A recent theme in some of the stories being read is hope. Now, what's the difference between "The Brownie of Black Haggs" and the hope portrayed in that story, as compared to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? In "The Brownie of Black Haggs", hope is portrayed in three different ways. One is the colley that will never hunt again, for fear of the gun; that is completely against it's nature, and so maybe there is some hope for humanity. On the mirror side, the hound that chases the fox almost to the point of death, til it cannot physically chase it's enemy anymore; chasing the enemy is natural, but it is supernatural to chase the fox to the point of near death, and so maybe humanity will follow this route. But some of humanity is expressed through Mrs. Wheelhope, who, literally, has no hope of survival. Her supernatural obession destroyed her relationships with everyone she knew, and, in the end, it took her life.
Compare "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". In that story, it is, at points in the Mariner's story, hopeless. And yet...something happens, and hope is restored. Maybe it is an act of God. Maybe it's the fact that when things go wrong, such as the death of the Albatross, the Mariner is shamed and guilty, and is either punished or punishes himself, laying down his pride and anger and grief. Or maybe it's sheer dumb luck. But if you mirror the actions of the Mariner to humanity, we may destroy something unintentionally, but if we lay down our pride, and apologize and do what we can to fix the mistake(s) we made, perhaps salvation and hope will again rise up with us.
I agree that in the poem "the Brownie of Black Haggs" hope is portrayed in many different ways. I believe that the poem repeats this theme in order to drive its point home. This forces us to look deeper past the despair the characters experience. It shows us the behavior of Lady Wheelhope, her husband, the collie and the hound. Lady Wheelhope's behavior remains unchanged in that she becomes more and more obsessed spiraling in to despair, while her husband, the collie and the hound have a different experience. We see in their initial behavior that they are content behaving the way they do. Until they get a shock that shakes them so deeply to the core that their eyes are opened to something else. It gives us hope and shows us that even certain behavior that is so ingrained within our being that we see no change ahead, that just maybe it could change if we try hard enough and never give up, because "In all things it is better to hope than to despair" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ReplyDeleteQuite interesting that this quote is from Goethe's play _Torquato Tasso_, whose main character (the poet Tasso) slowly moves from melancholy and introspection to paranoia and madness--but the play's larger theme (like that of Goethe's famous novel, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_) is the conflict between emotions and social order, desire and propriety. Tasso loves a Princess that he cannot have, and like Werther, he is finally driven to despair. Unlike Werther, Goethe's Tasso doesn't commit suicide, but the play leaves one with little hope and a large portion of despair.
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