The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nicks next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night. Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egghe was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nicks at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Toms marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose. As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsbys legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone old sport. Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsbys extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair. After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wifes relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminalhis fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him. When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsbys car has struck and killed Myrtle, Toms lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtles husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself. Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsbys life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsbys dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsbys power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him great, Nick reflects that the era of dreamingboth Gatsbys dream and the American dreamis over. Jay Gatsby The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophisticationhe dropped out of St. Olafs College

after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisys aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end. Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsbys reputation precedes himGatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter 3. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsbys background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsbys childhood in Chapter 6 and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter 7). As a result, the readers first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel. Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsbys approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for selfinvention is what gives Gatsby his quality of greatness: indeed, the title The Great Gatsby is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as The Great Houdini and The Great Blackstone, suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsbys self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as Americas powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth. Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgeralds personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom. Nick Carraway If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgeralds personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisys cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922. Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter 1, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally

assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgeralds voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter 9. Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nicks romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people. Nick states that there is a quality of distortion to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsbys party in Chapter 2. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsbys dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsbys funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values. Daisy Buchanan Partially based on Fitzgeralds wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nicks cousin and the object of Gatsbys love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisys heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents. After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfectionshe has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsbys ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsbys funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.

Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. In Fitzgeralds conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.

Tom Buchanan - Daisys immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nicks social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation. Jordan Baker - Daisys friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the new women of the 1920scynical, boyish, and selfcentered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth. Klipspringer - The shallow freeloader who seems almost to live at Gatsbys mansion, taking advantage of his hosts money. As soon as Gatsby dies, Klipspringer disappearshe does not attend the funeral, but he does call Nick about a pair of tennis shoes that he left at Gatsbys mansion.

Meyer Wolfsheim - Gatsbys friend, a prominent figure in organized crime. Before the events of the novel take place, Wolfsheim helped Gatsby to make his fortune bootlegging illegal liquor. His continued acquaintance with Gatsby suggests that Gatsby is still involved in illegal business. Themes The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday nightresulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracyfamilies with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike. Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsbys parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between old money and new money manifests itself in the novels symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsbys fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging. As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsbys dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nicks mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values. Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisys dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsbys dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its objectmoney and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished pasthis time in Louisville with Daisybut is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed. The Hollowness of the Upper Class One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the countrys richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit,

drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker. What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to moneys ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsbys funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisys window until four in the morning in Chapter 7 simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsbys good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley I n a series of letters, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, recounts to his sister back in England the progress of his dangerous mission. Successful early on, the mission is soon interrupted by seas full of impassable ice. Trapped, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn sledge across the ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to health, and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created. Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin in the 1818 edition, his adopted sister in the 1831 edition) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is consumed by the desire to discover the secret of life and, after several years of research, becomes convinced that he has found it. Armed with the knowledge he has long been seeking, Victor spends months feverishly fashioning a creature out of old body parts. One climactic night, in the secrecy of his apartment, he brings his creation to life. When he looks at the monstrosity that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. After a fitful night of sleep, interrupted by the specter of the monster looming over him, he runs into the streets, eventually wandering in remorse. Victor runs into Henry, who has come to study at the university, and he takes his friend back to his apartment. Though the monster is gone, Victor falls into a feverish illness. Sickened by his horrific deed, Victor prepares to return to Geneva, to his family, and to health. Just before departing Ingolstadt, however, he receives a letter from his father informing him that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. Grief-stricken, Victor hurries home. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he catches sight of the monster and becomes convinced that the monster is his brothers murderer. Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household, has been accused. She is tried, condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor grows despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears responsibility for the death of two innocent loved ones. Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone one day, crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monster equally grotesque to serve as his sole companion. Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The monster is eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After returning to Geneva, Victor heads for England, accompanied by Henry, to gather information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he secludes himself on a desolate island in the Orkneys and works reluctantly at repeating his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin. Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victors wedding night. later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the remains of the second creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an

unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monsters fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime. Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monsters warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge, and he soon departs to begin his quest. Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up to the time of Waltons fourth letter to his sister. Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor, already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter. When Walton returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor. The monster tells Walton of his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now that his creator has died, he too can end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die. Victor Frankenstein Victor Frankensteins life story is at the heart of Frankenstein. A young Swiss boy, he grows up in Geneva reading the works of the ancient and outdated alchemists, a background that serves him ill when he attends university at Ingolstadt. There he learns about modern science and, within a few years, masters all that his professors have to teach him. He becomes fascinated with the secret of life, discovers it, and brings a hideous monster to life. The monster proceeds to kill Victors youngest brother, best friend, and wife; he also indirectly causes the deaths of two other innocents, including Victors father. Though torn by remorse, shame, and guilt, Victor refuses to admit to anyone the horror of what he has created, even as he sees the ramifications of his creative act spiraling out of control. Victor changes over the course of the novel from an innocent youth fascinated by the prospects of science into a disillusioned, guilt-ridden man determined to destroy the fruits of his arrogant scientific endeavor. Whether as a result of his desire to attain the godlike power of creating new life or his avoidance of the public arenas in which science is usually conducted, Victor is doomed by a lack of humanness. He cuts himself off from the world and eventually commits himself entirely to an animalistic obsession with revenging himself upon the monster. At the end of the novel, having chased his creation ever northward, Victor relates his story to Robert Walton and then dies. With its multiple narrators and, hence, multiple perspectives, the novel leaves the reader with contrasting interpretations of Victor: classic mad scientist, transgressing all boundaries without concern, or brave adventurer into unknown scientific lands, not to be held responsible for the consequences of his explorations. The Monster The monster is Victor Frankensteins creation, assembled from old body parts and strange chemicals, animated by a mysterious spark. He enters life eight feet tall and enormously strong but with the mind of a newborn. Abandoned by his creator and confused, he tries to integrate himself into society, only to be shunned universally. Looking in the mirror, he realizes his physical grotesqueness, an aspect of his persona that blinds society to his initially gentle, kind nature. Seeking revenge on his creator, he kills Victors younger brother. After Victor destroys his work on the female monster meant to ease the monsters solitude, the monster murders Victors best friend and then his new wife. While Victor feels unmitigated hatred for his creation, the monster shows that he is not a purely evil being. The monsters eloquent narration of events (as provided by Victor) reveals his remarkable sensitivity and benevolence. He assists a group of poor peasants and saves a girl from drowning, but because of his outward appearance, he is rewarded only with beatings and disgust. Torn between vengefulness and compassion, the monster ends up lonely and tormented by remorse. Even the death of his creator-turned-would-be-destroyer offers only bittersweet relief: joy because Victor has caused him so much suffering, sadness because Victor is the only person with whom he has had any sort of relationship.

Robert Walton Waltons letters to his sister form a frame around the main narrative, Victor Frankensteins tragic story. Walton captains a North Polebound ship that gets trapped between sheets of ice. While waiting for the ice to thaw, he and his crew pick up Victor, weak and emaciated from his long chase after the monster. Victor recovers somewhat, tells Walton the story of his life, and then dies. Walton laments the death of a man with whom he felt a strong, meaningful friendship beginning to form. Walton functions as the conduit through which the reader hears the story of Victor and his monster. However, he also plays a role that parallels Victors in many ways. Like Victor, Walton is an explorer, chasing after that country of eternal lightunpossessed knowledge. Victors influence on him is paradoxical: one moment he exhorts Waltons almost-mutinous men to stay the path courageously, regardless of danger; the next, he serves as an abject example of the dangers of heedless scientific ambition. In his ultimate decision to terminate his treacherous pursuit, Walton serves as a foil (someone whose traits or actions contrast with, and thereby highlight, those of another character) to Victor, either not obsessive enough to risk almost-certain death or not courageous enough to allow his passion to drive him. Dangerous Knowledge The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein, as Victor attempts to surge beyond accepted human limits and accesses the secret of life. Likewise, Robert Walton attempts to surpass previous human explorations by endeavoring to reach the North Pole. This ruthless pursuit of knowledge, of the light (see Light and Fire), proves dangerous, as Victors act of creation eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him, and Walton finds himself perilously trapped between sheets of ice. Whereas Victors obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death, Walton ultimately pulls back from his treacherous mission, having learned from Victors example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be. Sublime Nature The sublime natural world, embraced by Romanticism (late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century) as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for the individual, initially offers characters the possibility of spiritual renewal. Mired in depression and remorse after the deaths of William and Justine, for which he feels responsible, Victor heads to the mountains to lift his spirits. Likewise, after a hellish winter of cold and abandonment, the monster feels his heart lighten as spring arrives. The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel, but for Victor, the natural worlds power to console him wanes when he realizes that the monster will haunt him no matter where he goes. By the end, as Victor chases the monster obsessively, nature, in the form of the Arctic desert, functions simply as the symbolic backdrop for his primal struggle against the monster. Monstrosity Obviously, this theme pervades the entire novel, as the monster lies at the center of the action. Eight feet tall and hideously ugly, the monster is rejected by society. However, his monstrosity results not only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation, which involves the secretive animation of a mix of stolen body parts and strange chemicals. He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural workings. The monster is only the most literal of a number of monstrous entities in the novel, including the knowledge that Victor used to create the monster (see Dangerous Knowledge). One can argue that Victor himself is a kind of monster, as his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. Ordinary on the outside, he may be the true monster inside, as he is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation. Finally, many critics have described the novel itself as monstrous, a stitched-together combination of different voices, texts, and tenses (see Texts). Secrecy Victor conceives of science as a mystery to be probed; its secrets, once discovered, must be jealously guarded. He considers M. Krempe, the natural philosopher he meets at Ingolstadt, a model scientist: an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. Victors entire obsession with creating life is shrouded in secrecy, and his obsession with destroying the monster remains equally secret until Walton hears his tale. Whereas Victor continues in his secrecy out of shame and guilt, the monster is forced into seclusion by his grotesque appearance. Walton serves as the final confessor for both, and their tragic relationship becomes

immortalized in Waltons letters. In confessing all just before he dies, Victor escapes the stifling secrecy that has ruined his life; likewise, the monster takes advantage of Waltons presence to forge a human connection, hoping desperately that at last someone will understand, and empathize with, his miserable existence.

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell It is the spring of 1861. Scarlett OHara, a pretty Southern belle, lives on Tara, a large plantation in Georgia. She concerns herself only with her numerous suitors and her desire to marry Ashley Wilkes. One day she hears that Ashley is engaged to Melanie Hamilton, his frail, plain cousin from Atlanta. At a barbecue at the Wilkes plantation the next day, Scarlett confesses her feelings to Ashley. He tells her that he does love her but that he is marrying Melanie because she is similar to him, whereas he and Scarlett are very different. Scarlett slaps Ashley and he leaves the room. Suddenly Scarlett realizes that she is not alone. Rhett Butler, a scandalous but dashing adventurer, has been watching the whole scene, and he compliments Scarlett on being unladylike. The Civil War begins. Charles Hamilton, Melanies timid, dull brother, proposes to Scarlett. She spitefully agrees to marry him, hoping to hurt Ashley. Over the course of two months, Scarlett and Charles marry, Charles joins the army and dies of the measles, and Scarlett learns that she is pregnant. After Scarlett gives birth to a son, Wade, she becomes bored and unhappy. She makes a long trip to Atlanta to stay with Melanie and Melanies aunt, Pittypat. The busy city agrees with Scarletts temperament, and she begins to see a great deal of Rhett. Rhett infuriates Scarlett with his bluntness and mockery, but he also encourages her to flout the severely restrictive social requirements for mourning Southern widows. As the war progresses, food and clothing run scarce in Atlanta. Scarlett and Melanie fear for Ashleys safety. After the bloody battle of Gettysburg, Ashley is captured and sent to prison, and the Yankee army begins bearing down on Atlanta. Scarlett desperately wants to return home to Tara, but she has promised Ashley she will stay with the pregnant Melanie, who could give birth at any time. On the night the Yankees capture Atlanta and set it afire, Melanie gives birth to her son, Beau. Rhett helps Scarlett and Melanie escape the Yankees, escorting them through the burning streets of the city, but he abandons them outside Atlanta so he can join the Confederate Army. Scarlett drives the cart all night and day through a dangerous forest full of deserters and soldiers, at last reaching Tara. She arrives to find that her mother, Ellen, is dead; her father, Gerald, has lost his mind; and the Yankee army has looted the plantation, leaving no food or cotton. Scavenging for subsistence, a furious Scarlett vows never to go hungry again. Scarlett takes charge of rebuilding Tara. She murders a Yankee thief and puts out a fire set by a spiteful Yankee soldier. At last the war ends, word comes that Ashley is free and on his way home, and a stream of returning soldiers begins pouring through Tara. One such soldier, a one-legged homeless Confederate named Will Benteen, stays on and helps Scarlett with the plantation. One day, Will brings terrible news: Jonas Wilkerson, a former employee at Tara and current government official, has raised the taxes on Tara, hoping to drive the OHaras out so that he might buy the plantation. Distraught, Scarlett hurries to Atlanta to seduce Rhett Butler so that he will give her the three hundred dollars she needs for taxes. Rhett has emerged from the war a fabulously wealthy man, dripping with earnings from his blockade-running operation and from food speculation. However, Rhett is in a Yankee jail and cannot help Scarlett. Scarlett sees her sisters beau, Frank Kennedy, who now owns a general store, and forges a plan. Determined to save Tara, she betrays her sister and marries Frank, pays the taxes on Tara, and devotes herself to making Franks business more profitable. After Rhett blackmails his way out of prison, he lends Scarlett enough money to buy a sawmill. To the displeasure of Atlanta society, Scarlett becomes a shrewd businesswoman. Gerald dies, and Scarlett returns to Tara for the funeral. There, she persuades Ashley and Melanie to move to Atlanta and accept a share in her lumber business. Shortly thereafter, Scarlett gives birth to Franks child, Ella Lorena. A free black man and his white male companion attack Scarlett on her way home from the sawmill one day. That night, the Ku Klux Klan avenges the attack on Scarlett, and Frank ends up dead. Rhett proposes to Scarlett and she quickly accepts. After a long, luxurious honeymoon in New Orleans, Scarlett and Rhett return to Atlanta, where Scarlett builds a garish mansion and socializes with wealthy Yankees. Scarlett becomes pregnant again and has another child, Bonnie Blue Butler. Rhett dotes on the girl and begins a successful campaign to win back the good graces of the prominent Atlanta citizens in order to keep Bonnie from being an outcast like Scarlett. Scarlett and Rhetts marriage begins happily, but Rhett becomes increasingly bitter and indifferent toward her. Scarletts feelings for Ashley have diminished into a warm, sympathetic friendship, but Ashleys jealous sister,

India, finds them in a friendly embrace and spreads the rumor that they are having an affair. To Scarletts surprise, Melanie takes Scarletts side and refuses to believe the rumors. After Bonnie is killed in a horse-riding accident, Rhett nearly loses his mind, and his marriage with Scarlett worsens. Not long after the funeral, Melanie has a miscarriage and falls very ill. Distraught, Scarlett hurries to see her. Melanie makes Scarlett promise to look after Ashley and Beau. Scarlett realizes that she loves and depends on Melanie and that Ashley has been only a fantasy for her. She concludes that she truly loves Rhett. After Melanie dies, Scarlett hurries to tell Rhett of her revelation. Rhett, however, says that he has lost his love for Scarlett, and he leaves her. Grief-stricken and alone, Scarlett makes up her mind to go back to Tara to recover her strength in the comforting arms of her childhood nurse and slave, Mammy, and to think of a way to win Rhett back. Scarlett OHara The protagonist of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett is a dark-haired, green-eyed Georgia belle who struggles through the hardships of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Scarlett exhibits more of her fathers hard-headedness than her mothers refined Southern manners. Although initially she tries to behave prettily, her instincts rise up against social restrictions. Determination defines Scarlett and drives her to achieve everything she desires by any means necessary. This determination first manifests itself in her narcissistic and sometimes backstabbing efforts to excite the admiration of every young man in the neighborhood. Later, under threat of starvation and even death, she is determined to survive and does so by picking cotton, running her entire plantation, forging a successful business, and even killing a man. Scarlett also aims to win Ashley Wilkes, and her failure to do so guides the plot of the novel. Ashleys marriage to Melanie Hamilton and rejection of Scarlett drive nearly all of Scarletts important subsequent decisions. Scarlett marries Charles Hamilton to hurt Ashley, stays by Melanies side through the war because she promises Ashley she will, and loses her true love, Rhett Butler, because of her persistent desire to win Ashley. Scarlett possesses remarkable talent for business and leadership. She recovers her fathers plantation, Tara, after the war leaves it decimated, and she achieves great success with her sawmill in Atlanta. Despite her sharp intelligence, however, she has almost no ability to understand the motivations and feelings of herself or others. Scarlett lives her life rationally: she decides what constitutes success, finds the most effective means to succeed, and does not consider concepts like honor and kindness. She often professes to see no other choices than the ones she makes. Scarletts development precisely mirrors the development of the South. She changes from spoiled teenager to hard-working widow to wealthy opportunist, reflecting the Souths change from leisure society to besieged nation to compromised survivor. Scarlett embodies both Old and New South. She clings to Ashley, who symbolizes the idealized lost world of chivalry and manners, but she adapts wonderfully to the harsh and opportunistic world of the New South, ultimately clinging to dangerous Rhett, who, like Scarlett, symbolizes the combination of old and new. Rhett Butler Dark, dashing, and scandalous, Rhett Butler brings excitement to Scarletts life and encourages her impulse to change and succeed. Thrown out of both West Point and his aristocratic Charleston family for dishonorable behavior, Rhett, like Scarlett, goes after what he wants and refuses to take no for an answer. He earns his fortune through professional gambling, wartime blockade-running, and food speculation, behavior that earns him the contempt and even hatred of what he terms the Old Guardthe old Southern aristocracy. Rhett sees through hypocrisy and self-delusion, horrifying people by cutting down their egos and illusions with agility and pleasure. Whereas Ashley cannot face reality and change, Rhett thrives on both. Because of his opportunism, Rhett symbolizes the New South. However, as the novel progresses, we see that Rhett does care about the Old South. At two critical points in the novel, Rhett abandons Scarlett to commit himself to the Old South. First, he leaves Scarlett in hostile territory and joins the Confederate army. Second, at the end of the novel he leaves Scarlett and goes in search of remnants of the Old South. This sentimentality complicates Rhetts character and reveals that he is partially motivated by emotion. Ultimately, Rhett symbolizes pragmatism, the practical acceptance of the reality that the South must face in order to survive in a changed world. He understands that the U.S. government has overhauled the Southern economy and that the old way of life is gone forever. He adapts to the situation masterfully, but he does not fully abandon the idealized Southern past.

Rhett falls in love with Scarlett, but, despite their eventual marriage, their relationship never succeeds because of Scarletts obsession with Ashley and Rhetts reluctance to express his feelings. Because Rhett knows that Scarlett scorns men she can win easily, Rhett refuses to show her she was won him. He mocks her, argues with her, and eventually resorts to cruelty and indifference in order to win her. But his fondness for her is evident in his support of her, as he encourages her to shun social customs and gives her money to start her own business. Ashley Wilkes Blond, dreamy, and honorable, Ashley Wilkes is the foil to Rhetts dark, realistic opportunism. Ashley courts Scarlett but marries Melanie Hamilton, thus setting in motion Scarletts central conflict. Ashley is the perfect prewar Southern gentleman: he excels at hunting and riding, takes pleasure in the arts, and comes from an excellent family. Scarletts idealization of Ashley slowly fades as time goes on, and she finally sees that the Ashley she loves is not a real man but a man embellished and adorned by her imagination. Ashley admits to his love for Scarlett, but as a gentleman he ignores this love in order to marry Melanie, the more socially appropriate match for him. He excels at battle despite his doubts about the Southern cause. As the novel progresses, though, Ashley displays signs of weakness and incompetence. After the war he is worthless on the plantation and cannot adjust to the new world. Whereas Rhett and Scarlett survive by sacrificing their commitment to tradition, Ashley cannot or will not allow himself to thrive in a changed society. He sinks even lower as he sacrifices his honorthe only thing he still values in himselfby accepting charity from Scarlett in the form of a share in her mill and by kissing her twice. Ashley represents the Old South and Southern nostalgia for the prewar days. He epitomizes the old lifestyle and cannot function in the New South that emerges during and after the war. Scarlett clings to him like many Southerners cling to dreams of their old lives, but her eventual recognition of Ashleys weakness and incompetence enables her to see that dreaming of a lost world makes one weak. The Transformation of Southern Culture Gone with the Wind is both a romance and a meditation on the changes that swept the American South in the 1860s. The novel begins in 1861, in the days before the Civil War, and ends in 1871, after the Democrats regain power in Georgia. The South changes completely during the intervening years, and Mitchells novel illustrates the struggles of the Southern people who live through the Civil War era. The novel opens in prewar Georgia, where tradition, chivalry, and pride thrive. As the Civil War begins, the setting shifts to Atlanta, where the war causes the breakdown of traditional gender roles and power structures. When the South loses the war and the slaves are freed, putting a stop to the Southern way of life, the internal conflict intensifies. White men fear black men, Southerners hate profiteering or domineering Northerners, and impoverished aristocrats resent the newly rich. Mitchells main characters embody the conflicting impulses of the South. Ashley stands for the Old South; nostalgic and unable to change, he weakens and fades. Rhett, on the other hand, opportunistic and realistic, thrives by planting one foot in the Old South and one foot in the New, sometimes even defending the Yankees. Overcoming Adversity with Willpower Scarlett manages to overcome adversity through brute strength of will. She emerges as a feminist heroine because she relies on herself alone and survives the Civil War and Reconstruction unaided. She rebuilds Tara after the Yankee invasion and works her way up in the new political order, taking care of helpless family members and friends along the way. Mitchell suggests that overcoming adversity sometimes requires ruthlessness. Scarlett becomes a cruel businesswoman and a domineering wife, willingly coarsening herself in order to succeed. Other characters succeed by exercising willpower, among them Old Miss Fontaine, who watched Indians scalp her entire family as a child and then gritted her teeth and worked to raise her own family and run a plantation. Rhett Butler also wills his way to success, although he covers up his bullheaded willpower with a layer of ease and carelessness. The Importance of Land In Chapter II, Gerald tells Scarlett that [l]and is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything. At critical junctures Scarlett usually remembers that land, specifically Tara, is the only thing that matters to her. When Scarlett escapes to Tara from Atlanta during the war, she lies sick and weak in the garden at neighboring Twelve Oaks and the earth feels soft and comfortable as a pillow against her cheek. After feeling the comfort of the land, she resolves to look forward and continue the struggle with newfound vigor. Scarlett prizes land even over love. When Ashley rejects Scarletts proposed affair, he gives her a clump of Taras dirt and reminds her that she

loves Tara more than she loves him. Feeling the dirt in her hand, Scarlett realizes that Ashley is right. At the end of the novel, when all else is lost, Scarlett thinks of Tara and finds strength and comfort in its enduring presence.

The Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell On a yacht bound for Rio de Janeiro, a passenger named Whitney points out Ship-Trap Island in the distance, a place that sailors dread and avoid. He and his friend Rainsford are big-game hunters bound for a hunting trip in the Amazon River basin. As the yacht sails through the darkness, the two men discuss whether their prey actually feels fear. Rainsford believes that the world consists only of predators and prey, although Whitney is not as certain. Noticing the jitteriness of the crew, Whitney wants to sail past the mysterious island as soon as possible. He theorizes that sailors can sense danger and that evil emanates in waves like light and sound. Whitney then decides to turn in for the night, but Rainsford opts to smoke his pipe on the afterdeck for a while. Suddenly, he hears three gunshots in the distance and moves toward the railing of the deck to investigate. Hoisting himself onto the rail to try and get a better look, Rainsford drops his pipe, loses his balance in an attempt to catch it, and accidentally plunges into the water. His cries for help go unanswered, and the yacht quickly disappears into the night. Rainsford decides to swim in the gunshots direction. He hears the screeching sound of an animal in agony and heads straight for it, until the cries end abruptly with a pistol shot. Exhausted, Rainsford reaches the rocky shore and immediately falls into a deep sleep. He wakes the next afternoon and sets off in search of food, forced to skirt the thick growth of the jungle and walk along the shore. He soon comes to a bloody, torn-up patch of vegetation where a large animal had thrashed about. He finds an empty rifle cartridge nearby. He follows the hunters footprints in the growing darkness and eventually comes upon a palatial chateau at the edge of a precipice that drops steeply into the rocky ocean below. At first, Rainsford thinks the chateau is a mirage, until he opens the iron gate and knocks on the door. Ivan, a burly man with a gun, answers and refuses to help Rainsford until another man, General Zaroff, appears from inside the chateau and invites Rainsford inside. Zaroff greets Rainsford warmly and has Ivan show him to a room where he can dress for dinner. The huge, lavish dining hall features numerous stuffed and mounted heads, trophies that Zaroff has brought back from his many hunting adventures around the world. As the two men eat borscht, a red Russian soup made of beets, Rainsford praises his hosts specimens, remarking on how dangerous it can be to hunt Cape buffalo. Zaroff states that he now hunts far more dangerous game on his island. He recounts past hunts, from his childhood in the Crimea to hunting big game around the world, but goes on to describe how the sport eventually became too easy. Zaroff hints, however, that he has found a new kind of animal to hunt, one with courage, cunning, and reason. Rainsfords initial confusion turns to horror as he slowly realizes that the general now hunts human beings. Zaroff doesnt understand Rainsfords indignation but promises that his outrage will subside once hes begun the hunt. Rainsford declines Zaroffs invitation to join in the hunt that night and goes to bed. After a fitful night of insomnia and light dozing, the sound of a distant pistol shot awakens him in the early morning. General Zaroff reappears at the chateau at lunchtime, sad that hunting humans no longer satisfies him. He laments that the sailors he lures to the island present less and less of a challenge. Rainsford demands to leave the island at once, but the general refuses and forces Rainsford to be his new prey in the next hunt, hoping that Rainsford, as a renowned big-game hunter, will provide the challenge he seeks. Zaroff promises to set Rainsford free if he lives through the next three days. Rainsford sets off into the jungle after receiving food, clothes, and a knife from Ivan. He cuts a complicated, twisting path through the undergrowth to confuse Zaroff and then climbs a tree to wait as darkness approaches. Zaroff finds Rainsford easily but lets him escape to prolong the pleasure of the hunt. Unsettled that Zaroff found him so quickly, Rainsford runs to another part of the jungle and makes a booby-trap called a Malayan mancatcher to kill Zaroff. The trap only wounds Zaroff, who returns to the chateau and promises to kill Rainsford the following night. Rainsford runs for hours until he mistakenly steps into a bed of quicksand. He manages to wrest free, then digs a pit in the soft mud a few feet in front of the quicksand. He lines the bottom of the pit with sharp wooden stakes, covers it with foliage, and then hides in the brush nearby. One of Zaroffs hunting hounds springs the trap and plunges to his death, forcing Zaroff to return to the chateau again. At daybreak, Rainsford hears the baying of the

hounds and spots Zaroff and Ivan with a small pack of hunting dogs in the distance. Rainsford fashions another trap by tying his knife to a sapling. The trap kills Ivan, but the hounds push on, cornering Rainsford at the edge of a cliff. Instead of facing the dogs, Rainsford jumps into the rocky sea below. Stunned and disappointed, Zaroff returns to his chateau. As he turns on his bedroom light, he is shocked to find Rainsford concealed in the curtains of the bed. Before they fight, Zaroff states that the dogs will eat one of them that night while the other will sleep in the comfortable bed. Rainsford later concludes that he has never slept in a more comfortable bed. Sanger Rainsford The protagonist, Sanger Rainsford, is an adventurous big-game hunter who confronts the nature of life and death for the first time in his life during his few frightening days on Ship-Trap Island. Calm and composed, Rainsford coolly handles any challenge, be it falling overboard in the middle of the night or having to swim several miles to reach the shore. Hes survived numerous near-death experiences, from fighting on the frontlines during World War I to hunting dangerous animals in some of the worlds most exotic locales. Rainsfords wartime experiences have reinforced his ultimate belief in the primacy of human life and the respect it deserves. Only during Zaroffs relentless final pursuit does Rainsford truly feel fear and his own primal instinct to survive. The long-term ramifications of Rainsfords harrowing ordeal remain indeterminate and unresolved, however, because Connell purposefully chooses to leave any transformation in Rainsfords character uncharted. Although Connell suggests that Rainsford now empathizes with the creatures he has hunted in the past, it is uncertain whether he will discontinue hunting in the future. On one hand, Rainsford could possibly abandon hunting altogether or at least approach it with a new respect for his prey. Conversely, Rainsfords ability to sleep so soundly after killing Zaroff may suggest that he has become even more ruthless or hasnt undergone any significant transformation at all. General Zaroff General Zaroffs refined mannerisms conceal a maniacal desire to inflict suffering and death for his own amusement. In many ways, Zaroff considers himself a god who can snuff out life as he pleases. Zaroffss madness stems from a life of wealth, luxury, and militarism, which inflate his ego and sense of entitlement and impose few limits on his desires. Zaroff began hunting at an early age when he shot his fathers prized turkeys and continually sought out bigger game in his familys tract of wilderness in the Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea. Commanding a division of Cossack cavalrymen in Russia, meanwhile, familiarized Zaroff with the horrors and atrocities of warfare. His bloodlust and passion for hunting eventually prompted him to hunt men, the most cunning and challenging prey he could find. Accustomed to death, General Zaroff has lost the ability to distinguish men from beasts, suggesting that he has slipped into barbarism and lost his humanity. The sanctioned violence of his youth and early manhood drained the general of his empathy and capacity to make moral judgments. His passion for the hunt and love of the refined, meanwhile, led him to devalue human life. In fact, Zaroff even praises his thoroughbred hounds over the lives of the sailors he hunts. Connell describes Zaroffs sharp pointed teeth and smacking red lips to dehumanize him and highlight his predatory nature. Ironically, Rainsford discovers that General Zaroff is far more repulsive than the scum he disdainfully hunts, devoid of all emotion and humanity despite his seeming gentility. Reason versus Instinct Pitting Rainsford and General Zaroff against each other in the hunt allows Connell to blur the line between hunter and prey, human and animal, to suggest that instinct and reason are not as mutually exclusive as people have traditionally thought. Writers and philosophers have traditionally placed human intellect and the ability to reason above the bestial instincts of wild animals, which have no moral compulsions and act solely to satisfy their own needs. Reason, therefore, transforms mere animals into people and allows them to live together in functioning societies. Connell first blurs the dichotomy between reason and instinct through Rainsfords friend Whitney, who asserts that animals instinctively feel fear and then confesses that Captain Neilsons description of Ship-Trap Island has given him the chills. Without realizing it, Whitney admits that his perception of the island has sparked a sense of dread in him, just as perceived danger induces fear in an animal. Connell further turns the table on the idea that reason exists apart from instinct by reducing the gentleman hunter Rainsford to the role of prey in General Zaroffs sadistic hunt. Rainsford comes to realize that all creatures, including people, rely on fear and their instinct to survive to avoid pain and death, just as Whitney had

originally argued. Nevertheless, Rainsford remains calm in spite of his fear and works methodically to evade death and even defeat Zaroff. Despite his desire to kill his pursuers, however, Rainsford keeps his perspective and continues to value human life, therefore remaining more man than beast. In contrast, the genteel General Zaroff reveals himself to be more animal than human by rationally concluding that people are no different from other living creatures and by ruthlessly hunting men to satisfy his inner bloodlust. Zaroffs and Rainsfords cool rationality and calculating cunning throughout the entire hunt belies the fact that each man acts only according to instinct, one to survive and the other to kill.

The Masque of the Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe A disease known as the Red Death plagues the fictional country where this tale is set, and it causes its victims to die quickly and gruesomely. Even though this disease is spreading rampantly, the prince, Prospero, feels happy and hopeful. He decides to lock the gates of his palace in order to fend off the plague, ignoring the illness ravaging the land. After several months, he throws a fancy masquerade ball. For this celebration, he decorates the rooms of his house in single colors. The easternmost room is decorated in blue, with blue stained-glass windows. The next room is purple with the same stained-glass window pattern. The rooms continue westward, according to this design, in the following color arrangement: green, orange, white, and violet. The seventh room is black, with red windows. Also in this room stands an ebony clock. When the clock rings each hour, its sound is so loud and distracting that everyone stops talking and the orchestra stops playing. When the clock is not sounding, though, the rooms are so beautiful and strange that they seem to be filled with dreams, swirling among the revelers. Most guests, however, avoid the final, black-and-red room because it contains both the clock and an ominous ambience. At midnight, a new guest appears, dressed more ghoulishly than his counterparts. His mask looks like the face of a corpse, his garments resemble a funeral shroud, and his face reveals spots of blood suggesting that he is a victim of the Red Death. Prospero becomes angry that someone with so little humor and levity would join his party. The other guests, however, are so afraid of this masked man that they fail to prevent him from walking through each room. Prospero finally catches up to the new guest in the black-and-red room. As soon as he confronts the figure, Prospero dies. When other party-goers enter the room to attack the cloaked man, they find that there is nobody beneath the costume. Everyone then dies, for the Red Death has infiltrated the castle. Darkness and Decay and the Red Death have at last triumphed. Analysis The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory. It features a set of recognizable symbols whose meanings combine to convey a message. An allegory always operates on two levels of meaning: the literal elements of the plot (the colors of the rooms, for example) and their symbolic counterparts, which often involve large philosophical concepts (such as life and death). We can read this story as an allegory about life and death and the powerlessness of humans to evade the grip of death. The Red Death thus represents, both literally and allegorically, death. No matter how beautiful the castle, how luxuriant the clothing, or how rich the food, no mortal, not even a prince, can escape death. In another sense, though, the story also means to punish Prosperos arrogant belief that he can use his wealth to fend off the natural, tragic progress of life. Prosperos arrogance combines with a grievous insensitivity to the plight of his less fortunate countrymen. Although he possesses the wealth to assist those in need, he turns his wealth into a mode of self-defense and decadent self-indulgence. His decadence in throwing the masquerade ball, however, unwittingly positions him as a caged animal, with no possible escape. The rooms of the palace, lined up in a series, allegorically represent the stages of life. Poe makes it a point to arrange the rooms running from east to west. This progression is symbolically significant because it represents the life cycle of a day: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, with night symbolizing death. What transforms this set of symbols into an allegory, however, is the further symbolic treatment of the twenty-four hour life cycle: it translates to the realm of human beings. This progression from east to west, performed by both Prospero and the mysterious guest, symbolizes the human journey from birth to death. Poe crafts the last, black room as the ominous endpoint, the room the guests fear just as they fear death. The clock that presides over that room also reminds the guests of deaths final judgment. The hourly ringing of the bells is a reminder of the passing of time, inexorable and ultimately personal. As in many Poe stories, the use of names contributes to the symbolic economic context of the story and suggests another set of allegorical interpretations. For example, Prospero, whose name suggests financial prosperity,

exploits his own wealth to stave off the infiltration of the Red Death. His retreat to the protection of an aristocratic palace may also allegorize a type of economic system that Poe suggests is doomed to failure. In the hierarchical relationship between Prospero and the peasantry, Poe portrays the unfairness of a feudal system, where wealth lies in the hands of the aristocracy while the peasantry suffers. This use of feudal imagery is historically accurate, in that feudalism was prevalent when the actual Bubonic Plague devastated Europe in the fourteenth century. The Red Death, then, embodies a type of radical egalitarianism, or monetary equality, because it attacks the rich and poor alike. The portrayal of the masquerade ball foreshadows the similar setting of the carnival in The Cask of Amontillado, which appeared less than a year after The Masque of the Red Death. Whereas the carnival in The Cask of Amontillado associates drunken revelry with an open-air Italian celebration, the masquerade functions in this story as a celebratory retreat from the air itself, which has become infected by the plague. The masquerade, however, dispels the sense of claustrophobia within the palace by liberating the inner demons of the guests. These demons are then embodied by the grotesque costumes. Like the carnival, the masquerade urges the abandonment of social conventions and rigid senses of personal identity. However, the mysterious guest illuminates the extent to which Prospero and his guests police the limits of social convention. When the mysterious guest uses his costume to portray the fears that the masquerade is designed to counteract, Prospero responds antagonistically. As he knows, the prosperity of the party relies upon the psychological transformation of fear about the Red Death into revelry. When the mysterious guest dramatizes his own version of revelry as the fear that cannot be spoken, he violates an implicit social rule of the masquerade. The fall of Prospero and the subsequent deaths of his guests follow from this logic of the masquerade: when revelry is unmasked as a defense mechanism against fear, then the raw exposure of what lies beneath is enough to kill.

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bront Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Janes aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Janes Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncles ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Janes delight, Mrs. Reed concurs. Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The schools headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the schools funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike attitude toward the schools miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehursts place, Janes life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher. After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Janes employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly. The wedding days arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wifea woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Masons claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third story of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his

wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield. Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced Sinjin) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three newfound relatives. St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany himas his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochesters voice calling her name over the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochesters new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary. At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth. Jane Eyre The development of Jane Eyres character is central to the novel. From the beginning, Jane possesses a sense of her self-worth and dignity, a commitment to justice and principle, a trust in God, and a passionate disposition. Her integrity is continually tested over the course of the novel, and Jane must learn to balance the frequently conflicting aspects of herself so as to find contentment. An orphan since early childhood, Jane feels exiled and ostracized at the beginning of the novel, and the cruel treatment she receives from her Aunt Reed and her cousins only exacerbates her feeling of alienation. Afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community, Jane feels the need to belong somewhere, to find kin, or at least kindred spirits. This desire tempers her equally intense need for autonomy and freedom. In her search for freedom, Jane also struggles with the question of what type of freedom she wants. While Rochester initially offers Jane a chance to liberate her passions, Jane comes to realize that such freedom could also mean enslavementby living as Rochesters mistress, she would be sacrificing her dignity and integrity for the sake of her feelings. St. John Rivers offers Jane another kind of freedom: the freedom to act unreservedly on her principles. He opens to Jane the possibility of exercising her talents fully by working and living with him in India. Jane eventually realizes, though, that this freedom would also constitute a form of imprisonment, because she would be forced to keep her true feelings and her true passions always in check. Charlotte Bront may have created the character of Jane Eyre as a means of coming to terms with elements of her own life. Much evidence suggests that Bront, too, struggled to find a balance between love and freedom and to find others who understood her. At many points in the book, Jane voices the authors then-radical opinions on religion, social class, and gender. Edward Rochester Despite his stern manner and not particularly handsome appearance, Edward Rochester wins Janes heart, because she feels they are kindred spirits, and because he is the first person in the novel to offer Jane lasting love and a real home. Although Rochester is Janes social and economic superior, and although men were widely considered to be naturally superior to women in the Victorian period, Jane is Rochesters intellectual equal. Moreover, after their marriage is interrupted by the disclosure that Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason, Jane is proven to be Rochesters moral superior. Rochester regrets his former libertinism and lustfulness; nevertheless, he has proven himself to be weaker in many ways than Jane. Jane feels that living with Rochester as his mistress would mean the loss of her dignity. Ultimately, she would become degraded and dependent upon Rochester for love, while unprotected by any true marriage bond. Jane will only enter into marriage with Rochester after she has gained a fortune and a family, and

after she has been on the verge of abandoning passion altogether. She waits until she is not unduly influenced by her own poverty, loneliness, psychological vulnerability, or passion. Additionally, because Rochester has been blinded by the fire and has lost his manor house at the end of the novel, he has become weaker while Jane has grown in strengthJane claims that they are equals, but the marriage dynamic has actually tipped in her favor. St. John Rivers St. John Rivers is a foil to Edward Rochester. Whereas Rochester is passionate, St. John is austere and ambitious. Jane often describes Rochesters eyes as flashing and flaming, whereas she constantly associates St. John with rock, ice, and snow. Marriage with Rochester represents the abandonment of principle for the consummation of passion, but marriage to St. John would mean sacrificing passion for principle. When he invites her to come to India with him as a missionary, St. John offers Jane the chance to make a more meaningful contribution to society than she would as a housewife. At the same time, life with St. John would mean life without true love, in which Janes need for spiritual solace would be filled only by retreat into the recesses of her own soul. Independence would be accompanied by loneliness, and joining St. John would require Jane to neglect her own legitimate needs for love and emotional support. Her consideration of St. Johns proposal leads Jane to understand that, paradoxically, a large part of ones personal freedom is found in a relationship of mutual emotional dependence. Helen Burns Helen Burns, Janes friend at Lowood School, serves as a foil to Mr. Brocklehurst as well as to Jane. While Mr. Brocklehurst embodies an evangelical form of religion that seeks to strip others of their excessive pride or of their ability to take pleasure in worldly things, Helen represents a mode of Christianity that stresses tolerance and acceptance. Brocklehurst uses religion to gain power and to control others; Helen ascetically trusts her own faith and turns the other cheek to Lowoods harsh policies. Although Helen manifests certain strength and intellectual maturity, her efforts involve self-negation rather than self-assertion, and Helens submissive and ascetic nature highlights Janes more headstrong character. Like Jane, Helen is an orphan who longs for a home, but Helen believes that she will find this home in Heaven rather than Northern England. And while Helen is not oblivious to the injustices the girls suffer at Lowood, she believes that justice will be found in Gods ultimate judgmentGod will reward the good and punish the evil. Jane, on the other hand, is unable to have such blind faith. Her quest is for love and happiness in this world. Nevertheless, she counts on God for support and guidance in her search. Love Versus Autonomy Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Thus Jane says to Helen Burns: to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest (Chapter 8). Yet, over the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrificing and harming herself in the process. Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her refusal of Rochesters marriage proposal. Jane believes that marrying Rochester while he remains legally tied to Bertha would mean rendering herself a mistress and sacrificing her own integrity for the sake of emotional gratification. On the other hand, her life at Moor House tests her in the opposite manner. There, she enjoys economic independence and engages in worthwhile and useful work, teaching the poor; yet she lacks emotional sustenance. Although St. John proposes marriage, offering her a partnership built around a common purpose, Jane knows their marriage would remain loveless. Nonetheless, the events of Janes stay at Moor House are necessary tests of Janes autonomy. Only after proving her self-sufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her master. The marriage can be one between equals. As Jane says: I am my husbands life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. . . . We are precisely suited in characterperfect concord is the result (Chapter 38). Religion Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to find the right balance between moral duty and earthly pleasure, between obligation to her spirit and attention to her body. She encounters three main religious figures: Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers. Each represents a model of religion that Jane ultimately rejects as she forms her own ideas about faith and principle, and their practical consequences.

Mr. Brocklehurst illustrates the dangers and hypocrisies that Charlotte Bront perceived in the nineteenthcentury Evangelical movement. Mr. Brocklehurst adopts the rhetoric of Evangelicalism when he claims to be purging his students of pride, but his method of subjecting them to various privations and humiliations, like when he orders that the naturally curly hair of one of Janes classmates be cut so as to lie straight, is entirely un-Christian. Of course, Brocklehursts proscriptions are difficult to follow, and his hypocritical support of his own luxuriously wealthy family at the expense of the Lowood students shows Bronts wariness of the Evangelical movement. Helen Burnss meek and forbearing mode of Christianity, on the other hand, is too passive for Jane to adopt as her own, although she loves and admires Helen for it. Many chapters later, St. John Rivers provides another model of Christian behavior. His is a Christianity of ambition, glory, and extreme self-importance. St. John urges Jane to sacrifice her emotional deeds for the fulfillment of her moral duty, offering her a way of life that would require her to be disloyal to her own self. Although Jane ends up rejecting all three models of religion, she does not abandon morality, spiritualism, or a belief in a Christian God. When her wedding is interrupted, she prays to God for solace (Chapter 26). As she wanders the heath, poor and starving, she puts her survival in the hands of God (Chapter 28). She strongly objects to Rochesters lustful immorality, and she refuses to consider living with him while church and state still deem him married to another woman. Even so, Jane can barely bring herself to leave the only love she has ever known. She credits God with helping her to escape what she knows would have been an immoral life (Chapter 27). Jane ultimately finds a comfortable middle ground. Her spiritual understanding is not hateful and oppressive like Brocklehursts, nor does it require retreat from the everyday world as Helens and St. Johns religions do. For Jane, religion helps curb immoderate passions, and it spurs one on to worldly efforts and achievements. These achievements include full self-knowledge and complete faith in God. Social Class Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian Englands strict social hierarchy. Bronts exploration of the complicated social position of governesses is perhaps the novels most important treatment of this theme. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing and, consequently, a source of extreme tension for the characters around her. Janes manners, sophistication, and education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the culture of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were more or less treated as servants; thus, Jane remains penniless and powerless while at Thornfield. Janes understanding of the double standard crystallizes when she becomes aware of her feelings for Rochester; she is his intellectual, but not his social, equal. Even before the crisis surrounding Bertha Mason, Jane is hesitant to marry Rochester because she senses that she would feel indebted to him for condescending to marry her. Janes distress, which appears most strongly in Chapter 17, seems to be Bronts critique of Victorian class attitudes. Jane herself speaks out against class prejudice at certain moments in the book. For example, in Chapter 23 she chastises Rochester: Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!I have as much soul as youand full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. However, it is also important to note that nowhere in Jane Eyre are societys boundaries bent. Ultimately, Jane is only able to marry Rochester as his equal because she has almost magically come into her own inheritance from her uncle. Gender Relations Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. In addition to class hierarchy, she must fight against patriarchal dominationagainst those who believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such. Three central male figures threaten her desire for equality and dignity: Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, and St. John Rivers. All three are misogynistic on some level. Each tries to keep Jane in a submissive position, where she is unable to express her own thoughts and feelings. In her quest for independence and selfknowledge, Jane must escape Brocklehurst, reject St. John, and come to Rochester only after ensuring that they may marry as equals. This last condition is met once Jane proves herself able to function, through the time she spends at Moor House, in a community and in a family. She will not depend solely on Rochester for love and she can be financially independent. Furthermore, Rochester is blind at the novels end and thus dependent upon Jane to be his prop and guide. In Chapter 12, Jane articulates what was for her time a radically feminist philosophy:

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

A mean-spirited, miserly old man named Ebenezer Scrooge sits in his counting-house on a frigid Christmas Eve. His clerk, Bob Cratchit, shivers in the anteroom because Scrooge refuses to spend money on heating coals for a fire. Scrooge's nephew, Fred, pays his uncle a visit and invites him to his annual Christmas party. Two portly gentlemen also drop by and ask Scrooge for a contribution to their charity. Scrooge reacts to the holiday visitors with bitterness and venom, spitting out an angry "Bah! Humbug!" in response to his nephew's "Merry Christmas!" Later that evening, after returning to his dark, cold apartment, Scrooge receives a chilling visitation from the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. Marley, looking haggard and pallid, relates his unfortunate story. As punishment for his greedy and self-serving life his spirit has been condemned to wander the Earth weighted down with heavy chains. Marley hopes to save Scrooge from sharing the same fate. Marley informs Scrooge that three spirits will visit him during each of the next three nights. After the wraith disappears, Scrooge collapses into a deep sleep. He wakes moments before the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Past, a strange childlike phantom with a brightly glowing head. The spirit escorts Scrooge on a journey into the past to previous Christmases from the curmudgeon's earlier years. Invisible to those he watches, Scrooge revisits his childhood school days, his apprenticeship with a jolly merchant named Fezziwig, and his engagement to Belle, a woman who leaves Scrooge because his lust for money eclipses his ability to love another. Scrooge, deeply moved, sheds tears of regret before the phantom returns him to his bed. The Ghost of Christmas Present, a majestic giant clad in a green fur robe, takes Scrooge through London to unveil Christmas as it will happen that year. Scrooge watches the large, bustling Cratchit family prepare a miniature feast in its meager home. He discovers Bob Cratchit's crippled son, Tiny Tim, a courageous boy whose kindness and humility warms Scrooge's heart. The specter then zips Scrooge to his nephew's to witness the Christmas party. Scrooge finds the jovial gathering delightful and pleads with the spirit to stay until the very end of the festivities. As the day passes, the spirit ages, becoming noticeably older. Toward the end of the day, he shows Scrooge two starved children, Ignorance and Want, living under his coat. He vanishes instantly as Scrooge notices a dark, hooded figure coming toward him. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come leads Scrooge through a sequence of mysterious scenes relating to an unnamed man's recent death. Scrooge sees businessmen discussing the dead man's riches, some vagabonds trading his personal effects for cash, and a poor couple expressing relief at the death of their unforgiving creditor. Scrooge, anxious to learn the lesson of his latest visitor, begs to know the name of the dead man. After pleading with the ghost, Scrooge finds himself in a churchyard, the spirit pointing to a grave. Scrooge looks at the headstone and is shocked to read his own name. He desperately implores the spirit to alter his fate, promising to renounce his insensitive, avaricious ways and to honor Christmas with all his heart. Whoosh! He suddenly finds himself safely tucked in his bed. Overwhelmed with joy by the chance to redeem himself and grateful that he has been returned to Christmas Day, Scrooge rushes out onto the street hoping to share his newfound Christmas spirit. He sends a giant Christmas turkey to the Cratchit house and attends Fred's party, to the stifled surprise of the other guests. As the years go by, he holds true to his promise and honors Christmas with all his heart: he treats Tiny Tim as if he were his own child, provides lavish gifts for the poor, and treats his fellow human beings with kindness, generosity, and warmth. Analysis A Christmas Carol is a fairly straightforward allegory built on an episodic narrative structure in which each of the main passages has a fixed, obvious symbolic meaning. The book is divided into five sections (Dickens labels them Staves in reference to the musical notation staff--a Christmas carol, after all, is a song), with each of the middle

three Staves revolving around a visitation by one of the three famous spirits. The three spirit-guides, along with each of their tales, carry out a thematic function--the Ghost of Christmas Past, with his glowing head, represents memory; the Ghost of Christmas Present represents charity, empathy, and the Christmas spirit; and the reaperlike Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come represents the fear of death. Scrooge, with his Bah! Humbug! attitude, embodies all that dampens Christmas spirit--greed, selfishness, indifference, and a lack of consideration for one's fellow man. With A Christmas Carol, Dickens hopes to illustrate how self-serving, insensitive people can be converted into charitable, caring, and socially conscious members of society through the intercession of moralizing quasi-religious lessons. Warmth, generosity, and overall goodwill, overcome Scrooge's bitter apathy as he encounters and learns from his memory, the ability to empathize, and his fear of death. Memory serves to remind Scrooge of a time when he still felt emotionally connected to other people, before he closed himself off in an austere state of alienation. Empathy enables Scrooge to sympathize with and understand those less fortunate than himself, people like Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit. The fear of death hints at imminent moral reckoning--the promise of punishment and reward. With each Ghost's tale functioning as a parable, A Christmas Carol advances the Christian moral ideals associated with Christmas--generosity, kindness, and universal love for your community--and of Victorian England in general. The book also offers a distinctly modern view of Christmas, less concerned with solemn religious ceremony and defined by more joyous traditions--the sharing of gifts, festive celebrations, displays of prosperity. The book also contains a political edge, most evident in Dickens' development of the bustling, struggling Cratchit family, who are a compelling, if one-dimensional, representation of the plight of the poor. Dickens, with every intention of tugging on your heartstrings, paints the Cratchits as a destitute family that finds a way to express profound gratitude for its emotional riches. Dickens carries this sentiment even further with the tragic figure of the pure-hearted, crippled Cratchit son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge's emotive connection to Tiny Tim dramatically underscores his revelatory acceptance of the Christmas ideal. Scrooge begins to break through his emotional barricade in Stave Three as he expresses pity for Tiny Tim. The reader, upon hearing the usually uncaring miser inquire into Tim's fate, begins to believe Scrooge has a chance at salvation. Scrooge's path to redemption culminates with his figurative "adoption" of Tiny Tim, acting as "a second father" to the little boy. Ebenezer Scrooge - The miserly owner of a London counting-house, a nineteenth century term for an accountant's office. The three spirits of Christmas visit the stodgy bean-counter in hopes of reversing Scrooge's greedy, coldhearted approach to life. Bob Cratchit - Scrooge's clerk, a kind, mild, and very poor man with a large family. Though treated harshly by his boss, Cratchit remains a humble and dedicated employee. Tiny Tim - Bob Cratchit's young son, crippled from birth. Tiny Tim is a highly sentimentalized character who Dickens uses to highlight the tribulations of England's poor and to elicit sympathy from his middle and upper class readership. Jacob Marley - In the living world, Ebenezer Scrooge's equally greedy partner. Marley died seven years before the narrative opens. He appears to Scrooge as a ghost condemned to wander the world bound in heavy chains. Marley hopes to save his old partner from suffering a similar fate.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Stephen King Red, the narrator, recounts how he planned and carried out his wifes murder by disabling her brakes, which accidentally killed a neighbor and child as well and earned him a life sentence at Shawshank Prison. Red also remembers the arrival of an inmate named Andy Dufresne, whose tenure at Shawshank affected the lives of everyone at the prison. Andy was sent to Shawshank for life in 1947 for the cold-blooded murder of his wife, Linda, and her lover, tennis pro Glenn Quentin. Despite the damning evidence placing him at the scene of the crime on the night of the murders, Andy has always maintained his innocence, which Red eventually comes to believe in as well. Andy has some initial difficulty adjusting to prison life, especially because many of the other prisoners think hes a snob. A gang of men known as the Sisters frequently attack and rape him in the laundry room while the guards look the other way. Andy fights the Sisters, even though it always lands him in the infirmary and sometimes solitary confinement. Despite these hardships, however, Andy never complains or loses his confidence.

Soon after arriving at Shawshank, Andy approaches Red and asks him to procure a rock hammer because hes interested in rock collecting and carving. After a while, he also pays Red to smuggle in some polishing cloths and then, rather nervously, a large poster of pinup Rita Hayworth. Red fulfills Andys requests. After a few years, Red and Andy both find themselves on a work crew, tarring the roof of the prisons license plate factory. Andy overhears Byron Hadley, a prison guard, complaining to the other guards about the taxes hell have to pay on the $35,000 he just inherited from his long-lost brother. Andy offers Hadley some financial advice by telling him to give the money to his wife as a one-time tax-free gift. Andy even offers to fill out the paperwork for Hadley in exchange for giving three beers to each prisoner on the work crew. After some initial hesitation and suspicion, Hadley agrees. The deal wins Andy the respect of everyone involved and makes him a mythic hero in the eyes of the prisoners. Andy also becomes a valuable financial resource to those who run the prison. As a result, the guards and the warden protect Andy from the Sisters, make him the prison librarian, and dont assign other inmates to his cell. Andy relishes his new position and works hard during the next two decades to significantly expand the library. Andys financial responsibilities start with filing the guards tax returns, but they soon expand to laundering money for the various prison wardens, including Bible-thumping Samuel Norton. Andy has no moral objection to hiding the money that Norton receives from construction companies, but he doesnt realize that doing so also hurts his chances of ever leaving Shawshank. A new inmate named Tommy Williams arrives at Shawshank and tells Andy that he served time in another prison with Elwood Blatch, a man who privately admitted to killing tennis pro Glenn Quentin. When Andy asks Norton to request a retrial, Norton dismisses Andys claims and puts him in solitary confinement for more than a month on the grain and drain diet of bread and water. Norton, meanwhile, transfers Tommy Williams to another prison out of fear that Andy would expose his money laundering operation if paroled. After another aborted attempt to reason with the warden and another stint in solitary, Andy drops the issue and becomes more brooding and introspective. Eventually Andy emerges from his lengthy depression and tells Red one day that he had a friend set up a false identity for him. Under the false identity, the friend invested $14,000 of Andys money, which has since become more than $370,000. Andy, however, cant touch the money, saved under his alternate identity, because he would risk exposing himself and losing everything. The documents and lucrative bonds are kept in a safe-deposit box at a local bank, the key to which has been stashed under a black volcanic rock wedged into a stone wall in the countryside near the prison. Andy dreams of escaping, assuming the new identity, and becoming the proprietor of a small hotel in Mexico. Andy also imagines Red going with him. Red thinks nothing of this until years later when the prison guards find Andys cell empty one morning. The guards search the prison but find nothing, until an extremely frustrated Norton rips the pinup poster from the wall to reveal a gaping hole in the thick concrete. The hole leads to the sewage drainpipe, which empties into the marshes surrounding Shawshank. Red figures that Andy slowly and systematically used the rock hammer and polishing cloths every night for nearly twenty years to carve through the wall. After completing his hole, Red also figures that it took Andy roughly eight years to muster the courage to actually try to escape. A search of the marshes and nearby towns reveals nothing, however, and Norton has a nervous breakdown and resigns. Red never hears anything from Andy but receives a blank postcard from a border town in Texas some months later. The story of Andys escape spreads throughout the prison and gives him an even greater mythic status. He becomes the symbol of hope for many prisoners, not only as someone who successfully escaped, but also as a man who never let prison crush his spirit. Red adds a postscript to his story about a year later, writing from a hotel in Portland, Maine, after being released from Shawshank. The transition to life on the outside has been tough, and Red thinks of Andy when he feels the urge to commit a petty crime or violate the terms of his parole so that hell be put back in prison. Now working as a bag boy at a supermarket, Red uses his days off to explore the countryside, partly because he likes the freedom and the space but also because hes looking for the volcanic rock where Andy hid the key to the safe-deposit box. Red walks the rural hayfields in search of the stone wall Andy had described years earlier, and after several weeks of searching, he finally finds the rock. Underneath, Red discovers a letter addressed to him from Peter Stevens, Andys pseudonym. The letter invites Red to join Andy in Mexico and includes a gift of $1,000. Red concludes the

postscript with renewed hope for the future as he decides to abandon his job, violate his parole, and make his way to Mexico to find Andy. Red Red is the lifeline of the prison, the man who can smuggle almost anything into Shawshank from the outside world. By making himself indispensable to the other inmates, Red affords himself protection and an esteemed place in the pecking order of the prison yard. He forces the other men to do business on his terms and knows full well the need to defend his own interests in a world where violence and exploitation are the norm. Ultimately, however, Reds hardened stance conceals his fear and insecurity as he struggles to make sense of his life both in and out of prison. Even though Reds narrative focuses on Andy and his eventual escape, Red admits that the story is really all about himself. Andys inner confidence and sense of self-worth represent the part of Red that Hadley, Norton, and the other prison authorities never managed to crush. Although Red has undoubtedly thought of escaping numerous times during his thirty-eight years in prison, it is Andys resolute sense of hope that Red admires. Red knows that hope is what keeps him and every other inmate alive. Andy Dufresne Andy is an enigma to Red and the other inmates, a man they admire but never really understand. An element of fantasy infuses the characterization of Andy: at one point King even refers to the mysterious myth-magic that his protagonist seemingly possesses. In truth, Andy is an anomalous figure who stands out from the rest of the inmates at Shawshank Prison, but not for any mythical or spiritual reason. Andys calm, cool collectedness govern his interactions with the world around him, and he rarely succumbs to emotion or cheap sentiment. What many inmates take for snobbery is actually reserve and caution as Andy tries to stay one step ahead of his adversaries. Without this strength and inner resolve, Andy would never have survived his twenty-eight years in prison nor managed to escape. Andy emerges as an object of fascination for many of his fellow prisoners, a figure onto whom they project their various embellishments of the ideal man: Andy, the man who can talk down the guards; Andy, the man who can manipulate the warden; and Andy, the man who can escape out from under everyones noses. Samuel Norton Warden Norton embodies the hypocrisies and contradictions of the penitentiary system. The national exposure and adulation he gets for his Inside-Out program belies and conceals the corruption that prevails during his tenure and the campaign of threats, intimidation, abuse, and excessive cruelty he employs to maintain control of the inmates. At times aligned with images of deathhis face is compared to a cold slate tombstoneNorton is a selfdeluded despot who justifies his exploitation and the promotion of his self-interest at the expense of others in the name of his faith and the fire-and-brimstone Bible passages he often quotes. The Burden of Isolation and Imprisonment Each of the inmates inside Shawshank Prison is locked up metaphorically as well as literally, hiding from himself or unable to function in the unregulated world that extends beyond the prison walls. There are many levels of isolation inside Shawshank, from the large, enclosed recreation yard to the smaller work crews down to the cellblock, cells, and, finally, solitary confinement. The prison is thus a multilayered world, a microcosm of the world outside that the prisoners have been forcibly removed from. The bars, strict schedules, sadistic keepers, and predatory Sisters only add a sense of entrapment and suffocation to these layers of isolation. Shawshanks confines, however, also highlight the extent to which the prisoners have isolated themselves and compromised their sense of identity. Beneath the hardened criminals lie insecure, maladjusted outcasts, many of whom believe they cant function outside the prison system. Elwood Blatch, for example, is a braggart and an egomaniac whose exaggerated accounts of his exploits fool none of his listeners into believing that he is the master criminal whom he makes himself out to be. Red, meanwhile, identifies Andy as the part of himself who never let go of the idea of freedom. Freedom is a frightening concept for Red, who dreams of being paroled but eventually struggles to find his place in society after almost forty years in prison. Recounting Andys escape, therefore, allows Red to face his fears and find the psychological freedom he seeks. The Power of Hope Hope, more than anything else, drives the inmates at Shawshank and gives them the will to live. Andys sheer determination to maintain his own sense of self-worth and escape keeps him from dying of frustration and anger in solitary confinement. Hope is an abstract, passive emotion, akin to the passive, immobile, and inert lives of the prisoners. Andy sets about making hope a reality in the form of the agonizing progress he makes each year

tunneling his way through his concrete cell wall. Even Andys even-keeled and well-balanced temperament, however, eventually succumb to the bleakness of prison life. Red notes that Tommy Williamss revelation that he could prove Andys innocence was like a key unlocking a cage in Andys mind, a cage that released a tiger called Hope. This hope reinvigorates Andy and spreads to many of the other inmates in the prison. In his letter addressed to Red, Andy writes that hope is a good thing, which in the end is all that Red has left. Reds decision to go to Mexico to find Andy is the ultimate proof of Reds own redemption, not from his life as a criminal but from his compromised state, bereft of hope and with no reason to embrace life or the future. Reds closing words, as he embarks tentatively onto a new path, show that hope is a difficult concept to sustain both inside the prison and out.

Uncle Toms Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe Having run up large debts, a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby faces the prospect of losing everything he owns. Though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, have a kindhearted and affectionate relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise money by selling two of his slaves to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. The slaves in question are Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children on the farm, and Harry, the young son of Mrs. Shelbys maid Eliza. When Shelby tells his wife about his agreement with Haley, she is appalled because she has promised Eliza that Shelby would not sell her son. However, Eliza overhears the conversation between Shelby and his wife and, after warning Uncle Tom and his wife, Aunt Chloe, she takes Harry and flees to the North, hoping to find freedom with her husband George in Canada. Haley pursues her, but two other Shelby slaves alert Eliza to the danger. She miraculously evades capture by crossing the half-frozen Ohio River, the boundary separating Kentucky from the North. Haley hires a slave hunter named Loker and his gang to bring Eliza and Harry back to Kentucky. Eliza and Harry make their way to a Quaker settlement, where the Quakers agree to help transport them to safety. They are joined at the settlement by George, who reunites joyously with his family for the trip to Canada. Meanwhile, Uncle Tom sadly leaves his family and Masr George, Shelbys young son and Toms friend, as Haley takes him to a boat on the Mississippi to be transported to a slave market. On the boat, Tom meets an angelic little white girl named Eva, who quickly befriends him. When Eva falls into the river, Tom dives in to save her, and her father, Augustine St. Clare, gratefully agrees to buy Tom from Haley. Tom travels with the St. Clares to their home in New Orleans, where he grows increasingly invaluable to the St. Clare household and increasingly close to Eva, with whom he shares a devout Christianity. Up North, George and Eliza remain in flight from Loker and his men. When Loker attempts to capture them, George shoots him in the side, and the other slave hunters retreat. Eliza convinces George and the Quakers to bring Loker to the next settlement, where he can be healed. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, St. Clare discusses slavery with his cousin Ophelia, who opposes slavery as an institution but harbors deep prejudices against blacks. St. Clare, by contrast, feels no hostility against blacks but tolerates slavery because he feels powerless to change it. To help Ophelia overcome her bigotry, he buys Topsy, a young black girl who was abused by her past master and arranges for Ophelia to begin educating her. After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. She slowly weakens, then dies, with a vision of heaven before her. Her death has a profound effect on everyone who knew her: Ophelia resolves to love the slaves, Topsy learns to trust and feel attached to others, and St. Clare decides to set Tom free. However, before he can act on his decision, St. Clare is stabbed to death while trying to settle a brawl. As he dies, he at last finds God and goes to be reunited with his mother in heaven. St. Clares cruel wife, Marie, sells Tom to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with a group of new slaves, including Emmeline, whom the demonic Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave, replacing his previous sex slave Cassy. Legree takes a strong dislike to Tom when Tom refuses to whip a fellow slave as ordered. Tom receives a severe beating, and Legree resolves to crush his faith in God. Tom meets Cassy, and hears her story. Separated from her daughter by slavery, she became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not stand to have another child taken from her. Around this time, with the help of Tom Lokernow a changed man after being healed by the QuakersGeorge, Eliza, and Harry at last cross over into Canada from Lake Erie and obtain their freedom. In Louisiana, Toms faith is sorely tested by his hardships, and he nearly ceases to believe. He has two visions, howeverone of Christ and one of Evawhich renew his spiritual strength and give him the courage to withstand Legrees torments. He encourages

Cassy to escape. She does so, taking Emmeline with her, after she devises a ruse in which she and Emmeline pretend to be ghosts. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to beat him. When Tom is near death, he forgives Legree and the overseers. George Shelby arrives with money in hand to buy Toms freedom, but he is too late. He can only watch as Tom dies a martyrs death. Taking a boat toward freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harriss sister and travel with her to Canada, where Cassy realizes that Eliza is her long-lost daughter. The newly reunited family travels to France and decides to move to Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where, after his fathers death, he sets all the slaves free in honor of Toms memory. He urges them to think on Toms sacrifice every time they look at his cabin and to lead a pious Christian life, just as Tom did. Uncle Tom History has not been kind to Uncle Tom, the hero of Uncle Toms Cabin and one of the most popular figures of nineteenth-century American fiction. After its initial burst of sensational popularity and influence, Uncle Toms Cabin fell into neglect. Its circulation declined following the end of the Civil War and Stowes death, and by the mid-1900s, the book was virtually out of print. Not until the early 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement reawakened an interest in anti-slavery fiction, did the novel again become widely read. More than a hundred years after its initial publication, however, Uncle Toms Cabin stood as a testament to a past set of standards and expectations. The values and attributes that seemed admirable in its characters in 1852 frequently appeared incomprehensible and even contemptible to twentieth-century readers. In particular, the passive acceptance of slavery practiced by the novels title character seemed horrendously out of line with the resolve and strength of modern black Civil Rights crusaders. The term Uncle Tom became an insult, conjuring an image of an old black man eager to please his white masters and happy to accept his own position of inferiority. Although modern readers criticisms hold some validity, the notion of an Uncle Tom contains generalizations not found within the actual character in the novel. First, Tom is not an old man. The novel states that he is eight years older than Shelby, which probably places him in his late forties at the start of the novel. Moreover, Tom does not accept his position of inferiority with happiness. Toms passivity owes not to stupidity or to contentment with his position, but to his deep religious values, which impel him to love everyone and selflessly endure his trials. Indeed, Toms central characteristic in the novel is this religiosity, his strength of faith. Everywhere Tom goes in the novel, he manages to spread some of the love and goodwill of his religious beliefs, helping to alleviate the pain of slavery and enhance the hope of salvation. And while this religiosity translates into a selfless passivity on Toms part, it also translates into a policy of warm encouragement of others attempts at freedom. Thus, he supports Elizas escape, as well as that of Cassy and Emmeline from the Legree plantation. Moreover, while Tom may not actively seek his own freedom, he practices a kind of resistance in his passivity. When Legree orders him to beat the slave girl in Chapter XXXIII, he refuses, standing firm in his values. He will submit to being beaten for his beliefs, but he will not capitulate or run away. Moreover, even in recognizing Toms passivity in the novel, and Stowes approving treatment of it, one should note that Stowe does not present this behavior as a model of black behavior, but as a heroic model of behavior that should be practiced by everyone, black and white. Stowe makes it very clear that if the villainous white slaveholders of the novel were to achieve Toms selfless Christian love for others, slavery would be impossible, and Toms death never would have happened. Because Stowe believes that a transformation through Christian love must occur before slavery can be abolished successfully, she holds up Toms death as nobler than any escape, in that it provides an example for others and offers the hope of a more generalized salvation. Through this death, moreover, Tom becomes a Christ figure, a radical role for a black character to play in American fiction in 1852. Toms death proves Legrees fundamental moral and personal inferiority, and provides the motivating force behind George Shelbys decision to free all the slaves. By practicing selflessness and loving his enemy, Tom becomes a martyr and affects social change. Although contemporary society finds its heroes in active agents of social change and tends to discourage submissiveness, Stowe meant for Tom to embody noble heroic tendencies of his own. She portrayed his passivity as a virtue unconnected to his minority status. Within the world of Uncle Toms Cabin, Tom is presented as more than a black herohe is presented as a hero transcending race. Ophelia St. Clare Probably the most complex female character in the novel, Ophelia deserves special attention from the reader because she is treated as a surrogate for Stowes intended audience. It is as if Stowe conceived an imaginary

picture of her intended reader, then brought that reader into the book as a character. Ophelia embodies what Stowe considered a widespread Northern problem: the white person who opposes slavery on a theoretical level but feels racial prejudice and hatred in the presence of an actual black slave. Ophelia detests slavery, but she considers it almost necessary for blacks, against whom she harbors a deep-seated prejudiceshe does not want them to touch her. Stowe emphasizes that much of Ophelias racial prejudice stems from unfamiliarity and ignorance rather than from actual experience-based hatred. Because Ophelia has seldom spent time in the presence of slaves, she finds them uncomfortably alien. However, Ophelia is one of the only characters in Uncle Toms Cabin who develops as the story progresses. Once St. Clare puts Topsy in her care, Ophelia begins to have increased contact with a slave. At first she tries to teach Topsy out of a sense of mere duty. But Stowe suggests that duty alone will not eradicate slaveryabolitionists must act out of love. Evas death proves the crucial catalyst in Ophelias transformation, and she comes to love Topsy as a human being, overcoming her racial prejudice and offering a model to Stowes Northern readers. Simon Legree Although largely a uniformly evil villain, Simon Legree does possess some psychological depth as a character. He has been deeply affected by the death of his angelic mother and seems to show some legitimate affection for Cassy. Nonetheless, Legrees main purpose in the book is as a foil to Uncle Tom, and as an effective picture of slavery at its worst. Often associated with firelight and flames, Legree demonstrates literally infernal qualities, and his devilishness provides an effective contrast with the angelic qualities of his passive slave. Legrees demoniacally evil ways also play an important role in shaping the end of the book along the lines of the traditional Christian narrative. Above all, Legree desires to break Toms religious faith and to see him capitulate to doubt and sin. In the end, although Tom dies and Legree survives, the evil that Legree stands for has been destroyed. Tom dies loving the men who kill him, proving that his faith prevails over Legrees evil. The Evil of Slavery Uncle Toms Cabin was written after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal for anyone in the United States to offer aid or assistance to a runaway slave. The novel seeks to attack this law and the institution it protected, ceaselessly advocating the immediate emancipation of the slaves and freedom for all people. Each of Stowes scenes, while serving to further character and plot, also serves, without exception, to persuade the readerespecially the Northern reader of Stowes timethat slavery is evil, un-Christian, and intolerable in a civil society. For most of the novel, Stowe explores the question of slavery in a fairly mild setting, in which slaves and masters have seemingly positive relationships. At the Shelbys house, and again at the St. Clares, the slaves have kindly masters who do not abuse or mistreat them. Stowe does not offer these settings in order to show slaverys evil as conditional. She seeks to expose the vices of slavery even in its best-case scenario. Though Shelby and St. Clare possess kindness and intelligence, their ability to tolerate slavery renders them hypocritical and morally weak. Even under kind masters, slaves suffer, as we see when a financially struggling Shelby guiltily destroys Toms family by selling Tom, and when the fiercely selfish Marie, by demanding attention be given to herself, prevents the St. Clare slaves from mourning the death of her own angelic daughter, Eva. A common contemporary defense of slavery claimed that the institution benefited the slaves because most masters acted in their slaves best interest. Stowe refutes this argument with her biting portrayals, insisting that the slaves best interest can lie only in obtaining freedom. In the final third of the book, Stowe leaves behind the pleasant veneer of life at the Shelby and St. Clare houses and takes her reader into the Legree plantation, where the evil of slavery appears in its most naked and hideous form. This harsh and barbaric setting, in which slaves suffer beatings, sexual abuse, and even murder, introduces the power of shock into Stowes argument. If slavery is wrong in the best of cases, in the worst of cases it is nightmarish and inhuman. In the books structural progression between pleasant and hellish plantations, we can detect Stowes rhetorical methods. First she deflates the defense of the pro-slavery reader by showing the evil of the best kind of slavery. She then presents her own case against slavery by showing the shocking wickedness of slavery at its worst. The Incompatibility of Slavery & Christian Values Writing for a predominantly religious, predominantly Protestant audience, Stowe takes great pains to illustrate the fact that the system of slavery and the moral code of Christianity oppose each other. No Christian, she insists,

should be able to tolerate slavery. Throughout the novel, the more religious a character is, the more he or she objects to slavery. Eva, the most morally perfect white character in the novel, fails to understand why anyone would see a difference between blacks and whites. In contrast, the morally revolting, nonreligious Legree practices slavery almost as a policy of deliberate blasphemy and evil. Christianity, in Stowes novel, rests on a principle of universal love. If all people were to put this principle into practice, Stowe insists, it would be impossible for one segment of humanity to oppress and enslave another. Thus, not only are Christianity and slavery incompatible, but Christianity can actually be used to fight slavery. The slave hunter Tom Loker learns this lesson after his life is spared by the slaves he tried to capture, and after being healed by the generous-hearted and deeply religious Quakers. He becomes a changed man. Moreover, Uncle Tom ultimately triumphs over slavery in his adherence to Christs command to love thine enemy. He refuses to compromise his Christian faith in the face of the many trials he undergoes at Legrees plantation. When he is beaten to death by Legree and his men, he dies forgiving them. In this way, Tom becomes a Christian martyr, a model for the behavior of both whites and blacks. The story of his life both exposes the evil of slaveryits incompatibility with Christian virtueand points the way to its transformation through Christian love. The Moral Power of Women Although Stowe wrote Uncle Toms Cabin before the widespread growth of the womens rights movement of the late 1800s, the reader can nevertheless regard the book as a specimen of early feminism. The text portrays women as morally conscientious, committed, and courageousindeed, often as more morally conscientious, committed, and courageous than men. Stowe implies a parallel between the oppression of blacks and the oppression of women, yet she expresses hope for the oppressed in her presentation of women as effectively influencing their husbands. Moreover, she shows how this show of strength by one oppressed group can help to alleviate the oppression of the other. White women can use their influence to convince their husbandsthe people with voting rightsof the evil of slavery. Throughout the novel, the reader sees many examples of idealized womanhood, of perfect mothers and wives who attempt to find salvation for their morally inferior husbands or sons. Examples include Mrs. Bird, St. Clares mother, Legrees mother, and, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Shelby. The text also portrays black women in a very positive light. Black women generally prove strong, brave, and capable, as seen especially in the character of Eliza. In the cases where women do not act morallysuch as Prue in her drunkenness or Cassy with her infanticide, the womens sins are presented as illustrating slaverys evil influence rather than the womens own immorality. Not all women appear as bolsters to the books moral code: Marie acts petty and mean, and Ophelia begins the novel with many prejudices. Nonetheless, the book seems to argue the existence of a natural female sense of good and evil, pointing to an inherent moral wisdom in the gender as a whole and encouraging the use of this wisdom as a force for social change.

Flowers for Algernon

Daniel Keyes Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded thirty-two-year-old man, is chosen by a team of scientists to undergo an experimental surgery designed to boost his intelligence. Alice Kinnian, Charlies teacher at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults, has recommended Charlie for the experiment because of his exceptional eagerness to learn. The directors of the experiment, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, ask Charlie to keep a journal. The entire narrative of Flowers for Algernon is composed of the progress reports that Charlie writes. Charlie works at Donners Bakery in New York City as a janitor and delivery boy. The other employees often taunt him and pick on him, but Charlie is unable to understand that he is the subject of mockery. He believes that his coworkers are good friends. After a battery of testsincluding a maze-solving competition with a mouse named Algernon, who has already had the experimental surgery performed on himCharlie undergoes the operation. He is initially disappointed that there is no immediate change in his intellect, but with work and help from Alice, he gradually improves his spelling and grammar. Charlie begins to read adult books, slowly at first, then voraciously, filling his brain with knowledge from many academic fields. He shocks the workers at the bakery by inventing a process designed to improve productivity. Charlie also begins to recover lost memories of his childhood, most of which involve his mother, Rose, who resented and often brutally punished Charlie for not being normal like other children.

As Charlie becomes more intelligent, he realizes that he is deeply attracted to Alice. She insists on keeping their relationship professional, but it is obvious that she shares Charlies attraction. When Charlie discovers that one of the bakery employees is stealing from Mr. Donner, he is uncertain what to do until Alice tells him to trust his heart. Delighted by the realization that he is capable of solving moral dilemmas on his own, Charlie confronts the worker and forces him to stop cheating Donner. Not long afterward, Charlie is let go from the bakery because the other workers are disturbed by the sudden change in him, and because Donner can see that Charlie no longer needs his charity. Charlie grows closer to Alice, though whenever the mood becomes too intimate, he experiences a sensation of panic and feels as if his old disabled self is watching him. Charlie recovers memories of his mother beating him for the slightest sexual impulses, and he realizes that this past trauma is likely responsible for his inability to make love to Alice. Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur take Charlie and Algernon to a scientific convention in Chicago, where they are the star exhibits. Charlie has become frustrated by Nemurs refusal to recognize his humanity. He feels that Nemur treats him like just another lab animal, even though it is disturbingly clear that Charlies scientific knowledge has advanced beyond Nemurs. Charlie wreaks havoc at the convention by freeing Algernon from his cage while they are onstage. Charlie flees back to New York with Algernon and gets his own apartment, where the scientists cannot find him. He realizes that Nemurs hypothesis contains an error and that there is a possibility that his intelligence gain will only be temporary. Charlie meets his neighbor, an attractive, free-spirited artist named Fay Lillman. Charlie does not tell Fay about his past, and he is able to consummate a sexual relationship with her. The foundation that has funded the experiment gives Charlie dispensation to do his own research, so he returns to the lab. However, his commitment to his work begins to consume him, and he drifts away from Fay. Algernons intelligence begins to slip, and his behavior becomes erratic. Charlie worries that whatever happens to Algernon will soon happen to him as well. Algernon eventually dies. Fearing a regression to his previous level of intelligence, Charlie visits his mother and sister in order to try to come to terms with his past. He finds the experience moving, thrilling, and devastating. Charlies mother, now a demented old woman, expresses pride in his accomplishments, and his sister is overjoyed to see him. However, Rose suddenly slips into a delusional flashback and attacks Charlie with a butcher knife. He leaves sobbing, but he feels that he has finally overcome his painful background and become a fully developed individual. Charlie succeeds in finding the error in Nemurs hypothesis, scientifically proving that a flaw in the operation will cause his intelligence to vanish as quickly as it has come. Charlie calls this phenomenon the Algernon-Gordon Effect. As he passes through a stage of average intelligence on his way back to retardation, Charlie enjoys a brief, passionate relationship with Alice, but he sends her away as he senses the return of his old self. When Charlies regression is complete, he briefly returns to his old job at the bakery, where his coworkers welcome him back with kindness. Charlie forgets that he is no longer enrolled in Alices night-school class for retarded adults, and he upsets her by showing up. In fact, Charlie has forgotten their entire romantic relationship. Having decided to remove himself from the people who have known him and now feel sorry for him, he checks himself into a home for disabled adults. His last request is for the reader of his manuscript to leave fresh flowers on Algernons grave. Charlie Gordon Charlie is the narrator and the main character of the novel, and his miraculous transformation from mental disability to genius sets the stage for Keyes to address a number of broad themes and issues. Charlies lack of intelligence has made him a trusting and friendly man, as he assumes that the people in his lifemost notably, his coworkers at Donners Bakeryare as well intentioned as he is. As his intelligence grows, however, Charlie gains perspective on his past and present. He realizes that people have often taken advantage of him and have been cruel to him for sport, knowing that he would not understand. Likewise, he realizes that when people have been kind to him, it usually has been out of condescension or out of an awareness that he is inferior. These realizations cause Charlie to grow suspicious of nearly everyone around him. Interestingly, the experimental operation elevates Charlies intelligence to such an extent that his new genius distances him from people as much as his disability does. Charlie eventually convinces himself that he has lost feeling even for Alice Kinnian, the one person whom he feels has never betrayed him and the only one for whom he has maintained a deep affection throughout his life.

Feeling isolated from humanity, Charlie pursues a course of self-education and struggles to untangle his emotional life. He comes to feel that his mind contains two people: the new, genius Charlie, who wants to reach emotional maturity, and the older, disabled Charlie, whose actions are largely informed by the fear and shame his mother, Rose, instilled in him. To reach his goal, the new Charlie must come to grips with the traumas the old Charlie experienced. Although Charlie resents the mistreatment he endured while disabled, he harbors hostility toward his old self and, ironically, feels the same lack of respect for his intellectual inferiors that many others used to feel for him. It is only in the final weeks of Charlies heightened intelligence, before he reverts to his previous mental retardation, that he learns to forgive his family and give and receive love. Charlies brief moment of emotional grace comes in the form of the fulfilling but fleeting romantic affair he has with Alice. Finally, though Charlie lapses back to his original state at the end of the novel, a newfound sense of self-worth remains within him, despite the fact that he has lost his short-lived intelligence. Alice Kinnian Alice Kinnian is the one person with whom Charlie comes to experience a truly fulfilling personal relationship. It is fitting that throughout the novel Alice represents the human warmth and kindness that persist in the face of the intellectual and scientific focus of many of the other characters. Alice teaches literacy skills to mentally retarded adults because she cares about and enjoys working with her students; she does not believe that their disabilities make them lesser human beings. She takes genuine satisfaction in helping people and recommends Charlie for Nemur and Strausss experiment because she admires Charlies desire to learn. Charlie appreciates Alices concern for his well-being; she is a constant presence in his earliest progress reports, even though she is not a member of the scientific team that is examining him. In Alices concern and affection lie the seeds of her eventual romantic love for Charlie. Though she is often deeply confused throughout their relationship, uncertain of what is and is not appropriate in their unique situation, Alice displays unwavering care for Charlie as his IQ boomerangs up and back down again. Her ability to accept Charlie as a person of any level of intelligence sets Alice apart from the other characters in the novel, who consistently judge Charlie only on his intellect. Though she is driven by emotion, Alice is not at all anti-intellectual; on the contrary, she is fascinated by academia and high culture. Though intellect and emotion seem to be opposed throughout the novel, Alices intellectual leanings demonstrate that one need not sacrifice his or her ability to love in order to enjoy a life of the mind. Professor Nemur If Alice represents the possibility of an emotionally healthy adulthood, Nemur represents the opposite. He is a man of great intellect but little ability to relate to others. Unlike his partner, Dr. Strauss, Nemur is never interested in Charlies human emotions; he cares only about Charlies quantifiable progress as an experimental subject. Professor Nemur thinks of Charlie just as he thinks of Algernonas a laboratory animal. Pressured by a domineering wife, Nemur is desperate to advance his career and longs for his peers to regard him as brilliant. Nemur cannot stand to be shown up by anyonenot by Strauss, and certainly not by Charlie. He is deeply perturbed when Charlie surpasses him intellectually and takes command of the experiment. Though Charlie resents Nemur for most of the novel, we see after the operation that Charlie himself is potentially at risk of becoming cold and loveless like Nemur. Rose Gordon Obsessed by an imaginary ideal of normalcy, Rose initially responded to Charlies mental disability with denial. She insisted that her son was normal, and she developed a delusional theory that he was brilliant but was cursed by jealous neighborhood mothers. Her refusal to accept her sons disability was demonstrated by her decision to name Charlies younger sister Norma because it sounds like normal. After Normas birth, Rose turned her full attention to Normas success and tried to ignore Charlie altogether. Signs of Charlies progression toward adulthood, especially his manifestations of sexuality, infuriated Rose. She demanded that Charlie be removed from her home. By denying his existence, she also denied what she perceived to be her failure as a mother. When Charlie, now brilliant after his operation, visits an aged Rose near the end of the novel, her capacity for denial has grown into full-fledged dementia. She switches back and forth from recognizing Charlie to thinking he is a stranger, and back and forth from pride at his recent accomplishments to an irrational fear that he has come back to molest Norma. In her old age, Rose has been driven entirely mad by her overwhelming yet doomed desire to be what she perceives as normal.

Mistreatment of the Mentally Disabled The fictional idea of artificially augmenting or diminishing intelligence enables Keyes to offer a telling portrayal of societys mistreatment of the mentally disabled. As Charlie grows more intelligent after his operation, effectively transforming from a mentally retarded man to a genius, he realizes that people have always based their attitudes toward him on feelings of superiority. For the most part, other people have treated Charlie not only as an intellectual inferior but also as less of a human being than they are. While some, like his coworkers at the bakery, have treated him with outright cruelty, others have tried to be kind but ultimately have been condescending in their charity. After his operation, Charlie himself drifts into a condescending and disrespectful attitude toward the disabled to a certain extent. Charlie consciously wants to treat his new intellectual inferiors as he wishes others had treated him. When he sees patrons at a diner laughing at a mentally retarded busboy, he demands that the patrons recognize the boys humanity. However, when Charlie visits the Warren State Home, he is horrified by the dim faces of the disabled people he meets, and he is unable to muster any warmth toward them. Charlie fears the patients at Warren State because he does not want to accept that he was once like them and may soon be like them again. We may even interpret Charlies reaction as his own embodiment of the same fear of abnormality that has driven his mother to madness. Thus, while Keyes condemns the act of mistreating the mentally disabled, he also displays an understanding of why this mistreatment occurs, enabling his readers to see through the eyes of someone who has experienced such ridicule firsthand. Charlie struggles with a tendency toward the same prejudice and condescension he has seen in other people. However, Charlies dual perspective allows him to understand that he is as human as anyone else, regardless of his level of intelligence. The Tension between Intellect and Emotion The fact that Charlies mental retardation affects both his intellectual and emotional development illustrates the difficultybut not the impossibilityof developing both aspects simultaneously and without conflict. Charlie is initially warmhearted and trusting, but as his intelligence increases he grows cold, arrogant, and disagreeable. The more he understands about the world, the more he recoils from human contact. At his loneliest point, in Progress Report 12, Charlie shockingly decides that his genius has effectively erased his love for Alice. Professor Nemur and Fay indicate the incompatibility of intellect and emotion. Nemur is brilliant but humorless and friendless. Conversely, Fay acts foolishly and illogically because she is ruled entirely by her feelings. It is only with Alices encouragement that Charlie finally realizes he does not have to choose between his brain and his heart, the extremes represented by Nemur and Fay. Charlie learns to integrate intellect and emotion, finding emotional pleasure in both his intellectual work and his relationships. It is in this phase that he finds true fulfillment with Alice. The Persistence of the Past in the Present Charlies recovery of his childhood memories after his operation illustrates how significantly his past is embedded in his understanding of the present. Charlies past resurfaces at key points in his present experience, taking the form of the old Charlie, whom the new Charlie perceives as a separate entity that exists outside of himself. In a sense, the past, as represented by the old Charlie, literally keeps watch over the present. When Charlie longs to make love to Alice, the old Charlie panics and distracts hima sign that the shame Rose instilled in Charlie is still powerful, even if he cannot remember the origin of this shame. Charlie cannot move forward with his emotional life until he understands and deals with the traumas of childhood. Similar ties to the past control Charlies mother. When Charlie returns to see Rose, she still harbors her old resentment over Charlies lack of normalcyeven after his intelligence levels have increased dramatically. Roses attempt to attack Charlie with a knife illustrates that for her, just as for Charlie, the past interferes with her actions and concerns in the present. Rose cannot separate her memories of the retarded Charlie from the genius Charlie who comes to visit her in the flesh. The harrowing turn of events at this meeting is a tragic reminder of the pasts pervasive influence on the present.

All summer in a Day

Ray Bradbury The story is about a class of school children on Venus, which in this tale is a jungle world of constant torrential rainstorms, where the sun is only visible for two hours every seven years. Such an occurrence is imminent.

One of the children, Margot, had moved to Venus from Earth five years before the story takes place, and she is the only one in her class to remember sunshine. She has become frail and miserable on Venus, and almost has a nervous breakdown from the anxiety of living with the relentless rain. "[Once], a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head." Margot writes a poem about the sun: "I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour." Margot describes the sun as "a penny", or "like a fire in the stove". The other children refuse to believe her, claiming that she's lying and she doesn't remember. In her misery, Margot will not play with the other children, and they bully her for her separateness and refuse to believe her memories of the sun. As the sun's predicted appearance draws near, while the teacher is out of the classroom, William, the student who most often torments Margot for being a quiet outcast, convinces the other children to lock Margot in the closet. They ignore her cries and pleas; her beating against the closet door begging to be let out. As the sun is about to appear, the teacher arrives to take the class outside to enjoy their two hours of sunshine. In their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot. They run and play, skip jump and prance about, savoring every second of their newly found freedom. All at once, a girl feels a raindrop in her hand, and with the sad realization that the rain is returning, all the children start to cry. Thunder sounds, and the children run back inside. Suddenly, one of the children remembers Margot, still locked in the closet. They stand frozen with shame for what they have done, unable to "meet each other's glances." The precious sun has come and gone, leaving Margot still pale in gloom and darkness, not having seen the sun. The children walk slowly towards the closet, now silent, and let Margot out.

The veldt

Ray Bradbury A family has just bought a house with the latest technology. It is called the Happylife Home and its installation cost $30,000. The house is filled with machines that do everything for them from cooking meals, to clothing them, to rocking them to sleep. The two children, Peter and Wendy, become fascinated with the "nursery," a virtual reality room that is able to connect with the children telepathically to reproduce any place they imagine. The parents, George and Lydia, soon realize that there is something wrong with their way of life. The emptiness of life in the "Happylife Home" has caused George to take up smoking and drinking, while the children have become spoiled and are ruling the roost. George and Lydia are also perplexed that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with lions in the distance, eating the dead carcass of what they assume to be an animal. There they also find recreations of their personal belongings. Wondering why their children are so concerned with this scene of death, they decide to call a psychologist. The psychologist, David McClean, suggests they turn off the house and leave. The children, completely addicted to the nursery, beg their parents to let them have one last visit. The parents relent, and agree to let them spend a few more minutes there. When they come to the nursery to fetch the children, the children lock them in from the outside. George and Lydia look on as the lions begin to advance towards them. At that point, they realize that what the lions were eating in the distance was not an animal, but their own simulated remains. The story then jumps forward in time to a scene with Peter and Wendy having a picnic in the African scene, with the parents absent. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Robert frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. meaning: The literal meaning of this poem by Robert Frost is pretty obvious. A traveler comes to a fork in the road and needs to decide which way to go to continue his journey. After much mental debate, the traveler picks the road "less traveled by." The figurative meaning is not too hidden either. The poem describes the tuogh choices people stand for when traveling the road of life. The words "sorry" and "sigh" make the tone of poem somewhat gloomy. The traveler regrets leaves the possibilities of the road not chosen behind. He realizes he probably won't pass this way again.

Fire and Ice Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

Walt Disney: Today Disney rakes in billions from merchandise, movies and theme parks around the world, but Walt Disney himself had a bit of a rough start. He was fired by a newspaper editor because, "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." After that, Disney started a number of businesses that didn't last too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure. He kept plugging along, however, and eventually found a recipe for success that worked. Albert Einstein: Most of us take Einstein's name as synonymous with genius, but he didn't always show such promise. Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. It might have taken him a bit longer, but most people would agree that he caught on pretty well in the end, winning the Nobel Prize and changing the face of modern physics. Winston Churchill: This Nobel Prize-winning, twice-elected Prime Minster of the United Kingdom wasn't always as well regarded as he is today. Churchill struggled in school and failed the sixth grade. After school he faced many years of political failures, as he was defeated in every election for public office until he finally became the Prime Minister at the ripe old age of 62. Vincent Van Gogh: During his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting, and this was to a friend and only for a very small amount of money. While Van Gogh was never a success during his life, he plugged on with painting, sometimes starving to complete his over 800 known works. Today, they bring in hundreds of millions.

Ludwig van Beethoven: In his formative years, young Beethoven was incredibly awkward on the violin and was often so busy working on his own compositions that he neglected to practice. Despite his love of composing, his teachers felt he was hopeless at it and would never succeed with the violin or in composing. Beethoven kept plugging along, however, and composed some of the best-loved symphonies of all timefive of them while he was completely deaf.

Inspiring career stories of famous people for students

Some of us think that one is lucky if one is born in a business family so that after graduating one can straightaway take over the family business. That is not always the case as the following examples show:-: One of the most interesting vocation stories are with respect to Henri Ford. Fords father was a farmer who wanted his son to follow him in his own footsteps. However young Hernris heart was with the motor engine and similar things with which he tinkered. After furious arguments with his father, he left to chart his own course to create history by becoming one of the worlds richest entrepreneurs. The lesson to learn here is that one has to see where ones spontaneous inclination lies and then have the courage and conviction to back is up. Much later in life, Henri Ford brought into ford a person who could concentrate on all other areas except for manufacturing which was Henris forte. Henri ford was regarded as a business genius in his time. This shows that even geniuses have to indulge in complimentary synergies- supplement their own strength and complement their weaknesses. The other example is that of Akio Morita who became Sonys Chairman. Though he did not have any arguments with his father, being the eldest in the family, he was expected to take over the family business of brewing sake, a Japensese drink. However, Moritas interest lay in electronics which is where he went. He created one of the worlds biggest companies in partnership with another person. In one of Dale Carnegies books there is the example of one person whose father has a laundry business. His father was ashamed of his son because he had no interest in work and was lazy and indifferent. However the son wanted to become a mechanic and used to do that work endlessly. He pursued his heart and went on to become chairman of Boeing. Thomas Edison had no fathers business but he used to work 18 hours a day and yet say that he didnt work in his life as it was all fun. The best example in recent times is the richest man in the world, Mr Bill Gates who left his Harvard studies midway to follow his heart and that is what made him the richest man in the world. This would obviously not happen with everyone but what one has to learn is to know exactly what one wants to do. Sometime back, Bill Gates made Steve Ballamer CEO and designated himself chief software Architect to focus on his real love, software design. This is similar to what Henri ford did. Another example is Michael Dell who had a passion for selling computers and competing with IBM which led to the formation of Dell corporation while he was only 19. It would not be out of place to mention an Indian story. Alyque Padamsee, the former chairman of Lintas has written a book called The double life. In that he describes how he used to do advertisements for money which used to fund his real passion which was theatre. He had to sacrifice a lot of social life for this double life but this story clearly shows that one has to follow ones heart more than ones head for the choice of ones career. It can be concluded that passion alone determines what one should or should not be doing because it enables one to overcome all obstacles.