T.S. Eliot

"The Waste Land" is one of the most widely read poems in the world and one of the least understood. My only prior knowledge of this poem was a mention of it in a Steven King novel I have read and even so they were merely prologue excerpts of the poem. Also, my sister, who is six years my senior, told me two things about the poem. One is that the only line she remembered was "April is the cruelest month" and that she preferred Yeats's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." As such, I went into this poem expecting an unenjoyable and morbid tale. I was not disappointed. While the tale may be morbid and I may not have enjoyed it I still understood it, or so I think I did. The eponymous "Waste Land" is Europe and it is not a physical wasteland but a metaphysical one. The people of Europe have been shaped into cold, emotionless people with poor relationships with one another. The concept of death, which Yeats explores throughout the poem, is more of a death of spirit and of hope. Eliot shows that the "interpersonal malaise" that had fallen over modern Europe was the wound that caused the Wasteland. What I noticed about the poem (through the help of the footnotes) was how "the Waste Land" moves from one person and place to the next. Eliot describes how the cold hard world of Europe is like "dry sterile thunder without rain" and the world as a mountain with "no water but only rock" (Eliot 1212). This is my belief of how Eliot sees Europe: capable of making sounds but otherwise impotent and without the ability to affect the dry mountain.

James Joyce

After reading so much poetry, I thought it would be a relief to finally read prose again. I was wrong. Not to say James Joyce is not important in the development of the modern novel as a legitimate work of art, and I can name numerous authors who have been greatly influenced by "Ulysses," but found Joyce's writing to be unimaginative. While I am sure there are many who would disagree with me, I found Joyce's "Dublin" to be a bit pointless, or at least the section of it found in the Anthology. Maybe I am unable to grasp the subtlety of the work or the message Joyce tries to present(if he is in fact presenting one), but from what I read of the life of Maria everything seemed ordinary and altogether uneventful. The title of the excerpt from Joyce's novel suggests that Maria will die soon, given that Clay was originally used as part of that Hallow's Eve game Maria played with the two girls and that Clay symbolized a coming death. However, I saw nothing in this chapter to suggest that Maria had any illness or any enemies who would wish her dead, making the very meaning of this chapter a bit puzzling for me. Perhaps Joyce wishes to show the nature of the people in modern Ireland and he depicted a modern Irish woman's life through Maria. If this is the case then there are several places where he describes the mind set of Maria, and possibly through her the mind set of common Irish women, such as when the narrators states that, "She arranged in her mind all she was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own money in your pocket" (Joyce 1135). Of course, this could mean different things depending on the person reading it. For someone in Joyce's time it could mean that the people of Ireland truly did wish for independence from England and that the "own money" was a separate form of Irish currency from the English pound. All of this is mere supposition, however, as I said earlier, this particular section rather baffled me.

William Butler Yeats

Although Years probably never intended for it to be so, "The Second Coming" is what I consider (along with Poe's "The Raven") to be the perfect horror poem. The imagery of this poem instills fear in the reader from start, with the devolving of human civilization into "mere chaos," and to the finish, with the monster with head of man and body of lion moving slowly and ceaselessly towards Bethlehem to be born. Two other works come to mind immediately while reading this magnificent poem of Yeats's. These are Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu." The influences can be seen in Achebe's novel, obviously for the title of the work, and Lovecraft's short story for the similar depictions of chaos created by the coming of a monster. As for the actual details and elements of the poem, all I can say is that rarely have I seen such a poem with as many memorable lines as "The Second Coming." The famous opening lines of the poem "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" are so memorable for the disturbing sense of impending collapse portrayed by those words (Yeats 1122). The situation the opening lines depict reminds me most of a drain and that all the worlds order and the connections used to hold humanity's societies together are torn apart and all are circling down a dark drain away into oblivion. Yeats describes the coming creature as "a shape with lion body and the head of a man, [with] a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun" (Yeats 1123). The sheer awesome picture of ruthless might this creature possesses is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this poem for me. The Second Coming is meant to be the coming of Jesus Christ, to redeem the world one last time and to bring finality to God's creation. The beast Yeats depicts is most likely the anti-christ, characterized as a sphinx most likely because of the the connotation the sphinx carries in Greek culture as a demon of pure destruction and ill fortune.

World War 1

World War 1 was thought to be the war that would end all wars. The sheer scale of the conflict absorbed the entire planet as resources and materiel were flooded into Europe to support one side or the other. The work I found most intriguing is a famous poem that I have encountered before: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est." This haunting poem reminded me greatly of the novel by Erich Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front. Both works are presented by a soldier's perspective and both show the same experience. The concept of War is by no means a stranger to mankind. Wars have been fought for as long as there have been nations. It is only recently, with the advent of newer and more clever ways of killing each other, that such tremendous death tolls as those seen in the World Wars have been achieved. Before I speak directly of the poem and its meaning for me, I would like to recount an experience from my high school days that I think of whenever I read a poem, short story, novel, etc. that details the atrocities soldiers and civilians face in wars. In my Junior English class, our teacher was speaking to us about an article she read in the local newspaper. The article was about a high schooler, much like ourselves, who had read Remarque's novel and decided to write an essay (which the newspaper published) about the need for peace in the world, the futility of war, and the need for greater understanding and compassion between all people. You may be expecting me to tell you that our teacher was singing this boys praises. Not quite. Our teacher lividly disagreed and said that simply because he read "All Quiet on the Western Front" he cannot possibly understand the nature of war and that he did not have the right to say wars should not be fought. All I took away from her argument was that it is easy to say wars are worth fighting when its not you in the trenches. So much for the civilian's perspective. Now, as for Dulce Et Decorum Est, I found this particular poem tremendously morbid and somber. The tone the poet sets is unbearably bleak using lines such as "the white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" (Owen 1102). You can imagine the horrifying images that passed through the soldiers as they hauled their ally's corpse back to the body wagon. What makes this scene all the more poignant is that these soldiers have served their time in the trenches, at least for the time being. They are dead tired and moving back to rest and reprieve, and suddenly one of them is killed by green toxic gas. The most powerful lines of this poem are, in my opinion, however, the closing four: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori" (Owen 1102). Sweet and fitting is it to die for your fatherland.

George Bernard Shaw

At first reading Pygmalion, I could easily understand Shaw's connection with Henrik Ibsen. It was also only with Shaw that I first understood the nature of the transition from Victorian to Modern writing. In Victorian literature there was a tendency towards heroic characters or at least characters with above average moral tendencies. Or as Freud would say, persons dominated by their super-egoes. In Pygmalion, the characters are for lack of a better word, more complicated. In the first act the main characters of the play are introduced: Higgins and Eliza. Higgins is a bossy and somewhat boorish expert on phonetics and Eliza is a self-pitying and somewhat selfish flower-girl. Neither of these characters would be considered Victorian by any notable measure. What struck me most about Pygmalion, besides its title, is the true complexity of the characters. No character is inherently good or inherently bad. Each one has characteristics, bad habits, tendencies, whatever you wish to call them that both earn the audiences disdain and admiration. For example, in the opening act of the play Higgins says to Eliza, "A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere - no right to live" (Shaw 1013). Only a few lines later, however, Higgins (and this is merely stage direction but the narrator is, I believe, to be trusted) gives Eliza money while "hearing in it [the church bells] the voice of God, rebuking him for his pharisaic want of charity to the poor girl" (Shaw 1014). Shaw demonstrates through Higgins mankind's propensities towards cruelty and charity. Higgins is not altogether cruel and not altogether kind, he is merely human.

Thomas Hardy

Hardy's "Epitaph" seemed to be a strange piece for him to write, especially at the time he did. Hardy died in 1928 and this particular poem was written in 1899. Some people may write their epitaph if they think they are near death, but I do not recall Hardy suffering any severe illness at this time. For whatever reason Hardy wrote "Epitaph" (and it may not even be an epitaph for himself) the poem contains many wordings which I find somewhat difficult to interpret. In the opening lines of the poem, the speaker states that "I never cared for life: Life cared for me, and hence I owed it some fidelity" (Hardy 1079). In saying this, does Hardy mean that the world cared whether he lived or died or does he mean that he feels that life treated him well? Further, when Hardy says he owes life some fidelity, the question arises How can one owe fidelity, which usually means loyalty, duty, or service, to an abstract concept such as life? Later, in the closing of the poem, Hardy writes "'though didst ask no ill-advised reward, Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find'" (Hardy 1079). This ill-advised reward may be many things, but one idea that comes to mind is the old idea that the things men most want are the things absolutely worst for them. These things such as money, power, distinction, and longer life are amongst the rewards most men would hope to get out of life and I believe Hardy did not want them.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Out of any poet who wrote during the Victorian, I would say that Hopkins's poetry most directly matched his personality and life. Many of the poems featured in the Longman anthology concerning Hopkins greatly matched the description the anthology gives for this particular poet. Many of his writings were religiously based and perhaps intended as tools of religious inspiration and conversion. Also, many of his poems dealt with his poor emotional and physical health. The poem that struck out most to me was "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day." To me, the title of this poem is referring to the condition Hopkins found himself in during his time in Liverpool, surrounded by the filfth of the slums and the emotionally draining occupation of Jesuit Priest in such harsh conditions. Because of all his work Hopkins was doing for the Lord, I believe he expected some kind of earthly compensation, but all he ever received was poor health. Hopkins writes, "O what black hours we have spent" and later "where I say hours I mean years, mean life" (Hopkins 778). These lines indicated his life is of a dark and ill state. The dark Hopkins speaks of is, I believe, a reference to the night rather than the day the title of the poem speaks of. While he sits in the darkness of the night, he should be sleeping peacefully but is kept awake and tired. Hopkins desires peace of body and mind and I believe this poem does a most adequate job of conveying that feeling.

Oscar Wilde 2

Oscar Wilde's Magnum Opus, "The Importance of Being Earnest," is a perfect example of social satire. Wilde's play focuses on wealthy and pompous Londoners and the relationships between them while criticizing, in my opinion, arrogance of wealthy Victorian lives. The incredibly rigid class distinctions between the wealthy aristocracy and the lower classes is shown in the statement by Algernon: "If the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?" (Wilde 849). This line shows two aspects of the mind set of the wealthy Victorian the statement belongs to, one being that the aristocracy, according to Wilde, are more like irresponsible children while the lower classes have to be mature and adult like and that the aristocracy have great contempt for the lower classes and that the aristocracy fails to perceive of them as anything but useless. Perhaps I am reading too much into a single statement, but this is merely my interpretation of context. The importance of being Earnest is a play and as such I am of the opinion that it seen and heard, rather than read like a book. When it comes to inventive and humorously witty dialog, there are none who surpass the creativity of Wilde. As such, the I believe the wittiness and the comedy of the satire has a tendency to distract viewers or readers of the underlying issues Wilde is attempting to point out. I believe Wilde was attempting to show the inadequacy, pompousness, and foolishness of the wealthy who controlled Victorian culture and that, much like in Ibsen's own writings, the relationships people have between each other should be founded on much more than the simple whims and meaningless aspects which were deemed by popularity to be supremely important.

Oscar Wilde 1

Perhaps no Victorian is as well known or as well read as the late and great Oscar Wilde. The world renowned satirist renowned for the plethora of witicisms he crafted over a lifetime of writing and his rebelling against against society has left Wilde a legend amongst social historians and playwrights alike. In "The Decay of Lying" Wilde presents two inept and most likely aristocratic Victorian era women discussing the state of lying in modern affairs. Wilde's use of satire to attack the elites of his own culture can be seen in the sentence "How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy natural disdain of proof of any kind!" (Wilde 833). Wilde presents the two characters of his play, Cyril and Vivian, as caricatures of actual Victorian blue bloods. They are, essentially, like clowns in a circus. They are meant to make people laugh at the foolish interchange of argument between the two of them. Yet, towards the end, something more is revealed about the "lying" which the play is about. I believe it is Wilde's intention not to condemn lying, but rather to embrace one of its forms. There is a possibility, or so I believe, that this poem was influenced by an essay by Samuel L. Clemens entitled: "On the Decay of the Art of Lying." It would be possible, as there is a lengthy portion of the play that deals with the use of art and artistry in lying. Clemens's essay concerning lying espouses the idea that lying can be used for the betterment of society rather than for selfish gain or pleasure. Lying can be used to protect others or help others find happiness, even if the happiness is false. In Wilde's play the character of Vivian takes a surprising change when she delivers an impassioned argument for a rebellion against realism and about the decay of imagination. The lying I believe Wilde wants is one in which the world is more fantastic merely for the existence of lies and the imagination that these lies feed upon.

Robert Browning

Reading from the Longman Anthology is not the first time I have encountered Robert Browning's poetry, and more specifically: "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." Anyone familiar with Steven King's writing may know of his famous book series: The Dark Tower. There are seven novels of this series and the series is in many ways an interpretation, at least to King, of Browning's poem. In the novels the main character is Roland Deschain: a knight. Except where the Childe Roland of Browning's poem assumedly used a broad sword, the Roland of Steven King's Dark Tower series used a pair of six-shooters. In the novels, King excerpts certain portions of Browning's poem for his own uses. This has provided me with a somewhat indirectly extensive relationship with this poem, as I have read all seven of the Dark Tower novels.
Moving away from the lackluster style of horror writing of Steven King and moving on to the enigmatic and most likely allegorical writing of Robert Browning, I can say that I was deeply satisfied with this particular poem. While I may haven no clue what Browning meant in the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" I do think I grasped the general mood depicted in the poem. In the line "All the day had been a dreary one at best, and dim was settling to its close, yet shot one grim red leer to see the plain catch its estray," Browning provides a sense of moroseness and acerbic anger at the world that pervades the entire poem. While I am unsure of what the intended allegory actually is, and I am only assuming there is one, I do understand the mood of the setting and the tone of the poem. In my opinion, the mere tone of this poem makes it far more frightening than the novels of King. The world is seen by Browning's Roland as a terrible and dreary place and the picture Browning paints with his words are most impressive.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tennyson was, amongst all the Victorians, the writer whom I liked the most. His poetry was ambivalent concerning the changing times and the issues facing his society. Split between science and religion, evolution and creationism, and, in his poem: In Memoriam, life and death. The poem of his that I liked the most was definitely In Memoriam. I cannot rationalize why I like this poem above the others Tennyson wrote, I simply felt that I most associated with the ideas Tennyson was expressing. Perhaps its because I at one point doubted the existence of God in favor of more intellectually accepted rationalizations about the universe. Perhaps its also because I have had someone very close to me die and was left without the means to express how I felt when it happened and this "In Memoriam" seems to remind me of how I felt during that very difficult time in my life. My favorite quote in this poem is without a doubt "A warmth within the breast would melt the freezing reason's colder part, and like a man in wrath the heart stood up and answer'd "I have felt" (Tennyson 613). What I like most about this particular quote is, in addition to what I have said about my emotional connection with it, is the idea that seems to be expressed in it. I do not simply mean the idea of God against reason, what I mean is the defiance of this statement. In spite of the oppressiveness reason has upon the heart, the heart fights back. The heart may not have a great argument for defending its actions, but at the very least it knows what it wants.

Charles Dickens

Newgate prison of London England is famous amongst many writers in 19th century England for the squalid conditions its prisoners were kept in and for being the site of numerous public hangings. As well as being the prison where a number of famous individuals, such as William Penn and the pirate Captain Kidd. Newgate prison received harsh criticism from many writers, Charles Dickens merely being one of them. I find it unsurprising that Dickens called for more humane treatment of prisoners, especially since one of his most notable characters (Oliver Twist) was a orphan and almost sent to prison himself for falsely accused burglary. While many of the occupants of the prison were in fact legitimately guilty of crimes, such as stealing, the treatment they faced was horrendous and unjustly extreme for the crimes they did commit. In one section of "A Visit to Newgate" Dickens describes "a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary" (Dickens). And when Dickens says "condemned" he means the young man was to be executed. Never has there so clearly been a case, or at least as far as my memory serves, where the punishment did not fit the crime. Dickens was not simply writing about the conditions at Newgate, which were atrocious, but also about the system in which Victorian England had established for itself and its prisoners. Dickens believed, or so I think he believed, that the prisons were a way for the rich and powerful to store and get rid of the human "waste" that clogged the streets of London and for getting rid of anyone who questioned the foundation of Victorian society.

Elisabeth Barrett Browning

Elisabeth Browning was not one of the Victorians I particularly cared for. While she certainly is deserving of the prominence she is awarded for her poems and writing, I personally did not care for them. Perhaps this is merely because I had a hard time grasping what she was saying about her family and herself in her poem "Aurora Leigh." Many of my ideas concerning Browning's poetry are unfounded and are merely suppositions, but still I see fit to describe them. When Browning writes about her Aurora Leigh's life, she says that "Aurora Leigh, was born to make my father sadder, and myself not over joyous, truly" (Browning 533). I believe this to be a confession of sorts on Browning's part about her life with her father. Browning's father apparently did a lot for his daughter, he encouraged her to learn and to express herself and yet he tyranically forbid her from marrying. Perhaps Elizabeth thought of herself as a burden upon her father, a good man who had a daughter not quite to his liking. As I said, this is unfounded, yet they are still the only ideas I have. Also, in the poem Aurora Leigh, the eponymous character's father dies when Aurora is still of a young age. This may yet be another confession of Browning's about her desire for her father to have died when she could still have loved him and when he had not yet become villainous towards her in forbidding her from marrying. Truthfully I have no ideas worth defending in any great extent. As I said, I did not care for Browning nor did I understand her poetry or connect with it to any great extent.

John Stuart Mill

It seems strange to me that a man such as John Stuart Mill, who was raised in the strictest and perhaps ruthlessly efficient manner possible, would become such a considerate and in the more modern sense of the word "liberal" person. Mill, being raised in a Utilitarian household, lived a life without any kind of freedom or play that a normal child (at least by today's standards) would usually be afforded. Because of this harsh early life it might be natural for one to assume that Mills would become a harsh and bitter person, much like his father before him. Mill's politics and not how he grew up, however, are what interest me most concerning this world renowned genius. Mills defended "'liberty of the press' as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government" (Mill 515). He also championed independent thought and action rather than group conformity in a society where uniqueness was practically a crime and class distinction dictated the rules of engagement between individuals all across England. In his quote concerning individuality, Mills states that "He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation" (Mill 518). Mill was, or so I perceive, a forerunner of liberal politics as they are known today. Freedom of choice, freedom of the press, and perhaps most controversal: women's right were the most important issues to Mill and were the topics he most championed.

Industrialism

The section concerning Industrialism in the Victorian age that most stood out to me was Henry Mayhew's discussion with a little street urchin, entitled: "A Boy Crossing-Sweeper." This section, in my opinion perhaps best gives an adequate and poignant depiction of life as in the industrialized London landscape for the poor and dejected. The boy Mayhew speaks with depicts his life as a mere existence of subsisting. This child belongs to a gang of young men who are forced to work together yet at the same time compete for money and food. According to the boy's story, he was abandoned by his sister shortly after she married. Her provided excuse for such abandonment being that she did not have the means to provide for him and that all she could do was turn him loose and instruct him to fend for himself. Much of what Mayhew describes seems very similar to the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth, by this I mean the abject poverty and the begging for food or money. The most poignant line, or so I feel, from the Mayhew's passage is the last line from the young man, "It's awful cold and gives us chilblains on our feet; but we don't mind it when we're working, for we soon gets hot then" (Mayhew 513). I find it nearly unfathomable that a group of young men have to scrounge and work without proper garments or anyone to care for them. I don't know what I would do if I were in that same situation, I would probably do much as the boy of the passage has done and simply find some way to survive. While this sort of thing may be difficult to imagine happening in America, it's tough to think that elsewhere in the world there are children the same age as the boy of the story who live in the same conditions or worse.

Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth lived in the shadow of her brother, though she was herself an excellent writer. It was only during the Romantic era that people saw female poets and writers emerging as a legitimate source of literature. Professor Glance was kind enough to make an observation concerning Dorothy Wordsworth's writings that I agree with (to an extent), being that her poetry is inferior to her prose. Certainly her poetry is good, it is without a doubt better than anything I could produce, but it is her prose that is most captivating. Her prose writing shows daily observations of social decline in England, namely the abject poverty many people are forced into and the occupation of begging that they take up. In one of her letters, Dorothy Wordsworth states that she met a woman who "had buried her husband & three children within a year & a half - all in one grave - burying very dear - paupers all put in one place - 20 shillings paid for as much ground as will bury a man - a stone to put over it or the right will be lost" (Wordsworth 295). There are a number of reasons for this woman's children and husband to have died. Perhaps a congenital illness the children inherited from their father or perhaps tuberculosis. Whatever it was that killed them it can be said with some great confidence that their poor state in life had hurried them on their way. What frightens me about the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth is how normal all this seems. It would be hard for me to imagine seeing the kind of poverty she sees without being disturbed by it, yet she seems to accept it. I suppose it is mostly the same, however, as the homeless people seen in large urban areas. Yet, it is still a novelty to someone like me who lives in a town with virtually no homeless.