Climbing through Adolescence

During the summer of 2000, at age 16, my friends and I departed on a two month trip by car to explore some of the most famous rock climbing areas in the United States. My two friends, Jeff and Ian, are also from Florida, and we became acquainted during rock climbing competitions in the Southeastern division of the Junior Competitive Climbing Association (JCCA).  The JCCA is a circuit of indoor climbing competitions which one can enter in order to gain qualifying points toward receiving an invitation to the United States Junior National Climbing Competition. The top three competitors are then invited to be a member of the United States Junior Climbing Team that competes at the World Climbing Competition each year. The fourth and fifth place competitors are alternates for that team. Becoming a member of that team is dream of most young competitive climbers. 

            Jeff, Ian, and I were living in different cities at the time. Jeff lived in Orlando, and Ian lived in St. Petersburg where I also used to live. However, I had just moved in with my older brother in Gainesville, Florida after my sophomore year in high school in order to go to Santa Fe Community College via my General Education Development Test.

In June, we began our adventure. Jeff drove his 1991 Ford Crown Victoria from Orlando to pick up Ian in Tampa, and then they came to Gainesville to get me. We packed a U-Haul Roof Rack, and the old Ford’s trunk was filled as full as we could get it with everything from clothes and climbing gear, to stoves and sleeping bags. We had everything three guys needed to live out of a car for two months.

Our first stop was Atlanta, Georgia. In Atlanta, we competed in the JCCA Regional Competition as our last event before JCCA Nationals. All of the dieting, dedication, and training had us set to reach our peaks at the time of National competition in a few weeks. Unfortunately, I did poorly in the Regional Competition and failed to gain enough points for the invitation to the big competition in Portland, Oregon. I made a mental error early on in my first climb, and it left me with little chance of reaching the necessary amount of points. We left Atlanta headed for Denver. We were not even quite sure which climbing area to hit first. We had Portland as our goal at the end of the first month.

            We first decided to try out the boulders at Morrison, just outside of Denver. We arrived about a day and a half of continuous driving. We did not sleep like any other sane people would after such a grueling road trip. We jumped right out of the old, beat up Ford running for the rocks. The boulders there were impressive red sandstone that have enough climbs (or boulder problems, as climbers call them) to keep us occupied for about half of the day. My favorite climb there was called Helicopter because at the last move a climber is required to throw his right hand up and out so far that the entire left side of his body swings off the rock with tremendous speed.

            Our next stop was Rifle, Colorado where the mystical Rifle Canyon lay on the outskirts of this little town. Rifle Canyon is a dazzling display of colors on a canvas of limestone rock. I had never before seen any such coloring. The canyon was carved by a river, and at some spots the road is only wide enough for one car. The entire structure appeared to be falling on us at all times. It is a polished limestone canyon that has an onslaught of all these crazy little angles. The rock is an overhanging face that threatens to throw your feet off at any second. The climbing there is world renown for its tests at power and endurance. Some of America’s hardest climbs are there as well, i.e. Zulu and The Crew.

We met a group of Swedish guys at the base of one wall of Rifle Canyon. They told us a little about their heritage which was fascinating. At night we sat around campfires and talked about the climbs of days past. As we talked, we sought advice from the other climbers on certain approaches to different climbs because we knew that there was always another way that could be easier. The collection of climbers around campfires was like a brotherhood. No one criticizes anyone, and everyone is feeding off of each other’s enthusiasm and energy for climbing. I felt like we were all brought together from different parts of the globe to do some hardcore soul searching.

            For the whole time we were in Rifle Canyon, it felt like I was a kid in the Magic Kingdom. I had the feeling of not knowing where to start. I tried to soak up as much knowledge as I could on the unusual climbing style that is forced upon a climber by Rifle Canyon. Many of the climbs require unorthodox techniques that are really trick moves which seem to boggle one’s mind with every newfound quirk that the rock has to offer. We left Rifle Canyon to proceed on to Maple Canyon, Utah where we heard there were dozens of cobblestone covered walls with excellent climbing.

            Unfortunately for us, our Crown Victoria had transmission problems so we were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a town called Price, Utah. The population of this place was like two thousand people, and there was nothing to do for the three days we were stuck there. We made the best of it by trying to pick up girls at night on the main street of the small town. We hesitantly got a hotel room while we were there because there were no parks for us to pitch a tent nearby. We were all a little short on cash, so the hotel set us back even more. The whole trip we ate the cheapest possible food we could, so that meant a lot of nights with a hot bowl of Ramen noodles. Our stomachs were put through hell daily, and I got down to a lean one hundred and thirty pounds at the midway point of the trip. I was weighing around one sixty at the beginning. After the car was fixed, we were short on time, so we went to American Fork, Utah instead of Maple Canyon because it was more on our way to Portland.

            American Fork Canyon is located just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. When we arrived at the climbing area, we met these locals who were putting up a new climb. They seemed to be cool guys, and they showed us around to a few walls where there was some really excellent climbing was. At the end of the day, the kids asked if we wanted a place to crash because they knew we were camping. We gladly accepted, and these kids took us back home to their parents’ house. This Mormon family showed us the best hospitality with dinner at night and breakfast in the morning for the two nights we stayed there. We were indebted to them for their kindness, but Jeff, Ian, and I had a competition to get to that started in a little more than a week. We had to depart from them, but we still keep in touch with the guys every once in a while.

            The road into Portland, Oregon along the Hood River is one of the most scenic drives I have ever seen. There is an abundance of black, slate-like rock everywhere with windsurfers out on the river challenging the mighty winds that rip through the Hood. Being from Florida, I know about water, and the waves created by the winds on the Hood are like the waves created by tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico. It is just a beautiful place to be. Portland is a very liberal town, and we hit it just before the Fourth of July Celebration. The town was crazy with festivities near the waterfront, and there was more alcohol being drunk than fireworks being lit. It was one giant party for independence. During the next couple of days, we ended up skateboarding at Newberry Skate Park and the famous Burnside Skate Park underneath the historic Burnside Bridge. The day of the competition came upon us, and I was stuck in the crowd with the rest of the spectators. I was, however, happy to see all of my friends from all over the country who came together for the event. Both Ian and Jeff did not make it too far in the competition, and Jeff was knocked out first. We had fun though, and the next part of the trip was the event for which we had been waiting.

            We originally planned to climb at the acclaimed Smith Rock in Bend, Oregon, but we could not contain our excitement for Yosemite National Park and Bishop, California.

We left Portland and drove about eighteen hours south to Yosemite National Park in California. Now before I got here, I thought the other places were amazing and interesting. Yosemite is like Paul Bunyan’s climbing area. With the two largest rock faces in the United States, El Capitan and Half Dome, it is easily the most monstrous climbing area I have ever seen. The rock is very old granite that can be any range of white, grey, and black colors. The waterfalls there are enormous, but the Sequoia trees are by far the biggest trees I will ever see, unless I make it to Redwood National Forest someday. We never trained for a multi-day big wall climb, so we did not have the equipment necessary to climb any one of the routes up El Capitan or Half Dome. It takes a tremendous amount of equipment to climb those walls because you have to haul everything from your fecal matter to your port-a-ledge with you. A port-a-ledge is a cot that hangs from the rock wall so you can sleep on it while you are on one of these multi-day beasts. We climbed some boulders in Yosemite because they were also world famous climbs first done in the late 1970’s including the ultra-classic line Midnight Lightning.             We met a park ranger there named Lisa Lopez who is the girlfriend of arguably the best climber who ever lived, Chris Sharma. She was very down to earth and even pointed us to some of her personal favorite climbs. Yosemite was a blast, but it was a little too touristy for us so we moved on down the road to Bishop, California.

            The small country town of Bishop was just south of a skiing town called Mammoth. Bishop is the birthplace of the climbing guru, Chris Sharma. It had the hardest boulder problems in the world on this collection of desert patina sandstone. Within five minutes of the city there are about six different climbing areas. The climbs at the Buttermilk and Peabody Boulders were the most famous, and we had seen some of them in videos. We tore ourselves apart on this super sharp desert rock for about two weeks until we ran out of money. We ended up eating at the A.M. P.M. Gas Station every day because you could get a burger for fifty nine cents.  I met a beautiful blonde girl who loved to climb, and she hung out with us about every day. This other guy who we called Texas Tony also became our friend out there, and he took us out to a couple local parties at night. He showed us some great climbs during the day. The climbing there is unique because most of the boulders start out overhanging or inverted, then you must pull a lip of some sort, followed by a finish on a slightly less than vertical face. It was a lot of fun. Our next and final stop was one of relaxation.

            Jeff’s brother, Mark, lives in San Diego, and we headed there for some rest. On the way there we lost our U-Haul car top off the roof of our car. Unfortunately, it contained most of our personal belongings. We never found it, and we were all limited to one outfit of clothing for the remainder of the trip. We spent a couple of days in San Diego with no work at all. We had climbed outdoors for almost two months, and it was nice to have some recovery. Our muscles stopped aching, and our fingers stopped hurting. We spent a lot of time playing cards and lying on the beach, while we reminisced about all of the people we met and the climbs we did. We went into Mexico one day to see Tijuana, Rosarito, and Ensenada. We ate at the most unclean restaurant I have ever seen, but with the same twist of fate, it was the best Mexican food ever. This guy took some slow roasted pork and cut it up on a tree stump with a rusted machete and flies were all around him the whole time, even when he rolled up the burrito. Tijuana smelled so bad that we could not bear it to stay there, but Rosarito and Ensenada are nicer. The beaches were terribly polluted, and it made me very sad to see that one had to walk on the beach with shoes so you would not be cut by a piece of glass or a hypodermic needle. The local Mexicans were doing anything they could to get some American dollars out of us by approaching us on every block trying to sell some homemade jewelry or Mexican memorabilia. Anyway, back in San Diego, we rested up for the long forty-four and a half hour road trip ahead of us back to Gainesville, Florida.

            On the ride home, Jeff, Ian, and I, realized that the day to day lifestyles we were living and the drives that compelled us to finish school, get a good job, and be successful put too much emphasis on money. The trip reminded us of how important it is to stop for a second and to appreciate God’s greatest gifts of love, life, nature, family, and friendship. In our rapid paced industrial society, we often overlook the most important things in life. Our lives are like a wall built one brick at a time, and each brick is a different experience, situation, or emotion. If we finish the wall by forgetting the most important bricks at the bottom that got us where we are today, the wall is not strong. If we cherish every moment and opportunity in life, then the walls that we build are meaningful to us and strong. We remind ourselves of our trip often because it helps us remember that we cannot work our whole lives toward a goal without enjoying the process that got us there. Everyone knows that the adventure of a story is always more exciting and interesting than the ending, and that is why our trip is of great significance to me.

Marlowe and Ralegh: Contrasting views of pleasure

The two poems, Cristopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Sir Walter Ralegh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”, have contrasting views of pleasure. The shepherd asks his love to “Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove” (Marlowe lines 1 to 2). Marlowe uses nature images in the last two lines of the first stanza to say that the shepherd wants to see what pleasures nature “yields” (lines 3 to 4). He wants his love to experience all that nature has to offer or more importantly, all that he has to offer. The shepherd describes the time period as being in “May” (Marlowe line 22). The shepherd is saying that the season of spring will be gone soon, so let us indulge in it. There is an urgent tone used in this poem. He wants the two of them to seize the day.

The nymph is not easily taken in by this glorified version of life that the shepherd offers her. She replies to him that:

          If all the world and love were young,

          And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

          These pretty pleasures might me move

          To live with thee and be thy love. (Ralegh lines 1 to 4)

The nymph starts her argument by talking about the influence time has on people and their feelings. She knows that everything might be great right now, but things change as time goes on. People grow older and uglier, and they also can fall out of love with one another. She also believes that the shepherd could be lying to her about all the pleasures he promises her.  

The shepherd tells his love that “we will sit upon the rocks, /Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks” (Marlowe lines 5 to 6). However, the nymph knows that they cannot do this forever because “Time drives the flocks from the fields to fold” (Ralegh line 5). Snow will cover the field, and the flock will have to go into a pen. She further describes time’s affect on the “shallow rivers” that the shepherd speaks of by saying that the “rivers” will eventually “rage and [the] rocks [will] grow cold” (Marlowe line 7, Ralegh line 6). The setting that the shepherd is describing will be turned upside down. She is talking about the winter and the change in the season. She is trying to show the shepherd that everything changes. The “Melodious birds” that the shepherd speaks of will also go away when the winter comes (Marlowe line 8, Ralegh line 7).

The shepherd offers his love “beds of roses/ And […] posies,” but the nymph knows that “The flowers do fade, and wanton fields/ to wayward winter reckoning yields” (Marlowe lines 9 to 10, Ralegh lines 9 to 10). Again she throws this problem of time into his plan. At the end of that same stanza she says that his ideas sound good, but they will not last through time. She has a skeptical attitude towards everything he says.

The nymph describes all of the things the shepherd has promised her by saying that they will “Soon break, soon wither, and soon forgotten” (Ralegh line 15). As time goes on the shepherd will grow tired of the nymph and forget about how much he loves her. The fancy clothing that the shepherd offers his love has little affect on the nymph (Marlowe lines 13 to 18). She says that “All these in me no means can move/ To come to thee and be thy love” because she is not impressed by material or superficial goods (Ralegh lines 19 to 20). Everything that the shepherd is offering the nymph might seem good, however they are “In folly ripe, [and] in reason rotten” (Ralegh line 16). The nymph knows that to go with the shepherd because of superficial reasons would be making a big mistake.

If the world is unchanging, the pleasures that the shepherd speaks of would not lose there value. The nymph describes this by saying, “But could youth last and love still breed, / Had joys no date nor age no need, / Then these delights my mind might move” (Ralegh lines 22 to 24). She is trying to show the shepherd that her beauty and her ability to procreate will not last forever, therefore love has different needs at different times. The shepherd seems to be naive by believing that the two of them will always wake up to a “May morning” (Marlowe line 22).

The difference in gender in the poems is not the main reason for the difference in the two positions. The gender of the shepherd’s poem makes somewhat of a difference in the cultural context because women were not supposed to initiate any intimate offer with a man. The positions taken on both sides of the argument are not gender based at all. The issues that the poems deal with are carpe diem verses time’s inevitable changing process. Marlowe’s poem takes the stance that there is no time to waste, but Ralegh’s response is that time is all we have. Ralegh takes the view that anyone would take in response to Marlowe’s poem, and it is not restricted to a female role. The messages sent by both of the poems are more about contrasting viewpoints than love affairs. The messages are universal to anyone and are not limited to a strict male-female interpretation. The literal meanings of this courting process may cloud the messages of seizing the day like in Marlowe’s poem and of time’s inevitable affects like in Ralegh’s poem. Ralegh does not produce a believable female speaker because he did not limit any of his response to being a strictly female characteristic. He simply took the contradicting view. He uses a didactic method of taking everything that Marlowe uses to try to win his love and switching it around to show the insignificance of it in the broader picture. The items that Marlowe and Ralegh talk about are slightly gender related, but they are not necessary to the theme of both of the poems. Although men did wear gowns, skirts, fancy belts and slippers at the time of these poems, we usually associate these things with women (Marlowe lines 11 to 17). Men, at the time, wore clothing similar to what the shepherd was offering his love, so even these things are not limited to gender. The difference in the positions taken by Marlowe and Ralegh are not gender based. One is simply a logical argument against the other.

Shakespeare on Controlling Lust

In Sonnet 129, by William Shakespeare, the concluding couplet shows the reader that lust is a downfall inherent in people’s lives that they cannot avoid. Shakespeare tells the reader “All this the world well know; yet none knows well” (line 13). He connects lust to being instilled in people by God as a curse, and he says people should “shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” (line 14). This “heaven” can also be thought of as the act of lust.

The poem begins by describing lust as “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame/ Is lust in action; […]” (lines 1 to 2). The footnote describes that “the word order here is inverted and slightly obscures the meaning. Lust, when put into action, expends ‘spirit’ […] in a ‘waste’ […] of shame” (Norton 1040). Shakespeare is writing about the effort, pain, and seamen exerted in the immoral act of lust. The “waste of shame” can also be taken literally to mean the genitals of someone who lusts. The genitals are corrupted because they are not being used for God’s purpose of procreation. Lust is a misuse of a man’s seamen because it is not being used to procreate. Lust is not an act of love: it is just about sex. In the next part of the stanza, Shakespeare uses very descriptive adjectives to show that lust is “full of blame” (line 3). He calls lust “perjured, murd’rous, bloody […]/ Savage, extreme, rude, cruel” (lines 3 to 4). Lust has these qualities “till action” and “in action” (line 2). He concludes the stanza by warning the reader “not to trust” lust because it will not lead to good (line 4).

Shakespeare opens the next stanza, by explaining that lust is “Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight” (line 5). This line deals with the anticipation that lust makes one have for achieving lust’s goal of sex, but then after sex, a person hates themselves and the one they have lusted for because of the morality involved. After the act, people see the impurity of the whole situation. Shakespeare describes lust taking people “Past reason” to conquer the one they have “hunted” (line 6). Then after this illogical hunt is over, “Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait” (line 7). Shakespeare uses the imagery of a hooked fish to describe a person after lust has occurred. The person knows they have made a mistake, but they also know they cannot correct it just like a fish. This also is given another meaning when the couplet comes along. The fish can be thought of as people who are given this hook by God. A fish has an instinct to pursue the food, and people have an instinct to lust. Both fish and people cannot prevent their problems because it is part of God’s design.

The person who has succumbed to lust or “the taker” is now “mad” because he or she realizes his or her faults (line 8). The word “mad” also is used to describe the insanity involved with lust (line 8). Lust is “Mad in pursuit, and in possession so” (line 9). Lust occupies one’s mind and is all they can think about when one is lusting. People are “Mad” when they are trying to lustfully pursue someone because they do not think or behave logically.

Shakespeare concludes that “Had, having, and in quest to have, [people are] extreme” (line 10). People do not behave rationally, but they are not capable of rational behavior under the power of lust. Shakespeare concludes that the act of sex for the purpose of lust is “A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe” (line 11). When people have this kind of sex it is great but afterwards, it is terrible. “Before” the sex takes place people think it will be a “joy”, but “behind” or after the sex people want to separate themselves from the incident like it never happened (line 12). People would like to block out the memory like it was all a bad “dream” (line 12).

The couplet at the end of the poem gives the reader a meaning to Shakespeare’s deep description of lust in the rest of the poem. He does not relate lust to a broader scale until the ending couplet. Before the couplet, Shakespeare does not let readers know what this description of lust has to do with them. He knows that everyone knows that lust is filled with problems, but Shakespeare points out that people cannot avoid it when he says, “none knows well” (line 13). He then gives the reader instruction “To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” (line 14). Shakespeare shows the reader that the lust was given to people by God, but they must attempt to keep it from controlling or ruining their lives

The Invisible Man, a brief overview of Ralph Ellison's masterpiece

Ellison's writing could be called autobiographical. His writings are about his life experiences. His first novel The Invisible Man was thought to be about him because there were so many similarities between the main character and himself.

The central theme of Ralph Ellison's writing is the search for identity, a search that he sees as central to American literature and the American experience.

He has said that "the nature of our society is such that we are prevented from knowing who we are," and in Invisible Man this struggle toward self-definition is applied to individuals, groups, and the society as a whole. The particular genius of Invisible Man is Ellison's ability to interweave these individual, communal, and national quests into a single, complex vision.

In this sense, the book is part of the literary tradition of initiation tales, stories of young men or women who confront the larger world beyond the security of home and attempt to define themselves in these new terms.

The novel surveys the history of African-American experience and alludes directly or indirectly to historical figures who serve as contradictory models for Ellison's protagonist. Some of the novel's effect is surely lost for readers who do not recognize the parallels drawn between Booker T. Washington and the Founder, between Marcus Garvey and Ras the Destroyer, or between Frederick Douglass and the narrator's grandfather

Ellison does not restrict himself to the concerns of African-Americans because he believes that African-American culture is an inextricable part of American culture. Thus, Invisible Man shows how the struggles of the narrator as an individual and as a representative of an ethnic minority are paralleled by the struggle of the nation to define and redefine itself. 

Transcendentalism and Emerson's "Nature"

Transcendentalism is a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement of the Nineteenth Century.  The major writers in American Transcendentalism include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller.

                        The transcendentalists, in keeping with the individualistic nature of this philosophy, disagreed readily with each other.  Here are four points of general agreement: […] 1.  An individual is the spiritual center of the                                   universe – and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself.  It is not a rejection of the existence of God, but a preference to explain an individual and the world in terms of an                                  individual.  2.  The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self – all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge.  This is similar to Aristotle’s dictum “know thyself.”  3.Transcendentalists accepted the neo-Platonic conception of nature as a living mystery, full of signs – nature is symbolic.  4.  The belief that                                     individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization – this depends upon the reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies: a. the expansive or self-asserting tendency – a desire to embrace the whole world – to know and become one with the world. b. the contracting or self-asserting tendency – the desire to withdraw, remain unique and separate –  an egotistical existence. (Reuben)

The Transcendental Movement strived for people to go beyond scientific or rational thought into a more spiritual and intuitive look at reality.  The writers of the movement believed that a look at everything around them can bring them to a better understanding of themselves and their purpose.  Industrialism in America inspired transcendentalists who saw the degradation of the landscape and of human rights brought on by mercantilism.  The organized religious structures were attacked by this movement because transcendentalists believed that divinity can be obtained through their own intuition and the understanding of nature.  Emerson wrote "Nature" which talks about the knowledge one can gain from the natural world.

            Ralph Waldo Emerson thought that the only way to achieve transcendentalism was to look to nature for revelation.  He spent a good part of his life away from society trying to find man's purpose.  He stayed in the woods for a part of his life to be closer to nature which he deemed as a pathway to divinity. Emerson wrote in "Nature" that "All science has one aim, namely to find a theory of nature" (Emerson 1107).  He argues that nature is the only thing "unchanged by man," and that everything else is simply "Art" (1107).  Man will spoil the purity or divinity of any nature it touches.  If nature is "unchanged by man," then it must be a part of the divine.  Since man is a part of nature, he and everything natural is a part of the divine.  Emerson believes that we can attain this higher awakening through nature.  "I become the transparent eye-ball.  I am nothing. I see all.  The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God" (1109).  He professes that he is no one thing, he is all. He is not a thing because he is above being something. He is a man doing something and is not defined by one thing.  If one is defined by a thing he or she does (like a writer being one who writes), then how can he or she do other things that do not comply with being one thing.  This also shows the duplicity involved with Transcendentalism because man is always trying to define his existence while being pulled toward different identities.   

            Emerson attacks the religious structures of the time by saying,

                        We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. (1107)  He means that their view of salvation and man's purpose is too narrow.  "The aim of the Transcendentalist is high.  They profess to look not only beyond facts, but without the aid of facts, to principles" (Konvitz 4).  Religious people are too concerned with the afterlife, but the Transcendentalist is concerned more with one's life here on Earth.  Transcendentalists believe that people must rise above the texts of religious works because God must reveal Himself to people now just as He did to those people who wrote religious texts in the past. 

                        Nothing divine dies.  All good is eternally reproductive.  The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind [...] for new creation. (Emerson 1113)  Emerson believes God reveals himself through nature continually.  He refuses to believe that God only exposed himself to a select few for a select time.  People can see God in the order and magnificence of nature.

                        Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result.  All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. (1110)  Man needs nature for everything.  Nature provides food, water and air in order for man to survive.  Nature also "satisfies the soul" of a man, so "In their eternal calm, he finds himself" (1111).  Nature has a source of power that one can draw from its beauty and order.  Transcendentalists thrive on gaining their inspiration, direction and salvation from God through the vehicle of nature.  "The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation" (1113).  Artists, architects, philosophers, astronomers, chemists, physicists, writers and mathematicians all gain their inspiration and revelation from nature because "Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths" (1119). 

            Nature is the source of thought and religion.  From a Transcendentalist perspective, people are given knowledge of everything through natural causes.  "That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator." (Emerson 1115).  Religions are primarily based on faith with reason as a polar opposite, but the Transcendentalists see faith in a higher power because the reasoning of nature revealed it to them.  People can look at the elaborate design of the universe and know that there is a higher power.  "And no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine" (1127).  Man's association with nature gives man the power to influence nature and even change it, just like the creator.  Nature is also a pathway to which man can find the creator, and "we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite" (1129).  Man's actions while on Earth changes the face of the Earth to create man's own world filled with things that were not present before like buildings and pollution.  Man can also control the population or the extinction of species like a creator or a divine entity.

            Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a "manifesto" for Transcendentalism when he wrote "Nature" because it became an important guidebook for people to understand the philosophy of Transcendentalism (Bloom 48).  "The Emersonian or American Sublime is a wildness or holistic freedom in which the spirit, transparent to itself, knows its own splendor, and by knowing that knows again all things" (48-9).  Emerson and other Transcendentalists believed in their power to gain knowledge of everything from the world, body, and mind they are given.  Emerson wrote "Nature" with an impatient tone that calls for the reader to grasp hold of this philosophy of "The kingdom of man over nature" (Emerson 1134).  He ends the essay by telling the reader that:

                        As fast as you can conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. (1134)  Transcendentalism is a philosophical, literary, and spiritual movement that brought a new understanding and a new way of thinking into the lives of many people.  Emerson's case that he makes in "Nature" makes it hard for anyone to argue his point.  It is an effective argument that shapes the mind of the reader as he or she reads.  Everyone who reads "Nature" must question there own beliefs about life and religion as they pass over the pages.  Emerson forces the reader to spiritually redefine where he or she stands.  Transcendentalist literature influences readers and writers today because people are always searching for man's purpose and place in this world.  The concept also lets one decide his or her purpose in life.  Transcendentalism points toward a stream of consciousness that is the vehicle through which an individual can find answers to eternal questions.    

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold.  Figures of Capable Imagination.  New York: Seabury Press, 1976.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo.  "Nature".  The Norton Anthology of American Literature.  Vol. B.  Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Konvitz, Milton R.  The Recognition of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1972.

Rueben, Paul P.  "Chapter 4: Early Nineteenth Century - American Transcendentalism: A             Brief Introduction."  PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and         Reference Guide.         12/07/03.

The Tradition in Art, Ezra Pound's Manifesto

The essay called “The Tradition” by Ezra Pound, is a manifesto of sorts, tracing modern English poetry back to its origins.  Pound deals with the role of the tradition in art, and how poetry should not try to destroy or react against the tradition.  In Pound’s mind art should not think of the tradition as the “fetters to bind us” (Literary Essays 91).  The artist needs to understand the tradition, in order to appropriate its proper use.  Tradition for Pound is not just any set of past works, rather it is the origins of modern poetry, “when the arts of verse and music were most closely knit together” (91).  More importantly, the artist, and especially the poet, should make use of the tradition because the “tradition is a beauty which we preserve” (91).  Pound sees English verse as having its origins in the “two great lyric traditions,” which are the “Melic poets and that of Provence” (91).  Pound sees these two periods as a point of reference for modern poetry.  The Greek and Provencal artists unified culture by blending music and verse into a melodious flow of rhythm and voice.  Poetry declined “from the date of divorce” between the two arts, until the times of “renaissance fashions” where art was restored in the old ways (91).  Pound values this period in art because it brought back the traditions of the Melic and Provencal poets, reviving culture through language and meter.  He explains that “the Italians of that century had renewed the art, they had written in Latin, and some even a little Greek, and had used the Hellenic meters” (92).  Pound sees looking back to the great traditions of the past as a way of finding out how to carry on the tradition and how to make it better. 

            The second section of this essay deals with the benefits of rooting art in the tradition.  Pound writes, “A return to origins invigorates because it is a return to nature and reason” (92).  Reason here is not meant in the modern notion of discursive rationality and the reason of the scientific revolution.  Reason here means to “behave in the eternally sensible manner [...] naturally, reasonably, intuituively” (92).  This idea of intuition that is accessed sensibly, that is by the senses, is a mode of participating in the experience of something overarching in art, some design.  Pound seems to come very close to sympathizing with Plato’s idea of the over-soul, where we are all connected by a force that transcends space and time.  Pound’s friend and colleague, William Butler Yeats, is also concerned with this idea that he calls the spiritus mundi, the collective consciousness of human beings that allows access to eternal truths. 

            In the tradition of verse, Pound respects and values poetry that harmonizes emotion, language, and time.  He explains that the Melic poets “composed to the feel of the thing, to the cadence, as have all good poets since” (92-93).  Rhythm and feeling must coexist in good poetry and music.  Pound also explains how poetry should pay close attention to how speech affects the timing of the lines and how the words affect the harmony of the whole.  He writes, “The movement of poetry is limited only by the nature of syllables and of articulate sound, and by the laws of music, or melodic rhythm” (93).  The tradition can and should be looked to by artists so that they can pursue beauty at its highest points.  Artists should study how their origins can reveal access points to purer forms of beauty, ones that are more in harmony with nature, history, and human experience.  Pound would not want someone to reject or react against tradition, but he is calling for a look at the heights of art in order to push them even higher.       

The Dialogue Between the Body and Soul, Marvell in Review

In the poem, "The Dialogue Between the Body and Soul," Andrew Marvell structures the poem in the form of a debate. The Body and the Soul are combating each other in order to express the tragedy that both of them are put through in life. The Body and Soul are shown as two different outlooks on life. The structure of the argument is set up with ten lines for the first three stanzas, but Marvell gives the Body the last word with a fourteen line stanza at the end. The poem explores the polar opposites that people must deal with like the body and soul, faith and reason, science and religion, man and nature, etc. The two arguments are put forth so that they are looking at the same situation from different points of view. The Body and the Soul are taking opposite positions, but they complement each other at the same time. What one side twists, the other side untwists.

            The Soul begins the argument by protesting that this Body is a "dungeon" in which has "enslaved" it (lines 1 and 2). The Soul talks about the devastation and degradation involved with being confined to the physical realm. The Soul has a metaphysical nature that is on a different level from the Body. The Body has a similar complaint for the Soul when he begins by asking, "O, who shall me deliver whole/ From bonds of this tyrranic soul?" (lines 11 and 12). Both the Body and the Soul are deeply troubled by the fact that they cannot control their devastating situation.

            The Soul has a connection to the metaphysical and the divine. The Soul is on a higher level than the Body, and the Soul is "blinded with an eye" of the Body (line 5). The Soul has a purer eye than the Body because the Body's eye is corrupted. The Body's eye can only see what is within the physical realm, and it can only see things the way that the body defines them. The Body has a flawed perception and judgment of everything. The Body strikes back by accusing the Soul of having no purpose except to separate man from animal (footnote 1687). The Body professes that the Soul only "Warms and moves his needless frame/ (A fever could but do the same)" (lines15 and 16). The Soul has the power to influence the Body by giving it love, hate, sadness, and happiness. However, the Soul is being "tortured [...]/ In a vain head and double heart" (lines 9 and 10). The Body always thinks its right because it chooses reason over faith. The Soul can affect the Body's heart not only emotionally but also physically. When someone is very sad, he or she can feel the burden of the sadness on their chest like a weight being placed on the heart. The Body is put through pain by the Soul, but the Soul will live on after the Body. The Body says the Soul "Has made me live to let me die" (line 18). The Soul has an eternal quality and hope for the future, but the Body can "never rest" because the Soul will always cause it pain while giving it a reason to live at the same time.

            The Soul disregards the Body's complaints by saying, "Where whatsoever it complain,/ I feel, that cannot feel, the pain" (lines 23 and 24). The Soul knows nothing of the physical pain because it can only feel the pain of mental and spiritual anguish. The Soul describes at the same time being taken advantage of by the Body because the Soul is used by the Body in order to cure the problems of the Body. The Soul knows that the Body's resistance and existence is a minor part of the Soul's life. The Soul endures beyond the Body. The Soul describes the futile task of serving the Body by saying, "And all my care itself employs,/ That to preserve which me destroys" (lines 25 and 26). The Soul desires the Body to die from "Diseases" because then the Soul would not have to endure this enslavement any longer (line 28). The word "Diseases" not only means the physical disease that the Body gets, but also, it means that the disease of man and his parasitic presence on Earth is ruining the divine nature of the Creator. The Soul cannot cure the Body's destructive nature towards anything pure and virgin. The Body cannot cure "The pestilence of love" that the Soul inflicts on them (line 35). The last stanza delivers a much more hopeless sorrow for the Body. The ills of the Soul will not cease to give the Body its purpose. Purpose is associated with love in the last stanza, but the Body is tormented by the pursuit of love. Love fills the Body with "hope[,]" but at the same time, the Body is tormented by "the palsy shakes of fear" (lines 33 and 34). The Body fears being hurt by the Soul again, and therefore, is bitter to opening up to love. The bitterness is described as "hatred's hidden ulcer [that] eat[s]" away at the initial trusting love that the Body once had (line 36).

            The Body's closing argument is that:

                        What but a soul could have the wit

                         To build me up for sin so fit?           

                        So architects do square and hew

                        Green trees that in the forest grew. (lines 41 to 44) 

The Body is saying that nothing else could possibly cause this much pain and problems except a Soul. The Soul plants seeds of love or of hope in the Body. The Body then nourishes the seeds like nature nourishing seeds into trees, until the seeds mature. The trees only purpose is to eventually be cut down by the 'Great Architect' (God). The hope may have been implanted by God or by the Soul, but it is nature and the Body that has developed the seeds of hope. The divine conquers or overcomes what is human and natural. At every moment of the poem, the argument pushes the reader to consider the duplicity of the struggle involved in one's life. Neither the Body, nor the Soul wins the argument because the two give opposite recounts of the tragedy of man. The writer does influence the reader to feel more sympathy for the Body due to the apparent hopelessness involved in its position and its ultimate fate being determined. The Soul is not given a fate in the poem because it is immortal. The poem does not provide any solution to the problem; it compels the reader to contemplate and be torn between the two characteristics of human life.

2.)            "The Flea," by John Donne is a poem in which a man is trying to entice a woman into having sex by using the analogy of the flea. The flea is used to represent the act of sex itself. "Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,/ And in this flea our two bloods mingled be" (lines 3 and 4). The bodily fluids of the man and the woman are mixed together inside the flea, so the man equates the flea with the exchange of bodily fluids involved in sex. The flea's blood sucking is seen by the man as insignificant when he says, "How little that which thou deniest me is" (line 2). The man believes that the woman's chastity is no big deal. He also uses religion to support his claim by saying "that this cannot be said/ A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead" (lines 5 and 6). The man is saying that the woman will lose no honor if she partakes in the act. The man also talks about how the flea does not have to put forth any effort to afford this pleasure when he says "Yet this enjoys before it woo" (line 7). The blood coming together to form one blood is said in the footnote to be the flea representing pregnancy, and the man professes that "this, alas, is more than we would do" (line 9).

            The "three lives in one" represents the man, the woman, and the flea whose blood all runs together as one. The man says that "Where we almost, nay more than married are" which means that with their bloods coming together they are already just like being married so there is no need for the woman to be apprehensive about sex (line 11). The speaker then goes after the morals that were instilled on the woman by her parents. "Though parents grudge, and you, we are met" means that even though the woman and her parents would protest it the act is already done in the flea, so it is too late now (line 14). The woman is accustomed to killing fleas, but the speaker does not want her to kill this one because killing the flea would also be killing the man, the woman, and the "temple" in which their bond was made (line 13). This is what the speaker means when he talks about "self-murder" (line 17). Suicide is seen as one of the greatest sins in Christianity because one takes the power of God into his or her own hands to decide his or her own fate. This is why he calls the action of killing the flea "sacrilege" (line 18).

            The woman in the third stanza kills the flea despite the man's warnings against killing it. The man describes the killing as "Cruel and sudden" when she uses her fingernail to kill the flea (lines 19 and 20). He describes the flea or the act of sex as being "in blood of innocence" (line 20). The flea is innocent and not "guilty" of any high crimes because the flea's action is just part of God's natural causes (line 21). There can be no dishonor in anything as natural as the flea. The flea only took "that drop which it sucked from thee" (line 22). The speaker shows the lady's concern with being a weak person if she has sex with him, but she "Find'st not thy self nor me the weaker now; / 'Tis true; then learn how false fears be" (lines 24 and 25). The speaker is relating how after the flea takes both of their bloods into its body where it mixes to become one, neither one of them is degraded nor "weaker" in any way (line 24). He tells the woman that in the aftermath of sex, she will realize "how false [her] fears be" (line 25). Throughout the poem, the speaker is protesting against the fact that there is any harm in having sex with him.

            The final couplet brings a summary to the entire subject when he says, "Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me, / Will waste as this flea's death took life from thee" (lines 26 and 27). This argument is set up in a playful way, but the way he uses the subject matter makes the argument convincing. The woman's honor will not be lost if she has sex with him. He makes her see that sex is just a natural process given by God. The flea who takes their blood and sex are just processes of nature. The argument is ridiculous because no one will look at a flea's blood sucking and equate it with the same importance as having sex. The speaker, however, makes a very strong case for why the act of sex holds no greater importance than the flea taking blood. When the flea is killed, the lady is held accountable by the speaker for such a dishonorable task. The flea contained her life, the speaker's life, and their new life together in the flea. The speaker shows the woman that there are "three sins in killing three" (line18). The lady is not honorable because she killed the flea, but she would have retained her honor if she let the flea live. If she would have entertained the idea of sex with the speaker, then she would have not lost her honor by killing the proposition for sex. The poem, more importantly, relates how the woman's judgment is corrupted by the society she lives in which has her believe in the severe consequences involved with the act of sex. The man shows the woman that it is simply a part of the circle of nature, and she need not to worry so much because the worrying will bring about greater problems for her.

The Moor of Venice: Racial Prejudice in Othello

The Moor of Venice and Racial Prejudice

            William Shakespeare wrote Othello around 1603-1604 (Kernan xvii).  Ania Loomba says that:

            For at least the last two hundred years, ‘race’ has functioned as one of the most powerful and yet most fragile markers of social difference.  It is one of the great ironies of imperial history that ideologies of racial differences have hardened as a direct response to racial and cultural crossovers; conversely, colonial enterprises have facilitated contact and exchange between people of different ethnicities,             religions and cultures. (203)

Shakespeare displays the significance of race not only throughout the play, but also in the title itself, The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice.  Before the play begins, the audience is signaled by the word ‘moor’.  “We know that he is black and a Moor; that the Elizabethans were inexact in their use of the terms ‘Moor’ and ‘negro’” (Harris 23).  Shakespeare uses the interplay of racial prejudice, and its religious and social significance to craft the corruption of Othello’s relationship with Desdemona.  Iago molds circumstantial and trivial events into a plan that leads Othello to internalize his own racism and fester until it becomes the cause of his own and Desdemona’s death.  Shakespeare uses the imagery of color and bestiality to add to the context of racism. 

            “The literal presence of Othello’s black, male body, especially as defined in relation to Desdemona’s white, female body, emerges as the crucial scene in need of erasure in order to satisfy the fictions of a Western European cultural order” (Little 310).  From the very beginning of the play, Iago exclaims to Brabantio that “you have lost half your soul./ Even now, now, very now, an old black ram/ Is tupping your white ewe.” (Shakespeare 1.1.84-86).  Iago’s rough racial depiction of the union of Othello and Desdemona presupposes Othello as bestial and barbaric before Othello even enters into the play.  “The three crucial structural elements of Shakespeare’s play are Othello’s blackness, his marriage to the white Desdemona, and his killing of her” (Little 306).  The seemingly circumstantial evidence and the twisted rhetoric that Iago uses to convince Othello of Desdemona’s betrayal is at the same time compounded with the racial prejudice that Iago uses to convince Othello of his blackness as the cause for her unfaithfulness.  Othello says:

            Haply I am black

            And have not those soft parts of conversation

            That chamberers have, or for I am declined

            Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much—

            She’s gone.  I am abused, and my relief

            Must be to loathe her.  O curse of marriage, (3.3.262-267)

Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona is unfaithful through the molding of Othello’s perception of the fairness of Cassio as ‘chamberer’.  Othello further detests his own blackness.  “Cassio, like Othello, is a foreigner in the Venetian community, but while Othello represents the sinister outsider, the Florentine Cassio signifies a kind of white knight from abroad” (Little 314).  Iago also uses stereotype of Venetian women to further Othello’s distrust:  Iago says, “I know our country’s disposition well:/ In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks/ They dare not show their husbands; their best science/ Is not to leave’t undone, but kept unknown” (Shakespeare 3.3.201-204).  Shakespeare implies that Venetian women were reportedly disloyal to their husbands and very good at concealing it from them.  This becomes yet another tool for the crafty corruption of Othello’s mind.

            Shakespeare uses imagery of color throughout the poem to display racial attitudes towards Othello.  From the beginning, Iago’s use of the words “black ram” which leads to Brabantio’s accusations of Othello using an implied black magic to woo Desdemona (i.e. “Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals/ That weaken motion” and “corrupted/ By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks”) (Shakespeare 1.1.73-74 and 1.3..61).  Othello defends the claims that he used drugs to coerce Desdemona into loving him when he says, “She loved me for the dangers I had passed,/ And I loved her that she did pity them./ This only is the witchcraft I have used” (1.3.166-168).  The Duke says to Brabantio, “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” (1.3.285).  The terrible night in Cyprus can be said to be another form of blackness that leads to corruption of the Venetians into the chaos of the Turks:  Iago says, “Tis a night of revels” on the “warlike isle” (2.3.41, 55).   Othello’s acceptance of his blackness as noted earlier in “Haply for I am black” leads to his distrust of Desdemona (3.3.262).  Othello internalizes his own racism when he beseeches Iago for some proof of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness:  “My name, that was as fresh/ As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black/ As mine own face” (3.3.383-385).  When Iago suggests that he saw Cassio with the handkerchief that Othello gave to her, Othello cries out for “black vengeance, from the hollow hell” (3.3.444).  All of this use of blackness as a symbol of defilement and corruption sets the tone for the monstrous conclusion that Othello comes to by killing Desdemona and himself.

            “Colour here operates as a sharp dividing line between Chritsians and non-Christians” (Loomba 208).  The Turks looming outside the play represent a chaos that could disrupt the order of Venice and the Romans.  “As Daniel Vitkus has remarked:

            What has often been forgotten is that while Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch ships sailed to the New World and beyond, beginning the exploration and conquest of foreign lands, the Ottoman Turks were rapidly colonizing European territory.  Thus, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Europeans were both colonizers and colonized, and even the English felt the power of the Turkish             threat to Christendom.

How does this doubleness affect the English sense of global relations, and more specifically, its representation on the English stages of the time” (Loomba 204)?

Great significance is placed on the doubleness of Othello as Turk and Venetian.  He is at once an essential tool and part of Venice and a threat to the order of its well-structured society.  Othello defines and is defined by the threat of the Turks in Europe, and the English audiences of Shakespeare’s own time must have seen this historical and cultural significance of Othello’s character.  Can a Turk really be saved or at least not thought to be a threat by turning to Christianity?

            Cassio notes that “Well, God’s above all; and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls/ must not be saved” (2.3100-101).  Later on in that scene, Iago adds “Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that/ Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?/ For Christian shame put by this barbarous brawl” (2.3.169-171).  When Desdemona tells Lodovico of the problems between Cassio and Othello, she says that she wishes to “atone them, for the love I bear to Cassio” which sends Othello into a sort of hell:  He shouts “Fire and brimstone!” (4.1.233-234).  Othello later asks, “Are not you a strumpet?” to which Desdemona replies, “No, as I am a Christian!/ If to preserve this vessel for my lord/ From any other foul unlawful touch/ Be not to be a strumpet, I am none” (4.2.81-84).     Othello is not only a Venetian and a converted Christian, but also a Moor who was once a Muslim.  Black and white corresponds to Muslim and Christian.  We are reminded of Othello’s past when just before he commits suicide he says, “a malignant and a turbaned Turk/ Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,/ I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog/ And smote him—thus” (5.2.349-352).  The tension in the play that Shakespeare creates is that Othello is at once a part of the Roman Catholic Empire by conversion and not a part of their world by ethnicity:

            The articulation of a religion which can be chosen and an ethnicity which cannot is particularly complex in the case of the category called ‘Moors’.  The Spanish derived the word ‘moro’ from the Latin word ‘maurus’ which in turn came from the Greek ‘mavros’ meaning black.  But they used it to designate their conquerors who were not black at all but a mixture of Arab and Berber Muslims... religious difference provides a vocabulary for the expression of racial difference.  Here we see an instance of how religion and ethnicity were expressed through a vocabulary of colour. (Loomba 210)

Othello is portrayed as having certain qualities of a Moor and of a Venetian.  Iago’s plan is “to draw the Moor apart” exploiting this dichotomy (2.3.385).  His identity is split between the Catholic Venetian world that he has been fighting for as general and the barbaric Muslim world in which he was a prince of his tribe and a slave once. 

            The language used to define Othello’s nature is as two-sided as his own identity.  Those people in the play that do not succumb to racial stereotypes of Othello regard him very highly.  Iago, on the other hand, uses prejudice to convince the others to take part in his undoing.  As Othello stabs himself in the end, he displays how he is literally torn between a Venetian and a Turk.  Upon seeing the approach of Othello and Brabantio to the Senate in the opening act of the play, the First Senator refers to Othello as “the valiant Moor” (Shakespeare 1.3.47).  Desdemona also does not share any racial prejudices when she defends her love of Othello: “That I love the Moor to live with him/ [...] And to his honors and his valiant parts/ Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate” (1.3.243-249).  Iago talks about exposing Othello’s finer qualities to bring about his downfall:

            The Moor is of a free and open nature

            That thinks men honest that but seem to be so;

            And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose

            As asses are.

            I have’t!  It is engendered!  Hell and night

            Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light. (1.3.390-395)

In the next act, the Third Gentleman speaks of the “warlike Moor Othello” who Monatano later defends as the having a “good nature” and being the “noble Moor” (2.1.27 and 2.3.130-135).  Desdemona looks at Othello’s ethnicity as being a positive thing when Emilia wonders about Othello being a jealous person:

            And but my noble Moor

            Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness

            As jealous creatures are, [...]

            I think the sun where he was born

            Drew all such humors from him. (3.4.26-31)

All of this evidence noted above, shows the wide variety of attitudes and experiences of race in dealing with Othello.  “The military prowess of the Moors, typified in the battle of Alcazar, coloured the drama of the day” (Harris 26).  Othello is at once respected for his skill in matters of war, and thought to be bestial because of that same skill combined with his blackness.

            Othello does not move from a glamorous black to a hated Turk: rather, we need to  notice how both blacks and Turks can be glamorized as well as hated in contemporary representations, and how the two were interconnected, both in Othello and in the culture at large, via the Spanish discourse on Moorishness, via medieval stereotypes of black Turks, or Egyptians and also by more recent             developments in global relations. (Loomba 206) 

The language used to describe Othello throughout the play, expresses this split between the celebrated Moor and the hated Moor.  Othello cannot prevent his own demise because the factors of racial prejudice and religious aptitudes are constantly working against him in ways that he cannot see.  He is innocent.  If he had never met Desdemona, those members of his army, namely Iago, would have probably found another way to bring about his destruction.  He is at once loved and hated.  Loved for his skills and hated for his skin.

            “The absence or presence of racist attitudes inevitably determines one’s response to Othello” (Orkin 166).  The modern audience has a different experience of the character Othello than the Shakespearean audience.  Today, the modern world deals with the issue of race and its damaging effects in retrospect to major historical events, such as slavery, the Civil-War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the poverty and crime that has defined the modern world in terms of the black experience.  If anything, the above argument shows how blackness took on different cultural and religious meanings than it does today.  The modern experience of blackness is a globalized one that can only be understood with literature and the media’s portrayal of blacks around the world.  Modernity has strived to move beyond differences of color and culture, yet the process is still polarized in the ways in which we understand blackness.  In the four-hundred years since Shakespeare wrote Othello, have people in this world come any further in their acceptance of different cultures, religions, and races?  The best answer to this question may be both yes and no.  While people may have a better understanding and recognition of the damaging effects of racism, the overall effect that racism has on black people has not altogether been bettered by the advancement of society.  Through Othello, Shakespeare speaks across the boundaries of time to give a valid insight into the destructive force of racism, tearing people between their own humanity and their racial difference.    

Works Cited

Harris, Bernard.  “A Portrait of a Moor.” Shakespeare and Race. Ed. Alexander and             Wells: Cambridge 2000.

Little, Arthur L.  “’An Essence that’s Not Seen’: The Primal Scene of Racism in             Othello.”  Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 3. Autumn, 1993.  pp. 304-324.             Folger Shakespeare Library.  Eckerd College Library.  26 Nov. 2007.              http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-            3222%28199323%2944%3A3%3C304%3A%22ETNST%3E2.0CO%3B2-J

Loomba, Ania.  “’Delicious traffick’: racial and religious differences on early modern             stages.”  Shakespeare and Race.  Ed. Alexander and Wells: Cambridge 2000.

Orkin, Martin.  “Othello and the ‘plain face’ Of Racism.”  Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol.             38, No. 2. Summer 1987. pp. 166-188.  Folger Shakespeare Library.  Eckerd             College Library.  26 Nov. 2007.  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-            3222%28198722%2938%3A2%3C166%3AOAT%22FO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6

Vitkus, Daniel.  Qtd. in Ania Loomba’s “’Delicious traffick’: racial and religious             differences on early modern stages.”  Shakespeare and Race.  Ed. Alexander and             Wells: Cambridge 2000.

National Archives Summary of The Constitution

The Federal Convention convened in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Because the delegations from only two states were at first present, the members adjourned from day to day until a quorum of seven states was obtained on May 25. Through discussion and debate it became clear by mid-June that, rather than amend the existing Articles, the Convention would draft an entirely new frame of government. All through the summer, in closed sessions, the delegates debated, and redrafted the articles of the new Constitution. Among the chief points at issue were how much power to allow the central government, how many representatives in Congress to allow each state, and how these representatives should be elected--directly by the people or by the state legislators. The work of many minds, the Constitution stands as a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise.

Is Human Nature Good or Evil?, The Brothers Karamozov Perspective

Robert Baynard II

Foltz/ Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov:  Is Human Nature Good or Evil?

            Dostoevsky explores the inner depths of human nature through the characters and events in The Brothers Karamazov.  Father Zossima and Ivan Karamazov represent two distinctly different views about the nature of the world and how the human conditioned is affected by it.  The coldly intellectual Ivan represents a nihilistic worldview where morality is only a social construct because the soul is not immortal and if there is a God, he must be a mean tyrant for allowing the suffering of so many people, especially children.  The warm and loving Zossima is an elder of a monastery where the youngest Karamazov brother, Alyosha, has been learning from him.  Zossima represents a life driven by faith, not only in God but in the general goodness of human nature.  He is the exact opposite of Ivan, who believes that people are generally bad and that religion is merely a tool that can curtail humanity from its chaotic indecency. 

            Zossima and Ivan are the guiding influences and viewpoints of every other character in the novel as well as the resulting action that plays out from these two opposing positions.  Zossima repeatedly shows his loving kindness for everyone he meets, regardless of what sins they have committed.  He believes in the inner goodness of people’s hearts and believes that love and honesty are the way to securing eternal happiness.  Father Zossima represents the power of faith in the novel, and the young and gentle Alyosha believes that by believing and following the goodness of a world created by God, Who is Good, the world can be transfigured into a place of peace and equality.  Suffering and guilt are a part of human nature, and they only exist in so far as they can bring about redemption for those who have strayed from the path of the Truth.  Alyosha’s depiction of Father Zossima represents his faith in God and in the promise of the world he created:

            Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there is some one holy and exalted.  He has the truth; he knows the truth; so it is not dead upon the earth according to the promise [...]  He is holy.  He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God   and the true Kingdom of Christ will come.  (30)

            Ivan, however, is less convinced.  He does not believe in the innate goodness in people and is skeptical that morality exists at all.  He has trouble reconciling the idea of God when there is so much suffering in the world.  If there is no God, then there is no afterlife for Ivan.  The afterlife seems to be the only reason why someone would be moral, and so morality cannot exist.  Ivan synthesizes the belief that it is perfectly acceptable to indulge in all the sensualist amoral behavior because there is no reason for restraining oneself from pleasure and debauchery.  Ivan proposes that ecclesiastical courts be given more control over people through allowing them to punish criminals because he sees that people would not commit crimes if they knew that they would be crimes before God (66, he also shows this outcome through the taking away of free-will from people in the Grand Inquisitor section, Book V).  This way of seeing the need for God in the world is very different from Zossima’s and Alyosha’s.  Whereas the loving monks believe that people are good and it is their conscience that makes them behave that way, Ivan believes people are bad and that only fear can make them behave morally.  Even if religion is no more than a way of controlling the hoi polloi, Ivan does see the need for it in society whether or not his reasoning is misguided.  Ezra Pound and Mussolini had a similar idea for the use of Roman Catholicism as a way to prevent a chaotic society.

            Suffering in the novel and in the context of the Eastern Orthodox tradition is an outward manifestation of a sickness in the soul.  Healing from affliction and the subsequent redemption of the soul can only come about through the purgation of sinful behavior and forgiveness from one’s iniquities.  The psychological and physical chaos, displayed by the characters who partially or wholly possess the sensualistic lifestyle and nihilistic worldview that Ivan argues about, is the direct result of agony of the soul.  Suffering is not an action of God but a reflection of the material inside of the person.  If the soul is filled with the putrid stench of evil thoughts and deeds whether under the influence of someone else or not, the body will succumb to heartache, hardships and eventual emotional death.  Ivan eventually sees the inevitable downfall of the world he has envisioned and how his influences or fulfilled ideas have led to: the death of his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, the imprisonment of his brother, Dmitri, and the suicide of his half-brother, Smerdyakov, after murdering his father. 

            Dmitri was imprisoned for Fyodor’s death because he wrote that he would kill his father for the money he owed Katarina, and he was found with a large sum of money with his clothes bloodied. Fyodor is a sick, insecure debaucher who has spent much of his wealth on women and booze.  Smerdyakov is believed to be the son of Fyodor who had him by a helpless retarded girl in the town.  He grows up as a servant of Fyodor’s and resents his father constantly.  Smerdyakov says that he was under the influence of Ivan’s philosophical ideas when he killed their father.  Even though Smerdyakov faced no criminal persecution for the murder, he became very sick and committed suicide just as Dmitri’s trial had begun.  Before his death, Ivan goes to see him, and he confesses that he is the murderer.  He accuses Ivan saying:

            You are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the murder and charged me     to do it, and went away knowing all about it.  And so I want to prove to your face this evening that you are the only real murderer in the whole affair, and I am not    the real murderer, though I did kill him.  You are the rightful murder. (714) 

However, Smerdyakov’s confession is not wholeheartedly given, and so the sickness in his soul drives him to kill himself.  Ivan must now come to grips with the idea that his actions and beliefs can have a destructive impact on human nature.  

            Dostoevsky explores the theme of sinful lifestyles and an irreverence of God by showing how it leads to a decayed moral fiber and a defect of the soul.  All of the characters in the novel battle one way or another with what they really believe, even the gentle Alyosha breaks the Fast by drinking vodka and eating sausage after Zossima’s corpse begins to stink.  Other displays of wrestling with sin are: the destructive behavior of the capricious Grushenka, the cold fatalism and unwillingness to act in the love between Ivan and Katerina, the suffering and death of Illyusha, the son of the captain who Dmitri beat in a duel, Dmitri’s beating of the Fyodor’s loyal servant, Grigory who was Smerdyakov’s caregiver, and the night terrors that torment Ivan.  Ivan’s philosophy has also influenced and symbolized the massive riff in the Karamazov family.  Father and son, Fyodor and Dmitri, continually duel it out over matters of inheritance and the affections of Grushenka.

            All of this suffering is offset by the figures of Zossima and Alyosha whose endless love and gentleness towards others makes the true goodness inside someone come forth.  They represent the beliefs and attitudes of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, and they stand as symbols of the anti-Ivan.  Dostoevsky shows that suffering can be a path to redemption, as long as one can honestly look into the material of their soul and try to correct their misdeeds.  Once we repent and come to forgiveness,  we can restore our lives and begin the path to salvation.  Father Zossima in the beginning of the novel tells the woman who is suffering from the loss of her son that her grief “will turn in the end into [a] quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin” (55). 

When Dmitri and Fyodor decide to have Father Zossima settle their dispute, they break out into a terrible argument.  Zossima foresees the great suffering that Dmitri will face, and he pours out his heart and love:

            Father Zossima moved towards Dmitri and reaching him sank on his knees before him.  Alyosha thought that he had fallen from weakness, but this was not so.  The   elder distinctly and deliberately bowed down at Dmitri’s feet till his forehead touched the floor. (78)

Zossima always loved sinners that he encountered, and he was a very holy man, despite there being no miracle corresponding to his death.  Zossima helped so many people in his life and continually stressed the need for people to love one another and care for the sins of others.  Unlike Ivan, he believes that in order for there to be peace and wholeness in one’s life, they must follow the path of theosis, striving to always become more of a likeness of Christ so that they may be transfigured into their full potential as human beings.  Zossima and Ivan believe that people generally want to be good because God has instilled people with a soul that is not indifferent to amorality.  Ivan believes that people are too imperfect to be left to their own devices and controlling them is the only way to peace on earth. 

            Zossima and Alyosha represent figures whom are made in the image and likeness of Christ (Genesis 1: 26).  They pour out their love for others despite what they think or say or do to them.  They represent the fullness of being that accompanies a life in Christ.  The problems of human nature are revealed through an elaborate poem that Ivan says he did not write, rather he was possessed or “carried away when [he] made it up” (273).  In Ivan’s creation, “The Grand Inquisitor”, a cardinal has taken over the world because God should not have given man the burden of freedom.  The poem takes up the specific context of the Roman Catholic Church and the corrupted inevitable end of true Christianity, when man takes the position of God (though probably not the intention of Ivan).  This is why Zossima believes that ecclesiastical courts should not try to judge people because that is only God’s business.  The Inquisitor sees the dichotomy of human nature, torn between free-will and the Will of God.  Ivan describes the Inquisitor’s position:

            He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy.  ‘For now’ (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) ‘for the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men.  Man was created a rebel; and how can rebels be happy?  Thou wast warned,’ he says to Him.  ‘Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst not listen to those warnings; Thou didst reject the only way by which men might be made happy. But, fortunately,  departing Thou didst hand on the work to us. (279)

The pomposity of the Inquisitor in the face of Christ signifies the roles of each of the characters who take their lives into their own hands, possibly or inadvertently supporting Ivan’s main points.

            Ivan believes people are too weak to hold up the standards of morality that God requires, so he imagines a cardinal at work with the devil to control the world by stripping away their freedom.  The cardinal knows that they cannot attain salvation in this way, following man not God, but at least they can have a comfortable mortal life.  When Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, the Inquisitor describes how God would not give man the power to reconcile their troubled human nature:

            For in those three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature.  Judge Thyself who was right—Thou or he who questioned Thee then? [...]  Nothing is more seductive for  man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.  And behold, instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man   at rest for ever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men, acting as though Thou didst not love them at all.  (280 and 282)  

Ivan is an Inquisitor figure also.  He upholds the ideas that people should basically live how they want to live because morality is either a farce or a cruel injustice.  This is why he does not abhor Fyodor for his debauchery, and is also partly responsible for his murder through his influence on Smerdyakov.  Freedom is the difficulty of morality.  God granted us the freedom to follow Him and therefore be good and have salvation, or we could follow our passions and live an evil lifestyle.  Like the Inquisitor, Ivan also believes that man was given the impossible burden of free will.  Dostoevsky crafts The Brothers Karamazov around the problem of free will in human nature.  Lives are played out along everyday worldly paths that resonate through any age of man and society.  Each character struggles with different demons, and Dostoevsky shows that a life in Christ is the only way to climb out of the depths of suffering.

            Christ, Zossima, and Alyosha all see that the people they are dealing with need love and compassion, not punishment and subservitude; because they will suffer enough from their own troubled souls.  Zossima’s metanoia at the foot of Dmitri is similar to the kiss that Christ gives to the Grand Inquisitor after his tirade and the kiss that Alyosha gives Ivan after hearing that same poem.  While the arguments of Ivan and the Inquisitor may be perfectly reasonable and acceptable, people in the novel show how taking their own judgment over God’s leads to nothing but despair and torment.  Love and the Loving Way of Jesus Christ and His ascetic followers, is a better life than trying to instill man-made values.  Instead of being lost amongst the current of self-doubt and distrust of others, one can hold onto God and the Holy Bible, for it says in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”  And also in the Book of Psalms 18:1-2, “I will love You, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

            Father Zossima’s death did not come with a miracle because like the temptation that Jesus denied from the devil, the people should not need a miracle to have faith.  Alyosha was described in the beginning of the novel as a true believer, and after his initial doubts, remains so in the face of this trouble surrounding the saintliness of his beloved Zossima:

            Alyosha was more of a realist than any one [...] The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.  Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognised by him.  Faith does not, in the realist, spring    from the miracle but the miracle from faith.  If the realist once believes, then he is   bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. (25)  Alyosha believes in his heart and would never disbelieve his own senses like the simple realist.  Alyosha is a realist who believes.  Alyosha, like Zossima and Christ, know that the spiritual life is more real and more important than the physical, and the mortal life will be more at peace if one would purge themselves of their sins and follow the path of theosis.  Dostoevsky shows through his characters and the plot that love and faith are the only two saving graces in a world torn apart by the human condition.

            Father Zossima’s and Alyosha’s teachings emphasize the need for love and community that will bring about a more perfect life for the people.  The characters show the human impulse to confess their wrongdoings and evil thoughts because they have an inherent need to seek salvation.  Following in the footsteps of Christ through love for one another, is the way to eternal joy.  In the section “Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima” one can see how this great man knew so well the right way to act and the right words to say.  Father Zossima’s teachings show how people can find their way through the troubles of the world by going to the Holy Bible:

            Good heavens, what a book it is, and what lessons there are in it!  What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man.  It is like a mould cast of the world and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages.  And what mysteries are solved and revealed. (325)  The human condition can find its repose in the Holy Scripture.  The Bible solves all of the questions that the devil tempts Jesus with.  This is what Jesus had in mind when He answered the devil with these three answers:

            1.)  It is written. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that                                       proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (Mark 4:4)

            2.)  It is written again.  Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (Mark 4:7)

            3.)  Get thee hence Satan, for it is written.  Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God                             and him only shalt thou serve. (Mark 4:10)

The Inquisitor, like Ivan lost the key facts to how man, with all his freedom, could obey God’s laws.  “It is written,” Jesus tells the devil, and that is how the mysteries of the human condition and the nature of the world can be revealed. 

            Reading the Bible can bring rest to one’s suffering, calm the passions, and work to restore one’s soul.  Faith is the answer to human nature’s deepest struggles.  Without faith and love the world could collapse into utter despair and isolation.  Zossima’s and Alyosha’s lives are testaments to the living faith at work in the lives of men.  The soul can be healed through following the ascetic path and loving one another.  Harmony and happiness can be found once man has transformed their heart into the pureness and love of Jesus Christ.  The many distractions of the senses and the outside world have little effect on Zossima and Alyosha aside from them being deeply sad for those involved.  The two characters embody the united human condition and its fulfillment with a life dedicated to theosis.

Works Cited

Dostoevsky, Fyodor.  The Brothers Karamazov.  Trans. by Constance Garnett.  New      York: Random House Modern Library edition, 1996.