This is a literary journey into the classics undertaken the first year that I returned to college. It consists mainly of book reviews and my own opinions. I don't pretend to be an academic by the way but I am a reader and as such am more than qualified to comment on written works, after all, that's who they're written for. I am assumng that anyone who browses this page is at least familiar with some of the works, if not, most can be found at Project Gutenberg's wonderful site. Download them there and sit back for a read. This journal is just a gathering of thoughts; feral dogs snapping at your heels. So sit back and read this at your leisure. I don't care if you download it, I've probably downloaded your stuff! Feel free to comment, but if you're determined to start a literary World War Three, don't waste your time; I couldn't care less and won't bother replying.

This story by Kate Grenville is about an old woman who looks like a witch and the impressions of a gang of kids who dream up all sorts of terrible crimes for this woman. The woman is Miss Spears and she lives in number forty-two. In a sense, Miss Spears is an archetype of the collective superstitions of the neighbourhood. "Miss Spear's what happens to you if the numbers on the bottom of your bus ticket don't add up to an even number. She's what happens when you lose a game of Old Maid."

Sandy encounters Miss Spears when she attempts a commando style raid on her home, in an attempt to prove that Miss Spears really did kill her own father. According to Sandy, she then stuffed him and mounted him in a glass case. She has to prove that she is right, this is Sandy's rites of passage; if she is to retain her standing amongst her peers.

Miss Spears invites Sandy, who is hiding in her garden, into her house and gives her milk and cookies. She also gives her a penknife, which goes a long way to establishing trust between the two. The closing pages chronicle the betrayal as Mick; who is the leader of a gang of boys eventually pressures Sandy into abusing Miss Spears. Not surprisingly the old woman doesn't reply with words but with a look, as she stares straight at Sandy. It is the look, combined with the kindness shown by Miss Spears the previous day that stands out. Sandy has been through her rites of passage. She has discovered that "lies are switched truths," that things are not always what they seem, and that prejudice and bigotry are universal traits for the human race.

Grenville has captured the soul and essence of humanity with this story. We have the suspicion that leads people to commit acts of barbarity. In a sense, Hitler's Auschwitz was no more barbaric than the taunts of children when we consider the effect it would have had on Miss Spears. An act of kindness towards another does not guarantee that the recipient will respond in a similar manner. Children are little people who grow into bigger people, carrying the faults and weaknesses of the human race with them into adulthood.

Tim Winton's story of a young boy growing up in Western Australia and learning how to cope with his father's illness is particularly clever because it is told through the eyes of a child. He has written as though the boy himself was telling the story, it was a stylistic device I found worked for me. It was a cleverly written piece of literature and for its portrayal of a slice of history, it was well written. I found this text disturbingly realistic considering the fact that my own father fell into a fatal coma a couple of years previously. I felt as if I was reading my own story although the Winton narrative had a happier ending. I found myself rejecting the text at first as if I were denying that it had actually happened. Nevertheless, in the end I am forced to admit on a deeper level, that my father really did die and that he isn’t coming back.

The religious overtones sprinkled throughout the text brought back memories of my own childhood. I was forced to read the bible from cover to cover a half dozen times at least. My own family used religion to cope with my father's death whilst I used the 'Fates.' Reading 'That eye the Sky' was like looking into a mirror and not liking what I saw reflected back at me. We don’t always like the images we have of ourselves, only we know the little warts and abnormalities buried in our souls. I will return one day to the story and reread it again for myself, there are certain texts that stay in our mind and won't let go until we have faced the issues they have raised.

A portrait of lost youth with an aboriginal setting. There are overtones of Camus' ‘The Outsider.’ Colin Johnson writing to Mary Durack in 1964, certainly admitted to the French existentialist writers such as Camus and Sartre. I would be hard pressed to disagree with him on that point. Colin Johnson's story is about disaffected youth, about a culture in decline still struggling to come to terms with the white invasion. The recent revelations that Johnson himself was descended from a runaway Negro slave probably do more to confirm the narrative than deny it.

A young Aboriginal gets out of prison and drifts through the outside world with little notion of where he is going just so long as he keeps moving. He is the traditional Aboriginal in that sense of the word. A child of the sixties who hangs out in university lounges, gets drunk and talks of waiting for Godot. It is not the traditional view we have of Aborigines but it is startlingly realistic in its portrayal of an ancient culture trying to cope with the 20^th century.

I found the narrative moving in many parts and concerning the rumours that he is not a real Aboriginal. I would regard that as being immaterial to the text. It would not be the first time a writer has faked a past in order to attain recognition for his/her works. Some of the most famous writers most notably the Brontes did the same thing. The kind of criticism labeled at Johnson says more about the kind of society he lives in than about the man himself. In the case of the latter it could almost be written off as accidental. The text stands on its own without needing to rely on the judgements of the critics.

Henry Lawson has become known over the years as a master storyteller. His stories have been criticised as being a romanticised view of Australia but no one can deny the enduring and universal appeal of his work. His life typified what has become a uniquely Australian trait and according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was an active feminist. There is a black humour and fatalism inherent in his work that was evident in his life. He wrote not only what he saw but perhaps what he wanted to see, he wrote of a mateship that overrides the existentialism of Johnson (Mudrooroo). He talks of people and communities that pull together. There is the traditional Australian isolation that is so much a part of our culture. In the double buggy image we have Joe and Mary struggling to make ends meet and dreaming of a new double buggy. Mary seems almost obsessed with the idea, to the point of materialism. Joe is a character who will give into his wife and obtain the buggy. The couple are an archetype of modern society when it comes to inter - personal relationships. There is an inability to get beyond the surface and explore the deeper side of their relationship. Mary's goal in life is to obtain the buggy and Joe's aim is to please Mary.

Although having said that, I admit that in this subsistence type the story was set does not allow time for the niceties of life. They are trying to make the best of what they have, in the end, Mary gets her buggy, and Joe finds a little peace. The end of the story shows a little intimacy however, ‘And at last Mary said. "Do you know Joe, why, I feel tonight - just like I did the day we were married." And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.’

Barbara Baynton on the other hand shows a slice of Australian life that does not make us feel warm and romantic. Stark realism is the word I would use for her work. Perhaps one writer who comes to mind when thinking of Baynton is Olga Masters. In both 'The Chosen Vessel,’ and ‘Squeaker’s Mate,’ she shows an image of the mysoginism that lies under Australia’s egalitarianism.

Here we have woman at the mercy of man; with no hope for the future. In ‘The Chosen Vessel,’ we have a young woman who is brutally murdered. Her husband is away and she is left to fend for herself much as Lawsons 'Drover’s Wife.' Nevertheless, there is no heroic victory of good over evil here. Nothing to romanticise over, she is stalked and killed just as if she were prey. It portrays women as being the prey and man as the predator.

In ‘Squeaker’s Mate,’ we see a woman brutalised and worked into the ground. When she eventually falls victim to a work related accident she is cast aside and left to linger in the background whilst Squeaker finds himself a new ‘slave.’ An image that is uncomfortable to both men and women. No one wants to own up to the fact that they are of the same physiological makeup as Squeaker. He represents everything that is hateful in men. Baynton seems to have loaded him down with extra baggage in the form of character defects. He is a misogynist in the true sense of the word. Perhaps Baynton was trying for shock value in her portrayal Mary.

It was stark realism at its best and Mary succeeds in getting her own back even though she is lying helpless in the hut. Her dog has the last say, Squeaker’s treatment of her was similar to the way one would treat a dog. It is a revealing glimpse when the lower form of life (the dog) turns on Squeaker and attacks him. Squeaker can only protest that it was his new mistress's fault. His old mistress has no reply for him, as with Miss Spears, she replies with her silent stare. Or as Germaine Greer would say;

Sally Morgan's book was a crossover between Aboriginal and white Australian culture. It was a marriage of the two, which in spite of the criticism labeled at it was successful in its portrayal of Aborigines. I could identify with Sally when it came to her experiences at school and church. On page 103 we have the conversation with Mary’s father: "I'd like you to stop mixing with Mary... I don’t want her mixing with you in case she picks up any of your bad habits...  really, it’d be better if you broke off your friendship entirely. You do understand don’t you?"

I've had the same words said to me at church as well. Anyone who has been on the wrong side of the fence or has even been seen to be different would identify with those words. Sally Morgan's book has the power to affect both black and white cultures, it has a power that transcends racial, religious, ideological and gender boundaries. There is no tribalism here. She wants to know where she came from, so as she can come to terms with her own humanity. Just because the book didn't fit in with the common Aboriginal theme does not work against it. I was born in Scotland but I see no need to wear the kilt, don’t keep Burns' birthday and have no great desire to return home. However, it is important to know where I came from. Family ties are important to the Scots and Irish, we know where we came from and can trace our family history. 'My Place' was an awakening of the black spirit of Australia, a recognition of our history as being so closely intertwined as to be inseparable. And a call to arms against those who would seek to divide us according to ethnic and cultural boundaries. Maybe Pauline Hanson and Arthur Tunstall should be forced to read ‘My Place.’ It couldn’t hurt them anyway, who knows?

Nietzsche wrote Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist, in a  hearkening back to the old gods. The heroes of old who performed mighty deeds and inspired the early Greeks to immortalise their lives with theatre. The Oresteia is one such example, it has the traditional themes of revenge, death, jealousy, tragic heroes and man’s struggle against the forces of nature. Agamemnon was a man of valor who fell foul of his wife when he sacrificed their daughter to appease the gods on his expedition to Troy.

Sacrificing one's daughter does not fit well with 20^th century man but in the context of the ancient world, it makes sense. It would have been a tragic event all the same but necessary. I found myself siding with his wife in spite of the fact that she is portrayed as a villain. I must admit I would probably have run old Agamemnon through myself.

He is the archetype for modern man though in the sense that he is a conqueror, someone who sees the goal or the prize and sacrifices his all to achieve it. He is to be admired when it comes to that. Nevertheless, we have the sacrifice of his daughter, which is paralleled in modern society by men who sacrifice their families for the sake of a career. These men would cringe at Agamemnon's act of barbarity but see nothing wrong with deserting their wives and children for the sake of a few extra dollars. These men (and women) have their reasons but when weighed up in the overall scheme of things they don't match up to real quality time with their families. The plot of The Oresteian Trilogy is a common one which recurs countless times over in various forms.

This narrative gives us a slice of recorded life as witnessed by Chaucer. It is a snapshot of English history chronicling the customs, manners and popular opinions of the day. It was interesting to read this tale, as it was the first recorded voice of a woman in English literature to date. She is not by any stretch of the imagination a lady. She has had five husbands so far. The number five tallies with the Samaritan woman of Cana whom Jesus blessed. This would have given Chaucer’s character some legitimacy. She regularly quotes from the bible as well as from other classic texts. Her prologue is leading up to the main tale. She is protesting her right to speak and she is not afraid to speak out either. She blatantly admits her sin and almost seems quite proud of the fact. This begs the question, was Chaucer giving women a voice, or was he mocking them?

In spite of the way she has been labeled, I would have to say that Chaucer was giving her a voice for a reason. He was able to say things about men that would not have been acceptable coming from the mouth of a woman. He warns of drunkenness and sexual immorality.

This almost seems to fit the woman in the narrative, she serves a purpose to remind us not only of her own faults of which she seems to be proud, but also of the faults of men. She has held up a mirror to English society such as it was in her day and mocked it. There is a story told that in those days the court jester was the only true power in the land. It was he who could tiptoe into the King’s court, look surreptitiously all around, and lifting up the king's robes could cry mockingly. "The king has no testicles!" The court would break down in fits of laughter and even the king, as stern and ruthless as he was likely to be, would be forced to concede to the black humour. Had any other mortal dared to insult his king in such a way, he would have lost his head, literally. The court jester and in this case Chaucer had the power to mock the church, the king and society in general without fear of losing his life. The jesters were the precursors of our own political commentators and investigative reporters. They were able to pass judgement, spread the news that, "the king is a fink!" Everyone knew the king was a fink but only the jester was allowed to say it, for even the king and church couldn’t legislate against humour. Chaucer's satirical work was an important breakthrough, in that it was recorded and passed down to us. We need more court jesters who can cry out, "Sieg heil Jackboot Jeff!"
 
 

There is an eternal truth about the sonnets, we seem to keep coming back to them time and again. "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
But one of my favorites was number 17.

Well my spell check has just hit warp drive but what the hell would a computer know about the language of love. About all this damn thing is good for is business letters and even then I have to tell it what to do. Maybe the problem with reading the sonnets is that we read them like a computer, picking up all the grammatical errors and sentence fragments. We miss the spirit of the author. Here is someone in love and knowing that words alone could never tell the world of the beauty he could see. Poets are the enduring thread of literature. From the earliest bards who traveled from village to village singing of Beowulf, the old Greek plays that were so much a part of religious life, to the poets of our own age.

Hmm... computer still doesn’t like it, neither would Sartre, he'd think the poets absurd when they talk of love. Is love just a way to define ourselves, to prove or justify our miserable existence? I hope he’s wrong. I fall in love hundreds of times a week with all kinds of women and if I could, I'd probably sleep with all of them. I don’t have the energy however so I'll have to content myself with just writing poetry and dedicating songs to them. Who would believe me if I wrote about one of my girlfriends in the same way Shakespeare did? They tell me that there’s a distinct possibility that old Willy Shakespeare was a bit gay, that he wrote some of his sonnets to a man. The gays will always try to stuff up history and literature. Whether the critics are right or wrong it doesn’t matter, it's good poetry and comes from the heart of man, the desperate seeking heart of man.

There is a line that runs on the back cover of my copy of Mein Kampf. "Mein Kampf is an evil book, but it remains necessary reading for those who seek to understand the Holocaust, for students of totalitarian psychology and for all who care to safeguard democracy." The closing lines of the Prologue are chilling when read in the light of recent events in Bosnia. "It (Mein Kampf) faces us in the post-Cold War era with a similar question. Are there enemies of peace in power in the world today? Are we trying to recognise them?

I must confess that I have never read Hitler's manuscript of desolation. I never got past the fifty-page introduction. But one day I'll get around to reading it, if only to recognise the next tyrant when he comes along. In the meantime, I'll have to content myself with MacBeth.

For MacBeth is above all else a study on tyranny. It is an insight into the birth of a tyrant, we have the all-conquering hero who has vanquished the King of Norway and is returning in triumph to his king. Nevertheless, something happens on the way home, he meets the witches on a ‘blasted heath.' What happens to our hero? He is seduced by the illusion of power, his wife and the three weird sisters combine their forces to raise MacBeth to undreamed of heights. Lady MacBeth in the end is the victim of her folly, she goes mad with guilt. She was unable to commit murder and keep her conscience clean. MacBeth was also destroyed by his own guilt. I read this play late last year (1996) and was so moved that I wrote my own rendition of MacBeth's hour of destiny when Birnum wood came to Dunisnane.

The shifting light from the flickering torches danced solemnly over the room, it sought out darkened corners as its pale hue illuminated in subtle hues, the dank air of desperation. It passed over the figure at the window his head bowed in silent contemplation, as if weighed down by the worries of a thousand generations. He glanced up to gaze at the approaching armies that were taking on the appearance of a forest; remorseless in its passage across the battle - scarred landscape. He turned towards the torchlight his gaze falling upon the oaken portals, for beyond the great pillars lay his one chance of salvation.

Where once his hair had fallen in luxuriant tumbling waves over his shoulders, it now only reached the collar of his quilted vest. Tight black curls streaked with sweat and filth, as if the foul machinations that had brought him to this last refuge had chosen to drape their evidence upon the head that bore the crown. Streaks of diet ran down in rivulets over his throat, following the line of his swollen jugular.

A close cropped beard, black and tinged with grey rose to meet his moustache, avoiding his lower lip as if afraid of the blasphemies that had oozed from his tongue of late. His hair barely covered the hard cruel lips, chapped and raw from winds that howled down with malevolent fury from blasted rocky escarpments. Mother Nature herself had found voice enough to condemn the tyrant in his hour of destiny. His cheeks once finely sculptured were lean and gaunt, taking on the sallow pallor normally reserved for the hour of death. The nose thin and hawk - like rose to meet his dark brooding eyes, behind which he hid a multitude of sins. Aye, and the great sorrow, the death of his wife at her own hand, a vain useless attempt to cleanse her soul from the relentless tides of guilt.

So it had come to this. His tormented eyes flashed venomously, as the windows to his soul were thrust open. Twisted by the macabre acts of violence; by which means he had clawed his way to the throne. The office was a mantle that now hung forlornly about his neck. For those he commanded obeyed not from sense of duty, but out of fear and mortal terror, for the Stygian blackness that emanated from his soul.

His vile acts of vengeance borne on the white-hot fires of hell had wreaked havoc on all and sundry. The abyss within had yielded such wanton acts of cruelty, that in a strange ironic twist they had debased him as much as they destroyed all who fell beneath his bloodstained claymore. He was ruler over all he saw and yet he possessed nothing. The kingdom was only his now because none dared oppose him.

Till now that is... but with the approaching whirlwind came the armies that heralded his doom. Where once he had been omnipotent, now he was impotent. Yet MacBeth felt no sense of impending doom, no pangs of remorse at the terrible carnage to come. There was only a diabolic rage in the wild staring eyes, that his plans for domination had been thwarted. He nursed a silent sullen resentment against all who opposed him.

No man born of woman could wrest the throne form his vice-like grip, even if Birnum wood should come to Dunisnane.

The tyrant showed no fear as he strode towards the courtyard bellowing for his armour bearer; a crazed demented look in his eyes as he prepared for the hour of reckoning.
 
 

Milton's poem is a disturbing piece of literature. It is full of vivid images of hell and eternal damnation and yet in the midst of it all his Satan rises like a demented being to claim his rightful due. Milton may have originally written it with the thought of defending his faith but he fails in that he portrays Satan as a heroic figure, a being who shakes his fist at the tyranny of heaven. The era in which Milton was writing in was a time of great change. The old orders were fast collapsing and the masses were rising up to claim what they deemed to be their due, they were revolting against the tyranny that had ruled Europe for centuries.

It is recommended that Paradise lost be read with a copy of Bullfinch's Mythology to make sense of the images in the text. The voice of Satan is the voice of freedom "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." There is a challenge issued here and a great conference is called of all the gods and demons who once were worshipped as part of the pagan system of belief. Milton has loaded his text down with every god known to man in popular mythology. It is almost as if he is desperate to prove that Satan is against all that is good and proper and right. God is a gloating god and humanity is as helpless and impotent against him, as are all the powers of hell.

Milton was born into turbulent times. The English Civil war broke out and he was attacked by the royalists as being a 'libertine,' he was a prolific writer of tracts, which mostly extolled the virtue of Christian living. Curiously enough although a Calvinist, he did not believe in the doctrine of predestination. Rather he believed that all believers were the 'elect,' a doctrine, which Calvin himself would not hold to. Although Calvin's own beliefs were in all likelihood doomed to failure even then.

I couldn't help comparing Milton's Satan however, with Cromwell, who was directly responsible for the execution of the king Charles I. This would have been seen as a serious act in itself, regicide was tantamount to blasphemy. He may have intended his Satan to be an evil figure but Satan comes out as a heroic figure, a modern day Prometheus. Shelley himself thought Satan to be the true hero of the piece. One wonders indeed, what Milton had in mind when he wrote Paradise Lost, was he subtly attacking Cromwell and the revolution? Was he attacking the Papal throne? Or was he attempting to teach mankind the folly of rebellion against God? In a sense, he parodied the futility of rebelling against the authorities. England restored its monarch, France nearly a century later would see its own revolution blurred by the 'Great Terror.' Only America would have a chance of breaking free and putting down her roots in fertile soil. This was not because of the rightness or wrongness of their cause, but a result of their isolation from the rest of the world; being rich in resources, they were less dependant economically on the changing economies of Europe and Britain. There are those who would argue however that the American Civil War was the new Republic's Paradise Lost.

This would have to be the forerunner to Rousseau's noble savage. It is sentimental in its content and overly dramatic but it works well for the time considering that Negroes were not even considered human beings. Jefferson for all his fine rhetoric later, would only regard them as three fifths human. Behn's story was also notable for its reference to a kingdom and a recognised social order amongst the black tribes. This was kept hidden for hundreds of years, it was only in the second half of the 20^th century that we were informed those kingdoms did indeed exist in Africa. The region known as Ghana boasted a sizable empire and there were a number of other smaller kingdoms that were in decline by the time the Europeans reached them. The fact that European man chose to ignore them is not surprising when one realises that he ignored the civilisations of the Americas.

Aphra Behn's reference shows us however, that some knowledge must have been available regarding the old kingdoms of Africa. The explorers brought back tales of the legendary Timbuktu, which equated with Xanadu and El Dorado in the Americas. All of which were reputed to be paved with gold it was European man's lust for gold rather than any empirical evidence that gave rise to these tales.

She gave Oroonoko a similar death to William Wallace, his body was dismembered and sent to the four corners of the province as a warning to the other slaves. Her hero was cast in the European mold, whether this was to endear him to her readers and so help to sell the book or whether she really believed in the humanity of the Negro is hard to say. She emphasized his blackness as if to ram home the fact that here was a black man in all his nobility and endowed with princely virtue. It has all the hallmarks of a Greek tragedy, he was fated to lose his lover and his life but in the dying he lives on in the pages of Aphra Behn's work. I would suggest that Behn herself would have taken risks with this work. To have it printed would have caused a storm but she was protected partly because she was a woman. Had a man written something like this he would have been ostracised or thrown into prison. Nevertheless, Aphra Behn being a woman was allowed her 'excesses of sentimentality.' She would no doubt have used this to her advantage.

Samuel Richardson wrote Clarissa in the form of letters, which was the dominant form of writing in those days. I found Clarissa a little hard to take, probably because we only had extracts and the book is so big that the little we had didn't really do it justice. I don’t know if it's actually on my reading list yet, I still have to get through War and Peace. But in one sense, it could have been construed as a breakthrough because it attempted to probe the feminine mind... for its time that was unusual. It was an influential book and Mary Shelley was reported to have read it whilst writing Frankenstein. She apparently liked the form of the narrative being in letters. It was certainly popular for its time, especially amongst the women probably because the protagonist was most definitely a woman and the antagonist was the 'vile Mr. Lovelace.' Clarissa's virtue was always at stake and she would leave no stone unturned to protect her honour. Lovelace on the other hand is the embodiment of lust and debauchery, a 'vile cad.' My mother seems to think he was a vile cad anyway. She worries about women losing their virtue to men, although in the closing stages of the 20^th century it’s probably more the other way now!
Lovelace had more colour than the poor Clarissa who seems to run from one catastrophe to another, perhaps the precursor to the archetypal 'perils of Pauline.' She seems to be forever hanging by her fingernails from some cliff or another, I’m surprised she wasn’t tied to the railway tracks or strapped to a pile of dynamite in some deserted mine shaft. Maybe if she’d had the keys to the safety deposit box at her 'ranch' Lovelace would have left her alone. Alas, unfortunately Mr. Lovelace succeeds in his plans and Clarissa loses her virtue to him. She dies lonely and heartbroken. I can’t help but wonder if Richardson was striking out at the men of his day. The establishment demanded that women bow to their wishes, they were discouraged from such things as education and from pursuing their goals and dreams. Maybe Lovelace was the archetype of the man, someone who was prepared to force his desires upon an unwilling woman, she fights against him but in the end it is all in vain. She will fall victim to him and once in his power, though she escapes, she will waste away mourning her lost youth and her stolen vitality, forever the servant of man. Perhaps Richardson showed more insight than I gave him credit for earlier in the year.
 
 

Ligeia, Poe's work has always been known as dark and gloomy. There is a glimpse into the writer's soul as we read his works. I must confess I was almost relieved to get away. He mourns his dead wife the Lady Ligeia and in the end destroys his new wife with the memory of Ligeia. How can she stand up against the shroud he draws around her? When I read of the architecture of his new home, it reminded me of a funeral home or a tomb.

Hullo, my grammar checker just went crazy! It doesn't like Poe either. The whole image is dark and gloomy and it's probably small wonder that the Lady Rowena dies in the end. It is as though another innocent human has to pay for the death of Ligeia. An analogy could be drawn between Poe's work and the danger of going into new relationships, without first healing the wounds of the past. The Lady Rowena died because her husband had never dealt with his sorrow and grief. How many second marriages die because people are not prepared to heal the grief of the past?
 
 

This tale is a retelling of Frankenstein in that the hero exchanges his own body for that of a misshapen dwarf, and emissary of hell. It is a retelling of the prodigal son as well; he has squandered his wealth and refused the forgiveness of his adopted father. Juliet falls victim to the monster and it is only by killing the monster, who is imprisoned in his own body, that their mingled blood will reverse the curse. There are Christian analogies in this text. The act of dying to yourself, to your own desires in order to find release, it is essential to transformation.

I was interested in the allusions to France and the revolution, my premise would be that she experienced the full horror of the Great Terror. This would come through in Frankenstein and this story too, but more of that later. Guido is driven by greed and selfish desire, perhaps an analogy of France and the picture of the nobility. Only by killing itself in mortal combat with its repulsive enemy the populace can it hope to survive. Well that's one other reading of the text, maybe she had both ideas in mind, perhaps she wanted to give Frankenstein a way out, a second chance. Huxley in his 1946 edition stated that he would have given the savage a third alternative. The opportunity to live in a ‘community where the economics would be decentralist, the politics anarchist and where science and technology would be harnessed to serve rather than to coerce mankind.’ I think Shelley really wanted Frankenstein to find his way out of the hell he had created for himself. Maybe she wanted France to find a way out of the hell it had created for itself. Perhaps she of all took to heart the words of Prometheus. "I planted blind hope in the heart of him." Maybe it is blind hope that has kept us going these past few thousand years of recorded history, it is in the end the only thing that can sustain us.
 
 

This narrative is an obvious retelling of the two halves of man, the good, and the bad. William Wilson as two halves to him, he seeks to rid himself of the good, which is the other William Wilson so, as he can be free to assert his manhood, which is manifested as pride. He cannot escape his conscience however, and so he does what so many others have done and kills it. He has become hardened to his conscience and refuses to admit that it is really himself he is running from. He has rejected God at an early age, having decided at the boarding school that God was to be feared. He tries to make himself anew but reckons without his conscience. He is Nietsche's superman who has become the sum total of his existence, the great I AM. However, as with Nietzsche he ends up destroying himself, he realises the stupidity of his actions but it is too late. He cannot turn back for he has killed the one thing that gave him hope that held the truth in its hands. Nietzsche proclaimed God to be dead and announced that he was the new antichrist. The problem was, he had nothing to put in God's place, without an outside frame of reference, a moral code, mankind is just a stumbling wreck, a blind Prometheus shaking his fist at the sky. William Wilson is not unique he could be an archetype for humanity, a warning of what lies ahead and a testament to a time when man searched desperately for the answers; before it sank into the despair of the 20^th century.
 
 

So reads the back cover of my copy of Frankenstein. I had always thought of the monster as being something of a laughing stock, with a bolt through his neck and a funny hairdo. Nevertheless, to read the original is to take a frightening journey into the heart of man's darkness. In fact thinking of it now, I will compare the two books, here is a passage from the first few pages of Conrad's work 'Heart of Darkness.'

There is an element of truth in both those statements. I compare them both because they are about the descent of mankind into the abyss. Huxley would talk about a different kind of abyss of science gone mad. But Conrad was concerned with the probing of our innermost fears, he found the soft heart of man and found it dirty and tainted. In spite of our technological advances, we had not advanced beyond the realm of the savages, the very savages we were exploiting. He found the veneer of civilisation that cakes us is very thin indeed.

Shelley also probed our heart and found it to be a transplanted one, stolen from another corpse. We have not an original bone in our body. Every idea we have is stolen from another culture, another civilisation. We rob the dead and pick their bones, all the while trying to give substance to what is really just a corpse, the corpse of humanity that has long since lost its freshness and vitality. It has plundered the Earth and ripped out its belly, cutting itself off from the very mother that nurtured it. She saw this grand procession of useless vanity; the emperor with no clothes really is a repulsive sight isn't he? We have democracy, which will save us; so we are told. But democracy is just another Frankenstein's monster, a corpse which is ingested with the blood and life of others to feed it. We bring this corpse to life and then shrink back at the hideous creation as we look at the widening gap between the haves and the have nots, the spiraling divorce rates and the spectre of multinational rationalisation and 'free trade.' But whether it takes the form of Marxism, Communism or another ism; it is all the same. We are trying to ingest our  corpses with life.

Western culture today is pieced together from a thousand different realities, it moves, it breathes, it screams out for a father but it is not living in the true sense of the word. Its father has deserted it, shunned it as being an abomination. Shelley saw France as being a monster I believe, as being a grand experiment to bring light to humanity that ended in the Great Terror. Can we admit that our monster is dead? Can we bury it and start over, return to what we once were? On the other hand, will we continue to pursue it, determined to kill it, to kill our freedom. It haunts us, mocks us, because we created it, we gave it life, and yet denied it the right to a mate, to happiness.

10% of the world uses up 80% of the world’s resources. Why is that?

Will we confess to our Elizabeth who represents our innocence and our children that we have failed? We cannot because they would be horrified at our clumsy attempts to infuse life into a dead corpse. In the end we will destroy them with our hedonism, they will seek the things we despise and know will destroy them. In the end they too will be forced to the same awful conclusion that they have tried to resurrect the dead, I do not hold out much hope for this world the way it is now. We need a radical restructuring of society. I once heard a preacher state that there were only two methods left open to us. One was a massive spiritual revival of some sort, and the other was total and absolute control such as Huxley and Orwell saw. He feared the second one was the only one left open to us. I believe him.

Go to my other essay on Frankenstein Age of Unreason
 
 

Coleridge, Blake, Byron and Shelley saw this insanity and tried to correct the balance, they reasoned that the only escape was through the power of the imagination. Coleridge wrote the Ancient Mariner as a testament to the death of God as in the killing of the albatross. The ship is suddenly becalmed, his men all die horribly and he drifts through despair. "Day after day. Day after day. We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." This is man's search for reason. He has killed the bird of good fortune (God) and suffers ill will. His men all die and he is close to death. He perseveres and in the end, it is the hermit, a harbinger of an ancient truth who saves him. He returns to civilisation a sadder and wiser man.

There is power in Coleridge and his ilk. They were men with a vision and a hope for the future. They could see what we had done and sought to provide man with an answer. Perhaps they did unwittingly stumble on the answer to mankind's ills. It is our sense of adventure, our ability to dream that saves us. If Edison had not dreamed of light I would be typing this by candlelight although I doubt that I would be typing at all had not someone dreamed of designing a machine that could complete millions of calculations in the fraction of a second. Would the Second World War have ended if we had not dreamed of peace? It is our ability to dream that will ultimately save us.
 
 

I found Dorothy's diary entries to be refreshing, they should be read hand in hand with Wordsworth's poems which can be over sentimental at the best of times and downright boring at the worst. She alone had the power to see what was going on around her, it was Wordsworth who translated it to the language of poetry. Maybe if she had published her recollections under the guise of poetry she would have become as famous and well known as her brother. She speaks simply and yet eloquently, her words are a valuable resource for studying the England of Wordsworth's times. She was familiar with Coleridge and Blake and here again we have a unique insight into the lives of these warrior poets. I would like to read more of these diaries as well as Shelley's diaries, they would give me more of an insight into a way of life that has gone now.

Wordsworth’s poems shall be covered here under his sister’s writing because that is where it belongs. She was the scribe and he the translator.

His poetry however, is still invaluable, no matter that it was a postcolonial tool and I agree with that one. It is a romantic view of England and one that the English who had been thrown to the far corners of the globe would have welcomed with open arms. They needed to hear of his Tintern Abbey. It was a world about which they wanted to tell their children. Culturally speaking, Wordsworth was invaluable to the English Empire. They needed his poetry to soothe their disgust at an alien lifestyle. There were no daffodils in Australia or Siam and no green fields either. Wordsworth was their security blanket that insulated them from a world that at times frightened them. We have our own Wordsworth in the form of popular culture now. The Rambo and Arnie movies, the shoot 'em up, kill 'em all type of movie. The sloppy romance, they are all cliches but they are very necessary cliches. Without them we are floundering, in time we will evolve, new art forms will supplant the old ones and we will move on. But right now we need these stereotypes and art forms. Wordsworth's art is seen as quaint and old fashioned but will our grandchildren and great grandchildren see our art as quaint and old fashioned? In 500 years time, will our descendants reject our art as being ridiculous? Our art is all we have to tell them what it was like to live in the late 20^th century, let us do it faithfully.
 
 

Jane Austen's novels are breathtaking in their spectrum, she had a unique ability to see what was intrinsically good and bad about English sensibility and infuse the two into a novel. She mocked the Gothic genre in Northanger Abbey and exposed the cruel hypocrisy of the class system that still rules England today. Our heroine as she is constantly referred to is at the mercy of the General who will do with her what he will because she is only a tool to further the family name. The royal family can draw a real life analogy in the treatment of Diana. Here we have a family who needs to produce a generation that will carry on the family name. It cannot marry outside its narrowly defined borders, blue blood cannot mix in English society. They take a young woman distantly related to the prince, she has to be a virgin of course that is crucial to the family name. Her family had lands, although from what I understand that is immaterial in the end. Nevertheless, she had position even if only in name. Once she has produced the heir, a boy of course, she had served her purpose. She produced a backup for the family and then they saw that she was not to their liking. Like Catherine, she does not measure up, will not bow to the Queen, she has been brought up in the real world where those things are centuries out of date. She is thrust aside and when she commits the unthinkable and leaves the prince, she is stripped of her title and cast aside. The fact that she refused to lie down and die infuriated the Windsors. Diana has in life and in death, revealed to the world the abomination of the class system in England. Hopefully she has spelled the end of the Windsors, Catherine lived happily ever after according to Jane Austen. Diana died tragically to prove that bigotry, pride and envy are at the root of the British aristocracy. She stood for something, Catherine stood for something too, for an abiding if naïve faith that all would work out if only we had faith.

See! It wasn’t such a silly novel after all!
 
 

This book disturbed me for the same reason that Clarissa did. Here we have another picture of women oppressed. It is not only men who do this but their own kind, her aunt is a picture of the oppressed woman, like a bird in a cage she is caught in her own little world. I think in view of Elizabeth Browning's sickness as a child she could have inadvertently pointed the bone at herself when writing of her aunt. Hearing of her history and her illness one cannot wonder if she didn’t stay sick on purpose so as to write. Austen never married because to do so would have put her under the authority of a man and her light would have been extinguished. Shelley was more fortunate as Percy was more enlightened; her mother had to fight for her rights to be heard. The Brontes had to masquerade as men in order to become published, Dorothy had to stay in William's shadow. Women in those days had to resort to extreme measures in order to continue writing. I don’t hold it against her that she perhaps faked or prolonged her illness, who under her circumstances would have done less? These women serve as an example to us all, whether male or female. They are an example of courage in an ocean of doubt, of the indomitable spirit of man, of our sense of adventure and the dreaming of another place and time.

A delightful little piece that dances along quite merrily, written by Christina Rossetti. When I did some research on her for my seminar paper I was surprised at the amount of information that exists about her. The net was my first source of knowledge and from there I picked up that she was one of the Victorian writers who kicked out at the conventions of the day. I liked Virginia Woolf's portrait of her.

She seems to have been caught up in religious experience at an early age and embraced it. Her brother Dante Rossetti was one of the pre-Raphaelite's and it was he who influenced her and was responsible for having her first poem published by Macmillan. Goblin Market is reckoned to be her finest work although that of course would be a matter of opinion. Goblin Market seemed to be an exploration of womanhood, she sacrifices herself to save her sister's life, a kind of female messiah figure. She suffered as a child and was often confined to the house due to illness, whether angina or tuberculosis.

We read this essay while eating bowls of fruit, which made certain parts of it come alive and although i found some passages silly, others were quite moving. This peice marked the end of my journey into the literary canon but not the end of my fascination wtih literature. I may add to this journal later on, other books that aren't part of the canon, after all, who decides what's great literature and what's pulp fiction?

Well, tell me what you think?
 
 

Well this is the end of this here journal, and that’s shocking English but who cares? This is supposed to be a journal not some thesis on art or literature. I just had to write down my observations and record my thoughts and feelings. I must confess that I haven't had time to do that this year. I have gone over every text we studied and tried to pull something out of it, something I learned, something I contributed at the time. quotes that seemed to tie in with the text. There are literally millions of words that could be written about the classics. I have simply taken a few and slipped them in here and there. This is my record of a year spent analysing the great classics of Western Civilisation, I may add to the journal in years to come. There are so many out there I haven’t read, War and Peace, Lord of the Rings, Jane Austen's novels. Maybe when I find time to read them all I can record more accurately the impressions I have of these works. They are the foundation stone upon which we stand today. Without Jane Austen there would be no innovative fiction, without Coleridge, our modern day poets would be like blind rats stumbling in the dark.

I have enjoyed my trip into the past, sometimes I have yawned and at other times I was on fire, but always I was affected by the great masters of the literary world and what better way to close this off than with a quote or two?

Written by Alastair Rosie. ©
Thursday, November 06, 1997 8:10:52 PM
Prepared for Literature Analysis.
Teacher: Carolyne Lee
Teacher: Carolyne Lee.
 

Take me back to the contents please!