Summary of Animal Form

Old Major calls a meeting of all the animals in the big barn. He announces that he may die soon and relates to them the insights he has gathered in his life. Old Major tells the animals that human beings are the sole reason that “No animal in England is free” and that “The life of an animal is misery and slavery.” Therefore, the animals must take charge of their destiny by overthrowing Man in a great Rebellion. He relates his dream of rebellion.

 

Old Major dies soon after the meeting, and the other animals prepare for the Rebellion under Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer's leadership. One night, Mr Jones passes out drunk, creating the perfect opportunity for the animals to rebel. They are so hungry that they break into the store shed. When Jones and his men try to whip them into submission, the animals run them off the farm. Snowball changes the name of the farm to “Animal Farm” and comes up with the Seven Commandments, which are to form the basis of Animalism. They are:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

3. No animal shall wear clothes.

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.

5. No animals shall drink alcohol.

6. No animal shall kill any other animal.

7. All animals are equal.

 

The pigs milk the cows, and then the animals go out to begin the harvest. When they return, the milk has disappeared mysteriously. The first harvest is a great success. The animals adhere to the tenets of Animalism happily and with good results. Each animal works according to its ability and gets a fair share of food.

Every Sunday, Snowball and Napoleon lead a meeting of all the animals in the big barn. The pigs are the most intelligent animals, so they think up resolutions for the other animals to debate. Soon after, the pigs set up a study centre for themselves in the harness room. Snowball embarks on various campaigns for social and economic improvement. Napoleon opposes whatever Snowball does. Because most of the animals lack the intelligence to memorise the Seven Commandments, Snowball reduces them to the single maxim, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” The sheep take to chanting this at meetings.

As time goes by, the pigs increase their control over the animals and award themselves increasing privileges. They quell the animals’ questions and protests by threatening Mr Jones’s return. During this time, Napoleon also confiscates nine newborn puppies and secludes them in a loft to “educate” them.

By late summer, Snowball’s and Napoleon’s pigeon messengers have spread news of the Rebellion across half of England. Animals on other farms have begun lashing out against their human masters and singing the revolutionary song “Beasts of England.” Jones and other farmers try to recapture Animal Farm but fail. The animals celebrate their victory in what they call “The Battle of the Cowshed.”

The animals agree to let the pigs make all the resolutions. Snowball and Napoleon continue to be at odds and eventually clash over the windmill. Snowball wants to build a windmill in order to shorten the work week and provide the farm with electricity, but Napoleon opposes it. Napoleon summons nine fierce dogs (the puppies he trained) to run Snowball off the farm. Napoleon announces that Sunday meetings will cease and that the pigs will make all the decisions in the animals’ best interest. At this point, Boxer takes on his own personal maxims, “I will work harder” and “Napoleon is always right.” In the spring, Napoleon announces plans to build the windmill, claiming that it was his idea all along—rewriting history.

 

Building the windmill forces the animals to work harder on Sundays. Shortages begin to occur, so Napoleon opens up trade with the human world. Through Squealer, he lies that no resolutions against interaction with humans or the use of money had ever been passed. Napoleon enlists Whymper to be his intermediary, and the pigs move into the farmhouse. Squealer assures the animals that there is no resolution against this, but Clover and Mureil discover that one of the resolutions has been changed to: “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Squealer convinces her that there was never a resolution against beds at all. One night, strong winds shake the farm, and the animals awake to discover the windmill destroyed. Napoleon blames Snowball and sentences the expelled pig to death.

 

In the winter, as conditions become worse on Animal Farm, Napoleon deceives the human world into thinking Animal Farm is prospering. He signs a contract for a quota of four hundred eggs per week, inciting a hen rebellion that results in several deaths. Around the same time, Napoleon begins negotiating with Fredrick and Pilkington to sell Animal Farm’s store of timber. He also spreads propaganda against Snowball, claiming that Snowball was always a spy and a collaborator while Napoleon was the true hero of the Battle of the Cowshed, and Squealer warns against Snowball’s secret agents.

 

Four days later, Napoleon holds an assembly in which he makes several animals confess to treachery and then has the dogs execute them. The dogs try to get Boxer to confess, but leave him alone when they cannot overpower him. Afterwards, Clover and some other animals huddle together on a hill overlooking the farm. They reminisce about Animalism’s ideals and consider how much they differ from the violence and terror of Napoleon’s reign. They sing “Beasts of England,” but Squealer informs them that the song is useless now that the Rebellion is completed and that it is now forbidden. The new anthem begins with the lyrics: “Animal Farm, Animal Farm, / Never through me shalt thou come to harm!”

Another commandment is changed to read: “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” Clover and Muriel convince themselves that the commandment has always been this way. Squealer begins reading the animals' statistics regularly to convince them that production is increasing. Napoleon seldom appears in public. The animals now call him “our Leader, Comrade Napoleon.” They attribute all misfortunes to Snowball and all success and luck to Napoleon. Napoleon continues to negotiate with the farmers and eventually decides to sell the timber to Mr Pilkington. At last, the windmill is finished and named “Napoleon Mill.” Soon after, Napoleon announces that he will sell the timber to Frederick, quickly changing his allegiance and disavowing his earlier vilification of Frederick. Napoleon says that Pilkington and Snowball have been collaborating. Frederick pays for the timber in fake cash, and the next morning, Frederick and his men invade the farm and blow up the windmill. The animals manage to chase the humans off, though many die or are injured in what they call “The Battle of the Windmill.”

 

After the battle, the pigs discover a case of whisky in the farmhouse. They drink to excess and soon, Squealer reports that Napoleon is dying and, as his last action, has made the consumption of alcohol punishable by death. But Napoleon recovers quickly and then sends Whymper to procure manuals on brewing alcohol. Squealer changes another commandment to “No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.”

 

Napoleon plans to build a schoolhouse for the thirty-one young pigs he has parented. Towards the end of the winter, Napoleon began increasing propaganda to distract the animals from inequality and hardship. He creates special “Spontaneous Demonstrations” in which the animals march around and celebrate their triumphs.

In April, Napoleon declares the farm a Republic and is elected unanimously as President. The animals continue to work feverishly, most of all Boxer. One day, Boxer collapses while overexerting himself. Napoleon promises to send him to the hospital. A few days later, a horse-slaughterer takes Boxer away in his van. The animals are none the wiser until Benjamin reads the lettering on the side of the van. A few days later, Squealer reports that Boxer died in the hospital despite receiving the best possible care. He claims that Boxer’s last words glorified Animal Farm and Napoleon. Napoleon promises to honour Boxer.

 

Years go by, and though Animal Farm’s population has increased, only a few animals that remember the Rebellion remain. Conditions are still harsh despite technological improvements. The pigs and dogs continue to do no manual labour, instead devoting themselves to organisational work. One day, Squealer takes the sheep out to a deserted pasture where, he says, he is teaching them a song. On the day the sheep return, the pigs walk around the yard on their hind legs as the sheep chant, “Four legs good, two legs better.” The other animals are horrified. Clover consults the barn wall again. This time, Benjamin reads to her. The Seven Commandments have been replaced with a single maxim: “All animals are equal / but some animals are more equal than others.”

 

        The pigs continue the longstanding pattern of awarding themselves more and more privileges. They buy a telephone and subscribe to magazines. They even wear Jones’s clothing. One night, Napoleon holds a conciliatory banquet for the farmers. Pilkington makes a speech in which he says he wants to emulate Animal Farm’s long work hours and low rations. Napoleon announces that the farm will be called “Manor Farm” again, the animals will call each other “Comrade” no longer, and they will no longer march ceremoniously past Old Major’s skull (a practice he denies understanding). He also declares that the farm’s flag will be plain green, devoid of the symbols of the Rebellion. As the animals peer through the windows to watch the humans and pigs play poker, they cannot distinguish between them. 

Question- Answers of Animal Form

1.      Define an allegory. Is Animal Form an allegory?

An allegory is a story in which the events and characters represent something beyond themselves. The characters and events of Animal Farm represent the real people and events of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Orwell wrote Animal Farm because he wanted to tell the true story of the Russian Revolution in a way anyone could understand, even if they didn’t know all the historical details. However, Animal Farm is not only an allegory of Russian history. The novella also makes a broader argument about the nature of political power and oppression in general.

 

2.      What is Animalism?

Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer develop Old Major’s idea that animals have a right to freedom and equality into “a complete system of thought” which they call Animalism. The central beliefs of Animalism are expressed in the Seven Commandments, painted on the wall of the big barn. However, as the pigs seize more and more power, they change the Commandments painted on the barn, until Animalism is reduced to a single principle, which is virtually the opposite of Old Major’s original idea: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”

3.      How does Napoleon seize power?

Napoleon trains nine puppies to be loyal to him: when they are fully grown, he uses the dogs to chase Snowball, his main rival, off the farm. Napoleon justifies his takeover by telling the other animals that Snowball was a traitor secretly working for the human farmers. Squealer makes confusing and manipulative arguments to convince most of the animals that Napoleon is telling the truth, while fear of Napoleon’s dogs keeps any doubters from speaking out.

4.      What does Boxer represent?

Within Animal Farm’s allegory of Soviet history, Boxer represents the Russian working class. Boxer does most of the work on the farm, and his strength and size give him a great deal of power. However, he is illiterate and trusting, which makes it easy for the pigs to trick him into submitting to their leadership. Orwell believed that something similar had happened to the Russian working class during the Soviet Revolution: the workers were powerful, and did all the work in the Soviet Union, but they were tricked and betrayed. 

 

5.      Why does Mollie leave Animal Farm?

Mollie leaves Animal Farm because she has never fully embraced its new way of life, and she prefers the benefits of being owned by humans. Of all the animals, Mollie has not risen to the demands of Animalism. She sneaks sugar and ribbons, shirks her duties, shows up late to work, and maintains contact with humans. After she leaves Animal Farm, pigeons see her in town, pulling a dogcart while a human strokes her nose and feeds her sugar. These details show that Mollie chooses to sacrifice her liberty for comfort.

6.      Why does Snowball want to build a windmill?

Snowball wants to build a windmill so it can power a machine to create electricity on the farm. Electricity will improve the animals’ comfort by supplying light and heat in their stalls. The electricity will also be used to power numerous machines that can perform the work the animals must do, providing them with more leisure time. With the windmill in operation, all the animals will have more time to relax and to “improve their minds with reading and conversation.”

7.      What is Snowball’s role at the Battle of the Cowshed?

Snowball is a hero at the Battle of the Cowshed, bravely leading the animals’ defensive operations to a decisive victory over Mr Jones, who tries to retake the farm. Employing what he learned from a book on war campaigns, Snowball launches a series of sham attacks designed to lull the farmers into thinking they’ve won, which end with the farmers running for their lives. After Snowball flees the farm, however, Napoleon and Squealer slowly distort this history. Squealer questions Snowball’s role and motives, suggests Snowball was a traitor, and eventually states that Snowball “had been openly fighting on Jones’s side” and “had actually been the leader of the human forces.”

8.      Why does Napoleon blame Snowball for everything that goes wrong on the farm?

Napoleon, aided by Squealer, uses Snowball as a scapegoat, which means that when something goes wrong, he blames Snowball. As Snowball is not present, Snowball can’t defend himself and reveal falsehoods in the accusations, essentially creating a situation in which all of Napoleon’s statements regarding Snowball are simply accepted as truth. This tactic means that Napoleon does not need to take responsibility for mistakes and misdeeds, and it also allows him to continue to receive the animals’ support and respect even when calamity occurs, as when the windmill collapses. Further, by casting Snowball in the role of the enemy, Napoleon ensures that his rival will never be able to return to the farm and challenge his leadership.

9.      How is the windmill destroyed?

The windmill is actually destroyed and rebuilt several times throughout the course of Animal Farm. The first windmill collapses in a storm, and the second windmill is blown up during the Battle of the Windmill. After the first windmill is destroyed, which Napoleon blames on Snowball’s sabotage, the animals begin reconstruction and make the walls much thicker. After the second windmill is fully built, Frederick attacks Animal Farm and takes down the structure with blasting powder. Undeterred, the animals begin rebuilding the windmill the next day.

 

10.  Why does Napoleon change the Seven Commandments?

Over time, Napoleon changes all of the Seven Commandments, which were created to keep the animals humble and on equal footing, to allow the pigs to enjoy prohibited privileges and comforts. For instance, when the pigs move into the farmhouse, Napoleon amends the commandment about not sleeping in a bed to read, “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Napoleon changes other commandments as well, so the pigs can wear clothes, drink alcohol, and even kill other animals. By the end of the book, the original commandments have been reduced to one statement that encapsulates the authoritarian nature of the farm: “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”

 

11.  What does Boxer’s death represent?

Boxer’s death represents the exploitation of the working classes as well as the death of the idealism that led to the establishment of Animal Farm. Before his death, Boxer was Napoleon’s most loyal supporter, abusing his body in service to the farm and the windmill. Once he weakens and is no longer useful, the pigs don’t reward him with the promised peaceful retirement but sell him to a glue factory. Ironically, this fate is what Old Major predicted for Boxer under Mr Jones’s ownership: “You, Boxer, the very day that those great muscles of yours lose their power, Jones will sell you to the knacker, who will cut your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds.” Instead of bringing about equality among animals, Napoleon has created a society in which the pigs have taken the place of humans in their corruption and self-interest.

12.  How does Squealer manipulate the animals so the pigs can better control them?

A persuasive speaker, Squealer uses language to make the other animals disbelieve what they have seen with their own eyes and to believe the lies he tells them. Sometimes Squealer encourages the animals to question their own recollections, such as when Napoleon violates the prohibition against trade: “Is it written down anywhere?” Squealer asks, causing the animals to be certain they are mistaken. Squealer explains why actions that appear to benefit the pigs actually help all the animals. When the pigs move into the farmhouse despite an earlier ban, he declares, “It was absolutely necessary... that the pigs, which were the brains of the farm, should have a quiet place to work in.” Squealer’s disingenuous and manipulative speech succeeds in making the animals distrust their own experiences. 

Character Sketch of Isabel Archer

Isabel Archer is the lady whose ‘portrait’ James offers us in the novel. She is the woman “affronting her destiny”. At the beginning of the novel, Ralph wonders, “What will she do?” Towards the close of the novel, Henrietta asks Isabel, “What have you done with your life?” Between these two questions lies the tragic-comedy of the life of Isabel.

The character of Isabel Archer is fully developed by James. Her development is the development from happiness to suffering, from love to hatred, from vivacity to dispiritedness. Isabel’s character is the central character around which other characters, such as Ralph, Caspar, Lord Warburton, Henrietta, Osmond, Madam Merle and the Touchetts rotate.

One of the distinguishing features of Isabel’s character is her deep love for liberty and freedom. It is her innocence and independence which attract Daniel Touchett to give her financial freedom. She tries her best to maintain her mental freedom even in the face of adversity and also to maintain her dignity and individuality throughout. It is this quality that draws Ralph to her. Neither Ralph’s sympathy nor Lord Warburton’s glamour can overcome her sense of freedom, and eventually, both are fascinated by her.

Another feature is her romantic idealism. From the very beginning, Isabel’s approach to life is romantic, idealistic and theoretical. James observes that she is a person of many theories; her imagination is remarkably active. One can notice how Isabel puts her theories of self-development into practice. One of the methods is that of refusal or rejection. She avoids any commitment to anyone. Caspar Goodwood suggests coercion, oppression and constraint on the plain physical level. Lord Warburton suggests immobilisation on the social level. Isabel rejects the first on physical reasons and the second on theoretical grounds of indefinite expansion.

Isabel is a pretty young woman of sparkling vivacity. She brings freshness and charm wherever she happens to be; however, she is sexually cold and frigid. When she is faced with an emotional situation, such as her suitors proposing to her, she becomes unnerved and fear-ridden. From her lovely physical make-up, mental independence and rich legacy, the reader can well deduce that Isabel was apparently made for happiness, but events took such a sharp turn that she fell victim to her own idealistic notions. Her ‘sentience’ is the vital force of her ‘choice’, but her choice deceives her because she wishes to see life whole and full. She chooses Osmond, prompted by his idealism and sophistry, and this wrong choice lands her in misery and sorrow.

Her choice of Osmond as a husband is a result of both admirable and not-so-admirable elements in her nature. Her excessive confidence in her own judgment, her sense of her own superiority, her shying away from indications of violent passion, are no less weighty elements in her decision than her eagerness for experience, the liveliness and freshness of her responses, her admiration for what seems to be unworldliness, the superiority to things material, a devotion to things beautiful. The qualities and shortcomings of Isabel are explained, even her return to Osmond- her fear of sex, her high sense of marriage, her moral seriousness, her pure conscience, her linking to a civilised way of life, her promise to Pansy and her preference for a life of suffering. In the words of Richard Chase, “Despite her deeply repressed sexuality, Isabel remains among the most complex, the most fully realised and the most humanly fascinating of James’s characters.”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : As a Satire

    

     In general, satire is a type of literature and sometimes pictorial arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule perfectly with the intent to humiliate individuals and society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually intended to be humorous, its primary purpose is often constructive in nature, utilizing wit as a tool.

   Satire is nowadays found in many artistic forms of expression, including literature, plays, commentary, and media. In fact, there are various types of satire that are not meant to be funny at all. On the other hand, not all humour, even on such topics as politics, religion, or art, is necessarily mocking, even when it uses the satirical tools of irony, parody, and mockery. Ironical satire, in some cases, has been regarded as the most effective source to understand a society. It provides a keen insight into any society’s overall psychology; it reveals its deepest values, tastes, and structures of power.

   Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to be read and analyzed as a satirical work. It has targeted many social classes, their way of thinking, as well as their way of acting. To achieve this with success, the author has used a twelve-year-old protagonist who laughed at the corrupt society, denouncing swindling, drunkenness, and materialism. The hero Huck used his inventiveness, quickness, morality, innocence, and love of adventure to ridicule not only the above-mentioned vices, but also social, cultural, and institutional norms. Huck says related to his father’s drinking habits, “Every time he got money, he got drunk; and every time he got drunk, he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain, he got jailed. He was just suited-this kind of thing was right in his line.” Violence was one of the first evils that Twain satirized. He first presented the most frequent forms of it through Pap Finn’s (father of Huck) brutality, the bloodshed resulting from a disagreement opposing two aristocratic families, and Lynch Law. All these social vices had plagued American society witnessed by Mark Twain, and remained on his mind since his childhood. He found no other means to fight it but through satire, which is a much well-organized and powerful tool than any other means in terms of ridding society of vices and other impious practices.

   The other major evil that Mark Twain wanted to denounce with all his might was slavery. In the mid-nineteenth century, life on the frontier was based on slavery. A slave was not a man who could be sold anywhere at any time, and had no way to show his worth and claim his rights. The author himself was born and grew up in a slave-holding society, intended not only to reveal slaves’ conditions, but also to denounce and condemn slavery. A slave was considered subhuman in many passages of Huckleberry Finn. Surely, the most shocking scene is the slave auction, where slaves are considered not as humans, but as mere property to be sold anyhow, when they are no longer needed. Huck gives a full spectacle of it in this novel.

   Certainly, one of Twain’s goals was proving to the entire humankind that a slave too was a man, that blacks were no different than whites, since the latter too were subjects to the same follies as blacks. Besides, in some cases, Mark Twain presented a black being as kind, more loyal, and more superior in morals than whites, like in the case of Jim. To achieve his goal, Twain used various means, such as allowing Jim to achieve positive things, allowing him to display his human sentiments as well as good-natured, kind-hearted and his loyalty.

   From the above discussion, Huckleberry Finn appears to be simultaneously a literary, sociological, and anthropological text. It deals with a real situation, in a precise part of the world, and during a determined period of time. Twain chose characters who give a clear idea of mid-nineteenth-century frontiersmen and their way of living, thinking, and acting. This novel took inspiration from the author’s day-to-day life, which is not far from reality. While writing this research paper, we also came to know that Mark Twain has tried his utmost in satirizing various social aspects of his own American society through Huckleberry Finn. It is a landmark novel in the sense that it has helped in bringing social changes in the said society. In this way, Mark Twain has joined hands with the American pioneers of the social cause, who were Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln.

Walt Whitman as a Mystic Poet

 

Mysticism is not really a coherent philosophy of life, but more a temper of mind. A mystical experience, according to Bertrand Russell, involves insight, a sense of unity and the unreality of time and space, and a belief that evil is mere an appearance. A mystic’s vision is intuitive; he feels the presence of a divine reality behind and within the ordinary world of sense perception. He feels that God and the supreme soul animating all things are identical. He sees an essential identity of being between Man, Nature and God. He believes that “all things in the visible world are but forms and manifestations of the one Divine light, and that these phenomena are changing and temporary, while the soul that informs them is eternal.” The human soul, too, is eternal. Transcendentalism is closely connected to mysticism, for it emphasizes the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical.

Whitman believed the soul to be immortal. He felt identification with all animate and inanimate things around him. What is interesting about Whitman’s mysticism is that, as Schyberg observes, “In his book we can find the typical characteristics of absolutely all the various mystic doctrines.” But generally, Whitman, unlike other mystics, can describe his mystical experience in specific and concrete terms without resorting to ambiguities and hyperbole.

            It is true that we cannot call him a pure mystic in the sense of oriental mysticism. He is not a ‘praying’ man. Like all mystics, he believed in the existence of the soul, in the existence of the Divine Spirit, in the immortality of the human soul, and in the capacity of a human being to establish communication between his spirit and the Divine Spirit. But he differs from the oriental or traditional mystics in that he does not subscribe to their belief that communication with the Divine Spirit possible only through denial of the senses and mortification of the flesh. Whitman declares that he sings of the body as much as of the soul. He feels that spiritual communication is possible, indeed desirable, without sacrificing the flesh. Thus there is a great deal of the sexual element in Whitman’s poetry especially in the early poetry - Section 5 of Song of Myself is a case in point where the sexual connotations are inseparable from the mystical experience.

 To Whitman the mystical state is achieved through the transfigured senses rather than by escaping the senses. In Section 11 of Song of Myself, once again a mystical experience is symbolically conveyed through, piece of sensuous experience. In Section 24, the poet becomes the spokesman of the “forbidden voices” of “sexes and lusts, voices indecent”. He loves his body and is sensitive to another’s touch. Both the lady and the prostitute enjoy equal position in his poetry, for the inner reality, the soul has been created by the same god. “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred”, he says in one of his poems. He celebrates all the organs of the body-male and female.

Whitman does not reject the material world. He seeks the spiritual through the material. He does not subscribe to the belief that objects are elusive. There is no tendency on the part of the soul to leave this world for good. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we see the soul trying to play a significant role in the administration of this world of scenes, sights, sounds, etc. Whitman does not belittle the achievements of science and materialism. Whitman has throughout his poetry shown his faith in the unity of the whole, or “oneness” of all. This sense of the essential divinity of all created things is an important aspect of mysticism and is also closely related to Whitman’s faith in democracy calling for equality and fraternity.          ‘Song of Myself’ is replete with lines proclaiming this “oneness”.

Whitman is a mystic as much as he is a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic without a creed”. He sees the body as the manifestation of the spirit which is delivered by death into a higher life. A spear of grass is not an inert substance for him but God’s handkerchief, the flag of his disposition. Whitman’s mysticism is “democratic” mysticism available to every man on equal terms and embracing contradictory elements.

 

Summary and Critical Appreciation of Astrophel and Stella

         Astrophel and Stella is a series of sonnets written by Sir Phillip Sidney. It was published around the 1580s. The sonnets are a series of love poems between the man Astrophel and his star, Stella. Astrophel has fallen in love with Stella. Many of the sonnets are speeches delivered to Stella. We learn a lot about the internal world of Astrophel but little about Stella, aside from a few clues in her actions and reactions to the speeches.

For the first thirty sonnets or so, Stella does not return Astrophel’s love, but does not snub his affections either. She tries to be kind, or at least he believes that she is. Eventually, she marries another man. This does not deter Astrophel, but rather makes Stella more attractive because her marriage is an unhappy one, and he admires her sacrifice.

She does eventually return his affection, but she is never overcome by it. Astrophel, on the other hand, is increasingly more in love and tries to convince her to make love to him despite her vows. He even steals a kiss from her while she is sleeping. She realises that even though she loves him, she cannot continue the affair. Because Astrophel will need to consummate his passion, she ends the affair before any improper behaviour can happen.

We know that approximately the first thirty sonnets were written while Sidney’s real love, Penelope, was still unmarried and he was still at court. She never gave Sidney any overt encouragement, but just like Stella, never snubbed his affections. These thirty sonnets most likely comprise a year altogether as Sidney left the court, visited his sister’s estate, saw “Stella” at the mutual family’s house, and then returned to court.

Sidney discovers her marriage to Lord Rich somewhere between sonnets thirty-one and thirty-three. They were engaged to be married in their childhood, but this was broken off. Penelope’s marriage does not make her happy, a thing Sidney notes, but this does not diminish his passion for her. Rather, her selfless dedication to a marriage that brings her no satisfaction is something that Sidney admires and finds attractive.

He is often jealous of Lord Rich’s access to her, though he knows that she is not happy. He does not feel that her husband can appreciate her, and so he vows to win her heart. Around the sixtieth sonnet, she begins to return his love, but only platonically. She is unwilling to risk her reputation and her husband, and so tells Astrophel that the only way she will return his love is if they never consummate it.

He is content with this for a while, but as his passion grows deeper, we see his behaviour change. He cannot help but want to be with her physically, and this desire overrides his rational behaviour. He steals a kiss while she is sleeping, and this begins the downfall of their affair. She is incredibly angry that he broke her trust; the sonnet describes it as a sort of rape.

She pulls away, and her absence torments him. It takes a toll on him, and he loves her more deeply than ever. Around sonnet ninety-three, he admits to having wronged her, and his guilt and sorrow are overwhelming in the next few sonnets.

We do not have much detail, other than the kiss, for why he feels this way, but he makes it clear that the relationship is doomed forever. She falls ill, and he serenades her under her window to make her feel better. It has the opposite effect. She is so angry that he would continue to pursue her even after she has asked him not to, that she ends the relationship entirely. At the end of the series, he is alone and isolated. He retains some measure of happiness, despite how things turned out, knowing that his love for Stella is genuine and that she once loved him in return.

Sidney mimics a rhyme scheme from a famous poem by Petrarch to tell the story of his love. Just as Stella torments Astrophel, so was Petrarch tormented by his own love, a love that also causes him much joy. He touches on themes of love versus reason, as well as the conflicting desires of purity and desire.

It is clear that although Astrophel’s love for Stella was fruitless and ended, it brought him an enormous amount of joy as well. He remains happy that Stella once loved him. His inability to keep his love chaste ends their relationship, a point he makes in the sonnet after he steals a kiss. Love, for Astrophel, is something that cannot be contained, though he tries for a long time to keep Stella in his life.

Sidney introduced a new style of poetry into England during the Renaissance, changing the way literature was produced. In the end, he understands that although reason is well and good, he is happier having loved Stella with abandon and knowing that she once loved him as well.

Emily Dickinson as a poetess

         Almost unknown as a poet in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now recognised as one of America's greatest poets and, in the view of some, as one of the greatest lyric poets of all time. The past fifty years or so have seen an outpouring of books and essays attempting to explain her poetry and her life. Some critics have used her life to try to explain her poetry, and others have tried to explain her life by referring to her poems, which they assume are autobiographical. The large number of poems she wrote (over 1700) makes it easy for critics to find support for their theories. And the fact that her life, her poems, and her letters are often difficult, if not impossible to understand, invites speculation.

Emily Dickinson's poetry speaks powerfully to us. It captures her insights and recreates meaningful events in living; it helps us to understand and even to re-live our own experiences through her intensity and with her emotional and intellectual clarity. Like John Keats, Emily Dickinson is a passionate poet. Though she lived in seclusion, she lived a passionate life. Within the confines of the family home, the garden, and her circle of family and friends, she felt with her whole heart, thought with intensity, and imagined with ardour, and she shared herself in her poetry and in her letters. She wrote of her life, "I find ecstasy in living, the mere sense of living is joy enough"

Writing poetry may have served Dickinson as a way of releasing or escaping from pain--from the deaths of loved ones, from her inability to resolve her doubts about God, from the terrors, however faint, which she saw within herself, in others, and in the world outside yet nearby. To say that she may have sublimated her pain into poetry does not invalidate her view of the power of poetry; both may be true and exist at the same time. 

In her poems, Dickinson adopts a variety of personas, including a little girl, a queen, a bride, a bridegroom, a wife, a dying woman, a nun, a boy, and a bee. Though nearly 150 of her poems begin with "I," the speaker is probably fictional, and the poem should not automatically be read as autobiography. Dickinson insisted on the distinction between her poetry and her life: "When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse, it does not mean me--but a supposed person."

His poems are not easy: there is no logical thought that binds them, some construct or system; crowded with images that are often private conventions of the artist — such as the Circumference -, or seem to be thrown into the void, about elements of his everyday life, almost impossible to clarify. In her, everything is a metaphor, never usual; it is not possible to resort to a tradition to interpret and understand them. Emily was referring only to herself, and her attention is directed more and more towards herself as the years go by.

To penetrate the meaning of her poetry, it is necessary to purify oneself from the layers of linguistic, social, personal and cultural prejudices and customs, to renounce the usual ways of thinking, to open up to the possible and immerse oneself with the being in what she says. Suddenly, an image takes shape and illustrates the meaning. It is often destabilising, it is necessary to go back to the origins of thought, proceed by associations, and rely on intuition to understand it; at the same time, one is overwhelmed by strong feelings, by recognitions and similarities that seem to echo in the infinity of the collective and archetypal subconscious.

Emily indirectly expresses the mystery that she sees and hears, but that human language is unable to express. She has no other way; she faces it by getting as close as possible to the truth, and, like Icarus, she burns the wings of inspiration, yielding to the mystical vision. Proceeding over the years, her compositions become more and more elliptical, sparse, and little remains to be said about the ineffable. Punctuation is also at the service of this language of the unspeakable, like the hyphen that replaces a meaning that cannot be said, or pauses, asks for silence, to put words and images in order, place them and better understand their meaning.

Themes in the poems of Emily Dickinson

 

In the modern poetic world of America Emily Dickinson plays a significant role which makes her different from contemporary modern poets. Her poems question the nature of death and immortality. She is remembered for her unique poetry. She writes from life experience and her deepest thoughts and for herself as a way of letting out her feelings. She as a poet deals with various themes such as nature, love, pain and sufferings, death and immortality, God and religion, artistic philosophy, universality and so on. Thus the range of themes in her poetry is very wide. Actually she goes through the depth of humane psyche to the profundity of nature.

Emily feels the necessity and profundity of nature. It plays an important role to make her poetic theme glorious and age-worthy. To her nature is extremely harmonious. It is an image of human. She considers nature as the gentlest mother as she finds mother like love amidst nature. Nature is the source of joy and beauty, the beauty of that nature holds up is in the beholders' perspective.

Emily Dickinson’s treatment of love shows her as a representative figure in the field of love and emotion. Her love poems are psychological as well as autobiographical. Love is a mystic life force it should be free from voluptuousness. Her poems run the range from renunciation to professions of love to sexual passion; they are generally intense.

"If you were coming in the fall"

"I cannot live with you"

"I early took my dog"

"Wild nights! Wild nights!"

Death is one of the foremost themes in Dickinson’s poetry. No two poems have exactly the same understanding of death, however. Death is sometimes gentle, sometimes menacing, sometimes simply inevitable. In “Because I could not stop for Death –,“ she personifies death, and presents the process of dying as simply the realization that there is eternal life. Death is personified in many guises in her poems, ranging from a suitor to a tyrant. Her attitude is ambivalent; death is a terror to be feared and avoided, a trick played on humanity by God, a welcome relief, and a blessed way to heaven. Immortality is often related to death.

Immortality have covered an important place in her poetic world. Emily Dickinson says death functions as a connecting link between life and immortality. The conventional idea of immortality, with its insistence upon splendour and a majestic transformation, is in her poem uniquely reworked to present her belief in the reality of the soul after death.  

The theme of pain and sufferings is also an organic part of her poetic theme. Actually, Emily Dickinson is a poet of universal grief whose poetic feelings goes on with the stream of eternal sufferings. Pain plays a necessary role in human life. The amount of pain we experience generally exceeds the joy or other positive value contrasted with pain. Pain earns us purer moments of ecstasy and makes joy more vital. The pain of loss or of lacking/not having enhances our appreciation of victory, success, etc.; the pain of separation indicates the degree of our desire for union, whether with another human being or God.

 Man's relationship to God and nature is concerned throughout Dickinson's life. Her attitude toward God in her poems ranges from friendliness to anger and bitterness, and He is at times indifferent, at other times cruel. Emily Dickinson transcends her poetic range to make her immortal and universal. Her universe is the universe of all people. Her poetry shows her personal confession through better experience. We can call her greatest as a modern poet. Emily Dickinson is totally a perfect poet who expresses her deepest thoughts under the guise of various themes.

The Battle of the Books

         The Battle of the Books is a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift, the renowned author of Gulliver's Travels. Published in 1704, it presents a fictional debate between books and authors and provides a witty critique of the ongoing literary controversies of Swift's time. Through clever allegory and sharp humour, Swift explores the value and merits of ancient and modern literature, ultimately questioning the importance of intellectual debates in society.

The theme of the work deals with the wide-ranging dispute between the Ancients and Moderns, which divided scholars in seventeenth-century France. The quarrel becomes significant when Sir William Temple wrote an essay on the comparative merits of ‘Ancient and Modern learning’. Temple was in support of the Ancients, and Swift composed the Battle of the Books to promote him. The controversy between the Ancients and Moderns is put forward in the form of a fictional battle between the two sets of books existing in the library at St. James’s Palace. The battle starts from a request by the Moderns that the Ancients shall withdraw the higher of the two peaks of Parnassus, which they have occupied. The books that are supporters of the moderns take up the matter, but before the battle was to be started, there occurs a dispute between a spider living in the corner of the library and a bee blundering into the spider’s web. According to Aesop, the quarrel between the spider and the bee is symbolic of the contention between the Moderns and the Ancients. For him, the spider represents the Moderns who spin their scholastic lore out of their own bowels, and the bee represents the Ancients who go to nature for their honey.

This essay deals with five incidents. The first of the five incidents forms the main body of the satire. This incident deals with the dispute between the ancients and the moderns for the right to live on the highest peak of Parnassus. This has been treated in an allegorical manner. The second part of this incident takes a serious turn. In a corner of the St. James Library, the battle among the books takes place. This incident has been treated in a mock-heroic manner.

     The second incident concerns the episode of the spider and the bee. The spider is the symbol of the moderns, and the bee represents the ancients. With the help of this fable, Swift wants to say that like spiders, the moderns put forth dirt. Like bees, the ancients spread honey and sweetness. Thus, here Swift has proved the superiority of the ancients. Later on, the satirist presents the picture of the battlefield. Both groups stand against each other. The battle starts. These groups use all sorts of weapons. On the one side, there are Pollas, Homer, Pindar, Euclid, Aristotle and Plato. Bacon, Dryden and some others are on the other side. At last, the ancients won the battle.

    Thus, ‘The Battle of the Books’ is full of criticism and satire. But it is rarely bitter. It is fluent and witty. Swift has regarded the moderns as spiders and the ancients as bees.

 

Character Sketch of Blanche

     Blanche’s character in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is defined by her complex relationship with truth. Torn between reality and illusion, Blanche’s struggle to confront her truths reveals her vulnerability and humanity. Her tragic downfall is rooted in her inability to reconcile her idealised self-image with the harsh realities of her past and present.

Blanche’s truth is complex, encompassing her personal history, desires, and fears. Her arrival at the Kowalski household marks the beginning of her unravelling, as her carefully constructed facade begins to crumble. The loss of Belle Reve, the death of her young husband, and her subsequent promiscuity form the backdrop of Blanche’s descent into self-delusion. Her interactions with Stanley and Mitch expose the fragility of her illusions, as she struggles to maintain her dignity in the face of scrutiny. Blanche’s confession about her husband’s suicide, “He was in the quicksands and clutching at me,” offers a rare glimpse into her vulnerability and guilt.

The play’s exploration of Blanche’s truth extends to her relationship with desire. Blanche’s infamous line, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” encapsulates her reliance on others to validate her existence. Her dependency on male attention, however, reflects a deeper truth about her insecurities and need for acceptance. Blanche’s pursuit of Mitch, for instance, is driven by her desire for stability and redemption, even as her past threatens to derail her efforts.

The portrayal of Blanche’s truth is both sympathetic and critical. Her illusions are depicted as both a defence mechanism and a source of self-destruction. The climactic revelation of her past by Stanley marks the ultimate confrontation between truth and illusion, leading to Blanche’s mental collapse. Her institutionalisation at the play’s end underscores the devastating consequences of her inability to reconcile her truths with her illusions.

In conclusion, Blanche’s character represents the tragic consequences of living in denial of one’s truth. Her fragile illusions provide a temporary escape but ultimately fail to shield her from reality’s harshness. Through Blanche’s journey, Tennessee Williams poignantly examines the complexities of human vulnerability and the fine line between self-preservation and self-destruction. Blanche’s downfall serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers of avoiding one’s truth and the inevitability of reality’s triumph over illusion.

The Streetcar Named Desire: Critical Appreciation

     This powerful play explores themes like desire, loss, and the struggle between reality and illusion. Set in New Orleans after World War II, it tells the story of Blanche, a fragile woman who comes to live with her sister Stella and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski. Blanche’s arrival creates tension in the household as her refined manners clash with Stanley’s rough and aggressive nature.

The play highlights the contrast between Blanche’s dreamlike world and Stanley’s harsh reality, showing how these opposing forces impact the characters’ lives. Williams uses the setting, characters, and dialogue to show the time's changing social and cultural dynamics. With its rich characters and emotional depth, A Streetcar Named Desire remains a classic that captures the complexities of human relationships and the struggles people face in a changing world.

One of the central themes of A Streetcar Named Desire is the struggle between reality and illusion, embodied primarily by Blanche. She is a character who constructs a fragile world of illusions to escape the harsh realities of her life. Her descent into mental instability reflects her inability to reconcile her past and present. Blanche’s lies about her age, her social status, and her relationships demonstrate her desperate attempts to cling to a romanticised vision of herself.

Scholars argue that Blanche’s illusions represent a broader commentary on the human tendency to avoid unpleasant truths. In contrast, Stanley Kowalski’s blunt and unapologetic approach to life represents a harsh reality. The inevitable clash between these two perspectives leads to Blanche’s psychological breakdown.

The title of the play itself suggests the centrality of desire as a driving force in the characters’ lives. Desire is depicted as a primal and often destructive force. Blanche’s previous life was marked by scandalous relationships that tarnished her reputation. Her arrival in New Orleans signifies her attempt to escape her past, but her actions with Mitch and her behaviour reveal that she is still driven by an uncontrollable yearning for validation and intimacy.

Stanley and Stella’s relationship is also rooted in physical desire, which serves as both a connection and a source of conflict. Stella’s attraction to Stanley’s raw masculinity often blinds her to his abusive tendencies. As critic Arthur Ganz states, “Williams portrays desire not as a romantic ideal but as an elemental force that binds and destroys.”

The play explores gender roles and power dynamics, particularly in the post-war American South. Stanley’s domineering and aggressive behaviour reflects traditional patriarchal values, while Blanche’s genteel demeanour represents outdated Southern ideals of femininity. The power struggle between these characters highlights the shifting societal roles of men and women.

Stanley’s assertion of dominance—physically, emotionally, and sexually—underscores his control over Stella and ultimately over Blanche. Meanwhile, Blanche’s attempts to assert her influence through manipulation and charm ultimately fail in the face of Stanley’s brute force. Feminist critics have noted that Blanche’s downfall symbolises the diminished power of women in a male-dominated society.

Class conflict is another prominent theme in the play, reflecting the economic and cultural shifts of mid-20th-century America. Blanche’s aristocratic background clashes with Stanley’s working-class ethos. The tension between them symbolises the decline of the old Southern aristocracy and the rise of a more egalitarian, industrial society.

Blanche’s disdain for Stanley’s coarse manners and her nostalgia for Belle Reve represent her longing for a bygone era. In contrast, Stanley’s disdain for Blanche’s pretensions reflects his rejection of class-based hierarchies. According to scholar Nancy Tischler, “The play’s class conflict is a microcosm of America’s broader social and economic transformation.”

Identity is a recurring theme, with characters struggling to define and maintain their sense of self. Blanche’s identity is particularly fragile, as she constantly reinvents herself to fit her desired image. Her attempts to mask her age, her financial struggles, and her tarnished reputation reveal her insecurity and dependence on others’ perceptions.

A Streetcar Named Desire is often classified as a modern tragedy, with Blanche as its tragic heroine. Her flaws—including her inability to adapt to changing social norms and her reliance on illusions—ultimately lead to her downfall. Williams’ use of tragic elements evokes both pity and fear, making Blanche a deeply sympathetic character despite her flaws.

Loneliness pervades the lives of the characters, particularly Blanche. Her alienation from society and her estrangement from her family leave her yearning for connection. Even Stanley, despite his domineering presence, reveals moments of vulnerability that suggest an underlying loneliness.

The play also critiques the American Dream, particularly through the character of Stanley. While Stanley embodies the promise of upward mobility and self-made success, his crude behaviour and lack of moral restraint undermine the ideal. Blanche’s downfall reflects the disillusionment of those who fail to achieve the dream. As critic Philip C. Kolin suggests, “Williams exposes the darker side of the American Dream, where ambition and desire often lead to exploitation and despair.”

Addison as an Essayist

 

Saintsburry refers to the age of Addison as the peace of the Augustans. It was in reality an era of tensions, tensions between the puritans and the courtly upper classes, and fierce political and civil strife. Unity and sanity were the urgent need of the hour and it was the mission of the Addison as a social reformer to bring about this sanity, the much needed order out of disorder, peace and harmony out of social strife. Court hope rightly calls Addison a great conciliator and David Daiches justly calls him a mediator between town and country, between landed gentry and prosperous citizens. It was the weapon of light ridicule against all aberrations from good breeding and

Common sense that Addison used: 1. To restore sanity  2. To reconcile parties  3. To found a sound public opinion and standard of judgment

It has been well establish that Addison and Steele aimed at social and moral reformation of the society in which they lived and moved. Addison avowed purpose and writing for the spectator was moral and ethical. But he also wanted to divert or amuse his readers. Addison so planned his essays as to make their instruction. Agreeable and their diversion useful to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality. He tried to proof that there was much good both in the puritan and the gentleman. He showed the courtiers, in a form of light literature which pleased their imagination, and with a grace and charm of manner that they were well qualified to appreciate, that true religion was not opposed to good breeding.

The refined upper classes were immoral, while the virtuous middle classes under puritan influence were fanatical. The puritans apposed all amusement as immoral and every gentle person for them was a veritable devil the very embodiment of immorality. Although Addison, in writing for the famous periodical which had been started by Steele called himself early a spectator, yet his real object was to play the role of a critic of the life and manners of his times. He set out to be a mild censor of the morals of the age and most of his compositions deal with topical subjects- fashions, head-dresses, practical jokes, indecency in conversation, gambling, drinking, swearing, cruelty, dwelling etc. he attacked the trivialities of life, and the follies and foibles of dress, of manners, or of thought. His aim in his own words was to point out those vices which are too trivial for the chastiment of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit. He was, therefore, an avowed social reformer but he had no desire to denounce or castigate the fools and the vicious people.

The very plan of the spectator club is intended to present to the readers a cross- section of English society. Every member of the club is a representative of a profession or trade or class of society. Thus sir Roger, a typical country squire of the old feudal order, represents country life, the Templers represents the legal, art and learning, captain sentry, the military. The spectator himself is an impartial observer of men and manners and he sees and records practically every aspect of life of the times.

The essay in the spectator covers a wide diversity of subjects. They are a faithful reflection of the life of the time viewed with an aloof and dispassionate observation. Addison stated his essentially moral intension when he declared his purpose of bringing philosophy out of closest and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables in coffee-houses.

It is chiefly through the character of Sir Roger that country life and country manners have been portrayed. In the old ideas of feudalism still persist. Through such papers as Sir Roger at home, Sir Roger at church, moll white every aspect of country life has been vividly represented. Many old ways of thinking still survive.

There are none to home; this paper will be more useful than to the female world, wrote Addison to the interest of the fair sex. Became one of the invariable convention of the periodical essay and there can be little doubt that the essays did much to improve the status and education of women. Here Steele is a better moralist than his collaborator.

Similarly he harmonized the code of wit and pleasure with that of virtue and religion, in the realm of art and literature. His penetrating wit, founded on truth and reason, was appreciated by the fashionable world. In all these aspects Addison is the voice of humanized Puritanism, the voice of a new and civilized urban life. He emphasized virtue but never went to the extreme of condemning all pleasure.

A similarly humanizing or civilizing role did Addison play in the realm of politics as well. He thus made a useful plea for moderation and tolerance for more civilized and human standards of conduct. Addison did not fail to exert a humanizing influence on the fierceness of party violence in his day.

The spectator is important also in so far as it established the essays as an honoured of literature. At least in the first half of the 18th century it became the dominant form. The spectator is important, next, as marking a definite stage in the evolution of the English novel. The essay series dealing with sir roger brings us with in measurable distance of the genuine 18th century novel. Finally, the spectator did a great service to English prose. It represents in this matter the indispensable 18th century. It was Addison who more than anyone else, invented, middle style something between the grave stately diction of formal writing and the free and easy speech of everyday, a style suited therefore, for addressing a wide circle of readers on a wide varieties of subject, un pretentious admirably clear dignified but never stilled Mr. Spectator and sir. Roger exchange visits and in this way the good and the admirable, as well as the eccentric and the frivolous, both in the town and the country are revealed. Thus the important of the work cannot be exaggerated. He laid down rational standards of conduct and formed sound public opinion.