PROJECT

ABSTRACT
A collection of critical papers and essays in
creative nonfiction representing advancements
made in undergraduate, both academic and
creative, over four years, this manuscript
attempts to display the progress of writing as well
as the personal and spiritual growth of a young
poet and writer.

WALKING THROUGH
WORDS: A SEARCH
FOR MENAING
Senior Capstone Project (DRAFT)
23 February 2016

John Edward Urdiales

Senior Seminar E-Portfolio

Urdiales 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of English Courses taken at Alma College_______________________________________4

Writing and Research

English 120: Stopping for Time___________________________________________________6
English 220: Attaining Salvation in Middle-earth____________________________________10
Honors/2015 Sigma Tau Delta Submission: Finding God through Agony and Devotion______28
Appendix I: Holy Sonnet I________________________________________________38
Holy Sonnet X_______________________________________________39
Holy Sonnet XIV_____________________________________________40
Appendix II: Alternative Version: 2015 Sigma Tau Delta Submission______________41
English 320: The Uncanny in The Black Cat _____________________________________48
English 380: Finding the Questing Beast___________________________________________59

Creative Writing
Philosophy 216: An Existential Approach to Meteors_________________________________73

Selections Appearing in Honors Thesis

Walking Far From Home_______________________________________________________80
To M.K.D.___________________________________________________________________81
To K.F.T. ___________________________________________________________________82
Martini-hours before Planes Flying above our Consciousness___________________________83
Iyes, I___________________________________________________________________85

Urdiales 3
Weah, wetogether__________________________________________________________86
The Larks Ascension__________________________________________________________89
Ive Been____________________________________________________________________92
Papa, Dont Climb into the Nest__________________________________________________97
Stars Dancing________________________________________________________________97

COMING SOON: Applications of Poetry

Seminar Resources (Also Coming Soon)

Urdiales 4
John E. Urdiales
B.A. English (with Writing Minor)
Alma College, Major Course Study
Fall 2012
ENG 101-04 College Rhetoric II
Dr. Melissa White
Winter 2013
ENG 190-04 Intro. Creative Writing
Mr. John Rybicki
Winter 2013
ENG 120-06 Reading Poetry
Dr. Melissa White
Fall 2013
ENG 250-01 Survey of British Literature I
Dr. Dana Aspinall
Fall 2013
ENG 220-01 Reading, Writing, and
Research
Dr. Chih-Ping Chen
Winter 2014
ENG 354-01 Shakespeare
Dr. Dana Aspinall

Winter 2015
ENG 380-01 Victorian Literature
Arthurian Legend
Dr. Chih-Ping Chen
Winter 2015
ENG 320-01 Critical Theory
Dr. Laura von Wallmenich
Winter 2015
ENG 293-01 Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Dr. Robert Vivian
Fall 2015
ENG 500-01 CNF Personal Essaying
Honors Thesis (Supplement for 202)
Dr. Robert Vivian
Fall 2015
ENG 291-01 Writing Fiction Workshop
Dr. Robert Vivian
Winter 2016
ENG 420-01 Senior Seminar
Dr. Laura von Wallmenich

Winter 2014
ENG 261-01 Survey of American Literature
II
Dr. Robert Vivian

Winter 2016
ENG 399-04 IS: Explorations in Poetry
Dr. William Palmer

Fall 2014
ENG 399-02 IS: Sherlock Holmes
Dr. Chih-Ping Chen

Winter 2016
ENG 390-01 Poetry Workshop II
Mr. John Rybicki

Urdiales 5

WRITING & RESEARCH

Urdiales 6
Stopping for Time: a Close Analysis of Frosts Poem, Stopping by Woods
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us (Tolkien). These wise
words from Gandalf the Grey are applicable to a varied assortment of situations, including
Robert Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Vendler 156). Frost compares the
physical action of stopping to gaze upon the snow to relate to a much larger idea regarding life.
While at first it may seem that the literal Stopping by Woods is an action of a man suffering
from depression, a second glance of the poem will reveal that the mans stopping is actually a
metaphor for figuratively stopping, rather than in a literal sense. From Tolkiens The Fellowship
of the Ring, this clever notion of applying a situation to ones life is idyllic in this Frostian poem.
In Stopping by Woods, the speaker pauses to take in the environment in both a seemingly
literal and technically figurative way. Stopping by Woods is a reflection on the human
condition, using metaphors and the juxtaposition of a practical thought to a more rhetorical idea
in the refrain of the fourth stanza in order to help the reader understand why humanity struggles.
The speaker stops by the woods because he desires to enjoy the environment for its
beauty and timeless comfort. The woods, which reside on the property of some unknown person,
are peaceful a quality which attracts the speaker. And the landowner will not see [him]
stopping because his house is in town (3). After all, to be on someones property without
permission gives a man a certain adrenaline and the sense of exploration or mischief. Frosts
comment then is that living on such borrowed time is an allegory of life: the speaker clearly has
things to accomplish and roads to travel, be they the ones commonly or rarely trodden upon. In
the last stanzas, the speaker is attracted to the mystery of the woods. The contents of the wood
are unknown to the speaker, his horse, and the reader. To the non-outdoorsman, the woods are
dark and deep because that person lacks the proper knowledge of nature or survival, a

Urdiales 7
desirable quality to someone looking for the spirit of adventure (13). Such a characteristic is
much sought after by the kind of man who wants some kind of change in his life. And the reason
that the woods are lovely is because they are the very epitome of tranquility and blissful nature
(13). The eerie aura of dark woods is fascinating to a troubled mind: it offers both an escape and
comfort in times of need.
Riddled throughout Stopping by Woods exists a myriad of metaphors predominantly
pertaining to the human condition. Frost seems to suggest that the horse is impatient and simpleminded, two fairly obvious characteristics of children. The horse is also not tame enough to be
able to appreciate the sound of the sweeping, easy winds or the sight of the falling snow. Deep
inside the heart of man exists an intuitive desire to stop and smell the roses, watch a flock of
wavering birds, or simply watch the snow fall gently in some peaceful wood; but the horse
cautiously stirs, as if to ask if there is some mistake (10). The horse represents the relentless
pushing force in the lives of the many who want nothing more than to briefly stop living their
day-to-day lives. Not long after, the speaker decides to continue on his route, doubting what
awaits him. The darkest evening of the year is chiefly directed to how the speaker feels (8).
His journey through life is busy and he feels alone and perhaps over-worked due to stress, which
could be caused by family life peppered with the burden of emotional anxiety.
The final stanza is strangely curious. The speaker recollects in line fourteen that he has
certain obligations to satisfy, or promises to keep (14). It may be that he has a family to take
care of; to awake early the next morning for work; to be responsible for a farm, crops, and
animals or all of the above. The first time he ponders the idea and miles to go before I sleep
he thinks practically about the journey ahead of him, based on the nature of his location (15). But
when he repeats, and miles to go before I sleep (16), he begins to actually think about such a

Urdiales 8
journey one which he has a lifetime before him to trod upon. With such refrain, the line takes
on a significance that causes him pause. This practical thought morphs into a more rhetorical
idea, and extends beyond the question of where am I headed? as opposed to simply returning
home: it creates the final refrain, as in a piece of music.
The last two lines then, exactly identical, possess two distinct purposes. The first is the
lines finish the poem at a dead-end, breaking the aaba-bbcb-ccdc end-rhyme scheme. Frost could
have continued the poem further with additional stanzas or even ended the poem in ddad,
wrapping the poem cohesively in a never-ending circle. He chose to end the fourth stanza
because he wanted to further reinforce the idea that, if the poem did end in dddd, that the road to
be travelled must also carry on as though he had never stopped briefly by the wood. Furthermore,
these lines ironically serve to show that, as the speaker must travel onward and leave the
tranquility of the woods, the poem must come to an end.
Life can be described as constant movement forward; to stop is to accept defeat, death, or
even sleep (as portrayed in the poem). Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening has a rather
simplistic meaning and message, and that is that many people tend to over-complicate the deeper
meaning found within poetry. There exist few people who are not so troubled by the thought of
what the following day will bring to them. Many people lead exceptionally busy lives and have
insufficient time to stop and watch the snow fall in the woods or see the constellations in the
dead of night. Stopping by Woods to watch the snow fall is no difficult task; nor is it any
easier than stopping for a gaggle of geese crossing the road. To have confidence to leave and
journey forward is the tricky part of the puzzle called life. Even more so, to have the strength of
character to continue is equal in comparison to killing a man in war. Due to its applicability to
different generations, this poem is timeless: it has a much humbler meaning than many realize.

Urdiales 9
Poetry sometimes turns readers away but that too is a road upon which the average person must
tread. All we have to do is find the way, stay on the path, and see to where it may lead in the end.

Works Cited
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. The Fellowship of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Print.
Vendler, Helen. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford
of St. Martin's, 1997. Print.

Urdiales 10
Attaining Salvation in Middle-earth
Symbolism is as much a factor in literature as it is in the Roman Catholic Mass. John
Ronald Reuel Tolkien was fortunate enough to have been brought up in a Faith that
nourished and taught [him] the little he knew (Letters 142). This fortune was later transferred
into his fiction stories. At the same time, Tolkien was a lover of language and a professor of
philology at the Oxford colleges of Pembroke and Merton. By combining these two loves of
linguistics and faith, Tolkien builds a religion-free world of Middle-earth while remaining
faithful to a Catholic elemental backdrop. Symbols such as the Ring, the healing waybread, and
physical and mental sacrifice are central to the story of Middle-earth: the One Ring, the lembas
bread of the Elves, and Frodos physical and mental sacrifice culminating in the passage into the
West as a form of exodus to new life. Further, Frodos voyage setting out of the Grey Havens is
emblematic of a period of reflection and a time of peace. These symbolic themes are found
within Frodos quest to destroy the Ring. Frodos quest becomes a salvific journey for his fate
and the fate of Middle-earth that can be compared to the Passion and Death of Christ for the
salvation of humanity.
Tolkien considered Catholicism to be a critical point in his writings. After the death of his
mother, Tolkien and his brother were left in the care of Father Murray, a Jesuit priest. In a letter
to Father Robert Murray, S.J., Tolkien states, The Lord of the Rings is of course a
fundamentally religious and Catholic work (Letters 142). He innately intended to create a world
inspired by his faith in God and the Church authority descending directly from Christ. Being
Catholic and holding his faith up to the highest respect, Tolkien took the necessary precautions in
creating Middle-earth. He firmly believed that England needed a new mythology of its own. To
him, the existing body of Arthurian legend was insufficient for the reason that it explicitly

Urdiales 11
contains the Christian religion (Mooney 171). In Tolkiens opinion, mythology must contain an
origin; and in Christianity, Christ was not present at the Beginning of Creation. He aimed to
create a universe without any references to religion. In the same letter he says, I have cut out
practically all references to anything like religion, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world.
For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism (Letters 142). He wanted
his readers to find Christianity specifically Catholicism in the narrative on their own rather
than to imply that Christ was present or tangibly incarnate.
Such exclusion of religion makes it difficult to find the presence of Christ implied by
Tolkien. Christopher Garbowski states that the liturgy involves elements of elevated play and
that it is hardly surprising that the Catholic sensibility finds beauty to be close to the truth
(Garbowski 11). In Tolkiens Middle-earth, the immortal Elves are the epitome of beauty and are
associated with truth and wisdom. From the Catholic perspective, the Church was established by
Christ. In Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus tells him: And so I [Jesus] say to you, you are Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my church I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven
(New American Bible). Likewise, The Lord of the Rings contains elements critical to the Catholic
Mass: healing bread and wine and the burden of sin on the saviour. Such symbolism also plays
an imperative role in finding a Christ-like presence in Middle-earth.
The One Ring of Sauron is the root of evil in Middle-earth. It is symbolic of sin and the
constant desire to eliminate sin from life. Tolkien tells his friend, Milton Waldman, in a letter:
so great was the Rings power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it; it was the
strength of any will (even his own) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it (Letters 131). The
Ring is created not out of love, but out of an extreme desire for lustful power. Thus, the Ring of
Power is the emblem of Sin; and as such, the carrying of it across Middle-earth is symbolic of

Urdiales 12
the Carrying of the Cross of Christ (Kerry 240). The Ring represents a literal presence of Sin in
the world. Sin is the enemy of Christ; similarly, the Cross carried by Christ is representative of
Sin. The Ring is accompanied by evil; corruption of the body, mind, spirit, and morality; and
death through violence. Christs Cross is the burden of sin which must be carried for the
redemption of humankind. With His death on the Cross, Christ defeats Satan. In Tolkiens
mythology, the One Ring is created as a source of ultimate power for Sauron Tolkiens parallel
character for Satan who only wants to dominate the peoples of the land with a dictatorial fist.
Sauron is the only one who can bear the power of the Ring because it was created out of sin, and
to create sin is its integral objective.
Sin is manifested in the forms of incredulity, ridicule, murderous animosity, perfidy, and
denial. Why does Christ fall three times on his way to be crucified? The physical weight of the
Cross is heavy to carry, especially after Christ is relentlessly scourged by the Romans; however,
Christ falls because of the weight of Sin (the symbolic meaning of the Cross). The Catholic
Church defines sin as being an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience Sin sets
itself against Gods love for us and turns our hearts away from His love (Roman 1849-50). Sin
mars the world and wreaks havoc where peace should freely reign. Like Christ, Frodo feels the
weight of his sin the Ring of Power in Mordor: I cant manage it, Sam, he says. It is such
a weight to carry (The Lord of the Rings 916). Frodo is burdened by the Rings extremity,
wanting nothing more than to be freed from its weight the symbolic burden of sin on his
consciousness by casting it away. For Frodo, this task is harder than the task set before
Catholics: Catholics can to go to confession to be cleansed of their sins. Frodo, however, must
sacrifice himself to conquer his sin.

Urdiales 13
To counter sin, Catholics do two things: they go to confession to be relieved of their sins
consequently growing closer to God and they receive the Eucharist for spiritual healing. The
blessed sacrament of the Eucharist correlates to the Elven lembas bread found within Middleearth. In Deuteronomy 8:16, the Hebrew people are given manna from Heaven: He [the
Almighty Father] gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known,
to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you (New American Bible).
They are thankful for this gift because they have been starving during their wandering. Later, in
the New Testament, Christ gives the Church new manna and water: His flesh and blood. The
Catholic Church believes that the Eucharist means first of all thanksgiving (Roman 1360). The
Liturgy of the Eucharist is the part of the Mass in which the communicants thank God for the
gifts that Christ gave to us to nourish and strengthen our spiritual nature: His flesh and blood in
the form of bread and wine. During the Last Supper, Christ chose to fulfill the Jewish Passover
by giving the disciples His Body and Blood.
[Christ] took the bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to
them [the Apostles], saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in
remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after supper, saying, This cup which
is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood. (Roman 1339)
The Catholic Church continues the Last Supper through the celebration of the Institution of the
Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice. When Christ died, he gave his body and blood in remembrance of the
Last Supper, fulfilling the promise of eternal life in His Heavenly Kingdom. For that reason,
Catholics gather at Mass to celebrate the Paschal mystery and His gift of salvation. This
communal flesh and blood conserves and replenishes life, returning humanitys inherent nature
to a state of grace: it is this growth in Christian life [which] needs the nourishment of

Urdiales 14
Eucharistic Communion, the bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be
given to us as viaticum (Roman 1392). The Eucharist is both the source of salvation and the
vital sustenance of spirituality with God.
In the Catholic faith, viaticum is the last reception of the Eucharist in the life on earth.
Viaticum is defined by its word origin in The Catholic Encyclopedia as deriving from the Latin
viaticus, translating to of or pertaining to a road or journey; previously, it meant anything that
gave spiritual strength and comfort to the dying and enabled them to make the journey
into eternity with greater confidence and security (Schulte). Because it is the sacrament of the
Passover of Christ, and death is perceived as a passing from life, the earthly journey should end
in receiving the Eucharist: the viaticum for passing into eternal life (Roman 1517). The Eucharist
and the Eucharist as viaticum feeds the will when individuals fast from foods of the earth.
Because the Eucharist becomes the actual flesh of Christ after the consecration, it leaves behind
any earlier presence it may have held beforehand.
Therefore, the connection between the Eucharist-viaticum and lembas in The Lord of the
Rings is clear: lembas feeds the will and gives the strength needed to endure hardships (915).
The Elves are immortal beings, but still require nutrition. In the light of their immortality, they
consume bread which lasts beyond the effects of the food of Men. In this way, the shelf life of
lembas mirrors the immortality of the Elves. The waybread is more potent when fasting, a
derivation from the Eucharist (Letters 213). Lembas, according to Tolkien, serves two roles.
The first is that it acts as a machine or device for making credible long journeys with
minimal rations (Letters 210). The second purpose is considered by Tolkien as a religious
variety, which becomes apparent in the chapter, Mount Doom, when the lembas provides
Frodo and Sam the strength to continue their trek through Mordor. Without the energy generated

Urdiales 15
from food and drink, the human body starves and dehydrates; but because of the extreme effects
of the lembas, Frodo and Sam are able to reach Mount Doom.
The lembas bread is first introduced to the narrative when the Fellowship departs from
Lothlrien. As a gift to the Fellowship at their departure, the waybread echoes Christs
Institution of the holy Eucharist at the Last Supper. Lembas is described as a very thin cake,
consisting of a wafer being baked to a light brown colour (360). Gimli initially judges the bread
as cram, the rough and rather unpleasant bread made by the Dale-men. Yet, after he consumes a
nibble, his expression quickly change[s]; and he hastily eats the remaining wafer, proclaiming
the waybread as being better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings (360). Gimli reinforces the
claim that lembas is vitally more valuable than the food of mortals. The effects of lembas are
beyond the comprehension of humanity. In The Two Towers, Legolas is also able to find
sufficient sustenance from the lembas. The bread allows him to sleep as he runs with Aragorn
and Gimli, open-eyed and conscious in the realm of Middle-earth (418-9). Echoing the theme of
thanksgiving, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas also rely on the effects of the waybread: Often in
their hearts they thanked the Lady of Lrien [Galadriel] for the gift of lembas (417). They
discover that, even as they eat and run, their physical strength becomes replenished. In these
ways, the presence of lembas in Middle-earth emulates the Eucharist instituted by Christ in the
Gospels and the manna given to the Hebrews wandering in the desert found in the Old
Testament.
The Eucharist affects both the spiritual and physical life. The success of the Eucharist in
the spiritual life is mirrored by what corporal foods may yield in the life of the physical being
(Roman 1392). This means that good physical health leads to a stronger spiritual life when
receiving the Eucharist. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo and Sam are able to remain

Urdiales 16
perseverant in their quest due to the effects of the waybread. Just as the elves instruct, Frodo and
Sam consume the waybread when they feel weak and hopeless in their quest: For these things
[lembas] are given to serve you when all else fails (361). The waybread nourishes beyond the
effects of rabbit stew or breakfast eggs and potatoes.
Not only in physicality, but also in purpose and effect, the lembas bread echoes a true
Eucharistic presence. Towards the end of their journey, Frodo and Sam become severely
dehydrated and starved. Still, they have enough lembas to last until the quest is completed:
The lembas had a virtue without which they would have long ago have lain down
to die. It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sams mind was filled with the
memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this
waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone
and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to
endure, and to master sinew [stamina, strength] and limb beyond the measure of
mortal kind. (915)
By feeding the will, the lembas bread echoes the presence of the Eucharist and viaticum. When
fasting, the Eucharist refreshes even the most starved soul who knows that Christ is truly present
in the Eucharist. Likewise, the lembas provides an identical value: it restores strength and
provides the necessary stamina for travel.
Although only one is efficiently described, there are several references in The Fellowship
of the Ring which suggests a symbolic Blood of Christ: miruvor. According to Gandalf, miruvor
is the very heart of the waters of Rivendell. Gandalf offers his flask to the Fellowship in the
mountain pass: Just a mouthful each for all of us. It is very precious the cordial of Imladris
[Rivendell] (283). Miruvor is more than a commodity affordable to Men: As soon as Frodo

Urdiales 17
had swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart, and the
heavy drowsiness left his limbs. The others also revived and found fresh hope and vigour (283).
Like the Blood of Christ, miruvor provides a warm feeling of revitalized energy, symbolic of the
consecrated wine which, after having undergone the process of transubstantiation, becomes the
Blood of Christ.
Transubstantiation is a process unique to Catholicism. It is the conversion of the bread
and wine into the body (flesh) and blood of Christ, becoming fully present in the Eucharist. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church proves this through the conclusions made at the Council of
Trent in 1563 A.D.:
That by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the
whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord
and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This
change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called
transubstantiation. (Roman 1376)
It was at this council that the leaders of the Church declared the official beliefs held by the
Church on several topics, including ordination, the importance of the sacraments, and especially
the legitimacy of Christs real and true presence in the consecrated Eucharistic host. As a result,
it became official Church teaching (in written, dogmatic form) that during the consecration of the
bread and wine, Christ truly and fully becomes present in the bread and wine. Catholics hold the
Blessed Sacrament in the highest esteem for this reason and because Christ gave up His own life
for the salvation of others.
Christ-like sacrifices are seen in the salvific journey of the Ring in Gandalf, Samwise
Gamgee, and Frodo, who must give up something they momentarily cherish so that a larger good

Urdiales 18
might be achieved. At the Bridge of Khazad-dm in Moria, Gandalf sacrifices his own life
because his purpose on Middle-earth is to counsel, teach, and arouse the hearts and minds of
those threatened by Sauron (Letters 156). Gandalfs perishing on the Bridge of Khazad-dm is a
necessary sacrifice in order to save his companions from the Balrog. The will of the authoritative
powers he serves (the Valar) determine that he humbly give up his life, simultaneously
abandoning any personal goals of success. As a result, Gandalf is rewarded after his defeat of the
Balrog and apparent death: the Lords of the West give him a new and enhanced form with some
higher understanding to bring back to the world of Men until [his] task is done (The Lord of
the Rings 491). Thus, he returns as Gandalf the White a common symbol of purity and divinity.
However, Gandalf is not divine but merely in the words of Tolkien an incarnate angel of
the angelic Valar (Letters 156). Gandalf belongs to a group called the Istari and, in common
terms, is referred to as a wizard; however, his true existence is more closely defined as a type of
guardian angel. In his Letters, Tolkien expresses that he found it difficult to describe what the
Istari literally meaning those who know were, other than wizards. He concludes that this
translation stems from a connection to the meaning of wise. In the form of old, wise sages,
these emissaries from the True West (Valinor) act as mediators from God, sent precisely to
strengthen the resistance of the good, when the Valar become aware that the shadow of
Sauron is re-shaping in Middle-earth (Letters 156). Thus, Gandalf serves the Valar through
guiding the peoples of Middle-earth so that he might better understand the task set before him to
complete.
Gandalfs role is also symbolic of authority. Although he is not a human being, he does
possess a certain degree of humanity: The humanity of Gandalf gains him much respect, while
his obvious spiritual authority is based on persuasion (Garbowski 11). Gandalf convinces Frodo

Urdiales 19
that he must take the Ring to Rivendell because Gandalf himself cannot, out of the fear of
becoming possessed by the power of the Ring. Frodo willingly accepts this task. Later, Gandalf
is able to persuade the Fellowship to take the path through Moria instead of the Mountain pass to
Caradhras, because the extremity of the falling snow is too heavy and the fear of the cold is
already set in the minds of the Fellowship. His authority is properly understood and carried out,
[fostering] genuine individualism (Garbowski 11). Furthermore, it is because of this authority
that the Fellowship survives through Moria.
Sam is also a figure of sacrificial acuity. In a time of need, this gardener departs from the
Shire with his master on some unknown errand, giving up his livelihood to help his friend out of
selfless love. Towards the end, when Sam and Frodo approach Mount Doom, Frodo begins to
despair of destroying the Ring. Sam swears: Ill carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back
and heart (918). Sleep deprived, they drift in and out consciousness and beg for their final day,
until Frodo is forced to crawl up the Cracks of Mount Doom. Hope seems lost, but Sam is there:
I cant carry it for you [Mr. Frodo], but I can carry you and it as well (919). And he carries
Frodo to Mount Doom. Without Sam, Frodo would have died perhaps even captured, tortured,
and killed after having travelled so far and so long, carrying such a burden. With the hobbit and
the emblem of Sin on his shoulders, Sam staggers to his feet; and then to his amazement he
[feels] the burden light (919). Sam is able to lift up his master with little difficulty because the
weight of the Ring still belongs to Frodo. Throughout their journey, Sam brings strength and
reassurance to Frodo; in the end, it is Sams physical strength which saves them and Middleearth from Sauron.
Frodos journey is burdened by the weight of the thing he wishes most to destroy: the
Ring. In The Two Towers:

Urdiales 20
Frodo seemed to be weary, weary to the point of exhaustion. He said nothing,
indeed he hardly spoke at all; and he did not complain, but he walked like one
who carries a load, the weight of which is ever increasing with every step
towards the gates of Mordor Frodo felt the Ring on its chain about his neck grow
more burdensome. He was now beginning to feel it as an actual weight dragging
him earthwards. (616)
His weariness is caused by the weight of the sin hanging around his neck. The Ring drags him
down into despair, and Frodo does not complain (initially). Like Christ, he walks without
grievance and humbly carries his burden. As he draws nearer to Mordor, he falls under the
weight of the Ring. But his falling is also the cause of the nearness of sin and death together,
forcing him to become unbalanced. All the while, he sees the Eye of Sauron. In fact, the Eye
becomes more of a threat to Frodo than the Ring. The Eye had a magnificent wretchedness and a
horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows to
see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable (616). Under the veil of
Christianity, understanding the burden of Frodo leads to a better grasp of the burden of sin
carried by Christ on the Cross. As he ventures closer to Mordor, Frodo falls because of the
weight of the evil Ring; similarly, Christ falls on His way to Calvary because of the evil he
carried on his shoulders.
The Ring-bearer, Frodo, is the true sacrificial character. Scholars, including Joseph
Pearce, have clearly voiced that the parallels with Christs carrying of the Cross are obvious to
Frodos quest for the Ring (Pearce 112). He takes upon the burden of the Ring out of filial love
and humility. His willingness to take the Ring to Mordor is also an action of true allegiance and
love for Middle-earth: I will take the Ring, he said, though I do not know the way (The

Urdiales 21
Lord of the Rings 264). To admit that he does not know the path is an act of humility in and of
itself. He fully understands that the Ring cannot be used against the Enemy, and that the Ring is
the root of evil. The logical decision, then, is to destroy the Ring. He agrees to take the Ring to
Mordor but not to destroy it himself and perhaps to be held partially responsible for its
demise. His lack of knowledge of the coming journey serves as an act of humility through his
willingness to accept the task that no one at the Council of Elrond wished to fulfill. Although
Frodo may not know that he will be rendered incapable of casting away the Ring, Elrond does
know. Lord Elrond declares at the Council in Rivendell:
I think this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no
one will But it is a heavy burden [to carry the One Ring]. So heavy that none
could lay it on another. I do not lay it on you. But if you take it freely, I will say
that your choice is right. (264)
Frodo is the only one capable of carrying the Ring to its ruin, but not the one to destroy it: Elrond
and Gandalf know this. Joseph Pearce argues that salvation is hidden: For when God asks us to
transcend our present state of being [H]e is asking us to break and spend ourselves as relentlessly
as Frodo gives his entire being to the quest (Pearce 115). Although Frodos selfless actions are
the driving force for his quest, the Ring still has a will of its own. Its burden takes a hefty toll on
Frodos health, physicality, and attitude. In the end, Frodo like Isildur and Smagol will fall
prey to its nature and become attached, greedy, and lustful for power.
Tolkien reveals several key points in his Letters regarding the sacrificial character of
Frodo. Any character exemplary of sacrifice is put in such a position in which the good of the
world depends on the behaviour of an individual in circumstances which demand of him
suffering and endurance far beyond the normal, or even demand a strength of body and mind

Urdiales 22
which he does not possess (Letters 181). In this sense, he is doomed to fail from the beginning,
and ultimately is unable to complete the task he volunteers for in Rivendell. Like many great
epic heroes, Frodo falls into temptation; he refuses to cast the Ring into the Mountain of Fire. In
the heart of the volcano, as The Return of the King draws to a close, he declares, I have come
But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!
(924). Frodo fails his quest; however, salvation is still gained, but through an unlikely character:
Gollum. Frodo saves himself and Middle-earth through his previous pity and forgiveness of
injury shown to Gollum (Letters 181). Without such exemplary Christian virtue, the Ring would
undoubtedly fall into the hands of Sauron. If Bilbo had killed Gollum when he found the Ring in
the Goblin caves, Sauron would have taken the Ring from Frodo at Mount Doom; if Frodo had
allowed Faramir to kill Gollum, Sauron still would have taken the Ring from Frodo. Tolkien
deploys these Christian virtues of pity and forgiveness in this climactic scene to fulfill Frodos
fate: to destroy the Ring. With the destruction of the Ring, Frodo and Middle-earth earn salvation
because of Gollums tenacious desire to steal the Ring from Frodo.
Ultimately, it is the cause not the hero which is triumphant. The destruction of the
Ring is achieved through the actions of Christian virtue: the mercy, pity, and forgiveness of
injury shown to Gollum. When Gandalf explains Gollums role to Frodo, Frodo initially replies
without pity or mercy, and condemns Gollum as deserving of death. But Gandalf is able to
foretell the creatures purpose in the narrative:
Pity? It was Pity that stayed his [Bilbos] hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike
without need Deserves it [death]! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve
death. And some that die deserve life. Can you [Frodo] give it to them? Then do
not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see

Urdiales 23
all ends [Gollum] is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that
he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes,
the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many yours not least. (58)
Regardless of so much uncertainty, Gandalf is right: Gollums destiny is to destroy the Ring, but
not to do so of his own will. It is because of his greed and attachment to the Ring that he falls
over the edge and justifies the fate of the Ring.
Tolkien states that Frodos failure was by no means a failure of morality: At the last
moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum and that force was bearable by no
one in Middle-earth except Sauron (Letters 246). The Power of the Ring is that it possesses a will
of its own. It was bound to eventually overcome Frodos will; but Frodos failure is nonetheless
important. According to Tolkien, to destroy the Ring is impossible for any one [sic] to resist
(Letters 246). But Frodo does what he can allow himself to do: he gives up his own life as an
instrument of divine guidance and creates a path through which the destiny of the Ring is bound
to destruction. Through these actions, he receives his salvation.
After Middle-earth is freed from the evil of the Ring, Frodo slowly begins to fade from
everyday life. Frodo tells Gandalf on their return journey, Though I may come to the Shire, it
will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with a long burden. Where
shall I find rest? (967). The quest for the Ring leaves Frodo with a mark which cannot be
cleansed. From a Biblical perspective, Tolkiens answer to this formulaic question is found in
Matthew 11:28 where Christ says, Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will
give you rest (New American Bible). For this reason, Frodo must leave Middle-earth. He
withdraws into recluse, and this quiet behaviour is no doubt related to his quest: he saw himself
and all that he [had] done as a broken failure (Letters 246). In combination with the mark of

Urdiales 24
mental affliction remaining from the Ring, Frodo is left physically wounded with the stab wound
from the Morgul blade at Weathertop. Middle-earth has nothing left to offer him, so the Elves
grant him the highest honour for his profound humility: safe passage into the West with the
Elves. In other words, they grant him peaceful rest.
The Grey Havens are often misinterpreted as the passage from life into death. Tolkien
specifically states that the ships leaving the Grey Havens into the West is not representative of
death (Letters 181). The Land of the Valar is neither a Heaven nor a metaphor for passing into
death from life. It is more or less a form of purgatory because Valinor is a physical place on the
earth (called E) hidden from mortals. Because they are mortal beings, Frodo and Bilbo must
logically pass away from life on E: that is their intended part in the plan of Ilvatar (called Eru
or God). Nevertheless, they are able to sail with the Elves to Valinor. Frodo goes to both a
purgatory and to a reward, for a while: a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a truer
understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness (Letters 246). The Grey Havens
represent something larger than a heavenly reward; what lies beyond and that which cannot be
known by the mortality of Middle-earth. The Grey Havens the final step before the end relate
directly to the Passion of Christ: the Creation, Fall, [and] Redemption are implied through
Frodos journey from the Shire, Mordor, and the Grey Havens (Kerry 240). Christs
Passion, Death, and Resurrection is the greatest story ever told, and Tolkien subtly underscores
this in The Lord of the Rings by the presence of Christ or, rather, by an unseen Christ. In
consensus, Michael OBrien believes that [t]he sense of the coming incarnation is very
prevalent [and] Tolkiens is a truly Catholic, incarnational vision which implies Christ (Kerry
240). In a world not yet exposed to the goodness of Christ, Christ remains present in the peoples
and the symbols of Middle-earth.

Urdiales 25
Tolkien suggests in his Letters that Arwen advises for Frodo (and Bilbo) to be allowed to
leave from the Grey Havens because of their afflictions caused by the power of the Ring. Frodo
and Bilbo bore still the mark of the Ring that needed to be finally erased: a trace of pride and
personal possessiveness which detached them from all others of Middle-earth (Letters 246). The
Ring changes the two hobbits and leaves an imprint of Sin on their conscience and within their
physical minds. This is why Frodo believes that he can never return to a life in the Shire. Frodos
passing into the West with the Elves is the greatest honour. However, Frodo is still mortal and
possesses the Gift of Ilvatar: death. Why then does he receive this reward despite his failure?
Tolkien believed that Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of
will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further
(Letters 192). Never was it a part of Frodos fate to destroy the Ring, but only to carry its burden.
Indeed, The Lord of the Rings is profoundly Catholic: unconsciously so at first, but
consciously in the revision (Letters 142). The elements of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection
of Christ are nigh identical in the realm of Middle-earth. Although Christ is not physically
present in any incarnate or tangible form, His spiritual presence is bountiful throughout the
narrative by means of the peoples, actions, thoughts, and sacrifices made during the course of the
quest for the Ring. Tolkien incorporates a physical representation of sin and evil in the world
which must be purged for harmonious living. The gift given by Christ to humanity his own
flesh and blood are clearly present in the mythology through the symbolic lembas bread.
Sacrifice is also a key component of the storyline; Gandalf is forced to give up his own life in
order to be rewarded a new life; Sam must travel with Frodo out of selfless love; and the Ringbearer must overcome several hurdles along the road to salvation and redemption. Tolkien
creates a world free from religion while at once ensnared in the trap of Satan evil; because of

Urdiales 26
the influence of his Roman Catholic faith, Middle-earth earns the same salvation promised to
Christians by Christ. In the end, it is with God and His Son (Christ) that nothing is made
impossible.

Bibliography (with Annotations)

Garbowski, Christopher. "Tolkien's Middle-earth and the Catholic Imagination." Mallorn: The
Journal of the Tolkien Society 41 (July 2003): 9-12. Print.
Kerry, Paul E. "Tracking Catholic Influences in The Lord of the Rings." The Ring and the Cross:
Christianity and the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Madison, N.J: Fairleigh Dickinson
UP, 2011. 234-45. Print.
Mooney, Chris. "The Ring and the Cross: How J.R.R. Tolkien Became a Christian Writer." The
Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Paul E. Kerry.
Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2011. 170-74. Print.
The New American Bible. St. Joseph ed. New York: Catholic Book, 1992. Print.
Pearce, Joseph. "Orthodoxy in Middle-earth: The Truth Behind the Myth." Tolkien: Man and
Myth. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998. 100-25. Print.
The Roman Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Print.
Schulte, Augustin Joseph. "Viaticum." The Catholic Encyclopedia. 1912. The Catholic
Encyclopedia. New Advent. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.
This source provides an adequate definition and description of viaticum according to the Roman
Catholic Church. Viaticum is the last reception of the holy Eucharist before the death of the
mortal life. This information helps support the claim made that the Eucharist is seen as the elven

Urdiales 27
lembas bread in Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings. The Eucharist as viaticum is mentioned in one
of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, and a definition is thereby required to continue the argument of
my thesis.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher
Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Print.
The Letters is a collection of letters written by Tolkien on various topics, ranging from the
mythology of Middle-earth and the Nmenrean Kings, to the history and purpose of the Valar.
Specifically, I pull from The Letters Tolkiens own opinions and original perceptions regarding
Middle-earth. On As with any author, Tolkiens works were subject to the criticism and wrath of
the world; however, he expressed that it is unnecessary to do so when his mythical world was the
creation of his own being (and so, indirectly from God).
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Print.

Urdiales 28
Finding God through Agony and Devotion:
An Examination of John Donnes Holy Sonnets
Preface: In my examination, I will look closely at Holy Sonnets I, X and XIV, with a special
emphasis dwelling on the connections between paradox and the imagery of pain and agony in
relation to fear and despair in order to achieve the devotion to God which Donne ultimately
reaches in the Holy Sonnets.

John Donne the great metaphysical poet of the seventeenth century was a child of
God: in other words, Donne devoted his life to God. This, of course, is best exemplified in his
Holy Sonnets, which are his love poems addressed to God. Donnes Holy Sonnets are full of
metaphysical conceits a combination of paradox, imagery drawn from arcane sources, and an
original and usually complex comparison between two highly dissimilar things (Murfin). His
usage of this literary device brings forth unique images of God in the poetic world. Donnes
poetry abound[s] with startling images [of God], some of them exalting and others grotesque
(Greenblatt 1370). Stephan Greenblatt hints at Donnes rather unorthodox yet fearsomely
tangible interpretation of God. Donnes Holy Sonnets exist as a wellspring of ecstatic, yet
vastly disquieting, illustrations of God as a force not to be reckoned with, while in union with the
inkling that God is always forgiving and ever-loving. The majority of Donnes Holy Sonnets are
inspiring imaginations of a God who is a loving, yet stern, Father who accepts His children often
after subjecting them to trials of pain and agony. Donne, however, is often led astray by the
paradoxical nature of fear and despair in his pursuit to fully give himself over to God.
Within the first Holy Sonnet, Donne works like an artist; he daubs a clear visage of hope
and despair, but also fear and surety, as he recollects his devotion to God. He pleads, Thou hast

Urdiales 29
made me, and shall thy work decay? to bring his agony and suffering to Gods attention (I.1).
He feels abandoned and hopeless, so he seeks to repair the damage to his soul caused by his
sinfulness as his life reaches the end. He sees that all [his] pleasures are like yesterday
suddenly made so insignificant (I.4). He recognizes that his earthly values and material
possessions are of no use to his spiritual life, and he knows that Death approaches. The sinful
pleasures of the world have left him in a rut where he run[s] to death, and death meets [him] as
fast (I.3). Physical pleasures and indulgences of the flesh have brought to him nothing but an
uneasy hunger. Sin causes not only his feeble flesh (I.7) to waste in decay, but his soul now
faces eternal damnation as it towards hell doth weigh [down] (I.8). Donne believes he has left
despair behind him, but comes to see that his despair will remain with him as long as his sins
dwell within his soul. Through all of this spiritual agony and physical pain, he remembers that
God is with him, ever omnipotent (Only thou art above). When Donne turns to Him, despair
begins to flee and God raises him out of the dark abysmal pit of sin. It is so easy for Donne to
turn back to God, but still equally as simple for him to allow Satan to again take root in his life,
as seen in the third quatrain:
. . . [W]hen towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain. (I.9-12)
Donne is so spiritually weakened that, alone, he has no defense to withstand the power of
temptation. He forgets that God is always at his side for protection and that all he needs to do is
ask for His divine assistance. Sin is everywhere, but God understands the condition of our frail
humanity. God loves unconditionally, and always draws the hearts of men near to Himself, rather

Urdiales 30
than causing the heart to harden mine iron heart (I.14) out of spite or malice toward
mankind or God. Ultimately, Gods power over the heart is greater than the sin which hardens
the heart, and Donne discovers this through his pleading for the grace of God.
Apart from his evident despair and the terror possessing him that God will abandon him
to Satan, Robert Blanch defines Donnes conviction [as being] utterly hopeless (Blanch 478).
Donne fears time and the effects it has upon his flesh and spirit. He suffers from a spiritual
deficit as a result of a promulgated distrust in God. Donnes despair and . . . feeling that sin is
weighing him down towards hell terrifies him in the octave (Stachniewski 699). This spiritual
weakness is led by a form of paralysis of the spirit: I dare not move my dim eyes any way
(I.5). His fear of hopelessness and continuing despair causes Donne to momentarily lose a firm
grasp on his faith: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? (I.1). Because of his fleeting
hope and budding despair, Donne undergoes a spiritual transformation. We begin to see a
general image of the decay and nourishment of an organism in Donne (Blanch 478). The
paradox he presents to himself rests within his grasp on despair. Although he claims to leave
despair behind, Donne struggles with letting go of sin the primary cause of his persistent
despair (I.6). With a new distrust in the One who has always provided for him, Donne places
himself in the proximity of not only sin, but eternal damnation. By the time the reader reaches
the sestet, an abrupt change of heart is seen when Donne resists the evil sensations of sin with a
steady poise in the grace of God. With this, he is able to firmly repel [them] . . . by confidence
in Gods grace (Stachniewski 700). The relief he seeks stems from his faith, and the trust he
finds he places in God to lead him to holiness. His final words then become ones of trust and
obedience. He concludes, Thy grace may [give wings to] me to [forestall Satans] art, / And

Urdiales 31
thou like adamant draw mine iron heart (I.13-14). As he learns to conform to the will of God, he
overcomes his presently ephemeral nature of life, readjusting his route toward salvation.
Throughout the first sonnet, Donne progressively becomes more aware of his spiritually
hazardous situation. He grows increasingly alarm[ed] at the thought of his impending death
(Beaston 97). This alarm contributes to the rapid growth of his despair, and he develops new
understandings of his fear of death as a result. Such terror (I.7), he recalls, is provoked not by
his fear of death itself [but rather a] fear of a death that will leave him forever separated from
God, eventually becoming the ultimate consequences of his sinfulness (Beaston 97). Sin has
caused his flesh to rot and decay because of the internal damage to his soul. The flesh becomes a
lost treasure the destroyed Temple and an abandoned and decaying artifact of God
(Beaston 98). But despair and death also present paradoxical implications. Although he mentions
his forgotten despair once, Donnes inability to confront Satans art implies that he dwells on that
mental terror. In the end, he knows that his only remedy lies in his trust in Divine Providence.
Instead of petitioning for an end to temptation, he asks for the wings to prevent his art (I.13).
However, Donne realises his mistake quickly, and he is able to properly assess the situation,
showing his trust instead of begging for a specific end means. He sees that, just as rusty water
corrodes a metal sink faucet, so, also, does sin affect the soul.
The essence of Holy Sonnet X consists of understanding Death and how to receive him at
the end of life. Death is not a force to be feared; the force and almighty power of God is that
which should be feared while at the same time whole-heartedly loved and adored. Donne
believes this and explicates this idea in telling Death to be not proud (X.1). He openly mocks
Death, revealing him to hide behind the veils of rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be (X.5).
Death uses these tricks to deceive man in order to gain power through fear. Donne, however,

Urdiales 32
compares such trickery to the effects of opium, or charms [which] can make us sleep as well /
And better than [Deaths] stroke (X.11-12). Opium relieves the senses and offers an ephemeral
mental freedom from the world in which one habituates; however, Death acts similarly with the
exception of wholly taking one from the earthly life. In this way, Death is no more powerful than
the effects of drugs. To close his argument, Donne names Deaths power as [o]ne short sleep
(X.13), only to await an eternal awakening in Heaven when death shall be no more (X.14). In
Greenblatts footnotes, he links this sonnet to 1 Corinthians 15:26, where St. Paul the apostle
tells the faithful, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death (Greenblatt 1412). This
sentiment offers hope to the despairing. It suggests that the end of Death is death. Donne wholly
embraces this idea in the couplet: Death, thou shalt die (X.14). Normally, sonnets are the
admirers love pleas to a female lover. The nature of the sonnet is to convey a little song of
love. Here, Donne takes an entirely different approach, one which no other sonneteer has taken.
In this way, Donne challenges Death, but artfully and zealously, for his love for God surpasses
his fear of corporal death and decay.
Death, in Holy Sonnet X, is a force of solace and paradox, rather than fear. In Death, be
not proud, the struggle to conquer fear and despair over the power of death is obvious. James E.
Berg calls it a struggle over the limited powers of death resulting from a concession of
intellectual control (Berg 152). But Donne does not utilize this poem as an escape from death;
no. Rather, it provides solace from facing fear in the company of friendship and courage the
friendship and love of Christ. Donne confounds the logic of death with a directness owed to any
being subject to humiliation, doing so through the paradoxical shame of Death being incapable
of killing: poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me (X.4). Death lacks power and is as vulnerable
as any human being. Where Donne takes away the implicit dread of death in the octave of the

Urdiales 33
sonnet, he suggests that Death keeps evil company as a slave to men of higher power in the
sestet (Berg 152). In doing so, he makes the humanity of death apparent. Finally, Donne
lacerates Death through the multiplicity of paradox. In the first quatrain, Death seems [like] a
criminal condemned to death (Berg 152). He is told to forego his own death, because Donne
reveals that Mighty and dreadful, for [Death is] not so (X.2). To conclude the sonnet, the
couplet reveals, One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; Death,
thou shalt die (X.13-14; my italics). Death becomes paradoxical. Berg says it best: if Death is
dead, then there is no death, and death cannot be dead (Berg 152). If the paradox of the first
quatrain regarding whether or not Death has dominion over Donnes life is viewed as the
question, then the answer is found in the couplet: Donne deliberately decries Deaths immortality
and concludes that the reality of Death is death itself. On the subject of fear, Mary Ruefle makes
a relevant comment that, Dying is the act, most often painful, that leads to death, while death
itself is as painless as the feeling you had before [birth] no feeling at all (Ruefle 124). Taking
this into consideration, death becomes frail and susceptible to Deaths only forceful action:
ending life. Likewise, pain has no direct correlation to death itself it is the process of dying
which takes precedence on pain. Ultimately for the Christian, Donne knows that death is the end
of mortality, and pain, and that the next step to eternal happiness, and peace, waits in heaven.
Batter my heart, three-personed God, Donnes most brutally depicted love prayer, is
abounding with imagery. In his despair, he weeps for righteous punishment, depicting God as an
overwhelmingly violent conqueror. Batter my heart, he pleads, that I may rise and stand
against sin (XIV.1-3). This battering is more or less a thrashing force of agony exerted against
his heart, strengthening it from the temptations of sin; but he does not end his plea here. Donne
asks to be ousted by means of break[ing], blow[ing], [and] burn[ing], so that he will be made a

Urdiales 34
new disciple of Christ, rather than mended (XIV.4). He seeks the pain and successive agony that,
through these means, can free him from the entanglements of sin. In despair, he likens himself to
that of an usurped town, or a maiden, who has been promised to another: Satan (XIV.5). Held
as a captive bride and reduced to feeble weakness and fear, he begs to be cut off. Divorce me,
he says, and untie or break that knot of conjugal sin (XIV.11). As a seized town, he is held a
prisoner and subjected to the temptations of Satan. He wishes to remain imprisoned, though, but
instead as a slave of God. He concludes that he will never be able to escape Satans briberies
unless God enslaves him, Nor ever chaste unless God rapes him (XIV.14). In other words, the
fate of Donnes chastity is determined through a raping by God and subsequent enslavement.
This is a most humble form of conforming to the uniformity of the Will of God: Donne is willing
to give up his own free will so that he may enjoy the beauty and the grace of God. Although
grotesque, Donne makes his intentions clear: to be ravished by God is to abandon fear and
despair and to accept the goodness He has to offer to man.
Holy Sonnet XIV is inherently paradoxical in nature. Donne equips sexual violence to
disprove his doubts and fears which become the lingering plagues of his sinfulness. Indeed, it is
through his imagery that we recognize that the poet has achieved a high degree of spiritual
intimacy with God (Blanch 481). From the octave to the sestet, Donne again undergoes an
advanced conversion from spiritual renewal to imagery of a newfound sexual intimacy with God.
Donne invokes a form of general physical violence (Blanch 481) from the three-personed
God the Holy Trinity (XIV.1). Because the Trinity can be viewed as an ultra-powerful force
of three, the battering must indeed be fearsome so much so that it destroys despair. Then, in the
later portion of the octave, the spread of violence continues. Donne, compared to a maiden
village besieged by a barbarous satanic force, is left without reinforcements (reason). He

Urdiales 35
petitions God to engage all of His power to swiftly rescue his spiritual self. In the sestet, his
relationship with God takes an intimate turn in the theme of violence. He solicits spiritual rape
in order that he may achieve spiritual perfection from God in shocking imagery of a sexual
implication (Blanch 482). In order to be freed from the snares of sin, the poet requires a defiling
of his body by God the thought of which is innately evil. Donnes contradictory conceits of
enthralled freedom and ravished chastity moves the reader in such a way as to stir similar
emotions in the community of the faithful (Geriguis 156). To be liberated from his agonizing
betrothal to Satan, then, Donne necessitates enslavement and a painfully implied sexual rape
from God in the concluding couplet. Yet again textually understood, another paradox is revealed
through the dual-meaning of his sought after chastening: to castigate and to purify (Parish
301). Simultaneously, he seeks a verbal reprimand and a spiritual purification from sin in the
context of physical rape. Donnes God is omnipotent and yet symbiotic, as shown in Batter my
heart, and this is realized through the contradictory nature of his cry for sexual intimacy coupled
with a likening to the harmony found within the Holy Trinity.
Further clarifying the characteristic paradox of Holy Sonnet XIV, Donne makes an initial
parallelism which is vital to recognize. John E. Parish makes the argument that the opening
quatrain establishes an extended metaphor:
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, oerthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. (XIV.1-4)
Found within the context of a united Being made distinct in three ways, Donne fashions three
ways in which to attain his salvation. First, God the Father is entreated to break, rather than to

Urdiales 36
knock; the Holy Spirit to blow, as opposed to breathe in him; and the Son of God to
burn sooner than to but shine on his heart (XIV.2-4). These three (or six) painfully
destructive actions contradict each other in that, through the second plea, Donne seeks to be
made new, and thus needs to first be destroyed, rather than a simple mending of his heart. The
force he requests from God is powerful so powerful that only one united Being of three-parts
may inflict the change he seeks. Lastly, Donne implies the Fathers omnipotence to batter the
heart, the Saviour, Christ, to utilize Reason rectified through love, and the Spirits
characteristic enlightenment through the imagery of interpenetration (Parish 299). The unity of
a God in three-parts creates a sense of paradoxical empowerment in Donne to repent and seek a
merciful pain and forgiveness from the Lord.
John Donne despairs for his Lord to overpower him in ways that are seen by humanity as
tyrannical and oftentimes nihilistic. This is due almost entirely to his lack of strength to be pure
through his own will. In the mind of John Donne, the only way to be lovingly accepted into the
eternal life in heaven is to be scourged by God. One must abandon all fear and despair, rather
than hope. The sufferings of life must be painful and agonizing because they have no place in the
eternal goodness of heaven. Through an array of paradox, Donne challenges the reader to
decipher the reasons for fear and despair. In this way, one unlocks the door to discover the tools
for the eternal and spiritual life. Furthermore, if the goal at the end of life becomes the entrance
into heaven, then mankind should endeavour to emulate the torture and mistreatment of Christ on
His way to Cavalry. In other words, suffering becomes the gateway to salvation. Although at
times Donne paints obscenely grotesque metaphors while dealing with a fleeting hope, growing
despair, or persistent fear, his heart remains full of a burning, fiery zeal for God. Donnes poetry

Urdiales 37
sheds a light of hope on the darkness of the world, leaving his readers with the courage to strive
for the approval of the Almighty.

Works Cited
Beaston, Lawrence. "Talking to a Silent God: Donne's Holy Sonnets and the Via Negativa."
Renascence Winter 51.2 (1999): 94-109. Print.
Berg, James E. "John Donne's Holy Sonnets." British Writers Classics 1 (2002): 141-59. Print.
Blanch, Robert J. "Fear and Despair in Donne's Holy Sonnets." The American Benedictine
Review 25 (1974): 476-84. Print.
Geriguis, Lora. "John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 (sic)." The Explicator 68.3 (2010): 155-58. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. "John Donne, From Holy Sonnets." The Norton
Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. B. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 1370415. Print.
Murfin, Ross C., and Supryia M. Ray. "Metaphysical Conceit." The Bedford Glossary of Critical
and Literary Terms. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
Parish, John E. "No. 14 of Donne's Holy Sonnets." College English January 24.4 (1963): 299302. Print.
Ruefle, Mary. "On Fear." Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. Seattle: Wave, 2012.
103-25. Print.
Stachniewski, John. "John Donne: The Despair of the Holy Sonnets." English Literary History
Winter 48.4 (1981): 677-705. Print.

Urdiales 38
Appendix I: Holy Sonnets
I
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

Urdiales 39
X
Death, be not proud, though some have calld thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Urdiales 40
XIV
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, oerthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Urdiales 41
Appendix II: Sigma Tau Delta Submission: 2015 Convention in Albuquerque, NM
Introduction:
In my research, I specifically explore the relationship between two of John Donnes Holy
Sonnets to the themes of pain, agony, fear, and devotion. Donne relates his relationship with God
in rather unconventional ways, but has an underlying meaning which I believe worthy of
research and explication. The title of my paper is
Finding God through Agony and Devotion:
An Examination of John Donnes Holy Sonnets
John Donnea metaphysical poet of the 17th centurywas a devoted child of God. This
is best exemplified in his Holy Sonnets, which are love poems addressed to God. Donnes Holy
Sonnets are full of metaphysical conceitsa combination of paradox, imagery drawn from
arcane sources, and an original and usually complex comparison between two highly dissimilar
things (Murfin 299). His usage of this device brings unique images of God in the poetic world.
Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt says that Donnes poetry abound[s] with startling
images [of God], some of them exalting and others grotesque (Greenblatt 1370). Greenblatt
hints at Donnes rather unorthodoxyet fearsomely tangibleinterpretation of God. The Holy
Sonnets exist as a wellspring of ecstatic, yet vastly disquieting, illustrations of God as a force not
to be reckoned with, while confessing that God is always forgiving and ever-loving. The
majority of Donnes Holy Sonnets are inspiring imaginations of a God who is a loving, yet stern,
Father who accepts His children often after subjecting them to trials of pain and agony.
However, Donne is often led astray by the paradoxical nature of fear and despair in his pursuit to
fully give himself over to God.

Urdiales 42
The essence of Holy Sonnet X consists of understanding Death and how to receive him at
the end of life. For Donne, death is not a force to be feared; it is the force and almighty power of
God which should be feared, while at the same time whole-heartedly adored. Donne explicates
this idea in telling Death to be not proud (X.1). He openly mocks Death, revealing him to hide
behind the veils of rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be (X.5). Death uses these tricks to
deceive man in order to gain power through fear. Donne compares such trickery to the effects of
opium, or charms [which] can make us sleep as well / And better than [Deaths] stroke (X.1112). Opium relieves the senses and offers an ephemeral mental freedom from the world;
however, Death acts similarly, with the exception of wholly taking one from the earthly life. In
this way, Death is no more powerful than the effects of drugs. To close his argument, Donne
names Deaths power as [o]ne short sleep (X.13), only to await an eternal awakening in
Heaven when death shall be no more (X.14). In Greenblatts footnotes, he links this sonnet to
1 Corinthians 15:26, where St. Paul the apostle tells the faithful, the last enemy that shall be
destroyed is death (Greenblatt 1412). This sentiment offers hope to the despairing. It suggests
that the end of Deathis death. Donne wholly embraces this idea in the couplet: Death, thou
shalt die (X.14). Normally, a sonnet is an admirers love plea, or a little song, to a female
lover. Donne takes an entirely different approach, one which no other sonneteer has taken. In this
way, Donne challenges Death, but artfully and zealously, for his love for God surpasses any fear
of corporal death and decay.
Death, in Holy Sonnet X, is a force of solace and paradox, rather than fear. In Death, be
not proud, there is a struggle to conquer fear and despair over the power of death. James Berg
calls it a struggle over the limited powers of death resulting from a concession of intellectual
control (Berg 152). But Donne does not utilize this poem as an escape from death. Rather, it

Urdiales 43
provides solace from facing fear in the company of the friendship and love of Christ. Donne
confounds the logic of death with a directness owed to any being subject to humiliation, doing so
through the paradoxical shame of Deaths incapacity to kill: poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill
me (X.4). Death lacks power and is vulnerable as any human being. When Donne takes away
the implicit dread of death in the octave of the sonnet, he suggests that Death keeps evil
company as a slave to men of higher power in the sestet (Berg 152). In doing so, he makes the
humanity of death apparent. Finally, Donne lacerates Death through the multiplicity of paradox.
In the first quatrain, Death seems [like] a criminal condemned to death (Berg 152). He is told
to forego his own death, because Donne reveals that Death is not so mighty and dreadful (X.2).
To conclude the sonnet, the couplet reveals One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And
death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die (X.13-14; emphasis added). Death becomes
paradoxical. Berg says it best: if Death is dead, then there is no death, and death cannot be
dead (Berg 152). If the paradox of the first quatrain regarding whether or not Death has
dominion over Donnes life is viewed as the question, then the answer is found in the couplet:
Donne deliberately decries Deaths immortality and concludes that the reality of Death is death
itself. On the subject of fear, Mary Ruefle comments, Dying is the act, most often painful, that
leads to death, while death itself is as painless as the feeling you had before [birth]no feeling at
all (Ruefle 124). Taking this into consideration, dying becomes frail and susceptible to Deaths
only forceful action: the ending of life. Likewise, pain has no direct correlation to deathit is the
process of dying which takes precedence. Ultimately, Donne knows that death is the end of
mortality and pain, and the next step to eternal happiness and peace waits in heaven.
Batter my heart, three-personed God, Donnes most brutally depicted love prayer,
abounds with intimate imagery. In his despair, he weeps for righteous punishment, depicting God

Urdiales 44
as an overwhelmingly violent conqueror. He pleads: Batter my heartthat I may rise and
stand against sin (XIV.1-3). This battering is a thrashing force of agony against his heart,
strengthening it from the temptations of sin; but his plea does not end there. Donne asks to be
ousted by means of break[ing], blow[ing], [and] burn[ing], so that he will be made a new
disciple of Christ, rather than mended (XIV.4). He seeks the pain and successive agony that can
free him from the entanglements of sin. In despair, he likens himself to that of an usurped
town, or a maiden who has been promised to another: Satan (XIV.5). Held as a captive bride
and reduced to feeble weakness and fear, he begs to be cut off. He says, Divorce me [and] untie
or break that knot of conjugal sin (XIV.11). As a seized town, he is held a prisoner and
subjected to the temptations of Satan. He concludes that he will never be able to escape Satans
briberies unless God enslaves him, Nor ever chaste unless God rapes him (XIV.14). The fate
of Donnes chastity is determined through a raping by God and subsequent enslavement. Donne
is willing to give up his free will so that he may enjoy the beauty and the grace of God: this is a
most humble form of conforming to the uniformity of Gods Will. Although grotesque, Donne
makes his intentions clear: to be ravished by God is to abandon fear and despair and to accept the
goodness He has to offer.
Holy Sonnet XIV is inherently paradoxical in nature. Donne equips sexual violence to
disprove his doubts and fears which become the lingering plagues of his sinfulness. Robert
Blanch believes that it is [indeed] through his imagery that we recognize that the poet has
achieved a high degree of spiritual intimacy with God (Blanch 481). From the octave to the
sestet, Donne again undergoes an advanced conversion from spiritual renewal to imagery of a
newfound sexual intimacy with God. Again, Blanch tells us that Donne invokes a form of
general physical violence (Blanch 481) from the three-personed Godthe Holy Trinity

Urdiales 45
(XIV.1). Because the Trinity can be viewed as an ultra-powerful force of three, the battering
must be fearsomeso much so that it destroys despair. Then, in the later portion of the octave,
the spread of violence continues. Donne, compared to a maiden village besieged by a barbarous
satanic force, is left without reinforcements. He petitions God to engage all of His power to
swiftly rescue his spiritual self. In the sestet, his relationship with God takes an intimate turn in
the theme of violence. Blanch puts it: [he] solicits spiritual rape in order that he may achieve
spiritual perfection from God in shocking imagery of a sexual implication (Blanch 482). In
order to be freed from the snares of sin, the poet requires a defiling of his body by Godthe
thought of which is innately evil, even so far as blasphemous. But Donnes mysticism intrigues
readers. Lora Geriguis elucidates that, Donnes contradictory conceits of enthralled freedom
and ravished chastity moves the reader in such a way as to stir similar emotions in the
community of the faithful (Geriguis 156). To be liberated from his agonizing betrothal to Satan,
Donne necessitates enslavement and an implied sexual rape from God in the concluding couplet.
Yet again textually understood, another paradox is revealed, as John Parish illustrates, through
the dual-meaning of his sought after chastening: to castigate and to purify (Parish 301).
Simultaneously, he seeks a verbal reprimand and a spiritual purification from sin in the context
of physical rape. Donnes God is omnipotent and yet symbiotic, as shown in Batter my heart,
and this is realized through the contradictory nature of his cry for sexual intimacy coupled with a
likening to the harmony found within the Holy Trinity.
Further clarifying the characteristic paradox of Holy Sonnet XIV, Donne makes an initial
parallelism which is vital to recognize. John Parish makes the argument that the opening quatrain
establishes an extended metaphor:
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you

Urdiales 46
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, oerthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. (XIV.1-4)
Found within the context of a united Being made distinct in three ways, Donne fashions three
ways in which to attain his salvation. First, God the Father is entreated to break, rather than to
knock; the Holy Spirit to blow, as opposed to breathe in him; and the Son of God to
burn sooner than to butshine on his heart (XIV.2-4). These three (or six) painfully
destructive actions contradict each other in that, through the second plea, Donne seeks to be
made new, and thus needs to first be destroyed, rather than a simple mending of his heart. The
force he requests from God is powerfulso powerful that only one united Being of three-parts
may inflict the change he seeks. Lastly, Parish tells us that Donne implies the Fathers
omnipotence to batter the heart, the Saviour, Christ, to utilize Reason rectified through love,
and the Spirits characteristic enlightenment through the imagery of interpenetration (Parish
299). The unity of a God in three-parts creates a sense of paradoxical empowerment in Donne to
repent and seek a merciful pain and forgiveness from the Lord.
John Donne despairs for his Lord to overpower him in ways that are seen by humanity as
tyrannical and nihilistic. This is due to his lack of strength to be pure through his own will. In his
mind, the only way to be lovingly accepted into the eternity of heaven is to be scourged by God.
One must abandon fear and despair, rather than hope. The sufferings of life must be painful and
agonizing because they have no place in the eternal goodness of heaven. Saint Andr Bessette,
C.S.C. once said, If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it (Ruefle 124).
Suffering is complicated, like Donnes paradoxical devotions. Through an array of paradox,
Donne challenges the reader to decipher his reasons for fear and despair. In this way, one

Urdiales 47
unlocks the door, discovering the tools for the eternal and spiritual life. Furthermore, if the goal
at the end of life becomes to enter heaven, then mankind should endeavour to emulate the torture
of Christ on His way to Cavalry. In other words, suffering becomes the gateway to salvation, the
key to true living. Although at times Donne paints obscene metaphors while dealing with fleeting
hope, growing despair, or persistent fear, his heart remains full of a burning, fiery zeal for God.
Donnes poetry sheds a light of hope on the darkness of the world, leaving his readers with the
courage to strive for the banquet of the Almighty God.

Works Cited
Berg, James E. "John Donne's Holy Sonnets." British Writers Classics 1 (2002): 141-59. Print.
Blanch, Robert J. "Fear and Despair in Donne's Holy Sonnets." The American Benedictine
Review 25 (1974): 476-84. Print.
Geriguis, Lora. "John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 (sic)." The Explicator 68.3 (2010): 155-58. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. "John Donne, From Holy Sonnets." The Norton
Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. B. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 1370415. Print.
Murfin, Ross C., and Supryia M. Ray. "Metaphysical Conceit." The Bedford Glossary of Critical
and Literary Terms. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
Parish, John E. "No. 14 of Donne's Holy Sonnets." College English January 24.4 (1963): 299302. Print.
Ruefle, Mary. "On Fear." Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. Seattle: Wave, 2012.
103-25. Print.

Urdiales 48
The Uncanny in The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poes short story, The Black Cat, tells us about the homely and the
unheimlich and the sociopathic tendency of a murderous man. The narrators description of the
tale begins with his purpose: to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without
comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified
have torturedhave destroyed me (Poe 71, emphasis added). This experience indicates that
something familiarin psychoanalytic terms, something repressedhas happened to the
narrator. This familiar feeling is what Sigmund Freud called the uncanny. In his essay by the
same name, he says that the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is
known of old and long familiar (Freud 255). One of the definitions he uses to describe the
uncanny reads: II. Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it,
withheld from others (Freud 257). And again: the uncanny is associated with that which is
eerie, weird, arousing gruesome fear and even ghostly (Freud 258). Already, he notes that
the uncanny is something improper or offensive, but also possessing a complicated and almost
impractical nature. It is clearly a challenge to pinpoint exactly what the uncanny is and is not, but
Freud opens the term up to a kind of multiplicity of meanings, thus enabling a variety of
perspectives. However, the role of the uncanny in The Black Cat is larger than even these
definitions; Freud would not restrict the literary uncanny to two or three simple observations.
Instead, Freud might suggest that The Black Cat is rife with uncanniness and the
psychoanalytic idea underpinning this concept. The uncanny is found in the text through such
methods of Freudian psychoanalysis: feminised transference, the doubling of Pluto, the second
cat, and the wife, and the cats and the events surrounding the cats as reflections of the conscious
and unconscious levels of the human mind. Such events draw on the phallic nature of the

Urdiales 49
narrators violence and lead him to his sociopathic tendencies. On the motif of violence,
conclusions can be drawn on the critical nature of the childhood and the childs relationship to
the family. Through these means, the cats become the familiar, or the uncanny, and are doubled
to the narrator, who also suffers from an anxiety of castration originating in childhood.
The narrators past is filled with an understanding of being bullied, yet bereft of the
necessary filling of familial and human love. He tells the reader that from infancy he had been
known for his docility and humanity ofdisposition, in addition to a tenderness of heart
which resulted in the frequent quip of any of his friends (Poe 71). These traits are stereotypical
descriptions of a female or a feminised noun; however, he establishes that the bodily vision of
himself happened to be an emasculated self, one which had suffered a rejection of the male
biological selfa rejection of the heterosexual person into which he had already developed
despite a lack of interpersonal and emotional connection to his parentsand became manifest in
his inability to form relationships with others, predominantly people but later animals.
Furthermore, he associates the memory of happy times spent with caressing his animals with a
certain growth into manhood, continuing to derive from it one of [his] principal sources of
pleasure (Poe 71). The animals become the feminising tool of transference used to describe his
tender character and happy memories. Moreover, he establishes that he received explicit
gratification derived from his attachment to the animals, rather than any human connection to his
parents. Gerald Kennedy discusses the narrators melancholic tendency to react violently as a
means of self-inflicted punishment: Freud contrasts melancholia with ordinary mourning,
characterising the former as a profoundly painful dejection, a sense of deprivation so absolute
that it entails a loss of self-esteem (Kennedy 543). Kennedy uses the connection of melancholy
to suggest not only the reason for the narrators perversity, but also for his need to hang Pluto

Urdiales 50
and then axe his wife. These are the internalised emotions of his dejected childhood. The reason
why he kills uncontrollably is to fix his emotion-deprived past. Kennedy also points out that
Poes narrators usually fit in the frame of one who offers implicit hostility toward cherished
women and an unlikely affection toward irritating males (Kennedy 544). The same is true
in The Black Cat: he loves his wife but irrationally kills her and loves an animal which
reminds him all too much of the memory of his childhood abandonment he desperately seeks to
forget. The narrators tender youth, which lacks familial love, later becomes repressed in
adulthood, and this in turn leads to his sociopathic violent nature.
To specify from these points: throughout this play of the memories of childhood, the
narrator identifies himself with two doubles: his wife and Pluto. Ed Piacentino claims that [t]he
psychodynamics of his wifes being one of the mirrors of [the narrators] lost selfmake the
marital relationship of the narrator and his wife seem intriguing in that they provide the clues
necessary to understanding his murderous tendencies (Piacentino 161). Their relationship lacks
intimacy and emotion because the narrator transfers that emotion to his animals. For this reason,
he identifies his significant other as Pluto, rather than his wife. In this way, the real double (the
cat) becomes doubled to his wife; they both simultaneously mirror the image of the narrator
because of his identifying himself with both, but in different ways; his wife and his pet,
respectively.
Piacentino uses the narrators motive to explain his perversity, but this can also account
for his descent into the unconscious of the mind. Piacentino claims that [t]he narrators motive
for murdering his wife seems to be subconscious and, therefore, the crime is not consciously
premeditated (Piacentino 153). But his problem is really more difficult than a mishandling of
childhood memories. If his actions were subconsciously performed, he would have had some

Urdiales 51
awareness of the connection between his bad childhood memories and his adulthood lack of
emotion. Using this information, it is easier to determine his actions as being unconsciously done
because he had no idea how to handle in adulthood his being excluded by his peers and parents
in childhood. Therefore, his perversity may be accounted as an unconscious recognition of this
basic human need for intimacy: he seeks it in adulthood first through sexual intimacy with his
wife and then through relationships with animals which had already been established in his
childhood.
Furthermore, the narrators wife acknowledges the superstition associated with black
cats: she made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as
witches in disguise (Poe 71). Through this association, the cats in the story are introduced as
being a witchs familiar, or companionthat thing which is familiar, or uncanny. In his
introduction to The Uncanny, Richard J. Lane describes the uncanny as something
frightening relating to the familiar, possessing varying degrees of dread or horror, and being
that which ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light (Freud 254). The
narrator points out that his wife was never very serious, that he merely notices this because it
happens, just now, to be rememberedthis points to the deep underlying influence of his
unconscious fear of the black cat (Poe 71). Why the narrator brings this conflict into the light is a
question of speculation. Robert Shulman offers one suggestion:
Whereas the usual psychological study of Poe treats the fiction as an unconscious
manifestation of the authors problems or as an unconscious confirmation of
orthodox Freudian categories, it seems to me that in his best stories Poe has a
genuine understanding of the unconscious processes and imaginative powers.
(Shulman 245)

Urdiales 52
Poe, like his narrator, knows the exact reason why the events of the story occur: he understands
his problems originate in childhood. The unconscious and apparently sudden remembering by
the narrator of the events which he recounts seems to have a motivation other than to give one
last speech before he meets the hangmans noose. While writing this story, Poes wife was dying
from consumption. To answer this emotional wound, he turned to alcohol to resolve his
problems. Unconsciously, he creates a story with multiple bloody encounters leading the narrator
not only to an actual death but also metaphorically to the gravehis own and the one he
fashioned in the wall of the basement for his axed-wife. In terms of Freudian classifications, the
narrators response to kill Pluto and then his wife are manifestations of the emotional neglect he
suffered in childhood and now again in his marriage: he struggles to identify with his father (as
male) and he never receives emotional support from either parent. As a result, the narrator is
unable to emotionally, physically, and spiritually connect to his wife. Instead, he turns to
animals, specifically the black cats. From this understanding of the uncanniness of the black cats,
the reader can appreciate the character of the uncanny in relation to the narrators unresolved
past and his relationship to the black cats.
The narrator is disposed to favour cats due to his childhood memories and his explicit
affection toward his various pets and catsa cat, to be precise (Poe 71). The first black cat
Plutohe houses during his marriage is a familiar beast for the narrator: it represents, to an
extent, some of his repressed childhood memories of being pampered with pets rather than the
necessary affection from his parents. Such parental affection shapes and forms the identity of the
child, but Poes narrator suffers from a psychosis because he clearly lacks this necessary human
connection. In fact, Freud saw adult neuroses as deriving from early childhood traumas that
interfere with the childs psychic development (Parker 119). It would then make sense for the

Urdiales 53
narrator, if not consciously, to admit that he had formed a fondness for animals in which he was
never so happy as when feeding and caressing them (Poe 71). Freud referred to this as the
return of the repressed. He believed that repressed drives can pop back up in the form of
neurotic symptoms, disguised representations of unconscious desires because neurotics repeat
the same symptoms over and over (Parker 119). Because the narrators parents indulged the
narrator in domesticated companions, he never established a firm relationship with human peers.
Such indulgences led to a misrepresentation of the pleasure principle and the narrator associated
emotional joy with pets, rather than a human connection. For the narrator to establish pleasure as
a result of the unconditional love1 received from his animal-friends, he effectively disconnects
himself from proper human interaction, that which results in humanistic feelings and emotions.
His parents neglectfulness (likely unintentional) results in a manifestation of the narrators
sociopathic tendencies, regardless of the attachment he forms to animals.
Thus, Pluto, his new adulthood pet, comes to represent not only these repressed memories
and the emotional, humanistic lack from which he suffers, but also the repressed anxiety of
castration, transferred through the compulsive stabbing out of one of the cats eyes from the
socket (Poe 72). Freud identifies this association of the eyes to the fear of castration: he says,
anxiety about ones eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough to substitute for the dread of
being castrated (Freud 261). He believes that the threat of being castratedexcites a peculiarly
violent and obscure emotion originating in the loss of an organ (Freud 262). Furthermore, this
horrible dread is primarily evident in children: We know from psychoanalytic experiencethat
the fear of damaging or losing ones eyes is a terrible one in children (Freud 261). Having
already established that the narrators violence is the effect of an emotional-lack from his parents

1

This unconditional love is really based on the animals instinctual needs rather than the affection similar to that of
a husbands love for his wife.

Urdiales 54
in childhood, it is easy to now see the connection between the anxieties of castration of the
dominant male reproductive organ and the eyes. The narrator stabs-out Plutos eye not because
the cat is somehow deserving of such a fate; rather, the narrator cannot comprehend the
implications of his feelings of jealousy and empathetic love. Such emotions likely have had a
negative effect on his inability to successfully perform during sexual intercourse. To make up for
his weaknesshis sexual ability to knowhe takes away from Pluto the thing which enables
him to see and to know visually. The cats physical appearanceblack with a splotch of white
(Poe 73) upon its chestreminds the narrator of his sexual and emotional weaknesses. This
incapacity to feel emotion relates to his relationship with his parents versus the relationship he
has with animals. The animals, from the Freudian understanding of the mother, have no penis
the sex is not specified. Like the mother, he assumes the cats have been castrated. His fear of his
father castrating him is transferred and thus subsumed by both parents. As if in answer to these
feelings of guilt, he turns to alcohol and drowns in wine all memory of the deed he commits
against the cat (Poe 72). His aggression originates in his alcoholism and his inability to love his
wife and pets. Poe scholar Magdalen Wing-chi Ki suggests that the aggressive actions, and the
story itself, reflect the [narrators] love of (self) mutilation. Having desecrated his flesh with
alcohol, the narrator wants to leave a mark on the body of the other, and desecrates the cats
flesh (Wing-chi 576). His aggressive attitude thus paves the way for the stabbing-out of Plutos
eye and the murder of his wife. In many ways, this story follows similar patterns from Poes own
life. This textual illustration mirrors the battle with alcoholism that Poe faced during the death of
his wife. However likely, the narrator is left with the inability to communicate not only with his
fellow man, but also with the animals to which he has established recognisable emotional
attachment.

Urdiales 55
Both cats and the narrators wife are doubled images of the narrator. In his discussion of
the uncanny, Freud also describes the double in such characters who are to be considered
identical because they look alike or possess similar traits, habits, tendencies, or identifications
(Freud 263). Pluto and the second black cat are seen as doubles of each other as well as of the
narrator. Because the narrator initially identifies with Pluto rather than his wife, his doubling is
made explicit: Pluto was [his] favourite pet and playmate. [He] alone fed him, and so on (Poe
71, emphasis added). Freud would label this relationship as one in which the subject identifies
himself with someone else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is, or rather, with whom he
sexually and physically identifies (Freud 263). Because he spends so much time pouring over
Pluto, he rejects the inherent human connection he has with his wife. Thus, he identifies himself
with Pluto, his double. The second cat, however, offers additional speculation. It is described as
some black object sitting atop a hogshead which captures his attention (Poe 73). His initial
care for the beast is similar to his affection for Pluto; however, he quickly grows tired of the
things company. He notes that, [w]hat added, no doubt, to [his] hatred of the beast, was the
discoverythat, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes and his wife was
endeared by it for that reason (Poe 73). First, his irritation of the cats missing eye proves his
feelings of guilt and shame, despite not mentioning them. Secondly, his wife takes an interest in
the cat because she had that humanity of feeling which had once been [his] distinguishing trait
(Poe 74). She now has the redeeming quality which the narrator previously possessed; he claims
that she robbed him of his ability to love animals (and humans). Here, he aligns himself in
opposition to his wife for that redeeming quality of her humanity. Both the cat and his wife, then,
become doubled to the narrator as he undergoes a doubling, dividing and interchanging of the
self (Freud 263). No longer the person he once was, he is now able to attack the second cat and

Urdiales 56
kill his wife in the process, altogether bereft of any sense of remorse, shame, or guilt after
plunging the axe into her skull.
The replacement cat is highly symbolic. The new black catwhich remains nameless
not only replaces Pluto and so provides a similar purpose or reaction as the supply of pets
provided by his parents during his childhood, but also has a distinguishing splotch of white
upon its breast, the region covering the heart (Poe 73). The white could represent a variety of
things. After his home burns downthe symbolic manifestation of Poes life crumbling away as
he loses his wife to consumption and his job to his alcoholismthe bas relief upon the white
surface, the figure of a gigantic cat, (Poe 73) comes to represent the innocence of his youth and
of Pluto, the pureness of sentimental love, or the soon-to-be white-splotched replacement cat.
The images of white recall a sense of innocence found in childhoodthe narrators childhood.
But this is implied because the narrator is the one telling the graphic tale, cryptically begging for
his life before the gallows. Magdalen Wing-chi Ki is quick to point out that [w]ith only one eye
left and a rope-mark around its neck, [Pluto] represents evil and chaos in the eyes of the narrator
(Wing-chi 586). This recognition of evil becomes, for the narrator, a sufficient motive to kill
Pluto. The new, unnamed cat is also blacksymbolic of evilbut also of something hidden in
the conscious. And this cat, like Pluto, is missing an eye. He is the marked reminder of the
narrators egregious actions against Pluto. After he brings the animal home, he develops distaste
for and an aberrant dislike of the cat because it explicitly recalls a certain sense of shame
within the narrator (Poe 73). That shame is connected to the white spot upon the breast of the cat.
It shows the narrator the kind nature of the cat but also reminds him of his unjustifiable
misdemeanour against Pluto. For this reason, the new cat is also representative of the narrators
unconscious. This cat, ironically, is also without an eye, and reminds the narrator of the stronger

Urdiales 57
memory and repressed feelings of the neglect he suffered by his parents in childhood, but
received through the unconditional love of his supplemental pets (Poe 73). Then the beast
follows him and makes several attempts to climb upon him. These actions evoke the memory of
his murdering Pluto, and consequently fill him with an absolute dread of the nameless cat (Poe
74). This feeling of dreador rather fearis also within Freuds unconscious level of the human
mind. With the new cat, he delves deeper into the human person, into the human mind. As he
dives, his descent is rapid: he comes to understand that the white spot upon the cats breast is in a
recognisable shapeof a ghastly thingof the GALLOWS! (Poe 74)but symbolically
represents more. It signifies his vile actions against Pluto, his fear of facing the humiliation of his
childhood, and ultimately his fear of death. In this way, the cat becomes a symbol of itself.
Despite all of this, the reader comes to the realisation that the narrator has no closure and
that his psychological issues ultimately cannot be resolved in understanding the cats, his vicious
and senseless murder of his wife, or the fact that he suffers from an under-nurtured childhood.
He goes through an explicit explanation of the events which occur a priori his trial and
subsequent hanging at the gallows, but fails to recognise the critical components of his actions:
namely, humanistic feelings of regret, remorse, shame, or guilt. He lacks any capability of
emotion after aggressively slaying Pluto and this culminates in his lodging the axe into his wife,
forever silencing her. In this event where he cannot have what he desires, he buries the axe, his
wife, and the bane of his sociopathic efforts into the wall, sealing his fate in the screaming cat
hiding inside the wall.

Urdiales 58
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. Chapter 24: The Uncanny. Global Literary Theory. Ed. Richard J. Lane.
New York: Routledge, 2013. 254-67. Print.
Kennedy, J. Gerald. The Violence of Melancholy: Poe against Himself. American Literary
History. Autumn 8.3 (1996): 533-51. JSTOR. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
Parker, Robert Dale. Psychoanalysis. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary
and Cultural Studies. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2015. 111-147. Print.
Piacentino, Ed. Poes The Black Cat as Psychobiography: Some Reflections on the
Narratological Dynamics. Studies in Short Fiction. Spring 32.2 (1998): 153-67.
ProQuest. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Black Cat. The Sandbox: Prose to Play with. Handout. Critical Theory:
ENG 320. (Prof. Laura von Wallmenich.) Alma College. Jan. 2015. Print.
Shulman, Robert. Poe and the Powers of the Mind. ELH. June 37.2 (1970): 245-62. JSTOR.
Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
Wing-chi Ki, Magdalen. Diabolical Evil and The Black Cat The Mississippi Quarterly.
Summer 62.3 (2009): 569-89. ProQuest. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.

Urdiales 59
Finding the Questing Beast:
the Nature and Purpose of Questing
in Malorys Le Morte Darthur
and Whites The Once and Future King
The Questing Beast, a reoccurring motif of Arthurian literature and legend, is less
commonly explored than such themes as kingship and kin-ship, womens studies, magic and
religion, and so on. Oxford scholar Alan Lupack offers his readers that, The Post-Vulgate
Queste del Saint Graal borrows material from the Prose Tristan, including the account of
Palamdes slaying of the Questing Beast and his love for Iseut (Lupack 387). This indicates
that the beast comes from a variety of sources, much like its hybrid nature. Merriam-Webster
suggests a concise definition of hybrid as something heterogeneous in origin or composition
(Hybrid). The Questing Beast is precisely that in both Malorys Le Morte Darthur and Whites
The Once and Future King: a mixed breed of four distinct animals. Sir Thomas Malory portrays
a hybrid Questing Beast which seems to serve no purpose other than to reinforce the importance
of the medieval quest. T.H. White satirises the noble, chivalrous, and knightly missionand the
hybridity of the beastby transforming the Questing Beast and her purpose into one of comic
relieffrom seemingly no purpose at all in Malorys versionin The Once and Future King.
But White goes further by proposing a commentary on the meaningfulness of the quest that
Malorys narrative seems to lack: specifically, he presents King Pellinore as a knight destined for
the quest but who gives it up for romantic love and family. White also satirises the quest in a
comedic subplot by gendering the beast to point toward the discovery of the nature and purpose
of her identity. All things considered, the Questing Beast is a hybridised creature used to convey
the meaningfulness of questing in Malory, but comically portrayed in Whites version to

Urdiales 60
emphasise a satirical critique of the nobleness of the medieval quest and the use of identity2 in
Arthurian literature as a means of realising personal nature and purpose.
In order to understand the role of its identity, a physical manifestation of the hybrid
nature of the Questing Beast needs to be made, illustrating the complexity its hybridity and
identity. Malory describes the beast in more ways than the barking sound3 emitted from its belly:
[it] had in shape like a serpents head, and a body like a leopard, buttocked like
a lion and footed like a hart; and in his [sic] body there was such a noise as it had
been twenty couple of hounds questing, and such noise that beast made
whersoever he [sic] went. (Malory 211)
This bodily depiction emphasises the beasts bestiality: it is a conglomeration of several species
and lacks a single identity. Catherine Batt advises that, [a]natomically, the Beste [sic] is a
grotesque composite of recognisable animal parts assembled into a being both familiar and
horrifyingly alien (Batt 151). Because it is unclear what precisely the beast is, its identity is left
hanging. Batt also claims that Malorys Questing Beast is better described as a metonym (Batt
152). Malorys beast is inherently symbolic, yet it also has a strange familiarity as a physical
being: the beast is a stand-in for some larger idea. The muddled and complicated visage of the
Questing Beast centralises an emphasis on the symbolic nature of the beast, rather than on any
one of its physical attributes or gender-identity. The hybrid physical attributes of the beast
intentionally defy a simple categorisation of what it isserpent, leopard, lion, or hartso that it
will remain symbolic and mysterious as a signifier, or a symbol, sound, or image (as a word)

2

Whites ultimate purpose of the quest is to discover identity. For example, young Arthur desires to quest and fight
battles and do such kingly or knightly things, but he lacks the educated knowledge of war, questing, and hunting
and the things these practices procure, as well as the nature of war and conflict and the ultimate purpose: to unite.
3
This barking sound from the belly of the beast is identified as a pun in both French and Middle English: glatisant is
explicitly a barking or baying and questen in Middle English is a verb meaning to bark but also to hunt.
Therefore, the name as a pun translates into the purpose of the quest: the knights hunt a barking beast (McShane).

Urdiales 61
that represents an underlying concept or meaning (Signifier). Batt goes on to say that the
beast is an aspect of questing, rather than an explanation of this activity (Batt 152-153). As a
signifier of questing, the beast is emblematic of the meaningfulness of the medieval quest instead
of being a reason why it exists or for what purpose it becomes the object of the hunt. Malory
conveniently neglects to introduce the origin of the beast in his version of the story; by doing so,
he leaves the nature of the beast-as-signifier open to interpretation.
Malorys use of the Questing Beast as a hybrid of creatures, yet also as a gendered
creature, points to the hereditary-purpose of questing. When first introduced to the beast, Arthur
is in the midst of a dream. He awakens to find a mysterious barking of hounds and soon learns
from King Pellinore that the beast has been his questthe first emphasis of a hereditarypurposethis twelvemonth (Malory 22). Pellinore claims that either [he] shall achieve
him, or bleed of the best blood in [his] body (Malory 22, emphasis added). He also tells Arthur
that it shall never be achieved but by me, or by my next kin (Malory 22). Later, in
describing the beast, the narrator styles the beasts masculinity in the sound of its stomach: and
such noise that beast made wheresoever he went (Malory 211, emphasis added). This emphasis
on the masculine nature of the Questing Beast seems to be a preference of Malory.4 But Malory
also changes the beasts entrance scene to suit a symbolic relationship. Arthurian scholar Malorie
Sponseller speaks of this change: [b]y bringing the Beast into the story after this information is
presented, Malory may be referring back to the Beast in the Post-Vulgate Cycle where she was
created out of desired incest (Sponseller 32-33). Sponseller suggests that Malory links the
incestuous past of the beast to Arthurs unconscious desired incest of the present. By
masculinising the beast and introducing him directly before the conception of Arthurs bastard,

4

(This conclusion is supported by the patriarchal order of things in medieval literature.)

Urdiales 62
Malory changes the Beasts purpose to one of hereditary significance. Alexander Bruce suggests
that Malorys beast serves to symbolise that, like Arthur and Mordreds relationship, some
relations are not right, that they are two elements which should have remained separate [but
instead] have been mixed (Bruce 133). This unnatural relationship results in chaosArthur will
die at the hands of Mordredand this is reflected in Arthurs reality: he sees a beast which
seems not [quite] right, illustrating the incongruity between himself and Mordred. He is the
symbol of illegitimacy for Arthur, who likewise rises from a lowly position to become king of
Camelot.5 This disconnection between the proper dynastic claim-need and the bastardising of
Arthurs lineage are directly compared to the Questing Beast. Thus, the identity of the beast is
symbolic of the relationship between it and the characters that encounter it. When Merlin reveals
to Arthur that his mother was Igraine, he does so already knowing of Arthurs deliberately
lustful, yet also incidentally incestuous, sexual passions with his sister. He lectures him, saying,
ye have done a thing late that God is displeased with you, for ye have lain by your sister, and on
her ye have begotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm (Malory
23). The implications of this symbolic circle of incest prove one of Malorys purposes: using the
beast, he establishes the divide between not only good and evil, but also between right and
wrong.
In this way, the beast comes to serve as a type of omen against evil deeds. Sponseller
proposes that, by introducing the beast after Mordreds conception, Malory suggests that the
Questing Beast is an omen of evil things to come; she recalls an incestuous past but isnt

It is also worth noting that Arthur and Guinevere never conceive a child and thereby never establish a hereditary
dynasty, one vital role of ancient world royalty. How ironic it is that Arthur never establishes the importance of his
heredity line, just as his father failed to underpin the importance of heritage. Arthurs father, Uther Pendragon, was
smitten by Igraine, the Duchess of Tintagel. As a result, he asked Merlin to change him so that he might visit Igraine
under the disguise of the Duke of Tintagel. The result was Arthurs conception outside of wedlock.

Urdiales 63
created from incest herself and that the distinctively unbiased characterisation of the beast
hearkens back to her darker past, and forewarns of evil to come, without making her evil
(Sponseller 33). Malory confirms this hypothesis by revealing Arthurs incestuous conception of
Mordred by his sister. Malory uses the hybrid and masculine undertones to point toward
something greater: a discourse on heredity. Arthurs incestuous affair with his sister is directly
paralleled to the hybrid, masculine beast lacking a hereditary identity.
From this explication of the beasts hybridity, a new emphasis can be placed on the
hereditary-purpose of King Pellinores/ Sir Palomides quest for the beast: it ultimately points
toward the meaningfulness of the quest. Malory intentionally uses heredity and identity as tools
to point toward the meaningfulness of questing because it often seems as though the quests of the
Knights of the Round Table lack focus and centrality. Pellinore claims to have ventured after the
beast for the last twelvemonth and the narrator notes that after his death Sir Palomides
followed it (Malory 22). As the knightly heir to King Pellinore, Palomides continues the
hereditary quest, because it was called his quest (Malory 211, emphasis added). Because the
quest for the beast belongs to Pellinore and then Palomides, the hereditary significance of the
beast points toward the meaningfulness of questing. The knights go on the quest to gain glory
and honour for their questing. It leads to a sense of fulfilment and achievement which cannot
otherwise be felt or understood and it leads to the discovery of personal identity which was
previously unknown. Using the Questing Beast to unveil identity is Malorys purpose in
exploring the meaning of the medieval quest.
White satirises the nature of the quest by using the beasts hybrid nature to give it an
identity. Although Aaron Jackson discusses identity on a larger scalethe identity of medieval
Englandmuch of what he says can be applied to identifying the beast in both Malory and

Urdiales 64
White. Speaking of Whites text, he quotes T.S. Eliot who says that there is an understanding of
an historical or generational sense of the whole of the literature and the whole of Britain (qtd.
in Jackson 48). But history complicates the relationship between the contemporary and basic
historical literary analyses of Britain. For this reason, a direct comparison between Malory and
White is impractical, but nonetheless possible. Trying to identify the Questing Beast, just as
Jackson speculates that Arthurs relationship with his kingdom is the divide between the myth
of Britain and its reality, further complicates arriving at a conclusion about subjective identity
in Whites The Sword in the Stone (Jackson 52). The country, its people, and its literature are
caught up in mythic Britain and this obscures the identities of multiple characters, but most of all
the Questing Beast. Many scholars have determined this problem as originating at the root of the
beasts name: that the Questing Beast is a pun on both the creature and the people hunting it.6
But, as Jackson suggests with defining the identity of medieval England, the beasts identity is
also problematical and difficult to pinpoint.7
Nonetheless, White creates good, comical fun out of the beast subplot, changing the
nature and purpose of the quest by using a romantic fantasy to stir the feelings of love in the
knights and the Questing Beast. But here in the heart of the subplot, the gender of the beast
becomes another question in providing it with an identity. Although Malory identifies the beast
as male, she is noted as being female in all other sources, including Whites The Once and
Future King. Malory may mystify the creatures physical identity without a specific origin, but
T.H. White comically introduces the beast through questing and a comedic subplot where the

6

For more on this, see Malorie Sponsellers Masters Dissertation in which she fully explores the linguistic origins of
the beasts name.
7
This can be attributed to the narrative structure of the novel: its palimpsestic juxtaposition of past and present
events likewise conceals and disguises the beast and her identity (Jackson 52). The scope of Arthurian legend is
quite extensiveone poet uses the quest of Palamedes [sic] as a metaphor for his own quest for self-knowledge
and a kind of mystical wisdom (Lupack 390). Identity is extremely difficult to narrow in Arthurian legend.

Urdiales 65
beast is confused about its sexual identity because of its ambiguous nature. This in turn points to
the relevance of the medieval quest. In Whites story, Pellinore and Palomides also search for the
beast with great effort. In one scene, they are closely tracking her:
The King had been hunting the Questing Beast a few months earlierwhen the
animal had taken to the sea. She had swam away, her serpentine head undulating
on the surface like a swimming grass-snake, and the King had hailed a passing
ship which looked as if it were off to the Crusades. Sir Grummore and Sir
Palomides had been in the ship, and they had kindly turned it round to pursue the
Beast. The three of them had arrived on the coast of Flanders, where the Beast
had disappeared in a forest, and there, while they were staying at a hospitable
castle, Pellinore had fallen in love with the Queen of Flanders daughter. (Queen
249)
The hybrid Beast is capable of traveling in a variety of waysin water and on landand she
escapes the grasp of the knights by venturing into the forest. Jackson describes the landscape as
symbolic of the world outside the England of the Castle [of the Forest Sauvage] and the beast,
like the outlaws [and] hostile natives of the forest, are the nuts and bolts which reside in the
forest (Jackson 57). The forest, as a symbol of digression and confusion, comes to represent the
othering of the forest peoples who have a complicated identity, as well as the purpose of
questing in Whites story. Furthermore, Pellinore loses his attention when he is smitten by the
young Lady Piggy. These digressions and distractions both show the symbolic nature of
Pellinores hereditary quest and the purpose of discovering identity through questing. Moreover,
because the Questing Beast lacks a clear and focused identity, this accounts for an identity which

Urdiales 66
is not only that which is perceived, but is also that which is desired. From this understanding, the
identity of the beast is viewed as veiled and easily flexible.
White uses the beast subplot as a comedy to satirise the nature of questing. More than
this, White uses Palomides and Pellinore, who was already established as a comic figure in The
Sword in the Stone, to continue the comedy but to point it toward the more serious and
ultimately tragic theme of love (Lupack 392). Muddled in all of this is a commentary on
identity, questing, the pursuit of love, and the juxtaposition of heredity and incest, much like
Malorys version. However, Sponseller points out that Whites Beast does not act as a warning
for incest and she does not traverse the forests with seemingly no purpose; instead, this Questing
Beast is a humourous creature and the readers first encounter with her underscores this
(Sponseller 61). While the hunt for the Questing Beast remains the responsibility, or rather the
burden (White 23), of the Pellinore family, the purpose of the beast changes into a role having
more significance. Like the beast, the illusiveness of Pellinores dog is made visually
impregnable at first when Arthur says, I do not see her very well (Sword 24) because she is
tied up around the tree. Like the seemingly forgotten hound, the suggestiveness of the Questing
Beasts invisible characteristics lend to her lack of a clear identity regardless of her vibrant
hybridity. This paradoxical understanding suggests that while she may be identified with
multiple species, she cannot have a distinct identity because of her legendry mystique. But later
in the novel, White also provides an explanation for Palomides pursuit of the Questing Beast
(McShane). Pellinore, love-sick with the daughter of the Queen of Flanders, needs to be
reminded of his hereditary quest. Having lost the beast in the forest yet again, and finding a new
love, Pellinore gives up on his quest for the Questing Beast. In this way, White adapts the beast
to function as a device of humour: Palomides suggests that he and Sir Grummore must dress up

Urdiales 67
[as the Beast] and assume the rle of Questing Beast in order to convince Pellinore of the
urgency of his quest (Queen 267). But their plan backfires on them: they dress up as the beast
and hide in the cave of the real Questing Beast. It develops a sentimental attitude toward the
two buffoons and consequently falls in love with the costumed-Grummore and Palomides
(Queen 284). White purposefully satirises the beast by commenting on her genderless identity:
the beast falls in love with the false-Questing Beast. He also intentionally uses the costumedknights as a metonym for the actual beast. This means that, as Catherine Batt tells us, the
Questing Beast participates in, but does not necessarily clarify, the narrative (Batt 152).
Because the beast ironically falls in love with the costumed-knights, she is confused about her
identity: she identifies with something that is not compatible with her physically, materially, or
spiritually, and thus loses the dominancy of her hybridity. Although Whites Questing Beast
possesses a certain ambiguity about her identity, she is ultimately incapable of possessing an
identitysexual, mental, or physical.
The character of Pellinore is made inherently comical in Whites adaptation to offer a
commentary on the medieval quest and all its facets. Pellinore serves a comical and nonsensical
purpose in T.H. Whites The Once and Future King. He is also the binary character of Sir
Palomides in Malorys Le Morte Darthur; however, be that as it may, the characters serve
different roles: Malorys Palomides searches for a beast having a similar hybridity of character;
Whites Pellinore serves to display a conflicted interest in his hereditary destiny to chase the
beast and his immediate emotions for the Lady Piggy. Alan Lupack describes Pellinore as a
bumbling knight who pursues the beast ineffectively but persistently (Lupack 468). Pellinore is
also an incompetent king: when he and Arthur meet, he is searching for the Beast Glatisant,
rather than resting in his castle. His dog provides the first clue that he is an inept knight (and

Urdiales 68
king): she, on a leash, winds herself round the other side of the tree and the frequency of this
miscommunication between hunter and hound is made clear when Pellinore reveals that [s]he
always goes the opposite way from [him] despite the fact that she is quite a good brachet
(Sword 24). Pellinore understand neither hunting nor the necessary tools for hunting. Pellinores
inability to train his hound exposes that he is not really a knight at all, much less a king. He also
tells Arthur that the dog is a good hound, implying that the problem is not with the dog but with
an incompetent king/ hunter. Pellinore therefore lacks the social identity expected of him by all
those he may encounter. It would only make sense for the identity-less king to be on a perpetual
search for a beast having an ambiguous identitythe Questing Beast. Then, as if to congeal the
issue of identity, Pellinore rants about his quest:
It is the curse of the Pellinoresalways mollocking about after that beastly Beast.
What on earth use is she, anyway? First you have to stop to unwind the brachet,
then your visor falls down, then you cant see through your spectacles. Nowhere
to sleep, never know where you are. Rheumatism in the winter, sunstroke in the
summer. All this horrid armour takes hours to put on. When it is on its either
frying or freezing, and it gets rusty. You have to sit up all night polishing the
stuff. Oh, how I do wish I had a nice house with beds in it and real pillows and
sheets. (Sword 24-25, emphasis added)
Malory saw the medieval quest as a noble deed with a sense of mission and he used Pellinores
quest to confirm that sense of mission, that meaningfulness of the quest. White, on the other
hand, challenges that ideal of questing by means of a satiric subplot. He does this perhaps
because Malorys mode of storytelling appears to be sporadic and tangential, always digressing
from the quest. Pellinores satirising of his own position as a knight-on-a-quest demonstrates that

Urdiales 69
White portrays the usual nature of questing as silly because it misses something (perhaps, a
lesson to be learned). This passage also reveals that Pellinore lacks the faith required to conquer
his quest. He has discovered no purpose in his questing; as such, this provides no clue to
realising his own identity. Pellinore mentions his desire for comfort, for a bed and pillows and
sheets, and when Arthur offers these things to him his response is enthusiastic; his need for
comfort exposes that the role in which he is placed does not match the role he wishes to fulfil.8
But upon remembrance of the sound of the beast, the loving huntsman forgets everything and
runs after his prey (Sword 26). Just as Jackson speaks of the resolve to find the identity of
England in his research, Pellinore and his Questing Beast will remain without identity. Jackson
concludes that Whites novel does not satisfactorily resolve quite whence Englands future
should take its cue and that the novel itself suggests that the nations journey toward the
apotheosis of a viable contemporary identity may be, like Warts [and Pellinores], a long,
difficult, and complex one (Jackson 57). This is the reason Pellinore quests for so long and why
he is so ineffective in achieving his quest. Pellinores lack of attentiveness illustrates that he will
continue to seek his symbolic identitythe Questing Beastbut his efforts will be futile, just as
his quest has been fruitless for the past year.
Ultimately, the reader is presented with two differently purposed Questing Beasts in
Malorys Le Morte Darthur and Whites The Once and Future King. Malory uses the hybrid
creature to convey a hereditary-purpose for King Pellinore/ Sir Palomides but as externalities
emphasising the importance of the quest. White, on the other hand, uses the beast in a comedic
subplot to discover the nature and purpose of questing and identity. The characters learn about
themselves as they journey along, but only at the cost of greatly ironic and elongated tangents.

8

Pellinore is portrayed as a king who wants to sit on a throne and live a life of luxurynot to go on adventures.

Urdiales 70
Malorys beast lacks a sense of selfhood because of its hybrid, indistinct, and blatantly
mysterious nature, nonetheless pointing toward the meaningfulness of questing because of its
decentred-ness from the plot. Whites beast has a sense of self because of her humanised desire
for love, but she is also confused about that love because her lover is really Grummore and
Palomides in disguise. This confusion accounts for her abstruse identity. Furthermore, because
White purposefully genders the beast as feminine, he gives the beast a sexual identity, despite
remaining a mysterious creature, confused about her orientation toward the false-Questing Beast.
Whites beast subplot proves that Arthurian literaturelike that of Malorys storycan appear
fantastical and fictional. However, regardless of Whites implied criticism of the nature of
questing, he maintains that questing has a purpose and this is seen best in his character studies.
The Questing Beast lives on in 21st century fantasy, making its way into pop-culture and
television productions, and evading the literary canon of meaninglessness.

Urdiales 71
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Bruce, Alexander. The Questing Beast in Malorys Le Morte Darthur. Proceedings of the
PMR Conference 19-20. (1997): 133-142.
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England: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
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n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2015.
Signifer. Def. 2. Merriam-Webster. Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.
Sponseller, Malorie A. Questing the Beast: From Malory to Milton. MA thesis. Georgia
Southern University, Spring 2014. Paper 1078. Print.
White, T. H. The Queen of Air and Darkness. The Once and Future King. New York: Ace,
1987. 211-312. Print.
---. The Sword in the Stone. The Once and Future King. New York: Ace, 1987. 7-209. Print.

Urdiales 72

CREATIVE WRITING

Urdiales 73
An Existential Approach to Meteors
Sren KierkegaardThe Teleological Suspension of Today
Today isor ought to befundamentally one of prudence and reflection, without
passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and shrewdly relapsing into repose. There is a
brilliant happening awaiting in the heavens and it is our sole responsibility to address it
however you choose to do so is up to youand to combat this manifestation of strength into the
pulverizing force of its exertionthat which is moving the object should be the goal of our
thoughts. How will you react? What is important is to have a reaction, to believe or not-believe,
but whichever you choose, you must choose so in freedom.
People rarely make use of the freedoms they have, for example, the freedoms of faith or
the act of infinitely resigning oneself to their self, to that aspect of the individual as the particular
which is higher than the universalthat idea of the ethicalof the perpetual reaching toward the
transcendent. As it pertains today, one must act according to their freedom, that great tool of
human life, to act, without regret and in full conscience, toward a state of great personal virtue,
yet also as a reflection of ones relation to the divine. In the end, one will stall as long as
possible, because that is the nature of the act: to deliberate and to choose shamelessly.
Friedrich NietzscheA Nihilist Examines his Conscience
After we killed Godthat defiantly free act whereby we as a race chose to reject a god,
to proclaim God is deadwe entered into the domain of a false cheerfulness, into the domain
of the shadows. Now, we are in the same situation: there is a shadow cast over us, immersing us
in the inevitably of fate. Again, we are confronted with that freedom of choice: what does your
conscience say? You should become the person you are. Mans consciousness is a sick

Urdiales 74
misinterpretation of the identity of the social nature of manthat the relation between the herdinstinct and consciousness are separable.
My idea of the thing is that we should end any misguided thought that this doom awaiting
us is foreordained, that it is rising from the bowels of time and space to launch us into that great
void from which we misinform ourselves that we must escape. Escaping is not the thing; to
escape is to deceive. Rather, one should steer away from that utility, from that calamitous
stupidity of which shall be the object of our perishing. At the final moment of this day, after
examining this, what I perceive to be my conscience, I could only suggest that one embrace his
fate, to conclude that, in spite of himself, man is mortal.
Martin HeideggerThe Discursive Understanding of the Immanence of Others
There is, as far as I am aware, only one problem with the eminent doom awaiting sentient
life, and that is the Da-sein of humanity. The shadow is, in fact, of no consequential significance
to the state of Da-sein; the only reality of consequence is, I fear, the implication of our actions
which help to define Da-sein. My Da-sein and your Mitda-sein are consequential of our actions,
of our intents toward authenticity. Because of the knowledge of the ontic value of the unknowing
inconsequence of today, the only problem which should be of the collective concern ought to be
that which pertains to Da-sein. I fear that in abandoning this quest for being-in-the-world, we
will stoop to that eternal inclination to abandon ourselvesby this I mean Da-sein. I would offer
that this abandonment of our being-in-the-world is inauthentic; the only authentic thing is to let
the being of individual Da-sein continue until natural means would prevent authenticity from
continuing (but even then, authenticity is not determined by the reality of living; authenticity can
be secured even in death).

Urdiales 75
To answer this problem there is but one solution, only one response: to let the personal
being-with that is intrinsic to the Da-sein of the self allow the collective distinguishing factors of
the Mitda-sein of others (which is the being-of-others) continue as if there were no death, no
account of a certain end to sentient life of the collective Da-sein in-the-world. There is no death;
there is only the distinguishment of the signifier reflecting the signified.
Albert CamusThe Idea of the Absurdity of All Things
All asteroids are at once wonderfully inspiring and absurd things. This one in question
can be considered as such. The absurdity of the question is also humouroushumour, an act,
will be our way in which we get through to the end of the day. I, for one, am completely ready to
start life all over againwhat better way than to accept what seems to be absurd: that the star is
our force of salvation? I feel as though this potentially crushing force is my brother, wrestling
with my childhood and laughing at once. To embrace this is likewise to embrace that benign
indifference of the universenay, of that loving indifference of the dark cloud that consumes.
The matter of the thing is its absurdity. But should we be so defiant as to reject the
certainty of absurdity? Was not also Sisyphus fate one of immense and utter absurdity? Our
inevitable separationlife from our abodeis the immanent absurdity of the living of today.
Living life for the sake of living it in spite of and the embracing of the defiance one bears toward
the inevitable is a personal condemnation, a jump toward purposelessness. If Sisyphus could
continuehappily, we must assumerolling that rock, then we must stand defiantly; however,
to stand defiantly in the face of this doom-bringer which crushes and gives life. With this in
mind, we can be conscious and if our death will be our scorn, then our fate is surmountable. Like
Sisyphus, we must imagine anything else would be without the happiness of our fate.

Urdiales 76
John-Paul SartreAccepting Nausea as the End-of Doctrinal Action: an Existentialism for
Death
At the centre of this conundrum rests the uneasy idea of whether the existence of the
comet, hurtling toward earth, is existing before its essence. To this, one can conclude this with
certainty. How? The purpose of the comet could only and logically come into its essence upon
entering the gravitational field of the earth: it was already existing whence it came into its
essencethe certain destruction of sentient life.
As with life, our words will vanish and with them the significance of things
specifically, life. The only worthy approach to this immanent inevitability is the certainty of the
interior struggle between good and bad faith. If I live in spite of death, I take on that costume
of bad faith and leave the idea of the individual at the crumbling of microscopic dust. If I accept
the already known data, I am living in good faith, and that should be enough for anyone. The
decision should be clear. Whether or not this is absurd, irreducible; nothingnot even a
profound, secret upheaval of naturecould explain it. And that is precisely the situation at hand.
In the Midst of Last Thingsthe Final Idea
Kierkegaards words of wisdom echo into the time remaining until the collision of the
asteroid into the surface of the earth. Perhaps I would suggest, along the lines of Kierkegaard,
immerse, individually and thereby entirely as a society, in reflection and repose. If we abandon
that great habit of meditation now, in the heat of a moment between moments of life and death,
then we separate our selves from our true selves. The only worthy reaction, as Sren would have
us act, is to be affirmative, to affirm that portion of our lives lived and not-lived as equally

Urdiales 77
worthy, equally purposeful. In this, the end times, we find our selves torn between beings of faith
and those of resigning ourselves to an inevitable fate. That is our freedom: to choose.
Nietzsche, without doubt, would disagree. His suggests embrace that totality of humanity
that is our terrific ability to choose: to choose either to become an authentic self or to choose
inauthenticity. The inauthenticity of man is that he chooses ruinous folly, that he is subject to
either his consciousness or a false-consciousness. Man inevitably deceives himself. In our last
moments, we either plunge into the deep sense of hopelessness because we have deceived
ourselves from the beginning, or we embrace the reality of the asteroid: that which is the same
reality of our lives or, rather, that we end our time in the confidence that we thought, all-along,
correctly toward the universe.
To embrace Heidegger would result in an agreement with Nietzsches latter perspective
of the asteroid: that in accepting our relation, as Da-sein, as being-in-the-world, to the asteroid, a
natural disaster lacking the identity of being-in-the-world. Fortunately, this means the impact
disastrous though it will beis of absolutely zero consequence to our material embodiment. Our
purpose as being-in-the-world is to be in-the-world; nowhere else can this be accomplished. He
is, in this way, correct: our death is meaningless if we let it be, if we abandon Da-sein, and,
especially, if we approach the asteroid as an agent against which we must feel the need to defeat,
for defeating it is impossible. To echo Martin: there is no death, only the differentiation between
the signifier and the signified.
I am more inclined to agree with Camus: the benign indifference of the universe is now
an embodiment, a manifestation which challenges us to remain our authentic selves. My thought
is that this star is indifferent and, with that indifference, carries the great benignity of the

Urdiales 78
universe: an omen of hope. Camus politely reminds us that the impact of the asteroid is
inconsequential to the tangent that is our life; we were going to die anyway, correct? I believe
that the conscious-less asteroid will, in fact, show us no injuryone, in fact, that is unintentional
and lacking completely of any sense of awareness. Might I also add that, with the benign
indifference of the universe, the comet brings to mind the idea of consciousness: precisely, that
the universeand especially the asteroidlacks consciousness. With this, we have a new hope,
and that is to carry on, calmly, as if the day were not ending, as if it were only beginning.
Finally, Sartre provides a more-or-less harmonic conclusion to our other philosophic
providers. Sartre forces us think about either our good or bad faith. If we live in good faith,
then we have nothing to fear; if we let live our bad faith, then we are ourselves our own
executioners. Truly, I dont think an understanding of existence and essence as it pertains the
asteroid are of value, except as the evidence toward living in good faith.
In my own final analysis, then, I urge you to embrace your current condition. If you
believe the universe is ending and you are afraid of the vast void of nothingness that awaits you,
then you have not yet examined the nature of the void, which takes in all things, both good and
bad. If you remain positive, remembering that you were going to die anyway, then you will also
remember that the asteroid is not acting consciously toward youthat it is not going to destroy
the earth out of some personal vendetta. Rather, the universe will continue in its benignity, that
great indifference which encompasses all types of being. The universe will continue, as it always
haseven after the end of the dinosaursand the mortality of humanity will be the only thing to
which we can cling; in a sense, our mortality will be the key to our jail-cells. And then, only
complete freedom awaits us.

Urdiales 79

SELECTIONS APPEARING IN HONORS THESIS

EXPLORATIONS IN CNF:
PERSONAL ESSAYING

Urdiales 80
Walking Far from Home
after Iron and Wine
I dreamt of the sound of sinners weeping streams of tears, flooding the walls full of the words,
BE okay, and their bridges tumbling from the beams, splintering, dissipating into the river
carrying away their earthy protection, that grain of life holding together the flowers swaying
upon hillsides, the sound of their music beating life into life into the earth, the soil of their
mothers, whispering I want you to come home. There was blood dripping from trees-withoutleaves, trees holding onto dear life because they were worth being, worth having, and doing the
work of the air and the sky and the clouds lofting above canyons of this, our blood, their blood
those martyrs falling asleep on cushions of bullet-shellsand boats filled with the consciousness
of God, with the believers in those bullets, being carried away into the unknowing of the sea,
boats full of saints and sinners, all blindly drifting away into that cloud of unknowing, into the
blaring sunlight asphyxiated on the water. And the river led to a temple where there were
windows, and into those windows slept leaping shards of glass, praying for the freedom to shine.
In the temple of the Lord there was a giant, resting, sleeping under the shadow of the altar,
waiting for the Lord to come as a fire, as tongues of flames to reprieve the trespassers of the
temple of the Lord, and their kindness, it ebbs and flows and fills the sanctuary with a perfume of
incense, and I saw this, I saw all this, as I was walking far from home.

Urdiales 81
To M.K.D.
With each breath breathes heavens, expanding designs of finely tuned feathers, sparkling spurs
of thought woven in a tapestry of a symphonic, lamentable tone. O, the richness of that droning
buzz, dominating itself in the deep recesses of the hum, humming, perfectly pitched hums and
drums and droning buzz, flames set afire with the warmth of hearth-fires, pine-needles, and
broken glass scattered over hardwood flooring and train-tracks, zooming, past lights and flashing
lights, lights, O, how those lights echo into the buzzing hum and drum of these arias, these
meticulously orchestrated notesbut more than notes, more than simple, connected ideas, more
of a heightened flowing of smoke through portholes and the prow of sea-ships echoing into vast
spaces in between the surface of the waters edge and the stolen air, drifting sweetly above,
dwelling in the unspoken words of amore from light to sea, bouncing back into the air. O, your
notes, these nomadic notes together as lovers, holding hands, singing French impromptus and
remembering the glowing candles of the yule, the memories of tiny flames, flickering in shadow,
in the honing beacons of time. These notes sing to meto youand diminish with the ritardo
and the penultimate fermata-ed chord, buzzing hum-and-drum against the stagnantand yet
waveringnote in between my soul and my consciousness, that being of my essence, begging to
be set free, to swim in the arias of that beloved, breathing heaven.

Urdiales 82
To K.F.T.
Then let us sing, you and I, and lift our voices up with the barrel-aged liquid in our hands, that
search for great value in voice and cheer and that high-pitched, eerie sound we find when you rip
open your chest to find the beating godhead, sleeping, haunting that fear of the ebb and the flow
of the blood, streaming through river-veins, streaming toward that intentional consciousness one
finds in a beating godhead, in the rumbling of mountainous thunder. I recall the sun, peering
through wooden planks, and a distant radio, radiating through our thoughts, and the subtle hint of
barroom cheer, of spilt beer and wine, and that demonically cruel voice, echoingMary didnt
have a baby, have a baby. Unkind winds wanting to know what we were saying, behind that
boarded tree behind the stage, that stage where we bled tears and threw aside our wanton
thoughts to play together, under the falling sun, that canopy of leafy shade, and safe from the
tumbling rainwater, from all the mud and the rain. Only a memory, it seems now, until I look at
that beating godhead, slowing, quickening, sleeping.

Urdiales 83
Martini-hours before Planes Flying above our Consciousness
I.
Spirits fly through the dust collecting in our worn shoes, breaking through the glass windows
separating our world of almond-spirited light and inherent poetry found in each breathe we take
and share with those who discover just who we are on the inside of a dimly-lit hotel room from a
world of stony creeks lofting through cavernous mountains and cloud-cloaked summits, above a
city growing in a dark alley of night-terrors and bad gin, surrounding our over-priced beer and
twisted martinis, letting us into a new door where we can always find mountainous rock and
stone in our half-stolen rock-glasses, waiting for an amber sea to wash over us and take us to the
depths of this cocktail hour.
II.
Streams of self-awareness are breathed out after taking in the twinkling city lights below my
winds, gliding over some foreign city. The streams flow like the water droplets streaking across
the window, fleeing from some oncoming wind or unknown gusts carrying long-lost windy-daykites and umbrellas and unhired nannies that now take care of the seasoned weather. They carry
the wind-gusts in their carpet bags and leave them next to the lamp-shade. They bring books and
scents of paper to test each page, each fiber of the unread texts of the lives lacking literature.
Sometimes she will take my gushing realisations out of her bag and leave them on the night
stand so I can read them a bedtime story before the ghosts and the monsters and the demons
return and steal away from me. Streaming, she asks me to hide it in the closet safe-box where we
used to go when we wanted to escape an impending doom outside of our grasp, our reach. Its
hard to remember the times when we would go out and play, day-dreaming on Papas freshly

Urdiales 84
mown grass-blades, waiting for the clouds to swallow the birds busily jittering by us, from treeto-tree and up, up into an endless sky, forever reaching out to Gods hands.
III.
Remember we are dust, you and I. We fly on the backs of peace-bestowing eagles waiting for the
storm to catch us and throw us into our desert prisons. We follow the rattling snakes down to the
rock and sand where Moses lost his temper and threw away all patience, calling forth a spring for
the thirsting wanderers. Now it is a spring of snakes, breeding a colony in their den. There is no
more water, only dust, sandthey fly into my breast-pocket and seep into my skin, burning the
already sun-scorched flesh protecting the same heart, aflame in a chest of weeping sorrow,
weeping because the sun never shone on a heart so fearful of distrusting itself from everything,
everyone, and had yet done so under the guise of a fishermans boat gone out to drop gators in
the lake where our swans once swam, where little ducklings made the best friends for little girls
trying to remember what God said when the earth ran away from the sun.

Urdiales 85
Iyes, I
Dont sip so fast, and try not to spill those peanuts over the tablebut dont pretend like youre
not hungry, and be patient: he is still talking. And that glassis it crystal? try not to break it.
Ahh, a cool breeze parades through you. No, Im not reading her right now; is she any good? But
she, she is nice. Be careful with that knife! And dont you know the crackers are for the dip or
the cheese and not both, but try them together anyway, and would you like another glass? Oh, no
more for me, I should be leaving. Nonsense, have another, for believing! Am I too loud? Did he
hear what I said? I cant believe I said that. Maybe I will shift to them, they look unentertained.
More cheese, more cheese, but dont eat so quickly, your stomach wont thank you for that. Is
this the single-malt? More oceans, waving through the valley. The backgrounds hiss at the
guests. How rude. Oh, hes fixing it. Did you know about meaning? Its important to understand
truth, but different for me than for you. And youre not having enoughhave anotherand
anotherand what about some more crackers? Dip? Cheese? Oh, let me get the jam. Am I
shifting, losing myself, what is happening and more cheese, more cheese. Echoes reverberating
against the ribs caging my beating godhead and more fire, more heat, more flames to set on the
table, next to the hors doeuvres and is that his fourth or fifth glass ofcrystal, right? But didnt
we join you to have some sherryno, no, more lowlands for you and you, but you must try the
small-batch: its sweet and succulent and reminds you of casting out tono, thank you, Ive
really had enough, but wont you at least try the nuts, and oh, I suppose I couldthey wont kill
me, theyll kill meand it was only last week I sent out several inquires, having heard back
from only a handfulmore cheese, more jamoh, the jam is delightful! Where on earth did it
come from? I think this is crystal. Wont you have another? Ive had too much to have one-less,
but sure Ill have anothergive us a hand, this one is a special blend and oh, the cork broke, I

Urdiales 86
guess well have to top offeverybody! Another night? Well certainly! Lets invitebut maybe
he shouldnt come, and she will only ever talk aboutmore cheese? Jam? Weve just about run
out of those perfectly terrific toasted breads, have you any more? And what are you doing these
days, its almost as if we never get together, and have another wont you, please, and I see your
latest artistic additions to the abode, where did this one come fromshe doesnt really seem very
interested in, well, anything, and maybe we might put those kind of shows on one day and now
were talking! But please, have another, oh, I cant finish thisthats alright, were just about to
leave, and oh, youre just a grand ol sportyes, well have you over again soon, this really was
too much fun, and next time let us bring the snacks, and shut the door and run away to find the
barrel and jump in and set sail to rediscover that youve been dreaming until the door slams shut
and youre crying, but weeping on shoulders of love, and it doesnt matter because sin, sin, sin,
sin and it will all work out because Im self-helping and youre self-conscious and this dream, it
really isnt as much a dream as it is you, swimming, wading through pools of thought, hoping to
dock-in at the harbour and find yourself there, waiting to bury yourself in the sand beneath the
sea.
* * *
Weah, wetogether
Two independently as one, one togetherness of mind, heart, being, being as one infinitely united
together, inseparable by time or space. A nagging, wrenching feeling of the selfwhich is not
the selfbegging for more, more, more until more is satisfied by less, less, less, less. A dying
urge that is satiated by the passing of time in spaces inhabited by our inner being. This aloneness
is coupled by togetherness; my hunger is sated by solitudinal presencean ontological presence

Urdiales 87
of being. But now is needing, is wanting, is craving and silence is the only remedy. To feast after
your fast is to assuage the spirit, to engage in the realm of only one-half being, ever-watching of
a needy-but-contentedness, a finite allotment of your being which can only be understood as
nothingcease! The way to follow the way is to breath as the road is breathing, carry yourself as
if you were one-half being and one-half presencethis is a universal makeup of identity, the
identity of the universal truth: oneness and sameness. Ah, but we are also unique, and so
uniquely hungry for what exactly? Ourselves? A kind of inner satisfaction? A parody of being
and living, of non-being and essential understanding of the road towhere, exactly? But this is
the struggle for personhood, for a self-realising oneness with everything, with contentedness of
being as being. Ah, this pain is a life-force for that well from which I draw my spirit, over and
over, as a rowing from here to there. It beckons feed me, but I choose the other route to discover
myself, to discover that there is food for the hungry and drink for the thirsty only when the well
is full, and when it dries, pandemonium. Feed me, feed me, but with what? Is not language and
love satiable? What of that human experienceof love and togethernessit is imaginary? Am I
only ever satisfied with dissatisfaction? But there is always that urge to disobeyto concede to a
higher beingand revel in the knowing that momentary hunger will last only as long as this
living is being. One moment is filled with an undesirable hunger, the next a quenched desire, and
finally back to undetectable knowing. The unknowing of hunger consumes as light dispels a
darkened room, light reaching to corners as it loves the space it inhabits for the sake of space
occupying space occupying that lovely, wonderful being of space filled with a continuous fluid
of wonderwhat is its name, wonder, I wonderand the inexplicable love of itself for itself for
the reason that no reason is necessary to know the meaning and being of itself. But why, why
must I refuse myself, must turn away to exile the necessity of myself at this moment? And what

Urdiales 88
are moments but presence of the presentthis moment, now, is a present unto itselfwaiting to
be unpackaged and understood as no Other could be othered, and waiting, waiting for its time to
flourish unto a time of its own so that your hunger can be left to reap its own reward, always
begging for a liberation unknown because unknowing becomes the key to understanding that the
fast will heighten your hunger, leaving you with the possibility of self-othering, self-loving, and
by that means, loving being as being, yourself as we, together.

Urdiales 89
The Larks Ascension
I am brought to the brink of boundless mountains, whispering songs of comfort and startling
stories of mystic dread, a despair without hope incarnating itself into whispers of stillness, of
those moments following moments of self-revelation, of earnest desire for personal truth, of
immense proportions of intimacy, begging for the lyres which play at night, odes unto
themselves and to all, to the always-already absence of your presence, or the presence of your
absenceI dont know whichand I look at myself with the wondering auspices of a nonbeliever, of the one who begs for the questions without answers and the answers to problems
long unsolvedbut why so unsolved when the moon still rises at night and that light which
brings with it the supplicatory return of beggars at St. Bernardsand yet never possessing,
never needing an answer toanything, because the mystery of mystery is the magic that sparks
in between your indolent thoughts and the next breath, the breath you take because your air is
love and you love that always-already desire to bebeing is being as being can only be itself,
beingbut without itself always-already present, again begging for more soup, more soup, more
soul, ah, this soulbegging for itself the warmth of ceramic and broth and steam, steam rising
and dissipating into everythingand yes, I remember, I remember this soul, sitting atop its perch
of the silent bell-tower, echoing endless chimes of the icy melody ofyes, my souland I cant
bear to be apart from that lonely perch, that height of my soul because the perch is not a perch, is
not a lonely exile, but is exile because it is so far away, so close to nothing and all that there is
rests in my being and so much more, and the perch is stone, rests uponisand falls into the
pitter-patter of the dust falling further from the skin of this prison, this prison atop a tall
mountain, atop this perch upon which rests this apparent soulYou called me from the depths of
my mothers womb and beckoned me to the heights of the dwelling place of my soul, oh my

Urdiales 90
souland who ticks as a tolling bell, a measuring clock, counting down the days, the hours, the
seconds, the moments of my time until time stopsand beginsand no, I am not a manI am
not the man who comes to save or to be saved or to understand the reasons for these words
gushing from the delta of my overactive-spirit, this spirit living unto a time without time, a time
not-in-need-of-time because love will take its placeand O, this crescendo of icy winds begging
my soul for more, more in place of less in place of nothing, and O, this reality, this condition of
being presses against me like a wall without boundary, bounteous and glorious gourd of my soul,
my soul atop a perch atop a bell-tower atop a mountain of grandiose proportion, and all of this
becoming me and an avalanche of the understanding of the condition of being, this presently
anxious habit of wonder, and the bells do not ring, ringing in silence, in the presently and
absolutely pleasant screams of a soul, silently pondering the immensities of my intimate perch,
my adobe haven in the whirlwind of this living being, this being of life, and I am not ready to
begin to end because in ending, this light stops its breath, its life-forcing abundance of endless
possibility, of infinite immensity, of the miniature scope gazing upon blades of grass, of
molecular-sized pleasantries and courtesies owed to no one but you, you who wait for this all to
end only to find yourself begging for the beginning to unearth, to find itself buried in the deep of
the faith of your unconscious spirit, now dwelling in its exile because you have placed it there
rather intently or not-sowhere the light may not shine, where the tonality of these bells of a
soul cannot ring, will-not ring out of fear of beauty, of wonder-and-awe, and it is there where
you hide your eye, your eye which pierces into the discovery of your musical unconscious
becausewhy?it is there where the bells will chime only if you believein what?in
yourself, in all, in the immense amount of possibility contained in the thread of your fabric of
being, in the habit of your being, and its there where I, too, have discovered the great epiphanies

Urdiales 91
of my soul, formed from time-before-time, in the constantly crashing and crushing waves of the
oceans, of the air above the sea carrying me away to somewheresomewhere I dont know, I
cant seeand its perfectly alright, you know, to drift away, to begin to find yourself, waiting
patiently, to find an infant lying in the pig-trough, where you see how beautiful you and me and
we are together, separate, wherever the winds bring us, even unto the infinite seas of space,
themselves containing the fueling love of our artistic prowess: the expressions of a soul waiting
for itself in the perch of a distant dream, a dream-loving-dream of bells, ringing, hoping for the
echo to remember the lighting of candles and the chanting of hymns we learned when we were
children because, yes, that is where we will dwell, where we find our memory lit aflame, echoing
and remembering miracles of epic heights, of the heights where we distantly remember that
perch, that ode to the serendipitous dwelling place of the soul.

Urdiales 92
Ive Been
Its been a long time and a short time, but Ive been walking all the way, sometimes alone,
sometimes together withwell, who knowsand I remember the times Ive spent writing and
wondering where the words were coming from, where I was drawing the water from my well
where is that well? and Ive been wondering about wandering, about that great escape one has
to sit up and stand on their two feet and walk and walk and find that place or that person or
indulge in that idea about birds flashing the tips of their wings over the surface of a boundary of
water, of the feeling of infinity absorbing into feathers, only ever wishing to fly away and to
discover on their own the great feeling of flying and living and being, being in the form of a
long-lost-and-then-found love, love tempered like the tempest of a storm upon long-sails and
your chest, a treasure trove of fish and the beating godhead echoing, go, go, go and wonder and
wander, and filing you with that sense of fulfillment one has as they lay, dying, remembering
times filled with puffy pride and lithe flirtations, of the warmth and the dexterity of youth, filling
you like a cup that could only ever take you in, to bear you until that hollow of the chalice
remembers forever of that godhead in your chest, telling you to go, go, go and wonder and
wander, and the torch burning inside of you, scorching the walls of the temple, leaving the
imprint of the flame, that beautiful warmth of the burning and inciting fire, shedding light over
the dark shadows, the shadows trying to fill you with the thought of being empty, of emptying
yourself into a bowl that will be incinerated, of casting you into the consuming flames of
oblivion, of the place where you know you dont want to go, but you know that others fall into
that abyss, falling into the ditch from which they cannot escapenot by themselves, not alone
but they are alone, they have to be cut off because thats what they did to themselvesthey cut
themselves from their selves, from their humanity and their beautiful burden of bearing the

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tiresome task of living in spite of the knowing that everything would eventually endand you
want to help them because to help is all you can do, all you wish you had the time to do, but the
wind falls on them, too, casts its great shadow over them to remind them of what they once had
but have lost, now burning in the flames of Gehenna, and the wind washes over you, too, asks
you to follow it, to let it be your guide as you prance and tumble through the undergrowth of the
unconscious, of the barrier between barriers which you have constructed and built up, reinforcing
them over again with mortar and cement and all matter of elemental barriers on that barrierbetween-barriers that you assembled in your coffer, protecting that godhead or destroying its
chance for infinite possibility, taking away the meaning of meaning and of last nights screams
into oblivion, letting it leap backward into the darkness of the nighttime veil, to the place where
Ive been thinking about rivers and swans and tiny ducklings, paddling after mama, after
themselves as they debate who eats first, last, and then the swan sings with the water, with the
spirituous and virtuous waves in the water, in the place where Ive been singing and Ive been
worshipping under the threshold of a church door, waiting for that moment when communion
and community collide into harmonic union, into that chance for swallows to echo in your
stomach, for hummingbirds to let their wings beat slower and slower until they start to reason
why they suck the honey and the sweet syrups from the feeder, and Ive been thinking about this
wobbly table, here at the caf, hoping for the wood to grow another Pinocchios nose and stand
on its own, to stand in the street and wave at the brightening light of the evening lamps, piercing
through clouds of fog desperately trying to take my sight out of my sockets, to steal away into
the good-night, gently tapping on my cranium and asking why did the cage-bird sing or perhaps
where is that albatross, and still those songs of the swan are beating against my godhead, surging
blood and water and tree-syrup through my veins until I see that Ive been wandering in the

Urdiales 94
pools of my thoughts for too long, for a time and almost three-quarters, in the midst of the
knowing that Ive been three weeks, four, five, without that liquid sustaining my godhead against
the cold biting of the winter plains, striking against my face as if the warmth of the amber liquids
were already ousted fires, still emanating the heat of your hands, and Ive been thinking about
the time God sent chills down my spine, that time I opened the golden-gilded gates to find
eternity waiting for me in a prison-cell, in a confinement so tiny not even an espresso machine
not one of those cheap onescould fit inside, where there was only room for my heart and yours
and we kept thinking about where Ive been wandering, why Ive been wandering, and I cant
help the thought that Im doomed to where I am, to where I was, that there are no future travels,
no opportunity to sing the lyrics of Bach and Handel until the coronation anthem rings in my
chest, but Ive lost the key and cant remember the combination to open it, to let it fly out into
the world and take me with it, to take me into the forbidding wind that still carries that part of me
that wishes that dogs were stilling whining, still singing their mono-syllabic hymns of hunger
and thirst and attention, pay-attention, and Ive been in the pit of my own foolishness, Ive been
looking for my hiding place in the forest but now the forest is burnt down, is gone, and I cant
find my hiding spot, my easy-to-climb tree, my swing where I let my hand touch the hand of
God, and Ive been wandering about looking for the sky, for that intonous blue sky that brings to
me the simplicity of colour and imagination, of the clouds making funny shapes for the child still
swinging, still singing in that forest where the past was never proffered the opportunity to meet
the present, and Ive been wondering if the sky will return to me, if we will have another chance
to return to those memory-filled pools of laughter, and Ive been thinking about Godbut why
dont we call him Abba, why dont we let our Father take us by the hand and lead us to him, why
cant we remember those years of infant-like love when our total dependence was on him, even

Urdiales 95
if we didnt know it, and why couldnt we know that his hair only grayed because he was the
Lord of Time, the Lord of heaven and earth, and the always-already aging agent of our lives, that
gracious task of growing old and remembering sitting on the swing and singing senseless songs
about growing oldand He came to me that one time, I told the story already, and he welcomed
me, reassured me, brought me closer to a heart that I could not yet understand, and he let me
touch His hand, let me be in His presence for as long as I wanted because I wanted what he
wanted, and Ive been worried about worrying too much, about that great, plaguing anxiety
occupying every millimeter of my attention, pulling me toward something I cant yet see or seem
to understand, and Ive been hoping that it will all be over soon, that that mighty hand might
reach down and pluck me away before I reach too high, too far above my own knowing of the
sky, of that blue-intoned shade that brings to me memory and hope and glory, and Ive been
studying those corners, in the caf, in my bedchamber, in the backseat of the car, and Ive been
hoping those corners will rejoice with me when I sing Amen! and Glory! and I cant help but
think about the disguises Ive been wearing all these years, all those years of playing hide-andgo-seek with myself, with that other half of me that is not human, and I cant help but wonder
about Cain, wandering in his deep aloneness, in that understanding that his exile became his fate,
that if he would have chosen otherwise, the Son of Man might never come, but he had to choose,
too, because he had to act, he had to do the thing that was forbidden to embrace that part of his
freedom, that radical notion that his freedom both limited and set-free his ability to chose, and
Ive been on many travels, wandering the earth, in search of something that I cant quite put my
finger on yet, and Ive been thinking about the subtle, genteel touch of the fire-upon-the-hearth
waiting for me at home, wherever that might be, and touching my back with a compassionate
hand, with the hand of God, and Im wondering about the homeless man sitting alonealone

Urdiales 96
with his thoughtsunder the steps of St. Bernards where his only comfort might be in knowing
that the cold will stop, that the sun will rise again and instead of a biting wind, one which
rejoices in his stature, in his object of breadth, and the birds will join him there, too, and I with
them, and I will let the earth sing in her unending rotations until I cant remember the day of the
week, the month, or the seconds passing by as I recall memories sitting on the lake, waiting for
the fish to bite the line, to sing their response to my Hail Mary and for the foolishness of love to
wash over me, into that person of my being which I am, that small reverence inside of me
waiting for the candles to be lit, for the choirs of angels to sing, and for the sustaining bread to
call my name, to beckon me to join him on a carousel-ride, on the critters of the pools of our
dreams, together loving the habit of sudden and incredible spoons of brick mortar, the binding
agent of my flesh and bones, of that chest of mine, echoing to the beating of the godhead
bleeding inside of me.

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Papa, Dont Climb into the Nest
The woodpecker singing his working-song echoes in the memory of cookies baking, elephants
pounding, children shouting, father crying. Scents of summer leaves and the suns rays mirroring
the meadow of grass and twigs and chipmunk-dwellings clashes with the sturdy nest standing on
stilts over a hill leading into blood-upon-rocks, rocks scattered across the pools of bloodmemory, always remembering the crunch of bones, groans, and the casting out of judgment into
that sea of terror. Papa, hes making a joke, he cant be hurt, dont listen, listen. Fear streaming
across the rivers of my blood hurdling through the cells and the barreled tunnels of tissue-thin
fear, expanding, growing into the boundaries of reality.
* * *
Stars Dancing
A blanket of black clouds, illumined by pinpricks of white-hope, stretches its arms from the
distant horizon to the estuary of white-hot light. These starry gifts light the corridor, lead us to
our own state of existence. In the dark of night, they wait to jump from constellation to faint
constellation, until their frivolously gay playtime erodes through their blanket of warmth and the
stars, they fall into the sea, bullets of lead piercing their own reflection. They give light to the
darkened seawater, hoping for their own eventual life-giving essence to catch fire and thrust
themselves in the very depths of majestic infinitude.