Throughout the semester many
of the literary works that were discussed meticulously in class contained some
sort of underlying relationship with death, either in a figurative or literal
sense. This theme can be examined from the begging of the course till the end through
every romantic writer. Implication of death in a figurative way can be traced
all the way back to the Rime of the ancient mariner, when an underlying force
seems to haunt the mariner leading him to slowly lose his true self and losing
his soul to this force that haunts him. When the mariner decided to kill the
albatross his fate suddenly changed, the killing of this bird is the last time
the mariner had control of his own life “The turning point of the poem and its
change of fortune happen when the sailor shoots the Albatross, which is
unequivocally called by the sailor "Christian"(pg. 2 Saeed &Sharif)”
: At length did cross an Albatross; Through the fog it came; As if it had been
a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name (Pg. 414 Black)”. This bird was
not just an ordinary bird but a good luck bird like I stated in the post The curse that opened the eyes of the
mariner “The reader is able to sympathize with the mariner once he realized
that killing the Albatross was a mistake because the bird helped the by
bringing good luck to their voyage and instead of him appreciating what the
bird brought to them he killed, bringing forth a curse to him, his crew and his
ship”. Although he didn’t die on board, he had to witness his fellow ships mates
go one by one and die due to natural circumstances (scarce of food and water
etc.) while he for some reason stayed alive. This leads to the idea of a chain
reaction of death that travels through the poem, by killing the albatross he
killed his fate and the fate of his crew members ultimately eliminating his own
soul from them equation causing him to go on “living” or dying slowly with the
weight of death on his shoulder that he can never be out run. This idea can be
mirrored in Thomas Jones Bard were
the man is attempting to fleeing from the light that is bound to catch up with
him once he reaches a dead end.
Just like in Rime
of the ancient mariner, Castle of Otranto
also has an influence of fate along with the influence of supernatural entities
that are all developed around the central theme, death. Because the setting of
the story starts out in a castle, the reader can instantly identify with a
gothic setting that can therefore produce ideas of supernatural occurrences
that are there to come. The story immediately
develops along once one of the main characters suddenly dies by mysterious
forces just like mentioned in the blog post Rightful
inheritance and the supernatural “Conrad's
death, resulting from the fallen helmet that resembles Alfonso's helmet, is an
unnatural way to die. It puts emphasis on the supernatural aspect of the helmet
killing Conrad, son of Manfred (Elocin3)”. When the only heir to the thrown
dies everything starts to unravel ultimately leading for the truth to be discovered
at the end of the story. Manfred was haunted by the ghost of Alfonso, because he
knew he had done wrong when he claimed the thrown of Alfonso under false pretenses. As discussed in blog
Prophesies and destruction “After the death of his only son, Manfred goes to
extreme lengths to try and secure his lineage. He still has Matilda, but due to
the perceived necessity of a male heir, he ends up killing his daughter and
only other heir. This fulfills the prophecy he tried so incredibly hard to
disprove. He made it true by trying too hard to disprove it and ended up losing
his family over it (kmj9127)”. The ultimate fate for Alonso’s rein to continue
led to the supernatural occurrences in the castle, a haunting that surrounded
Manfred in his consciences and in his surroundings. This is very similar to the
haunting of the mariners soul, peace could not be reached on either end of these
characters because death continued to devour their existence.
The Thorn by
Wordsworth is also linked to this theme of death and haunting of the dead when
Martha Ray is haunted with the death of her child. Upon fleeing the from town
and escaping to the mountains she attempted to hide away from her wrong doing
but it ended up catching up to her when she is left all alone to be haunted
with the death of her child. In the blog the
symbol of the thorn the symbolism behind the title of the poem and the
overall theme is “The thorn, overgrown,
is the child she may have killed. Just as the story of betrayal is an old tale,
so is the thorn itself. This is not the thorn of a rose, balanced with the
sweet smell of the flower. This is the
thorn of bitter anguish, without redeeming grace (Urizen)”. This again is
revealed in blog the thorn, which
reclaims the idea of this haunting “she is plagued by heartbreak and the death
of her child, which have led to the destruction of her life. Those events
"all have joined in one endeavor/to bury this poor Thorn forever" and
as a result, she spends her time upon the hill, crying and lamenting her
losses. Her life, once a promising one filled with love, is now one of tragedy and
warning to the reader (khaleesi)”.
Many have fear of death but it takes courage to
overcome this fear, to some extent John Keats had this same fear too. This same
idea is treated in blog Fears and regrets
“In John Keats' poem "When I have fears...” he discusses two things that
make him stick out in our hearts, and connect on a different level with him; he
discusses fear and regret. We all have some fear or fears, and he isn't too
afraid to admit that he is afraid: he is afraid of death, of dying at such a
young age, and he is afraid of missing opportunities (Alaric Masons)”. I think
everybody at some point in life, even literary characters (as mirrors of
writers) have all had this fear. It isn’t until something drastic happens that
a person’s perspective about death changes, for Keats it was tuberculosis. I
also think that in order for something go to come bad things have to come
first, just like I discussed this in my blog post Evil before good “In Keats
Epistle to John H. Reynolds he attempts to cheer up his friend by mocking the
views of society in how they treat people according to social classes. He
refers to great philosophers, poets, and artists as “Making the best of ways
towards Soho”(Epistle to John :line 12),meaning that even the greatest of
people go through social alienation and are miserable at first in order to
achieve great admiration. “Things cannot to the will be settled, but they tease
us out of thought; Or is it that imagination brought beyond its proper bound,
yet still confin’d lost in a sort of purgatory blind” (E to J 76-80) & “In
happiness, to see beyond our bourn it forces us in summer skies to mourn” (E to
J 83-84) both of this confirm Keats view of how first you must go through unhappiness
in order to be happy. This can be compared to Elizabeth Hamilton’s, Translation
of the letters of a Hindoo Rajah and her outside view into the Hindu religion.
According to the Hindu religion people are born into their social classes and
can never be reversed or altered but none of them hate or envy one another.
They are conformed and content to their class because” They believe that the
human soul must be purified by suffering, and that it is not till after having
undergone this expiatory discipline through a series of different bodies, that
it becomes worthy of admission to eternal happiness (Letters of Hinddo Rajah)”.
This idea of rebirth is also prolific in Keats poem to autumn, where he finally comes to realize that death might not
actually be an ending but a possible beginning to a new life. Death and rebirth
in romantic odes website states that “Keats in his poem To Autumn blends living
and dying, the pleasant and the unpleasant, because they are inextricably one;
he accepts the reality of the mixed nature of the world (Soumya)”. In my blog
post Seasonal transitions I discussed
the relationship between Keats, his poem to autumn and the circumstances in
which he was under “Keats interpretation contains more of a dying love most
likely a forbidden love that is flourishing “close bosom-friend of the maturing
sun” but has to end due to natural circumstances-, hence the autumn “death” and
hook or scythe reference. He could also be referring to his physical condition,
the fact that he had developed tuberculosis that very year of 1820 and would be
dying very soon “summer has o’er-brimmm’d their clammy cells” this sudden
realization that once he was very healthy and lively but as the summer ends and
the fall approaches he too is falling apart and dying along with nature”. “Describing
a “dreadful earnest” in Keats desire for death that would release him from his
“torture” of his tuberculosis ravaged life (pg. 321Corcoran)”.To autumn underlines
how Keats comes to accept death as a natural cycle in life that can help him;
he even comes to wish death upon himself so that through this seasonal transition
he can be rebirthed too.
In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein death is a little more subtle
to be introduced but the supernatural and eerie aspect is already set in motion
once Victor decides to compose life out of dead people. In blog post Frankenstein’s Monster the writer brings
up that to some extent Victor Frankenstein is playing a role of God by creating
this monster” Frankenstein's creation cannot physically be more than a patchwork
of what has been given by nature; however, the mere synthesizing of life by the
means of exciting an assemblage of corpse-parts creates a sort of divine,
sublime or impossibly unnatural context. Frankenstein being attributed with
qualities such as "God" can be rather suiting insofar that
"God" is our way of conceiving Nature in the most impossible and
unnatural of ways(as ourselves)(Guernica)”. The monster to some extent is a mirror
of Victor but Victor can also be an image for Shelly “The assumption that pregnant
women can and do breed monsters (pg. 3 Boyle)”.
As brought up in website Article myriad: “from the novel’s opening, the
importance of the reader getting a sense of physical place is established by
situating the text within a particular environment, the qualities of which will
both mirror and contradict the inner states of the main characters (Smith)”. Victor
Frankenstein can also be considered a monster because he attempted to create something
that was already dead and is still dead because it has not true soul. This statement
can be attributed to my post Monstrosity
as a whole “When it comes to considering humanity as a whole in comparison
to one human, the step is really wide in to the realm of monstrosity. For one
thing, when one person analyzes the world, he/she would typically say that
humanity is good but the world is cruel but when it comes to questioning the
good or evil of humanity as a whole, people most commonly same that the world
is good but humanity is cruel. And when we examine the nature of Frankenstein’s
monster, we could say he too is good but the world is evil to him when it comes
to analyzing the events for which he is a witness too. This in a grander scale
of comparing Frankenstein and the monster as a whole of humanity would leave to
the conclusion of the world being good but humanity being evil because Frankenstein
was miserable and alone he wanted to bring life into something for him to have
a friend but this selfishness that came by wanting to create a human being on
his own led him to greater sorrow and instead of creating life he brought
greater suffering to himself and his monster because of humanities cruel
selfishness”. Victors own selfishness and desire to have companionship led to
destroy even more his own creation by taking away the same thing that which Frankenstein’s
monster was created for, companionship. This “god” like figure of creation then
destruction (death) can be mirrored in Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his
son.
The last man by Shelly is a great way to
end the semester by treating the relation between science and humanity. This
poem symbolizes all of what could happen if science or nature is destroyed by
the hand of man. The colossus by Goya is a good example of how humanity can
seem so small when a giant natural catastrophe takes place or even man through
science plays god, humanity can be at risk and even be squashed (death) at the
feet of the beast (science).
The last presentation of the last man brought up a lot
of great examples of how the human race could seize to exist as a byproduct of
our own creation that can lead to our ultimate death. Since the 1920s we have
begun to damage our earth with industrialization, smug and human waste and if
we do nothing to succumb to these deathly actions, we could end up in outer
space like in Walle. We could even
end up like the portrait of Casper David Fredrick’s: wonder above the sea of fog, alone in the world without a way out
of our own disaster eventually killing ourselves off.
Work Cited:
Corcoran, Brendan. "Keats's Death: Towards a
Posthumous Poetics." Studies in Romanticism 48.2 (2009): 321,348,368.
ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2013.
Boyle, Elizabeth. "Bound and Unbound: Language
and Death in "Frankenstein"." University of Wyoming, 1992.
United States -- Wyoming: ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2013.
Black, Joseph. The Broadview Anthology of British
Literature. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Pr, 2010. Print.
The Age Romanticism.
Saeed, Dr. Ismael M., and Dr. Azad H. Sharif.
"The Bird Symbol in English Romantic and Post-Romantic Poetry."
Ircoedu.uobaghdad. Salahaddin University, n.d. Web. 08 May 2013.
http://www.articlemyriad.com/elements-romanticism-frankenstei
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