July 2007

Response to the Ages

A Selection of Reader Response Analysis

Letter to the Readers:

Reader Response is a formal analysis that includes a reader’s opinions, thoughts, and ideas regarding the written work of an author. Readers have the opportunity to explore different theories on how people respond to a wide variety of literary works. Throughout this journal, the analyses provided illustrate the literature studies of time periods from the 19th through the 20th century.

We created this journal for people that either enjoy the Reader Response theory, or those wanting to learn more about it. We as the editors set a margin for the authors found in this journal. We expect submissions to be an example of high quality writing, while exploring how Reader Response theory applies to authors as readers as well as to the audience. We wish to help clarify why Reader Response is so important to present generations of readers. Authors in this journal applied theory to literary works of their choice, and used creditable sources to support their ideas. The literary works discussed in this journal are broad in topic, but contain well applied Reader Response theories concerning works in various time periods. We hope that you enjoy this collection of works.

Sincerely your editorial board,

Jessica DanowskiApril KelleyWendy PorterMegan ReedSarah Stanger

2

Table of Contents

Letter to the Readers……………………………………………………..2

Persuasion Persuaded Me………………………………………………..4

Sermon of the Scarlet Letter……………………………….………..…...6

Unfathomable….…………………..………………………….………….9

A Modern View of an Un-Modern Novel……………………………….17

Living Vicariously Through a Young Girl………………………………21

Changing Expectations…………………………………………………..26

3

Persuasion Persuaded Me

1816A Book Review by Ashley Shaw

When reading a novel written by Jane Austen, one can expect complicated love interests, people marrying for social status, ridiculous parents, sisterhood, and many other elements. The last novel Austen fully completed, Persuasion, fulfills many of the expectations of Austen admirers and first time Austen readers. However, some aspects of the novel may not be what readers anticipate.

The heroine of Persuasion, Anne Elliot, is a sensible and witty character similar to many Austen protagonists, but Anne is different from most typical Austen heroines. When Anne was young, she was a “very pretty girl”(932), but her looks faded. Anne is not young like the other central characters in Austen novels. Anne is different because of her silent observation of her surroundings instead of her being an active participant. Most readers have an expectation that the protagonist of a story is the center of attention. Anne is not. Anne Elliot’s qualities of a heroine do not exactly fit to what many readers imagine. Even though Anne may not be what readers expect as a main character, Austen fans can take comfort in some expected elements. One of these

elements is the complicated love interests found in the novel. Eight years before the plot begins, a naval officer named Captain Frederick Wentworth proposed to Anne. Anne’s godmother and trusted friend, Lady Russell, persuaded Anne not to accept Captain Wentworth’s proposal because of his financial status. As the plot develops, Anne encounters Wentworth again through a friend connection. Anne appears excited to meet the captain, but this time he seems to be less interested in her and more interested in someone else. Anne assumes the captain is engaged to be married. Anne later discovers that Captain Wentworth is not betrothed. However, this time Captain Wentworth thinks Anne is engaged to another man named Sir William Elliot. Like most of Austen’s works, readers speculate if the characters get married to the right person. Austen’s novels typically end in marriages and nuptials throughout the plot.

Marrying for social status is another recognizable theme in Austen novels. A woman’s social status changed when she married depending on what her husband owned or was entitled to. Anne could not marry Captain Wentworth, although at the time “she could have

4

hardly given him up” (942) because of his lack of wealth. Anne’s father, Sir Walter Elliot, is a vain man who tries to have his daughters marry wealthy. Those who are familiar with Austen novels know that many characters try to find the wealthiest person to marry, especially female characters. This theme of marrying for social status is commonly found in Austen novels.

Readers can assume most of the characters want to marry for social status which leads to a high social rank. Austen uses a more scathing, satirical tone in this novel and comments on how her society tries to marry wealthy, instead of marrying for love. Captain Wentworth is a confidant man with “a great deal of intelligence” (941), willing to work hard and knowing that some day he will be well off. Anne’s father does not approve of him because he is poor, and Lady Russell saw his free spirit as an “aggravation of evil” (942). When Wentworth received his fortune, he received social status and the acceptance of others. Most infatuation interests of the heroines are people who are wealthy. Yet, Wentworth is a poor man at first, which those who are familiar with Austen’s works may be surprised at. Austen depicts her society’s view of a man with considerable wealth as a man of value. Austen seems to disagree. Wentworth is an example of how wealth means nothing. He is even more of a gentleman than Anne’s father, Sir Walter. Only when Wentworth has money does he gain respect from others and have a chance to marry someone. Considering the culture, Austen readers may be surprised with her satirical tone.

Austen uses satire for another concept which may be unanticipated to readers--an ideal marriage between a man and woman. Austen lived in a time where the men did public matters and provided for the family while the women worked in the home. Many people are familiar with this concept. Austen uses the “little weather-beaten” (940) Admiral and Mrs. Croft, as an example

of an ideal marriage. Both of these characters are equally yoked. Anne notes that they are both “so in unison” (959). In Austen’s time, the man was normally the more superior one. However, the Crofts are an equal couple in old age and an example of Austen’s satire on society. Readers may not expect to see such a perfect marriage. Persuasion fulfills reader’s expectations of a Austen novel by having them contain similar characteristics. Yet, Austen adds new elements to the novel to make it fresh and different by making the heroine

5

older, more sophisticated, and adding other subliminal opinions. This novel should appeal to new Austen admirers young and old. Persuasion, in one’s

opinion, may be one of Austen’s best works because this novel encloses some of her more mature ideas in a much shorter writing.

Sermon of The Scarlet Letter

1850A Book Review by Rebecca Criddle

The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne is a Puritan repentance log. Though it has some value in its morals and contains some qualifying literary elements, it is outdated for today’s reader. Nathanial Hawthorne writes of Hester Prynne, a woman living without her husband in a Puritan society in New England. She is young and passionate, and during her husband’s absence, whom she never loved anyway, she commits adultery. A baby is brought into the world through this sin, and she has to pay for her misdeeds by wearing a red “A” on her chest the rest of her life to signify she is an adulterer to the community.

As a reader, I thought the storyline was interesting--at least, it had some potential. However, a keen reader will be able to unravel and predict the outcome of the story in the first chapter. Hawthorne gives so much detail that the average reader will have the secret figured out of who her husband is, and who her partner in sin is within the first few pages. Today’s readers need not be spoon fed all the details. The more modern and popular writer Ernest Hemingway uses a writing style called the Iceberg Principle. Of this principle, Hemingway said "If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The

dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water" (Lorenze).

The Scarlet Letter would be a better dialogue on the implications of sin if the reader was given enough detail to provoke thought on the subject without knowing all the gritty details. The imagination is a powerful thing that writers can tap into. The power of a story, as Hemingway discovered, lies in what the reader imagines, not what the author says. Hemingway is such an acclaimed writer because he gives us only the tip of the iceberg. Hawthorn in comparison gives us nearly the whole thing. Although Hawthorne does not tell us the intricate details of the sin itself, he tells us way too much about Hester’s punishment after she gets caught for adultery. Nearly every chapter has at least a paragraph or two about how the scarlet letter affects Hester mentally. It gets old.

The Scarlet Letter is also outdated for readers today because besides its over-wordiness, it is like reading an obnoxiously strict version of the Bible. It is a 200 page plus sermon on the effects of sin. For example, in describing the flowers by the prison door Hawthorne writes, “It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom...or relieve the darkening close

6

of a tale of human frailty and sorrow” (47). When Hester tries to go to church, she finds that she is often the center of a discussion on why one should not commit sins. The poor woman is nothing but an example for the rest of the Puritan society in which she lives. Repentance is never finished because of her life long shunning, and the obligation to wear the “A” for the rest of her life. She never is given the chance to become anything but the adulterer she is labeled as. The book feels like a long sermon, in which the

readers are forced into pointing a flawless Puritan finger at our main character and shake our heads in disgust at her. The idea that sin is not allowed because once a sinner always a sinner is a theme which most readers will not agree with. Though it is important for people today to learn morals from books, they do not want an oration on it.

The few good things Hawthorne has to offer in The Scarlet Letter are

glimpses into the psyche of the preacher, and an unclear idea of whose fault the fornication is. Because the preacher does not confess his part in the creating of the bastard child, he is plagued with guilt for many years. He carves an “A” on his chest, and his tortured mind makes him ill. Hester’s husband, when he finds out that the preacher is the father of the child, does all he can to increase the preacher’s guilt. It is interesting that Hester, who gets her sins forcefully aired out for the entire world to see, lives on. And though she is an outcast, she makes it fine in the world. The preacher, who does not confess openly his sins, has quite a different ending. This was one delicious thing for the reader to keep turning pages.

Another redeeming quality of The Scarlet Letter is the speedy introduction to Hester’s husband. Hester was forced to marry him though she felt no love for him. He was also considerably older than Hester. He left her alone in the wild frontier of America to pursue his education and love of learning. Meanwhile, she was young, passionate, and lonely. It becomes difficult when married couples spend a lot of time away from each other. Hester’s husband left her alone so long, she did not know if he was still alive. He claims that the fault is his own for leaving her to her own passions. The ambiguity of who is most at fault gives the reader a reason to keep wading through description after description of the scarlet letter searing itself into the soul of its wearer. The reader wants to know who really pays most dearly for the act of sin in the end, and who is the most at fault.

Although The Scarlet Letter teaches its readers good morals, and has some interesting literary elements that

7

keep us turning the pages, it is out of touch with today’s reader. The over-sermonization, too many descriptions of the scarlet letter, and being spoon fed the plot makes the reader feel debased and

uninterested. “The Scarlet Letter” would have a bigger impact on the imagination and hearts of readers today if Hawthorne believed his readers capable of creating the details for themselves.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Scarlet Letter”. Dodd, Mead & Company Inc. 1979, U.S.A.Lorenze, Jenny. “Ernest Hemingway Quotes: Quotes by the inventor of a new way

of writing short stories” 7 July, 2007. <http://thinkexist.com/ernest_hemingway_quotes>.

Unfathomable

1894An In-depth Analysis by Mathew Watkins

Cords of saltwater cut the veteran sailor’s lips. He plants a hand on the forward mast, steadying himself against the pitch of the roiling sea. Dark water pounds the heavy wood of the ship and threatens to fling the bedeviled seaman into its profound depths. The sailor looks frantically over the churning mountains foam and brine, finally looking up in despair. A grey sky soaks up his frantic prayer; his fate is in the hands of the deep.

This sailor has endured the raw elemental power of the sea, one of the most pervasive human symbols. The sea embodies raw emotion: hate and love, hope and despair; all are found in it. The sea is a symbol of everything humans hold dear, and everything that we most fear. With no semblance of rationality

the sea acts on its own whims, owing allegiance to no mortal. It is uncontrollable and unknowable until we have occasion to greet it. Only then can we comprehend its depths. Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” contests the deep-rooted fears that his readers harbor for the sea, and confronts the three major symbols of death, element, and the unknown by illuminating the knowable within the unfathomable.

“The Open Boat” is a story of four shipwrecked men struggling for survival in a ten-foot dinghy, with six-inch sides to hold out the sea. These four men include a captain, a cook, an oilier, and a correspondent. Crane’s vivid descriptions help readers to put themselves in the boat with these men as they are face to face with a universal

8

symbol of unbridled natural fury. Few readers have ever had such an experience, but they will have heard stories and seen pictures. Humanity has built three major universal symbols into our cultural brain. However, Crane dispels these symbols and replaces them with his own literary symbols.

Symbols Attributed to the Sea

Humanity is obsessed with the sea and has produced a wealth of sea portrayals, building the sea as a universal symbol for humankind. Among the older works are tales from The Holy Bible. The first story of relevance is that of Noah. Noah’s people were corrupted, and God sent forth “a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh,” (Gen. 6.17) except for Noah, his family, and two of every animal. Being one of the more popular stories of The Bible, it has had a profound influence on readers’ view of the sea. The Bible has been distributed in about six billion copies (Ash 112). The Bible’s standing as a religious text has led many readers to view its stories as absolute truth. Noah’s story has been part of the core text of various dominant world religions since before 1000 B.C. Accordingly, any symbol portrayed in The Bible, specified or supposed, forms a prominent view for most of humanity. This ubiquitous work has perpetuated a symbol of the sea as a bringer of death.

The same symbol can be found in nearly every culture. In Greek mythology, the river Styx is used instead of the sea. Charon, the caretaker of the dead, would haul souls across the Styx to Acheron (supposedly being derived from

aqua, meaning water). This river-myth propagated many other sea myths about death. The Greeks viewed the sea as a giant river. As Fletcher S. Bassett described it, “From being a river around the world, Oceanus became a sea,” and the river myths of death spawned views

of the sea as the gateway to the land of the dead. In the odyssey, Ulysses sails across the western sea to Hades, the land of the dead. (Bassett 323)

Cultural SignificancesOther cultures maintain

this same symbol. Death ships, boats used for burials, are common among many cultures. Scyld, the grandfather of Beowulf, was sent out in a death ship, as was King Arthur. Bassett shows evidence of the prevalence of these death ships in that “such burial became so common that an early law prescribed the number of slaves to embark in the boat with the chieftain’s body” (Bassett 325). Several Native American tribes practiced canoe burial. In Siam, boat burial is still practiced. Among the Vikings, who conquered the sea as much as any race ever has, boat burial was a great honor as a means to reach Valhalla, the paradise of heroes.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a contemporary of Crane’s, also perpetuated this symbol:

Upon a sea more vast and dark The spirits of the dead embark, All voyaging to unknown coasts.

We wave our farewells from the shore,

And they depart, and come no more,Or come as phantoms and as ghosts. (249)

Crane’s readers would have been familiar with Longfellow’s dramatic poem, and so the sea as a symbol of

9

death would have still been familiar with them. This symbol has lasted through to our day, and most readers will bring this horizon of expectation to a reading of “The Open Boat.”

The text opens by describing the sea, drawing forth its powerful emotion. Crane’s four characters are in a small boat facing against the waves of the sea, and they are at it alone. The “six inches of gunwale,” or the wall of the boat from the floor to its top, are all that “[separate the men] from the ocean” (344). The men, as well as the readers, are forced to confront this symbol. In fact, they are placed eye to eye with it; it fills their view. Its immensity gives the reader an impression that the conflict of the story will be the four men’s fight for survival against the raging sea. The main antagonist is the universal symbol of death presented by the sea.

Crane reveals the tension by resolving this conflict at the end of part I. The boat mates have their first conversation, revealing their own view of the sea as a symbol of death. The topic of the conversation is the difference over life saving stations and houses of refuge. After this brief but important bit of dialogue, the reader gains a sense of struggle against death. The horizons of expectation are for an impending climax against death, resolved by the rescue of some number of the crew. Understanding Death

A challenge of these expectations comes when Crane mentions the physical state of the men in the boat. He points out that “if men could only train for [shipwrecks] and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there would be less drowning at sea” (348). Then he mentions their

physical fatigue, hunger, and lack of sleep. At this point, we see the first challenge of the symbol of death, as Crane helps us feel the men’s doubt of possible survival. The reader is forced to view the story, no longer as a struggle against death, but a struggle of understanding death. Crane foreshadows the death of the oiler by pointing out his double shift the previous day, leading us to suspect that he will die. This forces us to amend our expectations, to view the story as meaning much more than rescue from death.

The characters seem to feel the same apprehension, and struggle to understand death. The boat cannot be brought over the surf, or the large waves close to the shore, without capsizing. Crane introduces the books most important quote, an internal dialogue revealing much of the tension between the stories universal symbols, and Crane’s challenge of them. For the sake of space, this quote will not be repeated here, but it is found in part IV of “The Open Boat” beginning with the phrase “If I am going to be drowned” and ending with “Not after all this work” (349). It is a bit of internal dialogue as the men struggle to understand death and the sea. The boat-men’s contemplations on the sea force the readers to rethink the universal symbols they have felt. This important quote is repeated twice more in the story, but is shortened each time as the men understand the sea and its relationship with death more profoundly. At this point, the men and the readers have stared death in the face.

With the eventual capsizing of the boat foreboding their death, the men begin to take action in understanding death. They exchange addresses, and begin the struggle against the sea again. The oiler takes the boat out of the surf,

10

back into the open sea, where they can take more time in their struggle to understand death. This is important, allowing time, before the conflict’s resolution, for the reader’s view to be further developed.

Following the third repetition of the quote on page 349, Crane confronts this symbol of the sea. The correspondent, after having rowed for hours, sees a shark. At the time, he is the only man among the four that is awake, and he confronts his own feelings about death as he rides on the waves. In the dark of the night, the correspondent begins to face the potentiality of his own death. He realizes that maybe it is “the intention of the seven mad gods [of the sea] to drown him,” Crane illustrates his denial of this fact, by stating that if there had been a physical representation of nature, then a man would “throw bricks” at it. However, in the absence of a tangible representation (not to mention the bricks) the correspondent is forced to accept the possibility of death. After contemplating this, a verse of song enters his head “to chime the notes of his emotion.” This verse refers to a soldier dying in Algiers and the correspondent’s subsequent reaction is enlightening:

In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important… It was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point. Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile

drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an actuality--stern, mournful, and fine. Though Crane still uses the sea as a symbol of, seemingly, imminent death, he makes it seem less mysterious and frightening. Instead of being unfathomable, it becomes knowable.

Alongside the symbol of death, and related to it, is the symbol of natural power confined in the sea. Among humanity’s many symbols, few contain the raw elemental power of the sea. The most catastrophic events in the world have been the actions of the sea. We are led to curse, with the men in Crane’s boat, “the seven mad gods who rule the sea” (349). Hurricanes, coming in from the sea, have killed more than any other type of natural disaster. Few sights evoke more fear than a 100 foot tsunami and the destruction it leaves in its wake. Floods have carried away entire villages. Reader’s can only imagine the fear of passing through a storm in the midst of the sea.

The Bible again gives us an interesting perspective on the power of the sea. In the New Testament, Christ has been teaching his disciples near the Sea of Galilee. They begin a journey across

the sea and are taken captive by a storm. The storms on the Sea of Galilee are notorious for their ferocity. Jesus’ disciples were afraid and woke their master from the cargo hold. Christ

then stopped the sea-storm with a few words. The disciples remarked, “What manner of man is this, that the wind and the seas obey him.” The gospel writer chooses mastery over the sea to illustrate God’s power. Like the symbol of death, this symbol of the sea’s elemental power

11

is spread pervasively by The Bible. Readers have come to associate a mastery over the elemental force of the sea with absolute power.

This association is not without merits. Countries have spent countless amounts of money and endless hours to master the sea. Among the most influential books in history is Alfred T. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. In his book, Mahan shows that England gained its power and influence by its mastery over the sea. This book was the impetus for the construction of the Panama Canal and the buildup of American sea power. One of the important sections of the book indicates that the American Civil War was won by the north because they had sea power (Downs 100). Crane’s readers had seen the Civil War, and they knew what influence sea power had on its outcome. They knew the importance of harnessing the frontier of the sea. Power and the sea become inherently associated in the human mind, especially in that of Americans, and the ability to harness the elemental power of the sea leads to true power.

Even today, the ability to master the sea is a sign of power. Tsunamis have ravaged the world in the past years. As recently as 2004, one of the most devastating tsunamis in history hit the coasts of the Indian Ocean, resulting in a massive loss of life and property. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina ravaged the United States. No other natural disaster matches the monetary loss of Katrina. Thousands of lives were lost. Attempts have been made to harness the sea’s power, to no avail. Modern readers have the terrible ravenous might of the sea etched into their minds.

The men in Crane’s boat enter a titanic struggle against the sea’s power.

Their boat runs against each wave which Crane describes as being “most wrongfully abrupt and tall (344).” The oiler and the correspondent face off against the sea with their “thin little oar[s]” (344) in a struggle to defeat the elemental power of the sea. The sea’s power comes to a reader’s mind, concretized with help from the many cultural, historical, and contemporary evidences of sea’s elemental force. We, like the boat-men, are forced to struggle against the sea.

The Symbol PowerThroughout the story, one thing

remains constant; rowing. As they row, they try to master the element. The text reveals this symbol of the sea’s power. In part I, Crane uses imagery to help concretize the power of the sea from the boat-men’s point of view. He notes, “A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave, you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats” (344). In this line, he reveals the awesome and relentless power of the sea. Notice the words important, showing the power of the sea, and nervously anxious. As a literary symbol, Crane personifies the sea, making it seem eager to sink the men. Later he describes the waves as an “effort of grim water” to sink their boat.

The men continue to row, and their effort is shown to be tremendous. Crane describes the efforts of the men against the waves as “diabolical punishment….a horror to the muscles and a crime against the back” (348). They ride the waves like “a bucking broncho” (344). All in all, it is a great struggle against the sea, but one which

12

they know they cannot win. Eventually, the sea is going to overcome their strength, as is shown in the progression of the story. Now though, the reader sees that the conflict is not to overcome the power of the sea, nor to harness it; it is to understand it.

In the important and repeated quote on page 349, to which I referred earlier, the psychological struggle to understand the concept of the sea is illustrated. The reader is engaged in the thoughts of the men at sea as they proclaim “why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? …. she cannot mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work.” Crane illustrates the symbol of the sea’s elemental power, embodied by the “seven mad gods,” and also shows mankind’s struggle to harness the power of the sea; the belief that we can conquer it.

In part VII, towards the end of the story, Crane confronts the symbol of the incomprehensible power of the sea. The readers, with the correspondent, come to a realization that “nature does not regard him as important” (354). This spurs a contemplation of the sea and its power, in which the correspondent recites the poem of the soldier in Algiers. After some time to think, he asks the oiler to take over the rowing, and curls up in the bottom of the boat in the “cold, comfortable seawater.” The water has gone from stinging to comfortable, from dreadful and unfathomable to knowable. The water continues to wet them, but “this had no power to break their repose.” They have learned to be comfortable in the sea, because their close proximity to it has forced them to understand it.

Ironically, their understanding of the sea does not lead to a mastery over its elemental power. As they hit the surf, the boat is still capsized, and they are forced to swim to shore. One of the crew, presumably the oiler, dies in the surf. Crane’s symbol illustrates that mankind can come to an understanding of the sea, but will never be able to control it. The conflict is resolved, not in conquering the sea, but in understanding it.

The UnknownThe final and most majestic of

the sea’s symbols is its frontier of the unknown. Edward L. Beach stated, “[the sea] is mysterious, unfathomable, limitless in all directions….The land has always been familiar. The sea is fierce and foreign” (Beach xvii). It is a frontier of exploration and the unknown. Basset, quoting Gibbons, says “There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity” (Basset 7). By just standing on the shore and looking out on the sheer vastness of the sea, one can sense this majesty. The sea has no end; it simply continues on into the horizon. Its bounds are only the limits of our imagination.

Because of the sea’s mystery, myths and legends have grown rampant. A “fishy” tale is still regarded as unlikely. Basset, quoting Cooper, says “The confusion between things which are explicable and things which are not, gradually brings the mind of the mariner to a state in which any exciting or unnatural sentiment is welcome” (Basset 8). Anciently, the sea was imagined to be unnavigable, impossible to see the ends of, limitless beyond the reach of

13

human prowess. Sea-dragons, giants, merfolk, sirens, and a multitude of other legendary creatures, have all been related as occupants of the sea. It is an otherworldly place, some kind of “Inner Space,” and it has become a universal symbol for the unknown, beyond the reach of understanding.

The mystery of the sea was so great in ancient times that the entire American continents lay unfound at the end of the sea for thousands of years. The story of Atlantis has been popularized, a continent that has sunk below the sea. Essentially, we are stuck on land and the sea is something we cannot fully comprehend. Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, deals with the myths and legends of the sea, and was even contemporary to “The Open Boat.” Crane’s readers at the time would have felt the mystery of the sea as they began the story.

Modernly, the sea has become more understood. We have studied its depths. There are no leviathans lurking in the deep. We know the islands that lay scattered throughout the sea. The earth is two-thirds covered in water, a modern scientific finding. Submarines have journeyed into the depths of the sea. But stories of the seas mysteries continue to find strength, at least in the imaginations of storytellers. The recent box-office success of The Pirates of the Caribbean highlights the symbol of the unknown embodied in the sea. Though we know much more, we are still intrigued in the universal symbol of the unknown that has been perpetuated through history.

From the BeginningFrom the start, “The Open Boat”

challenges the sea’s universal symbol of the unknown. The first sentence reads,

“None of them knew the color of the sky,” followed by the statement “all of the men knew the colors of the sea” (343). The sea and its waves are so grand they shut out the sky. The reader can easily concretize the color of the sea, feeling like they are on an open boat that is smaller than a bathtub, as Crane puts it. “Six inches of gunwale” separate them from the ocean.

It was only with subsequent readings that I saw how the boat’s small size leads to a familiarity with the sea. Crane’s description forces a close proximity with the water and its symbols; therefore, the reader can concretize an understanding of the sea. The leap over the “six inches of gunwale” is not difficult for the reader’s brain. With an understanding of the sea comes an understanding of what it symbolizes.

Various clues help the reader to understand the sea and its symbols. We read later that “In a ten-foot dinghy one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience, which is never at sea in a dinghy” (344). Most readers will not have been in Crane’s experience. It is interesting that Crane is describing a personal experience after the shipwreck of the Commodore. Because this was his real experience, he can bring these ideas and feeling to light in the reader’s mind.

A major clue to the resolution of this symbol is the captain of the boat. The captain has no fear, though beleaguered by tide and storm. Throughout the story, he speaks with complete confidence, looking at the situation and finding a solution. He uses his coat as a sail, applying his understanding of the sea to make headway against the waves. Constancy is

14

his character and he leads the men out of the sea; with a “steady voice” he leads the company home. He represents a man who understands the sea, and so he does not fear.

Throughout the story, the boat encounters elements of the sea, which allow the men to make more sense of their situation. The men begin to use the seaweed as a landmark of their progress. As they pass clumps of seaweed, they know they are moving forward. Later, the correspondent is rowing while the rest sleep. A shark begins following the boat, but because the correspondent has come to know the sea, it “did not affect [him] with the same horror that it would if he had been a picknicker” (354). How could it, when he understood the sea?

“The Open Boat” presents the sea, simply as it is. It does not conjure wild legends or tales. The reader can think of the sea as it is, not as the author wishes it to be. The reality of it is presented in stark contrast to the imaginings which culture has entrenched in a reader’s mind. Our expectations for some adventure against some unknown force on the high seas are polished with an understanding of the sea itself. It is full of emotion, but it is not a fantastical realm of make believe. We are lead to wonder, as the correspondent, “if none ever ascended the tall wind-tower, and if

then they never looked seaward” (359). The fear of the unknown disappears like a fog in the sunlight; the unfathomable is illumined by experiencing the sea as it truly is.

“None of them knew the color of the sky (343) ,” opens Crane’s moving drama, “The Open Boat.” Like the men in the boat, readers are forced to narrow their vision, focusing on the complexity and unfathomability of the sea. In the end, though the readers do not know the color of the sky, they do know, as the men in the boat, “the colors of the sea.” Crane has taken this universal symbol of death, of wild elemental power, and of the unknown, and he has exposed its colors, making his own literary symbol. A reader can concretize the essence of the sea; or in other words, make knowable the unfathomable. Crane eloquently presents this theme in the final line of his story, highlighting the experience of coming to know the sea. “The wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on the shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters” (359). Like these four men, after contending against death, element, and fear of the unknown, we come out victors; not by having conquered the sea, but by coming to know it, and we too “could then be [its] interpreters.”

Works Cited

Ash, Russell. Top Ten of Everything. 1997. New York: DK ADULT, 1996. 112-113.Bassett, Fletcher S. Legends and Superstitions of the Sea and of Sailors. Detroit: Singing

Tree Press, 1971. Beach, Edward L. “A Romantic Natural.” Sea Fiction Guide. Ed. Myron J. Smith, Jr. and

Robert C. Weller Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1976. Crane, Stephen. “The Open Boat.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison

Booth. Et al. New York. 2006. 343-350.Downs, Robert B. Books That Changed the World. Chicago: American Library

15

Association, 1956The Holy Bible, King James Version. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints, 1979.Longfellow, Henry W. The Golden Legend. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851.

A Modern View of an Un-Modern Novel

1967An Analysis by Angelina Larson

Modern readers have a certain idea of what Victorian times were like. Some of the views are that the people who lived during that time period were very proper, a bit stuffy, and concerned with etiquette, money, social standing, and making a good marriage. To a certain point this is true and if you asked a Victorian, they would probably agree whole-heartedly. But Victorians also liked to ignore the bad things that people did such as have affairs, drink to excess, or have children out of wedlock; it was improper to talk or think about those kinds of things. When Thomas Hardy wrote Far From the Madding Crowd it was not heavily edited, but it still had some things taken out for “impropriety”. Twenty-first century readers examining Far From the Madding Crowd would not only be more tolerant of the improprieties that Hardy writes about (he reinserted them into later revisions so we still have them), but would also be more sympathetic to the characters. Readers of Far From the Madding Crowd naturally focus on the romantic

entanglements between Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors: Shepherd Oak, Farmer Boldwood, and Sergeant Troy. Examining these relationships provides an interesting contrast between how modern readers view the world, and how Victorian or contemporary readers viewed the world.

Character AffairsBathsheba is a beautiful woman.

It is understandable then, that of her suitors, at least one of them is drawn to her by lust. In describing her, Hardy

says:

There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive

because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true.... let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. (16, 17)

Of the three suitors, Sergeant Troy was the one who lusted after Bathsheba. He would have married Fanny Robin, the

16

love of his life, instead of Bathsheba if he hadn’t met her (or so he claims). In a fit of anger, the sergeant said to Bathsheba, “If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have married [Fanny Robin]. I never had another thought till you came in my way. Would to God that I had; but it is all too late” (321).The sergeant let lust get in the way of love. Because he was in love with another woman when he married Bathsheba, he was having an emotional affair. The sergeant admits this when he says to Bathsheba, “A ceremony before a priest doesn’t make a marriage. I am not morally yours” (322). It wasn’t merely that Sergeant Troy was still in love with Fanny Robin; he also kept a lock of her hair in his watch and accidentally revealed it to Bathsheba. She asks him whose hair it is and he says, “It is the hair of a young woman I was going to marry before I knew you. ...There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made—ties you know nothing of” (291, 292-293). The sergeant plans to make reparations by providing for Fanny, but she dies in childbirth before he can do so. (Whose child it is, is never revealed). Even in death, Sergeant Troy still loves Fanny above Bathsheba and he is still able to make these reparations by putting flowers on her grave and erecting a tombstone.

Responses to AffairsEven though Sergeant Troy

shouldn’t have married Bathsheba because he didn’t love her, modern readers would be more tolerant of the situation and not be as scandalized as Victorian readers. Modern readers understand that sometimes these sorts of things happen, even to good people, so

they do not judge as harshly. Additionally, affairs and the reasons for them are more openly discussed these days, and this makes modern readers more aware that it’s not a matter of good and bad; it’s just that relationships are difficult.

Bathsheba’s reason for marrying the sergeant may also be more acceptable or understandable to modern readers. In explaining why she married the sergeant Bathsheba said, “‘...he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his....And I was grieved and troubled—’ She cleared her voice, and waited a moment as if to gather breath. ‘And then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!’” (271).

It’s not that Victorian readers didn’t understand emotions like jealousy or lust; there were good reasons and bad reasons to get married and Bathsheba used a bad reason. A woman during Victorian times was supposed to marry a man because he was respectable, could provide for her, and was a good match socially. In modern times, criteria are vastly different and depend more on what a person values. Some people still do marry for economic reasons, but more and more people value love or compatibility as a good reason for marriage. There are a lot of different reasons to get married and again, because modern readers discuss marriage and reasons for marriage more openly, they don’t judge as harshly when someone marries for a strange reason. Again, modern readers know that marriage is hard and finding the right, or compatible person, to marry is just as difficult.

17

Character Madness and Response Some would agree that love is

maddening—and Farmer Boldwood’s love for Bathsheba drove him to madness. Or did it? A modern reader of Far From the Madding Crowd would diagnose Boldwood as suffering from depression, not madness. Depression is easier to recognize for modern readers because there is more information on it available, and people are more aware of it. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “In any given 1-year period, 9.5 percent of the population, or about 20.9 million American adults suffer from a depressive illness.” Because it is so widespread, people know about it. Symptoms of depression include constant feelings of sadness, loss of interest in normal activities, loss of energy, restlessness, sluggishness, decreased ability to make decisions or concentrate, hopelessness, or thoughts of suicide or death. (GlaxoSmithKline) Boldwood exhibits several of these symptoms. Hardy says of Boldwood, “[he] was stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength which was his customary gait.... His manner was stunned and sluggish now” (215). This isn’t the only sign of change in Boldwood. He also:

Lived secluded and inactive. Much of his wheat and all of his barley of that season had been spoilt by the rain. It sprouted, grew into intricate mats, and was ultimately thrown to the pigs in armfuls. The strange neglect which had produced this ruin and waste became the subject of whispered talk among all the people round. (354)

These outward signs show how Boldwood was feeling on the inside. He was miserable and he says so. He tells Shepherd Oak, “I am weak and foolish and I don’t know what, and I can’t fend

off my miserable grief! ...I feel it is better to die than to live” (276). Boldwood does eventually try to kill himself (404-405), but he is stopped by one of his servants.

Contemporary readers of Far From the Madding Crowd would agree with the characters in the book that Farmer Boldwood was mad — it runs in his family. Jan Coggan, one of many colorful minor characters in the book, said: “I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don’t know the rights o’t,” (253). Modern readers also know that depression often runs in families for generations (GlaxoSmithKline). However, at least Boldwood’s friends were able to use the insanity plea in his defense. This saved him from execution, but not incarceration.

Response to True LoveIn modern society, it has become

increasingly normal to marry for love. Of Bathsheba’s three suitors, only Shepherd Oak “truly” loved her. He knew and fell in love with her before she inherited her uncle’s farm and became rich. He was steadfast and loyal to her even after she refused his proposal of marriage. Shepherd Oak stood by her and gave her his honest advice when she didn’t know what to do about Boldwood and Sergeant Troy, her suitors. Most will agree that true love is loving someone despite their faults, and that his how Shepherd Oak feels about Bathsheba. He admits, “But she has her faults” (6) and he names one—vanity. He is her defender. When Oak hears some of the other workmen talking about Bathsheba, he says:

“That’s my fist.... the first man in the parish that I hear prophesying bad of our mistress, why” (here the first was raised and let fall, as Thor

18

might have done with his hammer in assaying it)—“he’ll smell and taste that—or I’m a Dutchman.” (115)

Bathsheba eventually married Shepherd Oak. Victorian readers would not have agreed with her decision. She should have married Farmer Boldwood when she had the opportunity because he was a respectable man, he could provide for her, and it was an equal match socially. Modern readers are more likely to have been rooting for Shepherd Oak all along because he was in love with her. Even though modern society has grown more cynical, it doesn’t mean that we don’t value true love. There are

thousands of movies tailored to an audience which is searching for true love; they just think it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

Modern readers looking at Far From the Madding Crowd will view it with a kind of grown-up lens. With what we know about depression, and because we have learned to value true love at the expense of our hearts, we realize relationships are difficult and there is much cause for suffering when there is infidelity and divorce to deal with on top of everything else.

Works Cited

Drabble, Margaret. Introduction: Far From the Madding Crowd. New York, New York: Random House, Inc., 2001.

GlaxoSmithKline. www.depression.com. 1997-2007. 18 June 2007.Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. New York, New York: Random House,

Inc., 2001.National Institute of Mental Health. www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/depression.cfm. 2000.

18 June, 2007

Living Vicariously through a Young Girl

1968An In-depth Analysis by Steven Hopkins

One of the pleasures derived from reading a text is living the story along with the characters. Robert Hellenga,

in his essay “What Is a Literary Experience Like?” describes reading a text as “seeing through other eyes” (108). He describes the reading experience as an analogy of

19

consciousness itself. In this sense, Hellenga argues that the text “challenges the reader to transcend the limits of his or her identity” (106). Alice Munro helps readers to participate with the Girl narrator in her short story “Boys and Girls.” She helps us as readers to see what the Girl sees, and how she sees it. As we read the story, we become as a little girl who is finding out what being a girl really means. Munro draws us into her story by letting us experience the feelings and experiences of the girl, and connecting us to her humanity. When Munro shows us the weaknesses of the narrator, her relationship with her parents, and how she struggles to become like her father, we empathize with her. We also enter her world through Munro’s vivid descriptions of the setting.

The Narrator’s Honesty Early in the story when we meet

the Girl, Munro connects with the reader quickly by sharing her weaknesses. As she lies in bed, she thinks to herself “I loved the sound of my own voice, frail and supplicating” (Norton 424). The narrator acknowledges a weakness in herself: her frail voice. Although later in the scene she imagines herself as a conquering hero, and as a girl who can scare her brother by telling him about bats and skeletons without being afraid, she still confesses a little weakness in herself. She listens to herself singing “Danny Boy,” and enjoys its weakness and concedes its lack of strength. We as readers connect better to a main character with faults and weaknesses like ourselves. If the girl described her own voice as beautiful, unwavering, or strong, we would not be swayed in her favor, but would more likely find her arrogant and conceited. But since she

admits these faults, readers grow closer to her because we empathize with her imperfections.

Later in the same scene, she describes her dreams and lets us in on more of her shortcomings. “There was always riding and shooting in these stories, though I had only been on a horse twice . . . I really was learning to shoot, but I could not hit anything yet, not even tin cans on fence posts” (424). Although she acknowledges her faults and still shows hope for the future, she whole-heartedly and honestly sees herself for what she really is: a small girl who doesn’t shoot guns or ride horses. She has not disillusioned herself into thinking she has become something she is not. She knows that they are fantasies, because she has tried to ride a horse but failed half of the time, and she had tried to shoot a gun but could not hit an intended target. Her honesty with the reader draws us closer to her with empathy and sympathy. The readers connect to the narrator in a more empathetic way as she acknowledges her weakness.

Struggle to Become Like her FatherWe can also feel for her in her

desire to become something great and feel her struggle to be better than what she is; particularly in her attempts to be like her father. Her father is her hero, and she tries to emulate him, but instead discovers more of her faults. “I had the real watering can, my father’s, though I could only carry it three quarter’s full” (425). Here we find out who she really aspires to be like and who she fails to be exactly like. Her hero figure who she compares herself to is her father. Her own accomplishments are judged by her father’s accomplishments. Her father can carry the watering pail all the way full,

20

be she can only carry it three quarter’s full. That probably means in her mind that she is three quarter’s the way to being just like her father. The universality of the Girl’s desire to become something better than what she is while struggling to accept reality brings readers closer to her because they can empathize. All readers can connect to the girl as they reach for their desires but fall short.

Comparing oneself to another is a universal theme Munro uses to draw the reader in. The Girl compares herself to her brother, who has to carry the water in a green gardening pail yet still knocks it against his legs and slops water on his shoes. Despite her lack in measuring up to her father’s image, she is closer to being like her father than her brother. Every person has someone or something they compare themselves to in order to know how good they are. For the Girl, it is her father and her brother; for me, it is a church leader from when I was a teenager. Readers can identify with the sense of struggle the Girl feels to meet that standard. For the Girl, any victory, even if it’s as small as carrying the same water bucket as her father, becomes another step closer to being her best self. The comparison against others is another experience we share with the Girl.

Comparison of Mother and FatherHer views of her father and

mother let us into her mind and draw us into the story. In one scene, she is working outside and sees her mother and father talking, and we get an insight into the Girl’s ideas of her parents. The girl sees her mother talking to the Girl’s Father. “It was an odd thing to see my mother down at the barn,” and “She looked out of place, with her bare lumpy

legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still damp across the stomach from the supper dishes” (425). The Girl sees the mother as a very different kind of person in this scene. Her parents stand in front of each other in a kind of opposite mirror: the father’s skin scarred, sunburned and leathery from hard work and the mother’s skin soft, pale and supple from working inside the house. Their roles are clearly defined in this simple image: The father works hard outside, and the mother works hard inside.

The Girl also describes her father in this scene. “My father had just come from the meat house; he had his stiff bloody apron on and a pail of cut-up meat in his hand” (425). The father is linked with death and blood throughout the story and is the taker of life. In this image of the parents talking to each other, the father is covered with blood and the mother with water, which has been used to cleanse and purify for food, which brings life.

There is no question what the father’s or mother’s purpose is in the girl’s mind. She sees the role of mother as boring and weak. The Girl says, “It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father’s service, was ritualistically important” (426). The Girl makes it clear whom she wants to serve. She has no desire to work in the house because she sees it as boring and restrictive. She does want to work outside because it is important.

This scene helps Munro bring the readers into the story because all readers at one point discover that their gender is an encumbering quality. Little girls and little boys are told to act according to their genders, instead of doing whatever

21

they feel like. Our parents, just like the Girl’s, are our examples of how to fulfill gender roles. If we don’t like the examples our parents give us, we will be in conflict with them, as the girl is. I remember watching my father work on cars growing up and being ashamed that I didn’t know what he was doing. In fact, I still feel ashamed that I can’t fix a car. This was a gender role example my father set for me. I deeply empathize with the Girl as she struggles to find out who she is, and what she can and can’t do as she fulfills her gender roles. Other readers can feel the same way and we can become part of the story as we do.

Relationship with FatherWe also feel closer to the girl as

we explore her relationship to her father. “My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing” (425). Munro tries here to relate to the reader by describing the Girl’s relationship with her father. The father establishes his role with work. He is calloused and straightforward and does not take time to talk to the Girl. He is not interested in relationships or gender roles as we would expect a female to be. He just wants the job to get done. His own relationship with his daughter is very limited. Yet, the Girl perseveres to strengthen her relationship with her father. “Nevertheless,” says she, “I worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride” (425). The Girl tries her hardest to impress her father, her parent that shows her the least amount of affection. She is devoted to him. Many readers worked hard, like the Girl, to earn the love and trust of a parent. Munro plays on this unrequited devotion. We empathize with the Girl because she is trying to please her father,

who barely notices her. Many readers, including myself, can relate to a relationship that was straightforward, where there was not much affection shown. Readers can relate to the Girl because any type of parent-child relationship has its difficulties; some readers may even have a parent that talks to them too much. But we feel closer to the Girl and her story because everyone wants a good relationship with their parents, and we often can’t have the relationship we would like because of the natural difficulties that come about in the relationship. The Girl’s attempts to please her distant father and reconcile her differences with her mother help bring the story to life because readers can relate to the same struggles.

Munro also draws the reader in with the use of concrete details to describe the scenes. She creates an alternate reality that can be easily seen in the mind of the reader. Nan Johnson in her essay “Reader-Response and the Pathos Principle,” describes how a writer can appeal to the emotions of the reader with a quote from Hugh Blair. “The foundation, therefore . . . is, to paint the object of the passion which is to raise, in the most natural and striking manner; to describe it with such circumstances as are likely to awaken in the minds of the readers” (153). Also, she quotes The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation by Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca that “one of the preoccupations of the speaker is to make present, by verbal magic alone, what is actually absent, but what he considers important to his argument, or . . . to enhance the value of some of the elements of which one has actually been conscious” (159). In other words, it is one of the author’s jobs, if they wish to evoke certain emotions in their readers,

22

to describe in magnificent detail all of the objects of significance. Munro does this in describing the setting.

The CellarOne of the concrete details used

to describe the house are little calendars from which the Girl learns what heroes do (422). The little calendars may be playing on an American tradition. I have personal memories of calendars like these hanging in my Grandparents house in a very small agricultural town in Idaho. They usually came from the grain and feed companies in the area. This has an emotional impact on me because of the nostalgic feeling I get when I remember being in my Grandparents house, or visiting my uncle’s cattle ranch. These calendars are a small part of that culture, but it evokes a nostalgic feeling in me. Readers, like me, identify quickly with images they are familiar with and these images bring them closer to the story.

The Girl’s description of the house provides many images the readers can relater to. The Girl tells us, “My father worked after supper in the cellar of our house” (423). The house is a symbol of family unity, of safety, and of togetherness. This story being set in a house not only makes sense because it is where the family lives; but also because

a home is where families live. A home is a metonym for the family unit. The reader feels wrapped up tight in the world of this house and farm from the very beginning of the story because of the many concrete details Munro uses to describe it. It doesn’t start in town, or outside in the fields, but rather, right from the start the reader feels like a member of the family because Munro puts the reader in the middle of the family life and the home. The Girl describes the cellar of the house to bring the reader in as well. “The cellar was white-washed, and lit by a hundred-watt bulb over the worktable” (423). The setting of the cellar seems dark and ominous. The walls are probably whitewashed so they can be easily and cheaply repainted at the end of the season because they are stained by splashes of blood by the end. The one light bulb in the center of the room feels ominous because of the dark corners. In the butchering room the only light source happens to be an artificial lighting fixture. Since this room represents death the lighting fixture seems to aid the white-washed walls in sucking out life.

By recreating this cellar in his or her mind’s eye, the reader feels stifled and grimy in the cellar, evoking the feeling that the father’s job is an ugly one, and not for the faint of heart. These details make the setting of the cellar come alive for the reader.

The Girl’s description of the bedroom let’s reader’s in to an intimate part of the Girl’s life. Munro describes their two little beds as “our narrow life rafts (423),” safe from the scary sea of a dark attic that surrounds them. Their space is an eye in the middle of a hurricane, or a microcosm of the home itself where the two children can be safe

23

through the night. The bedroom is where the children learn of each other and of themselves, and where the Girl’s role of protector and her Brother Laird’s role of damsel in distress can be played out, but safely. Munro’s intimate use of detail draws the reader into this world created in the mind of little children and we care about their story.

As the reader see the Girl’s weakness, and sympathizes with her struggles to be better than she is by comparing herself to her father, they can totally immerse themselves in this story. Munro draws us in with these techniques and helps us vicariously experience the world of a Canadian fox farm, and a little girl that wants to please her father.

Works Cited

Hellenga, Robert R. "What is a Literary Experience Like?" New Literary History 14.1,Problems of Literary Theory (1982): 105-15.

Johnson, Nan. "Reader-Response and the Pathos Principle." Rhetoric Review 6.2 (1988):152-66.

Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 9th ed.Eds. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2006.422-432.

Changing Expectations

1968An In-depth Analysis by Dave Johnson

Often times, stories are written with twists in the plot that change expectations or surprise the reader, and the results can be good. In some cases however, the results end up opposite to what the author intended. An example might be if the horizons of expectations are set at a high point of excitement, but the story shifts and never reaches its peak. There are several ways in which one can develop these expectations and using different themes through out the plot is one of those ways. In The Thing in the Forest, A. S. Byatt uses fairy tale themes that create horizons of expectations but are never met. While the reader expects one thing, Byatt

delivers something completely different leaving the reader unsatisfied with the result. In other words, the story simply does not intensify to the peak of the reader’s expectations, resulting from poor use of fairy tale themes.

Typical Themes for Fantasy StoriesThere are a large variety of themes that are

found in the hundreds of fairy tales written. These themes include things like a dark forest, a monster, a hero, a damsel in distress and more; many of which are found in The Thing in the Forest. When these things are present it sends a message to the reader that what they

24

are reading is a fairy tale and they begin to develop certain expectations, like a happy ending or the use of magic. Byatt uses some of those themes in this story and as Samantha Mathews wrote in a review, “The Thing in the Forest, wears its fairy tale debt” (Mathews). Even the title, The Thing in the Forest, denotes this notion, starting a reoccurring pattern of disappointment.

Disregarding the title, the reader still expects a fairy tale from the very beginning of the story. With an opening line that says, “There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in the forest” (35), the fairy tale motif is present. It might as well say, “Once upon a time, there were two little girls….” The introduction alludes to the idea that The Thing in the Forest might be an adventure quest or some kind of fight will take place when really it is the second point where the readers’ expectations can go in a certain direction. This turns out as the wrong direction, and it sets a pattern for the rest of the story.

There are quite a few interesting coincidences between Penny and Primrose, definite indicators of a fairy tale. Some of these coincidences are that both of them lost their fathers during the war, neither of them married, and both had jobs relating to children. The likelihood of these things happening seems pretty good since many children lost their fathers during the war, and many women

pursue careers like theirs, but the similarities between their mothers and their vacation choices get to be a little too coincidental to be a regular story. The text tells that their mothers “behaved alike”(35), and died with in a week of each other after which both Penny and Primrose took a vacation in the same area and at the same time. It also happened to be near the same forest where they encountered a bizarre monster in their childhood. The Need for a Hero

All of these strange coincidences continue to suggest a fairy tale motif because they are too much for normal everyday life. They cause the reader to expect resolution and a happy ending, which is not the case. In the end, as far as anyone can tell, the Loathly Worm is still on the loose because no one saved the day. The story is still missing a few pages and a good battle with the monster.

As the Loathly Worm is presented, it only adds to the expectations of a fairy tale, similar to Beauty and the Beast. When the Beast is introduced into the story it adds to the overall fairy tale effect. Beasts do not really exist, and neither do giant worms. In The Thing in the Forest the little girls wander into the forest (a very typical fairy tale motif) and they hear, “A crunching, a cracking…with threshing and thrashing…steaming sound, full of bubbles and farts, piffs and explosions…they crouched down behind a fallen tree trunk, and trembled, as the thing came into view”(38). The description given of the sounds are not normal. It is even more descriptive than most fairy tales and it makes this part of the story begin to build up with excitement and wonder. “Its face—which was triangular…pitted with worm holes… It had blind, opaque white eyes… It was made of rank meat, and decaying vegetation…bits of wire netting, foul dish cloths, and wire-wool

25

full of pan scrubbings, rusty nuts and bolts…leaving behind it a trail of bloody slime and dead foliage”(39). The visual description is so disgusting and horrible that it is almost impossible to imagine. It is a supernatural creature that could not possibly exist in the real world; according to fairy tale tradition, this requires a hero to come to the rescue and save the day like the hunter in Little Red Ridding Hood who shot the wolf and saved Grandma and the little girl. In this case a gun would do just fine or even somebody strong and courageous that has a sword and a shield, or maybe these two little girls are the heroines. Maybe they will save themselves and the rest of the children from utter destruction. Who will save the day? These thoughts are expected when a revolting monster is introduced however, none of these are the case. The monster goes by not even noticing the little girls, leading up to a shift in the horizons of expectation to make the story a little less interesting.

The expectation of a hero coming to the rescue changes after the girls leave the forest. They say nothing to the adults, as little children might do when they are away from their parents and amongst strangers, and they do not even talk about it to each other until they reunite as adults. This is not at all what the reader anticipated after the detailed description of the monster. This shift drops the fairly tale expectations like a hot potato because now the monster has become nothing but a horrible memory to them. According to Maria Margaroni’s review of The Thing in the Forest, this is where, “the story weakens slightly, as if exhausted by the birth of its prodigy; its mystery is almost hijacked by ideas” (Margaroni). The horizons of expectations change too much so that it weakens the story.

Now, one might think of the possibility that Penny and Primrose will come back to face this creature as adults and that they will defeat it. After all, they are the main

characters. They had the experience of witnessing such a beast tear through the forest. Even in Hansel and Gretel, the children are in a similar situation. They are in a dark forest, there is an evil witch, but Gretel out wits the witch and saves her brother from being cooked and eaten. The possibility of Penny and Primrose experiencing something similar might keep the reader reading, wanting to find out the outcome. New horizons of expectation are created after discarding the old ones, but will these ones fall through? It would be quite disappointing if nobody killed the Loathly Worm and it continued to be a nauseating beast that roamed the countryside.

After the girls grow up, and by chance choose the same place for a vacation, they reunite as they are leaning “over an image in a medieval-looking illustrated book” (41). The picture in the book suggests again to the reader the possibility of a hero that will fight the monster and kill it once and for all. “It showed a knight, on foot, in a forest, lifting his sword to slay something. The knight shone on the rounded slope of the page” (41). How many fairy tales contain a description with a knight in shining armor? The thought of a knight in shining armor is almost essential to a fairy tale, but this is another part of the story that is very misleading, as well as what happens next.

The Expected Versus UnexpectedAs the two women reminisce of their close

encounter with disgusting death, the reader will really begin to believe that Penny and Primrose are the heroines, and that they might still face the monster together. This possibility sounds good and gives the reader another reason to keep going, wondering how they are going to defeat it. The expectation continues to increase when they both decide separately to venture into the forest to see if they can catch a glimpse of the monster. They both know what might happen in the forest yet they decide to go anyways and face the

26

danger. Dorothy in, Wizard of Oz, knew of the danger that she faced when she went in search of the Wicked Witch of the West but the difference is that the readers expectations are met in that story. That has yet to happen in The Thing in the Forest. The fact that they do go back does cause the reader to wonder if a battle is coming soon creating a build up of tension, waiting for a fight that never comes.

In this part of the story the reader’s expectations are again shifted in a lower direction. After Primrose wanders through the forest and has a rather peaceful experience, she simply gets up and leaves. She might as well have left the reader in the forest too because that is where the excitement is. From a fairy tale perspective, Primrose’s character is beginning to lose value because she has a pointless walk in the forest which amounts to nothing more than a waste of time.

Penny’s second experience in the forest is a little different than Primrose’s. Penny actually went back to the same place where they saw the worm for the first time and she also saw evidence that it was still around, “She found odd sausage-shaped tubes of membrane, containing fragments of hair and bone and other inanimate stuffs” (46). This whole section of the story changes the expectation slightly causing the reader to wonder if the monster will eat Penny. What else is to be expected when she sees the bones of a former meal for this monster? Then the tension grows when “She could hear the old blind rumble, she sniffed the old stink” (46). Here the action and the climax are expected to take place but there is actually another shift. “...and just as suddenly as it had begun the turmoil ceased” (47) passing a prime moment for a climax. The failure of the Loathly Worm from eating Penny now changes the horizons of expectations to a story about how two women cope with seeing a monster when they were little girls, the latter being less interesting.

Up to this point of the story, the horizons of expectations have changed several times and are not completely finished. The reader now might expect the ending of the story to be a little less interesting than what they hoped for, but they might as well finish it since they are so close.

Before the story ends, Penny decides that she is not yet satisfied with her last experience in the forest. She decides to go back for the third time. There is a common phrase that says, “The third time is a charm”. Maybe now something exciting will happen. Maybe now the reader will see some action as a battle breaks out between Penny and the Loathly Worm. At this point the reader might actually be begging for the worm to eat her, but this proves to be the final disappointment. As Penny hears and smells it coming she sits and waits for it. “She was ready” (48), according to the narrator, but that’s all that is said. The tension is there, the opportunity is presented, but there is still no fight, and all the while, Primrose is sitting safely in a shopping mall, beginning to tell a story about “two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest” (48). She might as well have been eating a bucket of chicken because she turned out to be pretty useless and this is where the story ends.

By now the reader has been disappointed several times as a result of so many shifts in the horizons of expectations. A change in what is expected to be the out come of a story is only good if the change is better then the original expectation. In this case it is not better because it really turns out to be a story of how two women dealt differently with a traumatic childhood experience, even when they had so many things in common. Samantha Mathews said it best when she wrote, “Finally confirmed in the reality of what they witnessed, each separately returns to the wood, and comes to an individual accommodation with her past” (Mathews). It is great that they both found a way to deal

27

with seeing a scary monster but it is not the direction that the story began in. It is like a war movie that turns out to be a chick flick. If

the reader is expecting more than this, there will be obvious disappointment.

Works Cited

Byatt, A. S. “The Thing in the Forest.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth J. Paul Hunter and Kelly J. Mays. Shorter 9th Ed. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. 35-48

Margaronis, Maria. "Where the Wild Things are." The Nation. 278 no.23 (2004): 24-8. 29 May 2007 <http: //galenet.galegroup.com>.

Mathews, Samantha. "Monsters, Trolls, and Creative Writers." Times LiterarySupplement. no.5248 (2003): 21. 29 May 2007 <http://galenet.galegroup.com>.

28