The theme of revenge frozen the blood of every person. But only writers in their literary works can present all experiences of the soul of this human vice. A famous English dramatist Thomas Kyd wrote his well-known psychological masterpiece The Spanish Tragedy. By this work of literature, he tried to report all the heart of this insidious feeling and to disclose the whole many-sided nature of it. The history of the writing of this literary masterpiece dated back to the times of Ancient Rome. Seneca was the forefather of this scenery. He wrote many plays concerning the murders and revenge full of bloody payback. In its time The Spanish Tragedy was a ground for a new genre and was a stimulus for the quick development of such new branches in theatres as Elizabethan drama. The main trait of this play is a well-used device of literature – one play in the frame of the other play. The plot of the play presents several cruel and horrible murders. The main theme of it is the painful hesitations of the protagonist in conducting his revenge. It is easy to venture for such action, but it is hard to live with this burden in heart and mind. This theme is presented through the various aspects of the plot. The only difference is the attitudes to justification. The first case can be viewed at the beginning of the play when the Ghost of Andrea desires to revenge for the murder of his master on the Prince of Portugal Balthazar, who killed Andrea in the battle against the Portuguese. But the Ghost can do nothing as it is just the ghost. Bel-Imperia is one more character who longs for revenge. She wants the death of Balthazar, as he killed her beloved Andrea. Bel-Imperia tries to get to her victim with the help of Horatio, but Horazio is also murdered by Balthazar, so Bel-Imperia has two grounds for revenge. Balthazar in his turn also has a certain ground for revenge. He has a burning desire to revenge on Horatio, who defeated and took him, prisoner, in battle. Because of this fact Spain gained victory and made Portugal pay tribute. All the actions in the whole play are built on a serious theme, but only the reader knows the truth. Nobody among the characters does have the whole presentation of the situation. Here the reader can observe such interesting literary devices as dramatic irony.
The main characters of The Spanish Tragedy are Revenge ( personified abstraction), Ghost of Andrea (Spanish courtier), Hieronimo, Horatio, Lorenzo (son of the Duke), Bel-Imperia (widow of Andrea and sister of Lorenzo), Balthazar (Prince of Portugal, the object of revenge, as he is Andrea’s killer).
The famous masterpiece begins with the scene when Andrea tells about his life as a famous Spanish noble, his relationships with Bel-Imperia full of love, tenderness, and happiness, his descent into the Other World, returns to the Living World with Revenge. Balthazar wants to win the heart of Bel-Imperia, who became a widow after Andrea’s death. But she refuses to marry the murderer of her husband and gives her heart to Horatio. Balthazar with the help of Lorenzo kills Horatio.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Review
“Where are you going, where have you been?” is a beautiful story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The author takes the archetypal theme of seduction and then presents it in the way he finds it today, particularly in America. The way she depicts the emotions of a 15 year old American girl, who is trapped between the demands of her body and her confused mind, is marvelous. The story can be read and studied in different ways. It has also attracted several literary interpretations from different angles. Though the story is mainly about a girl, Connie, undergoing sexual tensions, it is also a reflection of the decaying American culture, and its declining morality. The readers get a feeling of the American experience directly from the story. This paper takes a critical look at the story with a particular attention to the way it ends. What really happens to Connie is the focus of this paper. In other words, this paper is about the increasing awareness of the horrors of human existence and the awful inequalities of gender, power, and violence that teenagers experience in American society today, as they mature in their life.
In a way, what happens at the end is not really important, because Connie, after a long dramatic tension in her life, has already changed her mind. “Changed” may not be the appropriate word here, as she had already set her mind to go with a boy, to go away from the influence of her parents in her life. Therefore, both realism and surrealism have equal share in the story. As expressed by Greg Johnson, “the stories move from what might be called realism to surrealism; there’s a bending of perceived reality toward the meaningful distortion of the unconscious” (Johnson).
What forced her to think in a risky line can be attributed to the moral impoverishment in the family. She has already experienced that her mother is not very affectionate. And her father is very indifferent. He is never present in the family. Her sister has her own ways and has been successful in getting their mother’s love and admiration. Only Connie is disliked in the family. Therefore, she has been turning her mind out elsewhere for a substitute, a boy who can love her. This yearning for a mate is nurtured by the physical demands of her maturing body. If looked at it from the Freudian angle, the story is about the libidinal force acting on an innocent teenage mind. As Mitchell points out, “In the end, Oates makes it clear that Connie, in capitulating to Friend, is not simply surrendering her virginal innocence, but bowing to absolute forces which her youthful coquetry cannot direct:
- absolute forces over which she has no control” (Olesen). It is a powerful warning coming from the author to all ignorant or careless parents, particularly to the mothers. The sex cannot be suppressed under any pretext.
It is at this stage in her life that the father of Connie’s friend drives Connie out along with the other girls to a drive – in restaurant, “where older kids hung out” (Oates). The description of the social habits of this place and the initial responses Connie makes here at the site of a young boy are superb. Her sexual emotions reverberate throughout the story, backed by a popular music in the background. The imagery of music used in the story is central to the very rhythm of the story. “It is music
- nstead of an apple which lures Connie, quickens her heartbeat; and popular lyrics which constitute Friend’s conversation and cadence”, says Marie Mitchell (Olesen). As Oates says, Connie has two selves, one for her use at home and the other to exhibit while away from home: “She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home” (Oates). The story, therefore, can be seen as Connie’s existential dilemma. It is at its height when she refuses to go with her family for the holiday picnic. It is precisely at this juncture the seducer in the name of Arnold Friend steps in. Connie’s role in choosing her own destiny can be seen when she rejects the established convention of moving under the protection of her mother. It is against the middle class norms as Linda puts it: “her whole struggle for autonomy has been against the middle-class values of her family (Linda). The tempter is always on the look out of such lonely Eves moving unprotected. Arnold finally gets the right girl he has been looking for. The climax in the story is when Connie wavers in her mind, to go or not go with Arnold. It is the twentieth century American dilemma, but it is also a universal dilemma which every girl confronts in her life. What hold her back are the traditional cultural restrictions, the values imposed on sex in her society, and what she is going to crush is her own secured life. The title of the story thus becomes very relevant here: “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been”.
Connie’s wavering conscience is the conscience of her race. Oates depicts in her story the actual social conditions found existing in her society. With her powerful narrative style she reminds the readers of the horror similar to the ones seen in old gothic stories. The effect of it on the readers is quite chilling. As Connie confronts Arnold, the readers understand that he has taken the absolute control of the situation. Like a Don Juan, he exploits the desire for sexual experience lying buried in a young girl: “I’ll tell you how it is; I’m always nice at first, the first time. I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t’ (Oates). These words with their phallic-like penetration tempt her. He reads her mind and continues: “And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me. Her heart was almost too big now for her chest and its pumping made sweat break out all over her” (Oates). It is a great realist portrayal of a delicate moment in a girl’s life coming from a female writer.
Arnold is portrayed with all the horrors of a devil. He is shown as an American devil. This enables Connie to earn sympathy, in spite of her loose moral character. Arnold tempts her with such a supernatural power that no girl of her age and sexual desire can escape from him. Most of the young female readers would have surrendered to him much before. He begins his seduction by appealing to Connie’s heart, but as it reaches its crucial point, his appeal goes directly to her womb. His approach is “that of the sexual psychopath who uses his knowledge of a person’s weaknesses to bring his victims to him” (Rena). The seduction finally ends up as a kind of conflict between Connie’s body and mind. The flesh wins at last. The ongoing tension in Connie is shown, according to Stephen Slimp, through the metaphor of breathing, a word repeated several times in the novel. “She has shown herself to be a fully breathing human being, one who has, in a moment, developed the spiritual life lacking in her former existence”, says Slimp (Stephen). Connie’s tension is a representation of a situation from which few American girls can escape.
Thus story is about the art of seducing an innocent female. Not only in the American context, but also in the universal context, it is realistic and mythical too. A very young girl, as her body develops into womanhood, is on the look out for her sexual mate without realizing that she is going to submit herself “to phallocentric culture, experiencing self-loss in the form of alienation, madness, and probable rape” (Wesley). Oates also depicts Connie as an American Cinderella. She has learned from others, particularly her mother, that a girl should have good looks in order to be attractive. She also learns that a girl is a sexual object, and she should appear in the best possible way. Therefore, she moves out exhibiting herself, to be picked by the best man. Connie is too immature to realize that in such circumstances only the devil will pick her up and that she should have stayed under her mother’s protection till the right man enters her life. She has not been trained to safely enter her life. It is the true reality of the girls in America, Oates realizes. The painful consequence of parental neglect and the consequences of “romantic delusions in her search for a “sweet, gentle love” (Rena) is the essence of the story.
The delay to say yes to Arnold is mostly caused by her fear, the fear emerging from her inner world about the honesty of the person tempting her. There is also the presence of another man as a witness which works against her female instinct. One version is that Connie is finally raped and murdered: “fifteen-year-old Connie, a “typical” American girl, who is seduced into what we assume will be her rape and murder” (Rena). The readers realize at the end that she would have opened her body to some Arnold as she had already kept the door of her mind wide open. This is the typical American situation, the horrible situation of an American female.
Does Connie go with Arnold or not is the obvious question lurking in the minds of the readers as they come to the end of the story. It is insignificant whether she goes or not. It is the drama which goes on in her mind that is important here. Could she have resisted more than she did is the central point for consideration in this paper. An answer to this lies in how one understands the power of Arnold’s temptation. Arnold says that “I took a special interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all about you” (Oates). In fact he has discovered all about her and it is an ample proof to support his desire to possess her. Moreover, his words and actions match Connie’s subconscious desire to go with him. Oates writes that “His smile assured her that everything was fine”. The words, “assured” and “fine”, here are particularly important. Arnold knows the most penetrating words a girl would like to hear. Therefore, he adds: “I’ll show you what love is like, what it does” (Oates). These persistent arrows in the form of words coming from Arnold have made her helpless, made her almost numb, physically and mentally.
What happens next is only anybody’s guess, the readers’ guess. The truth is that Connie’s conscious self has already left her. She is now floating, gripped by the fear and the seductive power of Arnold. “She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited”, narrates the author (Oates). Which self of Connie is watching “the door slowly open” is a million dollar question. If it is her triumphant self, it is the new American girl revolting against her parents. There is no need, then, for Connie to resist. If it is the seduced Connie, then it marks the fall of her self. Hence, the question whether Connie could have resisted is absurd.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a touching story. Connie becomes helpless to overcome the force of sex in order to preserve her identity in her society. The power of temptation is beyond the restrictions a teen aged girl can carry in her mind is the message emerging from the story. It is superbly handled by the author in the story. As Timothy says: “We certainly need writers who can show us the dark side and the many ways we cheat ourselves and others” (Schilling). That Connie could not have resisted anymore she could is a reality which Oates beautifully depicted in her story.
References
Greg Johnson. Interview with Carol. Michigan Quarterly Review. Ann Arbor: 2006.Vol. 45, Iss. 2; pg. 387, 15 pgs.Web.
Korb, Rena. “An overview of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Web.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Web.
Schilling, Timothy P. “The shape of our despair: the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates”. Commonweal, Commonweal Foundation, New York, 132:13, 2005], p.21-23.
Slimp, Stephen. “Oates’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Web.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?: Overview”. Web.
Urbanski, Marie Mitchell Olesen. “Existential Allegory: Joyce Carol Oates Where AreYou Going, Where Have You Been?” Web.
Wesley, Marilyn C. “Reverence, rape, resistance: Joyce Carol Oates and feminist film theory”,
Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature ,Univ. of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 32:3, 1999, p.75-85.
“Great Expectations” By Charles Dickens
The novel Great Expectations written by Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the most significant and sophisticated works of world literature. The style of the novel is predominantly semi-autobiographical while the author managed to reflect his personal experience and expectations concerning time and people he met. The analysis of the novel allows the readers to evaluate historical and sociological changes in the perspective of time; Great Expectations highlighted the interactions of such basic human concepts as mobility, gratitude and social sufferings.
The novel belongs to the complex in structure stories. It is difficult to cover in two words the particular theme or human aspect of the novel because it is devoted to family, love and rejection. Pip, the protagonist of the story, is a contradictory character being in search of pure feelings and social harmony. Dickens tried to illustrate lots of life sadness suffered by a boy during the long period. The character embodied in himself an inner fight for love and personal expectations. The story shows how snobbism can change people’s behavior and relations with close people. Pip’s great expectations and life in London society played a crucial role leading to the character’s growth through suffering and misfortune to maturity.
The novel Great Expectations is regarded to be rather dramatic. The author managed to demonstrate advanced language clearly planting setting insight and disclosing historical aspects of the story. Logically the novel can be divided into three various phases of life expectations of the protagonist following the formation of a real man out of a weak inexperienced boy. The author showed how Pip was completely satisfied with his life at the first stage of his expectations. Nevertheless moral standards of the character are changed with an evaluation of new norms of London society. The handsome property becomes an integral part of the character’s hopes and expectations at the beginning of his life. (Meckier, 2005).
Dickens tried to underline the fact how people’s behavior and attitude to life can be transformed within new social and cultural values. The protagonist of the novel being surrounded by new standards and cultured and educated people tends to experience considerable changes in his personal social needs. The author managed to show the nature of true friendship and human relationships on the example of the characters’ behavior.
“I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.” (Dickens, 21).
The novel is considered to be the gradual formation of the human sociological adaptation. Thus, Dickens underlined the change of Pip’s perception and vision of his former friends through the character’s educational level received in England. It is important to stress that the second stage of Pip’s expectations is closely connected with the process of culturing and education being an integral part of every person. Unlearned ways demonstrated by Pip’s friends showed how the world had changed for him living in the new society. This period moves slowly into the third phase of Pip’s great expectations which are connected with realities every person should deal with. So, Dickens highlights physical, moral and financial challenges faced by the character being the part of upper class’ artificial world.
“We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance was in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did.” (Dickens, 225).
The novel discloses the process of startling truth learning which leads to the realization of global life difficulties. Pip gets to know his failure in regaining the principal life issues resulting in the deep moral frustrations of the protagonist. The author managed to show that the final considerations of the character were connected with the Love of all his life…
“…suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be” (Dickens, 440).
It is one of the provided endings of the novel. Nevertheless it caused contradictions among the critics connected with the fact that a happy ending would have been more appropriate for the novel, though the original one offered the natural feelings of the characters and the depth of mutual relationships. (Meckier, 2005).
So, it is important to underline the fact that the author managed to demonstrate the process of social formation within the character. The basic themes of the story connected with class discrimination, cultural values and social advancement appeared to be the principal parts of human inner development. The complexity of the novel was shown through the psychological mechanism of gradual great expectations formation influencing the character’s destiny and relationships with close people, to be more exact the perception of people being a friend in the past. The author tried to demonstrate the transformation of basic values within one person under the pressure of culturing and class domination.
References
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Janice Carlisle. Boston: Bedford, St. Martins, 1996.
Meckler, Jerome. Dating the Action in Great Expectations: A New Chronology. 2005.