'THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER' -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a ballad: a simple narrative musical poetic composition. Since ballads are old stories their language is traditionally simple but it is not unusual for archaisms and inversions (l.12, 153) to serve to buttress their antiquity. The English ballad is usually in stanzas rhyming abcb: eight-six time. The profuse use of repetition serves to enhance the traditional musicality of the ballad.
Coleridge used this ballad to advance his preoccupation with supernatural themes and the poem thus demands 'a willing suspension of disbelief'. His friend and fellow nature poet, Wordsworth, was preoccupied, on the other hand, with the transcendentalism of natural phenomena. The story of the poem is told by the protagonist himself as penance for aimlessly killing an albatross (a sea-bird). Although biographical notes suggest that the story was a dream, possibly of a friend, which Coleridge adapted creatively, it also could pass for one of the numerous voyage stories of that time. The narrator is under compulsion to from time to time tell the story of how he was heavily punished for his wanton act. He only obtained partial absolution and salvation when recognized, a flash of seeming cosmic consciousness, the beauty of all created things. The simple moral of the story is that one who loves all things created by God (whether great or small, attractive or repulsive, bird, man or beast) is closest to God, since God loves all his creation.
At a symbolic level, it might be possible to see the albatross as Christ (perching with outspread wings, as it does, on the mast and killed by a cross bow) the crew as the Adamic world while the Ancient Mariner would be a personification of human guilt and near-compulsive, imperative gospelling.
The ballad is divided into seven parts which can be resolved into three main Movements:
Part I: The Ancient Mariner hypnotizes a wedding guest and commences telling his story to him. He and other sailors (200 men) had embarked on a sea voyage south of England, beneath the equator, only to be driven by a storm-blast into the foggy, windless, lifeless, icy South Pole. They were trapped in the midst of blocks of ice mast high. Then, a lone living thing, an albatross, had appeared, like a God-sent companion. The Mariners jubilated and their spirits were revived. They made friends with the bird and mysteriously, the ship started to move north in a gentle wind. The fog and the mist also cleared while the ice split. It was at this stage the Ancient Mariner shot the albatross with a cross-bow.
Part II: After initially blaming him, the Mariners started to praise him, attributing the clearing fog to the killing o the bird, thereby becoming vicariously liable. Unfortunately for the crew, a Polar sea spirit decided to avenge the albatross' death and the ship became becalmed in the hot equatorial region. All their tongues dried up in the great heat.
Part III: A spectre-bark carrying a spectre-woman (Life-in-Death) and Death appeared. The twosome dice for the ship's crew and Life-in-Death wins the Ancient Mariner while Death wins the other crew, who subsequently die.
Part IV: The Mariner then feels intense loneliness. He also lost the power to pray. Looking down at the still sea beside the ship, the Mariner notices many slimy wriggling creatures and feels a wave of abhorrence. However, raising his eyes heavenward, he contemplates the beauty of the moon and gradually recognizes the beauty also of the water creatures. A spring of love gushes from his heart and he blesses, unawares, the very creatures he had abhorred. Immediately, the albatross, which had been hung on his neck by the mariners before they died, fell off and sank into the sea.
Part V: The Ancient Mariner is blessed first with sleep then with rain. The dead crews are mysteriously energized and work as zombies (possessed by an angelic host) to sail the ship northward aided by a roaring wind.
Part VI: The Ancient Mariner is knocked out supernaturally so that the ship can move at super-human speed. The ship finally arrives at the English shore and a Pilot, his boy and a Hermit come to rescue him.
Part VII: Significant romantic references are made to the hermit?s forest habitation. The mariners' ship sinks in a big bang. The Ancient Mariner asks the hermit to shrive him. When the hermit asks him what manner of man he is, the penance-curse immediately painfully wrings from his soul the story as told above.
What we make of this story depends largely on the response it triggers in us. To Coleridge, a congenital poet whose 'Easter Holiday' was published at 14 years of age and who was already a well-established poet before his university education, the ballad was a doctrinaire parable of the same status with those found in scriptural writings. The supernatural nature of the natural was entrenched in his consciousness well beyond the level of superstition. It is, in fact, known that he was an acute loner and opium addict given to bouts of hallucination. For such characters the borders between dream and reality are blurred and their usually spontaneous art calls us to a world of imagination where we must willingly suspend scientific rationality. Although his drug problems had caused him to considerably degenerate psychosomatically by his death in 1834, and had, in fact, stultified his full evolution as a poet of note, Coleridge was actually a very fine wit. An avid reader, he was a prolific literary critic, philosopher, lecturer and, at a stage, an ordained minister.
ARTISTRY
Apart from the eight-six time already mentioned, there are other artistic devices employed in this poem. There is a regular vacillation between tetrametric and trimetric lines. The end rhymes are complemented by occasional internal rhymes (l.7,61,75) There are similes (l.15,54,129, 368-372, 446-451, 586) pictorial evocations (Part III Stanzas 7&8, l.210) and other imagery, like the very effective kinaesthetic ones describing the ship 'dropping' below the kirk and below the lighthouse and the description of the approaching spectre-bark. There are other simple but effective metaphors (l.43, 50, 171). There are several delightful alliterations (l.9, l.103/4, 460-463) parallelisms (l.57) near-magical repetitions (l.59, 115, 119-122, 232/3, 250, 285 & 7, 426, 428,432) and folkloric echoes (Part II, Stanzas II, III, IV).There are very many effective personifications (l.26,61) and pathetic fallacies (533-537). Students all over the world and through the ages have committed to memory several of the enchanting stanzas that best illustrate the devices above. You will need to read the poem very closely and see what lines are most likely to stick to your memory. Your ability to describe the effectiveness of these devices will depend to a large extent on your mastery of ENG 116:Introduction to Literature and Literary Criticism.
LECTURE 7: HARDTIMES -- CHARLES DICKENS
Hard Times is full of illustrative caricaturistic characters that lack the complex inner life of other round characters in the English Novel. This is because the author's principal aim is satiric: the desire to effect social reform. This explains the idealization of Sissy Jupe. She is used to illustrate the evil effects of mechanistic adherence to economic principles without humanistic considerations. An example was the teaching that the economic health of the nation depended on the unregulated working of the price mechanism without Government interference, proponents of this theory being students of Adam Smith. It was felt that profit margins and wages, for example, needed to be fixed by the powers of free enterprise in a laissez-faire economy, without welfarist considerations. Low wages, long working hours, high prices, bad working conditions, were alright, as long as they ensured the manufacturer's self-interest, the viability of his business pursuits and kept in check the breeding of idle populations. Other economic theorists, like the Utilitarians (e.g. Jeremy Bentham) harped on the expedience of a system or method that ensured 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. What paid could, therefore, be pursued rather than what was right. These are the ideas personified by Josiah Bounderby, the industrialist and banker, in Hard Times. Note the brazen plate on which his name is inscribed and the brazen door handle, at his house. The aim of the novelist, therefore, is to pit against the near-deified Reason of his age the powers of conscience and sentiment. The tragedy of the Grandgrinds illustrates the inimical results of an elevation of reason over feelings and love.
The language of the novel is, in most parts, racy, ironic, sarcastic (p.21) and humourous, especially the idioms. The melodramatic characters often serve as satiric butts in their exaggerated statement of their points of view. Authorial point of view is, thus, overt through the use of language. In narration, his free use of pejorative 'words and imagery' helps set his stance (e.g.pp.9&44) However, cases of direct author commentary abound (pp.11&62) Characterization is mainly through authorial descriptions. Serialized, the novel is a set of interlocking sections woven together through suspense. Although tending to be episodic due to this, the whole story adheres firmly together. You would need to look more closely at these aspects on your own since the exigensis of the moment demand that we talk principally about the central moral lesson of this novel.
The novel is broken into three parts: Sowing, Reaping and Garnering. In SOWING, we are introduced to Thomas Gradgrind. The name sounds hard. He made his money from hardware. His personal residence is named Stone Lodge. His personal philosophy advocates unconditional belief in hard empirical facts and the suppression of all emotions and imagination. Two of his male children are named Adam Smith and Malthus, to demonstrate his love for the industrial world of strict economic principle governed rigidly by the price mechanism. In the Gradgrind school, the teacher, M'Choakumchild, is conditioned to 'choke' young children with facts and facts alone, to the exclusion of the imaginative. Against this world, Sissy Jupe stands as a symbol of the world of softness. 'The One Thing Needful' title of the first chapter of the novel thus is an ironic reversal of the biblical emphasis on love as opposed to works. The 'Murdering the Innocent' title of chapter two, therefore, is overtly didactic. The world of fancy and childhood is throughout romanticized while that of industry (including the physical setting of Coketown) is presented in bad light, especially through the use of animal imagery.
The rustic and natural folk are associated with vitality and love, in spite of their suffering : Rachael's love for Stephen Blackpool; her care for his sick wife (13); Sissy Jupe's humanizing influence on Jane Gradgrind testified to by the dying Mrs. Gradgrind (25); Jupe's getting rid of playboy James Harthouse; Jupe's general resourcefulness in emergencies; Blackpool's spiritual grace in the face of death (34, p.244) etc. while the highly-placed with their emphasis on the superiority of the intellect, exude artificiality and drabness (conversations of Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. Bounderby and James Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit's gloomy disposition (7); James Harthouse's eternal boredom; Loo snd Tom's home-weariness). The vapidity of highbrow life is engendered by the philosophy of 'educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections' As Gradgrind goes on to counsels, 'Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder' (8). Mr. Gradgrind's library is full of books about hard facts. He disdains Sissy's reading of fairy tales to her father and Merrylegs (their circus dog) (7). The world of facts dehumanizes (calls workers 'hands', 'pests of the earth') while that of the emotions humanizes, even the animals (36, Mr. Sleary on dogs, also end 21; Stephen's speech 22; Louisa's new impressions at Blackpool's aparment of workers, not as a sea but as units, individuals)
In REAPING, Tom Gradgrind becomes an irresponsible drunkard (19, p.118) a fraudster. He blackmails poor Blackpool who later dies on account of that. He becomes a wanted criminal and finally has to be smuggled out of the country. Louisa suffers the breakage of an intellectually arranged marriage and gets helplessly involved in an extra-marital affair (28). Reason and propriety thus fail to breed culture and life.
The third part of the novel titled GARNERING is fast and eventful. Mr. Gradgrind softens. He is, ironically, forced by circumstances into Sleary's circus where he sits on a clown's performing chair in the middle of the ring (35). Helplessly, he watches one of his model children play the comic blackamoor (35) as part of the disguise to evade arrest. Blitzer, an ex-student of his school, surprises the secret party and goes on to insist on Tom's arrest, appealing to reason and facts. The situation is salvaged only through the help of circus animals. The ironic cycle is thus complete. The lesson is clear: to the wisdom of the head must be added the wisdom of the heart (29): to machinery and hard reality must be added 'imaginative graces and delights, without which the heart of infancy will wither up' and 'the sturdiest physical manhood will be morally stark death' (37). To economic law must be added welfarism and love.
One other, though related theme, is that of the poor quality of life of the citizenry. Coketown was covered in industrial smoke and ashes. The pollution has caused deaths. Working conditions were hazardous. All the apartments looked alike. Several persons were addicted to drugs and folk cared little about religious affairs. There was national prosperity but due to inequitable distribution of resources, many remained excruciatingly poor. Mining activities in the death-trap pits lead to accidental deaths while other workers get maimed by industrial machines. Workers 'rose early and worked hard' (p.145) Mr. Bounderby's orientation talk to Mr. Harthouse is decidedly anti-labour. Requests for better conditions of service are sternly reprimanded. Even Stephen's attempt to seek divorce in an intolerable marriage is seen as having labour-uprising undertones. The imposed laws of polished society appear to be capable only of causing distress to the poor.
LECTURE 8: WILLIAM GOLDING'S LORD OF THE FLIES
Lord of the Flies was published in 1954 by William Golding, a naval-officer World War II veteran. The novel is a parable of mankind's life here on planet earth from the point of view of a pessimist or misanthropist, one who does not believe in the essentially good nature of man. William Golding makes no secret of the fact that in Lord of the Flies he was kind of parodying R.M. Ballantyne's Corald Island. In Ballantyne's novel, three British teenage boys marooned on a coral island are able, like Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, to turn their new habitat into a pastoral haven through ingenuity, resourcefulness and good breeding. The boys convert marauding, feuding and cannibalistic savages to Christianity. To make it clear that he was proposing an anti-thesis, Golding adopted the names of the major characters of Ballantyne's novel. There is a Ralph and a Jack in both books with leadership qualities while the visionary Peterkin (a name kin to Simon biblically) in Coral Island is made up for by Piggy, the timid, sensitive and intelligent lad and Simon, the sage, poet and individualist. Unlike in Coral Island, the boys degenerate morally and end up becoming murderous savages. Like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the theme is that humans are innately barbaric and that this always becomes evident when they are removed from the influence of organized society. Civilization is, therefore, revealed to be merely skin-deep, a thin veneer that disappears when subjected to pressure through crisis, as was the case during the Second World War. Ballantyne's idealization (which is also society's self-deceptive belief in the sanctity and efficacy of her moral values) is, therefore, a myth. In Lord of the Flies, the idyllic setting becomes marred and destroyed by bestiality.
Ralph and Piggy had organized a civil democratic government where fairness and orderliness was respected. During public meetings only those with the conch (a sea shell used to summon the assemblies when blown) could speak. They advocated the building of shelters and the keeping up of a fire on a mountain top with the hope that a passing ship would see the smoke and rescue the stranded boys (who were all between the ages of six and twelve). There was even division of labour as the choir boys, led by Jack, were commissioned to hunt for food and enforce the rudimentary laws that were enacted. It was this semblance of adult-world civilization that became gradually undermined by the militaristic and carnal disposition of man, epitomized by Jack and Roger, his aide de camp.
The generic themes of conflict between good and evil, the passage of persons from innocence to experience, from order to chaos, is, therefore, what the novel is preoccupied with. Jack's innate brutish disposition is evident right from the start in his pen-knife attacks on trees and in his sadistic joy at being given the task of enforcing the law. Roger's murderous nature is hinted at also right from the beginning when he teasingly tosses rocks at the litl'uns. These incipient tendencies finally find full expression in the lawlessness that followed Jack's rebellion and formation of his own tribe, dedicated to the primitive and hedonistic fleshly pleasures of hunting, feasting, dancing and 'masquerading'. The wild profligacy of Jack's party leads to the slaughter of Simon, the hunting down of Ralph and the setting of the whole island on fire. Roger murders Piggy by rolling a rock (boulder) on him, smashing both the symbol of authority (the conch which stood for the parliamentary mace) and the vehicle of intellectualism (his grey matter). The plot moves chronologically from hope to frustration. The romantic leader (Ralph) who taught the boys that the Queen of England had a map of every island in the world and would surely send rescuers, who also believed so much in his naval-officer father proves, in the final analysis, to be a slow-thinking and weak leader who cannot match the compelling (to the boys) vibrancy of the impulsive, aggressive and coercive Jack. Despite being utterly selfish and arrogant, Jack wins the day. Imbued with a spirit of disunity and rebelliousness, this anarchist's lawlessness finds an echo in the boys' hearts, and they desert Ralph to follow him.
Continued
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