Joseph Andrews: Comic Epic Poem in Prose

It is true that we can term “Joseph Andrews” as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’ because it has almost all the prerequisites that are important for labeling it as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’.

Fielding himself termed it as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’ in the “Preface to Joseph Andrews”. Fielding claimed that he was founding a new genre of writing but this was not entirely accurate. There was a long tradition of such writing before him, though it was not completely developed or established. According to Aristotle, Homer had produced a ‘comic epic in verse’ but again according to Aristotle verse is not the only criterion for poetry. Fielding has only combined the ideal of ‘comic epic’ and the ‘prose epic’ to produce what he termed as ‘comic epic poem in prose’.

An epic is a story of “a conspicuous man who falls from prosperity to adversity because of his some error of judgment i.e. Hamartia. His death is, however, not essential. But his fall arises a sense of pity and fear in us”. It also has heroic style and bombastic language. And a comic epic is just reverse to it in most of its prerequisites except a few.

A heroic epic has a conspicuous hero, grand theme, a continuous action, a journey to underworld, wars, digressions, discovery, high seriousness, a high moral lesson and bombastic diction in it and in “Joseph Andrews” there is an ordinary hero, a journey from one place to another place, mock-wars, digressions, discovery, humour, a high moral and a bombastic diction in it. So, it can be termed as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’. We can also call “Joseph Andrews” as “The Odyssey on the road” because both the works, Homer’s “Odyssey” and Fielding’s “Joseph Andrew” in the first place involve a journey. Like Odysseus, Joseph Andrews after the displeasure of a lady, who is superior from him in position and power, sets out on his way home and meets with many misfortunes on the way by the lady who has fallen in love with him. So it would be fairly justified to call “Joseph Andrews” an “Odyssey on the road”. Hence it is a ‘comic epic poem in prose’ as well.

Unlike a heroic epic, the hero of “Joseph Andrews” is an ordinary boy. He is a foot-man of Lady Booby who has fallen in love with him. But Joseph is very innocent and virtuous. Therefore, he leaves the service of the Lady and goes to meet his beloved Fanny. On the way he has to face many hardships.

Though the action of the novel is not as great as the action of an epic yet it is enough to term the novel a comic epic. Joseph sets out from London to Somersetshire to see Fanny. On the way, Joseph crosses many roads, highways, country sides, stays at many inns and meets many people; all this constitute a big action.

Through the journey of Joseph, Fielding satirizes the society of the day and ridicules them. The corrupt and hypocritical clergy, Parson Trilluber and Parson Barnabas, individual like Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop, the Squire of Fools and the Squire of False Promises have been satirized.

The element of wars is very important in an epic and it is no exception in “Joseph Andrews”. We see a war took place in an inn where Joseph was insulted by the host. Parson Adams was annoyed and challenged the host. There started the first war between both the parties. Soon Mrs. Slipslop and landlady also joined in the battle. There are many other epical elements in the novel to call it a comic epic.

Another epic convention is the use of digression. There are two major digressions in “Joseph Andrews”. There are, seemingly, irrelevant stories of Leonara and Mr. Wilson. Epic writers considered them as embellishments. Fielding, however, makes the interpolations thematically relevant. For, these are not irrelevant in reality.

The formula of discovery, as described by Aristotle, an essential element of an epic, has also been used by Fielding. In the end of the novel, we see that Joseph is recognized to be Mr. Wilson’s child and Fanny as the sister of virtuous Pamela.

High seriousness is an important element in epic. But in “Joseph Andrews” there is a great deal of comedy and humour, because it is a comic epic novel. But behind this comedy, there lies a serious purpose of reformation. We have a gamut of vain and hypocritical characters in Parson Trilluber, Parson Barnabas, passengers in the stage-coach, Mr. Tow-wouse, Mrs. Slipslop, Peter Pounce and the various Squires. The surgeon and the lawyer and the magistrate are also some other example of hypocrisy and vanity. Each of these characters provides a great deal of humour and amusement under a serious purpose.

Every epic has a moral lesson in it and this is no exception with a comic epic. Fielding’s views on morality are practical, full of common sense and tolerance, liberal, flexible and more realistic. These are devoid of prudish and rigid codes. Fielding wanted to tear the veil of vanity and hypocrisy.

The use of grand, bombastic and elevated language is an important element in an epic. It has heroic diction. But in “Joseph Andres” we see that Fielding has used prose for poetry because it brings us close to the real and actual life and it is much more suitable for Fielding’s purpose of dealing with human nature. However, his use of prose is very good, up to the mark and apt for his novel.

So, we can conclude that the theory of the ‘comic epic poem in prose’ as described by Fielding in the preface of “Joseph Andrews” manifests itself in the novel. Fielding has assimilate the rules and adapted them to his way of writing so well that we are not consciously aware of the formal principles which give unity to his materials. According to Thornbury, “Joseph Andrews” by Fielding is:

“An art which conceals art, but is the art of a conscious artist.”

It is true that in “Joseph Andrews”, the scale is not as large as one can except in an epic, though it has all other elements of a ‘comic epic poem in prose’, as claimed by Fielding.

S. T. Coleridge: Function of Poetry

Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then answers them. He also examines the ways in which poetry differs from other kinds of artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of a poem.

He begins by emphasizing the difference between prose and poetry.

“A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition.”

Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and a prose composition cannot lie in the medium, for each employs words. It must, therefore, “consists in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed.” A poem combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different.

“All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. You may take a piece of prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better.”

Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, “sounds and quantities”, yield a particular pleasure too, though not of a very high order. If one wants to give the name of poem to a composition of this kind, there is no reason why one should not. As Coleridge says:

“But we should note that, though such rhyming tags have the charm of metre and rhyme, metre and rhyme have been ‘superadded’; they do not arise from the nature of the content, but have been imposed on it in order to make it more easily memorized.”

The “Superficial form”, the externalities, provides no profound logical reason for distinguishing between different ways of handling language.

“A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction.”

The philosopher will seek to differentiate between two ways of handling language by asking what each seeks to achieve and how that aim determines its nature. “The immediate purpose may be the communication of truth or the communication of pleasure. The communication of truth might in turn yield a deep pleasure, but, Coleridge insists, one must distinguish between the ultimate and the immediate end.” Similarly, if the immediate aim be the communication of pleasure, truth may nevertheless be the ultimate end, and while in an ideal society nothing that was not truth could yield pleasure, in society as it always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure has always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure without having any concern with “truth, either moral or intellectual”.

“The proper kinds of distinction between different kinds of writing can thus be most logically discussed in terms of the difference in the immediate aim, or function, of each.”

The immediate aim of poetry is to give pleasure.

But, “The communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed” – in novels, for example. Do we make these into poems simply by superadding metre with or without rhyme? To which Coleridge replies by emphasizing a very important principle: you cannot derive true and permanent pleasure out of any feature or a work which does not arise naturally from the total nature of that work. “To ‘superadd’ metre is to provide merely a superficial decorative charm.” “Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it.” Rhyme and metre involve, “an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound” which in turn “are calculated to excite” a “perpetual and distinct attention to each part.” “A poem, therefore, must be an organic unity in the sense that, while we note and appreciate each part, to which the regular recurrence of accent and sound draw attention, our pleasure in the whole develops cumulatively out of such appreciation, which is at the same time pleasurable in itself and conductive to an awareness of the total pattern of the complete poem.”

“Thus a poem differs from a work of scientific prose in having as its immediate object pleasure and not truth, and it differs from other kinds of writing which have pleasure and not truth as their immediate object by the fact that in a poem the pleasure we take from the whole work in compatible with, and even led up to by the pleasure we take in each competent part.” Therefore, a legitimate poem is a composition, in which the rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work; in it, “parts mutually support and explain each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement.”

Thus Coleridge puts an end for good to the age old controversy whether the end of poetry is instruction or delight or both. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure, and further poetry has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of the whole.

Not only that, Coleridge also distinguishes a ‘Poem’ from ‘Poetry’. According to Shawcross:

“This distinction between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not very clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the Imagination.”

This is so because ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is an activity of the ‘poet’s’ mind, and a ‘poem’ is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination. As David Daiches points out:

“’Poetry’ for Coleridge is a wider category than that of ‘poem’; that is, poetry is a kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosophers or scientists and is not confined to those who employ metrical language, or even to those who employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this large sense, brings, ‘the whole soul of man’, into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its ‘relative worth and dignity’.”

This takes place whenever the ‘secondary imagination’ comes into operation. Whenever the synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this larger sense results.

“The employment of the secondary imagination is, a poetic activity, and we can see why Coleridge is led from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poet’s activity when we realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished by the activity of their imagination.”

A poem is always the work of a poet, of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the harmony of meaning, the reconciliation of opposites, and so on, which Coleridge so stresses; but a poem is also a specific work of art produced by a special handling of language.

The harmony and reconciliation resulting from the special kind of creative awareness achieved by the exercise of the imagination, cannot operate over an extended composition; one could not sustain that blending and balance, that reconciliation, “of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshens, with old and familiar objects”, and so on, for an indefinite period. A long poem, therefore, would not be all poetry. Indeed, Coleridge goes to the extent of saying that there is no such thing as a long poem. Rhyme and metre are appropriate to a poem considered in the larger sense of poetry, because they are means of achieving harmonization, reconciliation of opposites, and so forth, which, as we have seen, are objects of poetry in its widest imaginative meaning.

In a legitimate poem, i.e. in a poem which is poetry in the true sense of the word, there is perfect unity of form and content. The notion of such organic unity runs through all Coleridge’s pronouncements of poetry. Rhyme and Metre, are not pleasure superadded for,

“Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.”

Nothing that is, “superadded”, merely stuck on for ornament or decoration, can really please in a poem; every one of its characteristics must grow out of its whole nature and be an integral part of it. Rhyme and metre are integral to the poem, an essential part of it, because the pleasure of poetry is a special kind of pleasure, pleasure which results both from the parts and the whole, and the pleasure arising from the parts augments the pleasure of the whole. Thyme and metre are essential parts for by their, “recurrence of accent and sound”, they invite attention to the pleasure of each separate part, and thus add to the pleasure of the whole.

“When, therefore, metre is thus in consonance with the language and content of the poem, it excites a ‘perpetual and distinct attention to each part’, ‘by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited’, and carries the reader forward to the end ‘by the pleasurable’ activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. There is no stopping for him on the way, attracted by the parts; nor any hastening forward to the end, unattracted by the parts. It is one unbroken pleasure trip from the parts to the whole.”

Thus Coleridge's contribution to the theory of poetry is significant. First, he puts an end for good to the age old controversy between instruction and delight being the end of poetry, and establishes that pleasure is the end of the poetry, and that poetry has its own distinctive pleasure. Secondly, he explodes the neo-classical view of poetry as imitation, and shows that it is an activity of the imagination which in turn is a shaping and unifying power, which dissolves, dissipates and creates. Thirdly, he shows that in its very nature poetry must differ from prose. He controverts Wordsworth's view that ‘rhyme and metre’ are merely superadded, shows that they are an organic part of a poem in the real sense of the word.

Assignment of Short story

Introduction Of Author

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years' hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry. He never returned to Ireland or Britain.

Oscar Wilde’s rich and dramatic portrayals of the human condition came during the height of the Victorian Era that swept through London in the late 19th century. At a time when all citizens of Britain were finally able to embrace literature the wealthy and educated could only once afford, Wilde wrote many short stories, plays and poems that continue to inspire millions around the world.

Introduction Of Fairy Tale

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.”

{J. M. Barrie)

A fairy tale is a fictional story that may feature folkloric characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants, gnomes, and talking animals, and usually enchantments, often involving a far-fetched sequence of events. In modern-day parlance, the term is also used to describe something blessed with princesses, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy tale romance", though not all fairy tales end happily. Colloquially, a "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story. Fairy tales commonly attract young children since they easily understand the archetypal characters in the story.

Fairy tales are found in oral folktales and in literary form. The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace, because only the literary forms can survive. Still, the evidence of literary works at least indicates that fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, although not perhaps recognized as a genre; the name "fairy tale" was first ascribed to them by Madame d'Aulnoy. Literary fairy tales are found over the centuries all over the world, and when they collected them, folklorists found fairy tales in every culture. Fairy tales, and works derived from fairy tales, are still written today.

The older fairy tales were intended for an audience of adults as well as children, but they were associated with children as early as the writings of the précieuses; the Brothers Grimm titled their collection Children's and Household Tales, and the link with children has only grown stronger with time.

Characteristics of a fairy tale

These are some of the characteristics of a fairy tale

· Begins with once upon a time, once long ago, long, long ago etc.

· Unspecified place

· Universal appeal

· Simple plot

· Archetypal characters (no specific names)

· Morality (good vs. Bad, good is rewarded and evil is punished)

· Extreme conditions (beauty, riches, poverty etc.)

· Story has good / nice characters

· Many of the characters are animals or members of royalty

· Protagonist leaves home

· Encouragement of middle-class social values

· Happy ending (order is restored in the end)

The Happy Prince as A Fairy Tale

The happy prince is an interesting fairy tale. It is a romantic story burdened with deep meanings on various aspects of life. A fairy tale belongs to folk literature. It deals with the fortunes and misfortunes of a hero or heroine in a romantic and adventurous background. The happy prince is a fairy tale.

So we will find that why Oscar Wild’s “The Happy Prince” is regarded as a fairy tale. This story is said a fairy tale due to these following characteristics.

(I). One of the very important fairy tale attribute of “The happy Prince” is its universal appeal as being a part if the literature of all ages. In the modern era fairy tales were altered, so that they could be read or told to the children.

So the following story also has a universal appeal this is not written for a specific age of specific people, it is for all the time and all the ages. There is no specific name of the place or town and no specific name of the characters. For example we can see that the story starts with these words:

“HIGH above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword- hilt.”

So in these lines, there is no specific name of the sity or no specific name of the statue is mentioned. So this is an element of a fairy tale.

(II).Another important characteristic of a fairy tale is that has some supernatural elements. Actually, these supernatural elements make a story a fairy tale. These supernatural elements can be angles, fairies, talking animals or even God. In the following story the supernatural elements are the statue of the prince, the swallow, angles, leaden heart and God and heaven. These are the fundamental elements which make this story a fairy tale

(III). The detailed description of the happy prince creates the fairy tale atmosphere for example in the following passage:

“All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.”

Such isolated scenes described by the swallow create a whole atmosphere very much beyond the reality like a fairy tale. These passages and all the other minute details included by the writer enrich the story with the sinic beauty.

(IV). The simple language is also a common element of fairy tales, also found in ‘The Happy Prince.’ Because these tales are written, generally, for the children so the is necessary to write them in simple language. The alterations and the rhythmic words sometimes give rise to an almost poetic prose caring music and the rhythm. Due to these effects the story becomes more and more attractive. For example the following words are very much poetic:

"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me for one night, and be my messenger?”

(V). Except the simple language it also has very simple plot which is also an important feature of a fairy tale. Because these tales are especially written for the children so it is necessary to make them as simple as possible. In the story a swallow, who has delayed his migration to Egypt for the love of a reed, rests on the statue's plinth; the Prince is crying at the injustices he can now observe, having been isolated from the realities of his society while he was alive. The Prince asks the swallow to remove the ruby that adorns his sword, and give it to a poor seamstress with a sick child; the swallow does so. The swallow stays with the Prince over the ensuing weeks, distributing the jewels and gold from the Prince to the poor of the city. When the Prince is completely denuded of gold, the swallow realizes he is dying from cold; the Prince asks the swallow to kiss him on the lips. The swallow dies, and the Prince's lead heart breaks. The next day, the Mayor of the city observes the state of the statue, and orders it to be removed and melted down. The Prince's heart does not melt in the furnace, and it is discarded on to the same dust-heap where the swallow's body is lying:

(VI) According to the definition, ‘The Happy Prince’ is a fairy tale. Because, the description of the characters or the two main characters are unreal, the statue of the happy prince and the swallow. Moreover in our daily experience of life we do not find them talking. So this is another common quality of fairy tales that some inanimate things or animals behave like human being.

A very striking feature of fairy tale is that it shows extreme contrast. This contrast can be between poverty and richness, powerful and weak or any other contrast it can be. In the following story we can see the contrast is extreme richness and misery. At the one hand there are people who enjoy all the joys of life, they are spending there lives in marry making and they are unaware of other poor people, and at the other hand there are people who are in extreme miserable condition. These are the tow extreme sides of single society presented by Oscar Wild. As for example the little swallow tells the happy prince about the condition of his city in these words

“So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates…….”

(VII). All the fairy tales have happy ending in the favour of the protagonist. Same is the case in the following story. In the end of the story, although the mission of the happy prince is not completed but in the end is in their favour and they are taken in the heaven by the angles. The leaden heart of statue of the happy prince and the dead body of the swallow are the most precious things for the God. When the angles take these two things in the heaven God said them:

“You have rightly chosen," said God, "for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”

(VIII).The moral lesson is an essential feature of modern fairy tales. Because at this time the purpose of the literature is to preach the morality. Because of the rapid scientific progress materialism, social evils were also rapidly prevailing in the society. So in the following story we find we find a strong moral lesson of love and to help the poor. The story tells us that the real purpose of man’s life is to serve humanity. In this way we can get the real happiness.

Conclusion

“The Happy Prince” thus not only a contained the elements of a fairy tales but also encoded with poetical wisdom of its author. Many of the themes and ideas are wrapped in the story. It contained skillfully engraved the philosophy of its author, not only making the tale enjoyable but also emphysized into the writers heart, the leaden heart.” So we can conclude with these famous words of a critic about Oscar Wild:

“He left behind, as his essential contribution to literature, a large repertoire of jokes which survive because of their sheer neatness, and because of a certain intriguing uncertainty— which extends to Wilde himself— as to whether they really mean anything.”

(George Orwell)

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Hypocrisy of Imperialism

Heart of Darkness explores the issues surrounding imperialism in complicated ways. As Marlow travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station and finally up the river to the Inner Station, he encounters scenes of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery. At the very least, the incidental scenery of the book offers a harsh picture of colonial enterprise. The impetus behind Marlow’s adventures, too, has to do with the hypocrisy inherent in the rhetoric used to justify imperialism. The men who work for the Company describe what they do as “trade,” and their treatment of native Africans is part of a benevolent project of “civilization.” Kurtz, on the other hand, is open about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words “suppression” and “extermination”: he does not hide the fact that he rules through violence and intimidation. His perverse honesty leads to his downfall, as his success threatens to expose the evil practices behind European activity in Africa.

However, for Marlow as much as for Kurtz or for the Company, Africans in this book are mostly objects: Marlow refers to his helmsman as a piece of machinery, and Kurtz’s African mistress is at best a piece of statuary. It can be argued that Heart of Darkness participates in an oppression of nonwhites that is much more sinister and much harder to remedy than the open abuses of Kurtz or the Company’s men. Africans become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation. This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is ultimately more troubling.

Madness as a Result of Imperialism

Madness is closely linked to imperialism in this book. Africa is responsible for mental disintegration as well as for physical illness. Madness has two primary functions. First, it serves as an ironic device to engage the reader’s sympathies. Kurtz, Marlow is told from the beginning, is mad. However, as Marlow, and the reader, begin to form a more complete picture of Kurtz, it becomes apparent that his madness is only relative, that in the context of the Company insanity is difficult to define. Thus, both Marlow and the reader begin to sympathize with Kurtz and view the Company with suspicion. Madness also functions to establish the necessity of social fictions. Although social mores and explanatory justifications are shown throughout Heart of Darkness to be utterly false and even leading to evil, they are nevertheless necessary for both group harmony and individual security. Madness, in Heart of Darkness, is the result of being removed from one’s social context and allowed to be the sole arbiter of one’s own actions. Madness is thus linked not only to absolute power and a kind of moral genius but to man’s fundamental fallibility: Kurtz has no authority to whom he answers but himself, and this is more than any one man can bear.

The Absurdity of Evil

This novella is, above all, an exploration of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. It explodes the idea of the proverbial choice between the lesser of two evils. As the idealistic Marlow is forced to align himself with either the hypocritical and malicious colonial bureaucracy or the openly malevolent, rule-defying Kurtz, it becomes increasingly clear that to try to judge either alternative is an act of folly: how can moral standards or social values be relevant in judging evil? Is there such thing as insanity in a world that has already gone insane? The number of ridiculous situations Marlow witnesses act as reflections of the larger issue: at one station, for instance, he sees a man trying to carry water in a bucket with a large hole in it. At the Outer Station, he watches native laborers blast away at a hillside with no particular goal in mind. The absurd involves both insignificant silliness and life-or-death issues, often simultaneously. That the serious and the mundane are treated similarly suggests a profound moral confusion and a tremendous hypocrisy: it is terrifying that Kurtz’s homicidal megalomania and a leaky bucket provoke essentially the same reaction from Marlow.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Observation and Eavesdropping

Marlow gains a great deal of information by watching the world around him and by overhearing others’ conversations, as when he listens from the deck of the wrecked steamer to the manager of the Central Station and his uncle discussing Kurtz and the Russian trader. This phenomenon speaks to the impossibility of direct communication between individuals: information must come as the result of chance observation and astute interpretation. Words themselves fail to capture meaning adequately, and thus they must be taken in the context of their utterance. Another good example of this is Marlow’s conversation with the brickmaker, during which Marlow is able to figure out a good deal more than simply what the man has to say.

Interiors and Exteriors

Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of Darkness. As the narrator states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this world. Thus, Marlow is confronted with a series of exteriors and surfaces—the river’s banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtz’s broad forehead—that he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound source of knowledge than any falsely constructed interior “kernel.”

Darkness

Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title. However, it is difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Fog

Fog is a sort of corollary to darkness. Fog not only obscures but distorts: it gives one just enough information to begin making decisions but no way to judge the accuracy of that information, which often ends up being wrong. Marlow’s steamer is caught in the fog, meaning that he has no idea where he’s going and no idea whether peril or open water lies ahead.

The “Whited Sepulchre”

The “whited sepulchre” is probably Brussels, where the Company’s headquarters are located. A sepulchre implies death and confinement, and indeed Europe is the origin of the colonial enterprises that bring death to white men and to their colonial subjects; it is also governed by a set of reified social principles that both enable cruelty, dehumanization, and evil and prohibit change. The phrase “whited sepulchre” comes from the biblical Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew describes “whited sepulchres” as something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors within (the bodies of the dead); thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialism’s civilizing mission. (Belgian colonies, particularly the Congo, were notorious for the violence perpetuated against the natives.)

Women

Both Kurtz’s Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the values and the wealth of their respective societies can be displayed. Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of naïve illusions; although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial, as these naïve illusions are at the root of the social fictions that justify economic enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the women are the beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects upon which men can display their own success and status.

The River

The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of the continent without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to remain always separate or outside. Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by Marlow’s steamer as he travels upriver. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult, but the flow of water makes travel downriver, back toward “civilization,” rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlow’s struggles with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with which he journeys back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his “choice of nightmares.”

"The Mill on the Floss": The end of the novel

The end of “The Mill on the Floss” is the most controversial issue of the novel. It has been subjected to biting criticism as it is alleged to be illogical, unnatural and rapid. Lytton spots that “the end is weakly prepared”. To Henry James, the end is ‘defective and shocking’. Bennet views that ‘the end indicates the novelist’s desire to bring about poetic justice’. Eliot ‘cut the knot she was unable to unravel’. To be curt, the critics blame that the end seems abrupt and imposed and does not flow from incidents.
The end may have some defects; yet it can be defended and justified on subsequent levels.
Firstly, the end can be justified at an allegorical level. The novel is, in fact, written in the retrospect. In 1850’s, Eliot portrayed the simple and pure life of 1830’s, which was no longer in Eliot’s age. In the span of twenty years, its purity was greatly affected by urbanization and materialism. The Tulliver stands for that pure life of 1830’s. With the extinction of the Tullivers, she showed the death of an epoch and introduced material age through Wakem who is the representative of the materialistic age.
At an allegorical level, the end also implies that lack of harmony in human personality is fatal. Maggie was torn amid two extremes – impulsiveness and sense of duty. Maggie should have been given a chance to make a moral choice. But the conflict of her mind had become so strong that she couldn’t go either way. Her impulsiveness swayed her to marry Stephen but her sense of duty asked her to be faithful to Philip and Lucy. If she married Philip, she would be disloyal to her family. So she had to pay for the disharmony in human nature through death.
The end is valid at the symbolic level, too, where River Floss stands for the cause of sustenance as well as ruin for the Tullivers. Some critics view that despite being drowned in the Floss, Maggie could have been killed by some other way. But it couldn’t have been credible enough. Had Tom killed Maggie, it would have been sensational and against the theme of the novel i.e. emotional self-control. Had Maggie committed suicide, she would have been reduced to a foolish sappy girl which Eliot didn’t like. Natural death would have been least artistic. Eliot also wanted to reunite the brother and the sister before death which would have been impossible in normal situation. She also wanted to show that the Floss which gave birth to whole of miseries, itself put an end to all the sufferings.
Like Fielding, Eliot wrote to inculcate the moral into the people. Maggie gave up the virtues of Christian charity for the impulses of the flesh. Through Maggie’s death, Eliot showed that the love of the flesh was socially as well as morally explosive and led to the valley of death.
Like Austen, Eliot, too, does not set up fanciful ideals in her novels. She wants to teach that when ideal is lost, the penalty is death. Maggie wanted to be, all at once, dutiful and true to her love, which has a fanciful ideal; it did break and she met a tragic death.
She also wanted to make us aware of the threat of temptation. Maggie could not resist the temptation towards Stephen and went out for boating with him which resulted in her death.
From the personal point of view the end can be easily defended. Eliot had an indecent life with Lewis for about 24 years but she never accepted such a life. She never allowed her women to repeat such a lapse and punished them for the slightest slip. Maggie had biographical similarity with Eliot. Through pushing her, she, in fact, pushed herself.
The end is equally defendable at the social level. Eliot wanted to tell that when one is socially disreputed and humiliated, it is impossible for him to live a happy and reputable life in the society. Maggie had to meet death for she had already socially died.
Lastly, we may justify the end from the structural point of view. Eliot’s notion of unity is unlike other novelists. In Eliot’s case, complex and interdependent relationship is responsible for creating unity. But after creating such relationship, she is usually unable to untie and resolve it because it becomes inextricable. Then she cuts the knot, she is unable to unravel. She involved Maggie in inextricable relationship together with Tom, Philip, Lucy and Stephen to invest the novel with unity but when she found herself at a loss to resolve it, she achieved her object through the death of Maggie, for, after all, the novel had to reach its end.
It concludes that the bitter criticism with reference to the end of the novel is quite unqualified. It is mainly on the part of the 19th century. Today, in the 21st century, the critics are all praise for her. The end of the novel could be none, they view, but what she conceived.

Aristotle's Theory of Imitation

Aristotle did not invent the term “imitation”. Plato was the first to use the word in relation with poetry, but Aristotle breathed into it a new definite meaning. So poetic imitation is no longer considered mimicry, but is regarded as an act of imaginative creation by which the poet, drawing his material from the phenomenal world, makes something new out of it.

In Aristotle's view, principle of imitation unites poetry with other fine arts and is the common basis of all the fine arts. It thus differentiates the fine arts from the other category of arts. While Plato equated poetry with painting, Aristotle equates it with music. It is no longer a servile depiction of the appearance of things, but it becomes a representation of the passions and emotions of men which are also imitated by music. Thus Aristotle by his theory enlarged the scope of imitation. The poet imitates not the surface of things but the reality embedded within. In the very first chapter of the Poetic, Aristotle says:
Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, as also the music of the flute and the lyre in most of their forms, are in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ however, from one another in three respects – their medium, the objects and the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.
The medium of the poet and the painter are different. One imitates through form and colour, and the other through language, rhythm and harmony. The musician imitates through rhythm and harmony. Thus, poetry is more akin to music. Further, the manner of a poet may be purely narrative, as in the Epic, or depiction through action, as in drama. Even dramatic poetry is differentiated into tragedy and comedy accordingly as it imitates man as better or worse.

Aristotle says that the objects of poetic imitation are “men in action”. The poet represents men as worse than they are. He can represent men better than in real life based on material supplied by history and legend rather than by any living figure. The poet selects and orders his material and recreates reality. He brings order out of Chaos. The irrational or accidental is removed and attention is focused on the lasting and the significant. Thus he gives a truth of an ideal kind. His mind is not tied to reality:
It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened but what may happen – according to the laws of probability or necessity.
History tells us what actually happened; poetry what may happen. Poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. In this way, he exhibits the superiority of poetry over history. The poet freed from the tyranny of facts, takes a larger or general view of things, represents the universal in the particular and so shares the philosopher’s quest for ultimate truth. He thus equates poetry with philosophy and shows that both are means to a higher truth. By the word ‘universal’ Aristotle signifies:
How a person of a certain nature or type will, on a particular occasion, speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity.
The poet constantly rises from the particular to the general. He studies the particular and devises principles of general application. He exceeds the limits of life without violating the essential laws of human nature.

Elsewhere Aristotle says, “Art imitates Nature”. By ‘Nature’ he does not mean the outer world of created things but “the creative force, the productive principle of the universe.” Art reproduce mainly an inward process, a physical energy working outwards, deeds, incidents, situation, being included under it so far as these spring from an inward, act of will, or draw some activity of thought or feeling. He renders men, “as they ought to be”.

The poet imitates the creative process of nature, but the objects are “men in action”. Now the ‘action’ may be ‘external’ or ‘internal’. It may be the action within the soul caused by all that befalls a man. Thus, he brings human experiences, emotions and passions within the scope of poetic imitation. According to Aristotle's theory, moral qualities, characteristics, the permanent temper of the mind, the temporary emotions and feelings, are all action and so objects of poetic imitation.

Poetry may imitate men as better or worse than they are in real life or imitate as they really are. Tragedy and epic represent men on a heroic scale, better than they are, and comedy represents men of a lower type, worse than they are. Aristotle does not discuss the third possibility. It means that poetry does not aim at photographic realism. In this connection R. A. Scott-James points out that:
Aristotle knew nothing of the “realistic” or “fleshy” school of fiction – the school of Zola or of Gissing.
Abercrombie, in contrast, defends Aristotle for not discussing the third variant. He says:
It is just possible to imagine life exactly as it is, but the exciting thing is to imagine life as it might be, and it is then that imagination becomes an impulse capable of inspiring poetry.
Aristotle by his theory of imitation answers the charge of Plato that poetry is an imitation of “shadow of shadows”, thrice removed from truth, and that the poet beguiles us with lies. Plato condemned poetry that in the very nature of things poets have no idea of truth. The phenomenal world is not the reality but a copy of the reality in the mind of the Supreme. The poet imitates the objects and phenomena of the world, which are shadowy and unreal. Poetry is, therefore, “the mother of lies”.

Aristotle, on the contrary, tells us that art imitates not the mere shows of things, but the ‘ideal reality’ embodied in very object of the world. The process of nature is a ‘creative process’; everywhere in ‘nature there is a ceaseless and upward progress’ in everything, and the poet imitates this upward movement of nature. Art reproduces the original not as it is, but as it appears to the senses. Art moves in a world of images, and reproduces the external, according to the idea or image in his mind. Thus the poet does not copy the external world, but creates according to his ‘idea’ of it. Thus even an ugly object well-imitated becomes a source of pleasure. We are told in “The Poetics”:
Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity; such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and dead bodies.
The real and the ideal from Aristotle's point of view are not opposites; the ideal is the real, shorn of chance and accident, a purified form of reality. And it is this higher ‘reality’ which is the object of poetic imitation. Idealization is achieved by divesting the real of all that is accidental, transient and particular. Poetry thus imitates the ideal and the universal; it is an “idealized representation of character, emotion, action – under forms manifest in sense.” Poetic truth, therefore, is higher than historical truth. Poetry is more philosophical, more conducive to understanding than Philosophy itself.

Thus Aristotle successfully and finally refuted the charge of Plato and provided a defence of poetry which has ever since been used by lovers of poetry in justification of their Muse. He breathed new life and soul into the concept of poetic imitation and showed that it is, in reality, a creative process.