The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
| Historical Context
Slavery
The issue of slavery threatened to divide the nation as early as the Constitutional
Convention of 1787, and throughout the years a series of concessions were made on both
sides in an effort to keep the union together. One of the most significant of these was the
Missouri Compromise of 1820. The furor had begun when Missouri requested to enter
the union as a slave state. In order to maintain a balance between free and slave states in
the union, Missouri was admitted as a slave state while Maine entered as a free one. And
although Congress would not accept Missouri's proposal to ban free blacks from the state,
it did allow a provision permitting the state's slaveholders to reclaim runaway slaves from
neighboring free states.
The federal government's passage of Fugitive Slave Laws was also a compromise to
appease southern slaveholders. The first one, passed in 1793, required anyone helping a
slave to escape to pay a fine of $500. But by 1850, when a second law was passed,
slaveowners had become increasingly insecure about their ability to retain their slaves in
the face of abolitionism. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law increased the fine for abetting a
runaway slave to $1000, added the penalty of up to six months in prison, and required
that every U.S. citizen assist in the capture of runaways. This law allowed southern
slaveowners to claim their fugitive property without requiring them to provide proof of
ownership. Whites and blacks in the North were outraged by the law, which effectively
implicated all American citizens in the institution of slavery. As a result, many who had
previously felt unmoved by the issue became ardent supporters of the abolitionist
movement.
Among those who were outraged into action by the Fugitive Slave Law was Harriet
Beecher Stowe whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) galvanized the North against
slavery. Dozens of slave narratives—first hand accounts of the cruelties of slavery—had
shown white Northerners a side of slavery that had previously remained hidden, but the
impact of Stowe's novel on white Northerners was more widespread. Abraham Lincoln is
reported to have said when he met her during the Civil War, "So you're the little lady who
started this big war." White southerners also recognized the powerful effect of the
national debate on slavery as it was manifested in print, and many southern states, fearing
the spread of such agitating ideas to their slaves, passed laws which made it illegal to
teach slaves to read. Missouri passed such a law in 1847.
Despite the efforts of southerners to keep slaves in the dark about those who were willing
to help them in the North, thousands of slaves did escape to the free states. Many escape
routes led to the Ohio River, which formed the southern border of the free states of
Illinois and Indiana. The large number of slaves who escaped belied the myths of
contented slaves that originated from the South.
Reconstruction
Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes place before the Civil War, it was
written in the wake of Reconstruction, the period directly after the Civil War when the
confederate states were brought back into the union. The years from 1865 to 1876
witnessed rapid and radical progress in the South, as many schools for blacks were
opened, black men gained the right to vote with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment
in 1870, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 desegregated public places. But these
improvements were quickly undermined by new Black Codes in the South that restricted
such rights. White southerners felt threatened by Republicans from the North who went
south to help direct the course of Reconstruction. Most galling was the new authority of
free blacks, many of whom held political office and owned businesses. While prospects
did improve somewhat for African Americans during Reconstruction, their perceived
authority in the new culture was exaggerated by whites holding on to the theory of white
superiority that had justified slavery.
Currier & Ives print of a riverboat titled "Wooding up on the Mississippi."
In response to the perceived threat, many terrorist groups were formed to intimidate freed
blacks and white Republicans through vigilante violence. The Ku Klux Klan, the most
prominent of these new groups, was formed in 1866. Efforts to disband these terrorist
groups proved ineffective. By 1876, Democrats had regained control over the South and
by 1877, federal troops had withdrawn. Reconstruction and the many rights blacks had
gained dissipated as former abolitionists lost interest in the issue of race, and the country
became consumed with financial crises and conflicts with Native Americans in the West.
Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, new Jim Crow laws segregated public spaces in the
South, culminating in the Supreme Court's decision in the case Plessy v. Ferguson in
1896, which legalized segregation.
| Overview
List of Characters
Huckleberry Finn—Narrator of the novel. Son of the town drunkard. The Widow
Douglas, his guardian, tries to “sivilize” him.
Jim—Miss Watson’s black slave. Huckleberry Finn’s traveling companion on the raft.
Widow Douglas—Huck’s guardian while his pap is gone. She is determined to civilize
Huck.
Miss Watson—The widow’s sister who tries to improve Huck’s manners.
Tom Sawyer—Huck’s best friend who conjures up intriguing plans derived from his
imagination and the books he reads.
Pap—Huck’s drunken father who kidnaps Huck and locks him in a cabin.
Aunt Polly—Tom Sawyer’s aunt and guardian.
Judge Thatcher—The good-hearted judge who invests Huck’s money.
Tommy Barnes, Jo Harper, and Ben Rogers—Members of Tom and Huck’s gang.
Mrs. Judith Loftus—A lady whom Huck visits while he is disguised as a girl.
Bill and Jim Turner, Jake Packard—Men whom Huck discovers arguing on a sinking
ship.
The Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons—Two feuding families. The Grangerfords adopt
Huck for a time.
The duke and the king—Two conmen who pretend to be royalty. They join Huck and Jim
on the raft. They also appear as impostors at the funeral of Peter Wilks.
Buck Harkness—He tries to turn the people against Colonel Sherburn.
Boggs—Drunkard in Arkansas who is shot by Colonel Sherburn.
Colonel Sherburn—The man who shoots Boggs.
Peter Wilks—A wealthy man who has died. The family is waiting for his brothers from
England to attend the funeral.
Mary Jane, Joanna, and Susan—The three nieces of the dead Peter Wilks.
William and Harvey Wilks—Peter Wilks’ two brothers from England whom the duke and
the king impersonate.
Levi Bell and Dr. Robinson—A lawyer and a doctor who suspect that the king and the
duke are frauds.
Silas Phelps—Aunt Sally’s husband who buys Jim.
Aunt Sally Phelps—Silas Phelps’ wife. Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Sally.
Summary
Mark Twain blends many comic elements into the story of Huck Finn, a boy about 13
years old, living in pre-Civil War Missouri. Huck, the novel’s narrator, has been living
with the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, in the town of St. Petersburg. They
have been trying to “sivilize” him with proper dress, manners, and religious piety. He
finds this life constraining and false and would rather live free and wild. When his father
hears that Huck has come into a large amount of money, he kidnaps him and locks him in
an old cabin across the river. To avoid his father’s cruel beatings, Huck elaborately stages
his own death and then escapes to Jackson’s Island. He finds Jim, Miss Watson’s
runaway slave, on the island, and the two decide to hide out together. To avoid danger of
discovery, they decide to float down the river on a raft they had found earlier. Sleeping
during the day and traveling at night, they plan to connect with the Ohio River at Cairo,
Illinois, which would lead them north into the free states, where slavery is outlawed.
They miss Cairo in the fog one night and find themselves floating deeper into slave
territory. While they are searching for a canoe, a steamship hits the raft and damages it.
Huck and Jim are separated.
Huck swims ashore where he meets the feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. He
claims to be George Jackson, a passenger who fell from a steamboat and swam to shore.
After witnessing a violent eruption of the feud in which many people are killed, he finds
Jim, and they return to the raft.
They continue down the river. Two conmen, calling themselves a king and a duke, find
their way to the raft. In one of the towns the king and the duke impersonate the two
brothers of Peter Wilks, who has just died and left a small fortune. Huck thwarts their
plan to swindle Wilks’ family out of their inheritance. The king and the duke escape, but
further down the river the two decide to sell Jim to Silas Phelps, who turns out to be Tom
Sawyer’s uncle.
Visiting his aunt and uncle, Tom persuades Huck to join him in an elaborate, ridiculous
plan to free Jim. Huck prefers a quicker escape for Jim but caves in to Tom’s wishes.
Only after Tom’s plan has been played out, and Jim recaptured, does Tom reveal that
Miss Watson had actually freed Jim two months earlier, just before she died. Huck
decides to “light out for the Territory,” to head west toward the frontier before anyone
can attempt to “sivilize” him again.
| Character Analysis
Huck Finn
Huck Finn is a loner, an adventurer, and the protagonist and narrator of the novel. We see
the events of the book through his eyes and learn as he learns about his world and his
place in it. Huck is a no-nonsense boy who rebels against the restraints of his society,
both in word and in deed; part of his rebellion has racial overtones, making this book
controversial both at its time and today.
Huck is the 13-year-old son of St. Petersburg, Missouri’s town drunk, an abusive man
who seems to care little for anything but the bottle. After one beating too many, Huck
finally leaves their shack on the banks of the Mississippi River to find another world. But
despite his “street smarts,” Huck is vulnerable to the characters he meets on his journey
down the river – only Jim, the escaped slave who is vulnerable in his own way, treats
Huck as an equal. The “schooling” Huck has received is spotty at best, unlike that of a
Tom Sawyer. Although the Widow Douglas tries to “civilize” him, it’s in Huck’s nature
to be wild, at least within the confines of his world. Out in the “real world,” Huck is
forced to think for himself and make difficult choices, often outthinking the adults who
seem to be taking advantage of his youth and inexperience.
Huck’s youth is what enables him to get away with his actions and the change of attitude
he undergoes in the novel – an adult like Mark Twain couldn’t question his society and
its morals without social stigma and closed minds. Through the voice of a child, wild
though he may be, Twain is allowed to challenge accepted norms of power, race, religion
and humanity in his society. Stealing Jim is a crime, yet freeing him, from Huck’s
perspective, is the right thing to do. When Huck lies to the slave-hunters he is forced to
reevaluate his position on lying – is it always wrong, or does the morality of helping Jim
find a normal life make it all right?
Huck’s imperfections offer a model for readers – if he can resist “civilization” and
become a fully realized human being, perhaps we can, too. His questions become our
own, and although he is very much a product of his time, Huck is a symbol of sorts for
the kind of future Mark Twain imagines.
Jim
Jim is a paradoxical figure in Huckleberry Finn – he is at once the weakest and the
strongest character in the novel. As an escaped slave, he is vulnerable to every aspect of
society, even Huck, who helps him escape from Miss Watson’s house. Jim is constantly
on the run and at risk of being caught and returned to servitude, so he must act
accordingly with the role he has been given, at least until he can be free and return to his
family.
On the other hand, Jim functions as the only true adult in the novel. His childish
superstition conceals a true intelligence and an understanding of the natural world, as
evidence on Jackson Island. He is the only genuine father figure Huck has, teaching him
the ways of the world and sheltering him from danger – it is telling that Jim obstructs
Huck’s view of his “natural” father’s corpse and conceals the news from Huck until he
feels the boy is ready to know.
Jim is therefore a kind of role model – he is strong and determined despite a world that
won’t allow him to express his true feelings or live a free life. Jim teaches Huck about
inner strength, and that people’s differences are less important than their respect for each
other as individuals.
Tom Sawyer
Tom moves from the forefront in the book bearing his name to a supporting player in
Huckleberry Finn. He is a dreamer to Huck’s realist – Tom’s prime purpose in the book
seems to be convincing Huck to live a life based on adventure books, when Huck’s true
life is far more of an adventure story than those books could ever tell. Tom helps Huck
free Jim near the novel’s end with his adventure-book tricks, but his presence in the novel
seems to be primarily as a foil – Tom is a product of the very “civilized” society Huck is
escaping from, and eventually learns to reject.
Widow Douglas/Miss Watson/Judge Thatcher
The wealthy sisters and the judge are examples of one life Huck doesn’t want to lead –
the Widow could be said to represent proper society, Miss Watson, religion, and the
judge, punishment. Their influence is something both Huck and Jim must overcome to
grow.
Pap
Huck’s drunken, abusive father is the example of the other life Huck doesn’t want to lead
– society’s complete outcast. Pap is a failure as a father and as a white man, and whether
he knows it or not Huck aspires to more. Pap is a role model for what could happen to
Huck if he doesn’t give in to the more “civilized” forces or undertake his journey.
The Duke/The Dauphin
This pair of con men, supposedly the deposed Dauphin (King) of France and Duke of
Bridgewater, are Huck’s teachers for a significant part of his journey. They represent a
life on the road (and sometimes on a raft) in which anything can happen and innocents
are taken advantage of. Huck and Jim realize the two are scoundrels, but they are helpless
to do anything for fear of being given over to “authority figures” – in fact, the “nobility”
sell Jim to a local farmer before being tarred and feathered themselves. Society’s
vengeance on the pair show Huck that there are good aspects to being “civilized,” if only
in working together to eliminate a threat to that society’s well-being.
| Themes
Freedom
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn both Huck and the runaway slave Jim are in flight
from a society which labels them as outcasts. Although Huck has been adopted by the
Widow Douglas and been accepted into the community of St. Petersburg, he feels
hemmed in by the clothes he is made to wear and the models of decorum to which he
must adhere. But he also does not belong to the world Pap inhabits. Although he feels
more like himself in the backwoods, Pap's drunken rages and attempts to control him
force Huck to flee. At the end of the book, after Jim has been freed, Huck decides to
continue his own quest for freedom. "I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of
the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I
been there before." Huck is clearly running from a civilization that attempts to control
him, rather than running in pursuit of something tangible. He is representative of the
American frontiersman who chooses the unknown over the tyranny of society.
As a slave, Jim has likewise been denied control over his own destiny, and he escapes to
prevent being sold down to New Orleans, away from his wife and children. But Jim is
chasing a more concrete ideal of freedom than Huck is. For Jim, freedom means not
being a piece of property. Jim explicitly expresses his desire to be free as they approach
Cairo and the junction with the Ohio River: "Jim said it made him all over trembly and
feverish to be so close to freedom." But after they pass Cairo in the confusion of a foggy
night, Jim's quest for freedom is thwarted and he must concentrate on survival. After
Jim's capture, Tom and Huck attempt to free him in a farcical series of schemes that
actually make escape more difficult and dangerous. Huck indicates that a simple removal
of the board that covers the window would allow Jim to escape, but Tom declares that is
too easy. "I should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that,
Huck Finn," Tom says. After Jim escapes and is recaptured, Tom reveals that he has been
free all along. Miss Watson had died and left him free in her will. The irony of freeing a
free man has concerned many critics, who believe Twain might have been commenting
on the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War.
Race and Racism
Probably the most discussed aspect of Huck Finn is how it addresses the issue of race.
Many critics agree that the book's presentation of the issue is complex or, some say,
uneven. No clear-cut stance on race and racism emerges. Despite the fact that Huck
comes to respect Jim as a human being, he still reveals his prejudice towards black
people. His astonishment at Jim's deep feelings for his family is accompanied by the
statement, "I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for
their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so." And even after he has decided to help
free Jim, Huck indicates that he still does not see black people overall as human beings.
When Aunt Sally asks "Tom Sawyer" why he was so late in arriving, he tells her the ship
blew a cylinder head. "Good gracious! Anybody hurt?" she asks. "No'm. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt," she responds. As some critics
have pointed out, Huck never condemns slavery or racial prejudice in general but seems
to find an exception to the rule in Jim. Nevertheless, the fact that Huck does learn to see
beyond racial stereotypes in the case of Jim is a profound development, considering his
upbringing. He lived in a household with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson where
slaves were owned. And Pap's rantings over a free black man indicate his deep racial
prejudice. When confronted with the fact that a free black man was highly educated and
could vote, Pap decides he wants nothing to do with a government that has allowed this
to happen. He wants the free man, whom he calls "a prowling, thieving, infernal, whiteshirted free nigger," to be sold at auction. In other words, all black people are slaves,
white man's property, in his eyes. Such are the views on race with which Huck has been
raised. But there is no agreement as to what Twain's message on the subject of race is.
While some critics view the novel as a satire on racism and a conscious indictment of a
racist society, others stress the author's overall ambivalence about race. Critics have had a
difficult time reconciling the stereotypical depictions of Jim and other slaves in the book
with Huck's desire to free Jim.
| Essential Passages (Important Quotations)
Essential Passage 1: Chapter 2
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by
fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped
Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but
he didn't wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance,
and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat
on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to
New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and
by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was
all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly
notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was
more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their
mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always
talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and
letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you
know 'bout witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim
always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm
the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and
fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told
what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim
anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it,
because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he
got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Summary
Huck, bored and lonely at the widow’s home, takes off in the night with Tom Sawyer,
looking for some adventures. They come across Jim, Miss Watson’s slave, asleep under a
tree. Knowing how superstitious Jim is, Tom decides to play a prank on the slave. He
removes his hat and hangs it on a nearby tree. When Jim wakes up and sees his hat, he is
convinced that it was witches who put it there. In the future, he makes up a wild tale in
which he was transported all across the state in a trance and then returned to the tree
where the witches hung up his hat. He later elaborates it further, stating that he was
carried down to New Orleans, and then even further until at last his account includes a
trip clear around the world. His supposed encounter with witches then gives Jim a new
sense of importance around the slave community, which he relishes. Huck proclaims that
Jim was almost ruined as a servant because he became so proud of having seen the devil
and ridden with witches. Jim’s gullibility and superstitious nature thus are set up for
further development in the rest of the story.
Essential Passage 2: Chapter 15
It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again
now.
“Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does
these things stand for?”
It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could see them firstrate now.
Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the
dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts
back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he
looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:
“What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid
de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I
didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back
ag'in, all safe en soun', de tears come, en I could 'a' got down on my knees en kiss yo'
foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole
Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er
dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed.”
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying
anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his
foot to get him to take it back.
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a
nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterward, neither. I didn't do him no
more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd 'a' knowed it would make him feel
that way.
Summary
Huck and Jim are traveling down the Mississippi, intending to reach Cairo, Illinois, and
then head up the Ohio River to the northern states and freedom. However, a dense fog
arises, and Jim and the raft drift from the bank, stranding Huck on shore. When the fog
clears, Huck finds the raft and quietly sneaks on board, surprising Jim. Huck, however,
still taking advantage of Jim’s gullibility, convinces him that he had been on the raft the
whole time. However, when Jim spots the leaves and twigs on the raft, he realizes that
Huck has tricked him. Jim does not see this as an innocent prank, but as a hurtful lie from
someone whom he had trusted. In a show of humility, Huck eventually apologizes to Jim
for having lied and vows that he will not play any more mean tricks on him.
Essential Passage 3: Chapter 23
I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I
waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees,
moaning and mourning to himself. I didn't take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was
about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low
and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his life; and I do
believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. It don't seem
natural, but I reckon it's so. He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when
he judged I was asleep, and saying, “Po' little 'Lizabeth! po' little Johnny! it's mighty
hard; I s'pec I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!” He was a mighty good nigger,
Jim was.
But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and
by he says:
“What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder on de bank
like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I treat my little 'Lizabeth so
ornery. She warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful
rough spell; but she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en I says to her, I
says:
“‘Shet de do’.'
“She never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. It make me mad; en I says ag'in,
mighty loud, I says:
“‘Doan’ you hear me? Shet de do'!'
“She jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up. I was a-bilin'! I says:
“‘I lay I make you mine!’
“En wid dat I fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'. Den I went into de
yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when I come back dah was dat do' astannin' open yit, en dat chile stannin' mos' right in it, alookin' down and mournin', en de
tears runnin' down. My, but I wuzmad! I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den—it was a
do' dat open innerds—jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, kerblam!—en my lan', de chile never move'! My breff mos' hop outer me; en I feel so—so—
I doan' know howI feel. I crope out, all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en
slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says pow! jis'
as loud as I could yell. She never budge! Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in
my arms, en say, ‘Oh, de po’ little thing! De Lord God Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze
he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb,
Huck, plumb deef en dumb—en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!”
Summary
Jim and Huck, now accompanied by two men who present themselves as a king and a
duke, involve the two travelers in their conniving schemes to swindle money from the
townspeople along the river. Jim is not impressed by his first run-in with royalty,
declaring that they must all be “rapscallions,” and not to be trusted. He is disturbed by
their dishonesty, as he was disturbed by Huck’s lying to him previously as a prank. Jim
tells Huck about his family, whom he intends to buy into freedom once he escapes to the
north. His sensitivity is revealed as he transparently tells a story that puts him in a
negative light. His daughter, Elizabeth, was a one-year-old when she contracted scarlet
fever. One day, after she recovered, he told her to shut the door. The child seemed to
completely ignore his repeated commands, so he slapped her on the side of her head.
Later, when she is still crying, Jim prepares to discipline her further when the door slams
shut in the wind. Elizabeth does not even flinch, and then Jim realizes that she is deaf.
His shame and grief for his unintended cruelty to his daughter still haunts him.
Analysis of Essential Passages
Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is frequently criticized as a racist work,
Mark Twain in fact uses the character of Jim to rewrite—to unwrite—
negative representations of African Americans in literature. Through the eyes of Huck,
Jim moves from being a racial stereotype of the Negro slave toward being an actual
human being, someone with depths of character and a sensitive nature. Jim can thus
arguably be described as the beginning of a more realistic, nuanced portrayal of African
American characters in American literature.
Here is how Twain develops his portrayal of Jim. In the beginning of the novel, Jim is a
pure caricature of the type that epitomized the Jim Crow years after the Civil War. His
deep superstitions and over-the-top gestures make him a comic figure and the butt of
Tom Sawyer's and Huck Finn’s practical jokes. Tom Sawyer represents the ignorant
white view of the time period, while Huck shows the beginnings of a more modern
sensitivity, taking less sport in pranking Jim than Tom does. Yet even Huck at this point
still sees Jim simply as a slave; the idea of Jim being a real person has not yet occurred to
Huck. It is only as the pair go down the river, engaging in meaningful conversation and
mutual support, that Huck’s views change.
When Jim is hurt by Huck’s lying to him, the boy begins to see the full depth of Jim’s
personality. He understands that Jim has been genuinely grieving and worrying about
him. Jim is a true friend, although this level of friendship is yet beyond Huck's
conception. The light begins to dawn, however, and though it takes some time, Huck does
manage to humble himself and apologize to Jim.
Twain could very well have portrayed Jim as a flawless, angelic, “Uncle Tom” type of
person, incapable of being mean-spirited. Yet Jim is honest with Huck when he tells
about his daughter, Elizabeth. The short-temperedness of the normal parent is portrayed
as Jim disciplines his young daughter for disobedience. Yet the obvious heartbrokenness
of Jim as he realizes that his child is deaf and that he has beaten her without cause reveals
his humanity.
Twain is adept at pulling the nineteenth-century reader to a new level of understanding.
Rather than immediately portraying Jim “as good as a white man,” he starts where the
average reader of the time was, gradually showing more and more of Jim's humanity.
Long before it is revealed that Miss Watson freed him, ironically making him a free man
for most of the trip, Twain frees Jim from the chains of the stereotype to make him an
equal of Huck Finn, capable of the full range of emotions, thoughts, and dreams as any
white man. Ultimately, Twain's novel advances the steady, though agonizingly slow,
march toward civil rights in the twentieth century.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Form and Content
Just as Benjamin Franklin himself was a man of many interests, The Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin has many facets. It shows how an ambitious individual can move up
in the world by being willing to work hard, by having a decent amount of good luck, and
by seizing opportunities. Among other things, his autobiography is a study in
entrepreneurism and individual pluck. Franklin’s economic climb came the hard way, as
he worked first as an apprentice to his brother James, who published a newspaper, and
eventually became the printer for the state of Pennsylvania and owned his own business.
When Franklin was appointed to official government offices, such as postmaster, he also
came to know people who were important politically, and some of these early contacts
are described in the work. Yet what Franklin seems most proud of and what he spends the
most time recounting are the many civic improvements that he had a hand in—from the
formation of the first American subscription library to the first fire department, from a
plan for improving city cleanliness by paving the streets and keeping the pavement swept
to a design for a more efficient stove. Another area that he only begins to describe is his
work as a diplomat. Unfortunately, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ends before
it reaches the period of Franklin’s international recognition.
When Franklin began his autobiography, he wrote in the form of memoirs and referred to
the work in that manner. The term perhaps more accurately explains the form of the work
than the title by which it is most known, as the word “memoirs” suggests the fragmented
quality of the book. It is divided into two major sections, the second section composed of
three parts. The first section begins as a letter that Franklin wrote to his son William in
1771; Franklin was a guest of the bishop of St. Asaph’s at Twyford on a summer holiday
from his work in London. Then came the American Revolution, and Franklin returned
home. After ten years had passed, Franklin took up his memoirs once again, this time
from a site not far from Paris. Franklin had received letters in 1782 and 1783 requesting
that he continue the story of his life after 1730. The second part of his autobiography was
begun in 1784, but after an account of his scheme to achieve moral perfection, there was
another break. Franklin picked up the narrative again in August, 1788, writing from
Philadelphia. He took the story of his life to about 1757, no doubt intending to continue,
but there The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin stops. Franklin lived some thirty years
after the events recorded in his autobiography, years of accomplishment and considerable
diplomatic influence.
Most of the autobiography is in narrative form, but Franklin includes letters from others
and a sample chart from his book on self-improvement. He also frequently digresses to
moralize on the events and characters that he describes and to offer his opinions on a
wide range of topics.
Analysis
The narrative tone of the book is clearly that of an older man looking back upon the
accomplishments and mistakes of his youth. An element of self-reflection pervades The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, especially in the part that is written to his son.
Nevertheless, the tone is one of perfect self-awareness and personal satisfaction. In the
opening paragraph, Franklin notes that he was born in “poverty and obscurity” and
reached in his adulthood “a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the
world.” His motive is not to revel in his accomplishments, however, but to offer a method
by which his son will be able to advance as Franklin has. Indeed, even modern readers
can appreciate the rags-to-riches model that Franklin displays in his autobiography and
learn much about the value of studying, working hard, creating a good image, and taking
responsibility for oneself.
In keeping with the Puritan ancestry that he details at the beginning of his autobiography,
Franklin is at ease with introspection. Often, however, this introspection serves not so
much to enlighten Franklin about himself as to provide an object lesson for the reader.
While he confesses to having committed a number of errata during his life, mistakes that
he wishes he could correct, more often he shows how he succeeded and reached his
present state. This goal seems to be more apparent in part 1 of the work than in part 2.
More than ten years after he stopped writing the memoirs in 1771, he received letters
from Abel James and Benjamin Vaughan urging him to complete the record of his life.
Among the reasons for continuing the account, Vaughan notes that Franklin’s life
provides “a table of the internal circumstances” of the young country; thus, a historical,
public, and collective theme is introduced. Franklin acknowledges his change in audience
at the end of part 1 when he notes that some of the information contained in the opening
pages of his autobiography is of a private nature and of interest only to family, whereas
the next part is intended for the public.
Consequently, the chatty, familiar tone of the first part yields to a slightly more formal
tone and an account that is more informative regarding specific dates and civic
accomplishments. Franklin is didactic throughout the work, and he is rarely hesitant to
voice an opinion on topics ranging from religion to government. What he has to say about
religion dramatically shows the shift in sensibility from seventeenth century piety to
eighteenth century secularism. For example, he objects to a Presbyterian minister on the
grounds that his aim seemed “to be rather to make … Presbyterians than good citizens.”
Above all, Franklin was interested in producing good citizens, people who would
contribute to the improvement of society. It is interesting to note that, while the
autobiography begins with references to religion, and an acknowledgment of God, the
focus throughout is on humanity’s accomplishments. An erratum, the word for a printer’s
error, is the word that Franklin metaphorically uses to label what in former times might
be called a “sin.” A sin cannot be easily forgotten, but an erratum, on the other hand, like
a typographical error, can be corrected without much trouble. Thus, Franklin does not
achieve the spiritual depth of writers of the seventeenth century, but he shows what it
meant to be an eighteenth century individual governed by reason. Thus, his book will
continue to be read by both young and older adults.
Critical Context
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is one of the great classics of American
literature. It uses a style that has come to be identified with the eighteenth century, a style
marked by clarity and balance. This approach makes the text accessible to the young
adult reader. Another reason for the long-standing interest in Franklin’s autobiography is
that it brilliantly encapsulates several themes that are central to American culture, such as
the rags-to-riches story and the confidence that hard work will earn its desired ends.
Then, too, the work shows the development of the United States from a collection of
thirteen individual colonies to a thriving union of many states, making it an important
document for historians and a realistic, personable entry for young readers into what were
perhaps the most crucial years in the history of that country.
Younger, first-time readers of the book are often surprised that this man, who has been
revered in their history books and in received opinion, had his foibles and quirks as other
people do. Older readers, perhaps of a more cynical slant, notice the areas of his life that
Franklin leaves out, thus opening the door to a discussion of the nature of a literary
persona. Questions arise concerning the image that Franklin was projecting and the extent
to which this image, the persona of the autobiography, was a creation of the eighteenth
century imagination rather than a historical record. Thus, the work can be read on many
levels and can appeal to a wide variety of audiences, and it can be read productively at
almost any age and at almost any level of sophistication.
,,
Franklin's Autobiography is divided into three parts, with a short addendum added a few
months before Franklin's death in 1790. Each has a distinct thematic purpose and thus
serves, in part, to make the work an important philosophical and historical tract. Part 1 is,
in essence, an extended letter to Franklin's son William, written in England in 1771. It
recounts Franklin's ancestry, his early days in Boston and Philadelphia, and his first
journey to London in 1724. In fact, Autobiography is by far the best source for
information on Franklin's early life. Part 1 ends with Franklin's marriage to Deborah and
the beginning of his subscription library in late 1730, when he was twenty-four years old.
Franklin ends part 1 with this explanatory note:
“Thus far was written with the Intention express’d in the Beginning and therefore
contains several little family Anecdotes of no Importance to others. . . . The Affairs of the
Revolution occasion’d the Interruption.”
In spite of this rejoinder, there are important ideas developed in part 1. Franklin
concludes that, after a youthful prank brought parental admonishment, that, “tho’ I
pleaded the Usefulness of the Work, mine convinc’d me that nothing was useful which
was not honest.” Part 1 also discusses Franklin's Deistic inclinations and his predilection
for the art of disputation, which is similar to modern-day debate. Franklin thus believed
in the mind's ability to use logic and reason over and above strong emotions. He
comments:
Therefore I took a Delight in it [disputing], practic’d it continually and grew very artful
and expert in drawing People of even superior Knowledge into Concessions the
Consequences of which they did not foresee . . . and so obtaining Victories that neither
myself nor my Cause always deserved.
One should not conclude that Franklin had a thoroughly optimistic view of human nature;
too many whom Franklin called his friends took advantage of his good nature and left
him with their debts or in embarrassing situations. Franklin, however, frequently blamed
himself for allowing such developments—and others, such as his failure to pursue his
courtship of Deborah actively after first meeting her. He terms such faults errata, a term
that appears frequently in part 1.
Part 2 is less autobiographical and more philosophical than part 1 but no less revealing of
Franklin's character. His Philadelphia friend Abel James encouraged Benjamin in 1782 to
follow through on his idea of continuing the Autobiography, with the idea of depicting, in
Franklin's words, “My Manner of acting to engage People in this and future
Undertakings.” The essence of part 2 can be found in Franklin's discussion of his
attempts to achieve “moral perfection,” “a bold and arduous project.”
He devises a list of thirteen virtues, such as temperance, industry, moderation, and
humility, and includes a precise definition for each. He then orders them in a vertical list,
according to the theory that “the previous Acquisition of some might facilitate the
Acquisition of certain others.” A list of the days of the week composes the horizontal axis
of the chart. Each of the virtues has its own separate chart, thus allowing Franklin to
concentrate on a particular virtue for those seven days. Theoretically, at the end of
thirteen weeks and after a religious maintenance of the charts, noting all transgressions at
the appropriate points, moral perfection, an attribute attainable by “people in all
religions,” can be achieved.
This “Book of Virtues” is joined by Franklin's “Scheme of Order,” an organizational plan
to meet each workday, to complete his precise scheme of living. Was Franklin himself
able to realize the edicts of moral perfection? He comments:
In Truth I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now I am grown old, and
my Memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it. But on the whole, tho’ I never arrived
at the Perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was by
the Endeavour made a better and happier Man than I otherwise should have been, if I had
not attempted it.
Part 3 does not have the literary value of the first two parts, but it is an intriguing
recollection of Franklin's career as a public administrator. It particularly focuses on his
efforts as Pennsylvania representative to British General William Braddock in a plan to
lease civilian “waggons and baggage horses” to the British army in 1755. The plan nearly
failed as a result of Braddock's arrogant contempt for the colonists. This incident had a
profound effect on Franklin's future attitudes toward Great Britain.
Franklin and the American Dream
Franklin's works written to instruct or improve the public — of which the Autobiography
is best-known — all rest on assumptions about the possibilities open to the individual,
which have come to be called "the American dream." The essence of the dream is that
any man can earn prosperity, economic security, and community respect through hard
work and honest dealings with others. That is, work is the avenue through which one
reaches wealth, and conversely, any one who works hard and uses his opportunities
shrewdly can assume that wealth will be his reward.
This assumption was revolutionary at the time Franklin lived. Most European countries
were still characterized by a clearly defined class structure; their political and social
institutions militated against dramatic changes of economic status for more than the lucky
few. Franklin, the arch-democrat, felt that in the American colonies anyone could fashion
his own economic and social status through his personal merits. He preached that the
possibilities were limitless for those practicing frugality, honesty, industry, and like
virtues.
Franklin's own life was the apparent proof of these assumptions: he had left Boston at
seventeen, with only a short period of formal education and the knowledge of a trade
behind him, had arrived almost penniless in Philadelphia, and had been able through luck
and work to make a fortune and to retire at the age of 42. He and his readers chose to
believe that such a career was possible for any American. Thus for a century — and even
today — students are taught the Autobiography in order that they might learn this
democratic vision of American potential.
Franklin's Autobiography thus becomes an important document in shaping American
character, because it shaped American expectations. American school children learned
through Franklin that the lowliest citizen was as humanly worthy as the wealthiest
because of his potential for earning wealth, and that poverty, like body lice, was
disgraceful only if one failed to do something about it. Further, they learned that formal
education was unnecessary, since the intelligent could learn by themselves. America was
the land of endless opportunity for everyone.
Franklin, of course, only articulated precepts that were generally accepted, or at least
generally held acceptable, in his society. He did not originate the worldview he
expressed. But his immense personal prestige, and his impressive personal example,
helped to make those precepts appear as almost self-evident truths to moralists of every
persuasion.
Finally, Americans chose to believe Franklin's descriptions of American opportunities
because they were so flattering. They told the American of his own worth, and promised
eventual reward, however grueling his present labors might be. They suggested that his
country was superior to those in which such opportunities did not exist, and that he was
superior to citizens of those less-fortunate countries because he had such opportunities.
And, Franklin seemed to suggest, anyone who emulated him closely enough could
eventually duplicate his prestige and career. Thus for a century Franklin's words
maintained in the United States nearly the status of Holy Writ. His vision has been
credited as the inspiration for many large fortunes, and his individualism has seemed the
paragon of "the American way of life."
Read more: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/The-Autobiography-ofBenjamin-Franklin-Critical-Essays-Franklin-and-the-American-Dream.id-236,pageNum51.html#ixzz1AH1J3jGe
| Essential Passages (Important Quotations)
*Let Englishmen be made not only to respect, but even to love you. When they think
well of individuals in your native country, they will go nearer to thinking well of your
country; and when your countrymen see themselves well thought of by Englishmen, they
will go nearer to thinking well of England. (2.28)
-Vaughan again, now telling Franklin that he owes it to British-American international
relations to finish writing his autobiography. Finishing this text, according to this logic, is
the one think that may help reconcile Brits and Americans to start being agreeable again.
*Reading became fashionable, and our People having no public Amusements to divert
their Attention from Study became better acquainted with Books, and in a few Years
were observ'd by Strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than People of the
same Rank generally are in other Countries. (2.33)
-Again, reading becomes a big part of the American self-image and a class equalizer. It's
probably partially due to Puritan society – that's the lack of "public Amusements" which
gives people all this reading time – but Franklin's saying that, because of all this reading,
average non-aristocratic Americans are way more educated than their foreign
counterparts. Some roots to the American Dream can be found here: a good education
can change your class standing.
*This [paper] was much spoken of as a useful Piece, and gave rise to a Project, which
soon followed it, of forming a Company for the more ready Extinguishing of Fires, and
mutual Assistance in Removing and Securing of Goods when in Danger. (3.19)
-Sometimes Franklin's modesty is too much. His plan for creating a fire department
system is a big deal, but he calls it just "a useful Piece." Instead of lingering on why it's
useful or what kind of reception it got, moves right to the point of telling us what it was
all about and how it worked. His concept of "mutual Assistance" is a very American one.
*I had on the whole abundant Reason to be satisfied with my being established in
Pennsylvania. There were however two things that I regretted: There being no Provision
for Defense, nor for a complete Education of Youth. No Militia nor any College. (3.30)
-It's intriguing to see what Franklin thinks is most important for developing Pennsylvania,
which is not a country but a rising city-state. He puts equal value on education and
military defense, which is an unusual opinion, one that's remarkable for its combination
of idealism and practicality. In creating a strong defense, he's also simultaneously making
sure there's something important to defend.
*The Colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended
themselves; there would then have been no need of Troops from England; of course the
subsequent Pretense for Taxing America, and the bloody Contest it occasioned, would
have been avoided. (3.68)
-Here's Franklin as both historian and injured strategist, saying that the entire
Revolutionary War could have been avoided if only people had adopted his plan for
uniting the colonies around the time of the French and Indian War. We wonder if his hurt
feelings – that the plan was turned down – cloud his judgment, or if he's right that the
whole Boston Tea Party and its aftermath could have been avoided, if people had only
listened.
*This whole Transaction [General Braddock's loss] gave us Americans the first
Suspicion that our exalted Ideas of the Prowess of British Regulars had not been well
founded. (3.100)
-In retrospect, this is a really tongue-in-cheek thing to say, as Franklin's writing about this
part of history so many years later, after Americans revolted against the British and
overcame them. It's pretty sarcastic, in hindsight, to make fun of these "exalted ideas" as
things without foundation. It also seems, in context with other problems Franklin has
coming up against British government officials, that this isn't, in fact, the first sign of
trouble.
On Being Brought from Africa to America
By:Philis Wheatley
The Poem
The four heroic couplets that constitute Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from
Africa to America” delve deeply into the psyche of the young African American slave
narrator who attempts to come to terms with her being torn from her native African soil
and being forcibly relocated to colonial America. The poem’s original title, “Thoughts on
being brought from Africa to America,” when written in 1768, clearly indicates that the
work was intended to represent the speaker’s pondering her situation rather than serving
as a mere statement, which is often misread for various reasons.
The first quatrain sets the tone for most readings of the poem by seeming to parallel
spiritual and physical rescue. The speaker’s “mercy” was the underlying factor that took
her from her home, her “Pagan land,” and brought her to a world centered upon
“redemption [which she] neither fought nor knew.” The result of her resettlement, the
narrator says, was her becoming aware “That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too.”
This resulting understanding, no doubt, echoes the rationalization that many who brought
slaves to the new world used to vindicate their actions.
The second and concluding quatrain moves Wheatley’s meditation to a new realm, in
which the narrator places herself and her race into context with the views of those who
eventually enslaved them. Regardless of intention, the takers of slaves held the blacks in
low esteem. To illustrate her point, Wheatley uses such terms as “our sable race,”
“diabolic die,” and “black as Cain” as descriptors for those thrust into slavery. The
perceptions depicted in the second quatrain seemingly intensify the significance of the
situation presented in the first.
Taken together, these two quatrains set up a rhetorical paradigm by which many readers
confront Wheatley and this poem and come away with the perception that Wheatley is
writing a poem of gratitude, much in the vein of her many elegies that address important
individuals who have passed from the scene but whose influence continues. In “On Being
Brought from Africa to America,” Wheatley mourns the passing of freedom in spite of
the superficial thanks expressed by the narrator.
“On Being Brought from Africa to America,” as well as the other works collected in
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, has brought Wheatley both admirers
and detractors. For her work, Wheatley is now known as the first published African
American writer. Because of the superficial complacency of the narrator’s statements,
many have criticized the poem for denying Wheatley’s real situation and voicing the
sentiments of her enslavers and for her not speaking out more clearly for her race.
Forms and Devices
Much of Wheatley’s acclaim has come from her elegies that celebrated the lives of great
men such as George Washington and the Reverend George Whitefield. However, many
of her most complex and delving poems are her meditations, which investigate such
abstract concepts as fancy and imagination. For what has become her most famous work,
“On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Wheatley chose to use the meditation as
the form for her contemplation of her enslavement, because the narrator (Wheatley)
meditates on the institution of slavery as it applies to her instead of making a more vocal
condemnation or acceptance.
The first-person meditation makes the message of the poem more personal than if it had
been presented in another pedantic pronouncement. “On Being Brought from Africa to
America” is clearly an internal monologue through which the narrator bares her soul and
voices her conclusion that even “Negroes, black as Cain,/ May be refin’d, and join th’
angelic train” in spite of their captors’ strong belief that the dark race is hopeless and
greatly inferior.
Wheatley utilizes a white/dark contrast to demonstrate the narrator’s movement from a
life of misunderstanding and ignorance in a “Pagan land” to a life of deliverance and
revelation in her new home. Up until the last line of the poem, Wheatley inserts such dark
language as “benighted soul,” “sable race,” “diabolic die,” and “black as Cain” to depict
both her and her race’s real and perceived place in the psychological world of their new
homes. Although the last line contains no definite reference to light, Wheatley creates a
light tone when she says, “refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.” Thus, the possibility of a
darkened soul’s moving into a spiritual light under the most adverse of conditions
becomes evident.
Wheatley even utilizes semiotics, although the term may have been unknown to her,
when she creates a title which illustrates the underlying concept of her poem. Wheatley
draws attention to her being forced to leave her home instead of to her being taken to a
better place by titling her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” By placing
Africa first, Wheatley intimates that her past holds as much if not more importance than
her future.
However, the strongest but often missed device to be found in “On Being Brought from
Africa to America” is Wheatley’s subtle irony which she presents through limited use of
italicized words. This irony allows Wheatley to placate her white reading public by
permitting them to hear what makes them feel good while, in fact, she is saying exactly
how wrong her captors’ perceptions are. For instance, her readers no doubt understood
her reference to “my Pagan land” as a condemnation of the place from which they had
freed her. Rather, when one accepts Wheatley’s irony, “Pagan land” illuminates the
concept that the most ungodly of actions came when the rescuers forced Wheatley and
others into enslavement. This same ironic approach should be considered when pondering
the word “Saviour.” Although one immediately thinks of a religious salvation, the italics
draw attention to the specific word and to the distinct possibility that the speaker did not
completely want to be saved from the life she knew.
It is in line seven, however, that the significance of italics becomes evident with the
inclusion of the proper nouns “Christians,” “Negroes,” and “Cain.” Again, a superficial
reading of these words leads to the conclusion that the speaker is offering a statement of
gratitude for having been delivered from her previously spiritually dark life. One must
look closely at the pronouncement that “Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,/
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” and appreciate Wheatley’s placement of her
race on an even playing field with her captors through the possibility that the black race’s
shortcomings can be just as completely forgiven as those of the white race and that the
white race is the one destroying its brothers as Cain did Abel.
The poem’s two quatrains of heroic couplets serve the same artistic and philosophical
purpose as do the octave and sestet of a traditional sonnet. The first section lays the
foundation for the speaker’s argument, while the second section presents the speaker’s
conclusion or resolution. For instance, in the first quatrain, the narrator tells, in a
relatively positive voice, of her removal from a world of darkness into one of light. The
second quatrain then provides a sounding board for the narrator’s more complex
conclusion, that blacks as well as whites, the enslaved as well as the enslavers, have the
same potential for salvation and becoming a member of the “angelic train,” thus negating
the egocentric attitude of whites. This message is often misread by careless readers.
Themes and Meanings
In her meditation, Wheatley attempts to come to terms with artistic and personal
abstractions such as what art is and when fancy becomes imagination. However, one of
the most significant abstractions with which she contends is where the African American
slave fits into the grand scheme of things. Much of her need to understand comes from
the refusal of many in the white reading community to take her seriously as an artist
because she was both black and a woman. In “To S. M.,” Wheatley articulates the reality
of blacks’ ability to create art in spite of the whites’ refusal to accept this “inferior” group
of people as able to create anything of significance or be anything more than second-class
individuals at best.
The conflict between racial reality and perception is most vividly and artistically
presented in Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” when she uses such
poetic devices as irony, italics, and first-person narration to express her unwillingness to
be cast into a second-fiddle role. In order to magnify the discrepancy between the whites’
perception of blacks and the reality of the situation, Wheatley guardedly speaks of the
good the whites have done in bringing blacks into the Christian world. It is not until the
second half of the poem, however, that Wheatley brings into play an understanding that
runs counter to the careless reader’s impressions. In the concluding four lines of the
poem, Wheatley argues that blacks and whites are made from the same spiritual cloth and
that both can “be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” of salvation.
In most meditations, poets move from the physical to the metaphysical or to a
philosophical or spiritual foundation for existence. This is what Wheatley does in “On
Being Brought from Africa to America.” First, she shows how life is perceived by white
enslavers and many of the enslaved. Then she moves on to argue that in the final analysis
both races have the same potential and are one in their relationship with the same
supreme being who, as her subtext discloses, is color-blind when granting salvation.
The Minister's Black Veil
| Historical Context
Having discovered his own connections to the early Puritan intolerance of Quakers and
the persecutions of the alleged witches in Salem, Hawthorne refocused the Puritan
experience in colonial America through his own perspective. In an 1850 article entitled
‘‘Hawthorne and his Mosses, by a Virginian Spending the Summer in Vermont'' which
appeared in Literary World, Herman Melville, a contemporary and eventual neighbor of
Hawthorne's, wrote a review of Mosses from an Old Manse, a subsequent selection of
tales written by Hawthorne in 1846. Referring to the Calvinist sense of Original Sin in
Hawthorne, Melville writes that the gloom in Hawthorne's soul is ‘‘blackness, ten times
black.’’
The darkness of the soul that Hawthorne connects with Calvinism is evident not only in
‘‘The Minister's Black Veil’’ but also in several of his other stories and novels, most
notably ‘‘Young Goodman Brown'' and The Scarlet Letter. It is not clear whether
Hawthorne meant to justify the severity of his Puritan ancestors or condemn Puritan/
Calvinist theology entirely, but it is clear that he wove the threads of Puritanism into the
fabric of America, many modern readers getting their only understanding of Puritanism
through Hawthorne. ‘‘The Minister's Black Veil’’ has a specific geographic setting in
Milford, Connecticut, but is set in no specific time, almost as if it is deliberately
suspended somewhere between the earliest of colonial American times and the
nineteenth-century America in which Hawthorne wrote.
| Introduction
Part I: Hooper Dons the Veil
As the story opens, the congregation of a small church in Milford, Connecticut is arriving
in their best clothes to attend Sunday service. The sexton, a person responsible for
maintaining the church, is ringing the bell that announces the service will soon begin. His
ringing stops abruptly when he is startled by the Reverend Mr. Hooper emerging from his
quarters with a veil of black crepe that covers his whole face and leaves only his mouth
and chin exposed.
In the minds of the parishioners, Mr. Hooper is a young and self-disciplined parson who
has never acted irrationally before. They are bewildered by his present behavior,
believing that either he has lost his wits or he has committed some terrible sin. An excited
hush greets Mr. Hooper as he walks to the pulpit. He has never been a terribly effective
orator, but, on this day, he delivers a sermon concerning ‘‘secret sins’’ that every man
harbors and would hide from his fellow man and even God Himself. The congregation is
dramatically moved by the combination of the sermon and the inexplicable black veil,
each parishioner feeling as if Mr. Hooper has penetrated to his or her very soul. They
cannot wait to flee the oppressive atmosphere of the church and feel the bright sunshine
outside. No one wants to walk with Mr. Hooper, and one of the parishioners who always
invites Mr. Hooper to dinner fails to do so on this occasion. As the Reverend Mr. Hooper
enters his quarters he turns and casts a "sad smile'' on the curious congregation.
Part II: The Funeral and the Wedding
At the later service, the black veil has the same impact on the parishioners. After the
service is over, Mr. Hooper officiates at the funeral of a young lady. When Hooper leans
forward to utter some final words into the face of the deceased, the veil falls away, and he
clutches it back into place as if afraid the corpse might see his features. One superstitious
old lady swears that when he did this, she saw the corpse shudder. As the mourners leave
the church, one of them looks back furtively, convinced that Hooper and the deceased
were walking hand in hand, this eerie conviction seconded by others present.
Later that evening, one of the most popular couples in town is to celebrate their wedding.
The parishioners anticipate the arrival of Parson Hooper, convinced that the earlier
wearing of the veil was just a passing fancy, expecting that he would be his old mildly
amusing and comfortable self. When he arrives with the veil still covering his face, he
casts a funeral-like atmosphere over what should be a joyous occasion, prompting some
there to imagine that he had brought the spirit of the dead girl from the funeral for the
purpose of some unholy or otherworldly marriage. As he raises his glass of wine to toast
the newly married couple, Hooper glimpses his own veiled face in the mirror and is
struck by the same sense of evil he has evoked in his parishioners. Horrified, he runs out
into the darkness of the night.
Part III: Requests for an Explanation
In the ensuing days, the black veil is all the congregation can talk about. The fascination
with Hooper's eccentricity extends even to the young schoolchildren. This young boy
wears a black veil and frightens his playmates so badly that the boy scares even himself.
Since the Reverend Mr. Hooper has always been ready to listen to the advice and
concerns of his congregation, a group is selected to approach the parson and inquire as to
the meaning and purpose of the veil. When this select group comes into Hooper's
presence they are tongue-tied and cannot ask him. If the veil were only removed, they
say, they could have advanced to the point. Since it was not, they leave in ignorance,
deciding that the issue of the veil is better left to the consideration of a church counsel, or
even the consideration of a group of churches uniting in a general synod.
Elizabeth, the woman to whom Hooper is engaged to be married, is not frightened or put
off by the veil, and she asks Hooper, directly, the question the others could not. She asks
him to remove the veil and then explain why he put it on in the first place. When he
replies that he cannot, she asks him at least to remove the mystery from his words. As he
explains that he has vowed to wear the veil forever, as a ‘‘type and symbol,’’ she is
suddenly unnerved by his willingness to give up the most meaningful of human
relationships for the sake of that veil, and is finally struck by its symbolic horror. She
asks him one last time to remove it, and he again refuses. When she leaves in dismay, he
displays, again, that sad smile, both amazed and amused that a simple piece of cloth
could intrude so heavily upon human happiness.
Part IV: A Summary of Hooper's Persistence
It soon becomes evident that Mr. Hooper intends to keep wearing the veil, despite his
discomfort with the reactions of his parishioners, many of whom cross the street to avoid
him while certain others make it a point of honor to confront him, in order that they might
brag about their courage later. It upsets him that small children run from him. Also, he is
disappointed that he has to give up his customary walks to the cemetery because of those
who always hide behind the gravestones trying to see behind the veil as he leans over the
gate.
Rumors continue to circulate that he has committed some terrible and unpardonable sin.
Yet, in a way, he has become a more effective minister. Many of those he had converted
to his own religious faith insist upon his presence at the moment of their deaths, as if they
believe the veil has given him an intimate understanding of life's mysteries.
Part V: The Deathbed Scene
The Reverend Mr. Hooper lives this lonely life for many years. On his own deathbed, the
Reverend Mr. Clark, a young and energetic parson who has come from the nearby town
of Westbury to comfort Hooper, asks if he might remove the veil before Hooper dies.
Perhaps misunderstanding Hooper's ambiguous answer, the Reverend Mr. Clark reaches
toward the veil, but Hooper clutches it to his face and prevents it from being removed.
Hooper, at last, offers to those assembled around him an explanation for his wearing of
the veil:
'"Why do you tremble at me alone?' cried he, turning his veiled face round the circle of
pale spectators. 'Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown
no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery
which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crepe so awful? When the friend
shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best-beloved; when a man does not
vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin;
then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look
around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!'’’ (Excerpt from ‘‘The Minister's Black
Veil: A Parable’’)
The Reverend Mr. Hooper accuses everyone of veiling their innermost secrets and
desires. The black veil symbolizes this masking. His explanation, though, is somewhat
dissatisfying, since readers might wonder why Hooper insists upon wearing that worldly
symbol in the afterlife. As the story ends, Hawthorne leaves readers with the grim image
of Hooper lying in his coffin with the black veil still firmly fixed to his face.
Alienation and Loneliness
The moment that the Reverend Mr. Hooper, a parson in the small town of Milford, puts
on the black veil that he is to wear for the rest of his life, the influence of the veil
becomes evident. As he delivers his first sermon wearing the veil, his congregation gets
the uncanny sensation that it is not really their beloved Parson Hooper. After the service,
those who usually vie for the prestige of accompanying Hooper out of the church do not
do so, and a parishioner who always invites Hooper to dinner fails to invite him on this
occasion. The veil so isolates him from the companionship of others that it denies him
even the happiness of a marriage with Elizabeth, to whom he admits the veil's unhappy
effects: ‘‘Oh! you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my
black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!’’ That miserable
obscurity only intensifies as he adamantly continues to wear the veil, despite the pain he
experiences when, again and again, certain people cross the street to avoid him, and
children quit playing and run away at his approach.
Doubt and Ambiguity
The black veil is a symbol fraught with doubt and ambiguity, but critics disagree about
what it symbolizes. Upon Hooper's first appearance in the black veil, one woman in his
congregation declares that the veil symbolizes the Parson's madness. Other parishioners
who consider themselves wise suggest that there is no mystery to the veil at all; the
Reverend Mr. Hooper has only strained his eyes the night before in intense studies by
lamplight. But as he continues to wear the black veil, the parishioners offer other
explanations of its symbolism.
At its least mysterious, Hooper's veil is explained as a symbol of mourning for some lost
soul. At its most mysterious, Hooper's veil is explained as a symbol of some great and
unpardonable sin that Hooper himself has committed. Doubt and ambiguity exist not only
for characters in the story who try to read the black veil's symbolism, but also for modern
readers of Hawthorne's tale. In trying to penetrate the mystery of the black veil, modern
readers are helped neither by the author's footnote to the subtitle nor by Hooper's dying
accusation. The footnote to the subtitle suggests that the story be read as a parable
wherein Hooper's veil is not unlike the veil worn by the clergyman Mr. Joseph Moody, as
a symbol of sorrow for the accidental killing of a friend. But the footnote also says, ‘‘In
his case, however, the symbol had a different import.’’ As Hooper lies dying, he accuses
all men of veiling themselves from God and other men. But if his own black veil has been
worn as a symbol of that shared sin or weakness, the reader might still question why
Hooper insists upon wearing the veil after he is dead and has gone to his eventual
judgment before God.
Guilt and Innocence
With his dying words, Hooper asks that his behavior be judged until others have
examined their own consciences and found themselves free of sin. Those sins prevent
people from communicating fully and openly with others and with God. Hooper has worn
the black veil of ‘‘secret sin’’ visibly on his face while others wear that black veil on their
souls. As a symbol, Hooper implies, the black veil represents a shared human weakness
in the inescapable tendency to commit and hide sin. This implication is reinforced by the
topic of the sermon Hooper delivers when he first appears wearing the black veil. ‘‘The
subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our
nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting
that the Omniscient can detect them.’’ In Christianity, this shared tendency to sin is called
Original Sin, an imprint of guilt inherited from Adam and Eve, who sinned against God
and then tried to hide from Him. No one is born innocent of Original Sin, and no one
escapes the mark of guilt of which Hooper's black veil is representative.
Moral Corruption/Sin
Many critics believe that the Reverend Mr. Hooper wears the black veil, at first, to teach
his congregation a lesson about acknowledging the presence of Original Sin in each and
every parishioner. His continued wearing of the veil, however, is a morally corrupting
influence on Hooper since it leads him to the sin of excessive human pride. Had Hooper
immediately explained to the congregation the significance of the black veil, the lesson
he meant to impart would have been clear. Instead, he wears the black veil for the rest of
his life, never offering an explanation until he is on his deathbed. And even then, the
explanation is not as clear and direct as it might have been.
Moreover, the black veil isolates him from the religious community to whom he should
minister with affection and concern. He takes great pride both in having discovered the
dark secrets of the soul and in parading that discovery in front of the congregation. His
isolation and suffering are, perhaps, only tolerable in his sense of moral superiority, and
he puts his own continued sense of moral superiority ahead of the concerns of his
congregation. Ironically, the black veil, which was initially meant to represent secret sin,
comes to represent Hooper's own sin of pride, and conceals the very thing it was meant to
expose.
Self-Reliance By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
| Historical Context
New England Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism took root in New England in the mid-1830s in reaction against the
rationalism (emphasis on intellectual understanding) of the Unitarian Church. The
philosophy centered around the premise that divine truth is present in all created things
and that truth is known through intuition, not through the rational mind. From this core
proceeded the belief that all of nature, including all humans, is one with God, whom the
transcendentalists sometimes called the Over-Soul. In an essay with that title, Emerson
defined God as "that great nature in which we rest . . . that Unity within which every
man's particular being is contained and made one with all other.’’
The term transcendental was borrowed from German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241804), who wrote in his well-known work Critique of Practical Reason, "I call all
knowledge transcendental which is concerned, not with objects, but with our mode of
knowing objects so far as this is possible a priori'' (meaning, independent of sensory
experience). American transcendentalism was thus clearly linked to similar philosophies
that existed in Europe, and it also shared important ideas with Eastern philosophies and
religions, including Hinduism. The New England transcendentalists read the
Bhagavadgita (sometimes called the Hindu Bible), the Upanishads (philosophical
writings on the Hindu scriptures), and Confucius. In addition, Emerson in ‘‘SelfReliance'' quotes both an Islamic caliph (religious person) and the founder of
Zoroastrianism.
The New England transcendentalists did not confine themselves to literary pursuits but
also experimented with putting their philosophy into practice. Some, such as Bronson
Alcott and Elizabeth Peabody, focused on educational reform. Peabody and Margaret
Fuller applied the principles of transcendentalism to the crusade for women's rights. The
group created two experimental communities, Fruitlands and Brook Farm.
But it is the writing of Emerson and Henry David Thoreau that has been the most
enduring product of American transcendentalism. Thoreau's ideas about nonviolent
resistance to oppressors, especially, were important both to Mahatma Gandhi's campaign
against the British in India in the early 1900s and to the American civil rights movement
of the 1960s.
Abolitionism
During the three decades before the Civil War, the movement to abolish slavery in the
United States steadily gained momentum. An abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator,
began publication in 1831, and the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in
Philadelphia in 1833. By 1838, there were nearly fifteen hundred anti-slavery
organizations in the United States, with nearly a quarter of a million members. The
Liberty Party was formed in 1840 to make abolition a central issue in national politics.
Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists spoke out against slavery, as did John
Greenleaf Whittier and other writers. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave, the autobiography of escaped slave Frederick Douglass, was published
in 1845 and became an immediate bestseller. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published serially in 1851-1852, gave a tremendous
boost to the abolitionist cause. Both books movingly portray the brutal conditions and
dehumanizing effects of slavery as it existed in the American South. In addition, the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which legislated harsh penalties for escaped slaves who were
recaptured, actually strengthened the anti-slavery movement.
Slavery, of course, became a central issue in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, of whom
the normally apolitical Emerson was a strong supporter, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation freeing all slaves in 1863. The proclamation was symbolic, however;
enforcement provisions did not back it. Slavery finally ended with the adoption of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
Sensibility
During the nineteenth century, the term "sensibility’’ was used to mean adherence to a set
of unwritten but all-encompassing rules that governed acceptable social behavior. A
person of sensibility observed others closely to learn how things were done and then
acted accordingly, being careful never to step outside the bounds of conventional
behavior. The term is preserved in the title of Jane Austen's famous novel, Sense and
Sensibility, first published in 1811. The story follows the lives of two sisters, one of
whom lives a life governed by sensibility and the other of whom flouts sensibility and
lives by her passions. In accordance with Austen's belief that sensibility led to personal
happiness and social order, her sensible Elinor is shown to be the wiser of the two and is
rewarded—after many dramatic trials—with the man of her dreams, while sensual
Marianne must reform herself before the author allows her to make a happy marriage.
The idea of sensibility as promoted by Austen and by nineteenth-century society in
general is exactly that which Emerson argues against in "Self-Reliance.’’
| Introduction
"Self-Reliance," first published in Essays (First Series) in 1841, is widely considered to
be the definitive statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of individualism and
the finest example of his prose. The essay is a fabric woven of many threads, from a
journal entry written as early as 1832 to material first delivered in lectures between 1836
and 1839.
Emerson was known for his repeated use of the phrase ‘‘trust thyself." "Self-Reliance" is
his explanation—both systematic and passionate—of what he meant by this and of why
he was moved to make it his catch-phrase. Every individual possesses a unique genius,
Emerson argues, that can only be revealed when that individual has the courage to trust
his or her own thoughts, attitudes, and inclinations against all public disapproval.
According to the conventions of his time, Emerson uses the terms "men" and "mankind"
to address all humanity, and the multitude of examples he gives of individuals who
exhibited self-reliance and became great are all men. These factors somewhat date
Emerson's presentation; the underlying ideas, however, remain powerful and relevant.
Self-Reliance Summary
Genius
Emerson begins "Self-Reliance" by defining genius: "To believe your own thought, to
believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.’’
Every educated man, he writes, eventually realizes that ‘‘envy is ignorance" and that he
must be truly himself. God has made each person unique and, by extension, given each
person a unique work to do, Emerson holds. To trust one's own thoughts and put them
into action is, in a very real sense, to hear and act on the voice of God.
Emerson adds that people must seek solitude to hear their own thoughts, because society,
by its nature, coerces men to conform. He goes so far as to call society "a conspiracy
against the manhood of every one of its members.''
Societal Disapproval and Foolish Consistency
Emerson discusses two factors that discourage people from trusting themselves: societal
disapproval and foolish consistency. "For nonconformity the world whips you with its
displeasure,’’ he writes. He quickly dismisses public censure as a "trifle."
To the second factor, foolish consistency, Emerson gives more attention. Perhaps the
most familiar and oft-quoted declaration in this essay or in all of Emerson's writing
appears here: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines.’’ He reassures readers that what appears to be
inconsistency and is judged harshly by others is simply the varied but unified activity of a
unique individual. Emerson supports this view with an apt analogy: ‘‘The voyage of the
best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.’’ Be true not to what was done yesterday,
Emerson urges, but to what is clearly the right course today, and the right destination will
be reached.
Self-Worth
Up to this point, Emerson has made a case that individuals have not only a right but also
a responsibility to think for themselves and that neither societal disapproval nor concerns
about consistency should discourage these. He now writes that individuals who obey the
admonition to "trust thyself'' should value themselves highly and consider themselves
equal to the great men of history. Returning to a point made earlier, Emerson states that
when men trust themselves they are actually trusting the divine, which exists in all men
and which he calls ‘‘the aboriginal Self," "Spontaneity," and "Instinct."
Relation of the Individual to God
Emerson further explores the nature of the relationship between the individual and "the
divine spirit.’’ He holds that this relationship is pure and therefore no intermediaries—
priest, doctrine, church, scripture, etc.—are needed or helpful. Emerson decries those
who "dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speaks the phraseology of ... David, or
Jeremiah, or Paul.''
The Highest Truth
Emerson tells readers that he has now come to ‘‘the highest truth of the subject": "When
good is near you . . . you shall not discern the footprints of any other... the way, the
thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new.’’
Emerson characterizes an individual's experience of the highest truth as a moment of
calm during which the soul stands above all passion, above time and space, above even
life and death, and experiences pure existence and reality.
Resist Temptation
Here Emerson encourages readers to give up social pretenses such as "lying hospitality
and lying affection.'' Be true to your feelings and opinions in relation to other people, he
writes, even the people closest to you; tell them what you really think of them. They may
well be hurt at first, he acknowledges, but they will, sooner or later, ‘‘have their moment
of reason'' and learn to be honest themselves. This social honesty is needed, Emerson
argues, because pretense has made people weak and afraid of truth, fate, death, and one
another.
Effects of Self-Reliance
Emerson writes that increased self-reliance would revolutionize religion, education, and
other facets of society. The remainder of the essay is an exploration of four numbered,
specific effects of self-reliance, as follows.
First, Emerson writes that self-reliance would radically alter people's religious attitudes
and practices. He calls conventional prayer a form of begging, ‘‘a disease of the will,’’
and even "vicious." In a society of self-reliant individuals, Emerson says, "prayer that
craves a particular commodity'' would be replaced by prayer consisting of ‘‘the
contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.’’ Another valid form of
prayer, according to Emerson, is right action.
Emerson builds on this idea by adding, ‘‘As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are
their creeds a disease of the intellect.’’ Again, Emerson urges readers to abandon systems
of thought built by others and to fall back on their own unique thoughts and ideas, about
the divine as about all else.
Second, Emerson writes that self-reliance would replace the ‘‘superstition of traveling."
"The soul is no traveler,’’ he says. ‘‘The wise man stays at home.’’ Emerson explains that
he is not against travel for the sake of pursuing art or study but that too many people
travel hoping to find a better culture or society than that in America. The wise course,
according to Emerson, is to stay home and devote oneself to making America a place to
be admired as much as American tourists admire Italy, England, Greece, and Egypt.
Emerson's third point expands on the second. He charges that Americans' minds are as
much "vagabonds'' as their bodies and that they look to other countries for inspiration in
everything from architecture to opinions, valuing "the Past and the Distant'' above the
present and the near. Emerson's remedy is that Americans should develop their own
culture and arts.
The fourth and final effect of self-reliance that Emerson deals with is the progress of
society overall. He holds that people misunderstand the true nature of progress, mistaking
advances in science, technology, and material welfare for progress. Every such advance
has a cost as great as its benefit, Emerson claims, and does not really benefit individuals
or society in meaningful ways. What passes for progress does not make people either
better or happier. True progress occurs on an individual, not a societal basis, he writes,
and results from looking to self, rather than material things, for fulfillment. Emerson
concludes, "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but
the triumph of principles.''
| Themes
Individualism
"Self-Reliance" is widely considered Emerson' s definitive statement of his philosophy of
individualism. This philosophy esteems individuals above all—societies, nations,
religions, and other institutions and systems of thought.
Emerson repeatedly calls on individuals to value their own thoughts, opinions, and
experiences above those presented to them by other individuals, society, and religion.
This radical individualism springs from Emerson's belief that each individual is not just
unique but divinely unique; i.e., each individual is a unique expression of God's creativity
and will. Further, since Emerson's God is purposeful, He molded each individual to serve
a particular purpose, to do a certain work that only he or she is equipped to carry out.
This direct link between divinity and the individual provides assurance that the individual
will, when rightly exercised, can never produce evil. Individual will, in Emerson's
philosophy, is not selfish but divine.
In this context, an individual who fails to be self-reliant—who does not attend to and act
upon his or her own thoughts and ideas—is out of step with God's purpose. Such a
person, in Emerson's view, cannot be productive, fulfilled, or happy.
On the other hand, a person who is self-reliant can be assured that he or she is carrying
out the divine purpose of life. This is true even of those who flout the rules and
conventions of society and religion and suffer disapproval as a result. In fact, Emerson
points out, those men who are now considered the greatest of all fall into this category.
He gives as examples Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Martin Luther, Copernicus, Galileo,
and Isaac Newton.
Nonconformity
Clearly, Emerson's philosophy of individualism leads directly to nonconformity. Most
individuals will find that their private opinions and ideas are in agreement with those of
others on some points. For example, most people agree that murder and theft are wrong.
On those points, nearly everyone can be a conformist. A commitment to live according to
one's own ideas about every matter, however, will certainly make every individual a
nonconformist on some issues. In Emerson's words, ‘‘Whoso would be a man must be a
nonconformist.''
Originality versus Imitation
The positive side of nonconformity is originality. Self-reliance is not a matter merely of
not believing what others believe and doing what others do but, just as importantly, a
matter of believing and doing what one is uniquely suited to believe and do. Emerson
expects the self-reliant to substitute originality for imitation in every sphere of life.
Speaking specifically of architecture, Emerson explains that originality will yield a
product that is superior (i.e., more suited to the needs of the maker) to one made by
imitation:
If the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him,
considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people ... he will
create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will
be satisfied also.
‘‘Insist on yourself,’’ Emerson concludes. ‘‘Never imitate.’’
Past, Present, and Future
Emerson counsels the self-reliant to keep their focus on the present. "Man postpones or
remembers,’’ he complains. ‘‘He does not live in the present, but with reverted eye
laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee
the future.'' One who lingers in the past wastes one's life in regret; one who looks to the
future misses today's duties and pleasures. It is Emerson's preference for the present over
the past that leads him to call consistency foolish.
That a certain belief or course of action was correct, useful, or best in the past does not
guarantee that it remains so in the present. Conversely, to leave behind a belief or a way
of doing things does not mean that it was not useful at the time or that one was wrong to
have pursued it.
To demonstrate the unity and effectiveness of an apparently inconsistent course through
life, Emerson uses a sailing journey as a metaphor: ‘‘The voyage of the best ship is a
zigzag line of a hundred tacks.’’ The knowledge that one is following the true path to the
right destination, despite apparent inconsistencies, gives the self-reliant individual
confidence to ignore the taunts of others who deride him or her for changing course.
Cause and Effect versus Fortune
Cause and effect, which Emerson calls ‘‘the chancellors of God,’’ are, he argues, the very
opposites of fortune, or chance. By self-reliance, man is able to overcome the
unpredictable turning of the wheel of fortune. Understanding the principle of cause and
effect, the self-reliant individual applies his will wisely to bring about desired effects. To
put it another way, through the wisdom of self-reliance, people become masters of their
own fates. Just as God is said to have created order out of chaos, so too can men.
Notable Quotations From "Self-Reliance"
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Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
Travelling is a fool's paradise.
Insist on yourself; never imitate.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of
principles.
The Raven by: Edgar Allan Poe
| Historical Context
It is always profitable to read about Poe’s life while reading his works because a clear
line can be drawn from the events in his life, through his particular phobias and
obsessions, and straight to the disturbing, supernatural poems and tales that he wrote.
Some of the facts of his life are obscure to us today because the man he chose to be his
literary executor and biographer, Rufus Griswold, is known to have hated Poe, and he
made up malicious facts in his “official” biography after he died. We do know that Poe’s
parents were actors; his mother was quite famous and his father a law student who joined
the acting troupe when he married her. Poe was born in 1809 when they were playing the
Boston Theatre. Some sources say that his parents had two more children and some say
that his father deserted the family a year after Edgar’s birth, but it is agreed that by the
time he was three, his father had left and his mother, coughing up blood, died before the
child’s eyes. He was taken in by a wealthy couple in Virginia, John and Frances Allan,
who raised him like a son. In 1824 he and Mr. Allan had a falling out: some sources
portray Mr. Allan as stingy and others accept him as being rightly fed up with the huge
amounts of money Poe had wasted drinking and gambling while away at the University
of Virginia. Poe went away to the army, disowned and written out of Allan’s will, and
soon after his discharge, Mrs. Allan died of consumption, the same disease that had killed
his natural mother. He had been rejected by both of his fathers, and both of his mothers
had died the same way.
Living in Baltimore with his blood relatives, the Poes, he fell in love with his first cousin,
Virginia Clemm. He was twenty-six, and she was at least a decade younger. He began a
series of jobs and literary attempts, travelling from city to city with his bride and
aunt/mother-in-law. In Richmond he edited the Southern Literary Messenger for two
years, but was fired for excessive drunkenness; in New York in 1837 and Philadelphia in
1838 he sold some fiction to make ends meet. In 1839 he co-edited Burton’s Gentlemen’s
Magazine, was fired for drinking, then was hired for Graham’s by the same publisher
who had just fired him. In 1842 Virginia suffered a burst blood vessel in her throat, and
was incapacitated for five years before she died. Although it was not the same disease
that had killed his mother and stepmother, the similarity was still there. Poe continued to
get and lose jobs. In 1845, publication of “The Raven” in The American Review made
him an instant sensation, and, with his profits from speaking engagements and his next
book, he was able to buy the magazine that he worked for, The Broadway Journal. True
to Poe’s luck, it went bankrupt the next year. Virginia’s death was two years after “The
Raven” was published, but that didn’t stop some critics from guessing that she was the
model for Lenore. After she died, Poe quit drinking but continued moving from place to
place, possibly affected by a brain lesion. He became paranoid and worried that assassins
were following him. On Election Day, October 3rd, 1849, he was found in a gutter in
Baltimore, muttering deliriously. Different accounts say that he was drunk, on drugs, or
had suffered a stroke. One of the most charming versions of his death comes from the
American Catholic Quarterly Review of October 1891: “Some political agents who were
on the lookout for voters perceived him, and in a spirit of thorough ruffianism seized and
drugged the unfortunate poet. They then made him record his vote in several different
polling booths, treating him with such violence that he died from its effects . . .”
|Summary
“The Raven” was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845,
and received popular and critical praise. Sources of “The Raven” have been suggested,
such as “Lady Geraldine’s 1843 Courtship” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Barnaby
Rudge by Charles Dickens, and two poems, “To Allegra Florence” and “Isadore” by
Thomas Holly Chivers. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, “The
Raven” has become one of America’s most famous poems, partly as a result, of its easily
remembered refrain, “Nevermore.” The speaker, a man who pines for his deceased love,
Lenore, has been visited by a talking bird who knows only the word, “Nevermore.” The
narrator feels so grieved over the loss of his love that he allows his imagination to
transform the bird into a prophet bringing news that the lovers will “Nevermore” be
reunited, not even in heaven. In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe's own essay
about “The Raven,” he describes the poem as one that reveals the human penchant for
“self-torture” as evidenced by the speaker’s tendency to weigh himself down with grief.
In the essay Poe also discusses his method of composing “The Raven.” He claims to have
given much thought to his selection of the refrain, recognizing in it the “pivot upon which
the whole structure might turn.” His selection of the word “Nevermore” came after
considering his need for a single, easily remembered word that would allow him to vary
the meaning of the lines leading up to it. The poem uses this refrain, or variations of it, as
the closing word for each stanza. The stanzas become increasingly dramatic as the
speaker makes observations or asks questions that reveal his growing tension and
diminishing reason. The narrator begins with innocent and amusing remarks that build in
a steady crescendo to intense expressions of grief, all of which conclude with
“Nevermore” or one of its variants.
|The Raven Summary
Lines 1-2:
The opening lines identify the speaker as someone who feels tired and weak but is still
awake in the middle of a gloomy night. He passes the time by reading a strange book of
ancient knowledge. The first line of the poem contains alliteration of w in “while,”
“weak,” and “weary” to produce the effect of unsteadiness. This line also sets the poem’s
rhythmical pattern and provides the first example of the use of internal rhyme in “dreary”
and “weary.”
Lines 3-6:
The speaker tells of becoming more tired and beginning to doze but being wakened by a
sound that he assumes is a quiet knock. Internal rhymes of “napping,” “tapping,” and
“rapping” along with repetition of these last two words, create a musical effect. This
effect is also produced by alliteration of n. These sound devices and the steady rhythm of
these lines are almost hypnotic. The use of “nothing more” is the first example of what
will evolve into the refrain “Nevermore.” In this first instance, the speaker presents the
phrase in a low key, attached to his bland explanation that the tapping sound is “nothing
more” than a late visitor knocking at his door.
Lines 7-12:
In this second stanza the narrator tells what he remembers about the setting and action at
the time of the Raven’s visit. It was December, the first month of winter and a time when
the nights are longest, creating a mood of mystery. A fireplace had been lit, but now the
fire was going out, and it cast an eerie glow. To set the mood, Poe uses mysterious and
depressing words in these descriptions: “bleak,” “dying,” and “ghost.” To escape his
heavy mood, the speaker has been reading; he says it was a vain attempt to “borrow /
From my books surcease of sorrow,” that is, to find something in his books that would
take his mind off the sadness he feels about his lost love, Lenore. He reveals that Lenore
has died when he says that the angels call her by name. This time the word “evermore” is
used in the refrain.
Lines 13-18:
The speaker tells that he was in a state of heightened sensibility because of his mood, the
late hour, and the eerie setting. Reading ancient folklore, possibly of a supernatural
nature, may also have added to his emotional state. The sound of the curtains as they
move strikes his imagination wildly. Poe creates this sound by using onomatopoeia, or
words that sound like what they describe (“rustling”), and alliteration, repeating s in line
13 and f in line 14. The speaker tries to calm down by telling himself twice that the
tapping noise (introduced in stanza one) is only the sound of a visitor knocking on his
door and “nothing more.” The refrain works here as it did in the first stanza, but now it
has been attached to a more emotionally charged situation.
Lines 19-24:
The speaker overcomes his emotional state and rationally calls out to the supposed
visitor. But when he opens the door he finds only “darkness there and nothing more.” The
refrain this time has been employed to create a sense of mystery that follows a moment of
rational behavior, overshadowing it.
Lines 25-30:
The lover tells that he stood looking out of his door, transfixed by the “darkness,” the
“silence,” and the “stillness” while his imagination increased. Finally he whispered the
name of his deceased lover, “Lenore,” and he heard it echoed in the night. An abundance
of words that use the sound d produces an alliteration that suggests the strong, rhythmical
heartbeat of an excited person. The refrain has now been used after a mysterious and also
slightly frightening experience, the “nothing more” contradicting the speaker’s agitated
state.
Lines 31-36:
At this point the speaker has not completely regained his composure, as shown by the
image of his “soul ... burning.” He returns to his room, but the tapping sound resumes,
even louder, and the speaker determines this time to investigate the window.
Lines 37-42:
The speaker finally reveals the source of the mysterious tapping noise—a bird. Upon
opening the window, the speaker discovers a Raven who flies in and sits on top of the
speaker’s “bust of Pallas.” Alliteration of fl creates the sound of wings flapping. The
description of the Raven is of first importance in this stanza. The bird is “stately,”
reminding the speaker of ancient times, perhaps seeming to fly out of the books that the
speaker tells of reading in stanza one. The Raven seems very purposeful, flying directly
to perch on the high statue without regarding the narrator at all. Symbolism occurs in
Poe’s choice of “Pallas” as the Raven’s perch. “Pallas” represents the Greek Goddess of
Wisdom, sometimes known as “Pallas Athene,” and so by placing the Raven above this
bust Poe creates a situation in which wisdom has been placed underneath the Raven, a
bird associated with death.
Lines 43-48:
The bird’s dramatic presence strikes the lover so that he begins to forget his sadness. He
finds humor in the situation, and in jest, begins to speak out loud, expressing his wonder
about the Raven. He compares the bird to a lord whose “crest” (royal emblem) is missing.
This comparison allows the reader to visualize the bird’s sleek head and also to associate
the bird with a character of dignity. In the suggestion that the bird has come from the
“Plutonian shore,” Poe calls upon the myth of Pluto, the God of the Underworld, the land
of the dead in Greek mythology. The Raven, therefore, may be thought of as a creature
from the land of the dead. In this stanza the refrain reaches its permanent form of
“Nevermore,” the answer given by the bird when spoken to regardless of what the
narrator says. The predictability of this answer allows the reader to note the narrator’s
course of self-torture with each question that he asks, leading to a more distressing
response as the poem progresses.
Lines 49-60:
The speaker tells of his amazement at the bird’s appearance, its position on the bust, and
its ability to speak. There is no indication that the lover truly believes the suggestions he
made concerning the bird’s origins (the “Plutonian shore” referred to in line 47); on the
contrary, the speaker notes that the bird’s reply was irrelevant, meaning it did not make
sense. In the closing lines of the tenth stanza (lines 55-60) the speaker again makes an
audible comment about the bird, and again the bird replies with the refrain. This time,
though, as if the speaker had planned it, he has made a statement to which the response
“Nevermore” makes sense. He has predicted the Raven’s departure, and the Raven’s
response indicates that he will never depart.
Lines 61-72:
This time the speaker is “startled” in reaction to the Raven’s answer because the speaker
thinks it makes sense. Still using his reason rather than his emotions, the speaker
rationalizes that the bird knows only this one word and has learned it by living with a
person who himself used the word repeatedly in response to his own bad luck. With this
explanation, the speaker feels amused, and he settles down on a comfortable chair to
contemplate the Raven.
Lines 73-78:
In this, the thirteenth stanza, the speaker and the bird remain silent. A frightening image
of the bird presents it with “fiery eyes” that “burned into” the speaker’s heart. This
description allows the reader to picture the Raven’s red eyes and also associate the bird
with evil. Poe reveals the narrator’s silence in the phrase “no syllable expressing,” a
phrase that calls to mind the poem and its use of syllables and meter. The speaker’s
silence is a brooding time during which his mind wanders away from the Raven and back
to the sorrows of lost love. The speaker thinks of Lenore as he sits on a “violet” colored
“velvet” chair on which the “lamp-light” flickers. Because Lenore used to sit in that
romantic spot, the speaker now begins to think of her again.
Lines 79-84:
Once the thought of Lenore re-enters the speaker’s mind, his imagination and emotions
again became active. He imagines that he smells the incense of angels. Quite likely, the
couch on which he sits has the lingering scent of Lenore’s perfume from the times she sat
there before her death, but this rational explanation does not occur to the speaker. He
prefers to think of the scent as a gift from God, noticing it provides a soothing experience
that may help him forget his sadness. He cries out to himself, calling himself “Wretch.”
By this he means that he has sunk to a wretched state of grief. But now he hopes that with
the angels’ help—a potion of forgetfulness known as nepenthe—he has a chance to rest
from the grief, to forget Lenore. When he suggests this out loud, the Raven who has also
almost been forgotten, reasserts his presence with his one word, “Nevermore.” In the
context of the lover’s thoughts, the bird’s statement means that the speaker will never
have a moment’s rest from the sadness he feels over Lenore’s death.
Lines 85-90:
In reaction to the Raven’s response in the preceding line (line 84) the speaker calls the
bird a “Prophet,” and because the prophecy foretells of more suffering for the speaker, he
calls the bird “evil” and suggests that it may be a “devil.” He does not know if the Raven
is merely a bird seeking refuge after a “tempest” (storm) or if it is an evil being “sent” by
the “Tempter,” that is, the devil. The speaker notes that the bird remains “undaunted”
even though it is “desolate” and it seems “enchanted” even though it is in this sad house
referred to as a “desert land,” a “home by Horror haunted.” This manner of referring to
the bird and the speaker’s home reveals that the speaker is becoming more distraught and
less reasonable. After making these statements about the Raven, the speaker continues
speaking out loud by asking “is there balm in Gilead?” (Gilead was known in Biblical
times for its healing plants), meaning will he ever find a remedy for his sorrow. As
expected, the Raven answers “Nevermore,” and the speaker will be thrown into a deeper
frenzy of despair.
Lines 91-96:
Setting himself up for more disappointment, the speaker continues to address the bird. He
repeats the first line of the previous stanza, an indication that more of the same type of
exchange will continue. This time the speaker asks if he will be reunited with Lenore
after he himself dies, in an afterlife he refers to as “the distant Aidenn.” In Poe’s “The
Philosophy of Composition” he identifies the speaker as one who has a penchant for selftorture, and this question with its anticipated answer of “Nevermore” provides proof of
the speaker’s character. In addition to the question itself, the speaker’s description of
himself as a “soul with sorrow laden” and his description of Lenore as a “sainted” and
“rare and radiant maiden” reveal how low he places himself and how inaccessible and
high he places Lenore in his memories of her.
Lines 97-102:
The speaker has lost his composure, as shown in the use of the word “shrieked.” He yells
to the Raven that it should leave and that it has spoken a lie. Note that the speaker’s
command for the Raven to depart—“leave loneliness unbroken”—could be interpreted to
mean that he wishes to preserve his miserable state, another indication of his tendency to
indulge in grief. The imagery used to describe the Raven continues to suggest its
association with evil; the words, “fiend,” “tempest,” “night’s Plutonian shore,” “black
plume,” “lie,” and the image of the Raven’s “beak” in the narrator’s “heart” reveal how
scornful the narrator feels toward the bird. The bird does not literally have his beak in the
lover’s heart, for the Raven still remains on its perch above the door, but its utterance of
“Nevermore” has wounded the lover emotionally.
Lines 103-108:
In this last stanza, the speaker describes his present situation. Until now, the poem has
been a retelling of events that lead up to this stanza. Now the speaker reveals that the
Raven remains in his room and that he, himself, remains despondent. Final associations
of the bird with evil occur in the words “demon” and “shadow.” The connection between
the Raven’s “shadow” and the speaker’s “soul” in the last line of the poem suggests that
the speaker believes himself to be cursed by the bird’s presence. The symbolism of the
physical location of the Raven, on top of the “pallid bust of Pallas” and above the
“chamber door” must be noted. Since the bird has been associated with death and evil in
the poem, his location suggests that these forces have overpowered wisdom, as
represented by Pallas. The speaker can not escape his condition because his wisdom and
its ability to produce rational behavior have been overpowered by his emotional response
to Lenore’s death. Since the symbolic Raven and bust of Pallas preside over the door, the
entrance and exit to the speaker’s “chamber” or residence, the speaker has no escape
from the situation. One may note that the word “chamber” calls to mind the chambers of
the heart, the legendary residence of emotional love. So the speaker, it seems, will never
emerge above his depression over the loss of his love, Lenore; his ability to be reasonable
will always be overshadowed by his thoughts of Lenore’s death. His “soul” will
“nevermore” feel happiness.
| Style
The poem is comprised of eighteen stanzas of six lines each, and most frequently
employs a meter known as trochaic octameter, which refers to a line containing eight
trochees—pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables. The first five lines of each stanza are
all in trochaic octameter, with the final unstressed syllable missing in lines two, four, and
five of each stanza. The sixth line of each stanza consists of three trochees and an extra
final stressed syllable. An example of the fifth and sixth lines from the last stanza shows
this pattern:
And my / soul from / out that /shadow / that lies /
floating / on the / floor
Shall be / lifted— / never / more!
Poe achieves variety in this rhythm by adding pauses, and he keeps the sound from
becoming monotonous by making much use of consonance and assonance, or repetition
of consonant and vowel sounds, respectively. In addition, Poe’s use of a regular rhyme
scheme in which every stanza uses words that rhyme with “more” to conclude the
second, fourth, fifth and sixth lines creates a very strong unifying effect for the poem. In
his “The Philosophy of Composition," “Poe states that he consciously chose the or sound
because of its “sonorous” quality. He also uses internal rhyme in lines one and three,
rhyming the fourth and last trochees of the lines, and repeating the rhyme of the third line
in the fourth trochee of line four. Thus the final word of every line has either an end
rhyme or an internal rhyme.
The Tell-Tale Heart
| Introduction
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous short stories, ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’’ was first
published in the January, 1843 edition of James Russell Lowell’s The Pioneer and was
reprinted in the August 23, 1845 issue of The Broadway Journal. The story is a
psychological portrait of a mad narrator who kills a man and afterward hears his victim’s
relentless heartbeat. While ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ and his other short stories were not
critically acclaimed during his lifetime, Poe earned respect among his peers as a
competent writer, insightful literary critic, and gifted poet, particularly after the
publication of his famous poem, ‘‘The Raven,’’ in 1845.
After Poe’s death in 1849, some critics faulted his obsession with dark and depraved
themes. Other critics, like George Woodberry in his 1885 study of Poe, considered ‘‘The
Tell-Tale Heart’’ merely a ‘‘tale of conscience.’’ But this simplistic view has changed
over the years as more complex views of Poe and his works have emerged. Poe is now
considered a forefather of two literary genres, detective stories and science fiction, and is
regarded as an important writer of psychological thrillers and horror.
‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ is simultaneously a horror story and psychological thriller told
from a first-person perspective. It is admired as an excellent example of how a short story
can produce an effect on the reader. Poe believed that all good literature must create a
unity of effect on the reader and this effect must reveal truth or evoke emotions. ‘‘The
Tell-Tale Heart’’ exemplifies Poe’s ability to expose the dark side of humankind and is a
harbinger of novels and films dealing with psychological realism. Poe’s work has
influenced genres as diverse as French symbolist poetry and Hollywood horror films, and
writers as diverse as Ambrose Bierce and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Tell-Tale Heart Summary
‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ begins with the famous line ‘‘True!—nervous—very, very
nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?’’ The narrator insists
that his disease has sharpened, not dulled, his senses. He tells the tale of how an old man
who lives in his house has never wronged him. For an unknown reason, the old man’s
cloudy, pale blue eye has incited madness in the narrator. Whenever the old man looks at
him, his blood turns cold. Thus, he is determined to kill him to get rid of this curse.
Again, the narrator argues that he is not mad. He claims the fact that he has proceeded
cautiously indicates that he is sane. For a whole week, he has snuck into the man’s room
every night, but the victim has been sound asleep with his eyes closed each time. The
narrator cannot bring himself to kill the man without seeing his ‘‘Evil Eye.’’ On the
eighth night, however, the man springs up and cries ‘‘Who’s there?’’ In the dark room,
the narrator waits silently for an hour. The man does not go back to sleep; instead, he
gives out a slight groan, realizing that ‘‘Death’’ is approaching. Eventually, the narrator
shines his lamp on the old man’s eye. The narrator immediately becomes furious at the
‘‘damned spot,’’ but he soon hears the beating of a heart so loud that he fears the
neighbors will hear it. With a yell, he leaps into the room and kills the old man. Despite
the murder, he continues to hear the man’s relentless heartbeat.
He dismembers the corpse and hides the body parts beneath the floorboards. There is a
knock on the front door; the police have come to investigate a shriek the neighbors have
reported. The narrator invites them to search the premises. He blames his scream on a bad
dream and explains that the old man is not home. The officers are satisfied but refuse to
leave. Soon the sound of the heartbeat resumes, growing more and more distinct. The
narrator grows pale and raises his voice to muffle the sound. At last, unable to stand it
any longer, the narrator screams: ‘‘I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—
it is the beating of his hideous heart!’’
| Characters
Narrator
The narrator of ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ recounts his murder of an old man. Since he tells
the story in first-person, the reader cannot determine how much of what he says is true;
thus, he is an unreliable narrator. Though he repeatedly states that he is sane, the reader
suspects otherwise from his bizarre reasoning, behavior, and speech. He speaks with
trepidation from the famous first line of the story: ‘‘True—nervous—very, very
dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?'' The reader
soon realizes through Poe’s jolting description of the narrator’s state of mind that the
protagonist has in fact descended into madness. The narrator claims that he loves the old
man and has no motive for the murder other than growing dislike of a cloudy film over
one of the old man’s eyes. Poe effectively conveys panic in the narrator’s voice, and the
reader senses uneasiness and growing tension in the narrative. Through the first-person
narrative of a madman, Poe effectively creates a gothic tale full of horror and
psychological torment, a style he termed ‘‘arabesque.’’
Old Man
The old man is known to readers only through the narration of the insane protagonist.
According to the narrator, the old man had never done anything to warrant his murder.
However, the old man’s cloudy, pale blue eye bothers the narrator tremendously. The
narrator believes that only by killing the old man can he get rid of the eye’s overpowering
malignant force. The old man is apparently quite rich, for he possesses ‘‘treasures’’ and
‘‘gold’’ and he locks the window shutters in his room for fear of robbers. However, the
narrator states that he has no desire for his gold. In fact, he claims that he loves the old
man. Through the narrator, the reader understands the horror that the old man experiences
as he realizes that his companion is about to kill him. The narrator claims that he too
knows this horror very well. Some critics argue that the old man must have known about
the narrator’s violent tendencies, for he cries out in horror well before the narrator kills
him. Other critics suggest that the old man may have been the narrator’s guardian or even
father. Still other critics believe that the old man is a doppelganger for the narrator, that
is, he is his double, and the narrator’s loathing for the man represents his own selfloathing.
| Themes
Guilt and Innocence
The guilt of the narrator is a major theme in ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’’ The story is about a
mad person who, after killing a companion for no apparent reason, hears an interminable
heartbeat and releases his overwhelming sense of guilt by shouting his confession to the
police. Indeed, some early critics saw the story as a straightforward parable about selfbetrayal by the criminal’s conscience.
The narrator never pretends to be innocent, fully admitting that he has killed the old man
because of the victim’s pale blue, film-covered eye which the narrator believes to be a
malignant force. The narrator suggests that there are uncontrollable forces which can
drive people to commit violent acts. In the end, however, Poe’s skillful writing allows the
reader to sympathize with the narrator’s miserable state despite fully recognizing that he
is guilty by reason of insanity.
Sanity and Insanity
Closely related to the theme of guilt and innocence is the issue of sanity. From the first
line of the story—‘‘True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am,
but why will you say that I am mad?''—the reader recognizes that something strange has
occurred. His obsession with conveying to his audience that he is sane only amplifies his
lack of sanity. The first tangible sign that the narrator is indeed mad appears in the second
paragraph, when he compares the old man’s eye to a vulture’s eye. He explains his
decision to ‘‘take the life of the old man’’ in order to free himself from the curse of the
eye. The narrator’s argument that he is sane, calculating, and methodical is unconvincing,
however, and his erratic and confused language suggests that he is disordered. Thus, what
the narrator considers to be evidence of a sane person—the meticulous and thoughtful
plans required to carry out a ghastly and unpleasant deed—are interpreted instead by the
reader to be manifestations of insanity.
Time
A secondary theme in ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ is the role of time as a pervasive force
throughout the story. Some critics note that the narrator is obsessed with time. While the
entire narrative is told as one long flashback, the narrator is painfully aware of the
agonizing effect on him of time. Although the action in this narrative occurs mainly
during one long night, the numerous references the narrator makes to time show that the
horror he experiences has been building over time. From the beginning, he explains that
his obsession with ridding the curse of the eye has ‘‘haunted [him] day and night.’’ For
seven long nights the narrator waits for the right moment to murder his victim. When on
the eighth night the old man realizes that someone is in his room, the narrator remains
still for an entire hour. The old man’s terror is also felt by the narrator, who had endured
‘‘night after night hearkening to the death watches in the wall.’’ (Death watches are a
type of small beetle that live in wood and make a ticking sound.)
For the narrator, death and time are closely linked. He explains that ‘‘the old man’s hour
had come,’’ all the while painfully aware of the hours it takes to kill a victim and clean
up the scene of the crime. What drives the narrator over the edge is hearing the
overwhelming sound of a heartbeat, which he compares to ‘‘a low, dull, quick sound,
such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.’’ Yet after killing the old man, the
narrator says that for ‘‘many minutes, the heart beat on.’’ He repeats his comparison of
the heartbeat to a ticking watch as the unrelenting sound drives him to confess to the
police. The narrator’s hour has also arrived.
| Style
Point of View
A notable aspect of ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ is that the story is told from the first-person
point of view. The story is a monologue of a nervous narrator telling the reader how he
murdered someone. He is eventually driven to confess to the police. The entire
straightforward narrative is told from his point of view in a nervous tone. Through Poe’s
masterful and inventive writing, the narrator’s twisted logic increasingly reveals that he is
insane. By using a first-person narrative, Poe heightens the tension and fear running
through the mind of the narrator. There is a clear connection between the language used
by the narrator and his psychological state. The narrator switches between calm, logical
statements and quick, irrational outbursts. His use of frequent exclamations reveals his
extreme nervousness. The first-person point of view draws the reader into the mind of the
insane narrator, enabling one to ironically sympathize with his wretched state of mind.
Some critics suggest that the entire narrative represents a kind of confession, as at a trial
or police station. Others consider the first-person point of view as a logical way to present
a parable of self-betrayal by the criminal’s conscience—a remarkable record of the voice
of a guilty mind.
Denouement
The denouement, or the resolution, of the narrative occurs in ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’
when the narrator, prompted by the incessant sound of a beating heart, can no longer
contain his ever-increasing sense of guilt. Poe is regarded by literary critics as having
helped define the architecture of the modern short story, in which its brevity requires an
economical use of sentences and paragraphs and the climactic ending often occurs in the
last paragraph. The abrupt ending in this story is calculated to concentrate an effect on the
reader. In ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ the crisis of conscience is resolved when the murderer
shrieks the last lines of the story: ‘‘I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—
it is the beating of his hideous heart!’’ This abrupt outburst is a shock to the reader, a
sudden bursting of the tension that has filled the story, and it provides the dramatic,
emotional conclusion to the story.
Aestheticism and Arabesque
Poe was a writer concerned more with style and mood than his American contemporaries
were, like James Fenimore Cooper whose fiction was often morally didactic. Poe
believed that a story should create a mood in a reader, or evoke emotions in order to be
successful, and that it should not try to teach the reader a lesson. He called his style
‘‘arabesque,’’ and it was notable for its ornate, intricate prose that sought to create a
feeling of unsettlement in the reader. This arabesque prose became a primary component
of the ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ movement, known as Aestheticism, that began in France in the
nineteenth century. Poe’s works were highly esteemed by French writers, like the poet
Charles Baudelaire, and their emulation of his style eventually influenced the Symbolists
and helped bring an end to the Victorian age in literature. In ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’’ an
example of arabesque prose is when the narrator describes sneaking into the old man’s
room in the middle of the night: ‘‘I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of
mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh no!—it was the low stifled sound
that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.’’ Instead of simply
stating that he had heard a groan, the narrator describes the sound in detail, creating in the
reader a sense of suspense and foreboding.
Doppelganger
In literature, a doppelganger is a character that functions as the main character’s double
in order to highlight the main character’s personality or act as a foil to it. Some critics
have maintained that in ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’’ the old man functions as a doppelganger
to the narrator. Thus, the narrator is truly mad, and he kills the old man because he cannot
stand himself, perhaps fearing becoming old or disfigured like him. The narrator recounts
evidence to support this idea: he does not hate the man, in fact, he professes to love him;
on the eighth night when the narrator sneaks into his room, the old man awakens, sits bolt
upright in bed and listens in silence for an hour in the darkness, as does the narrator. Most
notably, when the old man begins to moan, the narrator admits that the same sound had
‘‘welled up from my own bosom’’ many nights. When he hears the man’s heart quicken
with terror, he admits that he is nervous, too. Other critics have maintained that the old
man does not exist. After all, the narrator tells police that it was he who screamed, and it
is not stated that the police actually found a body. According to this viewpoint, the old
man’s cloudy eye is nothing more than a twisted fixation of the narrator’s own mind, and
the relentless heartbeat is not the old man’s, but the narrator’s.
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
The Poem
“Mending Wall” is a dramatic narrative poem cast in forty-five lines of blank verse. Its
title is revealingly ambiguous, in that “mending” can be taken either as a verb or an
adjective. Considered with “mending” as a verb, the title refers to the activity that the
poem’s speaker and his neighbor perform in repairing the wall between their two farms.
With “mending” considered as an adjective, the title suggests that the wall serves a more
subtle function: as a “mending” wall, it keeps the relationship between the two neighbors
in good condition.
In a number of ways, the first-person speaker of the poem seems to resemble the author,
Robert Frost. Both the speaker and Frost own New England farms, and both show a
penchant for humor, mischief, and philosophical speculation about nature, relationships,
and language. Nevertheless, as analysis of the poem will show, Frost maintains an ironic
distance between himself and the speaker, for the poem conveys a wider understanding of
the issues involved than the speaker seems to comprehend.
As is the case with most of his poems, Frost writes “Mending Wall” in the idiom of New
England speech: a laconic, sometimes clipped vernacular that can seem awkward and
slightly puzzling until the reader gets the knack of mentally adding or substituting words
to aid understanding. For example, Frost’s lines “they have left not one stone on a stone,/
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding” could be clarified as “they would not leave
a single stone on top of another if they were trying to drive a rabbit out of hiding.”
In addition to using New England idiom, Frost enhances the informal, conversational
manner of “Mending Wall” by casting it in continuous form. That is, rather than dividing
the poem into stanzas or other formal sections, Frost presents an unbroken sequence of
lines. Nevertheless, Frost’s shifts of focus and tone reveal five main sections in the poem.
In the first section (lines 1-4), the speaker expresses wonder at a phenomenon he has
observed in nature: Each spring, the thawing ground swells and topples sections of a
stone wall on the boundary of his property. In the second section (lines 5-11), he
contrasts this natural destruction with the human destruction wrought on the wall by
careless hunters.
The last sections of the poem focus on the speaker’s relationship with his neighbor. In the
third section (lines 12-24), the speaker describes how he and his neighbor mend the wall;
he portrays this activity humorously as an “outdoor game.” The fourth section (lines 2538) introduces a contrast between the two men: The speaker wants to discuss whether
there is actually a need for the wall, while the neighbor will only say, “Good fences make
good neighbors.” The fifth section (lines 38-45) concludes the poem in a mood of mild
frustration: The speaker sees his uncommunicative neighbor as “an old-stone savage”
who “moves in darkness” and seems incapable of thinking beyond the clichéd maxim,
which the neighbor repeats, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Forms and Devices
In his essay “Education by Poetry” (1931), Robert Frost offers a definition of poetry as
“the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.” “Mending Wall” is a
vivid example of how Frost carries out this definition in two ways—one familiar, one
more subtle. As is often the case in poetry, the speaker in “Mending Wall” uses
metaphors and similes (tropes which say one thing in terms of another) to animate the
perceptions and feelings that he wants to communicate to the reader. A more subtle
dimension of the poem is that Frost uses these tropes ironically, “saying one thing and
meaning another” to reveal more about the speaker’s character than the speaker seems to
understand about himself.
When the speaker uses metaphor in the first four sections of “Mending Wall,” he does it
to convey excitement and humor—the sense of wonder, energy, and “mischief” that
spring inspires in him. Through metaphor, he turns the natural process of the spring thaw
into a mysterious “something” that is cognitive and active: “something…that doesn’t love
a wall,” that “sends” ground swells, that “spills” boulders, and that “makes gaps.” He
playfully characterizes some of the boulders as “loaves” and others as “balls,” and he
facetiously tries to place the latter under a magical “spell” so that they will not roll off the
wall. He also uses metaphor to joke with his neighbor, claiming that “My apple trees will
never get across/ And eat the cones under his pines.”
In the last section of the poem, however, the speaker’s use of simile and metaphor turns
more serious. When he is unable to draw his neighbor into a discussion, the speaker
begins to see him as threatening and sinister—as carrying boulders by the top “like an
old-stone savage armed,” as “mov[ing] in darkness” of ignorance and evil. Through this
shift in the tone of the speaker’s tropes, Frost is ironically saying as much about the
speaker as the speaker is saying about the neighbor. The eagerness of the speaker’s
imagination, which before was vivacious and humorous, now seems defensive and
distrustful. By the end of the poem, the speaker’s over-responsiveness to the activity of
mending the wall seems ironically to have backfired. His imagination seems ultimately to
contribute as much to the emotional barriers between the speaker and his neighbor as
does the latter’s under-responsiveness.
Themes and Meanings
“Mending Wall” is about two kinds of barriers—physical and emotional. More subtly, the
poem explores an ironic underlying question: Is the speaker’s attitude toward those two
kinds of walls any more enlightened than the neighbor’s?
Each character has a line summing up his philosophy about walls that is repeated in the
poem. The speaker proclaims, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He wants to
believe that there is a “something,” a conscious force or entity in nature, that deliberately
breaks down the stone wall on his property. He also wants to believe that a similar
“something” exists in human nature, and he sees the spring season both as the source of
the ground swells that unsettle the stone wall and as the justification for “the mischief in
me” that he hopes will enable him to unsettle his neighbor’s stolid, stonelike personality.
From the speaker’s perspective, however, when the neighbor shies away from discussing
whether they need the wall, the speaker then sees him as a menacing “savage,” moving in
moral “darkness,” who mindlessly repeats the cliché “Good fences make good
neighbors.”
The speaker does not seem to realize that he is just as ominously territorial and walled in
as his neighbor, if not more so. The speaker scorns the neighbor for repeating his maxim
about “good fences” and for being unwilling to “go behind” and question it, yet the
speaker also clings to a formulation that he repeats (“Something there is that doesn’t love
a wall”) and seems unwilling to think clearly about his belief in it. For example, the
speaker celebrates the way that spring ground swells topple sections of the stone wall.
Why, then, does he resent the destruction that the hunters bring to it, and why does he
bother to repair those man-made gaps? Similarly, if the speaker truly believes that there is
no need for the wall, why is it he who contacts his neighbor and initiates the joint
rebuilding effort each spring? Finally, if the speaker is sincerely committed to the
“something” in human nature that “doesn’t love” emotional barriers (and that, by
implication, does love human connectedness), why does he allow his imagination to
intensify the menacing otherness of his neighbor to the point of seeing him as “an oldstone savage armed” who “moves in darkness”? To consider these questions, the speaker
would have to realize that there is something in him that does love walls, but the walls
within him seem to block understanding of his own contradictory nature.
Frost ends the poem with the neighbor’s line, “Good fences make good neighbors,”
perhaps because this cliché actually suggests a wiser perspective on the boundary wall
than the speaker realizes. This stone “fence” seems “good” partly because it sets a clear
boundary between two very different neighbors—one laconic and seemingly unsociable,
the other excitable, fanciful, and self-contradictory. On the other hand, this fence is also
good in that it binds the two men together, providing them with at least one annual social
event in which they can both participate with some comfort and amiability. To recall the
two meanings of the title, the activity of mending the wall enables it to be a “mending
wall” that keeps the relationship of these two neighbors stable and peaceful.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
“The Road Not Taken” is one of Robert Frost’s most familiar and most popular poems. It
is made up of four stanzas of five lines each, and each line has between eight and ten
syllables in a roughly iambic rhythm; the lines in each stanza rhyme in an abaab pattern.
The popularity of the poem is largely a result of the simplicity of its symbolism: The
speaker must choose between diverging paths in a wood, and he sees that choice as a
metaphor for choosing between different directions in life. Nevertheless, for such a
seemingly simple poem, it has been subject to very different interpretations of how the
speaker feels about his situation and how the reader is to view the speaker. In 1961, Frost
himself commented that “The Road Not Taken” is “a tricky poem, very tricky.”
Frost wrote the poem in the first person, which raises the question of whether the speaker
is the poet himself or a persona, a character created for the purposes of the poem.
According to the Lawrance Thompson biography, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph
(1971), Frost would often introduce the poem in public readings by saying that the
speaker was based on his Welsh friend Edward Thomas. In Frost’s words, Thomas was
“a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other.”
In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker, while walking on an autumn day in a forest
where the leaves have changed to yellow, must choose between two paths that head in
different directions. He regrets that he cannot follow both roads, but since that is not
possible, he pauses for a long while to consider his choice. In the first stanza and the
beginning of the second, one road seems preferable; however, by the beginning of the
third stanza he has decided that the paths are roughly equivalent. Later in the third stanza,
he tries to cheer himself up by reassuring himself that he will return someday and walk
the other road.
At the end of the third stanza and in the fourth, however, the speaker resumes his initial
tone of sorrow and regret. He realizes that he probably will never return to walk the
alternate path, and in the fourth stanza he considers how the choice he must make now
will look to him in the future. The speaker believes that when he looks back years later,
he will see that he had actually chosen the “less traveled” road. He also thinks that he will
later realize what a large difference this choice has made in his life. Two important
details suggest that the speaker believes that he will later regret having followed his
chosen road: One is the idea that he will “sigh” as he tells this story, and the other is that
the poem is entitled “The Road Not Taken”—implying that he will never stop thinking
about the other path he might have followed.
Forms and Devices
In his essay “The Constant Symbol,” Frost defined poetry with an interesting series of
phrases. Poetry, he wrote, is chiefly “metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another,
saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority.” His achievement in the
poem “The Road Not Taken” is to bring these different uses of metaphor into play in a
delightfully ironic balancing act. That is to say, the speaker solemnly uses the metaphor
of the two roads to say one thing, while Frost humorously uses the speaker as a metaphor
to say something very different.
The speaker is a solemn person who earnestly believes in metaphor as a way of “saying
one thing in terms of another.” The speaker uses the details, the “terms,” of a situation in
nature to “say” something about himself and his life: that he has difficulty making a
choice and that he is regretfully certain that he will eventually be unhappy with the
choice that he does make. When he first considers the two roads, he sees one as more
difficult, perhaps even a bit menacing (“it bent in the undergrowth”), and the other as
being more pleasant (“it was grassy and wanted wear”). Even in taking the second path,
though, he reconsiders and sees them both as equally worn and equally covered with
leaves. Changing his mind again, he believes that in the future he will look back, realize
that he did take the “less traveled” road after all, but regret “with a sigh” that that road
turned out to have made “all the difference” in making his life unhappy. The speaker
believes that in the future he will be haunted by this earlier moment when he made the
wrong choice and by the unfulfilled potential of “the road not taken.”
In contrast to the speaker, Frost uses metaphor to “say one thing and mean another.” That
is, Frost presents this speaker’s account of his situation with deadpan solemnity, but he
uses the speaker as a specific image of a general way of thinking that Frost means to
mock. The speaker first grasps at small details in the landscape to help him choose the
better path, then seems to have the common sense to see that the two roads are essentially
equivalent, but finally allows his overanxious imagination to run away with him. The
reader is meant to smile or laugh when the speaker scares himself into believing that this
one decision, with its options that seem so indistinguishable, will turn out someday to be
so dire as to make him “sigh” at “all the difference” this choice has made. Frost’s subtle
humor is most likely what Frost was referring to when he described the poem in 1961 as
“tricky,” for the Thompson biography documents two letters Frost wrote near the time of
the poem’s publication (one to Edward Thomas and one to the editor Louis Untermeyer)
to convince these readers that the poem is meant to be taken as a joke on the speaker and
as a parody of his attitudes.
Themes and Meanings
“The Road Not Taken” is an excellent example of what Frost meant by “the pleasure of
ulteriority” in his poetry. That is, the poem offers an entertaining double perspective on
the theme of making choices, with one perspective fairly obvious and the other more
subtle.
Considered through the perspective of the speaker himself, “The Road Not Taken” is an
entirely serious, even a sad poem. It expresses both the turmoil of making a choice and
the depressing expectation that the choice he makes between seemingly equal options
will turn out for the worse—is in fact going to make an even greater difference for the
worse than seems possible when he makes the choice.
Considered from Frost’s perspective, on the other hand, “The Road Not Taken” is a
humorous parody of the speaker’s portentous habits of mind. Frost’s 1931 essay
“Education by Poetry” offers further clarification on this point. In it, he wrote that people
need to understand that all metaphors are human constructs that “break down at some
point”; people need to “know [a] metaphor in its strength and its weakness…[h]ow far
[one] may expect to ride it and when it may break down.” From this perspective, the main
problem of the speaker in “The Road Not Taken” is that he tries to ride his metaphor too
far and too hard. Although he sees it break down early in the poem (in that he actually
cannot see any real difference between the two roads), the speaker persists in thinking
that the road is “less traveled” in some way that he cannot see and that this difference will
lead to dire consequences later on.
One other common interpretation of the poem deserves brief consideration: the view that
the poem is a celebration of nonconformity, an exhortation to the reader to take the road
“less traveled.” In this interpretation, the title is seen as referring to the road that the
speaker does take (which is “the road not taken” by most other people), and the speaker is
seen as ultimately exultant that he took the road “less traveled,” because it “has made all
the difference” in enhancing his life. To consider the validity of this interpretation, one
must put aside Frost’s stated intentions for the poem—an act that many critics consider
sometimes justified because an author’s intentions cannot be seen as fully controlling the
impression made by a literary work. Aside from the issue of Frost’s intentions, however,
this interpretation still conflicts with many salient details in the poem. One problem with
this view is that the speaker can hardly be praised as a strong nonconformist if in the
middle of the poem he can see little difference between the paths, let alone vigorously
choose the road “less traveled.” Another problem is that he imagines telling his story in
the future with a “sigh,” an unlikely gesture for a vigorous champion of nonconformity.
In 1935, Frost wrote on the subject of style that “style is the way [a] man takes
himself.…If it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer
humor, it must be with inner seriousness. Neither one alone without the other under it
will do.” “The Road Not Taken” is a notable example of Frost’s own sophisticated style,
of his ability to create ironic interplay between outer seriousness and inner humor.
Yet the humor of the poem also has its own serious side. This humor conveys more than
merely the ridicule found in parody: It also expresses an implied corrective to the
condition that it mocks. This condition is that the speaker sees the course and tone of his
life as determined by forces beyond his range of vision and control. Frost implies that if
the speaker were able to see himself with some humor, and if he were able to take more
responsibility for his choices and attitude, he might find that he himself could make “all
the difference” in his own life.
“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes
In Langston Hughes poem “Theme for English B,” the literary elements like plot,
character, setting, tone, point of view, symbols, and themes weight heavy throughout this
poem. The plot seems to take on a very structured, by providing detailed background
information. The plot is clearly connected to the setting as Hughes states “I am twentytwo, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to
this college on the hill above Harlem.” It sets an indicator of the time period and growth.
The setting begins as the student is instructed to “go home and write”, “Then, it will be
true.” The setting seems to give indication, of a young college student experiencing the
world through a colored man’s eyes. The setting takes you to a time before or during
desegregation. As the writer begins to explore his thoughts his self-assessment sets the
tone throughout the poem. The tone indicates his feelings toward growing up colored in a
white world.
The author attitude towards truth seems to start from the very beginning of the poem. In
which, you begin to see the character take form. The main character can be considered a
round or protagonist character. Because of all of his accomplishment it appears that he is
very well educated and knowledgeable. As the protagonist begins to discuss his point of
view on society can be argued.
The argument of “That’s American” can be misunderstood. Due to during that time
period colored were not considered American, but Africans. During giving his point of
view the protagonist begins to show that the symbols and themes are closely related to
the task at hand. The protagonist seems to be hinting at the fact that are skin may be
different, “yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American. Which “that’s
American” symbols that it doesn’t matter what color you are America is a country of
multi-colored people. It seems as the protagonist moves throughout the story the interior
monologue is clear. At the beginning of the poem the protagonist gives you the feeling
that he is somewhat of arrogant. Throughout the poem the protagonist seems to develop
into a more stock character.
The climax of the poem seems to draw all elements such as the plot, character, setting,
tone, point of view, symbols, and themes, to make a even flow read. The protagonist
opens your eyes to the views of racism, social status, and political equality in America.
The realization of these views sets the tone, symbols, and themes. The protagonist
questions the instructor from the very beginning. With the statement “I wonder if it’s that
simple?”, because being young, colored, and educated was not easy. The tone, symbols,
and themes give you such understanding and clarity of what this protagonist young life
experience of being true to oneself is evident.