1. Puritan literature and culture (17 th century): American literature begins in 1620 with settling of the
Plymouth Plantation and ends with the American Revolution and the treaty of Paris of 1783, which
confirmed the independence of the United States. Puritan culture: combined pure, absolute faith with
rationality, intellect with emotions, joy of life with rigorous moral conduct, independent study of the Bible
with strict communal control. The main body of Puritan writing is only semi-literary (histories, diaries and
sermons). The Puritans were English Protestants, who followed the teaching of Martin Luther, but who were
influenced by ideas of John Calvin. They believe in the doctrine of predestination, that at the beginning of
time God had chosen some people for salvation, while others were headed for eternal damnation. Puritans
were proud of being elected. Doctrines of predestination (everything is planed we can not change it):

Dogma of evil human nature: everybody has to be baptized, human is nothing and cannot be
responsible for himself.

Dogma of the elect: some people are chose to go to heaven, it happens at the moment we start our
lives, nobody knows why.

Dogma of limited salvation: Christ died only for the chosen ones.

Dogma of God’s mercy.

Dogma of Saints: God blessed them to leave evil life and change into walking examples.
a) William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation
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as a providential view of history: Puritans see themselves as being chosen by God for salvation.
There were only few elects and they were among them. They were proud of that. They have special
roles on the earth. In future they will be successful in all areas and can not be wrong. We interpret
everything as if it was the will of God (providences of Gad). Examples: Indians’ arrows didn’t hit the
Pilgrims; if the God hadn’t hale them they wouldn’t have harvested; they knew nothing about land,
savage people, climate when they came, but they believed they could do nothing without God’s help.
They see themselves as chose people because: hardship (weather), the idea of a journey, there are
God deliverances, America as a Promised land, many references to the Bible, God ‘opened’ the Red
sea (as an analogy to Moses).
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as a introduction of themes developed later in course of American literature
o Religion: God protects everybody and everything that happens is his will, they wanted to
prove that they are then chosen ones, so they are religious (more above in the point – as a
providential view of history).
o Relations with Indians: rather bad relationship, Pilgrims believed that Indians are savage
people; they treated them firstly as devils (then after seeing them and meeting them they sow
that Indians were people). They fought each other in bloody battles, they were enemies.
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Example: Indians sent arrows to hit the Pilgrims (they didn’t reached them as a God’s
providential).
o Language: wonderful ‘plain style’ which the Puritans admired. In order to present the ‘clear
light of truth’ Puritans writers avoided elegant language. The examples were drawn from the
Bible or from the everyday life of farmers and fisherman. Bradford’s history is deeply
influenced by the belief that God directs everything that happens. Each event he writes about
begins with, ‘It pleased God to…’.
o Realism: in this story there are authentic people (John Smith, King Henry VI); authentic
places (America-Indians, Holland); authentic dates (Holland – 1607/08); quotations from
historical books; some of the fragments are explained by historians now-so they really
happened; logical text – as a historical book.
o Testing the ideal against the real:
b)Anne Bradstreet’s poems:
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Upon the Burning of our House: This poem is less lyrical and more narrative. Everything belong to
God I blest His name that gave and took. When she sow the fire she said I, starting up, the light did
spy. - God was the fire she turned to (Puritan ideas). But she also lamented, as there were two sides in
her: her heart cries and her soul tries to convince her not to worry. There is a significant metaphor
God as an Architect.
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To my Dear and Loving Husband: It was a revolutionary poem as she wrote about love to the
husband not to God (previously love was associated with God). Here love is biblical, God likes this
love because it is pure and perfect, for example I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold. She
uses the original imagery, love theme, and idea of comparison popular in Europe at the time, but
gives theses a pious meaning ate the poem’s conclusion (if you are interested…. enjoy the poem):
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold.
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench.
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
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The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so preserve.
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
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The Author to her Book: Extended metaphor – Book as a child. The author as the mother speaks to
the book – her child. She warns her child who is leaving home – book in critic’s hand. She says that
her child is not perfect (as well as she). She was poor and wanted to publish her book. Each time she
wanted to correct her work she was finding more and more mistakes, but she still loves it and cares
about it (like a real mother loved her child even if he is not perfect). On the one hand she wanted to
publish the book (because she needed money) but on the other she complained that it is still
imperfect. Simply, she didn’t have enough abilities to write good poems.
2. The 18 th century: The Great Awakening began about 1730. It was one of many sudden explosions of
religious emotions. Preachers toured the country, telling people to repent and be saved by the New Light.
There was Halfway Covenant – such rules to membership of the Church, when your grandparents were
members of the church it was also possible for you.
a) Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
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as a propaganda literature (stylistic devices): like a sermon (so delivered orally). Many repetitions
(to keep attention of the audience). But here text images are not simply repeated, but they are
presented with increasing intensity, and the preacher consciously evoked the hysterical reaction of the
audience. This text strikes us as a powerful expression of deep religious convictions coming from a
man driven by the urge to transmit the sense of God’s anger to the hesitant audience. His sermons
were very powerful and frightening and had enormous impact, sending whole congregations into
hysterical fits of weeping. Edwards uses the traditional structure of the Puritan sermon: text (the
biblical passage that is the subject of the sermon- there were quotations from the Bible which were
explain how it works in our life), doctrine (the lesson or moral to be learned from the text), reasons
(or proofs of the truth of the doctrine) and uses (or application of the doctrine for the audience).
Unconverted people should wake up and convert. There are hyperboles (collection of images from
weakest to the strongest). They are memorable because of all different images and repetitions (only
two things: powerful God – weak man); they work on imagination and scary people. Attention is kept
by exclamations Sinners!!!, modulation voice, rhetorical questions and gestures.
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as an illustration of man – God relations: the image of a man who is like spider held by God over
the pit of hell, and the immediacy of eternal damnation for which God need only to let go of that
insect. God is not only able to cast wicked man into hell, but He can most easily do it. We all are in
God’s power. Edwards scared people. People are weak, loathsome, awful, disgusting because of sins.
God is powerful, decides about our life (if he will let us go we have no power to change a thing). He
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is angry – His wrath like great water which rises higher and higher – flood; black clouds, storm, bow
of God’s wrath. His kingdom is opposition to the miserable condition of men.
b) Benjamin Franklin Autobiography God was seen by Deists as rationalistic himself ad a creator of a
logical universe which man, through thinking and experimenting, could fully understand and explain. B.
Franklin didn’t create Deism but was among first proponents of pragmatism. He was an inventor of
lightening rod, pavements, and lamps. He was the embodiment of American culture, politics and practical
inventions first but some room is saved for artistic imagination as well. His own life became the epitome of
the most essential of American myth, that of the person advancing ‘from rags to riches’. Short description of
a plot: Franklin was born in Boston; he decided to leave home because he had problems with his brother, and
they were fighting. His father used to say that his brother was always better. His brother was a publisher and
Franklin a writer, so his brother wanted to published his books. He went to Philadelphia, seen as a new
world.
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puritan vs. enlightened: He is a representative of the Age of Reason, which brought about not only a
rational approach to the world, but first of all the beliefs in progress. The 18 th century American
Enlightenment was a moment marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than traditions (Puritan),
scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma. Enlightenment belief was that human
intelligence (or reason) could understand both nature and man. Unlike the Puritan who saw man as a
sinful failure. Enlightenment thinkers were sure that man could improve himself and wanted to create
a happy society based on justice and freedom. There is no belief in providence because the world is a
mechanism and people have just rules to follow.
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self – made man idea: Franklin was the first great self – made man in America, a poor democrat
born in an aristocratic age that his fine example helped to liberalize. His life illustrates the impact of
the Enlightenment on a gifted individual. Franklin learned from other writers to apply reason to his
own life and to brake with traditions (Puritan tradition). He tried to help other ordinary people
become successful by sharing his insights and initiating a characteristically American gender – the
self – help book (Autobiography). The most famous section describes his scientific scheme of selfimprovement. He had 13 virtues (listed below) and elaborated on each with a maxim, for example the
temperance maxim was Eat not to Dullness, Drink not to Elevation. He failed with accomplishing
the third virtue, he did it because he believed that people wouldn’t like him if he was so perfect and it
wouldn’t look so realistic. The project of self – improvement blend the Enlightenment belief in
perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self – scrutiny.
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as a prototypical American success story: Franklin presents his early life in a way that became an
American model, if not in details, then at least in principles. As a young man he had his whole day
rigorously planned from 5 in the morning till 10 in the evening. He also made a list of 13 cardinal
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virtues (temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation,
cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility) and prepared weekly reviews of his behavior on all days of
the week, marking sins against these virtues with a black spot What good shall I do this day? What
good have I done today? Most certainly a very unexciting model, yet this is what the myth of ‘from
rags to riches’ is all about – though Franklin was probably unique among people of success with his
concern about goodness. In his idea success is possible only if one does not waste one’s life away. In
Franklin’s world there was no predestination, and man alone was responsible for what he would do
with his own life: when we reject the Puritan’s view of the world as depriving man of the ultimate
control of his life, are we aware that being left with all responsibility may in fact be an even greater
burden? After all, for every man who has gone from rags to riches, there must be several who have
gone from riches to rags… You should have a plan to follow in order to become a successful man.
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as a demonstration of pragmatism: pragmatism: the truth is measured by practical experiences:
what worked was true because it could be traced back to law of nature. The success should be in
harmony with the overall pattern of the universe. To be a successful person everything has to be
checked and experienced.
3. Literature of the early republic:
1. Rip Van Winkle by WASHINGTON IRVING - a few words about it
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving tells the tale of the title character, Rip Van Winkle. Rip Van Winkle is
characterized as lovable and good-natured and equally lazy and irresponsible. He is quite popular in his small town
in the Catskill Mountains (which are romanticized by Irving, who describes Rip’s town in details and with huge doze
of affection)
Rip's popularity in his community is in part due to his altruistic nature. He was said to do any favor for his fellow
neighbor without question. Though, at home, it seemed impossible for him to fulfill any duties, especially that of a
father and husband. His wife, Dame criticized him very often for that. To escape the problems that plagued him in his
home life, Rip, along with his dog, Wolf, often set off to the Catskills.
One day, on one of the usual trips, Rip found himself on one of the highest peaks of the mountains as nightfall rapidly
approached. He found himself torn, as he knew it would be very difficult to trek home at night, and still yet he feared
more the wrath of his wife's tongue. Before he was able to start the long walk home, he heard his name being called
out. As he finally came face-to-face with this stranger, he couldn't help but notice his strange appearance, of an
'"'antique Dutch fashion.'"' Though they never spoke, Rip was entranced and awed, and followed him. They finally
reached the amphitheatre of the mountain and Rip saw that there were other men who looked like the stranger he had
just met. He was strangely attracted to the '"'flagon,'"' or alcoholic beverage, which occupied the center of the room.
After many servings, he became increasingly tired, and ultimately went to sleep.
When Rip finally awoke, he noticed that his dog was no where to be seen, and that his gun had rusted. He made his
way back into town to encounter people who he had never seen before. It was becoming obvious that there was
something strange happening. He made his way to the village inn. He noticed that the beloved statue of King George
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III had been replaced by the statue of a man named '"'General Washington.'"' When he finally asked around, it was
painfully clear that he had slept for nearly two decades. The world around him was different and new. Everything he
knew, was there no more.
Today, the term '"'Rip Van Winkle,'"' describes a diehard, or a traditionalist. In this story, Irving discusses the changes
that went underway after the Revolutionary War. People in the United States had long stopped talking about the
British and their affairs. They had now created their own stories, and their own history. Of course, no matter how much
Rip could have possibly hated the changes, he had to adjust, and he did. Rip once again became popular in his town, as
he learned to relate to the younger generation. Much like the new stories of war, and war heroes were the creation of a
new history for the characters in Rip Van Winkle, the story in itself, was intended by Irving to help enhance, enrich,
and create our history.
2. myth-creating story / legend
 description of the setting – like in a typical romantic tale
 mountain description – they’re mysterious (“fairy mountains”)
 narration in introduction – statement from the narrator who says that this was a real story (narrator is
self-reliable)
 many unrealistic elements
 there are some “not natural” people who look in a strange way (e.g. they have different
colors of beards). They looked like Dutch settlers.
 Descriptions of the men from the mountains – they’re no longer alive, they’re ghosts,
people from the past.
 Rip drank liquid which made him fall asleep for 20 years
 Creatures that he met
 There are many descriptions of the weather, village etc.
 Some descriptions are very mysterious (e.g. mountains which are like barometers – they’re sensitive
to changes)
 Many adjectives creating mood are used
 Distant setting, distant time.
3. History in the Rip Van Wrinkle (and realism)
 creation of the country
 there was a picture of the king signed as George Washington
 American Revolution
 There is a change in the people’s mentality and characters
 There is a change in the clothes and the way people are dressed
 Realism before and after the revolution (living in the village)
 People hardly knew what was going on (even the newspapers were delivered 3 days later)
 They weren’t interested in politics
4. Rip as the prototype of an American hero
Rip Van Winkle is simply taken from an old German folk-tale “Peter Klaus”. Yet, by transplanting it
to the American soil, Irving made it the first American short story to be widely read and creates in Rip
Van Winkle the prototype of the carefree American male, who forever remains an adolescent – a
character frequently appearing in American fiction. He:
 Stands out in the society (freedom)
 Is a volunteer – helps others in some unimportant jobs
 Is an individual (no boundaries)
 Likes solitude (doesn’t want to be limited by his wife)
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 Friendship with nature : going to the woods , he has a dog
 Has a gun as a protection
 Is hard-working
 Is indifferent towards politics
 Is sociable
 Is kind of a victim of his tyrannous wife
 Doesn’t care for his children
 Wanted to be an individualist (no orders)
4. American Transcendentalism
Intellectual movement that directly or indirectly affected most of the writers in the New
England renaissance. The trans. led by Emerson who believed human senses can know
only physical reality. the fundamental truths of being and universe lie outside the reach
of the senses and can be grasped only through intuition. focus on human spirit
interested in natural world n relationship to human reality away from scientific reason.
want to know universal truths better. they concluded all forms of being- god, nature, n
humanity- are spiritually united through a shared universal soul or over-soul .They
believed there was one being, god, no father son or spirit!
TRANCENDENTALISM:
-intuition allows us to "know" the existence of our own soul
-use the "highest power of the soul” to find their inspiration and insight
-nature confirms their deepest intuition
-heart of their writings- the spiritual unity of all forms of being, with god, humanity and
nature sharing a universal soul
-Embraces the romantics belief that nature contains all of the knowledge
-Transcendentalist writers went deep into the mysteries of human personality, especially
its' irrational elements
-natural, human, and spiritual meanings are interwoven
-the main goal is to relate all individuals to both the natural world and their own inner
worlds
In general, transcendentalism is ‘going beyond’ what is material (from Latin ‘over passing’) It
urged people to break free of the customs and traditions, listen to the spirit, go outside in order to
comprehend God, nature, and universe.
a.
NATURE
Emerson calls for a new philosophy and religion by revelation (individual experience). Everything was
new (land, thoughts) so they wanted to create new works.
a. NATURE refers to something unchanged by men
b. Man creates out of nature – it’s just superficial seeing
c. Children are innocent – we may perceive nature if we become like children
d. We will perceive nature when we are alone, in solitude – contemplation
e. We should go to the woods, and leave the world and civilization behind
f. Nature doesn’t destruct us, there is a connection between nature and our mood – the nature adjusts
our mood (when I’m happy the sun is shining (so he influences nature) but when he is in the woods
it is he who is influenced.
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g.
h.
i.
j.
k.
l.
m.
n.
o.
p.
In the woods we return to the reason and faith
He feels that he is a part of something bigger – a part of universe
He refuses egoism in order to ‘see all’
Man influences nature and vice versa
Nature is “a vehicle of thought” (it is our thought)
The feelings while being in the woods are : peace, calmness, emptiness, purity, transparent, quiet,
no needs, harmony with the surrounding
We feel younger while being with nature
We’re closer to God
Nature’s beauty can be found everywhere (example with the corpse)
God created nature so it must be good
q. Nature is useful
-all the things a man creates are a reproduction of the things he saw in the nature
-nature is a chain of beings (grass-animal-man) used to feed him --food
-man imitates the nature to use it for his own good (wind blows so may be used to move ships etc) --energy
-civilization
-pattern to follow
-pleasure
Functions of nature:
- daylight – he’s happy to be a part of something so beautiful
- beauty and virtue – virtue is usually accompanied by beautiful surrounding (good queen = pretty
queen)
- taste – the love of beauty is Taste, the creation of beauty is Art, Nature serves as a model for Art.
Oversoul – it is our inner power which is beyond Christianity, beyond religions, creeds and dogmas. It
doesn’t cause a clash; it causes unity of a man and nature, God.
UNITY OF NATURE:
- it’s a part of our Oversoul, it’s divine and serves people
- we see God in trees, birds ,etc
- we should try to find our own way to God, not to rely on traditions –we should rely on our OWN
EXPERIENCE
- we have to be directly related with nature, be practical about life
- nature gives us safety, asylum
- nature reflects our moods, and wears colors of the spirit
- Talking about Oversoul – we have two levels of knowledge:
The one we obtain from our senses (through reason)
The spiritual level – intuition, which is always right (and we should follow it)
AMERICAN SCHOLAR
In "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson characterizes the nature of the American scholar in
three categories: nature, books, and action. The scholar is one who nature mystifies, because one must be
engrossed with nature before he can appreciate it. In nature, man learns to tie things together; trees sprout
from roots, leaves grow on trees, and so on. Man learns how to classify the things in nature, which simplifies
things in his mind (section I).
Books, to the scholar, should only be used as a link to gathering information about the past. For these
books do not give a definite factual account of the past; they provide information for man to form his own
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opinions. These books were written by men who already had formulated ideas in their heads spawned by
other books. Man must look to these books for inspiration in creating his own thoughts. He must use all the
possible resources available to get every side and every opinion out there. When man creates his own
thoughts, using every source to aid him in his thinking, only then will the scholar be learned, be man thinking
(section II).
Although not as important, the scholar must also take action. He must fill each and every moment of
the day. The scholar should work different jobs and learn new professions. Then he will learn new
languages in which to illustrate his thoughts. The scholar should teach his knowledge to men, teach them
facts versus appearances. To do this, the scholar must trust himself, never willing to give in to popular
opinion. He should never seek money or power, or let either sway his judgment. His actions are a reflection
of his character, and "character is higher than intellect" (Section III).
Furthermore, the nature of the scholar is the gender of man. Emerson makes a division of the "man
thinking" and the woman. He writes, "I have heard it said that the clergy . . . the scholars of their day--are
addressed as women" (Section III). In the context of this quote, Emerson is saying that clergymen were the
scholars of the past, and that society degraded them. Emerson chooses to use women as the degraded image.
Therefore, women cannot be scholars since he uses them as this negative image. Multiplied by the fact that
throughout this piece, Emerson constantly uses the terms "the man," "man thinking," and the pronouns "his,"
and "himself." Herein lies the hypocrisy of Emerson, which by his own words displays how he is not a
scholar, a man thinking.
Emerson says that the scholar should take all the information from society available and use this to
make up his own mind (Section II). During this time, society equated women as not being equal in intellect
to men. Yet women writers like Mary Rowlandson, Elizabeth Ashbridge, and Sarah Kemble Knight, were
writing narratives just as good as men. They displayed how indeed, they equaled the intellect of men.
However, Emerson does not give women the credit or equality that is due to them. "In the degenerate state,
when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's
thinking" (Before Section I). In regard to the equality he gives women, Emerson has become the parrot he
describe
In ‘The American Scholar’
ii. Nature is a web of God – boundless, entire
iii. Nature is the opposite of soul. It is the measure of man’s attainments (osiągnięcia). If
a man is ignorant of nature, he will not possess his own mind (nature – mind)
iv. We should experience nature individually
v. BUT be self-thinker – be individual!
vi. Learn from studying nature! But be independent
CIVIL DIOBEDIENCE
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It
criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American
War.
Thoreau begins his essay by arguing that government rarely proves itself useful and that it derives its power
from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate viewpoint.
He contends that people's first obligation is to do what they believe is right and not to follow the law dictated
by the majority. When a government is unjust, people should refuse to follow the law and distance
themselves from the government in general. A person is not obligated to devote his life to eliminating evils
from the world, but he is obligated not to participate in such evils. This includes not being a member of an
unjust institution (like the government). Thoreau further argues that the United States fits his criteria for an
unjust government, given its support of slavery and its practice of aggressive war.
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Thoreau doubts the effectiveness of reform within the government, and he argues that voting and petitioning
for change achieves little. He presents his own experiences as a model for how to relate to an unjust
government: In protest of slavery, Thoreau refused to pay taxes and spent a night in jail. But, more generally,
he ideologically dissociated himself from the government, "washing his hands" of it and refusing to
participate in his institutions. According to Thoreau, this form of protest was preferable to advocating for
reform from within government; he asserts that one cannot see government for what it is when one is
working within it.
Civil Disobedience covers several topics, and Thoreau intersperses poetry and social commentary
throughout. For purposes of clarity and readability, the essay has been divided into three sections here,
though Thoreau himself made no such divisions
SELF-RELIANCE
Walden opens with a simple announcement that Thoreau spent two years in Walden Pond, near Concord,
Massachusetts, living a simple life supported by no one. He says that he now resides among the civilized
again; the episode was clearly both experimental and temporary. The first chapter, “Economy,” is a
manifesto of social thought and meditations on domestic management, and in it Thoreau sketches out his
ideals as he describes his pond project. He devotes attention to the skepticism and wonderment with which
townspeople had greeted news of his project, and he defends himself from their views that society is the only
place to live. He recounts the circumstances of his move to Walden Pond, along with a detailed account of
the steps he took to construct his rustic habitation and the methods by which he supported himself in the
course of his wilderness experiment. It is a chapter full of facts, figures, and practical advice, but also offers
big ideas about the claims of individualism versus social existence, all interspersed with evidence of
scholarship and a propensity for humor.
Thoreau tells us that he completed his cabin in the spring of 1845 and moved in on July 4 of that year. Most
of the materials and tools he used to build his home he borrowed or scrounged from previous sites. The land
he squats on belongs to his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson; he details a cost-analysis of the entire construction
project. In order to make a little money, Thoreau cultivates a modest bean-field, a job that tends to occupy his
mornings. He reserves his afternoons and evenings for contemplation, reading, and walking about the
countryside. Endorsing the values of austerity, simplicity, and solitude, Thoreau consistently emphasizes the
minimalism of his lifestyle and the contentment to be derived from it. He repeatedly contrasts his own
freedom with the imprisonment of others who devote their lives to material prosperity.
Despite his isolation, Thoreau feels the presence of society surrounding him. The Fitchburg Railroad rushes
past Walden Pond, interrupting his reveries and forcing him to contemplate the power of technology.
Thoreau also finds occasion to converse with a wide range of other people, such as the occasional peasant
farmer, railroad worker, or the odd visitor to Walden. He describes in some detail his association with a
Canadian-born woodcutter, Alex Therien, who is grand and sincere in his character, though modest in
intellectual attainments. Thoreau makes frequent trips into Concord to seek the society of his longtime
friends and to conduct what scattered business the season demands. On one such trip, Thoreau spends a night
in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax because, he says, the government supports slavery. Released the next day,
Thoreau returns to Walden.
Thoreau devotes great attention to nature, the passing of the seasons, and the creatures with which he shares
the woods. He recounts the habits of a panoply of animals, from woodchucks to partridges. Some he endows
with a larger meaning, often spiritual or psychological. The hooting loon that plays hide and seek with
Thoreau, for instance, becomes a symbol of the playfulness of nature and its divine laughter at human
endeavors. Another example of animal symbolism is the full-fledged ant war that Thoreau stumbles upon,
prompting him to meditate on human warfare. Thoreau’s interest in animals is not exactly like the naturalist’s
or zoologist’s. He does not observe and describe them neutrally and scientifically, but gives them a moral and
philosophical significance, as if each has a distinctive lesson to teach him.
As autumn turns to winter, Thoreau begins preparations for the arrival of the cold. He listens to the squirrel,
the rabbit, and the fox as they scuttle about gathering food. He watches the migrating birds, and welcomes
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the pests that infest his cabin as they escape the coming frosts. He prepares his walls with plaster to shut out
the wind. By day he makes a study of the snow and ice, giving special attention to the mystic blue ice of
Walden Pond, and by night he sits and listens to the wind as it whips and whistles outside his door. Thoreau
occasionally sees ice-fishermen come to cut out huge blocks that are shipped off to cities, and contemplates
how most of the ice will melt and flow back to Walden Pond. Occasionally Thoreau receives a visit from a
friend like William Ellery Channing or Amos Bronson Alcott, but for the most part he is alone. In one
chapter, he conjures up visions of earlier residents of Walden Pond long dead and largely forgotten, including
poor tradesmen and former slaves. Thoreau prefers to see himself in their company, rather than amid the
cultivated and wealthy classes.
As he becomes acquainted with Walden Pond and neighboring ponds, Thoreau wants to map their layout and
measure their depths. Thoreau finds that Walden Pond is no more than a hundred feet deep, thereby refuting
common folk wisdom that it is bottomless. He meditates on the pond as a symbol of infinity that people need
in their lives. Eventually winter gives way to spring, and with a huge crash and roar the ice of Walden Pond
begins to melt and hit the shore. In lyric imagery echoing the onset of Judgment Day, Thoreau describes the
coming of spring as a vast transformation of the face of the world, a time when all sins are forgiven.
Thoreau announces that his project at the pond is over, and that he returned to civilized life on September 6,
1847. The revitalization of the landscape suggests the restoration of the full powers of the human soul, and
Thoreau’s narrative observations give way, in the last chapter of Walden, to a more direct sermonizing about
the untapped potential within humanity. In visionary language, Thoreau exhorts us to “meet” our lives and
live fully.
Man and society
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Nature is needed to isolate from society, civilization, society and yourself, your place in the world
Nature can fill in the solitude
A child I not so tied to the society and its perception of nature is pure, fresh, new and intensive
(in the American Scholar) each man of a society performs a designed job. A man can become a victim
of society and become a mere thinker, or even worse, the parrot of other man’s thinking (society –
mere thinking)
society is against mankind
society restricts and kills individuality by rules (conformity – we should all be the same for a good of
society)
who wants to be a man must be a non-conformist
society is civilized, Christianized, but forgot how to use its ‘feet’ – it undergoes continual changes but
never advances
society prefers names and customs, not creators and realities.
The intellectual declaration of independence
(Nature)
 We should discover our own way of perceiving the world
 We should ‘get’ to our religion, philosophy and our own concepts of history – but in order to achieve
that a man should focus on what is now
 Tradition is connected with the past
(The American Scholar)
 be Man Thinking!
 “American Scholar” focuses on education, describes what a student in America needs to become. It
says that an American student must make himself into “Man Thinking”. His words constitute
America’s intellectual (not political!) declaration of independence. The student learns from studying
nature and the world around him. He should use books only as a GUIDE to improve, but not to
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control or replace his own thought. A student should become an individual thinker and experience
nature individually.
We shouldn’t waste days on reading – apply intuition while reading (use books wisely)
We shouldn’t base on something previously created
WALDEN by HENY DAVID THOREAU
Walden opens with a simple announcement that Thoreau spent two years in Walden Pond, near Concord,
Massachusetts, living a simple life supported by no one.. The first chapter, “Economy,” is a manifesto of
social thought and meditations on domestic management, and in it Thoreau sketches out his ideals as he
describes his pond project. He devotes attention to the skepticism and wonderment with which townspeople
had greeted news of his project, and he defends himself from their views that society is the only place to live.
He recounts the circumstances of his move to Walden Pond, along with a detailed account of the steps he
took to construct his rustic habitation and the methods by which he supported himself in the course of his
wilderness experiment. It is a chapter full of facts, figures, and practical advice, but also offers big ideas
about the claims of individualism versus social existence, all interspersed with evidence of scholarship and a
propensity for humor.
Thoreau tells us that he completed his cabin in the spring of 1845 and moved in on July 4 of that year. Most
of the materials and tools he used to build his home he borrowed. The land he squats on belongs to his friend
Ralph Waldo Emerson; he details a cost-analysis of the entire construction project. In order to make a little
money, Thoreau cultivates a modest bean-field, a job that tends to occupy his mornings. He reserves his
afternoons and evenings for contemplation, reading, and walking about the countryside. Endorsing the values
of austerity, simplicity, and solitude, Thoreau consistently emphasizes the minimalism of his lifestyle and the
contentment to be derived from it. He repeatedly contrasts his own freedom with the imprisonment of others
who devote their lives to material prosperity.
Despite his isolation, Thoreau feels the presence of society surrounding him. The Fitchburg Railroad rushes
past Walden Pond, interrupting his reveries and forcing him to contemplate the power of technology.
Thoreau also finds occasion to converse with a wide range of other people, such as the occasional peasant
farmer, railroad worker, or the odd visitor to Walden. He describes in some detail his association with a
Canadian-born woodcutter, Alex Therien, who is grand and sincere in his character, though modest in
intellectual attainments. Thoreau makes frequent trips into Concord to seek the society of his longtime
friends and to conduct what scattered business the season demands. On one such trip, Thoreau spends a night
in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax because, he says, the government supports slavery. Released the next day,
Thoreau returns to Walden.
Thoreau devotes great attention to nature, the passing of the seasons, and the creatures with which he shares
the woods. He recounts the habits of a panoply of animals, from woodchucks to partridges. Some he endows
with a larger meaning, often spiritual or psychological. The hooting loon that plays hide and seek with
Thoreau, for instance, becomes a symbol of the playfulness of nature and its divine laughter at human
endeavors. Another example of animal symbolism is the full-fledged ant war that Thoreau stumbles upon,
prompting him to meditate on human warfare. Thoreau’s interest in animals is not exactly like the naturalist’s
or zoologist’s. He does not observe and describe them neutrally and scientifically, but gives them a moral and
philosophical significance, as if each has a distinctive lesson to teach him.
As autumn turns to winter, Thoreau begins preparations for the arrival of the cold. He listens to the squirrel,
the rabbit, and the fox as they scuttle about gathering food. He watches the migrating birds, and welcomes
the pests that infest his cabin as they escape the coming frosts. He prepares his walls with plaster to shut out
the wind. By day he makes a study of the snow and ice, giving special attention to the mystic blue ice of
Walden Pond, and by night he sits and listens to the wind as it whips and whistles outside his door. Thoreau
occasionally sees ice-fishermen come to cut out huge blocks that are shipped off to cities, and contemplates
how most of the ice will melt and flow back to Walden Pond. Occasionally Thoreau receives a visit from a
friend like William Ellery Channing or Amos Bronson Alcott, but for the most part he is alone. In one
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chapter, he conjures up visions of earlier residents of Walden Pond long dead and largely forgotten, including
poor tradesmen and former slaves. Thoreau prefers to see himself in their company, rather than amid the
cultivated and wealthy classes.
As he becomes acquainted with Walden Pond and neighboring ponds, Thoreau wants to map their layout and
measure their depths. Thoreau finds that Walden Pond is no more than a hundred feet deep, thereby refuting
common folk wisdom that it is bottomless. He meditates on the pond as a symbol of infinity that people need
in their lives. Eventually winter gives way to spring, and with a huge crash and roar the ice of Walden Pond
begins to melt and hit the shore. In lyric imagery echoing the onset of Judgment Day, Thoreau describes the
coming of spring as a vast transformation of the face of the world, a time when all sins are forgiven.
Thoreau announces that his project at the pond is over, and that he returned to civilized life on September 6,
1847. The revitalization of the landscape suggests the restoration of the full powers of the human soul, and
Thoreau’s narrative observations give way, in the last chapter of Walden, to a more direct sermonizing about
the untapped potential within humanity. In visionary language, Thoreau exhorts us to “meet” our lives and
live fully.
Transcendentalist ideas put into practice
The transcendentalists separated morality from Christianity and placed it in nature. For two centuries
American Christians had been taught that the source of morality is in God. The transcendentalists changed all
of that, which is best described by Thoreau’s “Walden”
Thorough lived in the woods, on the shore of a pond called Walden. He wanted to live deliberately and deep.
‘Walden’ describes details of his life in the woods, where every moment matters to him.
 What old people say, you cannot do – you must try and find out what you can (simplicity)
 It is within our power to shape and renew our lives
 Present moment is very important
 We are trapped in our own traps – furniture and luxury, we live too fast, and people fall into routines
too easily.
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Simplicity – we need to renew our lives. It is our duty to shape our own being and living (so he goes
to the woods)
he urges us to find our turning point, to do the same but in our own way
He wants us to accept our own lives
(Emerson – American scholar) – mind is influenced by nature which has laws that we have to classify
– to find connections between them
(Thorough –Walden) Walden went to the woods and noticed changes in nature (spring, summer,
autumn, winter)
by observing nature, a man learns something about himself and starts to be aware of the present
moment (Oversoul)
Walden learnt that the man is prone to follow the same path (route). He leaves the woods to find
something new.
Thoreau’s idea of government and individual freedom
 He presents a disagreement between the government’s policy and the individual’s will
 The government does not respect an individual as the most powerful
 It’s also an outrage over social injustice
 It’s a protest against social wrongs – a war in Mexico! He can see the moral error in an unjust
war, which the government cannot see. What is moral or right must be found in the heart of
each individual person. It is to reestablish his connection with his own heart and moral truth.
He is seeking reinforcement, renewal and rebirth in nature.
 3 aspects of government Thoreau writes about are:
- standing army (and militia failures) – men like objects without any conscience.
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Legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers – serve the state mainly with their heads, rarely make any
moral distinctions “they are as likely to serve Devil”
“wooden gun” – a metaphor of the insufficiency of the government’s policy: to threaten people with
its power , but in feet being not powerful
 unjust laws
 government doesn’t educate (keep the country free and settle the west)
 There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the
individual as a higher and independent power.
 “If the injustice is part of necessary fiction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go;
but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say
- break the law!, let your life be a counter fiction to stop the machine”
 ** the author disobeyed the law by not paying poll tax for 6 yeas as an expression of his
disapproval of the Mexican War. He was imprisoned for that (later treated as a criminal by
neighbors and friends)
 (Civil Disobedience) – government is best when it governs least (not at all)
 government is a machine that can be used to abuse rights
EDGAR ALLAN POE
RAVEN
- loneliness and sorrow after the death of beloved
- raven: symbol of death (black + eating dead flesh)
- it is bleak December, midnight and he was almost asleep – he war reading some forgotten lore (wiedza
tajemna)
- he hears tapping, he feels terror but he’s trying to convince himself that there are some visitors
- he expects that it might be the ghost of Lenore
- he whispers her name, but only the echo calls back
- he opens the window, but there is only wind and….another tapping
- his heart expects Lenore but he tries to calm himself – it’s only the wind
- raven comes – he treats the bird as a prophet
- the bird can say only one word: ‘NEVERMORE’
SUMMARY (from net)
A lonely man tries to ease his "sorrow for the lost Lenore," by distracting his mind with old books of "forgotten lore."
He is interrupted while he is "nearly napping," by a "tapping on [his] chamber door." As he opens up the door, he
finds "darkness there and nothing more." Into the darkness he whispers, "Lenore," hoping his lost love had come
back, but all that could be heard was "an echo [that] murmured back the word 'Lenore!'"
With a burning soul, the man returns to his chamber, and this time he can hear a tapping at the window lattice. As he
"flung [open] the shutter," "in [there] stepped a stately Raven," the bird of ill-omen (Poe, 1850). The raven perched on
the bust of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology, above his chamber door.
The man asks the Raven for his name, and surprisingly it answers, and croaks "Nevermore." The man knows that the
bird does not speak from wisdom, but has been taught by "some unhappy master," and that the word "nevermore" is
it’s only "stock and store."
The man welcomes the raven, and is afraid that the raven will be gone in the morning, "as [his] Hopes have flown
before"; however, the raven answers, "Nevermore." The man smiled, and pulled up a chair, interested in what the
raven "meant in croaking, Nevermore." The chair, where Lenore once sat, brought back painful memories. The man,
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who knows the irrational nature in the raven’s speech, still cannot help but ask the raven questions. Since the narrator
is aware that the raven only knows one word, he can anticipate the bird's responses. "Is there balm in Gilead?" "Nevermore." Can Lenore be found in paradise? - "Nevermore." "Take thy form from off my door!" - "Nevermore."
Finally the man concedes, realizing that to continue this dialogue would be pointless. And his "soul from out that
shadow" that the raven throws on the floor, "Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!"
PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION
- gothic writing
- specific mood
- when author wants to scare the reader, author needs to be original and keep the effect (s/he wants to
achieve) in mind while writing a story
- important: composition
- there has to be novelty, originality, interesting plot (surprising and scary events), and specific tone
(creating mood)
- the poem cannot be too long – the reader has to read it by one sitting, if not – the effect is lost
- choice of impression – topic should be universally appreciable (example: beauty)
- mood – sadness/melancholy (it is not possible to get over the death of somebody beloved, beauty)
- refrain – repeated (one word! not good if it’s too long)
 letter -r- in it
 impossible to overlook
- situation – who and why should say the refrain? (creature able to speak → raven: black, omen, death)
- variation of application – each time the word ‘NEVERMORE’ means something else
- climax – stanza where is the answer: if Lenore is in heaven and if I will meet her after death? answer:
NEVERMORE (→all hope is lost, there is nothing)
- verification – rhythm, rhymes (at the end and in the middle of lines = internal rhyme), alliteration, long
verses
- monotony (mood of melancholy) →effect: we stop paying attention, what we remember is the word:
‘NEVERMORE’, we listen to the rhythm
- location – room of lover
- introduction of a bird – by the window
- where the bird sits – Athena (=wisdom)
- element of sublime – supernatural, we cannot really explain
- denouement (?) = resolving the action: raven changes into his shadow; soul is in that shadow and will
never leave → raven=soul says he will never meet Lenore again, raven stays forever to remind him
about it
- romantic poem?
→ sublime
→ mood
→ lost love
→ melancholy
- not romantic poem?
→ it was not written by inspiration
→ he thought about what he was going to write
- more universal setting – not American, it is separated from reality
- in a short story every sentence must suggest ending (creating mood)
- foreshadowing – suggesting that something strange will happen in a moment (keeps you read!)
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SUMMARY (from net)
Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay on the creation of "The Raven” entitled "The Philosophy of Composition." In that
essay Poe describes the work of composing the poem as if it were a mathematical problem, and derides the poets that
claim that they compose "by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the
public take a peep behind the scenes." Whether Poe was as calculating as he claims when he wrote "The Raven" or
not is a question that cannot be answered; it is, however, unlikely that he created it exactly like he described in his
essay. The thoughts occurring in the essay might well have occurred to Poe while he was composing it.
In "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe stresses the need to express a single effect when the literary work is to be
read in one sitting. A poem should always be written short enough to be read in one sitting, and should, therefore,
strive to achieve this single, unique effect. Consequently, Poe figured that the length of a poem should stay around
one hundred lines, and "The Raven" is 108 lines.
The most important thing to consider in "Philosophy" is the fact that "The Raven," as well as many of Poe's tales, is
written backwards. The effect is determined first, and the whole plot is set; then the web grows backwards from that
single effect. Poe's "tales of ratiocination," e.g. the Dupin tales, are written in the same manner. "Nothing is more
clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with
the pen" (Poe, 1850).
It was important to Poe to make "The Raven" "universally appreciable." It should be appreciated by the public, as well
as the critics. Poe chose Beauty to be the theme of the poem, since "Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the
poem" (Poe, 1850). After choosing Beauty as the province, Poe considered sadness to be the highest manifestation of
beauty. "Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy
is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones" (Poe, 1850).
Of all melancholy topics, Poe wanted to use the one that was universally understood, and therefore, he chose Death
as his topic. Poe (along with other writers) believed that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetical use of
death, because it closely allies itself with Beauty.
After establishing subjects and tones of the poem, Poe started by writing the stanza that brought the narrator's
"interrogation" of the raven to a climax, the third verse from the end, and he made sure that no preceeding stanza
would "surpass this in rhythmical effect." Poe then worked backwards from this stanza and used the word
"Nevermore" in many different ways, so that even with the repetition of this word, it would not prove to be
monotonous.
Poe builds the tension in this poem up, stanza by stanza, but after the climaxing stanza he tears the whole thing down,
and lets the narrator know that there is no meaning in searching for a moral in the raven's "nevermore". The Raven is
established as a symbol for the narrator's "Mournful and never-ending remembrance." "And my soul from out that
shadow, that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted - nevermore!"
THE FALL OF HOUSE OF USHER
- gloomy mood: autumn, oppressively low clouds, alliteration (assonance – the same consonants,
different vowels in words) (?) , adjectives (vacant, eye-like, bleak, soundless, low sinking)
- house: antiquity, pond (reflection → the house upside down)
- cracks on the walls – one big from top to down
- Roderick Usher: ‘prisoner’ of the house, after the death of his twin sister (Madeline) he started to
become more and more mad, pale, started to hear voices
- Madeline: doctor didn’t know her disease – she had some moments when she looked like dead (that’s
why they were mistaken and buried her); she appears and disappears (sleepwalker, ghost); she
resembles her brother; she becomes a vampire – takes the rest of life and blood from Roderick
- they are both sole remaining members of the long, time-honored Usher race
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- why they were sick: because of the house, stones, water, fungus
- ending: Madeline comes to Roderick (they were twins = empathy, connected with each other)
SUMMARY (from net)
The story begins with the narrator receiving a letter from his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, begging that he come
to him. Usher wrote in the letter that he was suffering from a terrible mental and bodily illness, and had longed for the
companionship of "his only personal friend". The request seemed so heartfelt that the narrator immediately set out
for Usher's ancestral home. Approaching the house, he saw an ivy-covered, old house that was overwhelmed with
gloom and depression.
When he reached the house, Usher looked equally shut in, pallid skin like that of a corpse, lustrous eyes, and long
hair that seemed to float about his head. Usher wasn't in the house alone because the narrator caught a glimpse of his
friend's twin sister, Madeline, who bore a resemblance to Roderick. It then became evident that Roderick and
Madeline shared an almost supernatural bond. That very night after Madeline went to bed it was the last night the
narrator saw her alive. For weeks the narrator tried to distract his depressed friend. They talked, painted, and read
together. Then one day Usher announced that Madeline was dead and that he was going to entomb her body in the
house's dungeon instead of burying her.
During the week that followed Madeline's death, a change came over Usher. Then one late night when the narrator
was unable to sleep, Usher dashed into his room with an evil look in his eyes. His friend tried to calm him down by
reading a medieval romance book. While reading he thought he heard the same noises that was being portrayed in the
novel. Usher then made an announcement that he buried his sister alive. He said that all week he had listen to her
stirring in her coffin.
At that moment, the door swung open and there stood Madeline with blood all over her. At that moment, he ran
out of the house with great speed and glanced back. What he saw was unbelievable, the house was ripping up into
pieces and was disappearing into the dark lake that was surrounding it.
Relationship: THE HOUSE – TWINS:
Poe next sets up a sense of the "double" or the ironic reversal when he has the narrator first see the House of Usher
as it is reflected in the "black and lurid tarn" (a dark and gruesome, revolting mountain lake) which surrounds it. The
image of the house, you should note, is upside down. At the end of the story, the House of Usher will literally fall into
this tarn and be swallowed up by it. And even though Poe said in his critical theories that he shunned symbolism, he
was not above using it if such symbolism contributed to his effect. Here, the effect is electric with mystery; he says
twice that the windows of the house are "eyelike" and that the inside of the house has become a living "body" while
the outside has become covered with moss and is decaying rapidly. Furthermore, the ultimate Fall of the House is
caused by an almost invisible crack in the structure, but a crack which the narrator notices; symbolically, this is a key
image. Also central to this story is that fact that Roderick and the Lady Madeline are twins. This suggests that when he
buries her, he will widen the crack, or fissure, between them. This crack, or division, between the living and the dead
will be so critical that it will culminate ultimately in the Fall of the House of Usher.
Poe uses the phrase "House of Usher" to refer to both the decaying physical structure and the last of the "all timehonored Usher race...." Roderick has developed a theory that the stones of the house have consciousness, and that
they embody the fate of the Usher family. "He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence for many years, he had never ventured forth...." Roderick also makes another
connection between a house and a person in the poem, "The Haunted Palace." The crack in the Usher mansion which
is at first barely discernible by the narrator, symbolically suggests a flaw or fundamental split in the twin personality of
Roderick and Madeline, and fortells the final ruin of both family and mansion.
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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE ‘THE SCARLET LETTER’
Plot Summary (net)
The Narrator tells us that he found some documents telling the story of a Scarlet Letter used by a woman named
Hester Prynne from Boston, Massachusetts in the early seventeenth century. He goes on to write an embellished
version of the story.
The story begins with Hester Prynne, who has just given birth to an illegitimate daughter, leaving the prison to
serve her sentence of standing in the town scaffolds for an hour with her three-month-old baby. She has also been
required to wear a red letter "A," to stand for Adulteress, on her chest. Hester has embroidered the A with beautiful
gold thread and amazing artistry. While Hester is standing on the scaffold, Roger Chillingworth, who appears to
recognize her, appears out of the woods. Hester is also asked to name the man with whom she sins, but refuses.
The years pass and Hester's daughter Pearl grows into an impetuous little girl. Hester has moved with Pearl into a
small cottage on the outskirts of town and makes her living by embroidering and sewing clothing for the townspeople.
Roger Chillingworth, who turns out to be Hester's long presumed-dead husband from Europe, befriends Hester's
Pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale, and the two eventually move in together. Chillingworth has billed himself as a physician,
and therefore able to care for Dimmesdale, who is in very poor health. In a rare moment when Dimmesdale lets his
guard down, Chillingworth discovers an open, self-inflicted wound on Dimmesdale's chest.
Dimmesdale's health continues to decline, and Chillingworth's character changes noticeably. He becomes a demonlike presence in Dimmesdale's life. Hester notices this change in Chillingworth and confronts him. It is suddenly clear
that Chillingworth has determined that Dimmesdale is Pearl's father, and that Chillingworth intends to make
Dimmesdale's life a living hell. Hester understands the gravity of the situation and decides to tell Dimmesdale who
Chillingworth really is. At first, when Chillingworth first entered the settlement, he had sworn Hester to secrecy about
his true identity. Hester decides that, for the sake of Dimmesdale's sanity, she must warn him about Chillingworth's
character.
In a surprise and secret meeting with Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester reveals her secret, and begs a defeated and angry
Dimmesdale for forgiveness. He eventually grants forgiveness, and agrees to leave the colony with Hester and Pearl as
soon as possible. Unfortunately, somehow Chillingworth manages to find out about their secret plan to leave, and
books passage on the same boat bound for Europe. In the meantime, Dimmesdale prepares for his final sermon, the
Election Sermon given on the day the local officials are sworn into office. He writes and re-writes a dramatic speech
which proclaims his sinful nature, which none of his parishioners can understand or accept. Dimmesdale is known as
a brilliant and inspirational preacher, and his congregation is convinced of his godliness. After the exhausting sermon
is over, Dimmesdale leaves the church and approaches the town scaffold. As he climbs the steps, he comes upon
Hester and Pearl standing in the shadows, and pulls them onto the scaffold with him. In that moment, the Reverend
Arthur Dimmesdale bares his chest wound to the congregation, and takes Pearl's hand to confess his fatherhood. He
then dies.
After this dramatic admission and Dimmesdale's death, Chillingworth no longer has anything to live for. He dies
shortly thereafter. Hester and Pearl go to Europe for many years, and Hester eventually returns without her daughter.
No one knows where Pearl is, although Hester is seen sewing extravagant baby clothing that no one in the colony
would ever use. In addition, Hester continues to receive letters from a man of great means throughout the rest of her
life. She lives a long life, and serves as counselor to many troubled women, as well as a giver of charity. When she dies,
Hester is buried next to Dimmesdale's sunken grave under a tombstone that says "On a Field, Sable, the Letter A,
Gules."
-
adultery – taboo – sin (→ ’A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man)
religion
small society
sinners exposure
hypocritical
narrator: 3rd person, omniscient, on Hester’s side
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- the Custom House - the legal point of entry at Salem, Massachusetts for cargo ships. The scene of the
Introductory chapter of the Scarlet Letter, where the narrator finds the scarlet letter itself wrapped in a
paper detailing the story of Hester Prynne
 the writer talks to us
 origin of the story
 Hester – historical person; someone noble, who takes care of sick people
 clothes with A (able, angel…)
 end: angel (angel from the sin → FORTUNATE FALL –‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘Adam&Eve’) – he wrote the
beginning
- reason for writing the book – Hawthorne’s uncle was one of the judges hunting for witches – he feels
guilty and wants to make it up (he sympathize with Hester)
- repentance – Hester’s side, punishment – society’s point of view
- consequences of sin:
 baby (Pearl)
 loneliness, isolation
 Pearl refuses to recognize her mother if she’s not wearing A (→ without A Pearl wouldn’t exist)
 Pearl wears clothes in the same colors (red, golden)
 Hester sometimes think that Pearl is a devil (she was born from a sin, she is crazy wild, she is not shy
with people)
- forrest – the only place where they feel free, at home (+) but also – it is the place of sin, outside society,
dark, out of control, to commune with devil (-)
- Chillingworth – legally still a husband of Hester but he wasn’t very interested in her (he was a scholar –
interested in books); he left her alone, sent her to America to test her fidelity, Hester didn’t know what
love was – she respected him; the author hates Chillingworth – says he is leech, devil does devilish
things and have no mercy – tortures Dimmesdale (becomes his personal doctor and stays the whole time
by him)
- Dimmesdale – also took part in the sin (letter A) but he confess his sin in public after few years (during
ceremony) and dies; before he confessed it to God but only Hester, Pearl and Chillingworth hears that
(afer that: stormy weather, meteor comes, people thought it was an angel); when he died Chillingworth
(devil) said: ‘though he escaped me’ = he escaped from devil, end of his tortures, not in danger any
more; A = adultery (he confessed) = Arthur (his name) = angel (he is forgiven)
- Hester – people isolate her first because she was a sinner, than because she wore A (don’t understand
why); it changed when she went to the sick person – she was able to come in because of the letter A
(nobody was to stop her)
- sin is beneficial for Hester and Dimmesdale
 Hester – had Pearl (the only joy in her life), she had ability to help others, she developed the ability to
read people’s mind/heart, she recognized sin in others – when people looked at her she felt burning and
relief – they were sinners as well
 Dimmesdale – was telling everyone about God’s forgiveness and understood sinners (he had empathy)
= he became a better preacher
- sin allows to develop – the author find out about Hester, a very positive person, and writes the
beginning of her story = sin





meanings of letter A
adultery
Pearl
angel
Arthur
Adam (he knew he sinned as well)
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PURITANISM IN THE NOVEL
The Scarlet Letter is set in the seventeenth century New England town of Boston, a staunch Puritanical
town. It is a moralistic and gloomy place where the citizens dress in drab colors and lack any liveliness.
Even on the Election Day holiday, they cannot relax and enjoy themselves. The Puritans easily find fault in
the weaknesses of others, as evidenced by the fact that they gather at the scaffold to witness Hester's public
humiliation. They also feel that her sentence is much too lenient. They punish her further by making both
Hester and Pearl social outcasts. They avoid interaction with either of them and often cast suspicious looks
and insulting comments in their direction.
Hester's sin, shame, and guilt are clearly heightened by the fact that she lives in a strict Puritanical society,
which is unable and unwilling to forgive her sin. The irony of the novel lies in the fact that the most
respected member of this Puritanical society, the Reverend Dimmesdale, is Hester's partner in sin.
***********************************************************************************************************************
WALT WITHMAN ‘SONGS OF MYSELF’
1
-
self – centered
lyrical
his point of view
we should take his point of view
very positive attitude towards himself
his identity: American, he was born here
he takes his identity from family, the same as from earth, soil... (transcendental circle)
he is an eye for us – yhe nature will speak through him
he is not influenced by schools or faith (→American Scholar)
inspiration from nature (also: form)
he is not going to follow any rules
- Emerson’s idea of the poet – art = creation made of mixture from nature and man’s will (man is a part
of nature), a poet should be individual, self-reliant and self-trust, should see the power of nature, a poet
has a gift, more sensitivity, has romantic views, a poet should be a ‘namer’ – he sees more and names
those things, he should have a massage for the people
3
- here and now
- he treats good and bed equally
- variety oppositions
5
-
body and soul -oppositions
body doesn’t abase soul and other way around
unity and contact
physical contact
transcendental contact with God
physical contact = transcendental contact with God
2 lovers
16
- poets represents humanity
20
- America = variety
- he lists people from America, from many nations, he lists: different lifestyles, different professions,
different origin – shows variety
- poet: sees, names
26
- he is also a listener
- he celebrates: nature, people, city, death
- he hears everything
51/52
-
reader should confide in poet
people are busy with their every-day life but he will wait for them
when he dies he will stay in soil and than he will grow in grass (transcendental circle)
there are a lot of things difficult to put into words
equal opposites
poet is contradiction, but America as well
form
- open road
- go without goal
- accepts other souls
- contact with others
- not salvation
- live as for yourself
- we can read it as a prose
- it is unrestricted
reader
- independent person
- you don’t have to read everything
- not in order
- you don’t have to follow line by line
- he gives us freedom
- choose whatever you want
***********************************************************************************************************************
Herman Melville ‘MOBY DICKR’
Plot Summary (net)
Moby Dick is told by Ishmael, a young man who wants to go to sea as a sailor to seek adventure and excitement. He
signs on the whaling ship, Pequod, along with his newfound Indian friend, Queequeg, whom he has met one night at
the Spouter Inn in New Bedford. Queequeg is a native of the Fiji islands and an expert harpooner.
The captain of the ship, the dark brooding Ahab, is obsessed with hunting a giant white sperm whale, Moby Dick.
Some years ago during an encounter at sea, Moby Dick had bitten off Ahab’s leg. Thirsting for revenge, the onelegged Ahab decides to hunt the whale down. Thus, Ishmael, along with the ship's crew, is caught under the spell of
Ahab’s obsession for Moby Dick.
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The Pequod leaves Nantucket on Christmas Day for the Pacific, and along its journey, the narrator introduces the
reader to quite a few of the ship’s members. Starbuck is the chief mate, Stubb, the second mate, and Flask, the third.
There are also three harpooners: Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. The narrator not only describes the crew but also
provides a lot of information about sperm whales and how they are spotted and hunted.
One night Ahab gathers the crew around him and tells them of his quest: to catch the great white whale. The crew
excitedly backs up his challenge to kill this deadly creature; the rest of the night is spent in revelry. Ishmael discovers
that Moby Dick is a temperamental and wicked beast who is capable of sinking a whaling ship.
While Moby Dick is being hunted, the crew catches several sperm whales. On the first sighting of a whale, Ishamael
ends up falling into the ocean after his boat is capsized; the crew enjoys his misadventure. Another time Pip, the cabin
boy, is thrown overboard and left for dead. Later he is rescued and declared mentally insane from the experience of
being in the sea. Along the way, the Pequod meets several other ships; Ahab has only one question for each of them:
"Hast seen the white whale, Moby Dick?" Some ships give Ahab news about the elusive white whale, but they report
that all their attempts to catch him have ended in disaster. One of the captains has lost an arm to the whale. Ahab,
excited by this news, goes back to the ship to make a new harpoon; in his excitement, he splinters his ivory leg.
The Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean much to the dismay of Starbuck and Stubb, who now realize the danger they
are in and would prefer to abandon their mission.
Eventually, the Pequod enters the Japanese sea, where the white whale is often sighted. Then a typhoon hits the
ship, battering it with heavy seas. Ahab then spies the Rachel, whose crew explains that the white whale has destroyed
a whole boat of crewmen, including the captain’s son.
Soon after meeting the Rachel, the Pequod sights the white whale. Two attempts on two consecutive days go in
vain as Moby Dick escapes. On the third day, Ahab drives a harpoon into Moby Dick’s side. Furious, the wounded
whale drives its massive head into the Pequod’s side, smashing its bow. Ahab still refuses to give up the chase. He
throws another harpoon at the whale, as his entire ship is sinking. As he throws the second harpoon, the rope gets
entwined around Ahab’s neck and drags him down into the water. The captain drowns, along with his crew. Only
Ishmael survives, rescued by the Rachel. In this tragic story, the writer paints a brilliant portrait of life at sea and the
American whaling industry during the 1800s.
- Moby Dick – monster, myths&legends, legendary creature, king of nature; he is like an idol – royal,
divine, demonic: present in many places in the same time, invisible, king of the sea, he sneers
(personification), he is white (life, purity, death), awe (like God); we may say that he’s got supernatural
power, defeating him = becoming a God, human cannot do it
- Ahab – pioneer, sacrifice himself, Prometheus (tries to give something for people – by killing Moby Dick
he wants to give them freedom at the sea) – thinks he can do it, thinks he can win the nature (Emersonic
man); he is obsessed with Moby Dick, worships him, he is deaf to all arguments when it comes to Moby
Dick; he’s got scar – crucifixion on face – he has suffered and maybe he’ll have to sacrifice himself; on
the one hand he is led by faith, on the other – there is some fault in him, he is a tragic hero (wrong
choice) – whatever tragic hero decides it will end up differently (he wants to kill Moby Dick but Moby
Dick defeats him); his name from king Ahab – he was jealous and he killed his neighbour – was killed as
a punishment, also great worrier
- Ishmael – his name is important – Ishmael survived on a desert (miracle) = he will survive; he sees both
aspects of Moby Dick, he realize that he has no chance; he doesn’t mind religion as long as it doesn’t
hurt anybody
- Queequeg – more important on ship than Ishmeal (more money), colored, son of a king (of an Island)
but decided to travel, he worships Yoyp (wooden idol), he meditates a lot
- nature – powerful, difficult to defeat
- tragedy – Queequeg has to die – seed has to die to give fruit – biblical circle of life and death; tradic flaw
– Ahab wants to have power over living creatures
- faith – name of the ship, story of Jonash (Ishmeal)
- epic – many different characters, life in America used to be like on ship = melting pot
- fighting heroes
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-
want to subject nature – living in difficult conditions against hardships (frontier)
characters are introduced as knights & squires
solidarity – fighting against Moby Dick, saving the ones who fell from ship
obedience – they had to be obedient to survive
hierarchy on the ship (order of eating) – hierarchy in society
- American tradition – looking for a sense behind the text
- this book is not about hunting!
- Bible of American Literature!



Symbolism
The Pequod- named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival
of white men and thus memorializing an extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a
gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent
death. It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes one.
Queequeg’s coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it built when he is seriously ill,
but when he recovers, it becomes a chest to hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. He
perpetuates the knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the coffin’s lid. The coffin further
comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the Pequod’s life buoy. When the Pequod
sinks, the coffin becomes Ishmael’s buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he will
pass on.


1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The meanings of Moby Dick
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals.
To the Pequod’s crew, the legendary White Whale is a concept onto which they can displace their
anxieties about their dangerous and often very frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about
Moby Dick acting malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the whale allow
them to confront their fear, manage it, and continue to function.
Ahab, on the other hand, believes that Moby Dick is a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world,
and he feels that it is his destiny to eradicate this symbolic evil.
Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific characters. In its inscrutable silence
and mysterious habits, for example, the White Whale can be read as an allegorical representation of an
unknowable God.
As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of white economic expansion and exploitation in the
nineteenth century.
As a part of the natural world, it represents the destruction of the environment by such hubristic
expansion.
The color white seems to have specific allegorical meanings: the white whale itself has been read as
symbolically representative of good and evil, as has Ahab. The white whale has also been seen as a
metaphor for the elements of life that are out of our control.
“Cetology,” as Ishmael explains, is “the science of whales.” In this and subsequent science-centered
chapters in the book, Ishmael attempts to classify whales scientifically. He includes quotations from various
writings on the whale, adding that others might be able to revise this draft of a classification system. Rather
than using the Linnaean classifications of family, genus, and species—which were already the standard in
Melville’s time—Ishmael divides whales into different “chapters” of three distinct “books”: the Folio,
Octavo, and Duodecimo.
“Cetology” seems to be a grandiose digression, a way for Ishmael to show off his knowledge and his
literary bent. The use of publishing terminology (the category names Folio, Octavo, and Duodecimo come
23
from the different sizes of books produced by nineteenth-century printers) suggests the arbitrariness of
human attempts to understand and classify the natural world. For Ishmael, though, the meaning lies not in
the final classification but in the act of classifying, which signifies hope and resistance to futility. The
classification also suggests that humans, in their imperfection, need such aids to understanding, lest they be
lost in a deep and fathomless sea of information and phenomena.

Moby Dick as an American epic- A strong argument can be made for Moby-Dick’s being the first great
American epic in its length, its elevated style, and its treatment of the trials and achievements of
democratic heroes or epic anti-heroes of national and cultural significance.
-> Moby-Dick's style was revolutionary for its time: descriptions in intricate, imaginative, and varied
prose of the methods of whale-hunting, the adventure, and the narrator's reflections interweave the
story's themes with a huge swath of Western literature, history, religion, mythology, philosophy, and
science. Although its initial reception was unfavorable, Moby-Dick is now considered to be one of the
canonical novels in the English language, and has secured Melville's reputation in the first rank of
American writers.
Emily Dickinson
1)” Success”
 It consists of stanzas and deals with the problem of becoming successful
 Two people compared, one (the winner) who tastes the success and the other (the loser)who reflects
upon success, he’s defeated and comprehension comes to him
 The person who wins, who succeeded, did it in a battle
 The speaker says that "those who ne'er succeed" place the highest value on success. (They "count" it
"sweetest".)
 You can appreciate the sweet taste of success only when you first failed
 This defeated character feels depressed, miserable, hopeless, he’s suffering
 As in most of Dickinson's poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB scheme, so that the
second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the stanza's only rhyme.
2)” Because I could not stop for death”
 the speaker is a woman who has been dead for many centuries; she revives the whole story of her life,
or to be more precise, the whole process of dying
 Mr. Death – he’s a gentleman, it’s like a date, she’s dressed up, they enjoy themselves, she finds him
attractive
 They are driving this journey around the city; she realizes that it’s not going to end well, they pass
children, schools(it means going through life) and they reach the grave
3) “ I heard a fly buzz”
 The speaker says that she heard a fly buzz as she lay on her deathbed.
 There is silence and stillness in the room, there were other people in the room who couldn’t cry
anymore
 The atmosphere was very solemn and respectful
 The speaker made a will and died, she was prepared for it, ready to celebrate this parting
 she was dying and at that moment, she heard the fly which is between the light and life, its buzzing
was sad, hesitating
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



an ABCB rhyme scheme
the poem strikingly describes the mental distraction posed by irrelevant details at even the most
crucial moments--even at the moment of death.
The poem then becomes even weirder and more macabre by transforming the tiny, normally
disregarded fly into the figure of death itself
The poem is also remarkable for its detailed evocation of a deathbed scene--the dying person's loved
ones steeling themselves for the end, the dying woman signing away in her will
4) “ I felt a funeral in my brain”
 Life, death, and reincarnation are portrayed
 She imagined her death
 The speaker is dead and lying in a coffin, she knows that because of sounds and senses
 The mourners tread to and from her saying goodbyes then they are seated in a chapel during the
service
 On the one hand there are bells and on the other hand there’s silence
 They put her in the grave and from now on there’s nothing but emptiness
 The use of words associated with death gives the poem an ominous and dark karma
 At the beginning of this poem the feelings of grief and pain are evident. Throughout the rest of the
poem, there is a strong sense that the speaker needs to make a choice between a world full of trouble
and pain or a heaven that brings solitude and peace
 This is all part of a vicious cycle. Sometimes when life doesn't turn out for the best, you need to wait
until your cycle is up. This is reflected clearly at the end of the poem. The speaker lives life, passes
away, and is reborn again into this world all throughout this poems' entirety. The first two words of
this poem reveal strong feelings. The words "I felt" show that the speaker is talking about themselves
6 A) Mark Twain „The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
1) Huck as a typical American hero:
 He is nonconformist (proves to be right)
 An individual, independent
 Close to nature
 Infancy of heart
 Has a rebel nature
 Ready to break rules
 The spirit of a typical American in embodies in Huck
 He didn’t have a name but wanted to find an identity; he adapts different names
 He stands for a typical American because he is self-sufficient, generous with open heart (he’s
prepared to accommodate everybody on the raft),he’s accepting everybody
 Smart, enterprise and innocent
 He travels along the frontier ( the spirit of pioneering, traveling, exploring the country)
 He learns from experience
 Defiance against society(running away to nature)
2) Huck as a child of nature
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



The primary theme of the novel is the conflict between civilization and natural life; Huck represents
natural life through his freedom of spirit, his uncivilized ways and his desire to escape from
civilization. He was brought up without rules and has strong resistance to anything that might
“civilize” him. The social vs. the natural laws : social rules were very strict and they must be obeyed,
they limited Huck very much, he felt as if he was in a cage This conflict is introduced in the 1 st
chapter through the efforts of widow Douglas: she tries to force Huck to wear new clothes, give up
smoking and to learn the Bible. Throughout the novel, Twain seems to suggest that the uncivilized
way of life is better, he draws on the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau in his belief that civilization
corrupts rather than improves human beings.
Huck and Jim were given the privilege to experience the world
Huck got synchronized with nature, realized that the world around(nature) was his home; nature was
the place where he felt free, away from society, boundaries, rules
Nature is freedom, individualism, ability to express and defend one’s opinions
3) Symbolism
 The motif of the river - For Huck and Jim, the Mississippi River is the ultimate symbol of freedom. It
carries them toward freedom: for Jim, toward the free states; for Huck, away from his abusive father
and the restrictive “civilizing” of St. Petersburg. The river is also wilderness, constant move. The
river can also be compared to Huck who pursues freedom, is wild in his acts and is on a constant
journey/adventure.
 Local color realism – the south, the frontier area, realism shows good and bad people, they are shown
the way they are. Although Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn two decades after the Emancipation
Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, America—and especially the South—was still struggling
with racism and the aftereffects of slavery. If we take the situation in the United States into
consideration we can say that Twain’s view on racism can be seen as representation of the condition
of blacks in the United States even after the abolition of slavery. In the book Twain exposed the
hypocrisy of slavery, demonstrated how racism misrepresents the oppressors as much as it does those
who are oppressed. As a result we see a world of moral confusion where “good” white people such as
Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of
separating Jim from his family.
 Narration – it’s a child’s narration, the language of a 13 year old boy, features of the language- his
attempts, words he has heard somewhere, grammatical mistakes, wrong tenses, very few abstract
words,
 Society – something bad, something Huck wanted to escape from, separate from, from its rules and
restrictions
 Attitude towards Europe – the King and the Duke speak with the British English, the attitude towards
the British is quite awkward, Huck can’t repeat many words and therefore his attitude is negative,
think it’s snobbish, artificial, not real life,; Duke and King also try to attract the audience with
Shakespeare but it doesn’t work (country people, not interested)
 The quest for maturity and freedom - Huckleberry Finn fits into the tradition of the bildungsroman: a
novel depicting an individual’s maturation and development.
6 B) Henry James „ Daisy Miller”
1) Psychological realism
 Feelings being described, not named
 We don’t know their thoughts
 The setting, environment is only a background
26




Focus on people, not on things
Concern what happens in people’s mind, inside the character’s mind, not around them
Description of Daisy, the author is fascinated by her, the way he sees and describes her
Reality is filtered through somebody’s emotions
2) Point of view technique
 Present all events from the point of view of one character
 Narrator’s role is limited, subjective; narration is usually indirect, filtered through fictional
consciousness placed between the reader and the events
 The author is not omniscient, doesn’t know what Winterbourne is going to do
 We are left with ambiguity
3) Symbolism
 Daisy and Randolph- Daisy is often seen as representing America: she is young, fresh, ingenuous,
clueless, naive, innocent, well meaning, self-centered, untaught, scornful of convention, unaware of
social distinctions, utterly lacking in any sense of propriety, and unwilling to adapt to the mores and
standards of others. Randolph is a different matter. He is a finely obscure comment on the type of the
“ugly American” tourist: rude, bigheaded, and stridently nationalistic.
 The Coliseum – symbolism of place, the place of Christian tragedy, Christian end, end of Daisy.The
Coliseum is where Daisy’s final encounter with Winterbourne takes place and where she contracts the
fever that will kill her (something that is not accepted is destroyed- scarified innocence).
 Daisy’s death – she dies as an individual, she in a way didn’t survive the critic of the society
 Rome and Geneva - Daisy Miller’s setting in the capitals of Italy and Switzerland is significant on a
number of levels. For the purposes of Daisy Miller, the two countries represent opposing values
embodied by their capital cities, Rome and Geneva. Geneva was the birthplace of Calvinism, the
fanatical protestant sect that influenced so much of American culture, New England in particular.
Geneva is referred to as “the dark old city at the other end of the lake.” It is also Winterbourne’s
chosen place of residence. Rome had many associations for cultivated people like Winterbourne and
Mrs. Costello. It was a city of contrasts. As a cradle of ancient civilization and the birthplace of the
Renaissance, it represented both glory and corruption, a society whose greatness had brought about its
own destruction. Rome is a city of ruins, which suggest death and decay. Rome is also a city of
sophistication, the Machiavellian mind-set. In a sense, Rome represents the antithesis of everything
Daisy stands for—freshness, youth, ingenuousness, candor, innocence, and naiveté.
4) A clash of two cultures- from innocence to experience
 Comparison of European and American lifestyle ( Daisy was fascinated with European way of life)
 It’s a novel of manner, solid rules, morality etc.
 Ignorance of rules- Daisy acts against rules, by Europeans she is seen as rude, vulgar, immoral
 Upper vs. lower class – free from ordinary pressures of life, intelligent, introspective
 Daisy’s character clashes with the European society
The Modernist poets first broke the traditional principle of making poems, such as set versification, self-indulged
emotionalism and harmonious subjects between man and nature. Instead, they made new rhythm, employed common speech
and were absolutely free in choosing subjects. In short the Modernist poets employed discontinuity, fragmentation and
collage to establish their new aesthetics and particularly they liked to employ images, mingling grand and commonplace
images.
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Modernist and Modern poetry
In the second part of 19th century American life changed a lot:
- industrial revolution
-
decrease in number of farms
families’ children go to cities – immigration to the cities and their rapid development
a huge wave of European immigrants
lg and conditions of modern life were changing – need for a new lg – realistic, simple – understandable,
Frost, Sandburg – urban lg
There was a need for a new poetry:
Has to be as well written as prose
- artificial verse
- derivative of Romantic and English models
- full of classical allusions and lofty ideals
- with little reference to the changing social and political realities
A need of a poet to carry on the Adamic(?) tradition of earlier A. writers and translate that tradition into
modern terms
-
independent poetry emerged between 1910 and 1920
1912 – Robert Frost went to England and published his first book, beginning of the magazine ‘POETRY’
set up by Harriet Monroe – they were the first poets that got money for publishing their poems. The
magazine was promoting new writers. There was forum for discussion about poetry (English and
American poets collaborated). Its function was to educate the audience.
ERZA POUND = The Imagist
IMAGISM – rejection of romanticism and its sophisticated poetry : - economy of lg
- everyday lg
- urban life, truly modern, industrialized reality
- consciousness of expression
- correctness of imagery
- rhythm
- clarity and intensity achieved by simplicity
THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT
- the poet is to be aware of his responsibility to alter his personal impulses, inspiration, imagination – they
are to be strictly controlled
The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock
- a dramatic monologue
- a modern technique of ‘fragmentation’ and film like montage
- dislocated fragments of a city landscape (huge,lonely ppl, unfriendly)
- interior monologue of a middle-aged bachelor, who faces the dilemma of how to propose to a lady at the
party
- his situation compared with mythical and literary heroes is a tragedy of the modern Everyman unable to
love or live his life fully
OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE – a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of
that particular emotion, so when the external facts are given, the emotions immediately evoke
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MATURE POET’S MIND – the difference is not because of more interesting things to say, he’s more
perfected medium, feelings save at liberty to enter into new combinations.
+ opracowania od Marleny ktore kserowaliscie
R. Frost “Mending Wall”
Romantic: Frost relates to romantic tradition, human feelings, nature.
Winter – destroys the wall
Nature has its order – after the winter comes the spring and the wall is against the nature
Frost celebrates farm life, relationship between people and nature.
Familiar with the English traditions and the classics
The rural and the local people provide his characters
Man and nature + romantic
Rules and laws are walls; justice is the process of wall-mending. The ritual of wall maintenance highlights
the dual and complementary nature of human society
The poem presents the country and the use of nature
Reszta na notatkach Marleny – man and nature, symbolic imagery
E.A. ROBINSON ‘Richard Cory’
Carl Sandburg “Fog” , “Chicago” - speedy development of an American city – w Marleny notatkach
Modernist themes: “Richard Cory” - human problem: failure to communicate, alcoholism, suicide, loss of
love
Development of a notion that each individual is responsible for him/herself, that everyone creates one’s own
heaven or hell
Most of his characters end up defeated by greed, sex, the struggle for social status, the growing depression of
the society
Direct style and often ironic treatment of subject matter
- a man’s life story within 16 lines with a suicide episode of the man at the end ( result of his character that
betrayed him)
- dealing with the experience of going to the city from rural areas. People have to get use to the fact that in
a city everyone cares only about themselves - solitude
- shows the psychological effects of these events upon R.Cory
- irony – Cory had everything but was unhappy
Carl Sandburg “Chicago” - follows Whitman’s poetry
Modernist themes: concentrated on urban life
- Simple and concrete lg
- attitude towards Chicago: loves the city (identical attitude to the city as Whitman)
- focuses on labourers class and wants to show reality
‘Fog’ image of a cat which is a metaphore for the fog
Modernist themes: place – city
I think that fog is a really deep poem. It may be really short, but still the whole poem is a metaphor. It really
captured the look of the harbor on a early morning, with the fog hanging right over the ocean. It also has a
wonderful ending. Fog moves on, just like life does, i think that he was comparing the poem to life.
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I think a strong part of this piece is the emphasis on the silence of fog. The imagery produced from a few
simple words is enormously complex. Fog is shown here as noiseless, silent, and swift. From this display of
Sandburg's brilliance, we can easily extrapolate a new meaning or new view of something as simple as fog.
After all, that's a big part of poetry, right?--Looking at something from a new perspective...
I also feel that the poet isn't referring to the fog when he writes "It sits looking over harbour and city on silent
haunches and then moves on" I beleive that he is referring to the cat watching the city. It sits in the early
morning, captures the moment and then moves on. I came to this conclusion because of the way the poem is
seperated. The first 2 lines refer to the fog. Then, the poem is seperated because it is now about the cat. Thats
just what i think, personlly.
May be he tried to say that there is someone silent watching us. It also has a wonderful ending. “and then
moves on”, like life is.
E.E. cummings ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’ -> notatki Marleny
W.C. Williams “The Young Housewife”
Speaker – observer, he knows the habits of a woman; he knows what she is going to do, he desires her
Vision through sb’s eye
He compares her to a fallen leaf – not alive any more, wasted, he thinks she is being wasted by her husband
Behind wooden walls she is not available; the speaker feels alone.
The title identifies a woman who is the object of attention of the poem’s narrator, indicating that she is young,
recently married, and identified in relation to the house in which she and her husband live. The narrator knows
her and is attracted to her. He apparently does not have access to the woman.
“The Red Wheel Barrow”
He did not approve of idea of intellectuality
Object may convey meanings, images, no ideas but things – He uses images that are down to the ground
This poem illustrates his attitude to poetry
How come so much depends on a wheel barrow – no justification
9. Modernist fiction: F.S Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby”

In the “Great Gatsby” Fitzgerald portrayts the 1920’s as an era of decayed social and moral values,
cynism, greed, shows how far America has moved from its beginnings idealism -> materialism

The mystery of Jay Gatsby
The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an
impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty
goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities.
From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of
St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying
his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his
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love for Daisy Buchanan,who was very rich. lied to her about his own background in order to convince her
that he was good enough for her.
Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsby’s reputation
precedes him.
He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity
before he is ever introduced to the reader.
He’s mysterious for us because Fitzgerald first proples the novel forewards hiding Gatsby’s background and
the source of his wealth in mystery
Self-made man – he pretends to be an honest and hardworking businessman, achieved his
goals

Gatsby as idealist / disillusionment with the American Dream
o Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his
dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him.
o Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues
her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing
the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees
the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and
individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.

Symbolism and paradoxes
The green light – represent’s Gatsby’s hopes for the future;
Gatsby associates it with Daisy.
It leads him to his goal.
Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the
American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more
generalized ideal. Nick compares the green light to how America,
rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the
new nation.
The Valley of Ashes - between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of
desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It
represents the moral and social decay that results from the
uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with
regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also
symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live
among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
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The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg- eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley
of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and
judging American society.
The eyes also come to represent the essential
meaninglessness of the world.
10. Sauthern Renaissance : Wiliam Faulkner “A Rose For Emily”

The interpretation of Emily’s madness
o
William Faulkner uses symbolism to compare the Grierson house with Emily Grierson's
physical deterioration, her shift in social standing, and her reluctance to accept change.
o
"In "A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner tells a story about a young women who is overwhelmingly influenced by her father. Her
father controls her live and makes all of her decisions for her. Without him she could not do anything except stay at home. When
her father dies, Emily has to confront a new life without her sponsor. Since she is not able to function without the presence of her
father, it is hard for her to adapt and accept the truth. When Emily's father dies, women of the town call on her to offer their help,
which is their custom when someone suffers a tragic loss. Emily denies that as she meets them in front of her house with no
emotion in her face. She sends them away as she considers her father still alive instead of being death. Her father controls all over
her life; therefore, she couldn't accept the death of her father. In her thought, her father still exists in her house and he is the only
one source that she can support to.
o
It's time for her to make her decision herself. She spends majority of her time in the house where she feels comfortable and where
her father still exists and protects her. She decides to live herself in the house regardless of changes outside in the world. She could
not escape from her father' ghost shadow. Everything changes; nevertheless, she still lives with the pastMiss Emily refuses modern
change into her desolate life; for example, she refuses to allow attaching numbers on her door and a mailbox for free mail service.
All her attitude is a result of her father's over-control her when she was very young. On the other hand, Homer is " a Yankee- a big
dark, ready man, with big voice and eyes lighter the his face."
o
o

Miss Emily represents for someone who lives in the South and couldn't accept the real thing that the North takes over the South
after Civil War.
Emily's house with all old things represents the Old south, which has to face to a new modern generation.
The plot of this story is mainly about Miss Emily's attitude. Miss Emily lives in the modern society but her attitude is about the
past. She is dominated by her father. Because she is so influenced by her father, when he passes away and leaves her alone, she is
so scared and cannot confront the truth.
She meets Homer, she feels balance in her life. He could be the one she can count on; however, she is still scared that he will
leave her one day. -> she poisons him and kills him. This is a way she can keep him with her forever.
The meaning of the use of gothic
o
Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between
Northand South, a mediation of the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic
heroine.
o The term Gothic derives from 19th-century novels, mostly by British novelists, that are set in
castles or huge houses in an atmosphere of menace and the supernatural.
o The term grotesque derives from 19th-century French fiction such as Victor Hugo’s The
Hunchback of Notre Dame and from Sherwood Anderson’s characters in Winesburg, Ohio (1919).
These settings and characters are often echoed in Southern fiction, with Civil War-era mansions
and characters who are physically or mentally grotesque.
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o Faulkner’s stories often fall under this category, as they probe the deep recesses of the human
psyche while experimenting with fictional forms.
o Gothic fiction tries to create terror and suspense and is usually set in isolated old houses, castles,
or monasteries, populated by mysterious individuals. Typical Gothic devices include locked
rooms, ancient servants, dusty chambers, and decayed mansions—all properties found in "A Rose
for Emily." Usually taking place in interior spaces of sinister buildings, Gothic fiction also thrives
on cultivating an oppressively claustrophobic atmosphere of disturbing mystery and implicit evil.
This story provides a good introduction to the genre.

no elaborate periodic sentences or stream-of-consciousness techniques. The simple and
direct style reflects the particular speaker Faulkner chose to tell the story. The unnamed
narrator is a townsman of Jefferson, Mississippi, who has for some years watched Emily
Grierson with considerable interest but also respectful distance. He openly describes his
perspective as average; he always uses we in the story, never I. His tone and manner
are informed but detached, and surprisingly cool given the horrific conclusion. He mixes
his own observations with town gossip to provide a seeming reliable view of Jefferson's
opinion of Miss Emily.
While the narrator notes and reports many things about Miss Emily's history and
personality, he is not the man to analyze or ponder their significance. The careful
reader, however, soon understands several important factors affecting her. Miss
Emily's father has somehow kept her down—dominating her life and driving away
suitors. She also has difficulty accepting loss or change. She will not, for example,
initially admit that her father has died or let the doctors or minister dispose of the
body. Miss Emily seems starved for affection and emotionally desperate enough to
risk censure from the town when she took Homer Barron as her lover. At the end
the reader also sees her determination in killing Barron, though her motives are
open to question. Did she want to extract revenge for his apparent refusal to marry
her? Or did she want to keep him with her forever?
J.D. Salinger : “The Catcher in The Rye”
“The Catcher In The Rye” as a contemporary Odyssey, the feeling of inadequacy and the fear of
failure
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
The Catcher in the Rye was frequently read as a tale of an individual’s alienation within a
heartless world. Holden seemed to stand for young people everywhere, who felt themselves beset
on all sides by pressures to grow up and live their lives according to the rules, to disengage from
meaningful human connection, and to restrict their own personalities and conform to a bland
cultural norm. Many readers saw Holden Caulfield as a symbol of pure, unfettered individuality in
the face of cultural oppression.
PLOT OVERVIEW (bo nie przerabialismy tego, więc nie wszyscy czytali  )
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is set around the 1950s and is narrated by a young man named Holden Caulfield.
Holden is not specific about his location while he’s telling the story, but he makes it clear that he is undergoing
treatment in a mental hospital or sanatorium. The events he narrates take place in the few days between the end of
the fall school term and Christmas, when Holden is sixteen years old.
Holden’s story begins on the Saturday following the end of classes at the Pencey prep school in Agerstown,
Pennsylvania. Pencey is Holden’s fourth school; he has already failed out of three others. At Pencey, he has failed
four out of five of his classes and has received notice that he is being expelled, but he is not scheduled to return
home to Manhattan until Wednesday. He visits his elderly history teacher, Spencer, to say goodbye, but when
Spencer tries to reprimand him for his poor academic performance, Holden becomes annoyed.
Back in the dormitory, Holden is further irritated by his unhygienic neighbor, Ackley, and by his own roommate,
Stradlater. Stradlater spends the evening on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl whom Holden used to date and
whom he still admires. During the course of the evening, Holden grows increasingly nervous about Stradlater’s
taking Jane out, and when Stradlater returns, Holden questions him insistently about whether he tried to have sex
with her. Stradlater teases Holden, who flies into a rage and attacks Stradlater. Stradlater pins Holden down and
bloodies his nose. Holden decides that he’s had enough of Pencey and will go to Manhattan three days early, stay
in a hotel, and not tell his parents that he is back.
On the train to New York, Holden meets the mother of one of his fellow Pencey students. Though he thinks this
student is a complete “bastard,” he tells the woman made-up stories about how shy her son is and how well
respected he is at school. When he arrives at Penn Station, he goes into a phone booth and considers calling
several people, but for various reasons he decides against it. He gets in a cab and asks the cab driver where the
ducks in Central Park go when the lagoon freezes, but his question annoys the driver. Holden has the cab take him
to the Edmont Hotel, where he checks himself in.
From his room at the Edmont, Holden can see into the rooms of some of the guests in the opposite wing. He
observes a man putting on silk stockings, high heels, a bra, a corset, and an evening gown. He also sees a man and
a woman in another room taking turns spitting mouthfuls of their drinks into each other’s faces and laughing
hysterically. He interprets the couple’s behavior as a form of sexual play and is both upset and aroused by it. After
smoking a couple of cigarettes, he calls Faith Cavendish, a woman he has never met but whose number he got
from an acquaintance at Princeton. Holden thinks he remembers hearing that she used to be a stripper, and he
believes he can persuade her to have sex with him. He calls her, and though she is at first annoyed to be called at
such a late hour by a complete stranger, she eventually suggests that they meet the next day. Holden doesn’t want
to wait that long and winds up hanging up without arranging a meeting.
Holden goes downstairs to the Lavender Room and sits at a table, but the waiter realizes he’s a minor and refuses
to serve him. He flirts with three women in their thirties, who seem like they’re from out of town and are mostly
interested in catching a glimpse of a celebrity. Nevertheless, Holden dances with them and feels that he is “half in
love” with the blonde one after seeing how well she dances. After making some wisecracks about his age, they
leave, letting him pay their entire tab.
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As Holden goes out to the lobby, he starts to think about Jane Gallagher and, in a flashback, recounts how he got
to know her. They met while spending a summer vacation in Maine, played golf and checkers, and held hands at
the movies. One afternoon, during a game of checkers, her stepfather came onto the porch where they were
playing, and when he left Jane began to cry. Holden had moved to sit beside her and kissed her all over her face,
but she wouldn’t let him kiss her on the mouth. That was the closest they came to “necking”.
Holden leaves the Edmont and takes a cab to Ernie’s jazz club in Greenwich Village. Again, he asks the cab
driver where the ducks in Central Park go in the winter, and this cabbie is even more irritable than the first one.
Holden sits alone at a table in Ernie’s and observes the other patrons with distaste. He runs into Lillian Simmons,
one of his older brother’s former girlfriends, who invites him to sit with her and her date. Holden says he has to
meet someone, leaves, and walks back to the Edmont.
Maurice, the elevator operator at the Edmont, offers to send a prostitute to Holden’s room for five dollars, and
Holden agrees. A young woman, identifying herself as “Sunny,” arrives at his door. She pulls off her dress, but
Holden starts to feel “peculiar” and tries to make conversation with her. He claims that he recently underwent a
spinal operation and isn’t sufficiently -recovered to have sex with her, but he offers to pay her anyway. She sits on
his lap and talks dirty to him, but he insists on paying her five dollars and showing her the door. Sunny returns
with Maurice, who demands another five dollars from Holden. When Holden refuses to pay, Maurice punches
him in the stomach and leaves him on the floor, while Sunny takes five dollars from his wallet. Holden goes to
bed.
He wakes up at ten o’clock on Sunday and calls Sally Hayes, an attractive girl whom he has dated in the past.
They arrange to meet for a matinee showing of a Broadway play. He eats breakfast at a sandwich bar, where he
converses with two nuns about Romeo and Juliet. He gives the nuns ten dollars. He tries to telephone Jane
Gallagher, but her mother answers the phone, and he hangs up. He takes a cab to Central Park to look for his
younger sister, Phoebe, but she isn’t there. He helps one of Phoebe’s schoolmates tighten her skate, and the girl
tells him that Phoebe might be in the Museum of Natural History. Though he knows that Phoebe’s class wouldn’t
be at the museum on a Sunday, he goes there anyway, but when he gets there he decides not to go in and instead
takes a cab to the Biltmore Hotel to meet Sally.
Holden and Sally go to the play, and Holden is annoyed that Sally talks with a boy she knows from Andover
afterward. At Sally’s suggestion, they go to Radio City to ice skate. They both skate poorly and decide to get a
table instead. Holden tries to explain to Sally why he is unhappy at school, and actually urges her to run away
with him to Massachusetts or Vermont and live in a cabin. When she refuses, he calls her a “pain in the ass” and
laughs at her when she reacts angrily. She refuses to listen to his apologies and leaves.
Holden calls Jane again, but there is no answer. He calls Carl Luce, a young man who had been Holden’s student
advisor at the Whooton School and who is now a student at Columbia University. Luce arranges to meet him for a
drink after dinner, and Holden goes to a movie at Radio City to kill time. Holden and Luce meet at the Wicker
Bar in the Seton Hotel. At Whooton, Luce had spoken frankly with some of the boys about sex, and Holden tries
to draw him into a conversation about it once more. Luce grows irritated by Holden’s juvenile remarks about
homosexuals and about Luce’s Chinese girlfriend, and he makes an excuse to leave early. Holden continues to
drink Scotch and listen to the pianist and singer.
Quite drunk, Holden telephones Sally Hayes and babbles about their Christmas Eve plans. Then he goes to the
lagoon in Central Park, where he used to watch the ducks as a child. It takes him a long time to find it, and by the
time he does, he is freezing cold. He then decides to sneak into his own apartment building and wake his sister,
Phoebe. He is forced to admit to Phoebe that he was kicked out of school, which makes her mad at him. When he
tries to explain why he hates school, she accuses him of not liking anything. He tells her his fantasy of being “the
catcher in the rye,” a person who catches little children as they are about to fall off of a cliff. Phoebe tells him that
he has misremembered the poem that he took the image from: Robert Burns’s poem says “if a body meet a body,
coming through the rye,” not “catch a body.”
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Holden calls his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who tells Holden he can come to his apartment. Mr.
Antolini asks Holden about his expulsion and tries to counsel him about his future. Holden can’t hide his
sleepiness, and Mr. Antolini puts him to bed on the couch. Holden awakens to find Mr. Antolini stroking his
forehead. Thinking that Mr. Antolini is making a homosexual overture, Holden hastily excuses himself and
leaves, sleeping for a few hours on a bench at Grand Central Station.
Holden goes to Phoebe’s school and sends her a note saying that he is leaving home for good and that she should
meet him at lunchtime at the museum. When Phoebe arrives, she is carrying a suitcase full of clothes, and she
asks Holden to take her with him. He refuses angrily, and she cries and then refuses to speak to him. Knowing she
will follow him, he walks to the zoo, and then takes her across the park to a carousel. He buys her a ticket and
watches her ride it. It starts to rain heavily, but Holden is so happy watching his sister ride the carousel that he is
close to tears.
Holden ends his narrative here, telling the reader that he is not going to tell the story of how he went home and
got “sick.” He plans to go to a new school in the fall and is cautiously optimistic about his future.
Alienation as a Form of Self-Protection
 Throughout the novel, Holden seems to be excluded from and victimized by the world around him, he
feels trapped on “the other side” of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in a world in
which he feels he doesn’t belong.
 Holden’s alienation is his way of protecting himself. Just as he wears his hunting hat (see “Symbols,”
below) to advertise his uniqueness, he uses his isolation as proof that he is better than everyone else
around him and therefore above interacting with them. The truth is that interactions with other people
usually confuse and overwhelm him, and his cynical sense of superiority serves as a type of selfprotection. Thus, Holden’s alienation is the source of what little stability he has in his life.
 Holden’s alienation is the cause of most of his pain. He never addresses his own emotions directly,
nor does he attempt to discover the source of his troubles. He desperately needs human contact and
love, but his protective wall of bitterness prevents him from looking for such interaction. Alienation is
both the source of Holden’s strength and the source of his problems. For example, his loneliness
propels him into his date with Sally Hayes, but his need for isolation causes him to insult her and drive
her away. Similarly, he longs for the meaningful connection he once had with Jane Gallagher, but he
is too frightened to make any real effort to contact her. He depends upon his alienation, but it destroys
him.
The Painfulness of Growing Up
 a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity.
 Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity. He wants everything to be easily understandable
and eternally fixed.
 He is frightened because he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand
everything around him. But he refuses to acknowledge this fear, expressing it only in a few instances—for
example, when he talks about sex and admits that “[s]ex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to
God I don’t”
 Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden invents a fantasy that
adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy (“phoniness”), while childhood is a world of
innocence, curiosity, and honesty. Nothing reveals his image of these two worlds better than his fantasy
about the catcher in the rye: he imagines childhood as an idyllic field of rye in which children romp and
play; adulthood, for the children of this world, is equivalent to death—a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff.
His created understandings of childhood and adulthood allow Holden to cut himself off from the world by
covering himself with a protective armor of cynicism. But as the book progresses, Holden’s experiences,
particularly his encounters with Mr. Antolini and Phoebe, reveal the shallowness of his conceptions.
The Phoniness of the Adult World
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

“Phoniness,” which is probably the most famous phrase from The Catcher in the Rye, is one of Holden’s
favorite concepts. It is his catch-all for describing the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and
shallowness that he encounters in the world around him.
Holden explains that adults are inevitably phonies, and, what’s worse, they can’t see their own phoniness.
Phoniness, for Holden, stands as an emblem of everything that’s wrong in the world around him and
provides an excuse for him to withdraw into his cynical isolation.
Relationships, Intimacy, and Sexuality
 relating to the larger theme of alienation.
 Both physical and emotional relationships offer Holden opportunity to break out of his isolated shell.
 also represent what he fears most about the adult world: complexity, unpredictability, and potential for
conflict and change. Holden likes the world to be silent and frozen, predictable and unchanging.
 Because people are unpredictable, they challenge Holden and force him to question his senses of selfconfidence and self-worth.
 Holden has trouble dealing with this kind of complexity. As a result, he has isolated himself and fears
intimacy. Although he encounters opportunities for both physical and emotional intimacy, he bungles
them all, wrapping himself in a psychological armor of critical cynicism and bitterness. Even so, Holden
desperately continues searching for new relationships, always undoing himself only at the last moment.
*Niestety to wszystko co udało mi sie znalezc o “Catcher...”, nic wiecej nie mam.... 
11. Minority fiction: Jewish fiction: Philip Roth „Portnoy’s Complaint”
Portnoy’s complaint is American writer Philip Roth’s fourth and, to date, still most popular novel. It has been
first published in 1969. Structurally, it is a continous monologue as narrated by its eponymous speaker,
Alexander Portnoy, to his psychoanalytist, Dr. Spielvogel (a discourse of a patient sitting on a
psychoanlitycal couch). This narration weaves effortlessly through time and describes scenes from each stage
in Portnoy’s life, with every recollection in some way touching upon Portnoy’s central dilemma, his inability
to enjoy the fruits of his sexual adventures (he is impotent). Roth is not subtle about defining this as the main
theme of his book. On the first page of the novel one finds his clinical definition of “Portnoy’s complaint”It’s a disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme
sexual longings, often of a pervasive nature...
The narrative situation
Structurally, Portnoy's Complaint is a continuous monologue as narrated by its eponymous speaker,
Alexander Portnoy, to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Spielvogel. This narration weaves effortlessly through time
and describes scenes from each stage in Portnoy's life, with every recollection in some way touching upon
Portnoy's central dilemma: his inability to enjoy the fruits of his sexual adventures even as his extreme
libidinal urges force him to seek release in ever more creative (and, in his mind, degrading and shameful)
acts of eroticism.-> masturbation.
Alexander Portnoy:
 A Jew with a big nose and big ego who loves sex. Unfortunatelly, he was brought up in an extremely
strict household with high expectations, and as a result has strongly conflicting feelings regarding the
world of sex. He has a strong sex drive, and though there is nothing more that he wishes for but a
normal, loving family with kids, he knows he could never settle down because of his wandering
libido. He loves kinky sex but feels guilty doing it, and relates this problem through several anecdotes
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


regarding his early childhood and teenage years, hoping to help the doctor reach a conclusion about
his problem.
Even though he is a forty-year old guy he is still on the same level of sexuality as he was in his
childhood.
Impotence is his problem (he meets a a Jewish girl who could be his wife. She reminds him of his
mother therefore, he is not able to perform).
He feels guilty of doing things that seem to be forbidden e.g. masturbation (he is afraid that it’ll make
him blind) or having sex with gentile (non-Jewish) girls.
Portnoy’s mother:
 Castrating mother – influences Portnoy’s inability to perform with a girl, because the girl resambles
his mother.
 Mother taught Portnoy everything about Jewish life, she sets the regulations e.g. forbids him to eat
french fries and chinese food.
 Because of all the restrictions imposed by his mother, Portnoy can’t become a normal American, even
though he really wants to.
 Mother stands with a knife over Portnoy (speaking figuratively of course)
 She is also seductive – she doesn’t mind being naked in his presence.
 She is Pornoy’s object of desire but she also, as a result of costant absence of the father, is the one
who punishes the boy for everything, she terrorizes him ( Mother, an object of desire and at the
same time a fearsome person – Castrating mother).
According to Freud’s theory, all the problems stem from early childhood:
Stages of libido to release mental energy:
1) Oral (baby drinks milk, it thinks it is one with its mommy. Father is someone who is in-between a
mother and a child. He is in a way excluded from their relationship)
2) Anal (a child learns to control to pee, it starts to know the boundry between its body and the world –
pleasure of controlling the body)
3) Phallic (a child distinguishes the difference between males and females)
4) Genital (discovers the sources of pleasure)
Edyp’s complex - You want to exclude the father to regain the unity with the mother (it is an
unconscious desire).
Castration anxiety (phallic stage):
 When a son is affraid that his father is going to castrate him.
 It causes the desire to be suppressed, to worship the father and to identify with him, to become a real
man.
 In case of Alexander Portnoy, his father is too weak and the boy can’t identify with him. It is the
mother who threatens the boy with castration.
 Circumcision – connection between circumcision and castration (reflects Jewishness)
 He’s afraid he’ll lose his pennis, in one scene he imagines that pennis is talking to him
 Sexual abuses are against his Jewish morality – he rebels but it’s stronger than him
“Portnoy’s Complaint” explores the nature of Jewishness:
 Portnoy’s big nose show that he is a Jew (a sign that he was circumcised).
 Portnoy wants to break free from Jewishness. It leads to rebellion: He breaks all taboos (he
masturbates and sleeps with non-Jewish girls – one and the other causes guilt)
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

Portnoy wants to become a normal American, to do that he will use bad language and sexual deeds.
But still deep inside he is a Jew and he knows that he has to defend his Jewishness (idealism). That is
why he feels guilty at masturbating and having sex with gentile girls (guilt leads to his being
impotent).
Guiltiness and rebellion are fighting a terrible battle in Portnoy’s mind.
Alexander mixes reality with imagination (Pornographic descriptions). We tend to lie when we describe our
past – we tend to color things, and that’s what Portnoy does.
Jewish body as a source of complexes
The fact that Alexander belongs to the minority affects theway he perceives himself -> the feeling of identity
turns into apsychological problem, his body reflects his psycho.
Impotance – is a result of his psychological disorder (the book is a session with a therapists)
The sense of morality – not inner but developed on the basis of upbringing
Alexander builds his own world , which is a form of protest (-> masturbation and the pursuit of gay girls)
 He’s afraid he’ll lose his pennis, in one scene he imagines that pennis is talking to him
 Sexual abuses are against his Jewish morality – he rebels but it’s stronger than him
Ambivalance toward Jewish identity (examples) ??
12. Post-modern and contemporary fiction



Everyone perceive the world in his own way because everyone has different expariance, attitudes
(sth is good / bad for different people)
There are not enough words to describe the reality
The way we look at the world depends on the way we are shaped by our language, society,
environment
Concept (a tree) <-- a sign
----------------------------------represenatation (vocal / visual)

Concept is never representative, a word is always arbitrary to the concept, there’s no natural
connection between them!
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S-signifier
<-- we think in --> no natural connection!
------------S-signified
That’s why we’re involved in signifier.
The proof is -> a tree -> in different language it’s a different word, we have no realaccess to reality
Communication <-- we learn a language to communicate
------------------understanding
Truth – there’s no truth because truth is not valid toothers

Trafamadoria – an artificial world ?, not a reality, it’s in the book, it’s prior to other – you cannot
tell whether it’s true or not (?)
Histograficzna metapowieść


Dąży do umiejscowienia się w dyskursie historycznym, ale częściowo fikcyjnym
Parodia, gdyż historia i fikcja przybierają równorzędny status
Intertekstualność



Zastępuje wyparty związek „autor-tekst”, zawiązkiem „czytelnik-tekst”
Dzieło literackie nie jest źródłema jedynie częścią poprzedniej wypowiedzi
Umberto Eco „Imię Róży” -> „ksiażki zawsze mówią o innych książkach”.
Parodia


Konserwatywna i rewolucyjna
Po to by odnowić historię i pamięć wobec wypaczeń „historii zapomnienia”
40

By zakwestionować autorytet wszelkiego aktu pisania
Postmodernism

the postmodern shift has been located as early as the late fifties to as late as the early seventies,
but for the most part changes in the 1960s lead cultural critics to see us as entering a new
historical period (especially in the worlds of art, architecture, literature, and ideas). Some
observers have identified this shift with the full onslaught of consumer capitalism: Frederick
Jameson, for one, calls postmodernism "the culture of late capitalism."
a) Kurt Vonnegut “Slaughterhouse Five”
Slaughterhouse-Five treats one of the most horrific massacres in European history—the World War II
firebombing of Dresden, a city in eastern Germany, on February 13, 1945—with mock-serious humor and
clear antiwar sentiment. More than 130,000 civilians died in Dresden, roughly the same number of deaths
that resulted from the Allied bombing raids on Tokyo and from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, both
of which also occurred in 1945. Inhabitants of Dresden were incinerated or suffocated in a matter of hours as
a firestorm sucked up and consumed available oxygen. The scene on the ground was one of unimaginable
destruction.
Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five as a response to war “because there is nothing intelligent to say about
a massacre.” The jumbled structure of the novel and the long delay between its conception and
completion serve as testaments to a very personal struggle with heart-wrenching material. But the timing of
the novel’s publication also deserves notice: in 1969, the United States was in the midst of the dismal
Vietnam War. Vonnegut was an outspoken pacifist and critic of the conflict.
Slaughterhouse-Five revolves around the willful incineration of 100,000 civilians, in a city of extremely
dubious military significance, during an arguably just war. Appearing when it did, then, Slaughterhouse-Five
made a forceful statement about the campaign in Vietnam, a war in which incendiary technology was once
more being employed against nonmilitary targets in the name of a dubious cause.
Bo treść jest dość zakręcona daje :
Plot overview
BILLY PILGRIM IS BORN IN 1922 and grows up in Ilium, New York. A funny-looking, weak youth, he does
reasonably well in high school, enrolls in night classes at the Ilium School of Optometry, and is drafted into the
army during World War II. He trains as a chaplain’s assistant in South Carolina, where an umpire officiates
during practice battles and announces who survives and who dies before they all sit down to lunch together.
Billy’s father dies in a hunting accident shortly before Billy ships overseas to join an infantry regiment in
Luxembourg. Billy is thrown into the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and is immediately taken prisoner behind
German lines. Just before his capture, he experiences his first incident of time—shifting: he sees the entirety of
his life, from beginning to end, in one sweep.
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Billy is transported in a crowded railway boxcar to a POW camp in Germany. Upon his arrival, he and the other
privates are treated to a feast by a group of fellow prisoners, who are English officers who were captured earlier in
the war. Billy suffers a breakdown and gets a shot of morphine that sends him time-tripping again. Soon he and
the other Americans travel onward to the beautiful city of Dresden, still relatively untouched by wartime
privation. Here the prisoners must work for their keep at various labors, including the manufacture of a nutritional
malt syrup. Their camp occupies a former slaughterhouse. One night, Allied forces carpet bomb the city, then
drop incendiary bombs to create a firestorm that sucks most of the oxygen into the blaze, asphyxiating or
incinerating roughly 130,000 people. Billy and his fellow POWs survive in an airtight meat locker. They emerge
to find a moonscape of destruction, where they are forced to excavate corpses from the rubble. Several days later,
Russian forces capture the city, and Billy’s involvement in the war ends.
Billy returns to Ilium and finishes optometry school. He gets engaged to Valencia Merble, the obese daughter of
the school’s founder. After a nervous breakdown, Billy commits himself to a veterans’ hospital and receives
shock treatments. During his stay in the mental ward, a fellow patient introduces Billy to the science fiction
novels of a writer named Kilgore Trout. After his recuperation, Billy gets married. His wealthy father-in-law sets
him up in the optometry business, and Billy and Valencia raise two children and grow rich. Billy acquires the
trappings of the suburban American dream: a Cadillac, a stately home with modern appliances, a bejeweled wife,
and the presidency of the Lions Club. He is not aware of keeping any secrets from himself, but at his eighteenth
wedding anniversary party the sight of a barbershop quartet makes him break down because, he realizes, it
triggers a memory of Dresden.
The night after his daughter’s wedding in 1967, as he later reveals on a radio talk show, Billy is kidnapped by
two-foot-high aliens who resemble upside-down toilet plungers, who he says are called Tralfamadorians. They
take him in their flying saucer to the planet Tralfamadore, where they mate him with a movie actress named
Montana Wildhack. She, like Billy, has been brought from Earth to live under a transparent geodesic dome in a
zoo where Tralfamadorians can observe extraterrestrial curiosities. The Tralfamadorians explain to Billy their
perception of time, how its entire sweep exists for them simultaneously in the fourth dimension. When someone
dies, that person is simply dead at a particular time. Somewhere else and at a different time he or she is alive and
well. Tralfamadorians prefer to look at life’s nicer moments.
When he returns to Earth, Billy initially says nothing of his experiences. In 1968, he gets on a chartered plane to
go to an optometry conference in Montreal. The plane crashes into a mountain, and, among the optometrists, only
Billy survives. A brain surgeon operates on him in a Vermont hospital. On her way to visit him there, Valencia
dies of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning after crashing her car. Billy’s daughter places him under the care of
a nurse back home in Ilium. But he feels that the time is ripe to tell the world what he has learned. Billy has
foreseen this moment while time-tripping, and he knows that his message will eventually be accepted. He sneaks
off to New York City, where he goes on a radio talk show. Shortly thereafter, he writes a letter to the local paper.
His daughter is at her wit’s end and does not know what to do with him. Billy makes a tape recording of his
account of his death, which he predicts will occur in 1976 after Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed by the
Chinese. He knows exactly how it will happen: a vengeful man he knew in the war will hire someone to shoot
him. Billy adds that he will experience the violet hum of death and then will skip back to some other point in his
life. He has seen it all many times.
As a metafiction / narrative technique
History
 nothing like one story, e.g not everyone kows about war bombing of Dresden
time, history are relative -> everything depends on the person who writes about it
42
(subjective point of view), the author’s mixture of facts and fiction.
Fiction
 to make it more interesting
 not able to “give” it in the right way
Metanarratives
 want to explain, to have the right to the best explanation of the world,
 create what is good or wrong
 to have the best knowledge of the world
 selfreflective fiction, aware that it’s a fiction (in the first chapter it was stated that it is a fiction)
The Author
 interferes in the story
 author is the witness
Billy as disintegrated protagonist
The novel is based on Kurt Vonnegut’s own experience in World War II. In the novel, a prisoner of war
witnesses and survives the Allied forces’ firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut, like his pro-tagonist Billy
Pilgrim, emerged from a meat locker beneath a slaughter-house into the moonscape of burned-out Dresden.
His surviving captors put him to work finding, burying, and burning bodies. His task continued until the
Russians came and the war ended.
Tralfamadore – an alternative reality frame, as an escape, as an structural device
Tralfamadore
 a kind of a madness (people perceive it that way)
 fictional escape from reality, fantasy
 utopia
WAR - real
TRALFAMADORE – dream, fantasy
Valencia (his life)
Montana – sexy girl who comes to Billy’s
bed
Billy = mediocre
Billy = playboy (nobody cares how he look
like, he’s an ideal there)
Death as an end of life
“so it goes” attitude to death
How does the life go on??
 Bily jumps from one moment to another one
 3 realities (Tralfamadorian perception of time -> everything is a sort of a continuation, there’s no
past and future, everything happens now / parallely)
1) War
2) Illium
3) Tralfamador
 There’s no death, Billy will be continuing living in one of three different dimensions,
Tralfamadorians can choose when they want to live, they can choose their favorite moment and last in
it.
43

In Illium Billy doesn’t have a choice!!
Postmodern treatment of history (?) – a historiographic metafiction
Historiographic metafiction:
 Historiographic metafiction is one kind of postmodern novel which rejects projecting present beliefs
and standards onto the past and asserts the specificity and particularity of the individual past event. It
also suggests a distinction between “events” and “facts” that is one shared by many historians.

the documents become signs of events, which the historian transmutes into facts,
Symbols
.
The Bird Who Says “Poo-tee-weet?”
 The jabbering bird symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war. Birdsong rings out
alone in the silence after a massacre, and “Poo-tee-weet?” seems about as appropriate a thing to say
as any, since no words can really describe the horror of the Dresden firebombing.
The Colors Blue and Ivory
 On various occasions in Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy’s bare feet are described as being blue and ivory,
as when Billy writes a letter in his basement in the cold and when he waits for the flying saucer to
kidnap him. These cold, corpselike hues suggest the fragility of the thin membrane between life and
death, between worldly and otherworldly experience.
12. (...)
a) K. Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse- Five
Major conflict · Billy struggles to make sense out of a life forever marked by the firsthand experience of
war’s tragedy.
Rising action · Billy and his fellow prisoners are transported across Germany and begin living in a slaughterhouse
prison and working in the city of Dresden.
Climax · Dresden is incinerated in a deadly firebomb attack. But Billy misses the moment of destruction, waiting out
the attack in a well-protected meat locker. Psychologically, Billy does not come to terms with this event until nearly
twenty years later, when the sight of a barbershop quartet on his wedding anniversary triggers his suppressed sense of
grief.
Falling action · The falling action occurs in the realm of Billy’s later life as he progresses toward a
newfound consciousness and an increasingly tenuous mental state. Billy experiences alien abduction and
prepares to share his new insights with the world.

Chapter 1 as metafiction, narrative technique
44
METAFICTION: fiction which treats about itself as fiction; passages in a text which relate to this particular
text one is reading.
Metafiction in 1st Chapter:
-
the author explains why it was hard to write a book about the war
-
he wanted to achieve/write a piece of mind, treats it as a therapy
-
we find out about his wartime experience
-
he tells us how the book starts, how it ends, what the climax would be (the execution of Edgar Derby) –
he gives us all the information
-
he thinks of the results of writing, will it be successful
-
he wants to write the truth about the firebombing in Dresden
Narrative technique
-
matanarratives- systems described the world, (More: It means a story or narrative that is presumed to
have great generality and represents a final and apodictic truth= an imaginary concept of truth in which it
is supposed that we know something with absolute certainty. To be an apodictic truth there must be no
possibility of mistake.
-
but: postmodernism- doesn’t believe in metanarratives
-
dirrefent types of narration, different accounts of history- no one is reliable
-
no chronology (travelling in time)
-
‘So it goes’ – a refrain which appears in the novel every time death is mentioned, it is connected with the
war experience and its effects on human life
* foreshadowing - Vonnegut gives away the climax he had been considering for his grand narrative (Edgar
Derby’s execution) in Chapter 1; when we finally get to the telling of it, at the end of Chapter 10, it comes as
an afterthought.

Billy as a disintegrated patagonist
-
Billy is a postmodern hero
-
unable to choose in which time/dimension he will land, he doesn’t have free will
-
he is passive, doesn’t decide about what happens to him
ex. father-in-law decides about him becoming an optometrist (because he also is an o.), he can’t
choose about his own about where to be (past or present)
-
irony of a soldier- he is not dressed properly (no gun, no shoes, no uniform,)
-
he is immature, never grows up
-
he is not a very strong man
-
he is Pilgrim- traveler, movable
45
-
name & surname: meaningful and meaningless at the same time (he wonders in time, realities, but it is
not common name, he is someone undistinguished, not a hero)

Postmodern treatment of history
-
different accounts of history, no one is reliable
-
the bombing of Dresden- the author refers to his own experience as well as to the text about this
event/tragedy
-
parody – realistic book doesn’t show the truth about the world (as in ‘The French Lieutenant Woman’adultery etc.), the book refers to parodistic composition of realism- the parody of the text that glorify the
war
-
the author is not the source of the text, we should base our knowledge on the experience of the author
-
the text refers to different texts (there is nothing beside the text- mimesis)

Tralfamadore – an alternative reality frame, as an escape, as a structural device; postmodern treatment of
history – as historiographic metafiction
Tralfamadore comes from books which Billy reads (science fiction), Montana comes from TV and papers he watched
and read (or saw ;-) So, the world may be a construction based on reality (historical texts). He creates a version of this.
-
escape from the reality, from the trauma of war
-
he has a woman of his dreams (Montana- porno star)
-
he is glorified, they admire him
-
he learns there that death doesn’t exist- different point of view on life
-
he is healed in a way, saying ‘So it goes’ he knows there is no death
-
Tralfamadore is a remedy to his trauma of war, there he is able to analyze it, to reconcile
-
he learns that there is no past and future but only now
-
he finds out about the end of the world- that it is inevitable
-
it gives him security, peace
-
the world of Tralfamadore is equally real as the war reality

What makes this book an anti-war book
-
title (people in Dresden were treated as animals in slaughterhouses)
-
young, weak soldiers who don’t know what to do and aren’t prepared for the war (no uniform, ...)
Germans are surprised- You are American Soldiers??
-
Roland- cruel, stupid, sadist (says that his father collected some objects for torturing people)
-
no fighting and combat situations
-
bombing of Dresden (children crusade, shouldn’t take place, people weren’t prepared,...)
-
prison/camp for British soldiers (they had v. good conditions there, a lot of food, fun; it’s not a world of war)
46
-
Billy as anti-hero

Symbols:
The 124 (the number of their house) Sethe had four children, she killed the 3rd one.
The colour red
o
o
o
Amy Denver’s red velvet - hope, bright future
Paul D’s red heart
- feelings and emotions
Red roses
- new life for Sethe, Paul and Denver
o
o
o
Sweet home – masks the true horror of the plantation
Paul D. – freedom, way home
Setha’s back (Chokecherry tree) - trauma, suffering, symbol of the prejudice of white men against black
people
Trees
The tin tobacco box
o Paul D describes his heart so – he locked away his feelings
b) Robert Coover: The Public Burning
The Public Burning is a 1977 novel by Robert Coover. It reconstructs the execution of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, the convicted traitors who gave atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union in 1953.
-
Post-war fiction
As representation of post-modernism
Historiographic metafiction: is one kind of postmodern novel which rejects projecting present beliefs and
standards onto the past and asserts the specificity and particularity of the individual past event. It also
suggests a distinction between ¡§events¡¨ and ¡§facts¡¨ that is one shared by many historians. Since the
documents become signs of events, which the historian transmutes into facts, as in historiographic
metafiction, the lesson here is that the past once existed, but that our historical knowledge of it is semiotically
transmitted. Finally, Historiographic metafiction often points to the fact by using the paratextual conventions
of historiography to both inscribe and undermine the authority and objectivity of historical sources and
explanations.
Historical reality – figures, events
47
Political bacground
 Time after WWII- people in the USA are tired with war, they want to lead peaceful life
 Fighting for women rights
 Imperialistic character of the US -> Cold War, conflict with the Eastern world
 Red Scare in the US; as a consequence -> hunting for communists
 Trials on tv -> to spread the fear, to show that the guilty are among us
 Rosennbergs’ Case – Jews suspected of spying for the Soviets, trialed and convicted of a treason,
executed in public in 1953 (Scapegoats -> nie wiadomo czy śledztwo w ich sprawie było
odpowiednio przeprowadzone)
 Uncle Sam starts osin the battle! On the brink of war with Korea!
Execution on the market place (Times Square)
– televised only to pull theattention from Uncle Sam losing his battle with Phantom (Soviet Union /
international communism)
Uncle Sam & Phantom – embodiments of the two great enemies
Phantom – because you don’t know how he looks like
Nixon – senator and “the one who thinks”, successful, hardworking person, career-man
-> Right of passage – Uncle Sam “raped”him or incarnation ? of Uncle Sam, he becomes a president
Eisenhower – president, not very intelligent, don’t know what he is talking about -> he’s only to talk to the
press, whole of his work is done by Nixon
c) Toni Morrison: Beloved
It’s a historical novel, to some extent, typical ghost story.

‘Beloved’ as a famine writing; woman as a slave, woman in a multi-racial society
-
the book shows the effects of slavery on people
-
the drama of woman abused, raped, humiliated because they were slaves
-
dehumanization, sexual abuse by white man
-
women suffered more than men, physically and mentally
-
it’s a monologue- she tells a story- it’s woman dominated narrative, she was a kind of a leader (Baby
Suggs)
-
Baby Suggs embodies timeless trauma- a personal trauma but also a trauma of all black woman (slave
woman who shared the same experience). She suffers from depression, and after the tragedy (when Sethe
killed her 3rd child <Beloved> she can’t cope with life and she dies from the depression).
-
they can’t forget about the past- this memory is a part of their identity whether they like it or not
-
taken away the freedom, dignity, treated as animals, humiliated
ex. Upon Sethe's back is a maze of scars, referred to by Paul D as a "chokecherry tree." It is the remains
of an operation schoolteacher performed upon her back in an effort to determine how much she
48
resembled an animal. The tree, which is ever-present but can never be seen, is symbolic of the burden
which Sethe carries. It is her past, and it is the prejudice of white men against her. It is a mark made by
people who believed her to be an animal.

Magic realism
-
post colonial culture that is engaged in the process of recovering the past (lost) while remaining
completely unable to escape the lingering influence of its more recent colonial history; the characters
have problems with identity
-
there is no chronology
-
past is real (the same as Beloved is)
Beloved is a recent form and result of the past, comes to remind Sethe about killing, remind about her
mother/ memories from the past
-
there are both: magic & realism but we can’t tell the one from another, the ‘magic moments’ are treated
as normal, although they are impossible they are mixed with the reality and people
-
spectacular, fantastic fiction produces in South American Countries after WW, the genre is characterised
by the juxtaposition of apparentally reliabe, realistic reportege and fantasy
d) Paul Auster: City of Glass

Intertextuality; self as a text
-
intertextuality- referring to other stories; names, quotes, etc.
-
Servantes- Don Quixote (similarity of characters)- there is nothing beside the text, 2nd volume of D.Q.
(initials of Daniel Quinn) refers to the 1st volume
-
intertextuality of the world- Ouinn observes Stillman- everything needs to be written
-
we interpret it with different text- it doesn’t have any specific ending

Play on detective story
A detective story- a detective, a case, a result of the investigation, possibility of
crime, while reading a story you feel like a detective;
-
detective book is based on associations of different events
-
there is nothing besides the text- when the book ends: Quinn no longer exists
City of Glass begins with the transformation of Daniel Quinn, who writes mystery novels under the pseudonym
William Wilson, into a real-life detective when he mistakenly receives a phone call intended for one Paul Auster,
private detective, requesting his assistance. The call is placed by Virginia Stillman, who wishes to hire Quinn/Auster to
protect her husband, Peter Stillman Jr., from his father whom she fears intends to kill his own son. She later tells
Quinn/Auster that some years prior Stillman Sr. locked his son away in a dark room for nine years as an experiment in
49
the possibility of recovering a pure lg (~God’s lg), an act that landed Stillman Sr. in prison. Now Stillman Sr. is being
released, causing Virginia Stillman to fear for Stillman Jr.'s life. For reasons even Quinn cannot explain, rather than
ignoring the mistaken call, he pretends to be Auster, taking on the identity of a detective, and accepts the case, which
he initially sees as little more than a "glorified tail job".
John Barth „Life story”









The writer is the Hero of the story. He’s writing a story but whenever he starts to write it he comes to
a conclusion that he cannot write. He misses out one very important element, the story lacks it – he
doesn’t have a grand situation to make it a good story.
Concept of mise-en- abyne (also used in Hamlet) story which we are reading is the story within a
stor(to co czytamy to tekst o pisaniu tego właśnie tekstu).
There is lack of grand situation- and that’s what the story is about, about a writes having this problem.
Writer’s life situation – he’s going through a crisis, the inability to write,
Literature of exhaustion – literature pisząca o wyczerpaniu literatury
Story is metafictional- the subject is writing a story, the story is self-reflective(whatever there is in the
story reflects this story)
Writer himself knows that he is a writes, he writes about his inability to write, he’s self -conscious
and the story itself also reflects self- consciousness.
Topic of “Life story” is lack of grand situation of the writer.
This story performs post-modern exhaustion.
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