Hold Fast to Our Belief

Abstract：

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a well-known realistic work of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It revolves around a long suffering slave Uncle Tom to develop its plot and delineates the life of his surrounding slaves sand slaveholders. This novel exposes the evil of slavery and also exalts the vital role of strong belief in one’s life.

 

Key word: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom, Belief

Harriet Beecher Stowe is an American author and abolitionist. Her father Lyman was a renowned clergyman. In her childhood, she was greatly influenced by Calvinism because of her relation with her father. In her youth, due to her Uncle Samuel Ford’s influence, she adopted the liberalism belief. She was fond of reading the romantic novels of Scott，Sir Walter, which was saliently reflected in her later works. In 1832, she along with her family moved to Cincinnati where she taught at a Girl’s School and wrote some life essays about New England. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, one of the leading professors at Lane. During this time, her visit to Kentucky make her witness slaves’ life, which provides the material for her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The strong anti-slavery sentiment at her father’s school impacted her much. This sentiment becomes the mood of her novel. Harriet returned to New England in 1850 when her husband took a professorship at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Partly inspired by the moral outrage she greeted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, partly liberated by her return to her New England roots, she availed of the free time to conceive Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin depicted life of African-American under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. The novel’s great effects on the readers made her get a smashing success. Abraham Lincoln once praised her, “It is you the little woman started the Civil War.” It is really a very influential masterpiece for it energized anti-slavery forces in the North American, while provoking widespread anger in the south. Her writing may be sentimental and her understanding of the slaves may be limited, but she has used her sentimentality for serious purposes.

Stowe is also a religious abolitionist. She claimed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a Christian book, written by God Himself, with her pen as His medium. She preaches the virtue of submission to God will.

 

 

 

Plot:

The serious financial problems harass Arthur Shelby, a plantation owner in Kentucky .Though he treats their slaves kindly, he still decides to sell slaves to a slave trader, Harley, to raise much-needed money. The slaves to be sold to Haley are Uncle Tom and Harry Harris. His wife, Emily is very benevolent to their slaves so when she learns her husband’s decision, she feels appalled for she knows it will mean breaking up the family. Tom has to be separated from his wife, Aunt Chloe, the plantation’s cook, and from his children. Harry has to be separated from his parents. His mother, Eliza, a beautiful quadroon, is Mrs. Shelby’s maid. His father is George, a slave at a nearby farm.

Eliza decides to escape with her son but Tom decides to stay put out of concern for the Shelbys when they know the news. Meanwhile Eliza’s husband, who can’t bear his master’s cruelness has also decided to flee and is to meet up with Eliza in Canada. 

During their formidable flight, Eliza and Harry are tracked by Haley and his trackers. Because of Haley’s closing track and her fear of losing Harry, Eliza amazingly crosses the river by jumping from one ice flow to another. She meets a lot of hardships but luckily she gets many help from some kind people. Coincidentally, she also gets reunited with her husband George happily. With the company of the Quakers, they leave for Canada. But Loker and Marks still capture Eliza and her family. It obliges George to shoot at Loker. Eliza is afraid that Loker will die and persuades George to send him to make him better at the nearby Quakers settlement.

Meanwhile, on the way down the Mississippi, Tom saves a little white girl Eva after she falls overboard. Eva had once urged her father, Augustine St. Clare, to buy Tom. He fulfills her wish. Tom finds life on the St. Clare plantation agreeable, for although he is head coachman he spends most of his time with Little Eva.

St. Clare has brought his cousin, Miss Ophelia, to run the household. But St. Clare and his cousin Miss Ophelia bicker with each other over the different opinions on slavery. Miss Ophelia opposes slavery but dislikes blacks while St. Clare thinks he has no prejudice against the black even though he is a slaveholder. In order to convince her cousin to believe her prejudice against the black is wrong, he buys slave child named Topsy and asks her to train Topsy.

Over the next two years, life is generally happy at the mansion. Besides St. Clare comes to understand the evils of slavery and decides to make Tom a free man and Miss Ophelia starts to overcome her prejudice against blacks. The changes are due in no small part to the influence of little Eva and Tom, who see the goodness in everyone. Unfortunately, little Eva takes sick and dies. Later St. Clare is also killed in an incident. In the consequent, his promise to free Tom is never fulfilled.

     His wife sells Tom to an extremely cruel slave owner, Simon Legree, who beats his blacks mercilessly and uses slave women to satisfy his lust. 

Although Tom has had bad luck, Eliza and George have had good luck on the trip to freedom and at last they have reached Canada safely.

When Tom refuses to carry out his master’s order, as expected to whip others, Legree feels very angry, whips him seriously and decides to overwhelm Tom’s religious belief. But Tom still refuses to stop reading the Bible and also takes all his length to comfort other slaves there. In this plantation, Tom meets two slave women Cassy who is used as a mistress by Legree, and Emmeline whom he plans to rape.

Cassy tries to talk Tom into killing Legree one night, but Tom refuses. Tom then encourages Cassy to run with Emmeline but he will still stay there for he believes God will save him. Cassy and Emmeline conspire to play supernatural tricks on Legree to wear him down until it the right time for them to flee. Legree fails to find the escapees and he orders him to tell what he knows. When Tom is unresponsive, Legree whips him to death.

George Shelby who has been looking for Tom arrives there but he only finds Tom dies remarkably without any complain in his heart. Legree slips into a serious illness after Cassy and Emmeline haunt the house. They take advantage of it and escape finally. 

Happily, they come across George Shelby and Emily de Thoux, who turns out to be the sister of George Harris, Eliza’s husband on the way to their freedom. In the ensuing conversation between them, it reveals that Cassy is Eliza’s mother. The three women go to Canada, where they reunite with George and Eliza and later they leave Canada for Africa, where they establish a colony for former slaves. After George Shelby reaches Kentucky, he frees his slaves and tells them to remember Tom’s sacrifice and his pious religious belief.

 

Character analyses of main characters:

Uncle Tom: In the early time of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom, the protagonist in the novel, is deemed as an honorable, steadfast and persevering Christian slave. However, in recent years, his name has become a nickname of those African Americans who are blamed to go and seek refugee with the white race. However, the real intention of Stowe is to mold him as a noble and admirable hero. In the work, Uncle Tom endures the affliction of being exploited but he still sticks to his belief even refusing to curse those who treat him cruelly. At last, his enemy also has to revere him.

Eliza Harris：She is a slave and maid of Emily Shelby. Realizing her five-year-old son, Harry, will be sold to the slave trader, Haley, she runs away with her son to the North. In Ohio, she meets her husband, George Harris again. Their family at last immigrates to Canada and then they go to France. Finally, they settle down in Lybia.

Eva: Her full name is Evangeline St. Clare. When Uncle Tom is on the way to New Orleans, Eva appears into the story. When the five-year-old little girl falls into the river, Uncle Tom saves her bravely. Eva entreats his father to but Tom and she likes Tom very much. Eva often talks about something about love and forgiveness. She even persuades the stubborn slave girl, Topsy, to believe she could get love. Part of people thinks she is the role prototype of Mary Sue.

Simon Legree: He born in the north of America is an extremely cruel slave overseer. He buys Uncle Tom after Augustine St. Clare dies. He has an intention to defeat uncle Tom’s faith.

Topsy: She is a ragged slave girl bought by Augustine St. Clare. When asked who created her, she thinks no one creates her and believes she is created by herself. In the late times, she is moved by Eva’s love and changes her mind.

Arthur Shelby: He is the slave owner of Uncle Tom in Kentucky. He is depicted as a kind slaveholder and traditional southern gentleman. Though he treats Tom and other slaves well, he refused to renounce the slavery. He sells Tom and a slave boy, Harry, in order to avoid his financial ruin.

Emily Shelby: She is Arthur’s wife. She believes in Christianity deeply and also tries to influence her slaves by her benevolence and morality. She is appalled by her husband’s decision to sell slaves. As a woman, she has no legal status to avert that because all the property belongs to her husband.

George Shelby: He is the son of Arthur Shelby and Emily Shelby. He treats Tom as his mentor and is also a very pious Christian. After he grows up, he finds Tom just before he dies and buries him. When returning to his home, he frees his slaves.

Augustine St. Clare: He is the second master of Uncle Tom and the father of little Eva. He is the most merciful slave owner in the novel. He has realized the evil of slavery. After his daughter’s death, he becomes more religious and also read the Bible to Tom and decides to make Tom a free man. But before carrying out his good will, he is killed in an incident.

George Harris: He is Eliza’s husband and lives on a neighboring plantation. He is also a brilliant man. His owner becomes jealous and demotes him from his factory job to doing hard labor on the plantation and at last he runs away.

Harry Harris: He is the Son of George and Eliza Harris.

Tom Loker: An impertinent slave hunter.

Marks: Slave hunter, friend of Tom Loker.

Marie St. Clare: She is the Augustine’s niggling wife. 

Miss Ophelia: She is the cousin of St. Clare. She runs households in St. Clare’s home.

Cassy, Emmeline: They are slaves in Legree’s house who conspire against him. Cassy is Eliza’s mother.

Emily de Thoux: She is the sister of George Harris.

 

Comment:

A famous saying goes, in one’s lifetime, one who can hold fast to his belief is undoubtedly a respectable man. After appreciating Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I contemplate this saying again and have a better understand of it for several characters in this novel leave me that impression as a sacred warrior who clings to and guards their belief. I am really startled by their firm belief since with their belief in heart whatever suffering they confront seems trifling and tractable.

Due to their firmly clinging to their belief, Eliza and her husband George made their great effort and finally realized their goals. Take Eliza for example. Her belief of pursing family reunion happiness helps her to pluck up courage to fight for their basic right and relieves her suffering from her obstacle. On hearing Mr. and Mrs. Shelby talking about selling her little Harry secretly, Eliza decided to take Harry away by herself. Though her hostess educated her and treated her very well, though she was soft and mild, in order not to break up with her only child, she ran away. Nobody will forget the scene of Eliza’s jumping onto the fragment of the ice on the river. When the slave traders were chasing after her, with wild and cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another ice; she stumbled, leaped, slipped and sprang upwards bravely! Her shoes were gone, her stockings cut from her feet and blood marked every step; but she never gave up and still struggled for son and their freedom. What a miracle! She crossed that river, which astonished everyone.

No one will deny Uncle Tom’s pious religious belief. His good quality is very salient to everyone. The more I become exposed to the character Uncle Tom, the more I respect him. He is really a faithful believer in Christianity and he did not fall short of his master’s expectation or do anything he thought to be ashamed.

At the very beginning of the story, Mr. Shelby, Tom’s first master, wanted to sell Tom. When people asked why he did not escape, his answer was that master trusted me, and I couldn’t leave him like that. Because Tom, a faithful Christian, believes god tells him that he should stay put out of concern for the Shelbys. When Cassy asked him to escape with her, he urged Cassy to escape with Emmeline but said he himself could not join them, for he believed God wanted him to stay and gave comfort to the other slaves. Such was Uncle Tom. I cannot get such an honest and upright image out of my mind. He held to his religious faith so firmly that even the most dreadful death can not break up. He is an audacious hero that makes people long to forget.

His firm belief makes us feel he is really sacred. Many people may feel confused at why Tom refused to escape for several times. Does it mean he doesn’t want to struggle for freedom? The answer is definite” No”. One illustration can tell us that he never gives up his freedom. We can see after St. Clare dies he asks Miss Ophelia to talk with Marie St. Clare to help him to become a free man. For several times, he chooses not to escape due to his firm religious faith. Though Tom is deprived of freedom and is a restricted man all his life, we can not deny he is actually always a free man in the analysis of Tom’s mentality. When he was tortured by the cruel slaveholder Legree, he never surrendered. He told Legree that he could take his body but he could never take his soul for it belonged to God. When he was at the last gasp, he still tried to exhort Legree to be kind so god would forgive him and even died without spite. Because of his firm belief he could be so peaceful no matter what evils he confronts.

We feel pitiful for Uncle Tom’s death, but he was remembered by all the slaves and his sprit is highly priced. When Tom’s young master, George, came back to his home after Tom’s death, he gathered all the slaves and handed each of them a bundle of papers containing a certificate of freedom on the place. He freed all the slaves and claimed that he would never have any slaves. He reminded us that every time we rejoice in our freedom, think that we owe it to that good old Uncle Tom. Think of our freedom, every time we see Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that warm and loving place. It is his great belief that impinges over people’s free will and kindness.

The belief we have is of great significance to our life. It will support us whenever we are caught up in rough conditions; it will help us get out of the dark to see the sunrise and it will teach us how to adapt ourselves to different circumstances. Life is full of ups and downs. We should hold fast to our belief to fight against the setback which seems invincible sometimes to realize our goals! With strong belief, we will found that hardship is just a paper tiger.

Conclusion:

   The novel is initially written in English. Those words seem to be “tailor-made”, each irreplaceable by any others. Every word finds its place in the sentence. Not only its words, but also the philosophical ideas and historical meaningfulness it embodies deserve our contemplating and pondering. If we could hold fast to our belief as firmly as Uncle Tom, Eliza and so on, we can conquer a lot of difficulties in our life and approach nearer to our goals.

Who “kills” Tess D’Urbervilles

Introduction:

1. Brief introduction of the author Thomas Hardy
2. 2.     An introduction of the novel

   
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 

 
 
Thomas Hardy（1840-1928），son of a mason, was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton in Dorset, a rural region of southwestern England. At the age of sixteen, Hardy was apprenticed to John Hicks, an architect who lived in the city of

Dorchester. Six years later he went to London to work for a famous architect. During his spare time, he studied widely: language, literature, history, philosophy and art, and he won two prizes for essays on architectural subjects. But architecture was never his desired profession. Soon he turned to literary creation. He spent nearly a dozen years toiling in obscurity and producing unsuccessful novels and poetry. In 1871, his first novel “Desperate Remedies” was published and well received. His “Under the Greenwood Tree” (1872) and “A pair of Blue Eye”(1873) are the most interesting idyrllic love stories. Then the Madding Crowd was published in 1874, it was the author’s first critical and financial success and finally able to support himself as a writer. “The Return of the Native” (1878) and “The Woodlanders”(1887) are generally regarded as his masterpieces; but “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”(1891) and “Jude the Obscure”(1895) are better expressions of Hardy’ literary art and of his gloomy philosophy. His other novels include “The Trumpet Major” (1880) and “The major of Casterbrige” (1886). He also wrote many poems. His “Wessx poems”, a collection of some lyrics, was published 1898. 

     His style: Hardy seems to belong to the present rather than to a resent age.

In style, Hardy is direct and simple, aiming at realism in all things. Hardy makes man an insignificant part of the world, struggling against powers greater than himself. Sometimes against systems which he cannot reach or influence, sometimes against a kind of grim world-spirit who delights in making human affairs go wrong. He is, therefore, Hardy a realist, hut rather a man blinded by pessimism; and his novels, though generally powerful and sometimes fascinating , are not pleasant or wholesome reading.

A.  Main characters

Tess Durbeyfield

 

Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate intensity, Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her name, formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her life. Other characters often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel calls her a “Daughter of Nature” or refers to her by the Greek mythological names “Artemis” and “Demeter” The narrator himself sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual woman, but as something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. Tess’s story may thus be a “standard” story, representing a deeper and larger experience than that of a single individual.

In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late nineteenth century. Possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has passed the Sixth Standard of the National Schools, Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of her predecessors, but financial constraints keep her from rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that higher world, however, as we discover on the first page of the novel with the news that the Durbeyfields are the surviving members of the noble and ancient family of the d’Urbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tess’s blood, visible in her graceful beauty—yet she is forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid. When she tries to express her joy by singing lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the third part of the novel, they do not satisfy her—she seems not quite comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the other hand, her diction, while more polished than her mother’s, is not quite up to the level of Alec’s or Angel’s. She is in between, both socially and culturally. Thus, Tess is a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain, where old family lines retained their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility.

 

Alec d’Urberville

 

An insouciant twenty-four-year-old man, heir to a fortune , and bearer of a name that his father purchased, Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tess’s life. His first name, Alexander, suggests the conqueror—as in Alexander the Great—who seizes what he wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he is more slippery than a grand conqueror. His full last name, Stoke-d’Urberville, symbolizes the split character of his family, whose origins are simpler than their pretensions to grandeur. After all, Stokes is a blunt and inelegant name. Indeed, the divided and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end of the novel, when he quickly abandons his newfound Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard to believe Alec holds his religion, or anything else, sincerely. His supposed conversion may only be a new role he is playing.

This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec, and its consequences for Tess so severe, that he becomes diabolical. Some readers feel Alec is too wicked to be believable, but, like Tess herself, he represents a larger moral principle rather than a real individual man.

 

Angel Clare

 

A freethinking son born into the family of a provincial parson and determined to set himself up as a farmer instead of going to Cambridge like his conformist brothers, Angel represents a rebellious striving toward a personal vision of goodness. He is a secularist who yearns to work for the “honor and glory of man,” as he tells his father, rather than for the honor and glory of God in a more distant world. A typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel sees human society as a thing to be remolded and improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects the values handed to him, and sets off in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his disdain for tradition. This independent spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general attractiveness that makes him the love object of all the milkmaids with whom he works at.

 

B. plot

Rising action

Tess’s family’s discovery that they are ancient English aristocracy, giving them all fantasies of a higher station in life; Tess’s accidental killing of the family horse, which drives her to seek help from the d’Urbervilles, where she is seduced and dishonored.

 

Climax

Tess’s new husband discovers her earlier seduction by Alec and decides to leave her, going off to Brazil and not answering her letters, and bringing Tess to despair.

 

Falling Action

Tess’s last-ditch decision to marry Alec, who claims to love her; Angel’s return from Brazil to discover Tess marriage to her former seducer, and his meeting with Tess; Tess’s murder of Alec and short-lived escape with Angel before being apprehended and executed.

Analysis of the causes of Tess’s Tragedy:

The external reasons

 

The social environmental influence is the most essential reason of Tess’s tragedy. On one hand, during Tess’s time, the industrialization of the cities was diminishing the quality of life of the inhabitants of rural areas. “England entered an agricultural depression in 1870s, brought on in part by the completion of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States. This made it easier and cheaper for American goods to compete with British goods. ”¹ Industrialization made rural life depressed. Besides the machines, like the steam threshing machine at Flintcomb-Ash, made agricultural workers less in demand. Many rural workers were unable to get job and throw them into poverty. On the other hand, “At the end of 19th century, capitalism prevailed in the whole England that made broad masses of peasant went bankrupt and then they had to live in poverty and grave situation.”²The capitalism brings a great harm to the rural and agricultural life of the place. The self-supporting peasants are displaced. They are extremely poor and live a very miserable life. Born as a daughter of a peasant’s family, Tess also suffered very much from the industrialized and capitalist society. Family poverty put the heavy duty upon the shoulders of young Tess. The death of the horse destroyed the family’s livelihood which forced Tess to go to see their cousin and worked there as an employee of Alec. With no means to maintain their daily existence, Tess had to claim kin against her own will at the expense of her own pride and dignity. The employment by Alec is the beginning of Tess’s tragedy. If she had not been worked under Alec, she won’t be seduced or raped by Alec, and there would not the consequent tragedy happened to Tess. Again, it is poverty which, when her father dies, drives Tess back to the arms of Alec, ruining her last chance of happiness. So the essential reason of Tess’s tragedy is brought to her by the society. The poverty of Tess’s family to which the society brought is the inevitable cause of Tess’s tragedy.

The external reasons also related to four people who are involved in Tess’s tragedy tightly. They are Tess’s father and mother, Alec d’Urbervilles and Angel Clare.

Tess’s father Jack beyfild is lazy, ignorant, incapable and selfish who just think of himself. Also he is a drinker. He could have supported the family by himself if he had not been so proud about being descendants of the famous d’Urbervilles family. After Tess’s father learned that he was descendant of a noble family, he became indolent and sluggish. He had never done more work than was necessary to keep his family. Even though his family was very poor, he never took the responsibility to make his family live better life but was addicted to alcohol. So Tess, the oldest daughter of this family, was obliged to take the duty of supporting her family. Tess’s father’s irresponsibility forced Tess to go into the way towards tragedy.

Tess’s mother also played an important role in the cause of Tess’s tragedy. Tess is innocent without experiences. Her mother should have informed her of the dangers of a man for a woman when Tess’s innocence is at risk. Instead of educating Tess properly about danger of some men she only hoped that Tess would make a good impression on the rich d’Urbervilles and perhaps a good marriage with one of the son. She is also an irresponsible character. She only cared about her own happiness rather than her daughter’s. She should have thought over that Alec may cause danger to her daughter Tess and protected her from being hurt. But actually she didn’t. So Tess’s seduction is indirectly caused by her mother.

Alec, a wicked character, caused Tess’s tragedy directly. He is lecher, a fraud as well as a morally corrupt person. He took advantage of Tess’s innocence and helplessness to set a trap to seduce her and rape her. He added the most to Tess’s tragic life because he got Tess pregnant. Although her child died soon after his born, this incident played a crucial role in her marriage to Angel. Innocence is crucial for a woman at that time of the society but Alec robbed all Tess’s right to happiness since he raped her. The affair with Alec made Angel who Tess fell in love with deserted Tess after his learning of Tess’s past. Tess lost the final opportunity to live a happy life as Angel abandoned her. Alec just cared about himself and his needs more than others. He even did wrong to others to benefit for himself. Alec is possessive of Tess although she is technically married to Angel. He exemplifies this point when he says, “remember, my lady, I was your master once, I will be your master again. If you are any man’s wife you are mine!”³ This line again represents Alec’s characteristic of selfishness.

Angel Clare is an opposite of Alec who is educated, reserved and subtle but also adds to Tess’s tragedy though he is the person Tess loves deeply. Angel is important in forming part of the environment which brings ruin to Tess. He went to woo Tess, deserted her for her past, and finally, recognizing her spiritual purity, he returns to her. This fluctuation on the part of Angel is one of the most important causal factors in the development of Tess’s character and her final ruin. Before the acquaintance of Angel, Tess suffered very much from her tragic life but Angel enlightened Tess’s final hope for happiness. But Angel’s desertion of Tess made Tess’s life a completely tragedy. Angel had an idea of egoism, even though, he himself was not a pure man, and he could not to accept Tess who was not a really pure bride. Angel idealizes her as the incarnation of innocence, purity and virginity, yet fails to see that Tess’s beauty lies more in her spiritual power which she has gained from her past sufferings. Angel is the slave to custom and conventionality and so the idealist can not face reality and leaves Tess which was a deathblow to innocent woman Tess.

 

 

The internal reasons

 

Tess’s tragedy is partly caused by the character of herself. Tess was a girl of integrity and of purity in her heart without experience. “Much of her suffering is due to an inner conflict between her longing for happiness, a right given by nature, and her conscience, forced upon her by society.”⁴ Tess struggles bravely against her destiny and the conventional morality. She desires for happiness and true love. Although she is courageous enough to set out, after suffering the initial consequences of the seduction or rape, for a better life, she can not completely get rid of social conventions and moral standard of the day, which makes her believe that she has to pay for what she has sinned. She always felt guilty after being raped by Alec. When she fell in love with Angel Clare, she hesitated in acknowledging her love for Angel because she thought of herself had no right to be Mrs. Angel Clare for her past but her longing for happiness and true love made her accept Angel Clare’s propose. The eager for happiness and true love indulged Tess’s love for Angel and the sense of guilt made Tess submit to Angel’s abandonment of her without any resistance, thinking she deserved it, which turned her tragedy from bad to worse. Undoubtedly, this kind of character of Tess helps to create the tragedy.

Tess’s fate is another reason for her tragedy. Tess’s tragic fate is firmly built up in the novel. Tess involved in the mysterious fate which leads to the tragedy step by step. Her misfortune started from the poverty of her family which forced her to work under Alec who later seduced her. If it hadn’t been for the duty of supporting her family, Tess would not meet Alec who is of wickedness. The acquaintance of Alec is Tess’s fate to some extent. “Hardy makes sure that no one reason for Tess’s fate can stand out among the many offered, because no one choice Tess might have made could have redirected her life.…… A series of relatively minor and logically unrelated events and facts are responsible for her fate, everything from her mother’s not educating her properly about designs of some men, to the death of Prince, her family’s horse, to Angel’s not selecting her from the dancers at the star. ”⁵ So Tess’s fate is an inevitable reason for her tragedy.

 

 

 

Conclusion:

Hardy portrayed Tess as a pure and innocent woman who has the quality of endurance and self-sacrifice. Through the above analysis, it is obvious that Tess was the victim of the society and her poor family. The cause of Tess’s tragedy rooted in the cruel social environment and the poverty of her family. Her character and fate also helps to create her tragedy in a way. As well as the outside influences which refers to the cause by Tess’s parents, Alec and Angel are the inevitable reason for Tess’s tragedy. Anyway Tess’s pathetic and miserable tragedy was caused by many means and impressed and moved readers deeply.

For Thee the Bell Tolls

Abstract：

Death and survival, are both very important issues in our life. And death is the eternal topic that we human beings can never avoid to talking about. Human are grumbling the momentary of life, the passage of time, and we are also actively thinking about what kind of attitude should be taken to face the death. In Hemingway’s work, For Whom the Bell Tolls, the death is reflected extremely vividly. This article is going to try to analysis the existentialism death view and  Hemingway’s death philosophy, which takes Hemingway’s work as the basis.

 

 

Key word:

Death,    Hemingway,   value of life,   war

 

 

Why did you choose this particular book?

1. The auther is very famous.

2. I haven’t read any novels in origin, this book will not be too difficult for me.

3. I have watched a movie which is an adaptation of the noval. And it is a property of matter to attract.

4. It was on a required reading list.

 

1. Brief Introduction of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement which made a great influence on the 20th-century fictions. Most of his works had been created between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. And in 1954, he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature because of his masterpiece, The Old Man and the Sea. The explanation of Hemingway’s fiction was successful is that the characters from his fictions he presented exhibited authenticity. And that’s also the reason that lots of his works are classics of American literature. Duiring his career, he had published 7 novels, 6 short story collections, and 2 non-fiction works. And there were further 3 novels, 4 collections of short stories, and 3 non-fiction works after he passed away.

Hemingway was born and raised in Oak Park. After leaving high school for working as a reporter a few months, then he left to the Italian to become an driver of ambulance during WWI, which became the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. During that period, he was badly wounded then backed home. In 1922 Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. Later they moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent. During that time, re he met and was influenced by the modernist writers which known as the “Lost Generation”. And then his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in 1926.

After divorcing with Hadley in 1927, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer. But they divorced after Hemingway’s back from the Spanish Civil War, the time which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940, but he left her for Mary Welsh after the WWII.

Shortly after Hemingway publicated The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, he went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he moved from Cuba to Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

 

2. Plot summary

This novel is presented primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan, which was inspired by Hemingway’s own experiences in the Spanish Civil War.

There is a easant named Anselmo guideert Jordan to the guerrilla camp, which is hidden in a cave. Along the way, they encounter Pablo, the leader of the camp, who greets Robert Jordan with hostility and opposes the bridge operation because he believes it’s dangerous. Robertsuspects that Pablo may betray or sabotage the mission.

In the camp, Robert Jordan meets Pilar, Pablo’s “woman”, who seems to be the real leader of the band guerrilleros. In the evening, Robert meets six other residents of the camp. The camp shelters a young woman named Maria, one of the fascist band raped not long age. Robert Jordan and Maria immediately attracted to each other.

The next morning, Jordan is led through the forest by Pilar for consultation with El Sordo, the guerrilleros and the leader of another band on the bridge operation. Together they take Maria. El Sordo agreed to help the mission.

In the next morning, Robert Jordan wakes to see a Fascist cavalryman, and shoots him immediately. After finishing the breakfast, the group hears the sounds of a fight in the distance, which Robert Jordan believes that the Fascists are attacking El Sordo’s camp right now. Otheres want to give a hand to El Sordo, but Robert Jordan and Pilar know that is helpless and reject them.

The scene shifts to El Sordo’s hill, which a group of Fascists is fighting with them. El Sordo’s men play dead and manage to shoot one of the Fascist captains.

Time moves on, at the second morning, Pilar wakes Robert Jordan and tells him that Pablo has fled the camp with some of the explosives which are important to the blowing the bridge. Being furious angry at first, Robert Jordan controls his anger and plans to carry out the operation anyway. To Jordan’s surprised, Pablo suddenly backs before dawn, claiming that he left because of a moment of weakness. He says that he threw the explosives into the river and felt great loneliness after doing so. He has brought back five men with their horses from neighboring guerrilla bands to help the misssion.

As long as the dawn breaks, Robert Jordan and Anselmo descend on the bridge, shoot the Fascist sentries, and plant the explosives. Then Pilar comes to tell that Eladio has been killed and Fernando was fatally wounded, and they must be left behind. Then Robert Jordan detonates the explosives, which makes the bridge falls. But the shrapnels from the blast strikes Anselmo and kills him. Pablo emerges from below, with the news that all his five men are dead.

When the group crosses the road when they are retreating, a Fascist bullet hits Robert Jordan’s horse, which tramples on Robert’s left leg and break it. Relizaing that he must be left behind, Robert says goodbye to Maria and he will always be with her even if she goes.

Robert has thought about suiciding, instead, he decides to stay alive to hold off the Fascists. He is grateful for having lived, in his final few days just like a full lifetime. For the first time, he feels “integrated,” and he is in harmony with the world. As the Fascist lieutenant approaches, Robert Jordan takes aim, feeling his heart beating against the floor of the forest.

3. Main characters

Robert Jordan The protagonist of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Initially, he believed in the Republican cause with a near-religious faith. As the conflict drags on, he realizes that he does not really believe in the Republican cause but joined their side simply because they fought against Fascism. Because he fights for a side whose causes he does not necessarily support, Robert Jordan experiences a great deal of internal conflict and begins to wonder whether there is really any difference between the Fascist and Republican sides.

Robert Jordan’s interior monologues and actions indicate these internal conflicts that plague him. Although he is disillusioned with the Republican cause, he continues to fight for that cause. In public he announces that he is anti-Fascist rather than a Communist, but in private he thinks that he has no politics at all. He knows that his job requires that he kill people but also knows that he should not believe in killing in the abstract. Despite his newfound love for Maria, he feels that there cannot be a place for her in his life while he also has his military work. He claims not to be superstitious but cannot stop thinking about the world as giving him signs of things to come. These conflicts weigh heavily on Robert Jordan throughout the bulk of the novel.Robert Jordan resolves these tensions at the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, in his final moments as he faces death. He accepts himself as a man of action rather than thought, as a man who believes in practicality rather than abstract theories. He understands that the war requires him to do some things that he does not believe in. He also realizes that, though he cannot forget the unsavory deeds he has done in the past, he must avoid dwelling on them for the sake of getting things done in the present. Ultimately, Robert Jordan is able to make room in his mind for both his love for Maria and his military mission. By the end of the novel, just before he dies, his internal conflicts and tensions are resolved and he feels “integrated” into the world.

Pablo  The leader of the guerrilla camp. Pablo is an individualist who feels responsible only to himself. Hemingway often compares him to a bull, a boar, and other burly, stubborn, and unpleasant animals. Pablo used to be a great fighter and a great man but has now started drinking and has “gone bad,” as many characters remark. Tired of the war and attached to his horses, Pablo is ready to betray the Republican cause at the start of the novel.

Pilar  Pablo’s part-gypsy “woman.” Pilar means “pillar” in Spanish, and indeed, the fiercely patriotic, stocky, and steadfast Pilar is—if not the absolute leader—the support center of the guerrilla group. Pilar keeps the hearth, fights in battle, mothers Robert Jordan, and bullies Pablo and Rafael. She has an intuitive, mystical connection to deeper truths about the working of the world.

Maria  A young woman with Pablo’s band who falls in love with Robert Jordan. The victim of rape at the hands of Fascists who took over her town, Maria is frequently described by means of earth imagery. Hemingway compares her movements to a colt’s, and Robert Jordan affectionately calls her “Rabbit.”

Anselmo  An old, trustworthy guerrilla fighter. For Robert Jordan, Anselmo represents all that is good about Spaniards. He lives close to the land, is loyal, follows directions, and stays where he is told. He likes to hunt but has not developed a taste for the kill and hates killing people. Anselmo has stopped praying ever since the Communists banned organized religion but admits that he misses it.

Agustin  A trustworthy and high-spirited guerrilla fighter. Agustin, who mans the machine gun, curses frequently and is secretly in love with Maria.

Fernando A guerrilla fighter in his mid-thirties. Short and with a lazy eye, Fernando is dignified and literal-minded, embraces bureaucracy, and is easily offended by vulgarities. These factors, combined with his lack of a sense of humor, make Fernando the frequent target of Pilar’s jokes.

Primitivo  An elderly guerrilla fighter. Despite his gray hair and broken nose, Primitivo has not learned the cynicism needed for survival in the war. His name, which means “primitive,” evokes his idealism as well as the basic, earthy lifestyle of all the guerrilleros.

Rafael A gypsy member of the guerrilla band. Frequently described as well-meaning but “worthless,” Rafael proves his worthlessness by leaving his lookout post at a crucial moment. He is a foil for the trustworthy Anselmo, who does not leave his post on the previous night despite the cold and the snow. Rafael has few loyalties and does not believe in political causes.

Andres  One of the guerrilla fighters, in his late twenties. Andres comes into conflict with the Republican leaders’ bureaucracy in his attempt to deliver Robert Jordan’s dispatch to the Republican command.

Eladio  Andres’s older brother and another of the guerrilla fighters. The jumpy Eladio plays a relatively minor role in the novel. His most noticeable feature is that Robert Jordan repeatedly forgets his name. His death at the end of the novel attracts little notice.

El Sordo (Santiago)  The leader of a guerrilla band that operates near Pablo’s.  Like Robert Jordan, he is excited by a successful kill and is sad to die.

General Golz  The Russian general, allied with the Republicans, who assigns Robert the bridge-blowing mission. Robert says that Golz is the best general he has served under, but the Republican military bureaucracy impedes all of Golz’s operations. Golz believes that thinking is useless because it breaks down resolve and impedes action.

Robert Jordan’s father A weak, religious man who could not stand up to his aggressive wife and eventually committed suicide. His father’s weakness is a constant source of embarrassment to Robert Jordan.

Robert Jordan’s grandfather  A veteran of the American Civil War and a member of the Republican National Committee. Robert Jordan feels more closely related to his grandfather than to his father.

 

4. comment

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Motherland is the less.

As well as if a promontory was.

As well as if a manner of thins own

Or of thins friend’s were.

Each man’s death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

 

                                                 ————John Donne

 

The phrase “for whom the bell tolls” comes from a short essay by the seventeenth-century British poet and religious writer John Donne. Hemingway excerpts a portion of the essay in the epigraph to his novel. In Donne’s essay, “For whom does the bell toll?” is the imaginary question of a man who hears a funeral bell and asks about the person who has died. Donne’s answer to this question is that, because none of us stands alone in the world, each human death affects all of us. Every funeral bell, therefore, “tolls for thee.”

Death and survival, are both very important issues in our life. And death is the eternal topic that we human beings can never avoid to talking about. Human are grumbling the momentary of life, the passage of time, and we are also actively thinking about what kind of attitude should be taken to face the death. In Hemingway’s work the death is reflected most vividly.

Many characters die during the course of the novel, and we see characters repeatedly question what can possibly justify killing another human being. Anselmo and Pablo represent two extremes with regard to this question. Anselmo hates killing people in all circumstances, although he will do so if he must. Pablo, on the other hand, accepts killing as a part of his life and ultimately demonstrates that he is willing to kill his own men just to take their horses. Robert Jordan’s position about killing falls somewhere between Anselmo’s and Pablo’s positions. Although Robert Jordan doesn’t like to think about killing, he has killed many people in the line of duty. His personal struggle with this question ends on a note of compromise. Although war can’t fully absolve him of guilt, and he has “no right to forget any of it,” Robert Jordan knows both that he must kill people as part of his duties in the war, and that dwelling on his guilt during wartime is not productive.

The question of when it is justifiable to kill a person becomes complicated when we read that several characters, including Andrés, Agustín, Rafael, and even Robert Jordan, admit to experiencing a rush of excitement while killing. Hemingway does not take a clear moral stance regarding when it is acceptable to take another person’s life. At times he even implies that killing can be exhilarating, which makes the morality of the war in For Whom the Bell Tolls even murkier.

The main topic of the novel is death. When Robert Jordan is given the mission to blow up the bridge, he knows that he will not survive it. Pablo, upon hearing of the mission, also knows immediately that it will lead to their deaths. Sordo sees that inevitability also. Almost all of the main characters in the book contemplate their own deaths, and it is their reaction to the prospect of death, and what meaning they attach to death, especially in relation to the cause of the Republic, that defines them.

A related theme is intense comradeship in the prospect of death, the giving up of the own self for the sake of the cause, for the sake of the People. Robert Jordan, Anselmo and the others are ready to do it “as all good men should”, the often repeated gesture of embracing or patting on one another’s shoulder reinforces the impression of close companionship. One of the best examples is Joaquín. After having been told about the execution of his family, the others are embracing him and comfort him by saying they were his family now. Surrounding this love for the comrades, there is the love for the Spanish soil, and surrounding this a love of place and the senses, of life itself, represented by the pine needle forest floor both at the beginning and the end of the novel. Most poignantly, at the book’s end, Robert Jordan awaits his death feeling “his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”

 

5. Conclusion:

From birth to death, death means the real foundation there is nothing. So ultimately the significance of the existence is kind of a tragedy which became very apparent. Ernest Hemingway clearly demonstrated this kind of tragic, and tragic hero is the main object of his creation.

The Scarlet Letter

The reason why I choose this particular book

1. It was on a required reading list.

2. My litertature teacher recommanded me about the book.

3. I want to know what is symbolism.

4. The author is famous around the world.

5. I like the cover of the book which is pink, the mixture of blood and white.

 

The Scarlet Letter

Abstract：

Hawthorne begins The Scarlet Letter with a long introductory essay that generally functions as a preface but, more specifically, accomplishes four significant goals: outlines autobiographical information about the author, describes the conflict between the artistic impulse and the commercial environment, defines the romance novel (which Hawthorne is credited with refining and mastering), and authenticates the basis of the novel by explaining that he had discovered in the Salem Custom House the faded scarlet A and the parchment sheets that contained the historical manuscript on which the novel is based.

 

Key word:

Sin; evil; “A”, adultery, ability, angel; avenge

 

The Scarlet Letter

1. Brief Introduction of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, a descendant of a long line of Puritan ancestors including John Hathorne, a presiding magistrate in the Salem witch trials. He was brought up by his widowed mother. Then he enter Bowdoin College in Maine.

After graduation from college, Hawthorne began trying to write and published several articles on historical aspects. His first novel, Fanshawe, was unsuccessful and Hawthorne himself disavowed it as amateurish. In 1846, he published essays Tales “The Moss of Old House “, many of them on the story of early American. In 1845, Hawthorne continued as a Customs inspector in Salem. At this time, he was like the narrator of “The Scarlet Letter”. In 1850, he lost the job to stay later, issued a The Scarlet Letter and said the novel did not win universal emblazonment, however, at least it raises the reader’s heart-warming cheer. Hawthorne had wrote a campaign biography for Franklin Pierce and help him become president .In 1853, Pierce appointed Hawthorne as the U.S. consul abroad. Hawthorne in Europe and spent the subsequent six years. In 1864, that is, in his return to the United States a few years later, he died. The other major works written by Hawthorne include The House of Seven Angular Pavilion (1851), Fogo Legend (1852), The Statue of Marble(1860.)

 

2. Plot

The Scarlet Letter was based on a true love story that happened in New England range from 1642 to 1649.

Hester Prynne was a kind and beautiful English woman. Unfortunately, she married a deformed old doctor, Roger Chillingworth so that she had ruined her youth. In the way of migrating to North America, Roger was caught by Indians so that Hester had to live a lonely life in the Boston. However, she fell into love with Arthur Dimmesdale , a pastor who was young and talented. After their unlawful daughter born, the feudal fact put Hester into prison, and even let her wear a red “A”(abbreviation for ADULTERY) before her chest. She was suffered form humiliation because of forcing to be pilloried in public with her little girl.

   Roger also came there resulted in recognized the humiliated woman was his wife. He had the chance to enter the prison to treat them as he was a doctor, and threaten Herter not to tell anyone the relation between them. He would find out the person who seduced his wife so that he could revenge him.

Hester live in a small cottage out of the country as a sinner with her little girl after out of prison. Although that, her needlework was the best in the country. She tried her best to serve everybody, especially to the poor, even to support the poor’s life with her limited resources. Seven years had been pasted, she made the dirty symbol of red “A” turn into the represent of kind and beautiful because of her noble virtues. She had won people’s respect through her many years’ social practice.

During this time, Roger had found out that Arthur was the person who seduced his wife. After it, he made every methods to approach Arthur, pretended to treat Arthur to torture and hit him brutally in spiritual and physical. Arthur was so poisoned by religious ideology that had no courage to admit and strict the love between him and Hester. Thus, under the formidable pressure of self-critical, penance and many other evil forces, his spiritual and physical turn to death rapidly. Hester had ever tried to meet Arthur in the forest to make the plan of escaping together and came back to Europe so that they could live together. Unexpectedly, their perfect plan was broken by Roger. And Arthur was despaired completely. A day of festival march, Arthur went to the scaffold to admit his guilt and died in the scaffold.

 

3. Character list

Hester Prynne

A young woman sent to the colonies by her husband, who plans to join her later but is presumed lost at sea. She is a symbol of the acknowledged sinner; one whose transgression has been identified and who makes appropriate, socio-religious atonement.

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale

Dimmesdale is the unmarried pastor of Hester’s congregation; he is also the father of Hester’s daughter, Pearl. He is a symbol of the secret sinner; one who recognizes his transgression but keeps it hidden and secret, even to his own downfall.

Pearl

Pearl is the illegitimate daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. She is the living manifestation of Hester’s sin and a symbol of the product of the act of adultery and of an act of passion and love.

Roger Chillingworth

The pseudonym assumed by Hester Prynne’s aged scholar-husband. He is a symbol of evil, of the “devil’s handyman,” of one consumed with revenge and devoid of compassion.

Governor Bellingham

This actual historical figure, Richard Bellingham, was elected governor in 1641, 1654, and 1665. In The Scarlet Letter, he witnesses Hester’s punishment and is a symbol of civil authority and, combined with John Wilson, of the Puritan Theocracy.

Mistress Hibbins

Another historical figure, Ann Hibbins, sister of Governor Bellingham, was executed for witchcraft in 1656. In the novel, she has insight into the sins of both Hester and Dimmesdale and is a symbol of super or preternatural knowledge and evil powers.

John Wilson

The historical figure on whom this character is based was an English-born minister who arrived in Boston in 1630. He is a symbol of religious authority and, combined with Governor Bellingham, of the Puritan Theocracy.

 

4. Character analysis

Hester is the public sinner who demonstrates the effect of punishment on sensitivity and human nature. She is seen as a fallen woman, a culprit who deserves the ignominy of her immoral choice. She struggles with her recognition of the letter’s symbolism just as people struggle with their moral choices. The paradox is that the Puritans stigmatize her with the mark of sin and, in so doing, reduce her to a dull, lifeless woman whose characteristic color is gray and whose vitality and femininity are suppressed.

Over the seven years of her punishment, Hester’s inner struggle changes from a victim of Puritan branding to a decisive woman in tune with human nature. When she meets Dimmesdale in the forest in Chapter 18, Hawthorne says, “The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.”

In time, even the Puritan community sees the letter as meaning “Able” or “Angel.” Her sensitivity with society’s victims turns her symbolic meaning from a person whose life was originally twisted and repressed to a strong and sensitive woman with respect for the humanity of others. In her final years, “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence, too.” Since her character is strongly tied to the scarlet letter, Hester represents the public sinner who changes and learns from her own sorrow to understand the humanity of others. Often human beings who suffer great loss and life-changing experiences become survivors with an increased understanding and sympathy for the human losses of others. Hester is such a symbol.

Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is the secret sinner whose public and private faces are opposites. Even as the beadle — an obvious symbol of the righteous Colony of Massachusetts — proclaims that the settlement is a place where “iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine,” the colony, along with the Reverend Mr. Wilson, is in awe of Dimmesdale’s goodness and sanctity. Inside the good minister, however, is a storm raging between holiness and self-torture. He is unable to reveal his sin.

At worst, Dimmesdale is a symbol of hypocrisy and self-centered intellectualism; he knows what is right but has not the courage to make himself do the public act. When Hester tells him that the ship for Europe leaves in four days, he is delighted with the timing. He will be able to give his Election Sermon and “fulfill his public duties” before escaping. At best, his public piety is a disdainful act when he worries that his congregation will see his features in Pearl’s face.

Dimmesdale’s inner struggle is intense, and he struggles to do the right thing. He realizes the scaffold is the place to confess and also his shelter from his tormenter, Chillingworth. Yet, the very thing that makes Dimmesdale a symbol of the secret sinner is also what redeems him. Sin and its acknowledgment humanize Dimmesdale. When he leaves the forest and realizes the extent of the devil’s grip on his soul, he passionately writes his sermon and makes his decision to confess. As a symbol, he represents the secret sinner who fights the good fight in his soul and eventually wins.

Pearl is the strongest of these allegorical images because she is nearly all symbol, little reality. Dimmesdale sees Pearl as the “freedom of a broken law”; Hester sees her as “the living hieroglyphic” of their sin; and the community sees her as the result of the devil’s work. She is the scarlet letter in the flesh, a reminder of Hester’s sin. As Hester tells the pious community leaders in Chapter 8, “. . . she is my happiness! — she is my torture . . . See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin?”

Pearl is also the imagination of the artist, an idea so powerful that the Puritans could not even conceive of it, let alone understand it, except in terms of transgression. She is natural law unleashed, the freedom of the unrestrained wilderness, the result of repressed passion. When Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest, Pearl is reluctant to come across the brook to see them because they represent the Puritan society in which she has no happy role. Here in the forest, she is free and in harmony with nature. Her image in the brook is a common symbol of Hawthorne’s. He often uses a mirror to symbolize the imagination of the artist; Pearl is a product of that imagination. When Dimmesdale confesses his sin in the light of the sun, Pearl is free to become a human being. All along, Hester felt there was this redeemable nature in her daughter, and here she sees her faith rewarded. Pearl can now feel human grief and sorrow, as Hester can, and she becomes a sin redeemed.

Chillingworth is consistently a symbol of cold reason and intellect unencumbered by human compassion. While Dimmesdale has intellect but lacks will, Chillingworth has both. He is fiendish, evil, and intent on revenge. In his first appearance in the novel, he is compared to a snake, an obvious allusion to the Garden of Eden. Chillingworth becomes the essence of evil when he sees the scarlet letter on Dimmesdale’s breast in Chapter 10, where there is “no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom.”

Eventually, his evil is so pervasive that Chillingworth awakens the distrust of the Puritan community and the recognition of Pearl. As time goes by and Dimmesdale becomes more frail under the constant torture of Chillingworth, the community worries that their minister is losing a battle with the devil himself. Even Pearl recognizes that Chillingworth is a creature of the Black Man and warns her mother to stay away from him. Chillingworth loses his reason to live when Dimmesdale eludes him at the scaffold in the final scenes of the novel. “All his strength and energy — all his vital and intellectual force — seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight.” As a symbol, Chillingworth’s job is done.

5. Comment:

The preface sets the atmosphere of the story and connects the present with the past. Hawthorne’s description of the Salem port of the 1800s is directly related to the past history of the area. The Puritans who first settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s founded a colony that concentrated on God’s teachings and their mission to live by His word. But this philosophy was eventually swallowed up by the commercialism and financial interests of the 1700s.

The clashing of the past and present is further explored in the character of the old General. The old General’s heroic qualities include a distinguished name, perseverance, integrity, compassion, and moral inner strength. He is “the soul and spirit of New England hardihood.” Now put out to pasture, he sometimes presides over the Custom House run by corrupt public servants, who skip work to sleep, allow or overlook smuggling, and are supervised by an inspector with “no power of thought, nor depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities,” who is honest enough but without a spiritual compass.

A further connection to the past is his discussion of his ancestors. Hawthorne has ambivalent feelings about their role in his life. In his autobiographical sketch, Hawthorne describes his ancestors as “dim and dusky,” “grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steel crowned,” “bitter persecutors” whose “better deeds” will be diminished by their bad ones. There can be little doubt of Hawthorne’s disdain for the stern morality and rigidity of the Puritans, and he imagines his predecessors’ disdainful view of him: unsuccessful in their eyes, worthless and disgraceful. “A writer of story books!” But even as he disagrees with his ancestor’s viewpoint, he also feels an instinctual connection to them and, more importantly, a “sense of place” in Salem. Their blood remains in his veins, but their intolerance and lack of humanity becomes the subject of his novel.

This ambivalence in his thoughts about his ancestors and his hometown is paralleled by his struggle with the need to exercise his artistic talent and the reality of supporting a family. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Elizabeth in 1820, “No man can be a Poet and a Bookkeeper at the same time.” Hawthorne’s references to Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, and other romantic authors describe an intellectual life he longs to regain. His job at the Custom House stifles his creativity and imagination. The scarlet letter touches his soul (he actually feels heat radiate from it), and while “the reader may smile,” Hawthorne feels a tugging that haunts him like his ancestors.

In this preface, Hawthorne also shares his definition of the romance novel as he attempts to imagine Hester Prynne’s story beyond Pue’s manuscript account. A careful reading of this section explains the author’s use of light (chiaroscuro) and setting as romance techniques in developing his themes. Hawthorne explains that, in a certain light and time and place, objects “. . . seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect.” He asserts that, at the right time with the right scene before him, the romance writer can “dream strange things and make them look like truth.”

Finally, the preface serves as means of authenticating the novel by explaining that Hawthorne had discovered in the Salem Custom House the faded scarlet A and the parchment sheets that contained the historical manuscript on which the novel is based. However, we know of no serious, scholarly work that suggests Hawthorne was ever actually in possession of the letter or the manuscript. This technique, typical of the narrative conventions of his time, serves as a way of giving his story an air of historic truth. Furthermore, Hawthorne, in his story, “Endicott and the Red Cross,” published nine years before he took his Custom House position, described the incident of a woman who, like Hester Prynne, was forced to wear a letter A on her breast.

 

6. Conclusion:

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most prolific symbolists in American literature, and a study of his symbols is necessary to understanding his novels. Generally speaking, a symbol is something used to stand for something else. In literature, a symbol is most often a concrete object used to represent an idea more abstract and broader in scope and meaning — often a moral, religious, or philosophical concept or value. Symbols can range from the most obvious substitution of one thing for another, to creations as massive, complex, and perplexing as Melville’s white whale in Moby Dick.

An allegory in literature is a story where characters, objects, and events have a hidden meaning and are used to present some universal lesson. Hawthorne has a perfect atmosphere for the symbols in The Scarlet Letter because the Puritans saw the world through allegory. For them, simple patterns, like the meteor streaking through the sky, became religious or moral interpretations for human events. Objects, such as the scaffold, were ritualistic symbols for such concepts as sin and penitence.

Whereas the Puritans translated such rituals into moral and repressive exercises, Hawthorne turns their interpretations around in The Scarlet Letter. The Puritan community sees Hester as a fallen woman, Dimmesdale as a saint, and would have seen the disguised Chillingworth as a victim — a husband betrayed. Instead, Hawthorne ultimately presents Hester as a woman who represents a sensitive human being with a heart and emotions; Dimmesdale as a minister who is not very saint-like in private but, instead, morally weak and unable to confess his hidden sin; and Chillingworth as a husband who is the worst possible offender of humanity and single-mindedly pursuing an evil goal.

Hawthorne’s embodiment of these characters is denied by the Puritan mentality: At the end of the novel, even watching and hearing Dimmesdale’s confession, many members of the Puritan community still deny what they saw. Thus, using his characters as symbols, Hawthorne discloses the grim underside of Puritanism that lurks beneath the public piety.

Some of Hawthorne’s symbols change their meaning, depending on the context, and some are static. Examples of static symbols are the Reverend Mr. Wilson, who represents the Church, or Governor Bellingham, who represents the State. But many of Hawthorne’s symbols change — particularly his characters — depending on their treatment by the community and their reactions to their sins. His characters, the scarlet A, light and darkness, color imagery, and the settings of forest and village serve symbolic purposes.

 Besides the characters, the most obvious symbol is the scarlet letter itself, which has various meanings depending on its context. It is a sign of adultery, penance, and penitence. It brings about Hester’s suffering and loneliness and also provides her rejuvenation. In the book, it first appears as an actual material object in The Custom House preface. Then it becomes an elaborately gold-embroidered A over Hester’s heart and is magnified in the armor breast-plate at Governor Bellingham’s mansion. Here Hester is hidden by the gigantic, magnified symbol just as her life and feelings are hidden behind the sign of her sin.

Still later, the letter is an immense red A in the sky, a green A of eel-grass arranged by Pearl, the A on Hester’s dress decorated by Pearl with prickly burrs, an A on Dimmesdale’s chest seen by some spectators at the Election Day procession, and, finally, represented by the epitaph “On a field, sable, the letter A, gules” (gules being the heraldic term for “red”) on the tombstone Hester and Dimmesdale share.

In all these examples, the meaning of the symbol depends on the context and sometimes the interpreter. For example, in the second scaffold scene, the community sees the scarlet A in the sky as a sign that the dying Governor Winthrop has become an angel; Dimmesdale, however, sees it as a sign of his own secret sin. The community initially sees the letter on Hester’s bosom as a mark of just punishment and a symbol to deter others from sin. Hester is a Fallen Woman with a symbol of her guilt. Later, when she becomes a frequent visitor in homes of pain and sorrow, the A is seen to represent “Able” or “Angel.” It has rejuvenated Hester and changed her meaning in the eyes of the community.

The Scarlet Letter

 

Why did you choose this particular book? Typical reasons might be:

 

1. You like the author.

 

2. You like this type of book (i.e. mystery, western, adventure or romance, etc.).

 

3. Someone recommended the book to you.

 

4. It was on a required reading list.

 

5. You liked the cover.

 

 

 

The reason is simple, that coincidently I have bought the English edition of The Scarlet Letter, so I started reading immediately after the teacher gave us the task. And I was curious about its Chinese translation Hongzi. And I got the explanation in the dictionary:” the letter A in red; Puritans required adulterers to wear it”.

 

 

 

The Scarlet Letter

 

Abstract：

 

The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book,Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.

 

 

 

Key word:

 

(character analyses of main characters, the attitude toward love, girls’ value.)

 

Hawthorne, the scarlet letter, sin , puritan

 

 

 

The Scarlet Letter

 

1. 1.     Brief Introduction of Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Nathaniel Hathorne was born in1804 inthe city ofSalem,Massachusettsto Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials. Nathaniel later added a “w” to make his name “Hawthorne”. He enteredBowdoinCollegein 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825.Hawthorneanonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. He published several short stories in various periodicals which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at a Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marryingPeabodyin 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse inConcord,Massachusetts, later moving toSalem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside inConcord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family toEuropebefore their return to The Wayside in 1860.Hawthornedied on May 19, 1864, leaving behind his wife and their three children.

 

Much ofHawthorne’s writing centers onNew England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend Franklin Pierce.

 

1. 2.     Plot

 

The story starts during the summer of 1642, nearBoston,Massachusetts, in a Puritan village. A young woman, named Hester Prynne, has been led from the town prison with her infant daughter in her arms, and on the breast of her gown “a rag of scarlet cloth” that “assumed the shape of a letter.” It is the uppercase letter “A.” The Scarlet Letter “A” represents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin—a badge of shame—for all to see. A man, who is elderly and a stranger to the town, enters the crowd and asks another onlooker what’s happening. The second man responds by explaining that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, who is much older than she, and whose real name is unknown, has sent her ahead toAmericawhilst settling affairs inEurope. However, her husband does not arrive inBostonand the consensus is that he has been lost at sea. It is apparent that, while waiting for her husband, Hester has had an affair, leading to the birth of her daughter. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her subsequent public shaming, is the punishment for her sin and secrecy. On this day, Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.

 

The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He reveals his true identity to Hester and medicates her daughter. They have a frank discussion where Chillingworth states that it was foolish and wrong for a cold, old intellectual like him to marry a young lively woman like Hester. He expressly states that he thinks that they have wronged each other and that he is even with her — her lover is a completely different matter. Hester refuses to divulge the name of her lover and Chillingworth does not press her stating that he will find out anyway. He does elicit a promise from her to keep his true identity as Hester’s husband secret, though. He settles inBostonto practice medicine there. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and her daughter,Pearl, grows into a willful, impish child, and is said to be the scarlet letter come to life as both Hester’s love and her punishment. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts ofBoston. Community officials attempt to takePearlaway from Hester, but with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, an eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the minister’s torments and Hester’s secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers something undescribed to the reader, supposedly an “A” burned into Dimmesdale’s chest, which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.

 

Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, whenPearlis about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to the deathbed of John Winthrop when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester andPearljoin him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refusesPearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. It is interpreted by the townsfolk to mean Angel, as a prominent figure in the community had died that night, but Dimmesdale sees it as meaning adultery. Hester can see that the minister’s condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses. She suggests that she may reveal his true identity to Dimmesdale.

 

As Hester walks through the forest, she is unable to feel the sunshine.Pearl, on the other hand, basks in it. They coincide with Dimmesdale, also on a stroll through the woods. Hester informs him of the true identity of Chillingworth. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live withPearlas a family. They will take a ship sailing fromBostonin four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. The sun immediately breaks through the clouds and trees to illuminate her release and joy.Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. She is unnerved and expels a shriek until her mother points out the letter on the ground. Hester beckonsPearlto come to her, butPearlwill not go to her mother until Hester buttons the letter back onto her dress.Pearlthen goes to her mother. Dimmesdale givesPearla kiss on the forehead, whichPearlimmediately tries to wash off in the brook, because he again refuses to make known publicly their relationship. However, he clearly feels a release from the pretense of his former life, and the laws and sins he has lived with.

 

The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday put on in honor of an election and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester andPearlstanding before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing the mark supposedly seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead just afterPearlkisses him.

 

Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester andPearlleaveBoston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resumes her charitable work. She receives occasional letters fromPearl, who was rumored to have married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own.Pearlalso inherits all of Chillingworth’s money even though he knows she is not his daughter. There is a sense of liberation in her and the townspeople, especially the women, who had finally begun to forgive Hester of her tragic indiscretion. When Hester dies, she is buried in “a new grave near an old and sunken one, in that burial ground beside which King’s Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both.” The tombstone was decorated with a letter “A”, for Hester and Dimmesdale.

 

 

 

1. 3.     Major Theme:

 

Sin: The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge of what it means to be immortal. For Hester, the scarlet letter functioned as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread”, leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England.

 

As for Dimmesdale, the “cheating minister” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his chest vibrate in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy. The narrative of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is quite in keeping with the oldest and most fully authorized principles in Christian thought. His “Fall” is a descent from apparent grace to his own damnation; he appears to begin in purity but he ends in corruption. The subtlety is that the minister’s belief is his own cheating, convincing himself at every stage of his spiritual pilgrimage that he is saved.

 

The rosebush, its beauty a striking contrast to all that surrounds it—as later the beautifully embroidered scarlet A will be–is held out in part as an invitation to find “some sweet moral blossom” in the ensuing, tragic tale and in part as an image that “the deep heart of nature” (perhaps God) may look more kind on the errant Hester and her child than her Puritan neighbors do. Throughout the work, the nature images contrast with the stark darkness of the Puritans and their systems.

 

Chillingworth’s misshapen body reflects (or symbolizes) the anger in his soul, which builds as the novel progresses, similar to the way Dimmesdale’s illness reveals his inner turmoil. The outward man reflects the condition of the heart; an observation thought to be inspired by the deterioration of Edgar Allan Poe, whomHawthorne”much admired”.

 

AlthoughPearlis a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol.Pearlherself is the embodiment of the scarlet letter, and Hester rightly clothes her in a beautiful dress of scarlet, embroidered with gold thread, just like the scarlet letter upon Hester’s bosom. Parallels can be drawn betweenPearland the character Beatrice in Rappaccini’s Daughter. Beatrice is nourished upon poisonous plants, until she herself becomes poisonous.Pearl, in the mysterious prenatal world, imbibes the poison of her parents’ guilt.

 

In this novel, author created different characters with different sins. He wanted to show us that everyone just like these characters is sinner. In the perspective of religion(Puritanism here), everyone is sinner and only god can redeem us. And the author Hawthorne himself, as a puritan，he was identified with this. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne dug deep into the unregenerate human nature, and he made these characters be redeemed in different ways after they truly confessed.

 

4.Comments:

 

This is a short novel to read and re-read. The theme of this story is sin and redemption. The scarlet letter symbolizes a lot : 1, Hester’s A means shame, punishment and warning to others , but later it stood for “able” as the result of Hester’s care and help to the others . 2, The scarlet letter caved on Dimmesdale’s breast symbolizes the sin secretly concealed in his heart. The scaffold is a symbol of puritan justice, enforcement of the laws and also the revelation of the truth.

 

This novel is truly one of literature’s greatest triumphs, its characters and themes reverberating in our collective consciousness more than 150 years after its initial publication. Few novels inspire as much contemplation and feeling on the part of the reader. Hester Prynne, American fiction’s first and foremost female heroine continues to haunt this world, inspiring a never-ending stream of scholarly debate. Even in our less puritanical age, some doubtless see her as a villainously great temptress, but to me she is a remarkably brave hero indeed. Her sin is known to all, and she never runs away from it, bearing the scarlet letter on her bosom bravely for all to see; she realizes the true measure of that sin, fretting constantly over the effects it will have on young Pearl, remaining steadfast in her beliefs while at the same time envisioning a new society where women and men can exist on more equal terms, free of the stultifying harsh punishments meted out on even the most repentant of souls by Puritanism. She shows her noble spirit by refusing to name her partner in sin and goes so far as to allow the ruthless Roger Chillingworth to torment the man she loves deeply enough to protect him for all time. LittlePearlis somewhat of an enigma, truly manifesting traits of both the imp and the little angel; her questions about the letter her mother wears and the minister who continually holds his hand against his heart reflect an insight that amazes this reader. Chillingworth is a thoroughly black-hearted man; I can certainly understand the blow he sustained as a result of Hester’s sin, but his actions and thirst for prolonged revenge on the so-called perpetrator of the wrong he suffered can only be described as roguish and unpalatable.

 

Of course, the most complex character in the novel (and literature as a whole) is the good minister Arthur Dimmsdale. One is compelled to both like him and despise him. He is basically a good man and an unquestionably fine soldier in the army of the Lord, winning many souls to God with his impassioned sermons. He is more aware than anyone else of his sinful nature, and he punishes himself quite brutally in private in a useless attempt to make up for the public ignominy he lacks the moral courage to call upon himself with a public profession of his deed. Dimmsdale is a coward and a hypocrite. At one critical moment in the latter pages of the novel, he blames Hester for his state of misery, and it is that comment in particular that makes this tragic character a man I can only commiserate with to a limited degree. Even at the penultimate moment of the novel, as he finally bears the mark of his shame and guilt for all his parishioners to see, the very men and women who have viewed him as a saintly man of God rather than the brigand he knows himself to be, he does not openly confess-his words and deeds do make plain the secret of his heart, but it is his lack of a thoroughly bold confession that causes some of his most devoted followers, so Hawthorne tells us, to blindly judge his final act as an illustrative parable on the danger of sin threatening each member of his congregation rather than an admission of guilt and self-condemnation.

 

The American author Nathaniel Hawthorne had an intricate relationship with the tradition of American Puritanism, with which both he and his Puritan ancestors were imbued in character and in belief.Hawthorne’s specific interpretation of the prevailing Original Sin and its redemption has gone beyond Puritan ethics and belongs to the Christian Universal. The artistic truths featured by their stained protagonists, passion description and social redemption in The Scarlet Letter have made great impact on readers, and hence are a warning toll for the reform of the Puritan church practice.

 

 

 

Conclusion:

 

This novel is all about sins and redemption. InHawthorne’s ideology, everyone has sin concealed in their hearts, which is fully expressed by three characters he created in this novel. His purpose of writing this novel is not to write about adultery, but to explore the psychological effects and moral problems of it. Hester, Chillingworth, Dimmsdale all commited the sin and then were punished. Finally they were all redeemed. They all experienced this process. It revealsHawthorne’s profound understanding and thinking of humanity. Everyone is born with sin. People must pay for their sins, and receive punishments. And at the same time, people must try to purify own heart and be redeemed.

 

BOOK REPORT

PREFACE

I bought The book The Scarlet Letter when I was still a junior middle school student. I forget the reason I chose the book from the bookshop. But at that time, it was really difficult for me to read it. So the result is that I put it aside for several years.

Several month ago, I was so surprised to find it. But a lot of pages have missed. In order to have a complete understanding of both the novel and the author, I decided to buy a new one. Fortunately, I got it soon. Later, I do think it is a novel worth reading and appreciating.

The book really shocks me a lot. The protagonist Hester, she was a really a heroine at that time. This was not because she has done something special to his country or the people, but because in my opinion she was the very embodiment of lofty moral. On the surface, Hester was found the guilty of adultery. The author was really talented. He has expressed his ideas and dissatisfaction to the society by moulding an excellent role in his book. The cruelity of the society, the deception of religion, the hypocrisy of moral, all of them were conveyed vividly in the book. It is really worthy being appreciated.

 

 

ABSTRACT

As we know that The Scarlet Letter is one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s  most famous novels, and it has made him known all around the world. Hester Prynne is the protagonist of this novel. I firmly believe that anyone who have read this novel will be impressed by Hester. She is convicted of adultery by a court of Puritan judges. What’s worse, she is forced to wear a scarlet letter on her breast because of her sin of adultrey. On the surface, Hester is guilty, for to some extent, she betrays her husband. But this is not what the author really wants to convey.

As far as I am concerned, Hester is a female who is both obedient and rebellious. On the one hand, as a puritan, she wants to get God’s salvation. On the other hand, she is contradictory in her inner heart. She wants to break some of the Puritan doctrines to protect her beloved ones. She is not willing to confess to other’s who is Pearl’s father, even when she is convicted the guilty of adultery. She herself brings Pearl up independently. Yes, she is brave enough to confront all difficulties she meets in life.

 

Key words: guilty, scarlet letter, Puritan thoughts, obedient, rebellious, etc.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nathaniel Hawthorne ( 1804-1864 ) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was an American novelist and short story writer. He belongs to the group of the famous anti-transcendentalism.

Hawthorne’s father was a sea captain. He died when the boy was only four years old. He and his two sisters lived in almost complete isolation from their mother. In a few years Hawthorne left Salem and entered Bowdoin College, in Maine. Among his college friends were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce who became fourteenth President of the United States.

Later, he returned to Salem. For nearly twelve years, he lived in solitude in this idle town. He gathered his material by observing and listening to others. He listened to all the talks that was filled with New England lore, legend, and superstition. He made annual excursions into Vermont and New Hampshire and absorbed hints for many stories on these jaunts. He also read the annals and chronicles of the Puritan world. After a few years, he began pouring them out.

For a time in the 1830s, Hawthorne edited a magazine in Boston, and afterward, he worked at the customs office. Then he lived for a few months in 1841 at Brook Farm, one of the famous New England experiments in communal living, where some of the region’s most remarkable, if somewhat impractical, people gathered. Hawthorne was essentially of a solitary nature, and group life was not for him, but the experience provided a material for his later novel The Blithedale Romance (1852). In 1841 he married Sophia Peabody, of a prominent Salem family. For some three years Hawthorne and Sophia lived in the house called the Old Manse, in Concord. It was there that he wrote the splendid stories in the volume called Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).

He was Surveyor of the Port of Salem for three years, until a change od administration liberated him to write The Scarlet Letter. When his college Franklin became President, he appointed Hawthorne to a consular position in Liverpool. Hawthorne eventually went on to Rome, where he found the inspiration for his novel The Marble Faun (1860).

Much of Hawthorne’s works center on New England. Many writings feature moral allegories with a Puritan inspitation. His fiction works are considered part of Romantic movement. His themes often concentrate on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity.

 

 

PLOT SUMMARY

The story tells us a story of the protagonist called Hester. To some extent it is a story of tragedy because of the final fate of the main characters in the story.

On a summer morning in Boston, Massachusetts Colony, a group of people gathered outside the jail in Prison Lane. Later, the woman with a scarlet letter wearing on her breast and her child in her arms appeared. She was the very protagonist Hester Prynne. She was convicted of the guilty of adultery by a court of stern Puritan judges. When she appeared, it was whispered in the gathering that she had been spared the penalty of death or branding only through the intercession of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, into whose church she had brought her scandalous sin.

Hester was the daughter of an ancient house of decayed fortune. When she was young, her father married her to husband who had great repue as a scholar. Two years before, her husband sent his wife to Massachusetts Colony. Hester, a young, attractive widow, had quietly in Boston until the time of her disgrace.

The ministers of the town asked her to name the man who with herself was equally guilty. Her pastor, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale exhorted her. Still Hester refused to name the father of her child, and she led back to the prison after her period of public shamed had ended.

Roger Chillingworth was the stranger who appeared all of a sudden from the forest while Hester stood on the scaffold that morning, and she knew him as her husband, the scholar Prynne. He also wanted to know the name of the child’s father. But Hester refused, either. He told Hester that he would stayed in Boston to practice medicine and he sweared that he would devoted himself to discovering the man. He wanted to revenge the man that had dishonoured him.

After Hester’s imprisonment was over, she lived with her child, Pearl, in a small house far away. She still worn the scarlet letter on her breast.

Several years later, Pearl had grown up to become a capricous child. At the moment then, there was a movement among the strict church members to take the child away from her. But Dimmesdale saved the situation by a persuasive speech. Chillingworth and Dimmesdale lived in the same house. Consequently, the physician gradually came to know Dimmesdale’s innermost feelings. Slowly, Chillingworth became sure that Dimmesdale was Pearl’s father. And he wanted very much to take his revenge against Dimmesdale.

One night, Dimmesdale went to the pillory where Hester had stood. Hester and Pearl were also there. At that time, Dimmesdale acknowledged that he was the father of Pearl. Everything was witnessed and heard by Chillingworth. And Hester was so astonishe by Dimmesdale’s behavior. All that she wanted to do now was to plead with Chillingworth to be merciful to his victim. But Chillingworth was a cruel man and he wouldn’t give up his revenge.

Hester and Dimmesdale had no chioce but took the chioce to leave the colony together in secret four days later to take passage in a ship then in the harbor and return to the Old World. They were to leave after the Election Sermon.

On the Election Sermon day morning, the captain informed Hester that Roger Chillingworth would go with him. Hester turned away and went with Pearl to listen to Dimmesdale’s sermon. But Dimmesdale admitted his guilt to the watching people. Then, because of the tiredness both mentally and physically out of his endurance, Dimmesdale died in the platform suddenly.

Chillingworth, no longer able to wreak his vengeance on Dimmesdale, died within the year. People finally forgave Hester’s guilt because of her diligence and kindness. But on the other hand, her beautiful years had also been exausted in the process of waiting. Fortunately, Pearl grew up healthily and later married to a noble family, achiving a happy ending of her life.

 

 

CHARACTER ANALYSIS

There are four major characters in the novel The Scarlet Letter. They are Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth and Pearl. Hester is the leading role in the novel. Throught the book, we can find that she is a woman of independence mind and she is very brave. Although she has accepted the punishment assigned her under the control of the Puritan doctrines, she still behaves strong. Dimmesdale is a man torn by a guilty conscience, but he has no enough courage to confess his fault. Chillingworth gradually destroys himself under his inner thoughts of taking revenge towards Hester and Dimmesdale. Pearl is an implish, innocent and unearthly girl.

Hester

 

 

 

 

Hester is the protagonist in the story. She is a woman described as young, beautiful and elegant. She is the daughter of an ancient house of decayed fortune. Although she comes from a impoverished family, we can define her as a really lady because of her pride behaviors presentsin her later life. For example, from the beginning scene until when she dies, she always wears the scarlet A.

We know that when she was young, she was sent to marry her husband, who had great reputation as a scholar. Later we gradually come to know that he is the very Roger Chillingworth. Later, Hester was sent to Massachusetts by her husband, where she came across Arthur Dimmesdale and had a child called Pearl – a pretty little girl.

Hester is an extrordinary brave woman, as far as I am concerned. She never surrenders to her fate easily. When she was charged with guilty of adultery by a court of stern Puritan judges and was forced to wear a scarlet letter on her breast, she still refused to tell others who is her child’s father. Thus in her inner mind, she wants to combat with the Puritan doctrines which confine people to a narrow wide of their lives. But at that time, the Puritan thoughts had a dominant influence on people. Although Pearl’s father Arthur Dimmesdale stands in front of her, she never changes her mind and keeps the secret. She is a eligible mother. She brings up Pearl a beautiful girl and tries her best to support their life.

She encourages Arthur Dimmesdale that they go together to another place in order to protect him from Chillingworth’s revenge after all the secrets are revealed. Though they did not succeed.

To some extent, she is a contradictory character. The author sets her to show his dissatisfaction with the Puritan doctrines and government, which is vividly presents in the character of “Hester”.

 

Dimmesdale

 

 

 

He is an eloquent minister, a devoted servant of God. There is no doubt that he is passionate in his religion and effective in the pulpit. But on the other hand, he dares not confess his guilty in public, leaving Hester alone to undertake all the punishment. From the private point of view, he is somehow a gloomy and selfish man, for he hasn’t took the responsibility for Hester and Pearl which he ought to.

When Hester tells him Chillingworth is her husband, he is not brave to face tha fact and sinks down on the ground, throwing his burden on Hester. He never thinks of what kind of pain and torment Hester has put up with.

Dimmesdale’s sin is a concealed one, which is different from Hester’s. The sin exsit in his inner heart and causes him increasing torment of conscience. But we know in the novel, Dimmesdale eventually confess to the public his guilty. But in order to gather the courage to do so, he has injured both mentally physically, which is totally  out of his endurance, Dimmesdale died in the platform suddenly. Maybe that is the price for him.

I just wonder why Dimmesdale could conceal his sin for such a long time? Even when he is able to confess it, he has reached the end of his life? In my opinion, it is the Puritan doctrines that causes him to escape from his responsibilities. Dimmesdale is such a reverent servant of God that there is no doubt that he can continue to do God’s work as a minister if he just keeps silent. But on the other hand, he wants to have the affection with Hester in public. While, he dares not. Thus, we can find that he is a really a contradictory character. Although Dimmesdale a devoted servant of God and an Evangelist, he cannot make himself totally transcended. Lust and impulse never disappear in his inner heart. They even become stronger after years of asceticism. When he is on the way to the town after the date with Hester, his behavior of impulse at the moment of seeing a girl really makes me confused. But what he does is to pretend to avoid seeing her and goes away. Actually, he can walk to her and say “hello” to her. But his highly developed asceticism stops him.

As a matter of fact, Dimmesdale suffers from torment of both social morality and his inner heart love. He has no choice but to bear all these sufferings. Another aspect is that he has no way to release and what he can do is to enter his ending door in his prison of torment.

 

 

 

Chillingworth

 

 

 

 

Just as I mentioned in the beginning, Chillingworth gradually destroys himself under his inner thoughts of taking revenge towards Hester and Dimmesdale.

When Chillingworth first appears, he is hideous, partly because of his strange mixture of “civilized and savage costume”. But the problem is that even when he is better dressed, he is far from attractive. He is a thin and small man. He is Hester’s husband, but we can learn from the novel that he just cannot get the love from Hester. The marriage between them totally arranged by the parents. Two years after he sents Hester to Boston, Massachusetts Colony, he learns that Hester has betrayed her. At that moment, his love to Hester changes into strong hate. In spite of the condemnation of morality and conscience, he takes revenge on Hester and Dimmesdale, which results in the distort of his personality.

At the begining, Chillingworth is considered as a scholar with plenty of knowledge. He wants very much Hester’s love. But when his hope brokes, the lust of taking revenge absolutely controls him. What he has in his mind is that he would do everything he can to torment his wife who betrays his, as well as her lover. Even at that time, his soul happiness comes from their sufferings.

When Hester begs the old physician to be merciful to Dimmesdale’s victim. But Chillingworth is inexorable; he will not forge his revenge on the man who has wronged him. Yes, he is determined to do so.

However, from another point of view, what Chillingworth wants do is just protect his marriage. To some extent, we can say that his wife betrays him. But the more important is that he just don’t know what is the correct method. In the conclusion part, when Hawhorne speaks of Chillingworth’s withering up and shriveling away, he makes it plain that the old physician’s fate is the most horrible of the three, because his sin is the blackest. As far as I am concerned, Chillingworth is a tragic character. He wants to revenge on his wife and lover who betrays him, at the meantime, he himself torments a lot in the process both mentally and physically. Finally, being no longer able to wreak his vengeance on Dimmesdale, he died within a year after Chillingworth died.

 

 

Pearl

 

 

 

 

Pearl is Hester’s daughter. She fuctions mainly as a symbol. She is quite young during most of the events of the story. We get can the conclusion from the fac that when Dimmesdale dies, she is only seven years old. Pearl owns a rich and luxuriant beauty. And we learn further that she has a perfect shape; she is vigor and has a natural dexterity.

She is intelligent, imaginative, determined and obstinate. And Pearl makes people constantly aware of her mother’s scarlet letterof the society that produces it. From an early age, she fixates on the emblem. Pearl’s innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the letter raise crucial questions about its meaning. Similarily, she inquires about the relationship between the people around her, of whom the most important is her relationship between Dimmesdale. Once her father’s identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity. At Dimmesdale’s death, she becomes fully “human”, leaving behind her otherworldliness and her preternatural vision.

 

 

CONCLUSION

To be honest, I think the novel would be very boring to read at the first sight of it. While, later I gradually come to know that the story is really worthy to be read and appreciated.

After reading the novel, I have formed an impression of the main characters in the novel. The four characters are so vividly portrayed, Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth and Pearl that the impression of them are still in my mind now. I want to say that Hawthorne is really good at characterization.

I am convinced that lots of people would be very curious about the content of the novel when see the title “ The Scarlet Letter”. We are familiar with the novels which are usually named after the name of a person who is the leading role in the story, or a palce where the story takes place for most of the time. But “ The Scarlet Letter” serves as the name of the novel. And at the beginning of the novel, we know what “the scarlet letter” means. It is the symbol of Hester’s guilty. And it is also “the scarlet letter” that connects the four principal characters in the novel. “The scarlet letter” has a great effect on their lives.

Despite the title, it is obviously not a story about adultery, or even really about sin. It tells more about men’s soul than about their actions. The best way to appreciate the characters and their fuctions in the novel is to study their relationship to the central sin and the manner in which that sin lays bare their souls. From another point of view, the novel is the expression of the author to convey his discontent to the society. The deception of religion and the hypocrisy of moral are all the contents of his story. Through describing the life of the four characters of his story, what he wants to convey has vividly presented behind the story. Hester has to wear the “the scarlet letter” all the time because of her “adultery”. She is a strong and brave woman, she always refuses to tell the public who is Pearl’s father, though Dimmesdale stands close to him.

Probably I haven’t had a full understanding of the novel. But what I have grasped is the general idea the author wants to convey. There are still some details of the story that I cannot understand very well. Later during my life of futher study, it is quite necessary for me to read the novel once again, maybe more times.

The Demise of American Dream

 

Why did you choose this particular book? Typical reasons might be:

 

1. You like the author.

 

2. You like this type of book (i.e. mystery, western, adventure or romance, etc.).

 

3. Someone recommended the book to you.

 

4. It was on a required reading list.

 

5. You liked the cover.

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Gatsby is a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, ranked second in the Modern Library’s lists of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James, because Fitzgerald depicted the extolled grandest and most boisterous, reckless and merry-making scene” commented by T．S．Elliot. All these enchanting achievements and compliments increasingly drive me to The Great Gatsby, so much so that I directly rule out any other option.

 

For another, I’m obsessed with American dream which is deeply rooted in American history. For over centuries, American dream has changed gradually in accordance with the varying backdrops. Earlier, I’ve dabbled into An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie, etc., aware of the phenomenon of so-called demise of American dream. I desire to go deeper about how American dreams are doomed and how life is predetermined.

 

Armed with the above two missions, I commence journeying in The Great Gatsby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Demise of American Dream

 

[Abstract] Compared to the entire glorious civilization, the American capitalist society in the 1920s was extremely ruthless, hypocritical and deformed. The Great Gatsby, the finest novel written by the renowned American writer, Fitzgerald, is a vivid example in point to repudiate and satirize that very Jazz Age. Gatsby, born humble, kept dreaming throughout his life. In the pursuit of his dream of fortune and dream of love, he paid a disastrous price, pathetically cut off in the flower of youth at the hands of the upper class.

 

By analyzing 5 major characters and Gatsby’s two dreams, this essay will try to convey that Gatsby is the victim of that corrupted capitalist society and his tragedy mirrors the demise of American dream.

 

 [Key words] Fitzgerald, Gatsby, character, the demise of American dream

 

Brief Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), an American author of novels and short stories, is widely judged to be a member of the “Lost Generation” and one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. In his vivid and graceful works, he revealed the stridency of an age (Jazz Age) of glittering innocence, portrayed the hollowness of the American worship of riches and the unending American dream of love, splendor, and fulfilled desires.

 

Born into a fairly well-to-do family in St. Paul, Miniesota, in 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald attended but never graduated form PrincetonUniversity. Here he mingled with monied classes from the eastern seaboard who so obsessed him for the rest of his life. In 1917, he was drafted to serve in World War I. He spent much of his time writing and rewriting his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which published in 1920, became an immediate commercial success. A week later, he married the beautiful Zelda Sayre, an embodiment of romantic notions of Southern Belle.

 

Together they embarked on a rich life of endless parties. Dividing their time betweenAmericaand fashionable resorts inEurope, the Fitzgeralds became as famous for their lifestyle as for the novels he wrote. He once said, “Sometimes I don’t know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels”.

 

Yet somehow he managed to continue writing and published his second novel The Beautiful and Damned in 1922 and The Vegetable (From Postman to President) in 1923. His masterpiece The Great Gatsby, came out in 1925, was met with excellent reviews, with T. S. Eliot being among the first to comment on the book, calling it “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James”. It was also at this time that Fitzgerald wrote many of his short stories (Tales of the Jazz Age in 1922) which helped to pay for his extravagant lifestyle.

 

The bubble burst in the 1930s when Zelda became increasingly troubled by mental illness. Tender is the Night (1934) which showed the pain he felt was not well received in America. For the final three years of his life, he turned to script-writing in Hollywood when he wrote the autobiographical essays collected posthumously in The Crack-Up and his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. On December 21, 1940, he died at the age forty-four.

 

1. 1.     Setting

 

The Great Gatsby chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the “Jazz Age”. It refers to a period of time after World War I, beginning with the Roaring Twenties and ending in the 1930s with the beginning of the Great Depression.

 

After the misery of World War I and the flu epidemic, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the “roaring” 1920s as the economy soared. Individuals were so exuberant to be alive that hedonism started to prevail and creep towards every corner. Just as Fitzgerald once put it, “All the gods have been dead, all the wars finished, and all the values about humanity has been completely shaken”. The Age witnessed unrestrained materialism, appalling selfishness and lack of morality, scented with corruption.

 

At the same time, it was also a period of Probation that banned the sale and manufacture of alcoholic drinks. Mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, it made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime. Gatsby is the example in point.

 

3. Plot^[1]

 

Young Nick Carraway, the First-person narrator, decided to forsake the hardware business of his family in Middle West in order to “learn the bond business” inNew York City. In 1922, he rented a low-cost cottage located in West Egg onLong Island. Across the bay was East Egg, inhabited by the “old aristocracy”, including Tom Buchanan and Daisy (his second cousin). At a dinner party at the house of Tom Buchanan, he renewed his acquaintance with Tom, his wife, Daisy and met an attractive female golfer, a friend of Daisy’s, Jordan Baker form whom he leaned Tom’s infidelity.

 

One day Tom took Nick to call on his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, the wife of George Wilson, an owner of a second-rate auto repair shop. Nick accompanied Tom and Myrtle to theirManhattanlove-nest. Nick didn’t leave the party thrown by the couple until Tom broke Myrtle’s nose for only speaking Daisy’s name.

 

After receiving an invitation from Gatsby, his wealthy and mysterious neighbor with no lack of contradictory rumor, Nick attended the lavish party given by Gatsby. For the first time, Nick met Gatsby, young and personal. An odd yet close friendship between Nick and Gatsby begins.

 

Nick became increasingly confused when Gatsby disclosed a seemingly far-fetched version of his upbringing and introduced an underworld figure Meyer Wolfsheim to him. It’s Jordan Baker that eventually revealed to Nick that Gatsby was holding these parties in hope that Daisy, his former love who deserted poor and unknown Gatsby for rich and influential Tom, would visit by chance. Nick promised to arrange an “accidental” meeting between Daisy and Gatsby. The reunion was initially awkward but Gatsby and Daisy began a love affair, so did Nick and Jordan.

 

At the Plaza Hotel inNew York, Tom accused Gatsby of trying to steal his wife and also of being dishonest as a criminal bootlegger. Gatsby defended himself and urged Daisy to say she never loved Tom. During their argument, Daisy sided with both men by turns.

 

On the ride back to the suburbs, Daisy insisted on driving home along with Gatsby in his yellow car, followed by Tom, Nick and Jordan. All of a sudden, Myrtle ran outside of the garage as Gatsby’s roadster approached (believing it to be Tom), only to be hit and killed by the car while Daisy and Gatsby speeded away. LaterTom,Jordanand Nick noticed the car accident. Tom ledWilsoninto a private place and preemptively convincedWilsonthat the yellow car was not his but Gatsby’s because they switched cars earlier in the day and that Myrtle was having an affair with Gatsby.

 

By this point, Nick has abandoned his role as an outsider observing Gatsby’s life and instead become his close friend. When Nick found out about the truth of the accident, he advised Gatsby to run away for a week but the latter refused for his illusion of Daisy’s love. Having tracked the owner of the roadster through Tom,Wilsonmurdered Gatsby before committing suicide while Tom was packing for an escape trip with Daisy.

 

Despite the best of Nick’s efforts to make Gatsby’s funeral respectable, still few people only three attended it. After severing connections withJordanand a brief run-in with Tom, Nick returned permanently to theMidwest, reflecting on Gatsby’s desire to recapture the past.

 

4. Character Analyses ^[2]

 

Without characters, there would be no plot and, hence, no story. Hence, the character development is the key element in a novel’s creation, and character analysis is crucial to understanding the novel. Therefore, major characters will be elaborately analyzed.

 

Nick Carraway (a bond salesman from the Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a resident of West Egg): He is not only a narrator but an outsider and a witness, bearing close relationships with many characters, Gatsby’s next-door neighbor, Daisy’s cousin and Jordon’s lover. Nick represents the lower classes of the society who also strives for the American dream. Initially he is obsessed with the legendarily glamorous parties at Gatsby’s Long Island mansion and attracted to the wealthy New York where life pace is fast. Gradually by witnessing hypocrisy, indifference, selfishness and greediness, especially shown in the death of Myrtle Wilson, the arrangement of a small funeral for Gatsby, he finds out that in the process of self-fulfillment, the once civilized and rational East has become a spiritual wasteland, a quality of distortion. It’s best exemplified throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker, firstly attracted by her vivacity and sophistication, increasingly repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people, eventually severing connections with her peacefully and returns to wholesomely.

 

He is the only three-dimensional character, an aspiration for mental maturity, as well as an embodiment of traditional virtues.

 

Jay Gatsby (originally James Gatz): Originally from North Dakota, Jay Gatsby, a typical upstart after the World War I, is a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury. He falls in love with a charming lady from a decent family, Daisy, who later marries to the affluent Tom for material security. He convinces himself that the change of Daisy gets bogged down to his meager economic condition. As a result, he spares no efforts to accumulate his wealth by hook or crook and then throws extraordinary parties every week in an attempt to draw Daisy’s attention. He has ordered his whole life around the desire to be reunited with Daisy whom he shuns every shortcoming of and idolizes a great deal. He never dwells on that his American dream has been distorted and turns out to be unworthy. Although he can tell Daisy, “Her voice is full of money”, he blindly lingers in the illusion and protects Daisy at the risk of losing anything, including his life. Consequently, his steadfast loyalty to love contributes to the demise of himself and his dreams.

 

Just as Nick tells him, “They’re [Daisy,Tom,Jordan] a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”, Jay Gatsby is one of the best among characters in the novel despite his role of a criminal bootlegger.

 

Daisy Buchanan née Fay（Nick’s second cousin, once removed; and the wife of Tom Buchanan）：As a representative lady of the upper class, she is undeniably attractive but severely shallow, self-centered and selfish. Although she once does love Gatsby since she even “packed her bag one winter night to go toNew York and said good-by to a soldier who was gone overseas”, dominated by her vanity and sophistication she eventually deserted Gatsby and married Tom, a young man from an aristocratic family who promises her a wealthy lifestyle. However, partly due to her husband’s constant infidelity, the material and sensual desire still fails to help her impoverished mind. Later mainly mesmerized by Gatsby’s affluence, she is willing to become his secret lover soon. When Tom reveals the illegal origin of Gatsby’s wealth, she beats a retreat from by saying “I never loved Tom” with perceptible reluctance to “I did love him once- but I loved you too”. She just couldn’t lose the comfortable and luxury life with Tom though this life is boring but gives her a feeling of safety.

 

Her irresponsibility and hypocrisy is completely manifested at the end of the story. When she drives over Myrtle, she doesn’t even stop and conspires with Tom to make Gatsby take the fall. Then she and Tom moves away, leaving no address but Gatsby’s demise of his dream and himself.

 

Doubtlessly, Daisy is the utmost idealized quintessence in Gatsby’s blind eyes and an epitome of hedonism which only centers on money first and materialism.

 

Tom Buchanan (a millionaire on East Egg and Daisy’s husband): He is the prototype of those who squanders their money accumulated by their ancestors and constantly flaunts wealth to parade his superiority. He delights in the affairs with Myrtle but forbids his wife’s unfaithful behavior. He is thoroughly aware of Daisy’s nature and makes full use of it. He confronts Gatsby’s illegality to Daisy, thus wins a definite victory. But he doesn’t stop. His conspiration with Daisy puts Gatsby on the track of demise.

 

He represents the typical ethic in the early 20^th century inAmerica, display of fortune without restraint, irresponsibility to the family, addiction to spree, total possesion of women, and diabolicalness.

 

Just as Fitzgerald described, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mass they had made…”

 

Jordan Baker (Daisy’s long-time friend, Nick’s lover): She is selfish, irresponsible, dishonest and shares the same value on money with Tom and Daisy. She even cheats in the golf playoff, intolerant of being disadvantaged. Due to her severely peccable personality, she is deserted by sensible Nick.

 

Her role is more of another narrator who completes Nick’s part but also provides responding information from various perspectives, facilitating the development of the fiction. 

 

5. Comments^[3]

 

The “American dream” has been deeply rooted in America. Firstly, it referred to Puritan’s yearning for religious freedom, later, evolved into the pursuit of happiness, especially success during the process of pioneering the New Worldand The West. With the progress of industrialization and gradual emergence of metropolitans, the “American dream” was specialized into the only aspiration of money. It’s also in this era that the American society witnessed its moral corruption. The Great Gatsby is a vivid example of disillusionment of the “American dream” after the First World War. Gatsby has been dreaming through his whole life. He’d rather die in his dreams than wake up and come back to reality.

 

Dream of fortune: When the World War II broke up，Gatsby was dispatched to the Europe frontline. Five years later, he returned in glory, only to find Daisy married to Tom for the sake of money. However, hope never eluded him for he held steadfastly that Daisy sooner or later, would reunite with him as long as he granted her a luxurious life. Consequently, he amassed money through illegal ways such as bootlegging alcohol and gambling to become an upstart overnight.

 

Making a great fortune is one of Gatsby’s American dreams, shown since as a young boy, “he had a lot of brain power” in his head and “always had some resolves like this or something”. What obsessed him a great deal with Daisy firstly lied in Daisy’s grand mansion, white limo and well-to-do life. Fully convinced that wealth maintained youth, mystery and even Daisy’s love, he made all-out efforts to pretend to be descent, showed off imported shirts to Daisy and threw legendarily glamorous parties. But they failed to win Daisy back, for the power of money was limited. Pathetic enough was that he didn’t realize no matter how much money he possessed, he was destined to be an outsider, an inferior upstart in the view of the aristocracy.

 

Dream of love: For Gatsby, Daisy was the green light that shone his prospect. Innocent enough, he fancied Daisy’s heart was as beautiful as her appearance and she stuck to love as he did. Therefore, he blamed himself for Daisy’s marriage to Tom and dreamed to buy back her love. Dominated by his weave of the dream, he successfully persuaded himself that his dream had already come true by the reunion with Daisy.

 

In his heart, the upper class meant paradise, encompassing all the beauty and colorfulness. So was Daisy, the angle of his genuine happiness, the incarnation of idealized dream. He shunned all her disadvantages so much so that his illusion surpassed her and everything. On the contrary, Daisy was merely shallow, irresponsible and selfish. She flirted with Gatsby out of boredom and thrill. Poor Gatsby! He didn’t figured out that “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mass they had made…” When Gatsby “first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, he had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He didn’t know that his dream was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”

 

Gatsby’s dream of love and his dream of fortune are closely connected to each other. His dream of love was based on his dream of fortune. How came that Gatsby would fall in love with Daisy if she was penniless? On the other hand, his dream of fortune served as an indispensible means to realize his dream of love, therefore he plunged himself to restlessly collecting money by hook or crook. The irreconcilable conflict between his way to purse love and his ideal for love determined the eventual disillusion of his dreams and even the demise of himself.

 

Gatsby’s is the victim who paid so high a price for his American Dream. Upon death, he still didn’t understand his American dream which once depended on individual efforts had been already gone with the wind in that rotten Jazz Age. He wasn’t aware that what he pursued so hard couldn’t be realized for the lack of pragmatic and realistic conditions.

 

Conclusion:

 

Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby is really worth mulling over. It not only contributes to being a paragon of the Great American Novel, but also witnesses the total decline of American society at Jazz Age. In conclusion, the Great Gatsby achieves an undeniable glory whether in literature field or in the conveying of the demise of American dream.

 

Personality Leads to Tragedy

Why did you choose this particular book?

    I choose this particular book “The Age of Innocence” for the following reasons:

First, the author Edith Wharton is considered as one of the most successful novelists in American literature. And it purports that she and Jane Austin both belong to prominent novelists of social manners, for her, the accurate depiction of the New York society is the most impressive. I want to read a book of female writer.

Second, the book The Age of Innocence is one of the most representative books of Edith Wharton. It wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature for her, which made her become the first woman to win this prize. And the story has been filmed well.

Third, I have read some introductions of the book, it involves love and family. I think at my age, it is necessary for me to gain some knowledge in these aspects. I believe I will benefit from the book.

Fourth, occasionally, I borrowed this book from the library and it was among the book lists which our professor gave us. So I began to read this particular book The Age of Innocence.

 

 

 

 

 

Personality Leads to Tragedy

Abstract：

With New York society as background, Edith Wharton’s famous work The Age of Innocence centers on the upper class’s daily life, love and marriage, especially the relations between Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska and May Welland. Through a deep and vivid depiction in the novel, human beings’ confusion, bewilderment and perplexity when facing their own chaotic sensibilities is thought-provoking. The love triangle, the departure of Newland Archer and Ellen are tragedies that mainly leaded to by Newland Archer’s weakness in personality as well as the society.

Key word:

Character, love, personality, tragedy

 

 

1. Brief Introduction of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton ( January 24, 1862- August 11, 1937 ), was born in New York City. In 1885, at her age of 23, she married Edward Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years older than her. They shared the love of travel but had little in common intellectually. She traveled a lot especially in France. In the series of articles Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort she described those trips. In 1908, the mental state of her husband was incurable and they divorced in 1913. Then she had an affair with a journalist who was an intellectual partner of her. During the World War I, Wharton spared no efforts in charity for refugees, and in 1916, she was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Besides, Wharton was a supporter of French imperialism. Having grown up in upper-class, she became one of the critics and her novels were featured by the use of dramatic irony and social manners especially the depiction of New York society. Wharton acquainted with many other famous figures of her times, including Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. She had a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social psychological insight with combining her insider’s view of America’s privileged classes. And she died of a stroke in France.

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer and designer. She finished The Age of Innocence in 1920 in Provence, which won the 1912 Pulitzer Prize for literature, giving her the honor of being the first woman to win the award. She wrote novels like The Touchstone ( 1900 ), The Valley of Decision ( 1902 ), Sanctuary (1903), The House of Mirth (1905), Madame de Treymes, The Fruit of the Tree (1907), Ethan Frome (1911), The Reef (1912), The Marne (1918), The Glimpses of Moon (1922) and so on; in addition to novels, she at least had 85 short stories. Her short stories collections like The Greater Inclination (1899), Souls Belated (1899), The Descent of Man and Other Stories (1903), Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910) and so on; she also wrote poetry as Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse (1909) and Twelve Poems (1926) and non-fictions like The Decoration of Houses (1897), Italian Vilas and Their Gardens (1904), France, from Dunkerque to Belfort (1915) and so on.^[1]

 

2. Plot

Regarding the New York as background, The Age of Innocence centers on a upper class couple’s impending marriage and also a story of love triangle. Newland Archer, who belongs to upper class and whose life is patterned by the social custom, is happily taking part in a marriage to a pretty girl May Welland. May Welland is purported to be a perfect wife and mother who complys with all the social custom. However, when Countess Ellen Olenska appears, Newland begins to doubt whether his choice of marrying May is right or not. Countess Ellen Olenska, who is May’s cousin, has been living in Europe and has returned to New York after separating herself from a bad marriage scandalously. Firstly, Newland helps Ellen as a support to May’s family because Ellen’s decision to divorce is a social crisis for the other members in her family. However, with Newland’s love for Ellen growing, he starts to confuse about the values on which he was raised and he struggles to balance social commitment to May with love for Ellen. Even after his marriage with May, he still wants to have Ellen to be his lover. When Newland decides to tell May that he will leave her for Ellen, but May’s pregnancy stops him and meanwhile Ellen returns to Europe because May has told her of her pregnancy earlier, in spite of not being sure of it. Feeling in a trap, Newland decides to surrender his love for the sake of his children and remain in a loveless marriage to May instead of following Ellen. Twenty-six years later, after May’s death, surprisingly Newland finds that May knew his love to Ellen. And he has an opportunity to meet Ellen again. But he declines and walks away because he realizes that the only place for their love is in his memory.^[2]

 

3. Character Analysis

In order to make a better analysis of the tragedy of love triangle and the departure of Newland Archer and Ellen that leaded to mainly by the weakness in personality of Newland as well as the society, I have first to analyze the main protagonists one by one.

Newland Archer: belongs to upper class. Living with his mother and sister in a graceful house in New York City, he is a handsome, popular and successful lawyer. His life has been shaped by social custom and conventions since his childhood. At the very first, he is satisfied to expect a traditional marriage. But it changes when Ellen appears. When he falls in love with Ellen, he begins to confuse about the values of his society. He struggles between social commitment and true love. At last, due to his weakness in personality and the restraints of the society, he finds the only place for his true love is in his memories and he surrenders himself into a loveless marriage with May.

May Welland: first Newland Archer’s wife-to-be, then wife. She is raised to be perfect wife and mother who complys with all social custom and conventions perfectly. Mostly, she is the shallow, uninterested and uninteresting young woman that the New York society requires. Even after marriage, she suspects Newland and Ellen, she still pretends happiness before public and holds the illusion of perfect marriage. And her unhappiness stimulates her manipulative nature to tell Ellen of her pregnancy before certainty which makes Ellen’s long leaving. However, compassion still lays in May. She has always known Newland’s love for Ellen until her death.

Ellen Olenska: she is May’s cousin and Mrs. Manson Mingott’s granddaughter. She married a Polish Count who is cruel, abusive and has an affair with others. So Ellen wants to get divorce and returns to New York City. She is a free spirit and helps Newland to see beyond narrow New York society. But her affair is a crisis to the society and she is disreputable and suffers a lot. When she falls in love with Newland, she feels in trap. Her conscience and responsibility to family complicate her love for Newland. Finally she leaves America to refuse Newland to follow her after she learns May’s pregnancy and so allow May and Newland to start a new life.

New York City society: a society of powerful and wealthy families. Following and imposing a strict, rigid code of social conventions and behaviour, they can not bear any one who break their rules. And such a society regards inappropriate for a woman parted from her husband, so Ellen is disreputable. The judgment in New York City can not be clear any more. ^[3]

 

4. Comment:

The plots of the novel The Age of Innocence are relatively simple. The story regarded New York City which Edith Wharton did best in depicting as the background. As a person who strongly hated the false ethics and values of upper class society, Newland Archer, the reluctant vindicator of those was doomed to be a tragic character, especially in his love and marriage.

At the very beginning, when reading the book, I had the idea that Newland Archer had a great personality because he chose the way of sacrificing himself to maintain the public order of New York City. However, after finishing reading and pondering this over, I began to realize that sacrificing for a hypocritical and snobbish society was not the original intention of Newland Archer. On the contrary, he was no more than a failure who fell into a contradiction between commitment and love and just could not find proper way to turn out right from the dream. Newland Archer had a very deep insight of the hypocrisy, provinciality, ignorance and conservatism of the upper class society in New York City. He regarded it as a small and slippery pyramid, and on the bottom of the pyramid were a group of creditable but noteless and decent families. These families lifted their status up and pushed their fortune by intermarriage with the dominant families. Taking these rich but inconspicuous families as the pinnacle of the pyramid, then a ruling circle which was massy, firm, close and packed was gradually taking into shape. So called social custom, etiquette and taboo were all laid down according to the standards of those families of the pyramid pinnacle. In order to maintain the stability of the pyramid, those families in  ruling circle were united as one and concentrated their attentions and efforts on strictly and rigidly boycotting any intruder out of the pyramid. They never allowed even one action to exist that was bucking the code and the standard. What’s more, they looked down upon writers, artists and even those who was full of imagination and seemed to exceed their conventions. As a consequence, under their control New York City had been in a state of culture hungriness. Newland Archer seemed to be among the pinnacle of the pyramid but also an outsider of the pyramid. He had a relatively higher cultural cultivation and he could hardly bear the life in the pyramid which was stuffy, tasteless and ignorant. He had read some books about anthropology, which would make him think about social relations in a new way. Always, he was just like a natural historian or an anthropologist observing the New York City society with cold composure. Tragically, the more objectively he observed the society, the more strongly he felt the sense of alienation. Even, he thought the traditions of engagement and marriage laid down by the society as well as so called civilized behaviours in civilized life were just paralleled with the barbarous rites of primitive tribes. Because they all stemmed from the blind worship for a certain rite. ” In reality, they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. “^[4] That was what Newland Archer recognized.

Then the arrival of Ellen Olenska brought the new promise land for Newland Archer. Ellen was bold, untrammelled, unconventional and beautiful. In comparison to May Welland, she was also mature, confident and glamorous. So Newland Archer soon fell in love with her fanatically but he was not willing to speak out his true feeling at first. With the dispassionate appearance, Newland Archer was going through a torment of inner suffering and grief. Actually, whether love or hatred Newland Archer never took action in reality or put into practice. He strongly hated all kinds of rules and punishments of the upper class society, however, all the time he behaved in a most cautious orderly way for fear that he violated the rule unconsciously. One the one hand, he showed sympathy to Ellen in his innermost heart and decided to fight against all his family members and even the whole society. Besides, he was in support of Ellen to get divorce with her libertine husband. On the other hand, however, when he was sent to deal with this affair as the identity of a lawyer, he violated his own willingness and stated the decisive talks to Ellen which pulled he himself and Ellen into the deep abyss of pain. He said to Ellen that on such occasion, the individual must always sacrifice for the interest of the collective. People must adhere to all the conventions firmly in order to maintain the unity of a family in order to protect their children. Newland Archer was quite clear about what the so-called interests of the collective was, but he was not willing to sacrifice himself heart and soul. It was his fear that Ellen would be condemned by society that made him to act out his hypocritical statement. After he persuaded Ellen to give up the intention of getting divorce, he persuaded May to bring the wedding day forward, but at the same time he expressed his love for Ellen at all hazards. Unfortunately, at that time Ellen had already deeply accepted his opinion of self-sacrifice. So she mentioned she had learned a good knowledge from him that people utterly detested those who exchange happiness with disloyalty, cruelty and absence of nerves. And Ellen told Newland Archer that she could love him only by giving him up. In the meantime May sent a telegram to tell Newland Archer that she agreed to bring the wedding day forward. So from here, it was not so much to say that the strict social custom constrained Newland Archer to make decision as to say that his innermost fear of these conventions and custom make him lose the chance of being together with Ellen. That is, the weakness of Newland’s personality mainly led to his tragedy in love. 

Newland Archer was not at all lofty to restrain his selfishness and be strict with himself, but only to reflect his personalities of indecision, cowardice and flabbiness. After his marriage, Newland Archer did not take the responsibility of family and marriage, instead, he began to pursue the happiness of love from dream and fantasy which he could not attain in reality, although from the surface he was a faithful, dutiful and responsible husband. However, there existed a secret world that only belonged to Ellen and him. He set up a palace in his heart and put the most secret thoughts and desires there. Even sometimes he considered that his spiritual world with Ellen was more real than his life in reality. Once he sit in his wife’s cart with Ellen shoulder to shoulder, he told Ellen that for him, this was the only thing to be reality. But when Ellen questioned him whether he wanted her to be his mistress, Newland Archer like a drowned mouse answered stutteringly, ” I want… Somehow, I want to get away with you… And…and find a world where words like that don’t exist！”^[5] Newland Archer seemed that he wanted to elope and run away with Ellen, which was totally paradoxical with his precious thought. Once when one of his friend, a low status correspondent said to expatriate himself, Newland Archer disapproved and did not concern about the idea. He thought that expatriating was just like a gentleman casting away his mother country. Actually, a man indeed could not at random run away from the culture that moulded him. Besides, just as Ellen put it, a man who departed from his national culture was like an exile. If a person even could not adapt to his own national culture, how could he adapt well to another culture, so it is doomed for him to feel more lonely in another cultural circumstance. Newland Archer’s personality of indecision forced him tragically to have no chance to choose another social and cultural circumstance that was in harmony with his life. In the novel, it was proven that he should have chosen another life way that was more suitable except for an exile because some people really had a different life way and relatively closer to reality. For example, artists of New York City apparently were not disturbed by the rules and punishments which dominated New York City society. They did not have the wish or desire to blend with the society’s structure. Maybe among the characters Edith Wharton praised most was the archaeologist Emerson. Although he also got married with the daughter of the prominent family, he and his wife conformed to no convention pattern. They annually regarded the form of holding garden party as complying with their social obligations. In the rest of time they all worked in the activities they were indeed interested in. He had the courage to break with the tradition, but he still lived a full and substantial life. From this perspective, for those who wanted to live a Bohemian life, there still exists room for one to be flexible and take action. 

In order to become a man who could live freely in a foppish world, Newland Archer must at first learn to choose and accept the most valuable thing in his national culture and give up the rest. However, he was lack of this kind of ability or he was just unwilling to make decision. He was an idealist who succumbed to vulgar demand. On the one hand, he wanted to get the ideal romance with Ellen. On the other hand, he was unwilling to fight against the system which constrained such kind of love and romance. What’s more, he wanted to get the extramarital love but at the same time he wanted to carry out his duty and responsibility of being a husband with loyalty. Except for the Utopia, there was no social system that could satisfy his two strongly conflicted desires at the same time especially in such a New York City society. Newland Archer’s personality of swaying between gain and loss, and the contradictory psychology of cowardice and hesitation were destined to make him let the blossom of life slip and tragedy was there only to be left. .

This novel through depicting the psychological development of Newland Archer, one of the themes that the conflict between individual requirement and social etiquette finally leaded to individual tragedy was seen clearly. The contradictory psychology of Newland Archer was also a plight of a common person. Each of us has two kinds of consciences: the first kind of conscience is totally consistent with our community, so it can not represent ourselves, instead, it stands for the society which restrains our life and behaviours. The other kind of conscience thoroughly stands for our innermost self, so it is personal and the very one makes us to be the individual. Any one in any society will have the case that two consciences occur at the same time. How to deal with the two consciences and two self relations well is the key to reach one’s happiness. Thus the individual should cultivate the abilities of judgment, selection and reconciliation. Besides, the individual should deal properly with the relation of self-control and aggressive pursuit, the relation between when to hold fast and when to let go. If we think for ourselves, the desire for self behaviour will be stronger and stronger, so it is not easy for us to comply with others’ thoughts and behaviours. Moreover, once these two kinds of thoughts and behaviours combine and begin to function, then our personality and individuality will disappear. Because we are not ourselves any more, we are only part of the life of the collective. The psychological development of Newland Archer just went through the process of transferring from the first kind of extreme to the second kind of extreme. Due to his unwillingness or inability of cohering with the two conflicts, he went through the process that was from at first hope for getting everything to at last losing everything. Therefore, Newland Archer’s tragedy was mainly individual, it was principally his personality of hesitation, mutability, cowardice and flabbiness that leads to his tragedy in love and marriage.^[6]

 

5. Conclusion:

    In conclusion, there is a pity for Newland, Ellen and May, for their tragedy of love. To some extent, there is on doubt that they are all victims of their society which has a strict and rigid code of social custom and convention. But mostly the tragedy results in the protagonists’ personality especially the indecision and cowardice of Newland Archer. I firmly believe that if Newland is decisive and bold enough, he is bound to be with Ellen. So from this, I realize that it is of importance to cultivate a good personality and quality, I should strive for it on and on. Besides, I begin to consider the balance between passion and duty in marriage. All in all, finishing reading The Age of Innocence, it enlightens me with many ideas on personality, marriage, love and duty, thus it really worth reading.

Appreciate The Adventures of Huckle

Why did you choose this particular book? Typical reasons might be:

 

1.     “All modern American literature comes from on book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn….There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

—Ernest Hemingway

 

1.     The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book by Mark Twain, considered as one of the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective).

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

 

1.     Because of his delicate familiarity with children’s psychology and his thorough understanding of Americans and American society, Mark Twain profoundly and vividly depicts the adventurous story of Huck and Jim and reveals his own views towards the civilized society. This point appeals me to read this novel.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Abstract：

First published in Englandin December 1884 and in the United Statesin February 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain’s masterpieces and considered as one of the Great American Novels. The novel depicts the adventurous story of a white child Huckleberry Finn and a black slave Jim’s escape toMississippi to pursue a free life. Through poring over the novel from children’s perspective, this book report tries to reveal the novel’s themes and the author’s views towards human civilization.

 

Key word:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, children’s perspective, book report

 

1. Brief Introduction of Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called “the Great American Novel.”

Twain grew up inHannibal,Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion’s newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on theMississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley’s Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the “greatest American humorist of his age,” and William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.”

 

2. Plot

Used to living a free and undisciplined life, Huck can’t stand his new life in his adopted mother Douglas’ home, where he has to wear decent clothes everyday and learn endless rules and regulations, which afflict him a lot. One day, Huck’s drunken father comes back after disappearing for over one year. He forces Huck to live with him in a hut among a remote forest. No longer need to learn the decent manners, Huck is fairly contented with life in the forest, fishing and hunting freely. However, he couldn’t stand that his father often beats him when drunken and keeps asking Huck to hand out his share of unexpected fortune, which he got with Tom Sawyer. Therefore, Huck takes the chance that his father goes to the town to sell the wood, makes a false spot that he’s drowned, steal his father’s raft and escapes toJacksonIsland.

JacksonIslandis a deserted one. However, Huck unexpectedly encounters Jim, an escaped black slave. Later, Huck learns that Jim escaped because he got the news that his mater wanted to sell him again, and that in order to get rid of the slavery fate, Jim escaped to the island. Even though Huck knows it’s against the law to help an escaped slave, they become good friends as they have similar experiences. Realizing that the island is not safe enough, they set about leaving for another state and float along theMississippion raft. To avoid the search, they hide among the forests in the daytime and goes out only at night. Finally, overcoming a cornucopia of setbacks, they get to a wide river gulf where they think a safe place. To their disappointment, after consulting the people on the river bank, they find they are matter-of-factly heading for the opposite direction and nearer to the centre of their state. Frustrated, they can do nothing but let it be. For them, only the wideMississippiand their small raft are their free paradise.

One dawn, they meet two people dispelled by a crowd. Compassionated, Huck and Jim adopt them. After a short time, they find out the two people are liars who later take charge of the raft and sell Jim. Knowing he can’t win over them, Huck secretly leaves the raft for Filps Farm to save Jim. In the farm, Mrs. Filps takes Huck for his nephew Tom. Huck finds out that the man who buys Jim is just Tom’s uncle and the household is waiting for Tom’s visit. Smart enough, Huck takes the chance to play the role of Tom in the farm and prevents Tom’s coming. However, Tom loves adventures and he demands to play the role of Tom’s younger brother Xide. Several days later, they work out an adventurous plan to save Jim. They spread the news that Jim is going to escape, and the whole staff in the farm goes out to hunt for Jim. As they carry the real guns and pistols, Huck and Tom are scared to death and try to escape. In a panic, Tom got a shot and experiences what real adventure is. Only after Jim is taken back does Tom reveal the truth that Jim’s master has announced Jim a free man. At the end of the story, Mrs. Phelps wants to adopt Huck who declined, however. Huck has made up his mind to live a free life where the Indians inhabit.

 

3. Character Analysis

The main protagonists in this fiction are white teen Huck and black slave Jim. The former escaped from a restraint and hush adopted family to pursue free and undisciplined life, while the latter escaped from his master’s house to get rid of his slavery fate. During their adventures, they develop a deep and unbreakable friendship.

Huck is the central character of the fiction and an upright and rebellious child image in American literary history. At the beginning of the story, he is active and restless. Influenced by racial discrimination of that time, he looks down upon Jim, mocks him, and once even wants to reveal him to the court. However, as they encounter many setbacks and frustrations together, and survive from a narrow escape, Huck develops a deep friendship with Jim and determines to help him attain freedom. The story depicts a lot of Huck’s psychological activities. For instance, there is a scene where Huck wants to reveal Jim to the court. He writes a letter and says “Well, so, go hell.” He then tears the letter immediately. Just as the author once said, “The wholesome soul (democratic idealism) has a conflict with malformed ideology (racial discrimination) and the malformed ideology is wiped out.” Huck’s change of views towards Jim and his actions to help Jim to attain freedom vividly imply the author’s view about racial discrimination—Now that racism could not even deceive a child into believing it, it’s inexorable that the slavery system will break down, that the white and the black should struggle together to foster a new democratic and free world.

Jim is a loyal and capable black people. His doomed destiny as a slave that can be sold randomly is the reflection of the pathetic life of black slaves. Different from Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin who is obedient to his sufferings, Jim takes measures to escape from the his master. Under that context, his actions can be considered as brave enough. Besides Jim are full of sympathy and sacrifice spirit. When they are floating along theMississippi, he takes care of Huck and tries his best to keep this white child from fear and danger. When Tom gets a shot, he puts his safety aside and helps the doctors to save him in the farm dangerous for him. Through depicting these kind-hearted and noble behaviors, the author tries to convey that the blacks are no worse than the white in personality, and that they surpass the white in many aspects, thus negating the theories of racial discrimination utterly. The creation of such an image is to state the requisiteness and urgency of abolishing slavery.

 

4. Comment:

This book reveals the author’s views towards civilized adult world through children’s perspective—Now that racism could not even deceive a child into believing it, it’s inexorable that the slavery system will break down, that the white and the black should struggle together to foster a new democratic and free world..

In children’s perspective, the adult world represents the civilized world. They understand the adult world from their unique point of view. They try to spare feeble efforts to express something, to change something, which are mere silent protest and leads to their despair. Children will inevitably pass their childhood and turn adults who suppress their own children. It is a vicious cycle attributed to human civilization.

At the beginning of the story, although Huck escapes from the civilized education, he still couldn’t keep himself far away from the adult world, which is filled with his drunken father’s screaming, scolding and beating. He knows he couldn’t stand directly against the adults, so he takes a silent step like most other children—after careful planning, he makes up a false scene that he’s dead and leaves the hut. Huck wants to rescue Jim to realize his dream of individual heroism. Jim is an innocent black slave different from the civilized world, a member of a class negated by the so-called civilized white world. The salvation reflects Huck’s revolt against the so-called civilized adult world. At the end of the story, Huck returns to the “civilized” world, but he’s aspiring to live in the west where he thinks he could be free from the rules and manners of the adult world. However, this idealized west doesn’t really exist and it resembles the “despair” that even the dreaming place of a child is “civilized” by the adult.

After reading the whole book, it’s obvious that Huck is a special literary image different from any other literary images—He has some unique features that can’t be explained through adults’ eyes, namely, his virginity. At first, Huck uses his fairy-tale point of view to look at the world, only to find that there is a huge gap between the reality and fairy tale. When he thinks about the world childishly, he finds out the reality is so chaotic and perplexing. As a consequence, he gradually begins to shun the reality and his adventures turn into escape. He tends to reject the so-called civilization of the adult world and aspire for the undeveloped nature. He once even tries to change the dark and chaotic world through his resistance. However, under immense pressure of the adult world, this kind of resistance will collapse, be assimilated or be swallowed.

1)      The voice in the fairy tale

What firstly accompanies children is the voice in the fairy tale, which is truthful

and good-natured. Then, the children are assimilated by adult world, the fairy tale being assimilated into the reality. Huck is no exception. He admires the nature and considers the sound in the forest the most natural. He feels the safest and most comfortable to sleep surrounded by the sound of the nature. “Put on my previous rugged clothes and hide into the big barrel I used to store candies, contented and free.” This is the sound he likes subconsciously. This is the voice in the fairy tale. This is the voice of realness and naturalness.

2)      The voice of the inner heart

Then, what follows the sound in the fairy tale is the voice of the inner heart. This

voice reflects the attitudes and aspiration the children have towards the society. At first, Huck is the son of a drunkard and is often scolded and beaten by his father. He likes sleeping in the forest and eats the food thrown by others, not as normal as other people living in the same society. Then the widow adopts him. Although he begins to accept some ways of normal life, he manages with all these with efforts and feels afflicted to some extent. When he couldn’t stand his new life anymore, he slides off, puts on his ragged clothes and goes back to live in the big barrel. Huck loves the nature and adventures. After he has made up a false scene that he’s dead and heads for his freedom, he meets the black slave Jim. According to the law, not revealing the escaped black slave is considered guilty. However after several mental conflicts and the later accompaniment, Huck realized that Jim is kind-hearted and friendly, and they develop a deep friendship. During their adventures, Huck learns more about the dirtiness, hypocrisy and guilt of the upper class and he becomes more mature. Matter-of-factly, Huck’s adventures are subconscious exploration, guided by the inner heart, to pursue freedom, nature and keep away from the chains and shackles of the so-called civilization.

3)      The trial to make a voice

After the inner voice has accumulated to a certain sum, it’s likely to be released.

It’s a process from exploration to resistance. During their adventures, Huck sees all sorts of so-called civilized life—the floating corpse on theMississippi, the liars, the aristocracies fighting against each other…Compared with the honest, loyal, kind-hearted Jim, he sees more clearly the sins of the white society. Jim cries anxiously for Huck when he thinks Huck is driven away by the floods. He also helps the doctors to save Tom and remains at the farm which is dangerous for him… All his actions are sparking with the good aspect of the human society. Huck’s trial to help Jim to escape and attain freedom is a decision made after pondering the society and a transformation from exploration to resistance. This embodies that Huck tries to make a sound from the inner heart.

4)      The silent resistance

At last, the children’s subconscious evasion, to some extent, is a form of

resistance. Compared with the chaotic and perplexing voice from the adult world, their voice is too weak. Therefore, they subconsciously resist through evasion, silent resistance. In this silent process, the children wish they could walk out of this chaotic adult world and to an undisturbed world of their own where they can make a voice. Under the guidance of the widow, Huck reads the Bible everyday even though he doesn’t know the meaning at all, and he can’t get across why people should go to the heaven. But it doesn’t matter, as long as he could be with his good friend Tom. He feels the new decent clothes are chains and shackles, restraining him. Therefore when his drunkard father forces him to live in an island with him, he can adapt himself quickly to the new living environment and begins loving living in the nature, where he can smoke, fish and don’t need to read and do homework. It reveals his evasion of the adult world, civilized education.

 

Conclusion:

Through children’s perspective, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn profoundly and vividly narrates the adventurous story of Huck and Jim, and reveals the author’s views towards racial discrimination—Now that racism could not even deceive a child into believing it, it’s inexorable that the slavery system will break down, that the white and the black should struggle together to foster a new democratic and free world. The adult world is usually too perplexed for children to join in. What the adults need to do is to set a good modal for the children and create a equal and harmonious world.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Typical reasons I choose this particular book might be because:

I like Mark Twain very much; he is very humorous and talented.

Abstract：

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written in 1876 by Mark Twain (1835-1910), or Samuel Clements, a famous American author in the early 19th century. The character Tom Sawyer is a clever but mischievous and adventurous boy. The story tells the childhood stories of Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn: racing bugs, fighting in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on theMississippi River

 

Key word: Mark Twain, adventures, Moral and Social Maturation, Society’s Hypocrisy, Freedom through Social Exclusion, Superstition in an Uncertain World

 

Brief Introduction of Mark Twain

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens inFlorida,Missouri, in 1835, and grew up in nearby Hannibal, a smallMississippi Rivertown.Hannibalwould become the model forSt. Petersburg, the fictionalized setting of Twain’s two most popular novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The young Clemens grew up in a prosperous family—his father owned a grocery store as well as a number of slaves—but he was sent out to work at the age of twelve after his father’s death. As a young man, he traveled frequently, working as a printer’s typesetter and as a steamboat pilot. In this latter profession he gained familiarity with the river life that would furnish much material for his writing. He also gained his pen name, Mark Twain, which is a measure of depth in steamboat navigation. Twain enlisted in the Confederate militia in 1861, early in the Civil War, but he soon left to pursue a career in writing and journalism inNevadaandSan Francisco. His articles and stories became immensely popular in the decades.

 

 

 2. Plot

   An imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two disciples were David and Goliath.

Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their romance collapses when she learns that Tom has been “engaged” before—to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American “half-breed” Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom’s anxiety and guilt begin to grow.

Tom, Huck, and Tom’s friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their newfound freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.

Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky’s favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon Muff Potter’s trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window.

Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Huck’s tools, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it.

Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal’s Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident ofSt. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.

Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky’s father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves to death.

A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom’s robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.

 

 

 

3. Character Analysis

 (I choose the main character and others who impresses me most)

Tom Sawyer

When the novel begins, Tom is a mischievous child who envies Huck Finn’s lazy lifestyle and freedom. As Tom’s adventures proceed, however, critical moments show Tom moving away from his childhood concerns and making mature, responsible decisions. These moments include Tom’s testimony at Muff Potter’s trial, his saving of Becky from punishment, and his heroic navigation out of the cave. By the end of the novel, Tom is coaxing Huck into staying at the Widow Douglas’s, urging his friend to accept tight collars, Sunday school, and good table manners. He is no longer a disobedient character undermining the adult order, but a defender of respectability and responsibility. In the end, growing up for Tom means embracing social custom and sacrificing the freedoms of childhood.

Yet Tom’s development isn’t totally coherent. The novel jumps back and forth among several narrative strands: Tom’s general misbehavior, which climaxes in theJackson’sIslandadventure; his courtship of Becky, which culminates in his acceptance of blame for the book that she rips; and his struggle with Injun Joe, which ends with Tom and Huck’s discovery of the treasure. Because of the picaresque, or episodic, nature of the plot, Tom’s character can seem inconsistent, as it varies depending upon his situation. Tom is a paradoxical figure in some respects—for example, he has no determinate age. Sometimes Tom shows the naïveté of a smaller child, with his interest in make-believe and superstitions. On the other hand, Tom’s romantic interest in Becky and his fascination with Huck’s smoking and drinking seem more the concerns of an adolescent.

Huckleberry Finn

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain created a character who exemplifies freedom within, and from, American society. Huck lives on the margins of society because, as the son of the town drunk, he is pretty much an orphan. He sleeps where he pleases, provided that nobody chases him off, and he eats when he pleases, provided that he can find a morsel. No one requires him to attend school or church, bathe, or dress respectably. It is understandable, if not expected, that Huck smokes and swears. Years of having to fend for himself have invested Huck with a solid common sense and a practical competence that complement Tom’s dreamy idealism and fantastical approach to reality (Tom creates worlds for himself that are based on those in stories he has read). But Huck does have two traits in common with Tom: a zest for adventure and a belief in superstition.

Through Huck, Twain weighs the costs and benefits of living in a society against those of living independently of society. For most of the novel, adult society disapproves of Huck, but because Twain renders Huck such a likable boy, the adults’ disapproval of Huck generally alienates us from them and not from Huck himself. After Huck saves the Widow Douglas and gets rich, the scale tips in the direction of living in society. But Huck, unlike Tom, isn’t convinced that the exchange of freedom for stability is worth it. He has little use for the money he has found and is quite devoted to his rough, independent lifestyle. When the novel ends, Huck, like Tom, is still a work in progress, and we aren’t sure whether the Widow Douglas’s attempts to civilize him will succeed (Twain reserves the conclusion of Huck’s story for his later novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

Injun Joe

Injun Joe is Tom Sawyer’s villain. His actions are motivated, from beginning to end, by unadulterated malevolence. When Injun Joe explains his motivation for revenge against Dr. Robinson and later against the Widow Douglas, we see that his personal history involves others mistreating and excluding him. Yet the disproportion between the wrongs Injun Joe has suffered—at least as he enumerates them—and the level of vengeance he hopes to exact is so extreme that we aren’t tempted to excuse his behavior. In contrast, Muff Potter’s misdeeds are inconsequential compared to the punishment he stands to receive. One might also compare Injun Joe to Sid: both are motivated by malice, which they paper over with a convincing performance of innocence.

Though his appearance changes when he disguises himself as a deaf and mute Spaniard, Injun Joe undergoes no real character development over the course of the novel. He never seems to repent for his crimes or change his spiteful outlook. His reappearances in different parts of the novel help to provide a thread of continuity, as they bring the murder-case plot, the treasure-hunt plot, and the adventures-in-the-cave plots together into a single narrative. Injun Joe’s presence also adds suspense to the novel, because we have very little sense of whether Tom and Huck’s constant fear that Injun Joe will hurt them has any basis in reality.

 

Aunt Polly 

Tom’s aunt and guardian. Aunt Polly is a simple, kindhearted woman who struggles to balance her love for her nephew with her duty to discipline him. She generally fails in her attempts to keep Tom under control because, although she worries about Tom’s safety, she seems to fear constraining him too much. Above all, Aunt Polly wants to be appreciated and loved.

4. Comment:

 Moral and Social Maturation

When the novel opens, Tom is engaged in and often the organizer of childhood pranks and make-believe games. As the novel progresses, these initially consequence-free childish games take on more and more gravity. Tom leads himself, Joe Harper, Huck, and, in the cave, Becky Thatcher into increasingly dangerous situations. He also finds himself in predicaments in which he must put his concern for others above his concern for himself, such as when he takes Becky’s punishment and when he testifies at Injun Joe’s trial. As Tom begins to take initiative to help others instead of himself, he shows his increasing maturity, competence, and moral integrity.

Tom’s adventures toJackson’sIslandand McDougal’s Cave take him away from society. These symbolic removals help to prepare him to return to the village with a new, more adult outlook on his relationship to the community. Though early on Tom looks up to Huck as much older and wiser, by the end of the novel, Tom’s maturity has surpassed Huck’s. Tom’s personal growth is evident in his insistence, in the face of Huck’s desire to flee all social constraints, that Huck stay with the Widow Douglas and become civilized.

Society’s Hypocrisy

Twain complicates Tom’s position on the border between childhood and adulthood by ridiculing and criticizing the values and practices of the adult world toward which Tom is heading. Twain’s harshest satire exposes the hypocrisy—and often the essential childishness—of social institutions such as school, church, and the law, as well as public opinion. He also mocks individuals, although when doing so he tends to be less biting and focuses on flaws of character that we understand to be universal.

Twain shows that social authority does not always operate on wise, sound, or consistent principles and that institution fall prey to the same kinds of mistakes that individuals do. In his depiction of families, he shows parental authority and constraint balanced by parental love and indulgence. Though she attempts to restrain and punish Tom, Aunt Polly always relents because of her love for her nephew. As the novel proceeds, a similar tendency toward indulgence becomes apparent within the broader community as well. The community shows its indulgence when Tom’s dangerous adventures provoke an outpouring of concern: the community is perfectly ready to forgive Tom’s wrongs if it can be sure of his safety. Twain ridicules the ability of this collective tendency toward generosity and forgiveness to go overboard when he describes the town’s sentimental forgiveness of the villainous Injun Joe after his death.

Freedom through Social Exclusion

St. Petersburgis an insular community in which outsiders are easily identified. The most notable local outsiders include Huck Finn, who fends for himself outside of any family structure because his father is a drunkard; Muff Potter, also a drunk; and Injun Joe, a malevolent half-breed. Despite the community’s clear separation of outsiders from insiders, however, it seems to have a strong impulse toward inclusiveness. The community tolerates the drunkenness of a harmless rascal like Muff Potter, and Huck is more or less protected even though he exists on the fringes of society. Tom too is an orphan who has been taken in by Aunt Polly out of love and filial responsibility. Injun Joe is the only resident ofSt. Petersburgwho is completely excluded from the community. Only after Injun Joe’s death are the townspeople able to transform him, through their manipulation of his memory, into a tolerable part ofSt. Petersburgsociety.

Superstition in an Uncertain World

Twain first explores superstition in the graveyard, where Tom and Huck go to try out a magical cure for warts. From this point forward, superstition becomes an important element in all of the boys’ decision-making. The convenient aspect of Tom and Huck’s superstitious beliefs is that there are so many of them, and they are so freely interpretable; Tom and Huck can pick and choose whichever belief suits their needs at the time. In this regard, Twain suggests, superstition bears a resemblance to religion—at least as the populace ofSt. Petersburgpractices it.

The humorousness of the boys’ obsession with witches, ghosts, and graveyards papers over, to some extent, the real horror of the circumstances to which the boys are exposed: grave digging, murder, starvation, and attempted mutilation. The relative ease with which they assimilate these ghastly events into their childish world is perhaps one of the least realistic aspects of the novel. (If the novel were written today, we might expect to read about the psychic damage these extreme childhood experiences have done to these boys.) The boys negotiate all this horror because they exist in a world suspended somewhere between reality and make-believe. Their fear of death is real and pervasive, for example, but we also have the sense that they do not really understand death and all of its ramifications.

5 Conclusions

I believe that one of the factors that makes a piece of literature or even a movie a masterpiece is how well the reader can relate to the story. This is definitely a book everyone can relate to.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a literary masterpiece, written in 1876 by the famous author Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer is a mischievous young boy who lives in the small town on the Mississippi River calledSt. Petersburg. The story line is simple, the book reads like a biography or a memoir of a summer in Tom Sawyer’s life.

Tom Sawyer seems to be the precursor of and the template for misfit kids such as Dennis the Menace, Malcolm in the Middle, and Calvin andHobbs. What makes this story great is that Tom Sawyer represents everything that is great about childhood. The book is filled with Tom’s adventures playing pirates and war with his friend Joe Harper. Tom has a trusted friend, Huck Finn, who few of the adults approve of. The book is filled with ideas of how the world works, such as how pirates and robbers work, that are so innocent, and they could only come from a child. It is a story filled with action, adventure, ingenious ideas, love, and schoolyard politics. The whole story is seemingly a complication of what people did or wish they did during their childhood.

The book is a little difficult to read at first. Personally, it takes me a little while to get used to the 19th century dialect in the book. Other than referring to persons of African descent in derogatory terms (which I’m sure uses terms even young children already know), the book would be an enjoyable read for people of all ages. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to feel young again, if just for a few hundred pages.

Concerned with Tom’s personal growth and quest for identity, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer incorporates several different genres. It resembles a bildungsroman, a novel that follows the development of a hero from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. The novel also resembles novels of the picaresque genre, in that Tom moves from one adventurous episode to another. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer also fits the genres of satire, frontier literature, folk narrative, and comedy.