My Blog

In Henry Fielding’s novel Joseph Andrews, we are presented with a character that shares a name with the novel and is assumed to be the hero of the story. The question must be raised though, is he truly a hero. When one thinks of a hero one usually thinks of a person who is willing and able to battle against Fate itself in order to achieve their ultimate goal. This description doesn’t really fit Joseph however. For most of the story it seems like he is just willing to follow the will of others without complaint, and almost every time some ill befalls him he really doesn’t do much to avoid it, instead he ends up being saved time and again by others. Let’s look towards the end of the novel where misfortune upon misfortune seems to befall Joseph. First, him and Fanny are taken to court and when they are about to be sentenced to be exiled from the parish, Fanny is clearly upset, but it seems as if Joseph is resigned to his fate and makes no move to stop the sentencing, luckily for them Squire Booby shows up and saves them. Later when Joseph and Fanny find out they might be related, Joseph automatically accepts the Peddlar’s story and goes about making plans how he can still spend his life with Fanny. In fact the only time we ever see Joseph react to the circumstances thrust upon him in any way is when someone tries to separate him and Fanny. We see him struggle against his sister and Squire Booby when they forbid the marriage, and he attacks Didapper when he comes on to Fanny. In the end these actions seem too little too late, but then one must remember that this is a mock-epic, in which case Joseph would be a mock-epic hero. So, if that’s the case wouldn’t it go without saying that the hero should be almost the exact opposite of those like Achilles and Odysseus?

In Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels we see many themes of the day underneath the surface of the text. What may at first seem to be a satire against the British government and the people that run it, soon becomes a criticism of the morality of man as a whole. It is almost as if the story becomes a microscope of morality. This is almost literally shown in the first two books of the story. In the first book when Gulliver arrives on the island of Lilliput he meets with a race of people that is much smaller than himself. If we use the analogy of a microscope we can think of the first book as looking through a microscope that is on a low magnification setting. Since Gulliver is so much larger than them it is hard for him to make out specific details, so he is mostly just a very vague impression of the appearance of the people. In the same sense the satire that is present in this chapter is mainly superficial criticisms of the British government and its actions In the second book Gulliver travels to the land of giants known as  Brobdingnag. In this book since the people are much larger than Gulliver he is able to make out minute details. The scene that ilustrates this best is when Gulliver is brought to entertain the aristocratic women. He comments how they probably resemble the women of England, but because he is so small all of their minute imperfections become very obvious. Unlike the criticisms of the last book this can be applied to humans in a much more general sense, it that no matter how perfect someone may seem there will always be faults when one looks close enough.After Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag, the microscope analogy becomes much harder to follow as the lands he travels to next have nothing to do with differences in size. Although Swift does continue to look closer at the morality of humans. In the final book he seems to become his most critical, and at the same time most forgiving of human behavior. In this book Gulliver arrives on the island of the Houyhnhnms, a race of horses that rely on rationality. Also inhabiting the island are a race of savage humans known as Yahoos. While at first it seems that Swift is commenting that in order for humanity to truly achieve a state of perfection it must embrace rationality and give up the baser emotions. It soon becomes clear that Swift is using both the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms to show what can happen to humans if they rely on one extreme and completely forego the other. While the Houyhnhnms are peaceful and extremely intelligent, they are also very dull and lack passion of any kind. The Yahoos on the other hand shows what can happen to humans that give in entirely to passion. So, it is easy to deduce that Swift believes for a person to be whole they must be able to balance between these two extremes.

Within Pope’s satire we are presented time and again with overreaction and insensibility. Yet, it seems that the entire poem is not devoid of reason, as at the beginning of Canto 5 Clarissa gives a speech on how beauty is fleeting and how “merit wins the soul.” If one were not paying attention it might seem that Clarissa is the wisest person in the story, but then one must remember that she was the one who originally handed the Baron the scissors in the first place. It may very well be that she did this so she could prove a point with her speech, but in my opinion there is much different reason for her actions. If everything in this poem is satirical in nature than what prevents Clarissa from being the same way. If Belinda could be seen as Pope’s satire on the way women overreacted during his day then couldn’t Clarissa very well be a satire on the actions of women during his day? It is most likely that she represents a real life woman, group of women, or just what Pope has noticed about women as a whole, but it seems like she is a commentary on how women can appear reasonable, but then will contradict their own statements in order to further their own position. While this may or may not be true of women is up to each individual person, but it would seem that based off of the way Clarissa behaves in this story that Pope at least believed this to be true of some women.

Every time I read Paradise Lost it amazes me how multi-dimensional a character Satan ends up being. When one looks at the other fallen angels, each has their own distinct characteristic that makes them stand out, but when you look at Satan there is nothing like that at all. At times one can be sympathetic towards his situation while at others one can think that he got exactly what he deserved. He is both an anti-hero and sympathetic villain at the same time. Take for example the Angel Rebellion throughout the entire thing you almost find yourself hoping that somehow the rebel angels will overthrow God.

While on the surface this could easily be argued that Milton just did an phenomenal job at making his Satan a true Master of Illusion and turning him into the smooth talker and liar that is portrayed in the Bible. But it truly extends deeper than this, in that Satan may truly be the most human character in the entire book. We find him behaving in ways that are similar to the ways we would behave in a similar situation. He feels that his leader is becoming a despot and so we attempt to overthrow him, exactly like America did with England. He displays a human strength of will in that even when he loses he gets right back up and tries to find a way to get back what he lost, while at the same time making the best out of a bad situation. And in all honesty who doesn’t agree with the line “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven?”

In the end we do not sympathize with Satan because he knows the exact words we want to hear. No. Instead with sympathize with Satan, because in all honesty, we are Satan.

Much like Shakespeare’s plays were adapted from stories that were around long before Shakespeare was born, Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted countless times by many different people. One of the more famous adaptations of King Lear is the 1985 film Ran directed by Akira Kurosawa. In this movie Hidetora chooses to give all his power to his eldest son, Taro. He then gives his other two sons, Jiro and Saburo, land and castles and tells them that they are to support Taro. Saburo sees the foolishness in this and speaks against his father and is summarily banished. Taro and Jiro then come to see their father as a burden and eventually banish him while at the same time they conspire against each other. There is a striking difference between Lear and Hidetora as they are slowly rejected by the family they raised. First it is worth noting that Kurosawa was in his twilight years when he directed this film and that Hidetora is most likely supposed to represent his views on old age. The most interesting difference between these two tragic figures is that Lear is a much more sympathetic character than Hidetora. Whereas Lear’s decisions appear to be made due to madness, it seems that Hidetora is completely aware of what he is doing. We come to learn that Hidetora’s rashness is not merely the product of old age, but that it has always been a part of his personality, driving him in his youth to wipe out entire families in his quest for power. It would seem that Kurosawa is making a commentary that Shakespeare could not have known at his age when he wrote King Lear. Mainly that, the road of life is paved with mistakes and we must take responsibility for them.

In Act 4 Scene 2, we are presented with Feste’s opinion on disguises. In his own words he simply says this, “So I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is ‘that’ but ‘that,’ and ‘is’ but ‘is’?” In other words if something appears to be true then people will believe it to be true. It then raises the question if the majority of people believe something to be true than is it not in fact true? In the case of Viola/Cesario, there is no person outside of Viola that is Cesario, so then it could be claimed that Cesario is not a fabrication of a person on Viola’s part, but instead a different facet of her person. Since, Cesario cannot exist separately from Viola this means that Cesario is as real as Viola.

This then brings us to a slightly more disturbing possibility that Feste’s opinion on disguises can allow for. If a person in disguise becomes the person they are trying to be when they convince everyone else that they are truly that person, then can the opposite also be true? If a group of people can convince a person they are something they are not, does then that not truly become part of their character? For this question we must look at Malvolio. He is presented to us throughout the story as a false Puritan, but this may not truly be of his own doing as it is the way other people view him. We know through reading that Malvolio takes everything seriously, so if people continued to think of him and acts towards him as if he were a false Puritan then it must be considered that eventually he would begin to believe what people were saying and he would then adapt that to his personality, in the end becoming what everybody thought of him.

On the surface it seems that the Wife of Bath is nothing but a walking contradiction, having nothing she says or does making sense in context of what she has already done in The Canterbury Tales. We see this enigmatic behavior in both her prologue and later reflected in the story she tells. On a cursory reading of the book it would seem that Chaucer did this simply to create an interesting character for his story, but if on were to look at the story as a whole it becomes apparent that there is a much more substantial reason for the Wife of Bath’s erratic behavior. The Canterbury Tales is first and foremost a satire of the time and place that Chaucer was living, and while Chaucer does a good job at giving a cross-section of the estates of Medieval England one can’t help but notice that the female population is greatly underrepresented. In the entire story we are introduced to only two separate women, the Wife of Bath and the Nun. The fact that the Nun is a member of the clergy and vastly different from many women of the time means that Chaucer’s entire criticisms of women of the time must fall on the Wife of Bath. Considering that females make up half of the population one must realize that the Wife of Bath must represent a vast number of people. It is then only natural that a lot of the Wife of Bath’s actions don’t seem match up. Whereas every other character represents a specific portion of the population, the Wife of Bath must represent every different type of woman living in England at the time. She must be rich and poor, lecherous and chaste, strong and timid, etc. We see each of these aspects reflected in the Wife of Bath at one time or another, although they might be apparent for only a fleeting moment. In the end Chaucer makes us both loathe and pity this woman, who is in fact every English woman of the time.

From our discussions in class it seems like the majority of people feel that Beowulf acted with no forethought at the end of the poem. After thinking over the situation that Beowulf was faced with I have come to a different conclusion. The main thing that we have to remember when reading Beowulf is that it was originally a story told by Norsemen, not Christian Britons. So, following this fact we must view the poem and Beowulf’s actions in a different light. The highest point a warrior like Beowulf could strive for was to die gloriously in battle so he could go to Valhalla in the afterlife. So, despite his previous achievements in life, Beowulf would not be allowed to fight beside the Æsir and Vanir for all eternity. This then brings us to the battle with the dragon. At that point Beowulf was getting old and didn’t have much time left to have one final battle, so when the opportunity presented itself he had to take this last chance to enter into Valhalla. Beowulf probably had no intention of coming back from that battle. It also seems that a lot of people thought it thoughtless for Beowulf to leave his people behind with no leader. Again we are applying the feudal idea of a king to a position that was much different. The Norse society was primarily rural and spread out with people being very self-sufficient. The king wasn’t much different from any of his followers except that his word was law when it came to settling disputes. So, with the death of Beowulf very little would have changed for his people.