Due Thursday, May 3rd - The Stranger Part II and Q3 on blog
Due Friday, May 4th - Practice Exam
Due Tuesday, May 8th - Two Study Packets
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Monday, April 30, 2018
Due Thursday, May 3rd - Finish Reading "The Stranger" by Albert Camus and Compose a Q3
Please finish read The Stranger by Albert Camus. As you read, take note of significant moments in your journal. When you complete reading the novel, take time to reflect. Then choose one of the following prompts from past A.P. Exams (see blow). Each one of the chosen prompts had The Stranger listed in the choices below the prompt. These are perfect matches. In a word document or Google Doc, compose a 40 minute essay. Read it over and edit the piece, and copy and paste it into this blog space for a class discussion and activity.
1979. Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might on the basis of the character's actions alone be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary.
1982. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience with a scene or scenes of violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid plot summary.
1986. Some works of literature use the element of time in a distinct way. The chronological sequence of events may be altered, or time may be suspended or accelerated. Choose a novel, an epic, or a play of recognized literary merit and show how the author's manipulation of time contributes to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2011. Form B. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), novelist Edith Wharton states the following: At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.
Choose a novel or play that you have studied and write a well-organized essay in which you describe an “illuminating” episode or moment and explain how it functions as a “casement,” a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2015. In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major social or political factor. Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.
Prompts:
1979. Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might on the basis of the character's actions alone be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary.
1982. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience with a scene or scenes of violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid plot summary.
1986. Some works of literature use the element of time in a distinct way. The chronological sequence of events may be altered, or time may be suspended or accelerated. Choose a novel, an epic, or a play of recognized literary merit and show how the author's manipulation of time contributes to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2011. Form B. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), novelist Edith Wharton states the following: At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.
Choose a novel or play that you have studied and write a well-organized essay in which you describe an “illuminating” episode or moment and explain how it functions as a “casement,” a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2015. In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major social or political factor. Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Due Monday, April 30th - "The Stranger" by Albert Camus - Part I (Pages 1-59)
1) Read Part I of The Stranger by Albert Camus.
2) Compose a blog response, using at least two lines from the novel, and apply it to Camus's theories as well make connections to our world today. Look at the characterization, plot, diction, syntax, etc. How is Camus trying to explain his theory through literature? Where are you seeing yourself in this novel? The theory of existentialism? How could it help us in our society?
Three Stages of Existentialism
Humans in Anguish: "The man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a law-maker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, cannot help escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility. Of course there are many people who are not anxious; but we claim they are hiding their anxiety, that they are fleeing from it....Anguish is evident, even when it conceals itself."
Humans in
Forlornness: "When we speak
of forlornness, we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face
all the consequences of this....The existentialist thinks it very distressing
that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven
of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer an a priori Good, since
there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists,
that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a
plane where there are only men....Neither within him or without does man find
anything to cling to. He can't start
making excuses for himself.
Humans in Despair: "As for despair, the term has a very
simple meaning. It means that we shall
confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the
ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible....No God, no scheme,
can adapt the world and its possibilities to my will."
About the author: Albert Camus(1913 – 1960) was a French author, philosopher, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. His most famous works were the novels La Peste (The Plague) and L’Étranger (The Stranger or The Outsider) and the philosophical essay The Myth Of Sisyphus.
Summary: In The Myth of Sisyphus (1955) Camus claims that the only important philosophical question is suicide—should we continue to live or not? The rest is secondary, says Camus, because no one dies for scientific or philosophical arguments, usually abandoning them when their life is at risk. Yet people do take their own lives because they judge them meaningless, or sacrifice them for meaningful causes. This suggests that questions of meaning supersede all other scientific or philosophical questions. As Camus puts it: “I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.”
What interests Camus is what leads to suicide. He argues that “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined … the worm is in man’s heart.”When we start to think we open up the possibility that all we valued previously, including our belief in life’s goodness, may be subverted. This rejection of life emanates from deep within, and this is where its source must be sought. For Camus killing yourself is admitting that all of the habits and effort needed for living are not worth the trouble. As long as we accept reasons for life’s meaning we continue, but as soon as we reject these reasons we become alienated—we become strangers from the world. This feeling of separation from the world Camus terms absurdity, a sensation that may lead to suicide. Still most of us go on because we are attached to the world; we continue to live out of habit.
But is suicide a solution to the absurdity of life? For those who believe in life’s absurdity it is a reasonable response—one’s conduct should follow from one’s beliefs. Of course conduct does not always follow from belief. Individuals argue for suicide but continue to live; others profess that there is a meaning to life and choose suicide. Yet most persons are attached to this world by instinct, by a will to live that precedes philosophical reflection. Thus, they evade questions of suicide and meaning by combining instinct with the hope that something gives life meaning. Yet the repetitiveness of life brings absurdity back to consciousness. In Camus’ words: “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday…”Living brings the question of suicide back, forcing a person to confront and answer this essential question—should I go on?
Yet of death we know nothing. “This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.”Furthermore I can’t know myself intimately anymore than I can know death. “This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself …” We know that we feel, but our knowledge of ourselves ends there.
What makes life absurd is our inability to know ourselves and the world’s meaning even though we desire such knowledge. “…what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.” The world could have meaning: “But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.” This tension between our desire to know meaning and the impossibility of knowing it is a most important discovery. In response, we are tempted to leap into faith, but the honest know that they do not understand, and they must learn “to live without appeal…” In this sense we are free—living without higher purposes, living without appeal. Aware of our condition we exercise our freedom and revolt against the absurd—this is the best we can do.
Nowhere is the essence of the human condition made clearer than in the The Myth of Sisyphus. Condemned by the gods to roll a rock to the top of a mountain, whereupon its own weight makes it fall back down again, Sisyphus was condemned to this perpetually futile labor. His crimes seem slight, yet his preference for the natural world instead of the underworld incurred the wrath of the gods: “His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.” He was condemned to everlasting torment, and the accompanying despair of knowing that his labor was futile.
Yet Camus sees something else in Sisyphus at that moment when he goes back down the mountain. Consciousness of his fate is the tragedy; yet consciousness also allows Sisyphus to scorn the gods which provides a small measure of satisfaction. Tragedy and happiness go together; this is the state of the world that we must accept. Fate decries that there is no purpose for our lives, but one can respond bravely to their situation: “This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Reflections – Camus argues that life is meaningless and absurd. Still we can revolt against the absurdity, and find some small modicum of happiness. Essentially Camus asks if there is a third alternative between acceptance of life’s absurdity or its denial by embracing dubious metaphysical propositions. Can we live without the hope that life is meaningful, but without the despair that leads to suicide? If the contrast is posed this starkly it seems an alternative appears—we can proceed defiantly forward. We can live without faith, without hope, and without appeal.
We are called upon to live without appeal, as appeals are intellectually dishonest. But perhaps there are other alternatives than: 1) accepting absurdity; 2) embracing hopeful metaphysics; or 3) Camus’ defiance. Perhaps we can just say we don’t understand life at all, but we affirm it anyway. We just try to live without being sure of anything. Be open to possibilities. Then we might ground the meaning of our lives in the small part we can play in bringing about a more meaningful reality, by working to transform reality. This is no answer, but a way to live.
Summary of The Myth of Sisyphus
Summary: In The Myth of Sisyphus (1955) Camus claims that the only important philosophical question is suicide—should we continue to live or not? The rest is secondary, says Camus, because no one dies for scientific or philosophical arguments, usually abandoning them when their life is at risk. Yet people do take their own lives because they judge them meaningless, or sacrifice them for meaningful causes. This suggests that questions of meaning supersede all other scientific or philosophical questions. As Camus puts it: “I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.”
What interests Camus is what leads to suicide. He argues that “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined … the worm is in man’s heart.”When we start to think we open up the possibility that all we valued previously, including our belief in life’s goodness, may be subverted. This rejection of life emanates from deep within, and this is where its source must be sought. For Camus killing yourself is admitting that all of the habits and effort needed for living are not worth the trouble. As long as we accept reasons for life’s meaning we continue, but as soon as we reject these reasons we become alienated—we become strangers from the world. This feeling of separation from the world Camus terms absurdity, a sensation that may lead to suicide. Still most of us go on because we are attached to the world; we continue to live out of habit.
But is suicide a solution to the absurdity of life? For those who believe in life’s absurdity it is a reasonable response—one’s conduct should follow from one’s beliefs. Of course conduct does not always follow from belief. Individuals argue for suicide but continue to live; others profess that there is a meaning to life and choose suicide. Yet most persons are attached to this world by instinct, by a will to live that precedes philosophical reflection. Thus, they evade questions of suicide and meaning by combining instinct with the hope that something gives life meaning. Yet the repetitiveness of life brings absurdity back to consciousness. In Camus’ words: “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday…”Living brings the question of suicide back, forcing a person to confront and answer this essential question—should I go on?
Yet of death we know nothing. “This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.”Furthermore I can’t know myself intimately anymore than I can know death. “This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself …” We know that we feel, but our knowledge of ourselves ends there.
What makes life absurd is our inability to know ourselves and the world’s meaning even though we desire such knowledge. “…what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.” The world could have meaning: “But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.” This tension between our desire to know meaning and the impossibility of knowing it is a most important discovery. In response, we are tempted to leap into faith, but the honest know that they do not understand, and they must learn “to live without appeal…” In this sense we are free—living without higher purposes, living without appeal. Aware of our condition we exercise our freedom and revolt against the absurd—this is the best we can do.
Nowhere is the essence of the human condition made clearer than in the The Myth of Sisyphus. Condemned by the gods to roll a rock to the top of a mountain, whereupon its own weight makes it fall back down again, Sisyphus was condemned to this perpetually futile labor. His crimes seem slight, yet his preference for the natural world instead of the underworld incurred the wrath of the gods: “His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.” He was condemned to everlasting torment, and the accompanying despair of knowing that his labor was futile.
Yet Camus sees something else in Sisyphus at that moment when he goes back down the mountain. Consciousness of his fate is the tragedy; yet consciousness also allows Sisyphus to scorn the gods which provides a small measure of satisfaction. Tragedy and happiness go together; this is the state of the world that we must accept. Fate decries that there is no purpose for our lives, but one can respond bravely to their situation: “This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Reflections – Camus argues that life is meaningless and absurd. Still we can revolt against the absurdity, and find some small modicum of happiness. Essentially Camus asks if there is a third alternative between acceptance of life’s absurdity or its denial by embracing dubious metaphysical propositions. Can we live without the hope that life is meaningful, but without the despair that leads to suicide? If the contrast is posed this starkly it seems an alternative appears—we can proceed defiantly forward. We can live without faith, without hope, and without appeal.
We are called upon to live without appeal, as appeals are intellectually dishonest. But perhaps there are other alternatives than: 1) accepting absurdity; 2) embracing hopeful metaphysics; or 3) Camus’ defiance. Perhaps we can just say we don’t understand life at all, but we affirm it anyway. We just try to live without being sure of anything. Be open to possibilities. Then we might ground the meaning of our lives in the small part we can play in bringing about a more meaningful reality, by working to transform reality. This is no answer, but a way to live.
Ryan Gosling in La La Land!
Camus says, "What does it all mean, Ryan Gosling?"
Due Friday, April 25th - “Existentialism Is a Humanism” By Jean-Paul Sartre
Please read the following essay on Existentialism and comment in this blog space using evidence from the essay in your response.
For further exploration:
Three Stages of Existentialism
Humans in Anguish: "The man who involves himself and who
realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a law-maker
who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, cannot help
escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility. Of course there are many people who are not
anxious; but we claim they are hiding their anxiety, that they are fleeing from
it....Anguish is evident, even when it conceals itself."
Humans in
Forlornness: "When we speak
of forlornness, we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face
all the consequences of this....The existentialist thinks it very distressing
that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven
of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer an a priori Good, since
there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists,
that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a
plane where there are only men....Neither within him or without does man find
anything to cling to. He can't start
making excuses for himself.
Humans in Despair: "As for despair, the term has a very
simple meaning. It means that we shall
confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the
ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible....No God, no scheme,
can adapt the world and its possibilities to my will."
“Existentialism Is a Humanism”
By Jean-Paul Sartre
Written: Lecture given in 1946
Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre,
ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989;
First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956;
Translator: Philip Mairet;
My purpose here is to offer a defense of existentialism
against several reproaches that have been laid against it.
First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to
dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one
would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one
would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since
contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy.
This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.
From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined
all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean,
sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty
and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the
Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this
side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the
solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the
Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity – upon the
Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to
himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other
men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the
cogito.
From the Christian side, we are reproached as people who
deny the reality and seriousness of human affairs. For since we ignore the
commandments of God and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing remains but
what is strictly voluntary. Everyone can do what he likes, and will be
incapable, from such a point of view, of condemning either the point of view or
the action of anyone else.
It is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavour to
reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition “Existentialism
is a Humanism.” Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this
connection, but we shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any
case, we can begin by saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is
a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which
affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human
subjectivity. The essential charge laid against us is, of course, that of
over-emphasis upon the evil side of human life. I have lately been told of a
lady who, whenever she lets slip a vulgar expression in a moment of
nervousness, excuses herself by exclaiming, “I believe I am becoming an
existentialist.” So it appears that ugliness is being identified with
existentialism. That is why some people say we are “naturalistic,” and if we
are, it is strange to see how much we scandalise and horrify them, for no one seems
to be much frightened or humiliated nowadays by what is properly called
naturalism. Those who can quite well keep down a novel by Zola such as La Terre
are sickened as soon as they read an existentialist novel. Those who appeal to
the wisdom of the people – which is a sad wisdom – find ours sadder still. And
yet, what could be more disillusioned than such sayings as “Charity begins at
home” or “Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down and
he’ll do you homage”? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to this
effect, and they all mean much the same – that you must not oppose the powers
that be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not meddle in
matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance with
some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not the
support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since
experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm
rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the
people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are
told of some more or less repulsive action, say “How like human nature!” – it
is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that
existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their excessive protests
make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much our pessimism, but,
much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine
that I am about to try to explain to you is – is it not? – that it confronts
man with a possibility of choice. To verify this, let us review the whole
question upon the strictly philosophic level. What, then, is this that we call
existentialism?
Most of those who are making use of this word would be
highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has become
fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is
“existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,”
and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no
longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel
doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the
latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however,
they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings
the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for
technicians and philosophers. All the same, it can easily be defined.
The question is only complicated because there are two kinds
of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I
shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the
other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as
the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the
fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will,
that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?
If one considers an article of manufacture as, for example,
a book or a paper-knife – one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had
a conception of it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a
paper-knife and to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of
that conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife is at the
same time an article producible in a certain manner and one which, on the other
hand, serves a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose that a man would
produce a paper-knife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the
paperknife that its essence – that is to say the sum of the formulae and the
qualities which made its production and its definition possible – precedes its
existence. The presence of such-and-such a paper-knife or book is thus
determined before my eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world from a
technical standpoint, and we can say that production precedes existence.
When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him,
most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be
considering, whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of Leibnitz
himself, we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the
understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows
precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God
is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes
man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan
manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each
individual man is the realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the
divine understanding. In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the
notion of God is suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is
prior to existence; something of that idea we still find everywhere, in
Diderot, in Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that
“human nature,” which is the conception of human being, is found in every man;
which means that each man is a particular example of a universal conception,
the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man
of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in
the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the
essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in
experience.
Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative,
declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least
one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before
it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as Heidegger
has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes
essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in
the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees
him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be
anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there
is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man
simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is
what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills
to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he
makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. And this is
what people call its “subjectivity,” using the word as a reproach against us.
But what do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a
stone or a table? For we mean to say that man primarily exists – that man is,
before all else, something which propels itself towards a future and is aware
that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective
life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before
that projection of the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of
intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be.
Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing
or willing is a conscious decision taken – much more often than not – after we
have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write a book or
to marry – but in such a case what is usually called my will is probably a
manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision. If, however, it is true
that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus,
the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of
himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence
squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for
himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality,
but that he is responsible for all men. The word “subjectivism” is to be
understood in two senses, and our adversaries play upon only one of them.
Subjectivism means, on the one hand, the freedom of the individual subject and,
on the other, that man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It is the latter
which is the deeper meaning of existentialism. When we say that man chooses
himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we
also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect,
of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be,
there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man
such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the
same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever
to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be
better for us unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes
essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that
image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our
responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns
mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a
Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I
choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best
becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit
myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action
is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a
more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this
decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am
thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of
monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a
certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion
man.
This may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms
– perhaps a little grandiloquent – as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you
will soon see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? – The
existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as
follows: When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not
only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator
deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from
the sense of complete and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, who
show no such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising their
anguish or are in flight from it. Certainly, many people think that in what
they are doing they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you ask
them, “What would happen if everyone did so?” they shrug their shoulders and
reply, “Everyone does not do so.” But in truth, one ought always to ask oneself
what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that
disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who lies in
self-excuse, by saying “Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in his
conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies.
By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that
Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham.” You know the story: An angel
commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son; and obedience was obligatory, if it
really was an angel who had appeared and said, “Thou, Abraham, shalt sacrifice
thy son.” But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed
an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? A
certain mad woman who suffered from hallucinations said that people were
telephoning to her, and giving her orders. The doctor asked, “But who is it
that speaks to you?” She replied: “He says it is God.” And what, indeed, could
prove to her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is the proof that
it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they proceed from
heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness or some pathological
condition? Who can prove that they are really addressed to me?
Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose,
by my own choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any
proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks
to me, it is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is not that
of an angel. If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who
choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am
Abraham: nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions
which are examples. Everything happens to every man as though the whole human
race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct
accordingly. So every man ought to say, “Am I really a man who has the right to
act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do.” If a man
does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the anguish with
which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or inaction.
It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who have
borne responsibilities. When, for instance, a military leader takes upon
himself the responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to their
death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt under a
higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require interpretation
by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty
men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish. All leaders
know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the
very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a
plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize that it
has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which
existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit through
direct responsibility towards other men who are concerned. Far from being a
screen which could separate us from action, it is a condition of action itself.
And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger
– we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw
the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is
strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress
God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors
endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God
is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we
are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that
certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence
ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not
to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are
going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that
these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although,
of course, there is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the
purport of all that we in France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if
God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and
humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which
will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it
extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him
all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no
longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect
consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that
one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there
are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be
permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is
indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for
he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He
discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence
precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference
to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism –
man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are
we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour.
Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values,
any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That
is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because
he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment
that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The
existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a
grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain
actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that
man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a
man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his
orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he
chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is
condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine
article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true. Only, if one took
this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is,
it would be false, for then it would no longer even be a future. If, however,
it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is a future to be
fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him – then it is a true saying. But in
the present one is forsaken.
As an example by which you may the better understand this
state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought
me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his
mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been
killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment
somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living
alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the
death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he,
at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French
Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised
that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his
death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in
fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect
in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and
fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and
serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait
indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in
England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms.
Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of
action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual;
and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national
collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated
on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality;
on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the
other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to
choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian
doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour,
deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But
which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the
patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting
in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular
person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it
given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as
a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall
be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in
danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the
converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be
treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If
values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the
particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in
our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he
said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is
really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother
enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my
longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I
feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the
strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined
precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a
certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I
cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to
remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the
strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined
and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I
find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
Moreover, as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is
play-acting and one which is vital are two things that are hardly
distinguishable one from another. To decide that I love my mother by staying
beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of which is that I do so – these
are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that
one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to
say that I can neither seek within myself for an authentic impulse to action,
nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae that will enable me to act. You may
say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But if
you seek counsel – from a priest, for example you have selected that priest;
and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other
words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice.
If you are a Christian, you will say, consult a priest; but there are
collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide
to turn: which will you choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the
resistance, or one of the collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the
kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what
advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free,
therefore choose, that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show
you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics
will reply, “Oh, but they are!” Very well; still, it is I myself, in every
case, who have to interpret the signs. While I was imprisoned, I made the
acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member of
that order in the following manner. In his life he had suffered a succession of
rather severe setbacks. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him in
poverty, and he had been awarded a free scholarship in a religious institution,
where he had been made continually to feel that he was accepted for charity’s
sake, and, in consequence, he had been denied several of those distinctions and
honours which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to
grief in a sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two – this was a trifle
in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup – he failed in his
military examination. This young man, then, could regard himself as a total
failure: it was a sign – but a sign of what? He might have taken refuge in
bitterness or despair. But he took it – very cleverly for him – as a sign that
he was not intended for secular success, and that only the attainments of
religion, those of sanctity and of faith, were accessible to him. He
interpreted his record as a message from God, and became a member of the Order.
Who can doubt but that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and
his alone? One could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series
of reverses – as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a
revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, he bears the entire
responsibility. That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide
our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.
As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is
extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon
that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which
render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these
elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may
be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the
appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of
possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that
are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the
possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to
disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can
adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said,
“Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the
same – that we should act without hope.
Marxists, to whom I have said this, have answered: “Your
action is limited, obviously, by your death; but you can rely upon the help of
others. That is, you can count both upon what the others are doing to help you
elsewhere, as in China and in Russia, and upon what they will do later, after
your death, to take up your action and carry it forward to its final
accomplishment which will be the revolution. Moreover you must rely upon this;
not to do so is immoral.” To this I rejoin, first, that I shall always count
upon my comrades-in-arms in the struggle, in so far as they are committed, as I
am, to a definite, common cause; and in the unity of a party or a group which I
can more or less control – that is, in which I am enrolled as a militant and
whose movements at every moment are known to me. In that respect, to rely upon
the unity and the will of the party is exactly like my reckoning that the train
will run to time or that the tram will not be derailed. But I cannot count upon
men whom I do not know, I cannot base my confidence upon human goodness or upon
man’s interest in the good of society, seeing that man is free and that there
is no human nature which I can take as foundational. I do not know where the
Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it as an example in so
far as it is evident, today, that the proletariat plays a part in Russia which
it has attained in no other nation. But I cannot affirm that this will
necessarily lead to the triumph of the proletariat: I must confine myself to
what I can see. Nor can I be sure that comrades-in-arms will take up my work
after my death and carry it to the maximum perfection, seeing that those men
are free agents and will freely decide, tomorrow, what man is then to be.
Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to establish Fascism, and the
others may be so cowardly or so slack as to let them do so. If so, Fascism will
then be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will
be such as men have decided they shall be. Does that mean that I should abandon
myself to quietism? No. First I ought to commit myself and then act my
commitment, according to the time-honoured formula that “one need not hope in
order to undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I should not belong to
a party, but only that I should be without illusion and that I should do what I
can. For instance, if I ask myself “Will the social ideal as such, ever become
a reality?” I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be in my power to make
it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing.
Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do
what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the
opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action.
It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes,
he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else
but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can
well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have
but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think,
“Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better
than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship;
but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I
have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do
so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I
did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide
range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly
viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the
mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there
is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than
that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is
expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of
Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which
there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet
another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man
commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait.
No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of
his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that
reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define
a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that
is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one
says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an
artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things
contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a
man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the
organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.
In the light of all this, what people reproach us with is
not, after all, our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If people
condemn our works of fiction, in which we describe characters that are base,
weak, cowardly and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only because those
characters are base, weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola, we
showed that the behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity, or
by the action of their environment upon them, or by determining factors,
psychic or organic. People would be reassured, they would say, “You see, that
is what we are like, no one can do anything about it.” But the existentialist,
when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is
not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not
become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he
has made himself into a coward by actions. There is no such thing as a cowardly
temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called
impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. But the man whose
blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice is the
act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is
defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with
horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What
people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero. One of the
charges most often laid against the Chemins de la Liberté is something like
this: “But, after all, these people being so base, how can you make them into
heroes?” That objection is really rather comic, for it implies that people are
born heroes: and that is, at bottom, what such people would like to think. If
you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing about it and
you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are born heroes
you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives eating and
drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes
himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a
possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being
a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case
or particular action that you are committed altogether.
We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the
reproaches against existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be regarded as
a philosophy of quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as a
pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny
of man is placed within himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man from
action since it tells him that there is no hope except in his action, and that
the one thing which permits him to have life is the deed. Upon this level
therefore, what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment.
However, we are still reproached, upon these few data, for confining man within
his individual subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.
Our point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the
individual, and that for strictly philosophic reasons. It is not because we are
bourgeois, but because we seek to base our teaching upon the truth, and not
upon a collection of fine theories, full of hope but lacking real foundations.
And at the point of departure there cannot be any other truth than this, I
think, therefore I am, which is the absolute truth of consciousness as it
attains to itself. Every theory which begins with man, outside of this moment
of self-attainment, is a theory which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside
of the Cartesian cogito, all objects are no more than probable, and any
doctrine of probabilities which is not attached to a truth will crumble into
nothing. In order to define the probable one must possess the true. Before
there can be any truth whatever, then, there must be an absolute truth, and
there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained and within the reach of
everybody; it consists in one’s immediate sense of one’s self.
In the second place, this theory alone is compatible with
the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an object.
All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an
object – that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different
from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a
chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a
pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity
which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual
subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that
one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the
philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say “I think” we are
attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain
of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself
directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the
condition of his own existence. He recognises that he cannot be anything (in
the sense in which one says one is spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous)
unless others recognise him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about
myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to
my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these
conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation
of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or will
without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in
a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world
that man has to decide what he is and what others are.
Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and
every man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there is
nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the
thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the
nature of man. By his condition they understand, with more or less clarity, all
the limitations which a priori define man’s fundamental situation in the
universe. His historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a
pagan society or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary
are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there.
These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both
a subjective and an objective aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with
them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and subjective because
they are lived and are nothing if man does not live them – if, that is to say,
he does not freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them.
And, diverse though man’s purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly
foreign to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt either
to surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to
accommodate oneself to them. Consequently every purpose, however individual it
may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian
or a Negro, can be understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means
that the European of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards
the same limitations in the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the
purpose of the Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is
universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man.
Not that this or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be
entertained again and again. There is always some way of understanding an
idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient
information. In this sense we may say that there is a human universality, but
it is not something given; it is being perpetually made. I make this
universality in choosing myself; I also make it by understanding the purpose of
any other man, of whatever epoch. This absoluteness of the act of choice does
not alter the relativity of each epoch.
What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is
the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises
himself in realising a type of humanity – a commitment always understandable,
to no matter whom in no matter what epoch – and its bearing upon the relativity
of the cultural pattern which may result from such absolute commitment. One
must observe equally the relativity of Cartesianism and the absolute character
of the Cartesian commitment. In this sense you may say, if you like, that every
one of us makes the absolute by breathing, by eating, by sleeping or by
behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between free being –
being as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence – and absolute
being. And there is no difference whatever between being as an absolute,
temporarily localised that is, localised in history – and universally
intelligible being.
This does not completely refute the charge of subjectivism.
Indeed that objection appears in several other forms, of which the first is as
follows. People say to us, “Then it does not matter what you do,” and they say
this in various ways.
First they tax us with anarchy; then they say, “You cannot
judge others, for there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another”;
finally, they may say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of
yours, you give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.”
These three are not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it
does not matter what you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is
possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I
must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it
may appear merely formal, is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and
caprice. For, when I confront a real situation – for example, that I am a
sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to
have children – I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect
I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also
commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no a priori
value whatever, it can have nothing to do with caprice: and if anyone thinks
that this is only Gide’s theory of the acte gratuit over again, he has failed
to see the enormous difference between this theory and that of Gide. Gide does
not know what a situation is, his “act” is one of pure caprice. In our view, on
the contrary, man finds himself in an organised situation in which he is
himself involved: his choice involves mankind in its entirety, and he cannot
avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he must marry without having children,
or he must marry and have children. In any case, and whichever he may choose,
it is impossible for him, in respect of this situation, not to take complete
responsibility. Doubtless he chooses without reference to any pre-established
value, but it is unjust to tax him with caprice. Rather let us say that the
moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.
But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that
we are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are
disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of art
only by way of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an
artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori.
Does one ever ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As everyone
knows, there is no pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist applies
himself to the composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to be made
is precisely that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are no
aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course
in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and
the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like;
one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with
morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of
art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand
very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was
painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.
It is the same upon the plane of morality. There is this in
common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and
invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done. I think it
was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of that student who came to see
me, that to whatever ethical system he might appeal, the Kantian or any other,
he could find no sort of guidance whatever; he was obliged to invent the law
for himself. Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with
his mother – that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete
charity as his moral foundations – would be making an irresponsible choice, nor
could we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man
makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of
his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of
circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments; it
is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice.
In the second place, people say to us, “You are unable to
judge others.” This is true in one sense and false in another. It is true in
this sense, that whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all
clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible
for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in
progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a
situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the
situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice
between slavery and anti-slavery – from the time of the war of Secession, for
example, until the present moment when one chooses between the M.R.P.
[Mouvement Republicain Poputaire] and the Communists.
We can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said, one chooses
in view of others, and in view of others one chooses himself. One can judge,
first – and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but it is a logical
judgment – that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others
upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. Since
we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and
without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by
inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver. One may object: “But
why should he not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that it is not for me to
judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot
avoid pronouncing a judgment of truth. The self-deception is evidently a
falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man’s complete liberty of
commitment. Upon this same level, I say that it is also a self-deception if I
choose to declare that certain values are incumbent upon me; I am in
contradiction with myself if I will these values and at the same time say that
they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I wish to
deceive myself?” I answer, “There is no reason why you should not, but I
declare that you are doing so, and that the attitude of strict consistency
alone is that of good faith.” Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment.
For I declare that freedom, in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no
other end and aim but itself; and when once a man has seen that values depend
upon himself, in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and
that is freedom as the foundation of all values. That does not mean that he
wills it in the abstract: it simply means that the actions of men of good faith
have, as their ultimate significance, the quest of freedom itself as such. A
man who belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain
concrete ends, which imply the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in
community. We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular
circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends
entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon
our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others,
but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of
others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make
that of others equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely
authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that
he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at
the same time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in
the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form
judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary
nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this
total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall
call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when
it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth – I shall
call scum. But neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane
of strict authenticity. Thus, although the content of morality is variable, a
certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a
will both to itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that
the formal and the universal suffice for the constitution of a morality. We
think, on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when
we come to defining action. To take once again the case of that student; by
what authority, in the name of what golden rule of morality, do you think he
could have decided, in perfect peace of mind, either to abandon his mother or
to remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always
concrete, and therefore unpredictable; it has always to be invented. The one
thing that counts, is to know whether the invention is made in the name of
freedom.
Let us, for example, examine the two following cases, and
you will see how far they are similar in spite of their difference. Let us take
The Mill on the Floss. We find here a certain young woman, Maggie Tulliver, who
is an incarnation of the value of passion and is aware of it. She is in love
with a young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an insignificant young
woman. This Maggie Tulliver, instead of heedlessly seeking her own happiness,
chooses in the name of human solidarity to sacrifice herself and to give up the
man she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in Stendhal’s Chartreuse de
Parme, believing that it is passion which endows man with his real value, would
have declared that a grand passion justifies its sacrifices, and must be
preferred to the banality of such conjugal love as would unite Stephen to the
little goose he was engaged to marry. It is the latter that she would have
chosen to sacrifice in realising her own happiness, and, as Stendhal shows, she
would also sacrifice herself upon the plane of passion if life made that demand
upon her. Here we are facing two clearly opposed moralities; but I claim that
they are equivalent, seeing that in both cases the overruling aim is freedom.
You can imagine two attitudes exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might
prefer, in resignation, to give up her lover while the other preferred, in
fulfilment of sexual desire, to ignore the prior engagement of the man she loved;
and, externally, these two cases might appear the same as the two we have just
cited, while being in fact entirely different. The attitude of La Sanseverina
is much nearer to that of Maggie Tulliver than to one of careless greed. Thus,
you see, the second objection is at once true and false. One can choose
anything, but only if it is upon the plane of free commitment.
The third objection, stated by saying, “You take with one
hand what you give with the other,” means, at bottom, “your values are not serious,
since you choose them yourselves.” To that I can only say that I am very sorry
that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father, there must be
somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to
say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this; that there is
no sense in life a priori. Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours
to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you
choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a possibility of creating a human
community. I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form
of humanism: people have said to me, “But you have written in your Nausée that
the humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism,
why do you now go back upon that?” In reality, the word humanism has two very
different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man
as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears,
for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of
the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane,
“Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I personally have not built
aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I
personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by,
achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe
value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That
kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a
position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is
magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do – at least, not as
far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce
judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an
existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be
determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which
we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity
ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in
Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which the
fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in
projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and,
on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able
to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in
relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his
transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe
of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man
(not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of
self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in
himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call
existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no
legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for
himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but
always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some
particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be
more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is
nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently
atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into
despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of
unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different.
Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in
demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if
God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we
believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His
existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that
nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of
God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action,
and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that
Christians can describe us as without hope.
“The Myth of Sisyphus”
by Albert Camus
Due Thursday, May 3rd - Preparation for the Exam
In preparation for the exam, please set aside a 3 1/2 hour block of quiet time and take the practice exam. All three essays must be handwritten. Compose one essay in the blue book and the other two on white-lined paper. All multiple choice are to be completed on the Scantron sheet. Bring all materials with you to class on Thursday, May 3rd for review and evaluation. I will go over the answers and you will be able to see your scores.
Also, complete two "Worksheet Review" packets for the Q3 on the exam. It would be in your best interest to have this completed before you take the practice exam to text your skills. This assignment is also due Thursday, May 3rd.
NOTE: I WILL NOT ACCEPT LATE WORK FOR THE ABOVE. THESE ARE PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXAM. IT IS MEANINGLESS TO HAND THIS WORK IN AFTER THE AP EXAM.
Also, complete two "Worksheet Review" packets for the Q3 on the exam. It would be in your best interest to have this completed before you take the practice exam to text your skills. This assignment is also due Thursday, May 3rd.
NOTE: I WILL NOT ACCEPT LATE WORK FOR THE ABOVE. THESE ARE PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXAM. IT IS MEANINGLESS TO HAND THIS WORK IN AFTER THE AP EXAM.
THE EXAM IS ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 9TH 7:30 AM AT TOWN HALL!!!!!!!!
Overview: The following is designed to be a helpful
study guide packet to help you on the A.P.E. exam.
The Poetry Cheat Sheet
Tone: This
is the attitude of the speaker of the poem.
You always have to consider the tone of the speaker even if you’re not
specifically asked to analyze it. Tone
relates to many of elements below. It’s
a “big-picture” or “umbrella” concept.
(You should have a “bank” of words in mind: angry, happy, carefree,
bitter, sympathetic, sad, nostalgic, ironic, satirical, etc.)
Repetition:
Poets often rely on repetition. This can
be words, phrases, sounds, images, ideas.
If a poet repeats something, it takes on more meaning.
Diction: This refers to words. What words does the poet use? Does he repeat any specific words? What connotation do the words have (positive,
negative)?
Syntax/Structure: Do the sentences within the poem or stanzas
have a recognizable structure? Does the
structure or pattern change at a specific moment?
Imagery (sensory
details): This refers to the
images of the poem, especially those that appeal to many senses (sight, sound,
taste, touch, smell).
Sounds: Sound is often conveyed in poetry. Look for rhyme and repetition, and things
such as alliteration, consonance, and assonance (which are repetitions of
specific types of sound).
Metaphors/Similes:
Comparisons are often used to support imagery, but they can also be used to
anchor a poem, to convey a poem’s main message.
Any time a poet compares something to something else, you should take
note of it.
Irony:
This is HUGE in poetry. If something is
said or happens that is unexpected, it’s ironic. If it’s sarcastic or satirical, it’s
ironic. If you can recognize irony,
you’re golden.
Allusion: This is a literary or historical
reference. It is not as common on the AP
exam, but you should know what it is and how it works.
Rhythm/Rhyme: This is covered with other elements
above. This just refers to the recognizable
pattern of a poem that gives it a sense of rhythm and flow.
Literary Devices
Overview: You know these (if not – you better!) Use the terminology in your essays to sound
like a scholar!!
Allegory
Alliteration
Allusion
Antagonist
Assonance
Characterization
Conflict
Connotation and Denotation
Consonance
Dialogue
Diction
Exposition
Falling Action
Figurative Language
Figure of Speech
Flashback
Foil
Foreshadowing
Genre
Imagery
Irony
Metaphor
Meter
Onomatopoeia
Paradox
Parallel Structure
Parody
Personification
Plot
Point of View
First
Person
Second
Person
Third
Person (Omniscient or Limited)
Protagonist
Satire
Soliloquy
Symbolism
Theme
Understatement
Thesis Statement Templates
Prose/Open Response Example #1:
(Insert author’s name) presents readers with
_________________________ as a means of __________________________. Through the use of
__________________________, ____________________________, and
_________________________ he/she demonstrates the necessity for human beings to
________________________. However, this
becomes more complicated because___________________________. Therefore, (Insert author’s name) uses
________________________ to make his/her point that in order to
____________________ one must ___________________________.
Prose/Open Response Example #2:
In the art of fiction, an author may choose to
utilize (insert literary device) as a means of
________________________________.
(Insert author’s name) takes this device to another level in _____________________________
by revealing
_____________________________ through the use of
_________________________. Through the
course of the novel/play, ____________________________________. However, by the end of the work
___________________ ________________. Therefore, (insert author’s name)
utilizes (insert literary device) to make the point
_________________________________________________.
Prose/Open Response Example #3:
Often novelists/playwrights
_________________________________. However,
(insert author’s name) chooses to ______________________________________ in his
her novel/play ____________________________ in order to reveal
_________________________________________ about (insert theme). While on the surface it may appear _________________________,
by the end of the work, (insert author’s name) proves __________________
______________________________. Therefore,
______________________________________________________________________.
Poetry Example #1:
A poet may choose to utilize (insert literary
device) as a means of describing the complex feelings attached
to________________________________.
(Insert author’s name) takes this device to another level in
_____________________________ by revealing
_____________________________ through the use of
_________________________. On one level,
the poet reveals ____________________________________. However, the use of (insert literary device)
also brings out the paradoxical feelings of ________________________________.
Therefore, _______________________________________________________________________.
Poetry Example #2:
A poet may choose to utilize (insert literary
device) as a means of describing the complex feelings attached
to________________________________.
(Insert name of poet #1) takes this device to another level in
_____________________________ by revealing
_____________________________ through the use of
_________________________. (Insert name
of poet #2) also tackles this notion, yet utilizes (insert literary device) in
order to describe _____________________________________________. On one level, both poets reveal
____________________________________.
However, when one examines ______________________________ one will
notice the paradoxical feelings of ________________________________. Therefore,
while (poet #1 ) describes _________________________________________________,
(poet #2) reveals that what really counts is _____________________________.
Friday, April 13, 2018
Change of Plans
We will have a full class performance on Wednesday, April 25th - Just for us - No audience.
On Thursday, April 26th you will be conversing with people from Berlin. No performance. Just be ready to connect - Be at the Portal at 11:00! We will have 4th lunch that day
On Thursday, April 26th you will be conversing with people from Berlin. No performance. Just be ready to connect - Be at the Portal at 11:00! We will have 4th lunch that day
Monday, April 9, 2018
Due Friday, April 13th - Q1 Essay - "Hawk Roosting" & "Golden Retrievals"
Please compose an essay for Q1 "Hawk Roosting" and "Golden Retrievals" and post it to Turnitin.com by Friday. This is a hard deadline. You may take as much time as you wish, but be aware of how this would work in a testing situation. You may choose to try 40 minutes, and refine it after that experience.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Literary Terms & 50 Poetic Forms
Literary Terms
Allegory: A
story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on
symbolic meanings. In Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," Dante,
symbolizing mankind, is taken by Virgil the poet on a journey through Hell,
Purgatory and Paradise in order to teach him the nature of sin and its
punishments, and the way to salvation.
Alliteration: Used
for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a
group. The following line from Robert Frost's poem "Acquainted with the
Night” provides us with an example of alliteration: “I have stood still and stopped
the sound of feet." The repetition of the s sound creates a sense
of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line.
Allusion: A
reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another
literary work. T. S. Eliot, in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
alludes (refers) to the biblical figure John the Baptist in the line Though I
have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, . . . In the
New Testament, John the Baptist's head was presented to King Herod on a
platter.
Ambiguity: A
statement which can contain two or more meanings. For example, when the oracle
at Delphi told Croesus that if he waged war on Cyrus he would destroy a great
empire, Croesus thought the oracle meant his enemy's empire. In fact,
the empire Croesus destroyed by going to war was his own.
Analogue: A
comparison between two similar things. In literature, a work which resembles
another work either fully or in part. If a work resembles another because it is
derived from the other, the original work is called the source, not an analogue
of the later work.
Anapest: In
a line of poetry, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable
forming the pattern for the line or perhaps for the entire poem.
Anecdote: A
very short tale told by a character in a literary work. In Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales, "The Miller's Tale" and "The Carpenter's Tale"
are examples.
Antagonist: A
person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. In Stephen
Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Mr. Scratch is Daniel
Webster's antagonist at the trial of Jabez Stone. The cold, in Jack London's
"To Build a Fire" is the antagonist which defeats the man on the
trail.
Aphorism: A
brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a
wise observation. Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac"
contains numerous examples, one of which is Drive thy business; let it not
drive thee. which means that one should not allow the demands of business to
take control of one's moral or worldly commitments.
Apostrophe: A
figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman. In
these lines from John Donne's poem "The Sun Rising" the poet scolds
the sun for interrupting his nighttime activities:
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through
curtains call on us?
Aside: A
device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by
the audience but not by other characters in the play. In William Shakespeare's Hamlet,
Polonius confronts Hamlet. In a dialogue concerning Polonius' daughter,
Ophelia, Polonius speaks this aside:
How say you by that? Still harping on
my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first; 'a said
I was a fishmonger.
'A is far gone. And truly in my youth I
suffered much extremity for love,
very near this. I'll speak to him
again.-
Assonance: The
repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar
Allen Poe's "The Bells" contains numerous examples. Consider these
from stanza 2:
Hear the mellow wedding bells-
and
From the molten-golden notes,
The repetition of the short e
and long o sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell
encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the i sound
in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.
Ballad: A
story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were
passed down from generation to generation by singers. Two old Scottish ballads
are "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Bonnie Barbara Allan."
Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a 19th century
English ballad.
Blank Verse:
A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Consider the following from
"The Ball Poem" by John Berryman:
What is the boy now, who has lost
his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street,
and then
Merrily over-there it is in the
water!
Cacophony/Euphony: Cacophony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. Euphony, the
opposite, is a pleasant combination of sounds. These sound effects can be used
intentionally to create an effect, or they may appear unintentionally. The
cacophony in Matthew Arnold's lines "And thou, who didst the stars and
sunbeams know,/Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honor'd, self-secure,/Didst
tread on earth unguess'd at," is probably unintentional.
Caesura: A
pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count
(see #62. meter). In scansion, a caesura is usually indicated by the following
symbol (//). Here's an example by Alexander Pope:
Know then thyself,//presume not God
to scan;
The proper study of Mankind//is Man
Canto: A
subdivision of an epic poem. Each of the three books of Dante Alighieri's Divine
Comedy is divided into cantos. For example, in each of the cantos of The
Inferno, Dante meets the souls of people who were once alive and who have
been condemned to punishment for sin.
Carpe Diem: A
Latin phrase which translated means "Sieze (Catch) the day," meaning
"Make the most of today." The phrase originated as the title of a
poem by the Roman Horace (65 B.C.E.-8B.C.E.) and caught on as a theme with such
English poets as Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell. Consider these lines from
Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time":
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles
today,
To-morrow will be dying.
Catastrophe: The
scene in a tragedy which includes the death or moral destruction of the
protagonist. In the catastrophe at the end of Sophocles' Oedipus the King,
Oedipus, discovering the tragic truth about his origin and his deeds, plucks
out his eyes and is condemned to spend the rest of his days a wandering beggar.
The catastrophe in Shakespearean tragedy occurs in Act 5 of each drama, and
always includes the death of the protagonist. Consider the fates of Hamlet,
Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello.
Character: A person, or any thing presented as a person, e. g.,
a spirit, object, animal, or natural force, in a literary work. In a cartoon
scene, firemen may be putting out a fire which a coyote has deliberately
started, while a hydrant observes the scene fearfully. The firemen, the coyote,
and the hydrant would all be considered characters in the story. If a billowy
figure complete with eyes, nose, and mouth representing the wind thwarts the
efforts of the firemen, the wind, too, qualifies as a character. Animals who
figure importantly in movies or live drama are considered characters. Mr. Ed,
Lassie, and Tarzan's monkey Cheetah are examples.
Characterization: The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of
a character in a literary work: Methods may include (1) by what the character
says about himself or herself; (2) by what others reveal about the character;
and (3) by the character's own actions.
Classicism: A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature
to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and
Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the
emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and
discipline.
Climax: The decisive moment in a drama, the climax is the
turning point of the play to which the rising action leads. This is the crucial
part of the drama, the part which determines the outcome of the conflict. In
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar the climax occurs at the end of Marc
Antony's speech to the Roman public. In the climax to the film Star Wars,
the empire's death star is ready to destroy the rebel base. Luke Skywalker and
rebel pilots attack the base, and after the deaths of some rebel pilots,
Skywalker successfully fires his missile into the death star's vulnerable spot
and destroys the death star, saving the rebel forces.
Comedy: A literary work which is amusing and ends happily.
Modern comedies tend to be funny, while Shakespearean comedies simply end well.
Shakespearean comedy also contains items such as misunderstandings and mistaken
identity to heighten the comic effect. Comedies may contain lovers, those who
interfere with lovers, and entertaining scoundrels. In modern Situation
Comedies, characters are thrown into absurd situations and are forced to deal
with those situations, all the while reciting clever lines for the amusement of
a live or television or movie audience.
Conceit: A far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit
occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things. In the following
example from Act V of Shakespeare's Richard II, the imprisoned King
Richard compares his cell to the world in the following line:
I have been studying how I may
compare
this prison where I live unto the
world:
Conclusion: Also
called the “Resolution" the conclusion is the point in a drama to which
the entire play has been leading. It is the logical outcome of everything that
has come before it. The conclusion stems from the nature of the characters.
Therefore, the decision of Dr. Stockmann to remain in the town at the
conclusion of An Enemy of the People is consistent with his conviction
that he is right and has been right all along.
...I'll
be hanged if we are going away! We are going to stay where we are, Katherine .
. . This is the field of battle ...this is where the fight will be. This is
where I shall triumph!
Concrete Poetry: A poem that
visually resembles something found in the physical world. A poem about a wormy
apple written so that the words form the shape of an apple, as in the
following, is an example.
Conflict: In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the
protagonist is opposed by some person or force in the play. In Henry Ibsen's
drama An Enemy of the People Dr. Thomas Stockmann's life is complicated
by his finding that the public baths, a major source of income for the
community, are polluted. In trying to close the baths, the doctor comes into
conflict with those who profit from them, significantly, his own brother, the
mayor of the town. Another example occurs in the film Star Wars. Having
learned that Princess Lea is being held prisoner by the evil Darth Vader, Luke
Skywalker sets out to rescue her. In doing so, he becomes involved in the
conflict between the empire and the rebels which Lea spoke of in her holograph
message in the drama's exposition. Since Luke is the protagonist of Star Wars, the conflict in the drama
crystallizes to that between Luke and Darth Vader.
Connotation and Denotation: The denotation of a word is its dictionary definition.
The word wall, therefore, denotes an upright structure which encloses something
or serves as a boundary.The connotation of a word is its emotional content. In
this sense, the word wall can also mean an attitude or actions which prevent
becoming emotionally closeto a person. In Robert Frost’s "Mending
Wall," two neighbors walk a property line each on his own side of a wall
of loose stones. As they walk, they pick up and replace stones that have
fallen. Frost thinks it's unnecessary to replace the stones since they have no
cows to damage each other's property. The neighbor only says, "Good fences
make good neighbors." The wall, in this case, is both a boundary
(denotation) and a barrier that prevents Frost and his neighbor from getting to
know each other, a force prohibiting involvement (connotation).
Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds with differing
vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Consider
the following example from Theodore Roethke's "Night Journey:"
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
The repetition of the r
sound in rush, rain, and rattles, occurring so close to
each other in these two lines, would be considered consonance. Since a poem is
generally much shorter than a short story or novel, the poet must be economical
in his/her use of words and devices. Nothing can be wasted; nothing in a
well-crafted poem is there by accident. Therefore, since devices such as
consonance and alliteration, rhyme and meter have been used by the poet for
effect, the reader must stop and consider what effect the inclusion of these
devices has on the poem.
Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following
by Andrew Marvell is an example of a rhymed couplet:
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
Dactyl: In poetry, a metrical pattern consisting of one
stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables as in the following
example from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord
Tennyson:
Note that the metrical
pattern in the fourth foot consists of one stressed and one unstressed
syllable, rather than the one stressed and two unstressed syllables necessary
to qualify the foot as dactyllic. A metrical pattern need not be consistent
throughout a line or poem for the work to be labeled as composed in an
identifiable meter. However, if enough of the work is written in an
identifiable metrical pattern for the reader to get a sense of a dominant
pattern, then the reader is justified in labeling the pattern.
Denouement: The
denouement is that part of a drama which follows the climax and leads to the
resolution.
Dialogue: In drama, a conversation between characters. One
interesting type of dialogue, stichomythia, occurs when the dialogue takes the
form of a verbal duel between characters, as in the following between Hamlet
and his mother, Gertrude. (William Shakespeare's Hamlet – III, iv)
QUEEN: Hamlet, thou hast thy father
much offended.
HAMLET: Mother, you have my father
much offended.
QUEEN: Come, Come, you answer with an
idle tongue.
HAMLET: Go, Go, You question with a
wicked tongue.
Diction: An author's choice of words. Since words have
specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a
writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer,
therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel A Farewell
to Arms during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite
the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about
finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words
right."
Didactic Literature:
Literature designed explicitly to instruct as in these lines from Jacque
Prevert's "To Paint the Portrait of a Bird."
Paint first a cage
with an open door
paint then
something pretty
something simple
something handsome
something useful
for the bird
Dramatic Monologue: In literature, the occurrence of a single speaker
saying something to a silent audience. Robert Browning's "My Last
Duchess" is an example wherein the duke, speaking to a non-responding
representative of the family of a prospective new duchess, reveals not only the
reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but aspects
of his own personality as well.
Elegy: A lyric poem lamenting death. These lines from
Joachim Du Bellay's "Elegy on His Cat" are an example:
I have not lost my rings, my purse,
My gold, my gems-my loss is worse,
One that the stoutest heart must
move.
My pet, my joy, my little love,
My tiny kitten, my Belaud,
I lost, alas, three days ago.
Epic: In literature generally, a major work dealing with an
important theme. Gone with the Wind, a film set in the antebellum and
Civil War South, is considered an epic motion picture. In poetry, a long work
dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. John Milton's Paradise Lost is
a book length epic poem consisting of twelve subdivisions called books. Homer's
The Iliad and The Odyssey are epic poems, the former concerning
the Greek invasion of Troy, the latter dealing with the Greek victory over the
Trojans and the ten-year journey of Odysseus to reach his island home.
Epigraph: A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a
literary work. The following is the epigraph from T. S. Eliot's "The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Quoted from Dante Allighieri's epic poem The
Inferno, the speaker, Guido di Montefeltro, believing Dante to be another
soul condemned to Hell, replies thus to a question:
If I believed my answer were being
given
to someone who could ever return to the
world,
this flame [his voice is represented by a moving flame] would
shake no more.
But since no one has ever returned
alive from this depth, if what I
hear is true,
I will answer you without fear of
infamy.
The epigraph here reveals one
of the themes of the poem, Prufrock’s urgent desire not to be revealed.
Epithet: In literature, a word of phrase preceding or
following a name which serves to describe the character. Consider the following
from Book 1 of Homer's The Iliad:
Zeus-loved Achilles, you bid me
explain
The wrath of far-smiting Apollo.
Euphemism: A mild word of phrase which substitutes for another
which would be undesirable because it is too direct, unpleasant, or offensive.
The word "joint" is a euphemism for the word prison; "W.
C." is a euphemism for bathroom.
Exposition: In drama, the presentation of essential information
regarding what has occurred prior to the beginning of the play. In the
exposition to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, two servants of
the house of Capulet discuss the feud between their master and the house of
Montague, thereby letting the audience know that such a feud exists and that it
will play an important role in influencing the plot. In the exposition to the
film Star Wars, Luke Skywalker sees a 3D holograph projection of the
Princess Lea warning that she is a prisoner of Darth Vader and begging for
help.
Fable: A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson.
Often the characters are animals as in the fables of Aesop.
Falling Action: The falling action is the series of events which take
place after the climax. In Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar, Cinna, the poet, is mistaken for Cinna, the conspirator,
and killed; Antony and Octavius argue, Brutus and Cassius argue, the battle at
Philippi is agreed upon, and the ghost of Caeser appears to Brutus. In Ibsen's,
An Enemy of the People, Dr. Thomas Stockmann has been declared an enemy
of the people and he and his family and supporters are harrassed by the
townspeople. The Stockmanns decide to leave the town. However, events occur which change Dr.
Stockmann's mind about leaving.
The falling action of a drama
leads to the conclusion.
Farce: A type of comedy based on a humorous situation such
as a bank robber who mistakenly wanders into a police station to hide. It is
the situation here which provides the humor, not the cleverness of plot or
lines, nor the absurdities of the character, as in situational comedy. Eugene
Ionesco's Les Chaises (The Chairs), a one-act drama in which two old
people, isolated on an island prepare for visitors, is an example. The visitors
are invisible, but the stage fills with chairs to accommodate them. In the end,
a deaf-mute narrator "addresses" the couple.
Figurative Language: In literature, a way of saying one thing and meaning
something else. Take, for example, this line by Robert Burns:
My
luv is a red, red rose.
Clearly Mr. Burns does not really mean that he
has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, many-petalled, long, thorny-stemmed
plant. He means that his love is as sweet and as delicate as a rose. While, figurative language provides a writer
with the opportunity to write imaginatively, it also tests the imagination of
the reader, forcing the reader to go below the surface of a literary work into
deep, hidden meanings.
Figure of Speech: An example of figurative language that states
something that is not literally true in order to create an effect. Similes,
metaphors and personification are figures of speech which are based on
comparisons. Metonymy, synecdoche, synesthesia, apostrophe, oxymoron, and
hyperbole are other figures of speech.
Flashback: A reference to an event which took place prior to the
beginning of a story or play. In Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilamanjaro,
the protagonist, Harry Street, has been injured on a hunt in Africa. Dying, his
mind becomes preoccupied with incidents in his past. In a flashback Street
remembers one of his wartime comrades dying painfully on barbed wire on a
battlefield in Spain.
Foil: A character in a play who sets off the main character
or other characters by comparison. In Shakespeare's Hamlet Hamlet and
Laertes are young men who behave very differently. While Hamlet delays in carrying
out his mission to avenge the death of his father, Laertes is quick and bold in
his challenge of the king over the death of his father. Much can be learned
about each by comparing and contrasting the actions of the two.
Foot: The basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry.
The meter in a poem is classified according both to its pattern and the number
of feet to the line. Below is a list of classifications:
Monometer
= one foot to a line
Dimeter
= two feet to a line
Trimeter
= three feet to a line
Tetrameter
= four feet to a line
Pentameter
= five feet to a line
Since the line above is
written in iambic meter, four feet to the line, the line would be referred to
as iambic tetrameter.
Foreshadowing: In drama, a method used to build suspense by providing
hints of what is to come. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo's
expression of fear in I, iv foreshadows the catastrophe to come:
I fear too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the
term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He that hath the steerage of my
course,
Direct my sail!
Free Verse: Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and
containing no specific metrical pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us
with many examples. Consider the following lines from "Song of
Myself."
I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you
I
loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a
spear of summer grass.
Genre: A literary type or form. Drama is a genre of
literature. Within drama, genre includes tragedy, comedy and other forms.
Haiku: A Japanese poetic form which originated in the
sixteenth century. A haiku in its Japanese language form consists of three
lines: five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the
second line. A haiku translated may not contain the same syllabication.
Designed to capture a moment in time, the haiku creates images. Consider the following by the
seventeenth-century poet, Basho. Note the bringing together of the images of
the clouds and the moon.
Clouds come from time to time-
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
Hyperbole: A figure of speech in which an overstatement or
exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of
Shakespeare's Macbeth. In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan.
Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this
blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will
rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Literally, it does not
require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand
turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth
feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.
Iamb: A metrical pattern of one unstressed syllable
followed by one stressed syllable. The following is an example:
When in dis
grace with For tune and men’s eyes . . .
Imagery: A word or group of words in a literary work which
appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell.
The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. The following
example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock,"
When the evening is spread out against
the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
uses images of pain and
sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society
and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.
Inference: A judgment based on reasoning rather than on direct
or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances. For example, advised not to travel alone in
temperatures exceeding fifty degrees below zero, the man in Jack London's
"To Build a Fire" sets out anyway. One may infer arrogance from such
an action.
Irony: Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation
, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth
murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness.
Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and finally is beheaded
for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something
that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the
murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the
mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal
meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as
brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
Local Color: A detailed setting forth of the characteristics of a
particular locality, enabling the reader to "see" the setting.
Lyric Poem: A short poem wherein the poet expresses an emotion or
illuminates some life principle. Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly
Buzz-When I Died" is a lyric poem wherein the speaker, on a deathbed
expecting death to appear in all its grandeur, encounters a common housefly
instead.
Metaphor: A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made
between two unlike quantities without the use of the words "like" or
"as." Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God," has this to say about the moral condition of his
parishoners:
There are the black clouds of God's wrath now
hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with
thunder . . .
The comparison here is
between God's anger and a storm. Note that there is no use of "like"
or "as" as would be the case in a simile.
Meter: A regular pattern of unstressed and stressed
syllables in a line or lines of poetry.
Metonymy: A figure of speech in which a word represents
something else which it suggests. For example in a herd of fifty cows, the herd
might be referred to as fifty “head” of cattle. The word "head" is
the word representing the herd.
Mood: The atmosphere or feeling created by a literary work,
partly by a description of the objects or by the style of the descriptions. A
work may contain a mood of horror, mystery, holiness, or childlike simplicity,
to name a few, depending on the author's treatment of the work.
Myth: An unverifiable story based on a religious belief.
The characters of myths are gods and goddesses, or the offspring of the mating
of gods or goddesses and humans. Some myths
detail the creation of the earth, while others may be about love, adventure,
trickery, or revenge. In all cases, it is the gods and goddesses who control
events, while humans may be aided or victimized. It is said that the creation
of myths were the method by which ancient, superstitious humans attempted to
account for natural or historical phenomena. In Homer's, The Odyssey,
the Greek hero, Odysseus, is thwarted in his attempt to reach home by an angry
Poseidon, god of the sea and patron of Troy. The Trojan horse, the trick the
Greeks used to gain entrance into the city of Troy when a ten-year siege had
failed, was the plan of Odysseus' creation. Poseidon, in his anger, kept
Odysseus from reaching home for ten years after the war ended.
Narrative Poem: A poem which tells a story. Usually a long poem,
sometimes even book length, the narrative may take the form of a plotless
dialogue as in Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man." In other
instances the narrative may consist of a series of incidents, as in Homer's The
Iliad and The Odyssey, John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Novel: A fictional prose work of substantial length. The
novel narrates the actions of characters who are entirely the invention of the
author and who are placed in an imaginary setting. The fact that a so-called
historical or biographical novel uses historically real characters in real
geographical locations doing historically verifiable things does not alter the
fictional quality of the work. Nor does it qualify a work labeled a novel by
the author as a historical text.
Ode: A poem in praise of something divine or expressing
some noble idea. In' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," English poet John Keats
expresses his appreciation of the beauty and agelessness of a work by a Grecian
artisan:
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and
slow time,
Sylvan historian who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than
our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy
shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
Onomatopoeia: A literary device wherein the sound of a word echoes
the sound it represents. The words "splash." "knock," and
"roar" are examples. The following lines end Dylan Thomas' "Fern
Hill:"
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
The word
"whinnying" is onomatopoetic. "Whinny" is the sound usually
selected to represent that made by a horse.
Oxymoron: A combination of contradictory terms, such as used by
Romeo in I, i of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity;
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Parable: A brief story, told or written in order to teach a
moral lesson. Christ's tale of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 30-7) is an
example.
Paradox: A situation or a statement that seems to contradict
itself, but on closer inspection, does not. These lines from John Donne's
"Holy Sonnet 14" provide an example:
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me,
The poet paradoxically asks
God to knock him down so that he may stand. What he means by this is for God to
destroy his present self and remake him as a holier person.
Parallel Structure: A repetition of sentences using the same structure.
This line from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address provides an example:
The world will little not nor long
remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did
here.
Parody: A literary work that imitates the style of another
literary work. A parody can be simply
amusing or it can be mocking in tone, such as a poem which exaggerates the use
of alliteration in order to show the ridiculous effect of overuse of
alliteration.
Pastoral: A literary work that has to do with shepherds and
rustic settings. Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love" and Robert Burns' "Sweet Afton" are examples.
Pathetic Fallacy: A fallacy of reason in suggesting that nonhuman
phenomena act from human feelings, as suggested by the word
"pathetic" from the Greek pathos;a literary device wherein
something nonhuman found in nature-a beast, plant, stream, natural force,
etc.-performs as though from human feeling or motivation. In Jack London's “To
Build a Fire,” "The cold of space," London writes, "smote the
unprotected tip of the planet, . . ." The word "smote" suggests
nature deliberately striking the northern tip of the earth with severe
cold. The poetry of William Wordsworth
is replete with instances of pathetic fallacy-
Personification: A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is
given human characteristics. Consider the following lines from Carl Sandburg's
"Chicago:"
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the big shoulders:
Carl Sandburg description of
Chicago includes shoulders. Cities do not have shoulders, people do. Sandburg
personifies the city by ascribing to it something human, shoulders.
"Justice is blind." is another example.
Plot: The structure of a story. The sequence in which the
author arranges events in a story. The structure of a five-act play often
includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution.
The plot may have a protagonist who is opposed by antagonist, creating what is
called, conflict. A plot may include flashback or it may include a subplot
which is a mirror image of the main plot. For example, in Shakespeare's, King
Lear, the relationship between the Earl of Gloucester and his sons mirrors
the relationship between Lear and his daughters.
Point of View: A piece of literature contains a speaker who is
speaking either in the first person, telling things from his or her own
perspective, or in the third person, telling things from the perspective of an
onlooker. The perspective used is called the Point of View, and is referred to
either as first person or third person. If the speaker knows everything
including the actions, motives, and thoughts of all the characters, the speaker
is referred to as omniscient (all-knowing). If the speaker is unable to know
what is in any character's mind but his or her own, this is called limited
omniscience.
Protagonist: The hero or central character of a literary work. In
accomplishing his or her objective, the protagonist is hindered by some
opposing force either human (one of Batman's antagonists is The Joker), animal
(Moby Dick is Captain Ahab's antagonist in Herman Melville's Moby Dick),
or natural (the sea is the antagonist which must be overcome by Captain Bligh
in Nordhoff and Hall's Men Against the Sea, the second book in the
trilogy which includes Mutiny on the Bounty).
Pun: A play on words wherein a word is used to convey two
meanings at the same time. The line below, spoken by Mercutio in Shakespeare's
"Romeo and Juliet," is an example of a pun. Mercutio has just been
stabbed, knows he is dying and says:
Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me
a grave man.
Mercutio's use of the word
"grave' renders it capable of two meanings: a serious person or a corpse in his grave.
Quatrain: A four-line stanza which may be rhymed or unrhymed. A
heroic quatrain is a four line stanza rhymed abab. John Donne's "A
Valediction Forbidding Mourning" is a poem of nine heroic quatrains: The
following is the first stanza of the poem:
As virtuous men pass mildly away
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say,
no:
Resolution: The part of a story or drama which occurs after the
climax and which establishes a new norm, a new state of affairs-the way things
are going to be from then on. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet climaxes
with the death of the two lovers. Their deaths resolve the feud between the two
families. In the play's resolution, Lords Capulet and Montague swear to end
their feud and build golden monuments to each other's dead child.
In the resolution of the film
Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca are given medals by
Princess Lea for destroying the death star and defeating the empire.
Rhyme: In poetry, a pattern of repeated sounds. In
<strong>end rhyme</strong>, the rhyme is at the end of the line, as
in these lines from "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish:
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb
When one of the rhyming words
occurs in a place in the line other than at the end, it is called Internal
rhyme. Eye rhyme is a form of
rhyme wherein the look rather than the sound is important. "Cough"
and "tough" do not sound enough alike to constitute a rhyme. However,
if these two words appeared at the ends of successive lines of poetry, they
would be considered eye rhyme. Half rhyme occurs when the final
consonants rhyme, but the vowel sounds do not (chill-Tulle; Day-Eternity).
Rhythm: Recurrences of stressed and unstressed syllables at
equal intervals, similar to meter. However, though two lines may be of the same
meter, the rhythms of the lines may be different. For example, if one were to
read the last two lines of Robert Frost's, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening" with equal speed, the lines would be the same in meter and
rhythm. However, if one were to read the last line more slowly (as it should be
read), the meter would be the same but the rhythm different. This is because
while the meter of a line is identified by the pattern within each foot, the
rhythm is accounted for by larger units than individual feet.
Rising Action: The part of a drama which begins with the
<strong>exposition</strong> and sets the stage for the climax. In a
five-act play, the exposition provides information about the characters and the
events which occurred before the action of the play began. A
conflict often develops between the protagonist and an antagonist. The
action reaches a high point and results in a climax, the turning point in the
play. We discover in the exposition of Shakespeare's Othello that the
Moor, Othello, has married the Venetian maiden, Desdemona. Her father objects
strenuously to the marriage. However, during those objections, a messenger
informs the Venetian council that the Turks are on their way to invade the
island of Cypress. Othello, who is sent with troops to defend the island,
brings Desdemona with him, planning a honeymoon to coincide with his military
mission. One of Othello's officers, Iago, plants a seed of doubt about
Desdemona's faithfulness in Othello's ear. This seed grows to the point where
Othello becomes convinced that his wife is having an affair with his
lieutenant, Michael Cassio. The play climaxes with the murder of Desdemona by
Othello in a jealous rage.
Romance: In the Middle Ages, tales of exciting adventures
written in the vernacular (French) instead of Latin. The medieval romances were
tales of chivalry or amorous adventure occurring in King Arthur's court.
"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is an example of a medieval
romance.
Saga: A story of the exploits of a hero, or the story of a
family told through several generations. Stories of the exploits of Daniel
Boone or Davey Crockett are sagas in the former sense. Alex Haley's Roots
would be considered a saga in the latter sense.
Satire: A piece of literature designed to ridicule the
subject of the work. While satire can be funny, its aim is not to amuse, but to
arouse contempt. Jonathan swift's Gulliver's Travels satirizes the
English people, making them seem dwarfish in their ability to deal with large
thoughts, issues, or deeds.
Scansion: A close, critical reading of a poem, examining the
work for meter.
Setting: The time and place in which a story unfolds. The
setting in I, i of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, for example, is a
public square in Verona, Italy. A drama may contain a single setting or the
setting may change from scene to scene.
Short Story: A short fictional narrative. It is difficult to set
forth the point at which a short story becomes a short novel (novelette), or
the page number at which a novelette becomes a novel. Here are some examples
which may help in determining which is which: Ernest Hemingway's Big
Two-Hearted River is a short story; John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
is a novelette; and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is a novel.
Simile: A figure of speech which takes the form of a
comparison between two unlike quantities for which a basis for comparison can
be found, and which uses the words "like" or "as" in the
comparison, as in this line from Ezra Pound's "Fan-Piece, for Her Imperial
Lord: "clear as frost on the grass-bade . . .” In this line, a fan of white silk is being
compared to frost on a blade of grass. Not the use of the word "as."
Soliloquy: In drama, a moment when a character is alone and
speaks his or her thoughts aloud. In the line "To be, or not to be, that
is the question" which begins the famous soliloquy from III, i of
Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth
living, and speaks of the reasons why he does not end his life.
Sonnet: A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed.
The rhyme scheme in the Italian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is
abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchan sonnet has two divisions: the first is of eight
lines (the octave), and the second is of six lines (the sestet). The rhyme
scheme of the English, or Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. The change
of rhyme in the English sonnet is coincidental with a change of theme in the
poem.
Stanza: A major subdivision in a poem. A stanza of two lines
is called a couplet; a stanza of three lines is called a tercet; a stanza of
four lines is called a quatrain. Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the
Night," consists of four rhymed tercets followed by a rhymed couplet. The
following illustrates the look of a stanza:
I have been one acquainted with the
night.
I have walked out in rain-and back in
rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to
explain.
Stereotype: An author's method of treating a character so that
the character is immediately identified with a group. A character may be
associated with a group through accent, food choices, style of dress, or any
readily identifiable group characteristic. Examples are the rugged cowboy, the
bearded psychiatrist, and the scarred villain. A criticism leveled at TV drama
is that those who produce such dramas use outdated or negative qualities of
groups to stereotype individuals. Ignoring the group's positive qualities, they
perpetuate and strengthen the group's negative image in the minds of viewers.
Some examples are: the Jewish accountant, the corrupt politician, the Black
gambler in a zoot suit, and the voice on the phone in a Middle Eastern accent
associated with a bomb threat. A well-known tobacco company uses the stereotype
of the rugged cowboy in its cigarette ads.
Style: Many things enter into the style of a work: the
author's use of figurative language, diction, sound effects and other literary
devices. Ernest Hemingway's style derives, in part, from his short, powerful
sentences. The style of the Declaration of Independence can be described as
elegant.
Suspense: Suspense in fiction
results primarily from two factors: the reader's identification with and
concern for the welfare of a convincing and sympathetic character, and an
anticipation of violence. The following line from Elizabeth Spencer's The
Name of the Game is an example of a suspense maker:
He
was an innocent, this boy; the other boys were out to get him.
Symbolism: A device in literature where an object represents an
idea. In Willaim Blake's "The Lamb," the speaker tells the lamb that
the force that made him or her is also called a lamb:
Little lamb, who made thee?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little lamb, I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a lamb;
The symbol of the lamb in the
above lines corresponds to the symbolism of the lamb in Christianity wherein
Christ is referred to as The Lamb of God.
Synecdoche: A figure of speech wherein a part of something
represents the whole thing. In this figure, the head of a cow might substitute
for the whole cow. Therefore, a herd of fifty cows might be referred to as
"fifty head of cattle." In Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses"
Ulysses refers to his former companions as “free hearts, free foreheads”
Synesthesia: One sensory experience described in terms of another
sensory experience. Emily Dickinson, in "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I
Died," uses a color to describe a sound, the buzz of a fly “with blue,
uncertain stumbling buzz .”
Theatre of the Absurd: A drama based on an absurd situation. In Samuel
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, two characters spend the entire play
waiting for someone named Godot, who is supposed to solve their problems, but
who never appears. Instead, Godot's servant appears, but only to tell the two
that Godot will not appear that day. The waiting commences again and is only broken
by the occasional appearance of the servant who tells them that Godot will,
once again, not appear that day. Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros is another
example.
Theme: An ingredient of a literary work which gives the work
unity. The theme provides an answer to the question What is the work about?
There are too many possible themes to recite them all in this document. Each
literary work carries its own theme(s). The theme of Robert Frost's
"Acquainted with the Night" is loneliness. Shakespeare's King Lear
contains many themes, among which are blindness and madness. Unlike plot which
deals with the action of a work, theme concerns itself with a work's message or
contains the general idea of a work.
Tone: Tone expresses the author's attitude toward his or
her subject. Since there are as many tones in literature as there are tones of
voice in real relationships, the tone of a literary work may be one of anger or
approval, pride or piety-the entire gamut of attitudes toward life's phenomena.
Here is one literary example: The tone of John Steinbeck's short novel Cannery
Row is nonjudgmental. Mr. Steinbeck never expresses disapproval of the
antics of Mack and his band of bums. Rather, he treats them with unflagging
kindness.
Tragedy: According to A. C. Bradley, a tragedy is a type of
drama which is pre-eminently the story of one person, the hero. Romeo and Juliet and Antony and
Cleopatra depart from this, however, and we may view both characters in
each play as one protagonist. The story depicts the trouble part of the hero's
life in which a total reversal of fortune comes upon a person who formerly
stood in high degree, apparently secure, sometimes even happy. The suffering
and calamity in a tragedy are exceptional, since they befall a conspicuous
person, e. g., Macbeth is a noble at first, then a king; Hamlet is a prince;
Oedipus is a king. Moreover, the suffering and calamity spread far and wide
until the whole scene becomes a scene of woe. The story leads up to and
includes the death (in Shakespearean tragedy) or moral destruction (in
Sophoclean tragedy) of the protagonist.
Trochee: A metrical pattern in a line of poetry characterized
by one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. The opening line
to Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth Enters into Heaven"
provides an example.
Understatement: A statement which lessens or minimizes the importance
of what is meant. For example, if one were in a desert where the temperature
was 125 degrees, and if one wee to describe thermal conditions saying "It's
a little warm today." that would be an understatement. In Shakespeare's Macbeth,
Macbeth, having murdered his friend Banquo, understates the number of people
who have been murdered since the beginning of time by saying "Blood hath
been shed ere now.”
ABC: A poem that has five
lines that create a mood, picture, or feeling. Lines 1 through 4 are made up of
words, phrases or clauses while the first word of each line is in alphabetical
order. Line 5 is one sentence long and begins with any letter.
Acrostic: Poetry that certain
letters, usually the first in each line form a word or message when read in a
sequence.
Ballad: A poem that tells a
story similar to a folk tail or legend which often has a repeated refrain.
Ballade: Poetry which has three
stanzas of seven, eight or ten lines and a shorter final stanza of four or
five. All stanzas end with the same one line refrain.
Blank
verse: A poem
written in unrhymed iambic pentameter and is often unobtrusive. The iambic pentameter
form often resembles the rhythms of speech.
Bio: A poem written about one
self's life, personality traits, and ambitions.
Burlesque: Poetry that treats a
serious subject as humor.
Canzone:
Medieval Italian lyric style poetry with five or six
stanzas and a shorter ending stanza.
Carpe
diem: Latin expression that means 'seize the day.' Carpe diem
poems have a theme of living for today.
Cinquain: Poetry with five lines.
Line 1 has one word (the title). Line 2 has two words that describe the title.
Line 3 has three words that tell the action. Line 4 has four words that express
the feeling, and line 5 has one word which recalls the title.
Classicism: Poetry which holds the
principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art,
architecture, and literature.
Couplet:
A couplet has rhyming stanzas made up of two lines.
Dramatic
monologue: A type of poem which is spoken to a listener. The
speaker addresses a specific topic while the listener unwittingly reveals
details about him/herself.
Elegy: A sad and thoughtful poem about the death of an individual.
Epic: An extensive, serious
poem that tells the story about a heroic figure.
Epigram: A very short, ironic and
witty poem usually written as a brief couplet or quatrain. The term is derived
from the Greek epigramma meaning inscription.
Epitaph: A commemorative
inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument written to praise the deceased.
Epithalamium
(Epithalamion): A poem written in honor of the bride and groom.
Free
verse (vers libre): Poetry written in either rhyme or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed
metrical pattern.
Ghazal: A short lyrical poem
that arose in Urdu. It is between 5 and 15 couplets long. Each couplet contains
its own poetic thought but is linked in rhyme that is established in the first
couplet and continued in the second line of each pair. The lines of each
couplet are equal in length. Themes are usually connected to love and romance.
The closing signature often includes the poet's name or allusion to it.
Haiku: A Japanese poem composed
of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five morae, usually containing a
season word.
Horatian
ode: Short
lyric poem written in two or four-line stanzas, each with its the same metrical
pattern, often addressed to a friend and deal with friendship, love and the
practice of poetry. It is named after its creator, Horace.
Iambic
pentameter: One
short syllabel followed by one long one five sets in a row. Example: la-LAH
la-LAH la-LAH la-LAH la-LAH
Idyll (Idyl): Poetry that either
depicts a peaceful, idealized country scene or a long poem telling a story
about heroes of a bye gone age.
Irregular
(Pseudo-Pindaric or Cowleyan) ode: Neither the three part form of the pindaric ode nor the two or four-line stanza
of the Horatian ode. It is characterized by irregularity of verse and structure
and lack of coorespondence between the parts.
Italian
sonnet: A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme
pattern abbaabba followed by six lines with a rhyme pattern of cdecde or
cdcdcd.
Lay: A long narrative poem,
especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels.
Limerick: A short sometimes
vulgar, humorous poem consisting of five anapestic lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5
have seven to ten syllables, rhyme and have the same verbal rhythm. The 3rd and
4th lines have five to seven syllables, rhyme and have the same rhythm.
List: A poem that is made up
of a list of items or events. It can be any length and rhymed or unrhymed.
Lyric: A poem that expresses
the thoughts and feelings of the poet.
Memoriam
stanza: A
quatrain in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of abba -- named after the
pattern used by Lord
Tennyson.
Name: Poetry that tells about
the word. It uses the letters of the word for the first letter of each line.
Narrative: A poem that tells a
story.
Ode: A lengthy lyric poem
typically of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and
formal stanza structure.
Pastoral: A poem that depicts
rural life in a peaceful, romanticized way.
Petrarchan: A 14-line sonnet
consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet of cddcee or
cdecde
Pindaric
ode: A
ceremonious poem consisting of a strophe (two or more lines repeated as a unit)
followed by a an antistrophe with the same metrical pattern and concluding with
a summary line (an epode) in a different meter. Named after Pindar, a Greek
professional lyrist of the 5th century B.C.
Quatrain: A stanza or poem
consisting of four lines. Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme while having a similar
number of syllables.
Rhyme: A rhyming poem has the
repetition of the same or similar sounds of two or more words, often at the end
of the line.
Rhyme
royal: A type
of poetry consisting of stanzas having seven lines in iambic pentameter.
Romanticism: A poem about nature and
love while having emphasis on the personal experience.
Rondeau: A lyrical poem of French
origin having 10 or 13 lines with two rhymes and with the opening phrase
repeated twice as the refrain.
Senryu: A short Japanese style
poem, similar to haiku in structure that treats human beings rather than
nature: Often in a humorous or satiric way.
Sestina: A poem consisting of six
six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are
repeated in varied order as end words in the other stanzas and also recur in
the envoy.
Shakespearean: A 14-line sonnet
consisting of three quatrains of abab cdcd efef followed by a couplet, gg.
Shakespearean sonnets generally use iambic pentameter.
Shape: Poetry written in the
shape or form of an object.
Sonnet: A lyric poem that
consists of 14 lines which usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes.
Tanka: A Japanese poem of five
lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the other seven.
Terza
Rima: A type
of poetry consisting of 10 or 11 syllable lines arranged in three-line tercets.
Verse: A single metrical line
of poetry.
Villanelle: A 19-line poem
consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes. The first and
third lines of the first tercet repeat alternately as a refrain closing the
succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain.
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