Thoughts on Peace Like A River

"We didn't know where we were going. Dad, driving, just followed her directions. We were a quiet troop. Swede was curled away from me, and I couldn't have spoken if asked, for my throat ached with coming departure and with the beauty I had perceived in Roxanna. So upright and calm she appeared, there in…Read more Thoughts on Peace Like A River

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Bartleby the Scrivener:” Kindred Spirits

First-person narration requires necessarily that the reader sees the story solely from the narrator’s perspective; and in “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the promise of only a vague understanding of the title character is assured when the narrator confesses that he knows nothing about Bartleby. Even by the end of the tale, we know nothing more of…Read more Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Bartleby the Scrivener:” Kindred Spirits

“1984” and words

The world of "1984" is constructed entirely of words, spoken and written. Winston, the protagonist, re-imagines history for a living. Every day he amends outdated newspapers to fit the Party's continually fluctuating information on the ongoing war. Indeed, citizens of Oceania receive no real information and in their blindness must grasp instead at belief, which…Read more “1984” and words

The Advantage of the Beast in Hardy’s Poetry

“’God’s humblest, they!’ I muse. Yet why? / They know Earth-secrets that know not I” (“An August Midnight,” 11-12). A subdued, defeated tone runs through Thomas Hardy’s poetry. He seems to be able to find neither happiness nor resignation in life, and infuses this hopelessness into his writing. This point of view, while growing out…Read more The Advantage of the Beast in Hardy’s Poetry

Alienation in John Clare’s Poetry

Wordsworth’s famous “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” with which John Clare was certainly familiar, characterized its titular volume, and to some extent Romantic literature as a whole, as an exploration of “low and rustic life… because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity,…Read more Alienation in John Clare’s Poetry

Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man:” The Problem of the Title

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound…Read more Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man:” The Problem of the Title