Tag: writing

Old Barnaby’s Pupil

It had rained.  The ground along the path to Jasper was particularly sopping.  Luis pulled his boots and mud-coated trousers from the earth as he turned onto the thoroughfare that crossed through town.  Slick mud and puddles would be a common sight for another month, possibly two, but today’s puddles were from the night before.  The storm was departing and as he crossed the floorboards in front of the post office, Luis developed a lithe spring in his step.  There were no clouds.  There was no work.  It was a Sunday, and he was a man with a purpose.

In the alleyway between the post office and the arms shop, he was accosted by a broad-shouldered figure.  Luis quickly recognized the shadow whose beard draped over the rough fabric of a well-worn cotton shirt.  Gray hairs shown through the gaps that ivory shirt buttons once adorned.

“Hold up now.  Where ya off to in such a huff?”  Luis backed against the wall to get some distance between himself and the old man, who was close enough for Luis to see the dried soup clinging to the corners of his grin and beard.

“Just walkin’, Old Barnaby.  Nothin’ special.”

The grizzled beard brushed at the younger man’s dusty sleeve and turned his head down to the end of the thoroughfare.  The general store was opening.  A click and slurp emerged from his mouth as Old Barnaby turned back to Luis and placed his long arm around his shoulder.  “Come on, son.  I’m goin’ that way.”

Luis immediately shook him off, his face indignant.  “I don’t need no geezer walkin’—”

“Ya shut yer mouth and show respect, boy!”

Luis recoiled at the outburst.  The old man’s face was as decrepit as before, and there was no sign of anger.  The comment was then swept away as quickly as it had been released.  Luis allowed Old Barnaby to lope ahead of him a few steps so that he could regain his composure.

“Ya need to grow up,” said Old Barnaby.  “Kind of man are ya?”

Luis scratched his head and turned to look at him.  “Law says I am and I grown up enough already, so I’m a man.”  He squinted as he turned away from Old Barnaby to the corner where the grocer was sweeping the floorboards in earnest.

“Just can’t say what kind.”

Old Barnaby shook his head and let out a deep groan from passing gas, or possibly disgust.  “See,” he began, “that’s what I mean.  If another man questions the kind of man ya are, ya don’t start talkin’ about it.  Ya look that man in the eye and tell him yer the kind of man who’ll clear out a couple of his front teeth if he don’t shut his trap.”

“So ya want me to hit you?” asked Luis.

Old Barnaby raised his brow and continued his steady pace toward the end of the path.  “Ya do and ya’ll find y’self in the pile of horse shit we’re passin’.  Now tell me, kid.  Where do ya find yerself going with s’much intent?”

“General store,” said Luis.  “Going to meet a gal there.”

“Of course, of course.  A bit of the hokey pokey, ey?”  Old Barnaby chuckled as he croaked out the word “pokey.”

“No sir, none of that.  She don’t know I’m sweet on her yet.”

Old Barnaby paused for a moment and squinted as if trying to see into Luis’ head.  “She don’t know?  That ain’t no good.  Ya have to show her.  Talkin’ won’t do much when yer too scaredy to get close.  Have to show a woman ya have confidence.  Let her know yer interested, and more importantly,” he added at the waggle of a finger, “let her know that ya know she’s likin’ ya.  Don’t matter if she knows it yet or not.  She’ll come to see it.”

“But ain’t that like forcin’ myself?”

“No, kid, no.  What’d I tell ya about bein’ a man?  A man knows when he’s bein’ persuasive and when he’s been a poor Christian.  A difference, y’see?”

Luis shook his head.  “Not Emma, no sir.  She’s real smart.  She’ll know I’m bein’ fresh.”

Old Barnaby shook his head as they passed the general store, where he managed to take a couple of plums from a wooden fruit stand.  Luis paused to look at the stand when Old Barnaby grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along.

“Here, kid.  One of these a day’ll keep the teeth white as a bone.”  Luis took the plum into his hand and glanced at the windows of the store anxiously.

“Ain’t that apples?”

“What’s apples?” said Old Barnaby.

“For teeth.  Apples’re for white teeth.”

The old man suckled a piece of plum into his mouth.  He slurped the juice that seeped from the wound as he muttered, “I don’t like apples.  I like plums.”

Plums in hand, they made their way to the side of the general store where a young woman of seventeen or so emerged from around the corner onto the thoroughfare.  She held the hems of her blue dress in her hands as she stepped across the muddy avenue, her eyes fixed on the storefront.  The shadow from the bonnet she wore partially concealed her face, which became clearer and clearer until Luis could make out the dimples of her cheeks and smattering of light freckles.

“That’s yer gal, is it?” said Old Barnaby.

Luis nodded and deftly bit into his plum, watching as she moved closer to the men while crossing the street toward the general store.  He forced down the plum in his mouth before discarding the remainder into the mud.

“Wastin’ a plum, y’fool.”

“Yea,” muttered Luis.  Old Barnaby watched as Luis straightened his shirt and swept the dirt off his trousers, ready to advance.

“All right, son.  Just mind what I told ya.”

“I will.”  Luis stepped forward to meet her as she approached the storefront floor.  He bunched his fists and grimaced slightly – sweaty palms were inevitable.

“Um, mornin’,” said Luis.

“Good morning,” said Emma.  Luis gazed at her in silence.

Old Barnaby shook his head and bit into the plum.  “Goddamn kids,” he sputtered, and stepped out onto the fresh mud.

Women’s Literature, on: Individualism

Historically,
women were oppressed as the “lesser sex” (depending on the
culture) and as such many were forced into positions of subservience
where they could not express themselves as independent individuals.
Whether it be a need to express love, biographical experience, a
fictional tale, or even something as simple (or complicated) as love,
it was difficult to do so without the aid of a family or rank that
allowed women to become educated enough to learn to read and write.
For many of these women authors it then became a need to not only
express themselves through writing but to also express the need to be
fully realized individuals.

One
common argument regarding the “weak” nature of women’s wills
and the reason they are dependent on men is the creation story and
Eve’s acceptance of the forbidden fruit.  Many people refute that
it was not just Eve who fell from grace but Adam as well, for as
Aemilia Lanyer wrote in her volume of poetry, Salve
Deus Rex Judaeorum (published 1611):

Your
fault being greater, why should you disdain

Our
being your equals, free from tyranny?

If
one weak woman simply did offend,

This
sin of yours hath no excuse nor end. (85 – 89)

Lanyer
used biblical reference (a common theme of Western literature during
that time) to make her point because religion played a vital role in
Western literature of the period, and it is possible Lanyer used such
language to gain respect, as it was important to recognize that which
is important to society in general.  Anne Bradstreet, another
outspoken author of the period, wrote “Men can do best, and women
know it well; / Preeminence in each, and all is yours, / Yet grant
some small acknowledgement of ours” (40 – 43), in which she
proposes that while men clearly are the superiors in society it is
only fair to acknowledge that women are at the very least capable of
the same literary accomplishments.  Other women authors of the period
include Dorothy Leigh and Elizabeth Brooke Jocelin who, although not
as quick to put down men, were also proponents of an education and
equality for their children regardless of sex.

As
time passed and more women were granted access to an education and a
means to express their ideas the writings became more diverse and
expressive of the desire to become independent individuals.  Mary
Leapor, a middle-class working woman who wrote from the point of view
of a common worker in at least one of her works, wrote that “…
men are vexed to find a Nymph so Wise” (30).  Indeed, for men to
accept a woman as an independent and equally intelligent person was a
bold proposal, especially for men of middle- or lower-class who were
less educated and worldly and clung to the old ways more than
educated men did.

Of
course the cause for individualism was not advocated just for women,
but for all people.  Hannah More’s “The Black Slave Trade”, an
anti-slavery piece, uses the “cause” she pleads to “sanctify”
her work, which advocates “And Liberty, in you a hallow’d flame,
/ Burns, unextinguish’d, in his breast the same” (133 – 134).
Once again equality comes to the forefront.  For all people, even
slaves, to be considered equal is to recognize them as individuals.
More later wrote a satirical piece called “The White Slave Trade”
in which she claims that English women are held prisoner by the
fashions that they are forced to bear, using terms such as
“inhumanity” and “impolicy” to describe the practice of
raising daughters to be eventual good wives and mothers, and nothing
more.  When some women other than educated white women began to write
they, too, expressed their disdain for the practices that kept people
in a subservient level.  Mary Prince described such practices,
although they were dictated and not told, when describing her life as
a former slave.  Towards the end of her memoir she states: “I am
often vexed, and I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this
country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not
want to be free.  They believe the foreign people, who deceive them,
and say slaves are happy.  I say, Not so” (437).   That such a
statement was allowed to be published, by a woman of African descent
no less, shows women and all people began to gain more individual
recognition towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Women
writers began to get published more frequently in the nineteenth
century, and with the influx of new literature came cultural and
philosophical change.  One notable yet sometimes overlooked
philosophical work is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In the novel the monster struggles to understand itself as an
individual being, at first tied to its creator but learning to be
independent through experience and its own observations of the world
around it.  After observing a family of cottagers reading out loud
near a place it was living, the creature comments “The words
induced me to turn towards myself.” (589).  The creature began to
attain independent thought by becoming in a sense more educated.
Later, the creature tells of the Arab mother of one of the cottagers,
Safie, who instructed the daughter to “aspire to higher powers of
intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female
followers of Muhammad.”  Shelley’s commentary on a woman’s
subservient status in Muslim society certainly stands out in a
narrative where a monster tells of the process through which it
attained self awareness and intelligence.

It
was arguably in the twentieth century that women writers came out in
full force to deal with individualism as ideas of feminism, sexual
and racial equality, and civil rights began to play a prominent role
in society and world politics.  Joyce Carol Oates’ “Nairobi”
demonstrates the loss of individualism in modern society.  In the
story Ginny, a middle class shop girl, is taken out to purchase new
clothes so that she can attend a social gathering with the man buying
her the new clothes.  At one point the man, Oliver, asks her if she
wants to keep her old shoes, and after quickly stating “Of course”
she changes her mind and says “No, the hell with them” (1681).
During the course of the evening Ginny is instructed not to speak too
much (or rather exactly how to behave), and is then sent home at the
end of the evening with only her new clothes and a bland cordial
sentiment.  Reflecting on the evening, the narrator states that “All
she had really lost, in a sense, was her own pair of shoes” (1684).
Ginny’s loss of her shoes, which she intended to keep before
quickly changing her mind, represent Ginny’s loss of individuality
after allowing Oliver to control her as he did, if only for a few
hours.  Oates’ portrayal of such a loss through a seemingly
inconsequential object serves to highlight just how important one’s
individuality truly is.

While
many authors since the advent of the written word have tackled the
subject of individuality (attainment, preservation, or loss of),
women authors have the unique perspective of being in positions of
subservience until recently in recorded history.  The points of view
they bring to the collective table help not only to broaden the
understanding of individuality but the importance of it.

Works Cited

Bradstreet, Anne.  “The Tenth Muse Lately
Sprung Up in America.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  90-91.

Lanyer, Aemilia.  “Eve’s Apology in Defence
of Women.”  Women’s Worlds: The
McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  58-60.

Leapor, Mary.  “An Essay on Woman.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  255-257

More, Hannah.  “The Black Slave Trade.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  288-296.

Oates, Joyce Carol.  “Nairobi.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.
1678-1684.

Prince, Mary.  “The History of Mary Prince, a
West Indian Slave.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  419-438.

Shelley, Mary.  “The Monster’s Narrative”
from Frankenstein.
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  579-606.

Women’s Literature, on: Individualism

Historically,
women were oppressed as the “lesser sex” (depending on the
culture) and as such many were forced into positions of subservience
where they could not express themselves as independent individuals.
Whether it be a need to express love, biographical experience, a
fictional tale, or even something as simple (or complicated) as love,
it was difficult to do so without the aid of a family or rank that
allowed women to become educated enough to learn to read and write.
For many of these women authors it then became a need to not only
express themselves through writing but to also express the need to be
fully realized individuals.

One
common argument regarding the “weak” nature of women’s wills
and the reason they are dependent on men is the creation story and
Eve’s acceptance of the forbidden fruit.  Many people refute that
it was not just Eve who fell from grace but Adam as well, for as
Aemilia Lanyer wrote in her volume of poetry, Salve
Deus Rex Judaeorum (published 1611):

Your
fault being greater, why should you disdain

Our
being your equals, free from tyranny?

If
one weak woman simply did offend,

This
sin of yours hath no excuse nor end. (85 – 89)

Lanyer
used biblical reference (a common theme of Western literature during
that time) to make her point because religion played a vital role in
Western literature of the period, and it is possible Lanyer used such
language to gain respect, as it was important to recognize that which
is important to society in general.  Anne Bradstreet, another
outspoken author of the period, wrote “Men can do best, and women
know it well; / Preeminence in each, and all is yours, / Yet grant
some small acknowledgement of ours” (40 – 43), in which she
proposes that while men clearly are the superiors in society it is
only fair to acknowledge that women are at the very least capable of
the same literary accomplishments.  Other women authors of the period
include Dorothy Leigh and Elizabeth Brooke Jocelin who, although not
as quick to put down men, were also proponents of an education and
equality for their children regardless of sex.

As
time passed and more women were granted access to an education and a
means to express their ideas the writings became more diverse and
expressive of the desire to become independent individuals.  Mary
Leapor, a middle-class working woman who wrote from the point of view
of a common worker in at least one of her works, wrote that “…
men are vexed to find a Nymph so Wise” (30).  Indeed, for men to
accept a woman as an independent and equally intelligent person was a
bold proposal, especially for men of middle- or lower-class who were
less educated and worldly and clung to the old ways more than
educated men did.

Of
course the cause for individualism was not advocated just for women,
but for all people.  Hannah More’s “The Black Slave Trade”, an
anti-slavery piece, uses the “cause” she pleads to “sanctify”
her work, which advocates “And Liberty, in you a hallow’d flame,
/ Burns, unextinguish’d, in his breast the same” (133 – 134).
Once again equality comes to the forefront.  For all people, even
slaves, to be considered equal is to recognize them as individuals.
More later wrote a satirical piece called “The White Slave Trade”
in which she claims that English women are held prisoner by the
fashions that they are forced to bear, using terms such as
“inhumanity” and “impolicy” to describe the practice of
raising daughters to be eventual good wives and mothers, and nothing
more.  When some women other than educated white women began to write
they, too, expressed their disdain for the practices that kept people
in a subservient level.  Mary Prince described such practices,
although they were dictated and not told, when describing her life as
a former slave.  Towards the end of her memoir she states: “I am
often vexed, and I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this
country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not
want to be free.  They believe the foreign people, who deceive them,
and say slaves are happy.  I say, Not so” (437).   That such a
statement was allowed to be published, by a woman of African descent
no less, shows women and all people began to gain more individual
recognition towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Women
writers began to get published more frequently in the nineteenth
century, and with the influx of new literature came cultural and
philosophical change.  One notable yet sometimes overlooked
philosophical work is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In the novel the monster struggles to understand itself as an
individual being, at first tied to its creator but learning to be
independent through experience and its own observations of the world
around it.  After observing a family of cottagers reading out loud
near a place it was living, the creature comments “The words
induced me to turn towards myself.” (589).  The creature began to
attain independent thought by becoming in a sense more educated.
Later, the creature tells of the Arab mother of one of the cottagers,
Safie, who instructed the daughter to “aspire to higher powers of
intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female
followers of Muhammad.”  Shelley’s commentary on a woman’s
subservient status in Muslim society certainly stands out in a
narrative where a monster tells of the process through which it
attained self awareness and intelligence.

It
was arguably in the twentieth century that women writers came out in
full force to deal with individualism as ideas of feminism, sexual
and racial equality, and civil rights began to play a prominent role
in society and world politics.  Joyce Carol Oates’ “Nairobi”
demonstrates the loss of individualism in modern society.  In the
story Ginny, a middle class shop girl, is taken out to purchase new
clothes so that she can attend a social gathering with the man buying
her the new clothes.  At one point the man, Oliver, asks her if she
wants to keep her old shoes, and after quickly stating “Of course”
she changes her mind and says “No, the hell with them” (1681).
During the course of the evening Ginny is instructed not to speak too
much (or rather exactly how to behave), and is then sent home at the
end of the evening with only her new clothes and a bland cordial
sentiment.  Reflecting on the evening, the narrator states that “All
she had really lost, in a sense, was her own pair of shoes” (1684).
Ginny’s loss of her shoes, which she intended to keep before
quickly changing her mind, represent Ginny’s loss of individuality
after allowing Oliver to control her as he did, if only for a few
hours.  Oates’ portrayal of such a loss through a seemingly
inconsequential object serves to highlight just how important one’s
individuality truly is.

While
many authors since the advent of the written word have tackled the
subject of individuality (attainment, preservation, or loss of),
women authors have the unique perspective of being in positions of
subservience until recently in recorded history.  The points of view
they bring to the collective table help not only to broaden the
understanding of individuality but the importance of it.

Works Cited

Bradstreet, Anne.  “The Tenth Muse Lately
Sprung Up in America.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  90-91.

Lanyer, Aemilia.  “Eve’s Apology in Defence
of Women.”  Women’s Worlds: The
McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  58-60.

Leapor, Mary.  “An Essay on Woman.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  255-257

More, Hannah.  “The Black Slave Trade.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  288-296.

Oates, Joyce Carol.  “Nairobi.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.
1678-1684.

Prince, Mary.  “The History of Mary Prince, a
West Indian Slave.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  419-438.

Shelley, Mary.  “The Monster’s Narrative”
from Frankenstein.
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  579-606.

Living the Lie in Ibsen’s “A Doll House”

Henrik
Ibsen’s “A Doll House” presents a woman, Nora, who has been
under the proverbial thumb her entire life; that of her father’s
and then later when she comes to marry Torvald Helmer, a man who
comes to take the place of the paternal authority figure in her life.
Both are men who did not truly love her but were only in love with
the idea of a beautiful girl or woman that belonged to them.  And
likewise Nora is not in love with the man she married, but with the
idea of pleasing a man who held such control over her.  She does not
immediately recognize this since she is filling the role of
submissive housewife that is expected of her.  In a sense all
characters in “A Doll House,” not just Nora and Torvald, are
living lies whether they realize it or not.

Nora’s
love for Torvald, or what she perceives to be love for him, is the
overwhelming element throughout the play.  From the beginning Nora is
presented as a subservient and submissive person who caters to her
husband’s every whim and allows him to treat her as a child, or
pet.  The names he uses, such as “little lark” and “little
squirrel,” are pet names, typically used when one speaks to a child
or someone who does not command respect equal to that of an adult.
Nora however never displays any resentment towards this behavior and
in fact seems to take joy when Torvald refers to her with those
terms.  They can certainly be terms of endearment, however the
connotation they carry are not meant to be viewed in a positive
light.  This can be viewed as Nora’s oblivious view of her
relationship to Torvald, which she comes to realize at the end of Act
III when she says “You don’t understand me, and I have never
understood you either–before tonight” (Ibsen III).  Nora’s
“happiness” in her marriage, then, is more like blissful
ignorance as she does all she can to please her husband but does not
stop to take stock of herself and what matters to her.

Later,
Nora lies not once but twice about her eating macaroons, which
Torvald does not like as he believes it harms her teeth.  She lies to
him when he directly asks her if she has been eating macaroons, then
the second time to Doctor Rank when he asks her where she got them,
telling him Kristine brought them.  Ibsen shows that Nora’s
relationship with Torvald is in such a bad state that she resorts to
covering up even the most innocent lies.  These are only the tip of
the iceberg as Nora then reveals to Kristine, in a fit of defensive
pride against Kristine’s accusation that Nora is a child, that Nora
was in fact responsible for saving her husband’s life when she
borrowed money to take him on a recuperative trip to Italy.  She
declines to tell Torvald and instead pays the debt in secret from her
allowance.  As she says, “how painful and humiliating it
would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he
owed me anything!” (Ibsen I).  It is her fear of hurting Torvald’s
pride and not love that prevents her from telling him the truth about
the loan.  Ibsen’s belief was that women, as
people, should be treated equally, and if they are not treated
equally then there can be no love, at least not the romantic love a
man and woman feel for one another (Freedman 92).

Nora
initially believes she loves Torvald the way he is, along with the
lifestyle he has practically chosen for her.  Torvald likewise feels
that he loves Nora for who she is and that the love is genuine and
pure, when he in fact loves her for the part she plays for his
benefit (“Torvald Helmer”).  He does not realize that the love he
feels is false as we come to realize in the play’s course of
events.  Torvald is following the typical male gender role of the
time as a controlling husband.  At the mid point of Act I, Nora asks
Torvald if he would consider giving a job to Kristine.  He is
hesitant, since he believes that a woman’s place is in the home.
Later, after Krogstad has paid Nora a visit in Act I, Torvald
comments on his belief regarding forgery and how it affects the home:
“Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has
had a deceitful mother.”  Nora asks him why he says only the mother
is responsible, clearly shaken by Krogstad’s threat to reveal her
own lie regarding the loan and forgery, and he responds: “It seems
most commonly to be the mother’s influence, though naturally a bad
father’s would have the same result” (Ibsen Act I), the latter part
meant to apply to Krogstad to whom he was referring.  Although
Torvald appears to be a good and honest man it is revealed that he in
fact harbors his own secrets and denials regarding his wife, and in
fact his very view on his own life.  Further into Act II Doctor Rank
comments on Torvald’s ability to handle serious news: “Helmer
with his sensitivity has such a sharp distaste for anything ugly”
(Ibsen).  It is almost as if Torvald is unable to handle life as a
serious matter outside of his own selfish ambitions.  He simply
desires beauty and wealth and a happy home, as he tells Nora on
numerous occasions.  Torvald is perhaps the one character that does
not fully learn what it means to be truthful and therefore more
satisfied with one’s life as he is left alone in his house at the
end of the play.

Although
Nora and Torvald’s relationship is the key display of living in a
marital lie, there are other examples to be found.  During Kristine
and Nora’s initial conversation upon Kristine’s arrival, she
explains to Nora that she married not out of love but out of
necessity, as she “was justified in refusing his offer”
(Ibsen I).  Her mother was ill and two younger brothers needed to be
cared for, and so she married a man she did not love.  In the end she
was left alone with no children and penniless when her husband’s
business went under, forced to work various odd jobs in order to
support her brothers and mother for three more years.  The irony is
that Kristine was in love with Krogstad before she married Mr. Linde,
and only now after returning to the town does she admit to him that
she loves him and wants to marry him.  When he questions her
intentions and wonders if she is doing it to help Nora, Kristine
tells him, “when you’ve sold yourself once for someone else, you
never do it again” (Ibsen I).  She sold herself into a lie, a sham
marriage, once, and now she is hoping to Krogstad in the hopes of
finding something real.  

Hidden
desire is also revealed as Nora attempts to coyly entice Doctor Rank
to convince Torvald to keep Krogstad in his position at the bank.
After he has revealed that he will die soon, a fact he wants kept
from Torvald until after his death, Nora speaks playfully with Doctor
Rank, using deception and feminine wiles to subtly get her way with
Doctor Rank.  Even as she faces certain doom (doom to her in any
case), Nora continues to use the only skills available to her which
are lies and deception.  After speaking with him and showing the
doctor the stockings she had purchased, Doctor Rank is unable to
contain himself.  He admits, truthfully, to Nora that he loves her
and has been in love with her for a long while, and only because of
the friendship with Torvald has he been unable to admit the truth to
her.  When faced with this truth Nora recoils and decides she wants
nothing to do with Doctor Rank.  Although it is an unpleasant
experience for Nora she is once again faced with another instance of
hidden secrets and lies.  It is around this time that she begins to
feel overwhelmed by the weight of the secret loan she borrowed in
order to pay for her family’s trip to Italy, Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her in order to secure his position at the bank, and the
ongoing doubt in her mind about whether or not she should even remain
in the household; perhaps, she believes, it would be best to kill
herself to spare her husband the shame and trouble of dealing with
all of the lies.  When faced with such hidden secrets Nora can only
think of her husband who she believes is a good and honorable man.

In
the cavalcade of deeply personal and selfish lies that are presented
throughout the play is the foremost among them and the critical
problem for Nora as the play’s protagonist: Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her if she does not help him secure her position in the
bank.  Krogstad reveals through this threat that he initially lost
his reputation in the community when he became a forger several years
before the play takes place, and Torvald himself calls out Torvald’s
rather unsavory reputation as a valid reason not to allow the man to
remain in his position at the bank (although he later reveals the
truth that he felt Krogstad was simply not showing him enough
respect).  As a result it becomes very difficult for Krogstad to
maintain his position at the bank which he needs in order to maintain
his family, although as he states in Act II that for the last year
and a half he has “not had a hand in anything dishonourable, amid
all the time I have been struggling in most restricted circumstances”
(Ibsen II).  He uses his past when he appeals to Nora, who herself
was guilty of forgery when she signed her father’s name to get the
loan, and although he is attempting to live as an honest man he still
not above blackmailing someone to retain his livelihood.

With
all this lying and deception present throughout the first two acts we
learn that all of the characters are in a sense miserable though it
does not appear so on the surface.  Nora is in a sham marriage which
she is blissfully unaware of; Torvald treats his wife as a doll,
treating her as a helpless child that needs his constant attention
when she is more than capable of taking care of herself as a grown
human being; Kristine reveals that she lived a lie in order to marry
for money, albeit with questionably good reason, then was forced to
work difficult jobs to sustain herself and family when the man she
married died and left her with nothing; Krogstad is still suffering
from his forgery accusation years before and uses blackmail to
attempt to keep his job; and even the poorly Doctor Rank who is great
friends with Torvald and Nora reveals that he is sick with a disease
that he prefers to keep secret from Torvald and has been harboring a
deep desire for Nora that he decides to reveal before his death.  In
Act III all the characters come to a type of acceptance about the
truth of things (either true love such as with Krogstad and Kristine,
or death with no secrets as with Doctor Rank), but no one more so
than Nora.  All these characters are meant to be compared and
contrasted to Nora’s own struggle with the truth behind the lies
because out of all the characters in the play she is the one who
learns the most about the nature of truth and what it means to be
true not only with everyone around her but with herself as well.
Although she departs from Torvald’s household with a door slam and
on serious terms Nora takes a vital step towards her emotional growth
and ultimate happiness as a human being.

Works Cited

Fjelde, Rolf.  Ibsen:
Four Major Plays Volume I.  New
York: New American Library, 2006.  vvii-xxxiii.

Freedman, Estelle.  The
Essential Feminist Reader.  New
York: Modern Library, 2007.  92-98.

Ibsen, Henrik.  “A Doll House.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1562-1611.

Jackson, Stevi.  Women’s
Studies: Essential Readings.  New
York: New York University Press, 1993.

“Torvald Helmer.”  SparkNotes: A Doll’s House: Henrik
Ibsen.  New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.
10.

Yalom, Marian.  A
History of the Wife.  New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.

Living the Lie in Ibsen’s “A Doll House”

Henrik
Ibsen’s “A Doll House” presents a woman, Nora, who has been
under the proverbial thumb her entire life; that of her father’s
and then later when she comes to marry Torvald Helmer, a man who
comes to take the place of the paternal authority figure in her life.
Both are men who did not truly love her but were only in love with
the idea of a beautiful girl or woman that belonged to them.  And
likewise Nora is not in love with the man she married, but with the
idea of pleasing a man who held such control over her.  She does not
immediately recognize this since she is filling the role of
submissive housewife that is expected of her.  In a sense all
characters in “A Doll House,” not just Nora and Torvald, are
living lies whether they realize it or not.

Nora’s
love for Torvald, or what she perceives to be love for him, is the
overwhelming element throughout the play.  From the beginning Nora is
presented as a subservient and submissive person who caters to her
husband’s every whim and allows him to treat her as a child, or
pet.  The names he uses, such as “little lark” and “little
squirrel,” are pet names, typically used when one speaks to a child
or someone who does not command respect equal to that of an adult.
Nora however never displays any resentment towards this behavior and
in fact seems to take joy when Torvald refers to her with those
terms.  They can certainly be terms of endearment, however the
connotation they carry are not meant to be viewed in a positive
light.  This can be viewed as Nora’s oblivious view of her
relationship to Torvald, which she comes to realize at the end of Act
III when she says “You don’t understand me, and I have never
understood you either–before tonight” (Ibsen III).  Nora’s
“happiness” in her marriage, then, is more like blissful
ignorance as she does all she can to please her husband but does not
stop to take stock of herself and what matters to her.

Later,
Nora lies not once but twice about her eating macaroons, which
Torvald does not like as he believes it harms her teeth.  She lies to
him when he directly asks her if she has been eating macaroons, then
the second time to Doctor Rank when he asks her where she got them,
telling him Kristine brought them.  Ibsen shows that Nora’s
relationship with Torvald is in such a bad state that she resorts to
covering up even the most innocent lies.  These are only the tip of
the iceberg as Nora then reveals to Kristine, in a fit of defensive
pride against Kristine’s accusation that Nora is a child, that Nora
was in fact responsible for saving her husband’s life when she
borrowed money to take him on a recuperative trip to Italy.  She
declines to tell Torvald and instead pays the debt in secret from her
allowance.  As she says, “how painful and humiliating it
would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he
owed me anything!” (Ibsen I).  It is her fear of hurting Torvald’s
pride and not love that prevents her from telling him the truth about
the loan.  Ibsen’s belief was that women, as
people, should be treated equally, and if they are not treated
equally then there can be no love, at least not the romantic love a
man and woman feel for one another (Freedman 92).

Nora
initially believes she loves Torvald the way he is, along with the
lifestyle he has practically chosen for her.  Torvald likewise feels
that he loves Nora for who she is and that the love is genuine and
pure, when he in fact loves her for the part she plays for his
benefit (“Torvald Helmer”).  He does not realize that the love he
feels is false as we come to realize in the play’s course of
events.  Torvald is following the typical male gender role of the
time as a controlling husband.  At the mid point of Act I, Nora asks
Torvald if he would consider giving a job to Kristine.  He is
hesitant, since he believes that a woman’s place is in the home.
Later, after Krogstad has paid Nora a visit in Act I, Torvald
comments on his belief regarding forgery and how it affects the home:
“Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has
had a deceitful mother.”  Nora asks him why he says only the mother
is responsible, clearly shaken by Krogstad’s threat to reveal her
own lie regarding the loan and forgery, and he responds: “It seems
most commonly to be the mother’s influence, though naturally a bad
father’s would have the same result” (Ibsen Act I), the latter part
meant to apply to Krogstad to whom he was referring.  Although
Torvald appears to be a good and honest man it is revealed that he in
fact harbors his own secrets and denials regarding his wife, and in
fact his very view on his own life.  Further into Act II Doctor Rank
comments on Torvald’s ability to handle serious news: “Helmer
with his sensitivity has such a sharp distaste for anything ugly”
(Ibsen).  It is almost as if Torvald is unable to handle life as a
serious matter outside of his own selfish ambitions.  He simply
desires beauty and wealth and a happy home, as he tells Nora on
numerous occasions.  Torvald is perhaps the one character that does
not fully learn what it means to be truthful and therefore more
satisfied with one’s life as he is left alone in his house at the
end of the play.

Although
Nora and Torvald’s relationship is the key display of living in a
marital lie, there are other examples to be found.  During Kristine
and Nora’s initial conversation upon Kristine’s arrival, she
explains to Nora that she married not out of love but out of
necessity, as she “was justified in refusing his offer”
(Ibsen I).  Her mother was ill and two younger brothers needed to be
cared for, and so she married a man she did not love.  In the end she
was left alone with no children and penniless when her husband’s
business went under, forced to work various odd jobs in order to
support her brothers and mother for three more years.  The irony is
that Kristine was in love with Krogstad before she married Mr. Linde,
and only now after returning to the town does she admit to him that
she loves him and wants to marry him.  When he questions her
intentions and wonders if she is doing it to help Nora, Kristine
tells him, “when you’ve sold yourself once for someone else, you
never do it again” (Ibsen I).  She sold herself into a lie, a sham
marriage, once, and now she is hoping to Krogstad in the hopes of
finding something real.  

Hidden
desire is also revealed as Nora attempts to coyly entice Doctor Rank
to convince Torvald to keep Krogstad in his position at the bank.
After he has revealed that he will die soon, a fact he wants kept
from Torvald until after his death, Nora speaks playfully with Doctor
Rank, using deception and feminine wiles to subtly get her way with
Doctor Rank.  Even as she faces certain doom (doom to her in any
case), Nora continues to use the only skills available to her which
are lies and deception.  After speaking with him and showing the
doctor the stockings she had purchased, Doctor Rank is unable to
contain himself.  He admits, truthfully, to Nora that he loves her
and has been in love with her for a long while, and only because of
the friendship with Torvald has he been unable to admit the truth to
her.  When faced with this truth Nora recoils and decides she wants
nothing to do with Doctor Rank.  Although it is an unpleasant
experience for Nora she is once again faced with another instance of
hidden secrets and lies.  It is around this time that she begins to
feel overwhelmed by the weight of the secret loan she borrowed in
order to pay for her family’s trip to Italy, Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her in order to secure his position at the bank, and the
ongoing doubt in her mind about whether or not she should even remain
in the household; perhaps, she believes, it would be best to kill
herself to spare her husband the shame and trouble of dealing with
all of the lies.  When faced with such hidden secrets Nora can only
think of her husband who she believes is a good and honorable man.

In
the cavalcade of deeply personal and selfish lies that are presented
throughout the play is the foremost among them and the critical
problem for Nora as the play’s protagonist: Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her if she does not help him secure her position in the
bank.  Krogstad reveals through this threat that he initially lost
his reputation in the community when he became a forger several years
before the play takes place, and Torvald himself calls out Torvald’s
rather unsavory reputation as a valid reason not to allow the man to
remain in his position at the bank (although he later reveals the
truth that he felt Krogstad was simply not showing him enough
respect).  As a result it becomes very difficult for Krogstad to
maintain his position at the bank which he needs in order to maintain
his family, although as he states in Act II that for the last year
and a half he has “not had a hand in anything dishonourable, amid
all the time I have been struggling in most restricted circumstances”
(Ibsen II).  He uses his past when he appeals to Nora, who herself
was guilty of forgery when she signed her father’s name to get the
loan, and although he is attempting to live as an honest man he still
not above blackmailing someone to retain his livelihood.

With
all this lying and deception present throughout the first two acts we
learn that all of the characters are in a sense miserable though it
does not appear so on the surface.  Nora is in a sham marriage which
she is blissfully unaware of; Torvald treats his wife as a doll,
treating her as a helpless child that needs his constant attention
when she is more than capable of taking care of herself as a grown
human being; Kristine reveals that she lived a lie in order to marry
for money, albeit with questionably good reason, then was forced to
work difficult jobs to sustain herself and family when the man she
married died and left her with nothing; Krogstad is still suffering
from his forgery accusation years before and uses blackmail to
attempt to keep his job; and even the poorly Doctor Rank who is great
friends with Torvald and Nora reveals that he is sick with a disease
that he prefers to keep secret from Torvald and has been harboring a
deep desire for Nora that he decides to reveal before his death.  In
Act III all the characters come to a type of acceptance about the
truth of things (either true love such as with Krogstad and Kristine,
or death with no secrets as with Doctor Rank), but no one more so
than Nora.  All these characters are meant to be compared and
contrasted to Nora’s own struggle with the truth behind the lies
because out of all the characters in the play she is the one who
learns the most about the nature of truth and what it means to be
true not only with everyone around her but with herself as well.
Although she departs from Torvald’s household with a door slam and
on serious terms Nora takes a vital step towards her emotional growth
and ultimate happiness as a human being.

Works Cited

Fjelde, Rolf.  Ibsen:
Four Major Plays Volume I.  New
York: New American Library, 2006.  vvii-xxxiii.

Freedman, Estelle.  The
Essential Feminist Reader.  New
York: Modern Library, 2007.  92-98.

Ibsen, Henrik.  “A Doll House.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1562-1611.

Jackson, Stevi.  Women’s
Studies: Essential Readings.  New
York: New York University Press, 1993.

“Torvald Helmer.”  SparkNotes: A Doll’s House: Henrik
Ibsen.  New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.
10.

Yalom, Marian.  A
History of the Wife.  New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.

The Indecisiveness’ the Thing

Shakespeare’s
“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” portrays a man who confronts great
challenges in his long and troubled quest to avenge his father’s
death.  However, it is undoubtedly Hamlet’s own choices stemming
from his indecisive nature that create the biggest hurdles in his
plans for vengeance.  There are many reasons for Hamlet’s
indecision throughout the play, most of which come from a lack of
opportunity, too much analysis and thought, issue with depression and
melancholy, issues with his mother and Oedipal feelings towards her,
and finally doubt both in the ghost that set him upon the quest in
the first place and his own motives.


From the onset of the first scene with Hamlet we find him accompanied
by other characters nearly all the time, and ironically the only
character Hamlet does not find himself alone with is Laertes, the
very man who would wound and lead him to his death in the final
scene.  As such, Hamlet has less opportunities to act out his revenge
because he is not free to wander about alone, and is forced to plot
an elaborate plan to first find out if Claudius is indeed guilty
(doubt being another factor in his indecisiveness, covered later in
this paper), then to actually kill Claudius, which ends up happening
more as a result of actions that were beyond his control than his own
clandestine scheming.  Of course as anyone who knows the story of
Hamlet is aware, he was actually presented with the one opportunity
to kill Claudius at the end of Act III, scene iii, when he comes upon
Claudius in the middle of prayer.  He decides, at the last moment,
not to kill Claudius when he has the perfect opportunity to do so.
As Hamlet states, “O, this is hire and salary, not revenge”
(Shakespeare 1507).  He
tells himself that to kill Claudius during his prayer would send him
to heaven, which is a mercy that Hamlet’s father did not get when
he was killed in his sleep.  Of course the ultimate irony in the
scene is that Claudius was not praying sincerely, and had Hamlet
killed him Claudius would not have gone to heaven: “My words fly
up, my thoughts remain below: / Words without thoughts never to
heaven go” (Shakespeare 1507).

If
there is one thing Hamlet does not lack it’s introspective
analysis.  All of “Hamlet” can be considered one long internal
monologue, even if Hamlet technically only has six soliloquies in
which he speaks to himself.  It is to the point where one could
consider Hamlet to be much too self-critical.  He simply thinks too
much.  In Act 2, scene ii, Hamlet states to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so” (Shakespeare 1477).  So, even Hamlet himself remarks
on the notion that too much thinking can amplify an emotion or
situation beyond the simplicity of what it really is.  That Hamlet
should see this flaw in himself and yet continue to perpetuate it is
somewhat odd, but then many of Hamlet’s actions seemed in contrast
to his goal of getting revenge.  Another aspect of his goal that
Hamlet considers is the fact that he has to kill a man.  When
considering conscience Hamlet remarks:

Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all,

And
thus the native hue of resolution

Is
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And
enterprises of great pitch and moment

With
this regard their currents turn awry

And
lose the name of action (Shakespeare 1490).

Too much thought,
then, could be viewed as a result of the conscience, and all momentum
gained in the initial flurry of decidedness is lost when the
conscience comes into play and consequences are considered.  Thinking
too much about what he is striving to do leads Hamlet to question if
the delays in his plan are caused by “Bestial oblivion” or by
“some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on the event . .
.” (Shakespeare 1520).  He begins to wonder if, perhaps, thinking
too much about what he has to do is causing him to have second
thoughts.  Once again Hamlet himself tells the viewer or reader that
he is having difficulty remaining resolute in his plan to kill
Claudius.

Considering
the internal conflict in Hamlet it is perhaps not surprising that he
should feel depression, causing him to ponder his thoughts and
actions from a resigned point of view and lead to more indecision and
hesitation.  Hamlet’s depressed mood is established from the first
scene, when Claudius urges Hamlet to snap out of his mourning, which
he terms “obstinate condolement” and “unmanly” (Shakespeare
1451).  Hamlet soliloquizes, “But break my heart, for I must hold
my tongue” (Shakespeare 1453).  Hamlet wants to speak truths and
let it be known how he feels, however he holds himself back and is
thus driven further into his depressed mood by his reluctance to
speak openly about his emotions.  Hamlet’s shifts in mood, which
appear to those around him as madness, would have been symptoms of
one of the so-called humors known as melancholy (Hunt 125).  The term
“melancholia,” in Shakespeare’s time, encompassed a variety of
psychological ailments including depression and schizophrenia, and
Hamlet is even known in literature as the “Melancholy Dane”
(“Melancholia”).  Given Hamlet’s state of mind after the loss
of his father, the duty required of him, and his uncle’s marriage
to his mother, Hamlet could very well have been suffering from
serious depression beyond the scope of mere emotional sadness, and
those in a state of depression are anything but sure of themselves.


The relation between Hamlet and Gertrude, his mother, plays an
important role both in the hatred for Claudius and Hamlet’s
indecision and careful planning, for as the ghost warned him, “nor
let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught.  Leave her to
heaven…” (Shakespeare 1464).  Gertrude
becomes greatly concerned for Hamlet as his initial mourning over the
death of his father extends into depression and perceived madness,
particularly by the time of the play within a play that takes place
in Act III.  Likewise, Hamlet’s feelings towards and about his
mother are strong throughout the play.  The relationship is
established during the court scene in Act I, scene ii, when Gertrude
tells Hamlet, “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, / And let
thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (Shakespeare 1450).  A
loving request, certainly, but Hamlet’s reproachful response later
in the scene is somewhat less endearing: “Seems, madam! nay it is;
I know not ‘seems’” (Shakespeare 1450).  This establishes that
something certainly is rotten in the state of Denmark for Hamlet to
speak to his mother in such a way.  After the ghost has warned Hamlet
not to bother his mother he becomes more aggressive regarding her
relationship with Claudius.  One rather large point in Hamlet’s
disdain for Claudius is the fact that he married his mother so soon
after his father died, and in fact he makes frequent references to
how little time has passed between King Hamlet’s death and
Gertrude’s remarriage, the first instance being at the court in
scene ii: “O, God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, / Would
have mourn’d longer–married with my uncle, / … Within a month…”
(Shakespeare 1452).  Indeed it would seem that upon the marriage to
Claudius, Gertrude became inseparable from him in Hamlet’s eyes.
He refers to Claudius as “dear mother” since “man and wife is
one flesh” (Shakespeare 1518).  Claudius essentially takes the role
of Hamlet’s father;  in terms of the classic Oedipal complex it
means that the son, on some unconscious level, wishes to kill the
father in order to be with the mother (Hunt 138).  Killing Claudius
would clear the path to Gertrude’s bed, and the feelings roused
within Hamlet as a result cause him great frustration that he takes
out on both Gertrude and his lover Ophelia, declaring to the latter
in Act III, scene ii, “Or, if thou wilt needs / marry, marry a
fool; for wise men know well enough / what monsters you make of them”
(Shakespeare 1491).  Following Polonius’ murder, Hamlet becomes
more obsessed with the physical aspects of Gertrude’s marriage to
Claudius, and becomes abusive until the ghost appears to remind
Hamlet of his promise not to hurt his mother; “O, step between her
and her fighting soul! / Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. /
Speak to her, Hamlet” (Shakespeare 1511).  Hamlet calms down, but
not before demanding that she promise to not sleep in the same bed as
Claudius.


That scene brings up what is perhaps the driving force behind
Hamlet’s indecision in Acts I and II: the ghost.  The wandering
spirit of his deceased father, doomed to wander the Earth in
purgatory as a result of being murdered before he could absolved for
his sins.  He begins by believing the ghost in Act I when he states
that “this vision here, / It is an honest Ghost” (Shakespeare
1466).  However, he soon begins to question the validity of the
ghost’s request for vengeance.  As he remarks in the second
soliloquy when considering that the ghost of his father may be the
devil tricking him, “Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / As he
is very potent with such spirits, / Abuses me to damn me…”
(Shakespeare 1487).  He finally tests the ghost’s claims regarding
Claudius in Act III when Hamlet tells Horatio that Claudius’
reaction to the Mousetrap will reveal if “It is a damnèd Ghost
that we have seen” (Shakespeare 1495).  When Claudius calls for the
lights and leaves during the play, Hamlet confidently tells Horatio,
“I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound”
(Shakespeare 1501).  His doubt over the ghost’s claim regarding
Claudius is finally settled, allowing for some resolve in an
otherwise tremulous psyche.


While there are indeed many reasons that might explain Hamlet’s
indecisiveness it is ultimately Hamlet’s doubt in himself and his
ambitious motives that hold him back.  In Act III, Hamlet tells
Ophelia that although he is moderately virtuous, “yet I could
accuse me of such things that it were better / my mother had not
borne me: I am very proud, / revengeful, ambitious…” (Shakespeare
1491).  Hamlet knows full well that he is not infallible; he is no
saint in the sordid affairs that occur within the walls of Elsinore
after his arrival.  In Act III, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz that his
“distemper” is because “I lack advancement” (Shakespeare
1503), meaning that while Claudius occupies the throne, Hamlet
cannot.  He ponders the possibility that he is jealous of the fact
that Claudius took the throne when it should have rightfully been
passed on to Hamlet after the death of his father.  Hamlet tells
Horatio that Claudius had “Popped in between th’election and my
hopes” (Shakespeare 1544), indicating that Hamlet had anticipated
being chosen by the people to succeed his father.  This would of
course also sow seeds of distrust both in his own ability to lead as
he believed he would have been voted into the royal office, and in
his ability to separate the goal of vengeance for his father’s
death from his own ambitions for the crown.  Hamlet is left to doubt
himself until the end of the play when he says with dying breath
after watching Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes die: “Heaven make
thee free of it! I follow thee,” and to Horatio, “But let it be.
Horatio, I am dead…” (Shakespeare 1552).

Hamlet
the Indecisive.  There is perhaps no title that sums up the character
of Hamlet better, and indeed describes why the play takes as many
turns as it does throughout the path to vengeance (literary and
dramatic plot devices not withstanding).  Hamlet was of course in a
very stressed state of mind and thus did have reason to consider his
choices carefully and ponder his true intentions, but there is no
doubt that such indecision is what led Hamlet down the twisted path
which leads to not only Claudius’ death but that of himself and
several others.  One cannot help but wonder if more decisive action
would have led to a quick vengeance and less drama (no pun intended)
for the Prince of Denmark.

Works Cited

Hunt, Marvin W.  Looking
for Hamlet.  New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007.

“Melancholia.”  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  1
Apr 2008, 00:31 UTC.  Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.  5 May 2008.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melancholia&oldid=202431586>.

Shakespeare, William.  “Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark.”  Living Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1443-1554.

The Indecisiveness’ the Thing

Shakespeare’s
“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” portrays a man who confronts great
challenges in his long and troubled quest to avenge his father’s
death.  However, it is undoubtedly Hamlet’s own choices stemming
from his indecisive nature that create the biggest hurdles in his
plans for vengeance.  There are many reasons for Hamlet’s
indecision throughout the play, most of which come from a lack of
opportunity, too much analysis and thought, issue with depression and
melancholy, issues with his mother and Oedipal feelings towards her,
and finally doubt both in the ghost that set him upon the quest in
the first place and his own motives.


From the onset of the first scene with Hamlet we find him accompanied
by other characters nearly all the time, and ironically the only
character Hamlet does not find himself alone with is Laertes, the
very man who would wound and lead him to his death in the final
scene.  As such, Hamlet has less opportunities to act out his revenge
because he is not free to wander about alone, and is forced to plot
an elaborate plan to first find out if Claudius is indeed guilty
(doubt being another factor in his indecisiveness, covered later in
this paper), then to actually kill Claudius, which ends up happening
more as a result of actions that were beyond his control than his own
clandestine scheming.  Of course as anyone who knows the story of
Hamlet is aware, he was actually presented with the one opportunity
to kill Claudius at the end of Act III, scene iii, when he comes upon
Claudius in the middle of prayer.  He decides, at the last moment,
not to kill Claudius when he has the perfect opportunity to do so.
As Hamlet states, “O, this is hire and salary, not revenge”
(Shakespeare 1507).  He
tells himself that to kill Claudius during his prayer would send him
to heaven, which is a mercy that Hamlet’s father did not get when
he was killed in his sleep.  Of course the ultimate irony in the
scene is that Claudius was not praying sincerely, and had Hamlet
killed him Claudius would not have gone to heaven: “My words fly
up, my thoughts remain below: / Words without thoughts never to
heaven go” (Shakespeare 1507).

If
there is one thing Hamlet does not lack it’s introspective
analysis.  All of “Hamlet” can be considered one long internal
monologue, even if Hamlet technically only has six soliloquies in
which he speaks to himself.  It is to the point where one could
consider Hamlet to be much too self-critical.  He simply thinks too
much.  In Act 2, scene ii, Hamlet states to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so” (Shakespeare 1477).  So, even Hamlet himself remarks
on the notion that too much thinking can amplify an emotion or
situation beyond the simplicity of what it really is.  That Hamlet
should see this flaw in himself and yet continue to perpetuate it is
somewhat odd, but then many of Hamlet’s actions seemed in contrast
to his goal of getting revenge.  Another aspect of his goal that
Hamlet considers is the fact that he has to kill a man.  When
considering conscience Hamlet remarks:

Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all,

And
thus the native hue of resolution

Is
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And
enterprises of great pitch and moment

With
this regard their currents turn awry

And
lose the name of action (Shakespeare 1490).

Too much thought,
then, could be viewed as a result of the conscience, and all momentum
gained in the initial flurry of decidedness is lost when the
conscience comes into play and consequences are considered.  Thinking
too much about what he is striving to do leads Hamlet to question if
the delays in his plan are caused by “Bestial oblivion” or by
“some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on the event . .
.” (Shakespeare 1520).  He begins to wonder if, perhaps, thinking
too much about what he has to do is causing him to have second
thoughts.  Once again Hamlet himself tells the viewer or reader that
he is having difficulty remaining resolute in his plan to kill
Claudius.

Considering
the internal conflict in Hamlet it is perhaps not surprising that he
should feel depression, causing him to ponder his thoughts and
actions from a resigned point of view and lead to more indecision and
hesitation.  Hamlet’s depressed mood is established from the first
scene, when Claudius urges Hamlet to snap out of his mourning, which
he terms “obstinate condolement” and “unmanly” (Shakespeare
1451).  Hamlet soliloquizes, “But break my heart, for I must hold
my tongue” (Shakespeare 1453).  Hamlet wants to speak truths and
let it be known how he feels, however he holds himself back and is
thus driven further into his depressed mood by his reluctance to
speak openly about his emotions.  Hamlet’s shifts in mood, which
appear to those around him as madness, would have been symptoms of
one of the so-called humors known as melancholy (Hunt 125).  The term
“melancholia,” in Shakespeare’s time, encompassed a variety of
psychological ailments including depression and schizophrenia, and
Hamlet is even known in literature as the “Melancholy Dane”
(“Melancholia”).  Given Hamlet’s state of mind after the loss
of his father, the duty required of him, and his uncle’s marriage
to his mother, Hamlet could very well have been suffering from
serious depression beyond the scope of mere emotional sadness, and
those in a state of depression are anything but sure of themselves.


The relation between Hamlet and Gertrude, his mother, plays an
important role both in the hatred for Claudius and Hamlet’s
indecision and careful planning, for as the ghost warned him, “nor
let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught.  Leave her to
heaven…” (Shakespeare 1464).  Gertrude
becomes greatly concerned for Hamlet as his initial mourning over the
death of his father extends into depression and perceived madness,
particularly by the time of the play within a play that takes place
in Act III.  Likewise, Hamlet’s feelings towards and about his
mother are strong throughout the play.  The relationship is
established during the court scene in Act I, scene ii, when Gertrude
tells Hamlet, “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, / And let
thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (Shakespeare 1450).  A
loving request, certainly, but Hamlet’s reproachful response later
in the scene is somewhat less endearing: “Seems, madam! nay it is;
I know not ‘seems’” (Shakespeare 1450).  This establishes that
something certainly is rotten in the state of Denmark for Hamlet to
speak to his mother in such a way.  After the ghost has warned Hamlet
not to bother his mother he becomes more aggressive regarding her
relationship with Claudius.  One rather large point in Hamlet’s
disdain for Claudius is the fact that he married his mother so soon
after his father died, and in fact he makes frequent references to
how little time has passed between King Hamlet’s death and
Gertrude’s remarriage, the first instance being at the court in
scene ii: “O, God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, / Would
have mourn’d longer–married with my uncle, / … Within a month…”
(Shakespeare 1452).  Indeed it would seem that upon the marriage to
Claudius, Gertrude became inseparable from him in Hamlet’s eyes.
He refers to Claudius as “dear mother” since “man and wife is
one flesh” (Shakespeare 1518).  Claudius essentially takes the role
of Hamlet’s father;  in terms of the classic Oedipal complex it
means that the son, on some unconscious level, wishes to kill the
father in order to be with the mother (Hunt 138).  Killing Claudius
would clear the path to Gertrude’s bed, and the feelings roused
within Hamlet as a result cause him great frustration that he takes
out on both Gertrude and his lover Ophelia, declaring to the latter
in Act III, scene ii, “Or, if thou wilt needs / marry, marry a
fool; for wise men know well enough / what monsters you make of them”
(Shakespeare 1491).  Following Polonius’ murder, Hamlet becomes
more obsessed with the physical aspects of Gertrude’s marriage to
Claudius, and becomes abusive until the ghost appears to remind
Hamlet of his promise not to hurt his mother; “O, step between her
and her fighting soul! / Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. /
Speak to her, Hamlet” (Shakespeare 1511).  Hamlet calms down, but
not before demanding that she promise to not sleep in the same bed as
Claudius.


That scene brings up what is perhaps the driving force behind
Hamlet’s indecision in Acts I and II: the ghost.  The wandering
spirit of his deceased father, doomed to wander the Earth in
purgatory as a result of being murdered before he could absolved for
his sins.  He begins by believing the ghost in Act I when he states
that “this vision here, / It is an honest Ghost” (Shakespeare
1466).  However, he soon begins to question the validity of the
ghost’s request for vengeance.  As he remarks in the second
soliloquy when considering that the ghost of his father may be the
devil tricking him, “Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / As he
is very potent with such spirits, / Abuses me to damn me…”
(Shakespeare 1487).  He finally tests the ghost’s claims regarding
Claudius in Act III when Hamlet tells Horatio that Claudius’
reaction to the Mousetrap will reveal if “It is a damnèd Ghost
that we have seen” (Shakespeare 1495).  When Claudius calls for the
lights and leaves during the play, Hamlet confidently tells Horatio,
“I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound”
(Shakespeare 1501).  His doubt over the ghost’s claim regarding
Claudius is finally settled, allowing for some resolve in an
otherwise tremulous psyche.


While there are indeed many reasons that might explain Hamlet’s
indecisiveness it is ultimately Hamlet’s doubt in himself and his
ambitious motives that hold him back.  In Act III, Hamlet tells
Ophelia that although he is moderately virtuous, “yet I could
accuse me of such things that it were better / my mother had not
borne me: I am very proud, / revengeful, ambitious…” (Shakespeare
1491).  Hamlet knows full well that he is not infallible; he is no
saint in the sordid affairs that occur within the walls of Elsinore
after his arrival.  In Act III, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz that his
“distemper” is because “I lack advancement” (Shakespeare
1503), meaning that while Claudius occupies the throne, Hamlet
cannot.  He ponders the possibility that he is jealous of the fact
that Claudius took the throne when it should have rightfully been
passed on to Hamlet after the death of his father.  Hamlet tells
Horatio that Claudius had “Popped in between th’election and my
hopes” (Shakespeare 1544), indicating that Hamlet had anticipated
being chosen by the people to succeed his father.  This would of
course also sow seeds of distrust both in his own ability to lead as
he believed he would have been voted into the royal office, and in
his ability to separate the goal of vengeance for his father’s
death from his own ambitions for the crown.  Hamlet is left to doubt
himself until the end of the play when he says with dying breath
after watching Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes die: “Heaven make
thee free of it! I follow thee,” and to Horatio, “But let it be.
Horatio, I am dead…” (Shakespeare 1552).

Hamlet
the Indecisive.  There is perhaps no title that sums up the character
of Hamlet better, and indeed describes why the play takes as many
turns as it does throughout the path to vengeance (literary and
dramatic plot devices not withstanding).  Hamlet was of course in a
very stressed state of mind and thus did have reason to consider his
choices carefully and ponder his true intentions, but there is no
doubt that such indecision is what led Hamlet down the twisted path
which leads to not only Claudius’ death but that of himself and
several others.  One cannot help but wonder if more decisive action
would have led to a quick vengeance and less drama (no pun intended)
for the Prince of Denmark.

Works Cited

Hunt, Marvin W.  Looking
for Hamlet.  New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007.

“Melancholia.”  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  1
Apr 2008, 00:31 UTC.  Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.  5 May 2008.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melancholia&oldid=202431586>.

Shakespeare, William.  “Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark.”  Living Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1443-1554.

A Clerk and a Traveler Make the Tough Choices

There
are moments in life when we as rational human beings must make
choices.  The choices we make are sometimes small: the type of milk
to buy, or which film to watch at the movie theater.  If we are
fortunate, we must make more important choices; choices that require
deliberation and careful thought.  But it is the simple act of
choosing that is perhaps the most important aspect.  It is not the
end result, beneficial or otherwise, that matters.  In John Updike’s
short story “A & P” and Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not
Taken,” we see that it is the choice itself that makes all the
difference.

Facing
a choice means facing more than one possibility and considering those
possibilities, applying thought and knowledge obtained from past
experience.  In “A & P” the protagonist, Sammy, faces a
choice when he decides to quit his job as a grocery store clerk after
his manager Lengel publicly humiliates several girls for wearing what
he believed were inappropriate outfits.  Initially, it appears that
Sammy decides to quit in order to get the girls’ attention; a vain
attempt at gaining their favor.  However, after questioning himself
on whether or not it was a wise decision, he decides it is and sticks
to it.  As he says it is “fatal” not to follow through on such a
gesture (Updike 62), which demonstrates that Sammy considered the
decision and the possible outcomes and ultimately decided that the
choice to quit would ultimately be the better choice if only to
retain his self-respect.  Likewise in “The Road Not Taken,” the
traveler is faced with two possible paths which he can take.  He
observes one path before choosing the other, or as the traveler
states, “…long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could.”
He stood and weighed the option to travel down one path versus the
traveling down the other, once again demonstrating that when we are
faced with more than one choice we must deliberate on and think
carefully about the possibilities before choosing one or the other.

It
is a sign of character when a person stands for a belief or decision
even when it seems as if the choice will lead to a difficult road
ahead.  Sammy ultimately stands for what he believed was a just
decision in quitting to protest the unfair treatment of the girls in
the store. The girls were just customers, after all, who were there
to make a purchase and nothing else.  He could have very easily
changed his mind and chosen to remain at his clerk position when
Lengel told him, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom
and Dad,” or, “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life”
(Updike 62), which may have encouraged a person of weak character to
remain or turn back on the initial choice, but Sammy stands by his
decision.  The traveler in “The Road Not Taken” speaks of taking
“… the one less traveled by” (Frost), indicating that the path
he took was an unpopular one, but follows up by saying “And that
has made all the difference.”  The traveler in the poem makes a
literal choice of one path versus the other and displays character by
choosing a path that was not as well-traveled as the other, at least
in his mind.  Frost clearly intended for the traveler to be a
metaphor for the state of mind where a person must make a difficult
decision and in his poem he seems to advocate that making the choice
builds one’s character.

Maturity,
that is to say emotional and mental maturity, is merely the means by
which we gain experience and use that experience as a base for our
decision-making process.  It is often a sign of maturity, then, when
a choice is not made randomly but with deliberate consideration.
Moreover, the choices made help us mature as well.  Sammy’s choice
is a clear one: stand by his perhaps ill-conceived decision to quit
in protest of the unfair treatment towards the girls, or back out of
his choice and resume his work as a clerk at the register.  At that
point in Updike’s “A & P” we have read Sammy’s rather
unpleasant view of working at the A & P, with the “witches”
(Updike 58), “house slaves” (Updike 59), and “sheep” (Updike
62) being regular players in his dreary existence in a small town
grocery store, and as such we as the readers can see that Sammy has
experienced working there and has learned it is not a pleasant job to
him.  Additionally his background, told by him throughout the story,
indicates that he is still in the “maturing” phase of
adolescence.  He lives with his parents, his mother does his laundry,
and he even says he is nearly nineteen years old.  So, when Sammy
chooses to take a stand he is taking a vital step in his emotional
and mental maturity, adding to his mental cache of experience.  The
traveler in Frost’s poem speaks of age and maturity when he says,
“I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages
hence.” (Frost).  He knows that, as he grows older, he will look
back on the moment of his choice and be the wiser for having made the
choice.  Both authors, through the characters in their respective
works, show that making such difficult choices is an important part
of maturing, despite the consequences that may come about as a
result.

It
is then vital to remember that each choice (that is, a scenario where
a person must decide between more than one option), comes with one or
more consequences.  The direst aspect of making a choice, then, is
the consequence of said choice.   There are some choices, such as,
say, which movies to watch, which have no particular consequence
other than a bad and quickly forgotten film experience.  It is not
such choices and consequences that I speak of.  I refer to those same
important choices that encourage careful thought, demonstrate
character, and that we use to build upon our maturity.  These choices
are the ones that get us to think about the consequences.  Take, for
example, when Sammy reflects on his decision to quit his job at the
grocery store:  “… my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the
world was going to be to me hereafter.” (Updike 62).  He says this
after stepping out of the store, and at that moment he realizes that
the choice he made would have serious consequences, and perhaps leads
to a difficult path in life.  The traveler in Frost’s poem, on the
other hand, is very considerate of the possible consequences of his
choice as he ponders which path to take.  He stands for a long while,
peers down both paths, and even takes in minute details such as the
amount of wear on each path.  This traveler carefully considers his
path, and therefore the consequences of taking one path over the
other, before making his choice, even if in reflection he realizes
that both paths were, “about the same” (Frost).

So
while some choices have immediate consequences or are more beneficial
than other possible choices, others have consequences and benefits
not foreseen.  There is no consistency to the act of making these
choices as, like life, it is impossible to foresee what we will have
to face.  We must simply stand before the manager, or the paths, or
even the sign displaying the movies showing tonight, and make the
choice–come what may.

Works Cited

Frost, Robert.  “The Road Not Taken.”
Living Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.  Ed.
John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1062.

Updike, John.  “A & P.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  58-62.

A Clerk and a Traveler Make the Tough Choices

There
are moments in life when we as rational human beings must make
choices.  The choices we make are sometimes small: the type of milk
to buy, or which film to watch at the movie theater.  If we are
fortunate, we must make more important choices; choices that require
deliberation and careful thought.  But it is the simple act of
choosing that is perhaps the most important aspect.  It is not the
end result, beneficial or otherwise, that matters.  In John Updike’s
short story “A & P” and Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not
Taken,” we see that it is the choice itself that makes all the
difference.

Facing
a choice means facing more than one possibility and considering those
possibilities, applying thought and knowledge obtained from past
experience.  In “A & P” the protagonist, Sammy, faces a
choice when he decides to quit his job as a grocery store clerk after
his manager Lengel publicly humiliates several girls for wearing what
he believed were inappropriate outfits.  Initially, it appears that
Sammy decides to quit in order to get the girls’ attention; a vain
attempt at gaining their favor.  However, after questioning himself
on whether or not it was a wise decision, he decides it is and sticks
to it.  As he says it is “fatal” not to follow through on such a
gesture (Updike 62), which demonstrates that Sammy considered the
decision and the possible outcomes and ultimately decided that the
choice to quit would ultimately be the better choice if only to
retain his self-respect.  Likewise in “The Road Not Taken,” the
traveler is faced with two possible paths which he can take.  He
observes one path before choosing the other, or as the traveler
states, “…long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could.”
He stood and weighed the option to travel down one path versus the
traveling down the other, once again demonstrating that when we are
faced with more than one choice we must deliberate on and think
carefully about the possibilities before choosing one or the other.

It
is a sign of character when a person stands for a belief or decision
even when it seems as if the choice will lead to a difficult road
ahead.  Sammy ultimately stands for what he believed was a just
decision in quitting to protest the unfair treatment of the girls in
the store. The girls were just customers, after all, who were there
to make a purchase and nothing else.  He could have very easily
changed his mind and chosen to remain at his clerk position when
Lengel told him, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom
and Dad,” or, “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life”
(Updike 62), which may have encouraged a person of weak character to
remain or turn back on the initial choice, but Sammy stands by his
decision.  The traveler in “The Road Not Taken” speaks of taking
“… the one less traveled by” (Frost), indicating that the path
he took was an unpopular one, but follows up by saying “And that
has made all the difference.”  The traveler in the poem makes a
literal choice of one path versus the other and displays character by
choosing a path that was not as well-traveled as the other, at least
in his mind.  Frost clearly intended for the traveler to be a
metaphor for the state of mind where a person must make a difficult
decision and in his poem he seems to advocate that making the choice
builds one’s character.

Maturity,
that is to say emotional and mental maturity, is merely the means by
which we gain experience and use that experience as a base for our
decision-making process.  It is often a sign of maturity, then, when
a choice is not made randomly but with deliberate consideration.
Moreover, the choices made help us mature as well.  Sammy’s choice
is a clear one: stand by his perhaps ill-conceived decision to quit
in protest of the unfair treatment towards the girls, or back out of
his choice and resume his work as a clerk at the register.  At that
point in Updike’s “A & P” we have read Sammy’s rather
unpleasant view of working at the A & P, with the “witches”
(Updike 58), “house slaves” (Updike 59), and “sheep” (Updike
62) being regular players in his dreary existence in a small town
grocery store, and as such we as the readers can see that Sammy has
experienced working there and has learned it is not a pleasant job to
him.  Additionally his background, told by him throughout the story,
indicates that he is still in the “maturing” phase of
adolescence.  He lives with his parents, his mother does his laundry,
and he even says he is nearly nineteen years old.  So, when Sammy
chooses to take a stand he is taking a vital step in his emotional
and mental maturity, adding to his mental cache of experience.  The
traveler in Frost’s poem speaks of age and maturity when he says,
“I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages
hence.” (Frost).  He knows that, as he grows older, he will look
back on the moment of his choice and be the wiser for having made the
choice.  Both authors, through the characters in their respective
works, show that making such difficult choices is an important part
of maturing, despite the consequences that may come about as a
result.

It
is then vital to remember that each choice (that is, a scenario where
a person must decide between more than one option), comes with one or
more consequences.  The direst aspect of making a choice, then, is
the consequence of said choice.   There are some choices, such as,
say, which movies to watch, which have no particular consequence
other than a bad and quickly forgotten film experience.  It is not
such choices and consequences that I speak of.  I refer to those same
important choices that encourage careful thought, demonstrate
character, and that we use to build upon our maturity.  These choices
are the ones that get us to think about the consequences.  Take, for
example, when Sammy reflects on his decision to quit his job at the
grocery store:  “… my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the
world was going to be to me hereafter.” (Updike 62).  He says this
after stepping out of the store, and at that moment he realizes that
the choice he made would have serious consequences, and perhaps leads
to a difficult path in life.  The traveler in Frost’s poem, on the
other hand, is very considerate of the possible consequences of his
choice as he ponders which path to take.  He stands for a long while,
peers down both paths, and even takes in minute details such as the
amount of wear on each path.  This traveler carefully considers his
path, and therefore the consequences of taking one path over the
other, before making his choice, even if in reflection he realizes
that both paths were, “about the same” (Frost).

So
while some choices have immediate consequences or are more beneficial
than other possible choices, others have consequences and benefits
not foreseen.  There is no consistency to the act of making these
choices as, like life, it is impossible to foresee what we will have
to face.  We must simply stand before the manager, or the paths, or
even the sign displaying the movies showing tonight, and make the
choice–come what may.

Works Cited

Frost, Robert.  “The Road Not Taken.”
Living Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.  Ed.
John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1062.

Updike, John.  “A & P.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  58-62.

On Loving a Father, “Those Winter Sundays”

Love
can be an emotion that is not expressed or recognized easily.  There
are many “types” of love, and the comprehension of the word
“love” itself is quite subjective to an individual’s experience
or understanding, but there is perhaps no version of love quite as
unrivaled in it’s complexity than that version which we see in
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden – the love between
father and child.  Hayden expresses an adult’s lament for not
recognizing the love of a father when the adult was still a child,
and in his childhood recollection the adult conveys the love that the
father did not explicitly state.

In
the poem the adult tells of a routine that begins with the father
waking up early on Sunday mornings, as he does every morning (“Sunday
too my father got up early”) (Hayden 1), when the “blueblack
cold” (Hayden 2) of the time before dawn is still present in the
house and the adult, then a child, is still asleep.  We learn that
the father works a laborious job during the week, coming home with “…
cracked hands that ached / from labor in the weekday weather…”
(Hayden 3-4), and while many people would certainly be content to
alleviate the physical weariness during the weekend, this man chooses
to get out of bed even on the days when he is not at work.

So,
why do it?  Why suffer, as it were, and give up the opportunity to
rest?  In the fourth and fifth lines of that first stanza we are
given a simple explanation for the father braving the cold and his
physical exhaustion: to make “banked fires blaze…” (Hayden 5).
The fire in the fireplace or stove (the means is not specified) must
be tended in order to bring warmth to the household and his child.
The father’s warming the house is seemingly nothing extraordinary,
and some could argue that he does it out of a sense of fatherly duty
rather than a loving affection for the child.  But is fatherly duty
not simply an expression of the love for a father’s children?  The
final sentence in the stanza, “… No one ever thanked him”
(Hayden 5), demonstrates that the adult considered it an important
act that went beyond mere duty – while it is not explicitly stated,
bringing warmth his child is viewed as an act of love.  There is
another such moment of realization on the adult’s part when he
speaks of the father polishing his “…good shoes as well”
(Hayden 12) in the third line of the final stanza.  It is another
seemingly simple part of the routine, and one that most certainly
could have been required of the child, but the father chooses once
again to do it for reasons that the child was unaware of – love.

There
is a more subtle aspect to the routine that is not as delineated when
compared to what is plainly stated in the poem.  The title itself,
“Those Winter Sundays,” is perhaps the biggest hint, but as we
read into the poem there are many supporting terms and lines that
give credence the idea that this father is preparing his child for an
important weekly event: church on Sundays.  In the second and third
lines of the second stanza we read, “When the rooms were warm, he’d
call, / and slowly I would rise and dress…”  What reason could
there be for waking up early on a Sunday morning?  Again, we are not
explicitly told, but the evidence for this is then strengthened when
one considers that the father polished his good shoes.  We are faced
with a child being woken up on a Sunday morning, called by his father
to specifically rise and get dressed, then presented with a freshly
polished pair of good shoes.  It certainly does sound like
preparation for Sunday church.  As is written in the Bible, “Keep
the sabbath day to sanctify it…” (King James Version Deut. 5:12).
This father could very well be preparing his child to attend church,
a tradition that many people around the world believe improves morals
and character, among other positive qualities.  A loving father,
then, would take his child to Sunday church because he cares for the
child and wants to help improve the child’s life.

As
mentioned, when the temperature reached comfortable levels the father
would call to the child to wake up and get dressed.  Hayden’s
persona of the regretful adult conveys waking up to the sound of the
wood in the fire crackling, or as the adult recalls the sound of
“cold splintering, breaking” (Hayden 6), certainly a sharp
contrast to the warmth of a fire.  The vivid description shows how he
perceived the sounds of his father’s early morning labors as a
child.  Following the call the child would rise and get dressed,
slowly and without any particular urgency as the child had a fear of
the “chronic angers of that house” (Hayden 9).  We are never told
what these “angers” could be, but as the only other prominent
character in the poem is the father we can infer that the father
instilled a type of fear in the child.  It is common for children to
fear their father, who is often seen as the stern figure that asserts
authority over his children.  As the French philosopher Joseph
Joubert wrote in his notebooks, “Love and fear.  Everything the
father of a family says must inspire one or the other” (“Joseph
Joubert”), and in this case it appears the father inspired fear.
The father may be performing his fatherly duty by taking care of his
child, but the child is unable to interpret the father’s actions as
symbols of his love, and resorts to “Speaking indifferently to
him…” (Hayden 10).  Thus, the father’s love goes unrecognized.

It
is not until the final stanza of the poem, in the final two lines,
that the adult expresses his feelings about not recognizing the
father’s love until adulthood: “What did I know, what did I know
/ of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden 13-14).  The
adult’s regret is laid out before us when he asks himself what he
knew, for he was only a child and could not know that all that the
father did for the child was done out of love.  He comes to
understand that love is not as easy to obtain when one is in a high
“office,” or place of authority.  As the authority figure the
father helped his child as best he could, loving him all the while,
but never able to express the love in a manner that the child could
recognize.

Works Cited

The Criswell Study Bible: King James Version.
Ed. W. A. Criswell.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979.

Hayden, Robert.  “Those Winter Sundays.”
Living Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.  Ed.
John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1083.

“Joseph Joubert.”  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  13
Feb 2008, 23:21 UTC.  Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.  24 Mar 2008.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Joubert&oldid=191285803>.