More on Brave New World

While re-reading Brave New World, I found a lot with regard to the Hamlet quotes, but I also noticed a lot of other stuff that I'd neglected the other times I'd read the book.

I'd never noticed how appropriate Mr. Foster's name is.  In the book, children aren't really born; rather, they're "decanted."  As such, they don't really have parents, so Mr. Foster, in working in the Hatchery, is sort of like a foster parent.

Around the same time that Mr. Foster is introduced in the book (chapter one), social predestination is mentioned.  While the caste element of this predestination is encountered throughout the book, I think this early section is the only time that other physical conditioning is mentioned (at least at any length):

On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine.  The first batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was just passing the eleven hundred metre mark on Rack 3.  A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation.  "To improve their sense of balance," Mr. Foster explained, "Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job,  We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down.  They learn to associate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing in their heads."

About a page earlier, heat conditioning is also mentioned, for those "predestined to emigrate to the tropics."  As the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning explains, "All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."

Reading the book this time, I realized more fully how disastrous this is.  Not only is it messing around with biology and free will with (at best) questionable ethics, but it also totally disregards the possibility of new job positions or old jobs' becoming obsolete.  If a new position requiring specific skills is spontaneously created, there won't be anyone with those skills, and there will be a period of about two decades before a group can be decanted and conditioned to qualify for that position.  And if rockets are no longer being built, what are those two hundred and fifty rocket-plane engineers - already endowed with those specific skills and only those specific skills - going to do?  In the one case, there's a deficit (or maybe even an impediment), and in the other, there's a surplus.  Either would significantly affect the technological progress that's so important in the book.

I also noticed to a new degree how much religion has been eradicated.  As the Director explains in chapter three, "All crosses had their tops cut and became T's," but this is also seen just in the word cross itself.  Instead of Charing Cross Station, there's Charing-T Tower, which encapsulates not only the book's view of technological progress (what was a station has become a tower) but also this eradication of religion and some specific religious elements.  Yet - interestingly - as an adjective (a synonym for angry), cross still exists.  In chapter four, Lenina says, "Henry gets cross if I keep him waiting."

There's also a fair amount about delayed gratification that I hadn't noticed before.  In chapter six, Bernard says, "I didn't want it to end with our going to bed... not at once, not the first day," and he says he wants "to try the effect of arresting my impulses."  When John is introduced, he's shown to "arrest his impulses" without even thinking about it.  In chapter seven when he sees Lenina, he "was so much overcome that he had to turn away and pretend to be looking very hard at something on the other side of the square."  When John sees Lenina sleeping in the rest-house in the reservation, he even denounces his impulses:

He found himself reflecting that he had only to take hold of the zipper at her neck and give one long, strong pull... He shut his eyes, he shook his head.  ...  Detestable thought!  He was ashamed of himself.

Bernard seems helpless to "arrest his impulses," but John has no problem in doing so, not even daring to look at Lenina.

Finally, I understood to a better degree John's inhabiting the lighthouse in the last chapter of the book.  Not only is he trying to give himself some direction ("Oh, forgive me!  Oh, make me pure!  Oh, help me to be good!"), but he also wants to be an example to the rest of society.  It's not explicitly mentioned in the book, but he does think "vindictively" that throwing away the enhanced food he's purchased will "teach them."  In a way, the purer life that he endeavors to lead will be a beacon for everyone else, so it's fitting that he lives in a lighthouse.

Hamlet in Brave New World

I recently re-read Brave New World.  At the same time, I was also re-reading Hamlet (and I still am), so I discovered some connections between the two, specifically in how Huxley uses the original context of the Hamlet quotes to add some more depth to his characters.

This post contains spoilers for both Hamlet and Brave New World.

In Chapter 8 in the midst of John's history in the reservation, he acquires The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which - in a way - give him the language to express his thoughts.  At the same time, it's explained how he hates Popé, one of the Indians on the reservation with whom his mother Linda spends a lot of time.  It's kind of hard to tell whether Shakespeare helps John in articulating his hate for Popé, or whether John starts hating Popé because of what he reads in Shakespeare and how similar it is to his own situation.  In any case, his hating Popé is accompanied with two Shakespeare quotes:

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty

And, when John's thoughts turn to murdering Popé:

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed

Both of these are from Hamlet.  The first ("Nay, but to live...") is in Act III, Scene IV (lines 103-106), when Hamlet talks to Gertrude about her marrying Claudius so soon after King Hamlet's death, and the second ("When he is drunk asleep...) is at the very end of Act III, Scene III (lines 92-93), when Hamlet resists killing Claudius because Claudius is praying (and Hamlet thinks that killing him in the midst of prayer will send him to Heaven, which Hamlet wants to avoid), so he thinks of better opportunities to kill him.

The characters in Brave New World sort of match up to the rôles in Hamlet.  John is Hamlet.  His mother Linda is Gertrude.  Popé is Claudius.  But the rôle of King Hamlet could be fulfilled by either Thomas (the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning), who is John's biological father, or - more broadly - the "civilized" society of England itself.  (I think the broader application is more useful.)  In both works, the son tries to kill his mother's new partner, and because Hamlet does this at the behest of the Ghost of King Hamlet, the parallels suggest that, in trying to kill Popé, John aligns himself with his father figure - England, including its "civilized" values of conformity and possibly even its caste system.  In the reservation, John and Linda stick out, and through John's attempts to complete the Indians' rituals, it's obvious that he's trying to fit in.  Before he sees England firsthand, he thinks it will provide him with that sense of belonging.

The parallels beyond that get sort of confusing, and they might even break down after that scene.  Like Hamlet, John dies at the end, but where Hamlet is (at least relatively) successful in avenging his father by killing Claudius, John turns away from his father figure - the society that bred him.  He doesn't have the strength to reform - or even resist - the "civilized" England and hangs himself.  At the end of the book, when he's discovered dead, his feet "turned towards the right: north, north-east, east, south-east, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left.  South-south-west, south, south-east, east...."  This is similar to Hamlet's "I am but mad north-north-west.  When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw" (II.ii.388-389), but I'm not sure of the depth of the resemblance.  I don't think I can make a very strong case for the southerly direction that John's feet point for most of the description and their connection with Hamlet's ability to "know a hawk from a handsaw" (i.e. that John was the only sane person in a land of crazy people), but at the very least, John's feet's directions - combined with that Hamlet quote - illustrate the conflict within him - whether he would adopt the ways of "civilization" or renounce them.  It could also represent the split nature of his being - his parents were from the "civilized" society yet he was raised as a "savage" in the reservation.

I think there's also a lot to be said between the two works about what's natural and what's artificial.  The conditioning in Brave New World seems to have some precedent with the differentiation of "seems" and "is" in Hamlet, but I'd have to re-read both again in order to pay attention to those specific points.  Additionally, in the same way that John can be cast as Hamlet, I think he bears some resemblance to Miranda from The Tempest (beyond just their shared excitement about a "brave new world"), but I think it's been two years since I last read The Tempest, so in order to support that claim I'd have to reacquaint myself with that too.  Reading Brave New World this time, I was paying attention mostly to the characters' connections to Hamlet.

Alliteration in The Return of the King

While re-reading The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I found multiple instances where Tolkien's writing style emulates that of Anglo-Saxon poems.  Most of my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon poems comes from the introduction to my edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  The version I have is in the Oxford World's Classics series, translated by Keith Harrison with an introduction by Helen Cooper.  In the introduction Cooper notes the frequent alliteration in the poem: "the defining feature of the poems of the movement [the "Alliterative Revival" of the 14th century] is the repetition of key sounds within each line, rather than a rhyme or a strictly regular metrical pattern."  Additionally, the introduction to one of my editions of Beowulf mentions this alliteration.  The translator - Burton Raffel - notes that he "felt it advisable, even obligatory, to alliterate much more freely, occasionally as the Old English alliterates," and in the afterword Roberta Frank notes that the lines are "linked by alliteration."  While Beowulf is older than Sir Gawain the Green Knight, through that particular stylistic element they're connected (based on Cooper's comments on the "Alliterative Revival," it seems as if the alliteration in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight might be reviving that of poems like Beowulf).  The themes (of knights and battles) are similar too.  Tolkien studied - and, if I'm not mistaken, even taught - Anglo-Saxon literature (I recently got his translation of Beowulf), so I'm pretty sure that he would have been familiar with this particular feature and it's not surprising that he includes it in The Lord of the Rings.

This posts contains spoilers for The Return of the King.

The first instance I found of this alliteration is at the end of Chapter 3 (The Muster of Rohan).  Before the knights of Rohan go to aid Gondor, they sing a song about Théoden:

From dark Dunharrow in the dim morning
with thane and captain rode Thengel's son:
to Edoras he came, the ancient halls
of the Mark-wardens mist-enshrouded;
golden timbers were in gloom mantled.
Farewell he bade to his free people,
hearth and high-seat, and the hallowed places,
where long he had feasted ere the light faded.
Forth rode the king, fear behind him,
fate before him.  Fealty kept he;
oaths he had taken, all fulfilled them.
Forth rode Théoden.  Five nights and days
east and onward rode the Eorlingas
through Folde and Fenmarch and the Firienwood,
six thousand spears to Sunlending,
Mundburg the mighty under Mindolluin,
Sea-kings' city in the South-kingdom
foe-beleaguered, fire-encircled.
Doom drove them on.  Darkness took them,
horse and horseman; hoofbeats afar
sank into silence: so the songs tell us.

Once they arrive and the battle begins (at the end of Chapter 5, the title of which [The Ride of the Rohirrim] is alliterative in itself), there's an-other alliterative cheer:

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

But, interestingly, that alliterative element also makes its way into Tolkien's prose here:

With that he [Théoden] seized a great horn from Guthláf, his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder.  And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains.

... 

Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away.  Behind him his banner blew in the wind.  ...  Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first éored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore.  ...  Fey he [Théoden] seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins.  ...  His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed.  ...  The hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them,  ...  And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.

When Éomer takes up the kingship in Chapter 6 (The Battle of the Pelennor Fields), he continues the alliterative verses:

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

And the alliteration is present in the song that recounts the battle:

We heard of the horns in the hills ringing,
the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland
as wind in the morning.  War was kindled.
There Théoden fell, Thengling mighty,
to his golden halls and green pastures
in the Northern fields never returning,
high lord of the host.  Harding and Guthláf,
Dúnhere and Déorwine, doughty Grimbold,
Herefara and Herubrand, Horn and Fastred,
fought and fell there in a far country:
in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor.
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales
ever, to Arnach, to his own country
returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen,
Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day's ending
lords took and lowly.  Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.
Grey now as tears, gleaming silver,
red then it rolled, roaring water:
foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset:
as beacons mountains burned at evening;
red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

And finally, there's the song sung at Théoden's funeral (in Chapter 6 [Many Partings] of Book Six), which is similar to what Éomer says when he rides into battle:

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day's rising
he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
Hope he rekindled, and in hope ended;
over death, over dread, over doom lifted
out of loss, out of life, unto long glory.

I started paying attention to all of the alliteration of the characters from Rohan only while reading The Return of the King, so I might have missed a lot in The Two Towers and even in the beginning of The Return of the King.  However, I still think there's enough alliteration present to connect Rohan to those Anglo-Saxon poems.

There are some other elements in The Lord of the Rings that I feel have precedents in Beowulf (for instance, Meduseld seems to be Tolkien's version of Herot), but I'm going to have to re-read both in order to find specific descriptions of each to compare.

Beneath the Wheels

Two days ago, I finished re-reading Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel for the second time (so now I've read it three times).  Considering the ill-feeling directed toward schools in the book, I felt it was an appropriate selection because most people are going back to school but it's the first time in my life that I don't have to.

Reading it this time, I noticed a lot of stuff that I hadn't noticed before.  I still haven't sorted through everything, so the only thing I have to say about it now is pretty low-hanging fruit (figuratively speaking) about wheels in the book.  Judging by the title, wheels are pretty important, yet I'd failed to notice them the other two times I read the book.

The rest of this post contains spoilers.

It's pretty hard to miss the significance of one of the wheels because it's in the line that provides the book's title.  After Hans' performance in Hebrew has started to flag, the headmaster talks to him and encourages him: "That's the way, that's the way, my boy.  Just don't let up or you'll get dragged beneath the wheel."  In this context, the wheel represents academic work.  If Hans doesn't keep up with his studies, he'll find later lessons and such to be more difficult, and he'll eventually fall behind.

Despite this encouragement (or perhaps warning) Hans eventually does fall behind and has to leave the academy.  After he comes back to the village, he goes to watch the other villagers make cider.  He becomes attracted to the shoemaker's niece, but he's nervous about talking to her, "so he withdrew his feelers awkwardly and a little offended and crawled back into himself like a snail brushed by a cartwheel."

It was at this point that I started paying attention to the wheels that appear in the book.  I don't know if there's an instance where Hans is actually described as encountering the crushing metaphorical wheel of academia, but this is an instance where the wheel starts to get closer, merely "brush[ing]" him.

Because he no longer attends the academy, he starts an apprenticeship as a mechanic.  His first task is to file off the rough edges of a cog-wheel.  The metaphorical wheel has now become an actual wheel, and it starts to affect Hans physically.  At first, it's just that his hands become black with the work, but later "his arm hurt and his left hand with which he pressed down on the file had become red and began to smart."  The next day, "his hands burned, [and] the swellings had turned into blisters."

As the book progresses, the wheel becomes less of a conceit and more of a physical object that Hans interacts with.  First, it's just the idea of a wheel.  Then it's a simile that just misses him, and finally, it's an iron cog-wheel that he tears up his hands trying to smooth.  Interestingly, the wheel gets closer to reality as it gets closer to rolling over Hans (it's like a meta-metaphor; as the wheel becomes more concrete, it becomes more impending).  Each of these three instances corresponds to different areas of Hans' life too.  The first is the crushing wheel of academia, the second is the pressure of socialization, and the third is the strain of intense physical work.

I think the last two of these wheels provide examples of how the pressure put on Hans to succeed academically has ultimately had a negative effect on him.  Because of the narrowly-directed and persistent pressure put on academic matters, he no longer knows how to communicate (or maybe even understand) his feelings, particularly his love for Emma, the shoemaker's niece.  (To some degree, his being out-of-touch with his feelings is also shown through his relationship with his friend Heilner while he's still at the academy.)  His body has also withered away.  Because he's pushed himself (and been pushed) so much academically, he's no longer able to do physical work.  There are also multiple instances throughout the book where he mentions headaches he gets because of his frequent and intense studying.

I think these instances of wheels and how they affect Hans could be read other ways too, but the crushing nature of them was particularly prevalent to me as I read the book this time.  Probably because I just recently finished my formal education and am glad to be avoiding it this year.

Biblical Allusions in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

In May, I started re-reading The Lord of the Rings.  The last and only other time I read it was for a class (for which I had to rush through the book in about three weeks), so it's been interesting being able to read it slowly and actually pay attention to things.

A few days ago, I finished The Two Towers, and in two different chapters I'd found that Tolkien employs extended Biblical allusions.  The first is in Book Three, Chapter 10 "The Voice of Saruman."  Gandalf leads a party to Orthanc to talk to Saruman, and he warns them to beware of his (Saruman's) voice.  The narration describes that "all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves."  This is similar to the serpent's temptation in Genesis 3:  "But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" (Genesis 3:4)  Both the serpent and Saruman appeal to the desire of knowledge; the serpent to "knowing good and evil," and Saruman to "seem[ing] wise."  When Éomer tries to dissuade Théoden from listening to what Saruman suggests, Saruman himself makes the connection between deceptive talk and snakes:  "'If we speak of poisoned tongues what shall we say of yours, young serpent?' said Saruman."

After Gandalf reveals that he is no longer Gandalf the Grey, but Gandalf the White, Saruman's staff breaks.  "There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman's hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf's feet."  The significance here, with regard to the Biblical allusions, is the head and the feet.  After the serpent's deception, God curses him, saying, "'I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel'" (Genesis 3:15).  (I think some translations of the Bible have it as "he shall crush your head," with which Tolkien's "split[ting] asunder" fits more closely, image-wise.)  Here, with Saruman as the serpent, that head bruising is fulfilled in the splitting of the staff and the head's falling down to Gandalf's feet.  There's no bruising of the heel though, and I think that's because this is Gandalf the White.  In the same way that man could not overcome sin until after God is incarnate in Christ, Gandalf could not overcome Saruman until after he's become Gandalf the White.  At least, that's if my grasp of theology and The Lord of the Rings is correct.  So, in a way, through the Biblical allusions, Tolkien connects sin and the power of Sauron, who is working through Saruman.

The second set of allusions I discovered is in Book Four, Chapter 8 "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol."  The setting is described as a "valley of shadow and cold deathly light," which is a fairly blatant reference to Psalm 23, specifically "the valley of the shadow of death" in verse 4.  Tolkien just changed "death" from a noun into an adjective.  In the same way that Tolkien uses the Biblical allusions to Genesis 3 to strengthen his own setting and characters in Book Three, Chapter 10, he uses the pastoral imagery of Psalm 23 to strengthen the contrast between Mordor and Galadriel in Book Four, Chapter 8.  The Ring Wraiths come close to where Frodo and Sam are hiding, but instead of clutching the Ring, Frodo holds on to the phial of Galadriel.  A little later Frodo "took his staff in one hand the phial in his other."  This is a mirror of the later half of Psalm 23:4 - "your rod and your staff, they comfort me."  The staff that Faramir gave Frodo and the phial of Galadriel help Frodo on his way to Mordor in a similar manner that the shepherd's rod and staff comfort the sheep in the pastoral language of Psalm 23.  Near the end of the chapter in The Two Towers, there's also a reference to the "green pastures" and "still waters" of Psalm 23:2.  "'Sleep!' said Frodo and sighed, as if out of a desert he had seen a mirage of cool green."

In both of these instances, the allusions that Tolkien uses strengthen his descriptions and characterizations.

Character Names in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea

About a month ago, I finished re-reading Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea for the first time (so now I've read it twice).  The day before I finished it, I finally realized the importance of the names that Verne gave his characters.  In Chapter XIX (The Gulf Stream) of Part Two, while Aronnax is talking with Captain Nemo about their "slavery" (as Aronnax calls it) on the Nautilus, he says that he (Aronnax) is willing to "live obscure in the frail hope of bequeathing one day, to future time, the result of my labors" but that Ned Land is different.  Throughout the book, Land is trying to get back to land or at the very least escape the Nautilus.  Aronnax then says that "Every man, worthy of the name, deserves some consideration."

What I don't understand here is whether Aronnax is saying that everyone worthy of being called a man deserves consideration or that Ned Land in particular deserves consideration because his last name is Land.  (It's probably the first one.)  Regardless, this sentence got me thinking about Ned Land's name and how it reflects his goal.  He's trying to get off the submarine, and his name reflects the very opposite of being under the sea - being on land.

Thinking about Ned Land's name then got me thinking about the names of the other characters, and I found similar reflections of disposition in Conseil and Captain Nemo's names.

In Chapter III (I Form My Resolution) of Part One, Aronnax says that "despite his name," Conseil "never giv[es] advice - even when asked for it."  In French, conseil means advice or counsel.  It's been about a month since I finished the book (and it wasn't until I was nearly finished reading it that I started thinking about this, so I wasn't looking for it in the earlier parts of the book), so I can't really speak as to whether Conseil "never" gives advice to Aronnax.  Still, he does accompany Aronnax for a large portion of the book.  When he is introduced in Chapter III, Aronnax explains that Conseil is a "true, devoted Flemish boy, who had accompanied me in all my travels."

After I got thinking about the names, I found more evidence for the accompaniment that Conseil embodies.  In the third sentence of Chapter XX (From Latitude 47° 24' to Longitude 17° 28') in Part Two, Aronnax remarks that during a storm, "Conseil and I, however, never left each other."

At the time I'd been reading Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, I'd been reading a Verne book every month: Around the World in 80 Days, From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon (published together), and Journey to the Center of the Earth from March to May (and I started Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea at the end of June).  In all of these books, Verne has pairs (or, in some books, trios) of characters so that via one character's scientific explanation to an-other, the reader can also gain an understand of what's going on.  While Conseil might not serve as a counsel to Aronnax, by Aronnax's explaining various underwater creatures and phenomena to the ever-present Conseil, the reader can understand a bit more of what's going on.  It makes it a little more interesting when that explanation is in dialogue instead of in the narration.  With this sort of function, Conseil does act as a sort of counsel, but he's a counsel to the reader instead of to Aronnax.

Captain Nemo also reflects his name.  Nemo is the Latin word for no one or nobody (which, interestingly, recalls Odysseus and his encounter with Polyphemus).  Captain Nemo has exiled himself from the world and travels around in the Nautilus, and his name mirrors his wish to be left alone.  In the aforementioned storm in Chapter XX, where Conseil accompanies Aronnax, Aronnax explains that Nemo "had isolated himself."

With these three character's names representing some aspect of themselves, I started to wonder whether Verne also did this to Pierre Aronnax, who is the only other major character, but I can't really find anything in Aronnax's name to suggest a particular quality.  Pierre might be a pun on pier and - through the nautical imagery that's prominent in the book - indicate Aronnax's importance of centrality as the narrator, but this neglects the fact that Verne wrote the book in French, a language in which that pun wouldn't work.

The only other thing I want to note after this reading of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is a description of the Nautilus near the beginning of Chapter XIX (The Gulf Stream) in Part Two.  Aronnax writes that "the Nautilus did not keep on in its settled course; it floated about like a corpse at the will of the waves."  By itself, it's a morbid description, but especially so after considering the previous chapter, in which one of the Nautilus' men is killed in a battle with the poulps.  In a way, in likening the submarine to a corpse, Aronnax is describing how the death affected the vessel itself.

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

About two weeks ago, I finished reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.  Here are some thoughts/observations about it.  There aren't any outright spoilers, but I do mention some significant plot points.

I thought the sort of reversal of life and death when Jane is talking to her aunt in Chapter XXI was interesting.  Mrs. Reed's son John recently died, and Jane goes to visit her, yet Mrs. Reed speaks as if John were still alive and if Jane were dead.  She said that she "wish[es] she [Jane] had died!" and talks to Jane as if Jane were someone else.  That is, Mrs. Reed mentions Jane only in third person even though she's who Mrs. Reed is talking to.  And when she talks about John, she uses present tense verbs: "John is like me and like my brothers, he is quite a Gibson... John gambles dreadfully... John is sunk and degraded, his look is frightful."  Even though John is dead, she talks of him as if he were still alive.

I can't help thinking that there's some further meaning to the names of the two sisters (Diana and Mary) whom Jane meets after she runs away from Thornfield.  In Chapter XXX, Jane describes Diana as "a superior and a leader" and "vigorous."  She also says that "in her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow."  To me, this seems to align her with the mythical figure Diana, goddess of the hunt and the moon.  The hunting aspects are covered with Jane's description of her as "a superior and a leader" and "vigorous" and in the mention of her "animal spirits."  The "certainty of flow" seems to be a connection between Diana and the moon, by way of the tides.

And if Diana is meant to resemble the mythical figure, I can't help but feel that Mary is meant to resemble the Biblical figure.  Yet I couldn't find any textual evidence to support this.  Similarly, their brother St. John might have some connections to the Biblical figure, but I couldn't really find anything to further that either.

While I couldn't find any Biblical connections to support my thoughts about those characters' names, there are many Biblical connections and references in the novel, especially in the later part of the book.  A lot of these are just similarities in phrasing, but I did notice two larger connections.

In Chapter XXXIV, St. John asks Jane to go with him on a missionary trip to India.  He wants her to go with him as his wife, but she would consent to go only if she remains his "adopted sister."  He explains, "I cannot introduce you as such; to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both."  This is almost the opposite of Abram and Sarai in Genesis 12.  "When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, 'I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, "This is his wife." Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake'" (Genesis 12:11-13).  I'm not exactly sure what the meaning of this connection is, but the situations are so similar (albeit oppositely) that there has to be something.  Along with the wife/sister complications, there's the similarities of going into a foreign land and the importance of physical appearance.  Sarai is beautiful, and Jane Eyre mentions more than once that she is rather plain-looking.

I also found some Biblical connections in the different ways that St. John and Jane pray in Chapter XXXV.  Jane describes that when St. John prays, "all his energy gathered" and "all his stern zeal woke."  In the same chapter, when Jane prays, she says, "I mounted to my chamber, locked myself in, fell on my knees, and prayed in my way - a different way to St. John's."  She herself makes a distinction between the two.  I think they're meant to reference Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount:  "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.  For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.  Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:5-6).  It seems to imply that St. John is a hypocrite.  This might explain why he's in an opposite position compared to Abram in regard to the wife/sister distinction, but I still don't really understand it.

Anthology Odyssey

Two and a half years into my program at university, I transferred schools.  It was the right decision to make at the time because I hated living on campus and the university I transferred to was only a few miles from where I live.  But academically, I think it was one of the worst decisions I've ever made.  I was constantly underwhelmed with the program at my new university because what I had been learning previously was more rigorous.  Yester-day I finally graduated from university, but I'm not sure that I actually deserve my English degree.  At the very least, I feel like I should know more about literature than I do.

So, in an effort to really earn it, I'm going to read all of the literature anthologies that I have.  I have almost three times as many as I actually needed for my classes because I kept finding them for relatively cheap prices at Half Price Books.  I am going to read all of them, but only one at a time and incrementally.  Even before I transferred universities, I didn't like the speed at which material was covered.  It all went by too quickly.  For this project, I'm going to read only one selection a day - a paradigm that I've used for many books of letters and books of poetry.  It seems to work well for me.

I'll be starting with the three anthologies that my advisor generously gave me when I transferred and then jumping back and forth among American, world, and English/British literature, saving until the end the anthologies that I actually used for classes.  I may also be adding some new anthologies to the listing if I get some more.

My current collection of literature anthologies

1. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 5th edition
2. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume One, 2nd edition
3. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume C, 2nd edition
4. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume C, 8th edition
5. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume D, 6th edition
6. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume B, 2nd edition
7. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume F, 8th edition
8. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, 7th edition
9. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 7th edition
10. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C, 7th edition
11. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 10th edition
12. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume 1, shorter 2nd edition
13. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume 2, shorter 2nd edition
14. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume B, second compact edition
15. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A, 8th edition
16. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, 8th edition

I'm sure that I'll encounter some material more than once, but spreading out the various types of literature (American, world, and English/British) will allow some time between reading them, so a second time through might be more enlightening.

I do realize that there's more to earning an English degree than just reading all of the required materials.  I'm glad to have gotten rid of paper writing, so I won't be doing that again.  However, I will write a few posts now and then, but only if I actually have sometime to say about the literature.  An-other thing I didn't like about university was trying to force myself to have an opinion about a work just so that I could write a paper about it or discuss it.

Like this project's title suggests, this might take about twenty years, but I'm fine with that, as long as it continues to be interesting and illuminating.

The Hobbit or The Odyssey

I recently re-read The Hobbit.  The first time I read it (in fall 2012), I hadn't read The Odyssey.  But now that I'm somewhat familiar with The Odyssey after reading it in spring 2013, I found a lot of elements in The Hobbit that resemble The Odyssey.  (It's been over a year since I last read The Odyssey, so I might be a bit vague in describing some of these connections.)

There's the obvious connection between Bilbo's journey and Odysseus' (although the same could be said for any number of adventure stories).  After all, the subtitle to The Hobbit is There and Back Again.  So, in the same way that Odysseus travels from Ithaca to the Trojan War and the back again, Bilbo travels from Bag End to the Lonely Mountain and then back again.  However, Thorin also bears some resemblance to Odysseus in that he's a king trying to regain his former position.  Additionally, both Thorin and Odysseus are trying to regain their treasure - Thorin's treasure in the actual definition, and Odysseus' more figuratively, as he's trying to get back to his wife Penelope.

Thorin is also cast in the rôle of Odysseus when he stabs one of the trolls in the eye in Chapter II.  "He caught up a big branch all on fire at one end; and Bert got that end in his eye before he could step aside."  In The Odyssey, Odysseus (with the help of his men) stabs Polyphemus in the eye with a flaming stick.

There's also a slight connection between the Lotus Eaters and the river that Bombur falls into in Chapter VIII.  After falling in, he "slept on with a smile on his fat face, as if he no longer cared for all the trouble that vexed them."  Later, in Chapter XVI, it's noted that "ever since the adventure in the forest he was always trying to recapture the beautiful dreams he had."  In The Odyssey, those who ate the lotus no longer cared about returning home.  It's not exactly the same in The Hobbit, but there is a certain similarity.

It's not surprising that Tolkien used various elements from The Odyssey in writing The Hobbit because not only was he trying to write an adventure but he was also interested in those old adventures and myths (I also have his The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún, which is based on mythology).  Naturally, parts of them would make their way into his own writing.

"Who Steals My Purse Steals Trash"

I've been re-reading Jack London's The Sea Wolf lately.  The last time I read this, which was also the first time I read this, was about six years ago, as a junior in high school.  (I actually wrote a paper about it, too.)  Last night, I read Chapter XXIV.  In it, there's this conversation between Maud Brewster (the writer who's been rescued/captured by the seal-hunting Ghost) and the captain, Wolf Larsen:

"Why, what can be worse than cutting our throats?" she asked, with pretty naïve surprise. 

"Cutting our purses," he answered.   "Man is so made these days that his capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses."

"'Who steals my purse steals trash,'" she quoted. 

"Who steals my purse steals my right to live," was the reply, "old saws to the contrary.  For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and in doing so imperils my life.  There are not enough soup-kitchens and bread-lines to go around, you know, and when men have nothing in their purses they usually die, and die miserably - unless they are able to fill their purses pretty speedily."

It took me a few minutes, but I finally placed "Who steals my purse steals trash."  It's from Shakespeare's Othello.  (I'm not sure I would have recognized it had I not read Othello just last month.)

At first, I thought that was it.   The writer quotes Shakespeare; I realize it's Shakespeare; woohoo!  But then I got thinking about the context in which this line appears in both works.  In Othello, the purse isn't really the thing that's being talked about.  It functions more as a metaphor:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash.  'Tis something, nothing:
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands.
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed (III.iii.159-165) 

As it's brought up in The Sea Wolf, Maud Brewster seems to be arguing for higher things, saying that a purse is merely transitory.  She, like the novel's protagonist Humphrey van Weyden, argues instead for "the immediate jewel of [the] soul."  That's one of the main themes of the novel - van Weyden and Larsen's disagreement about what it is to live.  Van Weyden argues for more esoteric things, and Larsen argues that life is just about surviving for the longest.

Here, Larsen's brutish nature is again illustrated because, regardless of whether you recognize the context of the Shakespeare quote (and the distinction it makes between short-lived things like money and the ongoing life of a reputation), he continues the conversation focused on the black-and-white, have-or-have-not that's central to prolonging life.  I'm not even sure if he recognizes that "Who steals my purse steals trash" is a Shakespeare quote.  If he does, he argues for the purse over reputation or any other higher causes, purposes, or morals.  If he doesn't, he's still just focused on surviving.  He's brutish either way.

But what's more interesting is Maud Brewster's use of this quote in such a normal conversation.  This might be contradictory to my earlier point of how Brewster brings up this choice of purse or reputation, but if she's using this quote simply to describe the sort of economic decisions that occur in seal hunting, it also seems to suggest that she's starting to be affected by Wolf Larsen's brutishness.  She's beginning to focus more on the immediate things rather than the higher level of morals and philosophy, so she uses the quote just because they've been talking about money rather than trying to bring up this discussion of purse-or-reputation to Larsen.  I'm not sure if that's happening to her, but that is what has happened to van Weyden.  When he first came aboard the Ghost, he held himself to those standards, but as the time went by, he started to become more brute-like too.

At the end of the chapter, Larsen does discuss "the worthwhileness of reason" with Brewster and van Weyden in that language of trade:

"You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools.  You have no facts in your pocketbook." 

"Yet we spend as freely as you," was Maud Brewster's contribution. 

"More freely, because it costs you nothing." 

"And because we draw upon eternity," she retorted. 

"Whether you do or think you do, it's the same thing.  You spend what you haven't got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven't got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get." 

"Why don't you change the basis of your coinage, then?" she queried teasingly. 

He looked at her quickly, half-hopefully, and then said, all regretfully: "Too late.  I'd like to, perhaps, but I can't.  My pocketbook is stuffed with the old coinage, and it's a stubborn thing.  I can never bring myself to recognize anything else as valid."

They're discussing intellectual delight versus emotional delight, which is similar to Shakespeare's purse-or-reputation, but they're still doing it while focused on the physical nature of the purse.  Brewster and van Weyden are arguing for intellectual delight (including the reputation of a name), but they're doing so by using a metaphor of a form of emotional delight - the money in the purse and what it can buy.  This change in diction illustrates that the brutish nature of life on the Ghost has changed them, even if they do hold to their original views.