American Literature Syllabus

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AMERICAN LITERATURE SYLLABUS

UNIT-I POETRY-DETAILED

1. PASSAGE TO INDIA by Walt Whitman

2. I NEVER LOST AS MUCH BUT TWICE by EMILY DICKENSON

3. SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST by Emily Dickenson

4. A BIRD CAME DOWN THE WALK by Emily Dickenson

5. AFTER APPLE PICKING by Robert Frost

6. COME IN by Robert Frost

UNIT-II POETRY NON-DETAILED

1. IN WEST-RUNNING BROOK by Robert Frost

2. THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM by Wallace Stevens

3. ANECDOTE OF THE JAR by Wallace Stevens

4. SHUNK HOUR by Robert Lowell

UNIT-III PROSE- DETAILED

1. WHERE I LIVED AND WHAT I LIVED FOR by Henry David Thoreau

UNIT-IV NOVEL- NON-DETAILED

1. TOM SAWYER BY MARK TWAIN

UNIT-V DRAMA- DETAILED

1. DEATH OF SALESMAN BY ARTHUR MILLER

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A Passage to India

by W ALT WHITMAN

Passage O soul to India!

Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.

Not you alone, proud truths of the world,

Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science,

But myths and fables of e ld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables,

The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams,

The deep diving bibles and legends,

The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;

O you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun!

O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!

You lofty and dazzling towers, p innacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold!

Towers of fables immortal, fashion’d from mortal dreams!

You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest! You too with joy I sing.

Passage to India!

Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?

The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,

The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,

The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,

The lands to be welded together.

A worship new I sing,

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,

You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,

You, not for trade or transportation only,

But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul.

Summary and Analysis: Passage to India Walt Whitman

Whitman was greatly impressed by three great engineering achievements: the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), the laying of the transatlantic undersea cable (1866), and the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Utah to produce the nation's first transcontinental railway (1869). These events resulted in improved communication and travel, thus making possible a shorter passage to India. But in Whitman's poem, the completion of the physical journey to India is only a prelude to the spiritual pathway to India, the East, and, ultimately, to God.

The poet, in section 1, celebrates his time, singing of "the great achievements of the present," and listing "our modern wonders": the opening of the Suez Canal, the building of the great American railroad, and the laying of the transatlantic cable. Yet these achievements of the present have grown out of the past, "the dark unfathom'd retrospect." If the present is great, the past is greater because, like a projectile, the present is "impell'd by the past."

Here Whitman presents the world of physical reality, an antecedent to the world of spiritual reality. The essential idea in emphasizing the three engineering marvels is to indicate man's progress in terms of space. The space-time relationship is at the heart of the matter. The present is significant, but it is only an extension of the past and, therefore, its glories can be traced to times before. Man has mastered space, but he must enrich his spiritual heritage by evoking his past. His achievement in space will remain inadequate unless it is matched, or even surpassed, by his achievement in time and his spiritual values.

In section 2, Whitman envisages a passage to India which is illuminated by "Asiatic" and "primitive" fables. The fables of Asia and Africa are "the far-darting beams of the spirit," and the poet sings of the "deep diving bibles and legends." The spanning of the earth by scientific and technological means is only part of the divine scheme to have "the races, neighbors." The poet, therefore, sings of "a worship new," a spiritual passage to India.

The poet here identifies time with space and merges them in the realm of the spirit. Modern miracles of science are all part of a divine plan, of "God's purpose from the first." Thus the poet sings of a new religion which will combine the scientific achievements of the present with the spiritual attainments of the past.

Man's achievements in communications are shown in the portrayal of "tableaus twain" in section 3. The first tableau, or picture, is the first passage through the Suez Canal "initiated, open'd" by a "procession of steamships." The second picture is the journey of the railway cars "winding along the Platte" River to a junction of the Union and Central Pacific railroads. These two engineering achievements have given concrete shape to the dreams of the "Genoese," Columbus, "centuries after thou art laid in thy grave." Columbus dreamed of "tying the Eastern to the Western sea"; his ideal has now been fulfilled.

The underlying significance of the two events which Whitman describes here is to show that man's material advancement is only a means to his spiritual progress. The poet seems to master the vastness of space through his visionary power. And his thoughts also span time: modern achievements are a realization of Columbus' dream of linking East with West. His discovery of America was only a first step toward finding a shorter passage to India.

Section 4 tells how "many a captain" struggled to reach India. History seems like an underground stream which now and again rises to the surface. Thus Whitman praises Vasco da Gama, who discovered the sea route to India, and who thus accomplished the "purpose vast," the "rondure [rounding] of the world."

This is a tribute to the courage and adventurous spirit of the West in seeking a passage to India. The poet has a vision of history "as a rivulet running," and this dominates his sense of space. History is conceived of as a progression of continuous events which are like a flowing stream. This stream joins the spiritual sea and the poet's vision endows historical happenings with spiritual meaning.

Section 5 presents the spectacle of this earth "swimming in space," endowed with incredible beauty and power. Since the days of Adam and Eve, Whitman says, man has asked the meaning of life: "Who shall soothe these feverish children?/ . . . Who speak the secret of impassive earth?' After the scientists and explorers have achieved their goals, the poet, who is "the true son of God," will forge the links of spiritual union. "Trinitas divine" will be achieved through the visionary power of the poet; he will fuse "Nature and Man."

In section 6, the poet sings of the "marriage of continents." Europe, Asia, Africa, and America are dancing "as brides and bridegrooms hand in hand." The "soothing cradle of man" is India. The poet perceives India as an ancient land of history and legend, morals and religion, adventure and challenge. Brahma and Buddha, Alexander and Tamerlane, Marco Polo and other "traders, rulers, explorers" all shared in its history. "The Admiral himself" (Columbus) is the chief historian. The poet says the culmination of heroic efforts is deferred for a long time. But eventually their seeds will sprout and bloom into a plant that "fills the earth with use and beauty."

Here Whitman has explored the swift passage of time and has invoked the India of Buddha through the present achievement of the linkage of continents by modern technology. The poet thus becomes a time-binder. He also attempts to fuse the familiar with the unfamiliar and the physical with the spiritual. He stands "curious in time," but he also stands outside of time, in eternity, in his spiritual quest.

Section 7 confirms that a passage to India is indeed a journey of the soul "to primal thought." It is not confined to "lands and seas alone." It is a passage back to the Creation, to innocence, "to realms of budding bibles." Whitman is anxious for himself and his soul to begin their journey.

The language of section 7 is highly metaphorical. The return of the poet and his soul to the East is envisaged as a journey back to the cradle of mankind, to the East, where many religions had their birth. It is a journey "back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions." The poet and his soul seek a mystical experience of union with God in the realm of the spirit.

In section 8, the poet and his soul are about to "launch out on trackless seas" and to sail "on waves of ecstasy" singing "our song of God." The soul pleases the poet, and the poet pleases the soul, and they begin their spiritual exploration. They believe in God "but with the mystery of God we dare not dally." They think "silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death." The poet addresses God as "O Thou transcendent,/ Nameless," as the source of light and cosmic design and a "moral, spiritual fountain." Whitman "shrivels at the thought of God,/At Nature and its wonders," but he expects the soul to bring about a harmonious reconciliation with these forces. When the soul accomplishes its journey and confronts God, it will be as if it had found an older brother. It will finally melt "in fondness in his arms."

The last two sections of this poem are marked by an upsurge of spiritual thought and an ecstatic experience. The poet and his soul, like two lovers, are united in harmony. They seek the mystical experience of union with God. The poet reflects on the nature of God as a transcendental deity. By comprehending God, the poet is enabled to comprehend himself and also man's complex relationship with time, space, and death. The soul is eternal and establishes its relationship with time. The soul is vast and expansive and thus forms a relationship with space. The soul is alive forever and thus conquers death.

In section 8, the poet and his soul together seek to perceive the Divine Reality. Both eagerly await a mystical experience of union with God, of merging with the Divine Being. God is conceived of as a "fountain" or "reservoir" and this image is similar to the basic metaphor of water, which is necessary to nourish the greenery" of Leaves of Grass .

In section 9, the journey which the soul embarks on is a passage to more than India." It is a challenging spiritual journey. Whitman asks the soul if it is ready: "Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?" The passage to the divine shores, to the "aged fierce enigmas," and to the "strangling problems" is filled with difficulty and "skeletons, that, living, never reach'd you" — but it is a thrilling journey. The poet, fired by the spirit of Columbus, is intent on seeking an "immediate passage" because "the blood burns in my veins." He "will risk . . . all" in this bold and thrilling adventure; but actually it is safe enough, for are they not all the seas of God"? Thus the passage to India — and more — is a journey of man through the seas of God in search of an ideal. It is marked by intense spiritual passion.

This last section presents the final evolution of the symbol of India, which began as a geographical entity and culminated in a timeless craving of man for the realization of God. The words "passage" and "India" both have an evolving symbolic meaning and significance in this richly evocative poem and the growth of their meanings is indirectly the growth of the poem itself.

Summary and Analysis of Passage to India by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman: Born in 1819 in Long Island, Walt Whitman was the second child of nine. At the time he began writing his poems, there was coming a transition between transcendentalism and realism, and as a result both of these themes appear in many of his works. He published his major work, Leaves of Grass, in the year 1855. Considered obscene by many, this piece of work was controversial upon its release. Whitman’s poetry is mostly in free verse and he is often called the father of the form. A humanist, author and poet, Whitman died in the year 1892 at the age of 72 in Camden, New Jersey.

About Passage to India: Passage to India is a prime example of Whitman’s transcendentalism and realism themes in his poems. It is wholly written in free verse and is considered one of his finest works. Setting of the poem: The title suggests that the setting of the poem may be India. But it isn’t. India is but a metaphor. The poem is set throughout time. From the beginning of time, to ancient history, to modern wonders and to the unexplored future; the poem covers and traverses it all. Poetic Devices in Passage to India

The poetic devices in this poem are too many and too scattered and varied in frequency. So only some instances of their appearance can be listed.

Free Verse: The whole poem is written in a free verse. It has neither rhyme nor rhythm.

Oxymoron: In section 1, the speaker sings of strong, light works. Strong makes us think of something heavy, bulky. But in contradiction, it is actually light. Adjoining contradictory terms is an oxymoron.

Repetition: There is a lot of repetition in this poem. In the first section itself, the words ‘singing’ and ‘The Past!’ are repeated numerous times. In section 2, ‘you’ and in section 3, ‘you’ and ‘your’ are repeated multiple times. Repetitions pop out continuously as one goes through the whole poem.

Apostrophe: Letters are skipped in many words. In the first section, letters from the words ‘spanned’, ‘unfathomed’, ‘formed’, ‘impelled’ and ‘formed’ are skipped using an apostrophe. This many in the first section itself. As you read on, you will find much more such apostrophes.

Personification: In the first section, the speaker is starting a sound, a cry along with the soul implying that the soul was making that sound too, giving it human characters. This here is personification.: In section 2, the speaker uses the sentence

‘ the deep diving bibles and legends; the daring plots… ‘

The repeated use of the letter ‘d’ makes this an alliteration. Many such alliterations are seen throughout the poem; like ‘red roses’, ‘become brothers’, ‘trade or transportation’ etc. Imagery: Imagery is seen in section 2, used to describe the temples and the towers; and then gain in section 4.

Metaphor: The passage to India in the poem does not really mean a passage in some cases. India is a land of many cultures and ancient history. Passage to India means a journey to the past in these cases. India is but a metaphor for the past.

Enjambment: Lines of verse continuing to the next line are seen in section 4 and section 5 and many other sections of the poem.

Simile: The deaths of sailors rains over the mood of the speaker, like the clouds that spread in the sky, says the speaker in section 5.

Summary and Analysis of Passage to India

Section 1: The speaker of the poem is singing of the great achievements of the present. He praises the engineers for their strong yet light works. He says the present wonders outdo the ancient wonders. He praises the mighty railroads, the wires laid through the sea and the Suez Canal. But then he cries out, along with a soul about the past. He then speaks of the past in great detail. He calls it an abyss of shadows and sleepers, dark and unfathomable. The past has infinite greatness. The present is but an outgrowth of the past. In this section 1 alone, we see multiple poetic devices like free verse, personification, and apostrophe.

Section 2: The speaker then tells the soul to travel to India, to explain the myths and fables surrounding it. The speaker says that he welcomes these myths and fables the same way he welcomes the proud truths of the world and facts of modern science. He describes them as beams of light, as unloosened dreams. He uses some imagery to describe the temples and towers. We see before us fair temples, with the rising sun behind, pouring its rays of lights, making it a dazzling site. We see red and gold towers. He says these fables are made immortal by the mortal’s (human’s) dreams.

Section 3: The speaker asks the soul did it not see through God’s purpose from the beginning. The earth exists to be spanned, connected by networks, people are meant to become brothers and sisters, marriages are meant to be diverse, the oceans exist to be crossed and the distances exist to be overcome. And all this is already seen in India, a land of unified diversity.

The speaker starts a new worship to all the voyagers, explorers, engineers and machinists. They do not just trade and transport but connect for the sake of Souls.

Section 4: The speaker sees two tableaus, two paintings in which he sees two modern great achievements and again, these are all for the soul. In the first one, he sees Suez Canal, newly opened, with steamships passing through it, led by Empress Eugenie. Empress Eugenie was the wife of Napoleon III and the last Empress Consort of the French. The speaker now imagines himself in that tableau, on the deck of a ship, seeing the landscape, the sky, and the sand. He passes the workmen and machines.

In the second tableau, he sees a different picture. Yet it was same as it belonged to the soul. In it, he sees the Pacific Railroad breaking every barrier. He then goes on at great length to describe what all he says when he’s on that train. He covers a vast number of places over a wide, wide range of land. He means to say that all these places, so far away from each other, are now so close and connected. The road connects the western and the eastern sea and acts as the road between Europe and Asia.

Genoa is an important port in Italy. Its people are called Genoese. The Genoese dreamt of connecting places across seas and now, it has become reality.

Section 5: The passage, the journey isn’t easy. Captains struggle and sailors die over the journey. These deaths rains over the mood of the speaker like the clouds which spread above in the sky. But like the rivulets which sink down only to rise again, throughout history the plans, the voyages and the expeditions are made again and again. It is by this process that lands are found, nations are born. The example of America is given here, a land found by Columbus on such an expedition. Such expeditions bust myths and find facts like the earth is round and not hemispherical.

Section 6: The speaker now speaks of the earth. He calls it a vast round object covered with power and beauty. He then goes on to speak of all that earth covers and has like trees, mountains, water. He says these are all with some unknown intention and the speaker’s thoughts spread across the earth now.

He speaks of Adam and Eve, and their descendants and of their questioning, feverish hearts. What is all this questioning for, you unsatisfied souls and where are you taking us, you mocking Life, the speaker asks.

And the earth is described as cold, without affection as it does not answer the questions of humans. Yet the intent of the humans remains, the speaker says to the soul. And when everything is connected, when the inventors, engineers, and captains all complete their journeys, there will descend the poet, the Son of God and he will join everything, nature and man both so that no soul ever be feverish and all their curiosities are soother, their questions answered.

Section 7: The speaker sees that day coming when all the continents are joined, all the oceans merged and all the climates united. This unification is unlike that of a mere Doge of Venice and Adriatic, the speaker says. Doges are elected officials in Venice. One of their ceremonial duties is to celebrate the symbolic marriage of Venice with the sea, Adriatic. The unification of all that is on earth is grander than this ceremony, which is grand in itself, making the unification the speaker sees that much grander. The lands are likened to a bride and bridegrooms holding a garland festival.

Section 8: The speaker returns to the passage to India now. He speaks of Caucasus, the region at the border of Europe and Asia, and river Euphrates, implying that he is drawing closer to India.

He speaks of India, in retrospection, as the most populous and wealthiest of Earth’s lands. He then goes on to describe its geography, its history, and religion in great detail. India is the land of many diverse occupations and origins. There is much to do there; maps to be expanded, blanks to be filled, doubts to be solved. Never is anyone found to rest. The speaker says that soul will find itself right at home in this place.

Section 9: In this section, the poet returns to his home, America. He speaks of the year 1492 in which America was discovered. The Admiral mentioned here is Columbus and his situation and plight is described in great detail here. The way his journey started, the great fame he got in discovering new lands, of how he faced misfortunes (due to his differences with Spanish crown and its colonial administrators), of how he lost everything he gained and died in poverty and dejection.

The speaker ends the section by noting the efforts of the heroes. Though they are slandered when alive, face conspired poverty and unceremonious death, their stories will always be passed on. And after a sufficient time passes on, their stories grow again and fill the earth with knowledge and inspiration. ‘Use’ and ‘beauty’ are used as symbols for knowledge and inspiration in this section.

Section 10: The speaker now returns to the ancient times when thought was new, Bible was still in creation and wisdom was just born. The speaker imagines himself and the soul journeying this earth together, going in a complete circle. They go to the time when everything was fair, and creation was new.

Section 11: The speaker cannot wait for any longer after he thinks of all of this. He tells the soul that they should immediately take a ship and happily go out on the vast seas. They should take this journey fearless singing songs of God and think of their pleasant exploration. ‘Though others weep for any reason, we shall be a happy soul, let us be happy, soul’, says the speaker.

The soul pleases the speaker and the speaker pleases the soul. They both go on their journey through space, time and death. They explore all the places on earth. At the beginning of the journey, the speaker shrivels at the thought of God and Nature and at their vastness and transcendental-ness. But he believes the soul will bridge this gap. At the end of the journey, when they see all and experience, and when they finally go before God, it will be like meeting an elder brother. The meeting would be filled with friendship and love; nothing to shrivel at anymore.

The speaker means to say that no one reached them before, that all those who tried to, died before they could reach.

The whole poem is one body of massive metaphorical verse. Section 13: The speaker is now ready to let go of the past. As said in the beginning, India is but a metaphor for past. And now the speaker is ready to go beyond all that is know, to go beyond the books into the unknown.

The speaker is with the soul and the soul with him and together they will venture only into the deepest of waters. No more mere lives of brutes; the blood of the speaker has awakened, boiling. He will risk the ship, himself and everything to go to that unknown. The soul is brave, so is he and they will sail farther and farther from the known, from safety; but they will be happy since all the seas are but seas of God.

The long poem ends with the sentence ‘O farther, farther, farther sail!’ The repetition tells the reader that the speaker and the soul are now on a journey to unreached places.

Central Idea of Passage to India: The central idea of the poem is to take one on a path of past, of adventure, of reality and ultimately to God.

Tone of Passage to India: The tone of the poem varies but it always maintains a trace of wonder. It is hopeful at times, dejected in others; hopeful at some, taking hope away at others. But at the end, all of this is replaced by a sense of exploration and a tone of hope and adventure.

Conclusion: Whitman takes the reader on a journey which is both factual and spiritual in this long piece of verse; he leads one to the past, the present and the future and shows us a way to God. He also shows the true greatness of exploration using actual places and events and telling them in a beautiful verse.

Summary and Analysis: Passage to India Walt Whitman

The earth has been spanned by the efforts of engineers and technicians, Whitman says, and now it is for the poet to bring about the unity of East and West in the realm of the spirit. In his general survey of history, Whitman seems to encompass all time. The poet is the "true son of God" because, in visualizing the union of man and nature, he responds to the divine call within him. He is thus a true explorer and a discoverer of spiritual India. In section 6, the poet sings of the "marriage of continents." Europe, Asia, Africa, and America are dancing "as brides and bridegrooms hand in hand." The "soothing cradle of man" is India. The poet perceives India as an ancient land of history and legend, morals and religion, adventure and challenge. Brahma and Buddha, Alexander and Tamerlane, Marco Polo and other "traders, rulers, explorers" all shared in its history. "The Admiral himself" (Columbus) is the chief historian. The poet says the culmination of heroic efforts is deferred for a long time. But eventually their seeds will sprout and bloom into a plant that "fills the earth with use and beauty."

Summary and Analysis of Passage to India by Walt Whitman

Setting of the poem: The title suggests that the setting of the poem may be India. But it isn’t. India is but a metaphor. The poem is set throughout time. From the beginning of time, to ancient history, to modern wonders and to the unexplored future; the poem covers and traverses it all. Poetic Devices in Passage to India

The poetic devices in this poem are too many and too scattered and varied in frequency. So only some instances of their appearance can be listed.

Free Verse: The whole poem is written in a free verse. It has neither rhyme nor rhythm.

‘ the deep diving bibles and legends; the daring plots… ‘

Imagery: Imagery is seen in section 2, used to describe the temples and the towers; and then gain in section 4.

Enjambment: Lines of verse continuing to the next line are seen in section 4 and section 5 and many other sections of the poem.

Simile: The deaths of sailors rains over the mood of the speaker, like the clouds that spread in the sky, says the speaker in section 5.

Summary and Analysis of Passage to India

He then speaks of the past in great detail. He calls it an abyss of shadows and sleepers, dark and unfathomable. The past has infinite greatness. The present is but an outgrowth of the past. In this section 1 alone, we see multiple poetic devices like free verse, personification, and apostrophe.

The speaker starts a new worship to all the voyagers, explorers, engineers and machinists. They do not just trade and transport but connect for the sake of Souls.

Genoa is an important port in Italy. Its people are called Genoese. The Genoese dreamt of connecting places across seas and now, it has become reality. Section 5: The passage, the journey isn’t easy. Captains struggle and sailors die over the journey. These deaths rains over the mood of the speaker like the clouds which spread above in the sky.

But like the rivulets which sink down only to rise again, throughout history the plans, the voyages and the expeditions are made again and again. It is by this process that lands are found, nations are born. The example of America is given here, a land found by Columbus on such an expedition. Such expeditions bust myths and find facts like the earth is round and not hemispherical.

Section 8: The speaker returns to the passage to India now. He speaks of Caucasus, the region at the border of Europe and Asia, and river Euphrates, implying that he is drawing closer to India.

Section 12: Now the speaker is ready to journey beyond India. He asks the soul if it was ready to go on greater journeys, to venture into the unknown, to ‘aged enigmas’ and ‘strangling problems’ which have the skeletons all around them. The speaker means to say that no one reached them before, that all those who tried to, died before they could reach.

The whole poem is one body of massive metaphorical verse.

Section 13: The speaker is now ready to let go of the past. As said in the beginning, India is but a metaphor for past. And now the speaker is ready to go beyond all that is know, to go beyond the books into the unknown.

The long poem ends with the sentence ‘O farther, farther, farther sail!’ The repetition tells the reader that the speaker and the soul are now on a journey to unreached places.

Central Idea of Passage to India: The central idea of the poem is to take one on a path of past, of adventure, of reality and ultimately to God.

I NEVER LOST AS MUCH BUT TWICE BY EMILY DICKINSON

Analysis

In this poem, she stands in front of God and begs him, before the door of God. This poem is actually about her loss of two friends when she was younger. She lost them at relatively a young age. So she seems to have blamed God and begged him to return them. But in the end, she realizes that he won't and says, "I am poor once more!"

This poem is made up of two stanzas with four lines in each. It has the rhyme scheme (which is perfect rhyme) as ABCB. Like many of Dickinson's poems, the first line is longer than the second, and third longer than the fourth. The even number lines in the first stanza have six syllables while the evens in the second stanza have five.

Poem

I never lost as much but twiceBy E mily Dickinson

I never lost as much but twice

And that was in the sod.

Twice have I stood a beggar

Before the door of God!

Angels, twice descending,

Reimbursed my store. Burglar, banker, father,

I am poor once more!

I never lost as much but twice

I never lost as much but twice,

Various learned people have speculated as to who was buried in the sod, but as there is no consensus and as it doesn't fundamentally affect the poem one way or the other, I want to just dive into the poem itself. The most striking part, of course, is where she calls God "Burglar! Banker–Father!" It seems a bit blasphemous. But we understand that when someone is torn with grief they call out wildly. This poem has the feel of a wild call of grief.

The first line provides the key to the story: I paraphrase it as "I've only lost as much as I just lost two other times before." The loss alluded to here is echoed more powerfully in the last line where she is 'poor once more!' The first two losses were to death. There is an interesting ambiguity about 'the door of God'. Is she standing before the graves, calling that the door -- the gateway, perhaps, to heaven? Or is the door simply a figurative one? At any rate she was beggared by the loss of two friends or dear ones and went to the very door of God for relief.

The poem is structured around an economic conceit that is further developed in the second stanza. While in the first, the poet was beggared by loss, in the second her storehouse of dear ones is reimbursed--by descending angels, no less. One thinks of angels delivering babies rather than beaus, so perhaps there were births to compensate for the deaths. But then there was a third loss that once more beggars the poet. We do not see her standing as a beggar before God here but almost lashing out at Him. This loss is probably not to death but to separation or alienation and that can be more embittering. She first calls God a Burglar: he has robbed her of a dear one. Then, 'Banker' -- He can call in the loan or grant reimbursements; He can raise the interest rate; He knows the solvency of her soul. And finally, she calls out to God the Father.

There is actually a bit of scripture for the odd Trinity: The Lord's Second Coming is to come 'like a thief in the night' according to the apostle Paul. We are also instructed in the New Testament to store up our treasures in Heaven--with the divine Banker. And Father is the familiar divine Patriarch.

What gives the lines extra punch, besides the alliteration and the whiff of blasphemy, is the syllable emphasis. While the rest of the poem is in garden-variety iambs, this line with the trochaic emphasis on the first syllables: b urglar! Banker--father demands to be read with some heat. The poet may be 'poor once more' (a reinforcing internal rhyme) but she is not meekly beggaring herself this time.

TEXT

S uccess is counted sweetest

BY E MILY DICKINSON

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!

Summary

“Success is counted sweetest...” Summary

“Success is counted sweetest...”

Summary The speaker says that “those who ne’er succeed” place the highest value on success. (They “count” it “sweetest”.) To understand the value of a nectar, the speaker says, one must feel “sorest need.” She says that the members of the victorious army (“the purple Host / Who took the flag today”) are not able to define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors.

Form The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimeter—with the exception of the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth stress at the end of the line. (Virtually all of Dickinson’s poems are written in an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly between three and four stresses.) As in most of

Dickinson’s poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the stanza’s only rhyme.

Commentary

Many of Emily Dickinson’s most famous lyrics take the form of homilies, or short moral sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe complicated moral and psychological truths. “Success is counted sweetest” is such a poem; its first two lines express its homiletic point, that “Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne’er succeed” (or, more generally, that people tend to desire things more acutely when they do not have them). The subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair of images that exemplify it: the nectar—a symbol of triumph, luxury, “success”—can best be comprehended by someone who “needs” it; the defeated, dying man understands victory more clearly than the victorious army does. The poem exhibits Dickinson’s keen awareness of the complicated truths of human desire (in a later poem on a similar theme, she wrote that “Hunger—was a way / Of Persons outside Windows— / The

Entering—takes away—”), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases

(e.g., “On whose forbidden ear”).

Emily Dickinson led one of the most prosaic lives of any great poet. At a time when fellow poet Walt Whitman was ministering to the Civil War wounded and traveling across America—a time when America itself was reeling in the chaos of war, the tragedy of the Lincoln assassination, and the turmoil of

Reconstruction—Dickinson lived a relatively untroubled life in her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she was born in 1830 and where she died in

1886. Although popular myth often depicts Dickinson as the solitary genius, she, in fact, remained relatively active in Amherst social circles and often entertained visitors throughout her life. However, she was certainly more isolated than a poet such as Whitman: Her world was bounded by her home and its surrounding countryside; the great events of her day play little role in her poetry. Whitman eulogized Lincoln and wrote about the war; Dickinson, one of the great poets of inwardness ever to write in English, was no social poet—one could read through her C ollected Poems— 1,776 in all—and emerge with almost no sense of the time in which she lived. Of course, social and historical ideas and values contributed in shaping her character, but Emily Dickinson’s ultimate context is herself, the milieu of her mind.

Dickinson is simply unlike any other poet; her compact, forceful language, characterized formally by long disruptive dashes, heavy iambic meters, and angular, imprecise rhymes, is one of the singular literary achievements of the nineteenth century. Her aphoristic style, whereby substantial meanings are compressed into very few words, can be daunting, but many of her best and most famous poems are comprehensible even on the first reading. During her lifetime,

Dickinson published hardly any of her massive poetic output (fewer than ten of her nearly 1,800 poems) and was utterly unknown as a writer. After Dickinson’s death, her sister discovered her notebooks and published the contents, thus, presenting

America with a tremendous poetic legacy that appeared fully formed and without any warning. As a result, Dickinson has tended to occupy a rather uneasy place in the canon of American poetry; writers and critics have not always known what to make of her. Today, her place as one of the two finest American poets of the nineteenth century is secure: Along with Whitman, she literally defines the very era that had so little palpable impact on her poetry.

Themes

Main Ideas

Themes

The Individual’s Struggle with God Dickinson devoted a great amount of her work to exploring the relationship between an individual and a Judeo-Christian God. Many poems describe a protracted rebellion against the God whom she deemed scornful and indifferent to human suffering, a divine being perpetually committed to subjugating human identity. In a sense, she was a religious poet. Unlike other religious poets, who inevitably saw themselves as subordinate to God, Dickinson rejected this premise in her poetry. She was dissatisfied with the notion that the poet can engage with

God only insofar as God ordains the poet as his instrument, and she challenged

God’s dominion throughout her life, refusing to submit to his divine will at the cost of her self. Perhaps her most fiery challenge comes in “Mine by the Right of the

White Election!” (528), in which the speaker roars in revolt against God, claiming the earth and heavens for herself or himself. Elsewhere, Dickinson’s poetry criticizes God not by speaking out directly against him, but by detailing the suffering he causes and his various affronts to an individual’s sense of self. Though the speaker of “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”

(1129) never mentions God, the poem refers obliquely to his suppression of the apostle Paul in the last two lines. Here, the speaker describes how unmitigated truth (in the form of light) causes blindness. In the Bible (Acts 9:4), God decides to enlighten Paul by making him blind and then healing him on the condition that thenceforth Paul becomes “a chosen vessel” of God, performing his will. The speaker recoils from this instance of God’s juggernaut-like domination of Paul in this poem but follows the poem’s advice and tells the truth “slant,” or indirectly, rather than censuring God directly. In another instance of implicit criticism,

Dickinson portrays God as a murderous hunter of man in “My Life had stood—a

Loaded Gun” (754), in which Death goes about gleefully executing people for his divine master. These poems are among the hundreds of verses in which Dickinson portrays God as aloof, cruel, invasive, insensitive, or vindictive.

The Assertion of the Self

In her work, Dickinson asserts the importance of the self, a T heme closely related to Dickinson’s censure of God. As Dickinson understood it, the mere act of speaking or writing is an affirmation of the will, and the call of the poet, in particular, is the call to explore and express the self to others. For Dickinson, “self” entails an understanding of identity according to the way it systematizes its perceptions of the world, forms its goals and values, and comes to judgments regarding what it perceives.

Nearly all Dickinson’s speakers behave according to the primacy of the self, despite the efforts of others to intrude on them. Indeed, the self is never more apparent in Dickinson’s poetry than when the speaker brandishes it against some potentially violating force. In “They shut me up in Prose—” (613), the speaker taunts her captives, who have imprisoned her body but not her mind, which remains free and roaming. Because God most often plays the role of culprit as an omnipotent being, he can and does impose compromising conditions upon individuals according to his whim in Dickinson’s work. Against this power, the self is essentially defined. The individual is subject to any amount of suffering, but so long as he or she remains a sovereign self, he or she still has that which separates him or her from other animate and inanimate beings.

The Power of Words and Poetry Though Dickinson sequestered herself in Amherst for most of her life, she was quite attuned to the modern trends of thought that circulated throughout Europe and North America. Perhaps the most important of these was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in 1859. Besides the tidal wave it unleashed in the scientific community, evolution throttled the notion of a world created by God’s grand design. For Dickinson, who renounced obedience to God through the steps of her own mental evolution, this development only reinforced the opposition to the belief in a transcendent and divine design in an increasingly secularized world.

Dickinson began to see language and the word, which were formerly part of God’s domain, as the province of the poet. The duty of the poet was to re-create, through words, a sense of the world as a place in which objects have an essential and almost mythic relationship to each other. Dickinson’s poems often link abstract entities to physical things in an attempt to embrace or create an integral design in the world. This act is most apparent in her poems of definition, such as “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—” (254) or “Hope is a subtle Glutton” (1547). In these poems, Dickinson employs Met aphors that assign physical qualities to the abstract feeling of “hope” in order to flesh out the nature of the word and what it means to human consciousness.

Themes

Main Ideas

Themes

Nature as a “Haunted House” In a letter to a friend, Dickinson once wrote: ‘Nature is a Haunted House—but

Art—a House that tries to be haunted.” The first part of the sentence implies that the natural world is replete with mystery and false signs, which deceive humankind as to the purpose of things in nature as well as to God’s purpose in the creation of nature. The sentence’s second part reveals the poet’s role. The poet does not exist merely to render aspects of nature, but rather to ascertain the character of God’s power in the world.

For Dickinson, however, the characterizing of God’s power proved to be complicated since she often abstained from using the established religious

Symbols for things in nature. This abstention is most evident in Dickinson’s poem about a snake, “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” (986), in which Dickinson refrains from the easy reference to Satan in Eden. Indeed, in many of her nature poems, such as “A Bird came down the Walk” (328), Dickinson ultimately insists on depicting nature as unapologetically incomprehensible, and thus haunted.

Motifs

Main Ideas

Motifs

The Speaker’s Unique Poetic Voice Dickinson’s speakers are numerous and varied, but each exhibits a similar voice, or distinctive T one and style. Poets create speakers to literally speak their poems; while these speakers might share traits with their creators or might be based on real historical figures, ultimately they are fictional entities distinct from their writers.

Frequently, Dickinson employs the first person, which lends her poems the immediacy of a dialogue between two people, the speaker and the reader. She sometimes aligns multiple speakers in one poem with the use of the plural personal pronoun w e. The first-person singular and plural allow Dickinson to write about specific experiences in the world: her speakers convey distinct, subjective emotions and individual thoughts rather than objective, concrete truths. Readers are thus invited to compare their experiences, emotions, and thoughts with those expressed in Dickinson’s lyrics. By emphasizing the subjectivity, or individuality, of experience, Dickinson rails against those educational and religious institutions that attempt to limit individual knowledge and experience.

The Connection Between Sight and Self For Dickinson, seeing is a form of individual power. Sight requires that the seer have the authority to associate with the world around her or him in meaningful ways and the sovereignty to act based on what she or he believes exists as opposed to what another entity dictates. In this sense, sight becomes an important expression of the self, and consequently the speakers in Dickinson’s poems value it highly. The horror that the speaker of “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—” (465) experiences is attributable to her loss of eyesight in the moments leading up to her death. The final utterance, “I could not see to see” (16), points to the fact that the last gasp of life, and thus of selfhood, is concentrated on the desire to “see” more than anything else. In this poem, sight and self are so synonymous that the end of one (blindness) translates into the end of the other (death).

In other poems, sight and self seem literally fused, a connection that Dickinson toys with by playing on the sonic similarity of the words I and e ye. This wordplay abounds in Dickinson’s body of work. It is used especially effectively in the third Stanza of “The Soul selects her own Society—” (303), in which the speaker declares that she knows the soul, or the self. She commands the soul to choose one person from a great number of people and then “close the lids” of attention. In this poem, the “I” that is the soul has eyelike properties: closing the lids, an act that would prevent seeing, is tantamount to cutting off the “I” from the rest of society.

Symbols

Feet Feet enter Dickinson’s poems self-referentially, since the words f oot and f eet denote poetic terms as well as body parts. In poetry, “feet” are the groups of syllables in a line that form a metrical unit. Dickinson’s mention of feet in her poems generally serves the dual task of describing functioning body parts and commenting on poetry itself. Thus, when the speaker of “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” (986) remembers himself a “Barefoot” boy (11), he indirectly alludes to a time when his sense of poetry was not fully formed. Likewise, when the speaker of

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes” (341) notes that feet are going around in his head while he is going mad, he points to the fact that his ability to make poetry is compromised.

Stone In Dickinson’s poems, stones represent immutability and finality: unlike flowers or the light of day, stones remain essentially unchanged. The speaker in “Safe in their

Alabaster Chambers” (216) imagines the dead lying unaffected by the breezes of nature—and of life. After the speaker chooses her soul in “The Soul selects her own Society—” (303), she shuts her eyes “Like Stone—” (12), firmly closing herself off from sensory perception or society. A stone becomes an object of envy in “How happy is the little Stone” (1510), a poem in which the speaker longs for the rootless independence of a stone bumping along, free from human cares.

Birds

Dickinson uses the symbol of birds rather flexibly. In “A Bird came down the

Walk” (328), the bird becomes an emblem of the unyielding mystery of nature, while in “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” (254), the bird becomes a

Personification of hope. Elsewhere, Dickinson links birds to poets, whose job is to sing whether or not people hear. In “Split—the Lark—and you’ll find the Music” (861), Dickinson compares the sounds of birds to the lyrical sounds of poetry; the poem concludes by asking rhetorically whether its listeners now understand the truths produced by both birds and poetry. Like nature, symbolized by the bird, art produces soothing, truthful sounds.

ALL THE BEST A Bird, came down the Walk - (359)

BY EMIL Y DICKINSON

A Bird, came down the Walk - He did not know I saw - He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass - And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass -

He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad - They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. -

Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer Home -

Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.

Summary

“A Bird came down the Walk—...”

The speaker describes once seeing a bird come down the walk, unaware that it was being watched. The bird ate an angleworm, then “drank a Dew / From a convenient Grass—,” then hopped sideways to let a beetle pass by. The bird’s frightened, bead-like eyes glanced all around. Cautiously, the speaker offered him

“a Crumb,” but the bird “unrolled his feathers” and flew away—as though rowing in the water, but with a grace gentler than that with which “Oars divide the ocean” or butterflies leap “off Banks of Noon”; the bird appeared to swim without splashing.

Form Structurally, this poem is absolutely typical of Dickinson, using iambic trimeter with occasional four-syllable lines, following a loose ABCB rhyme scheme, and rhythmically breaking up the meter with long dashes. (In this poem, the dashes serve a relatively limited function, occurring only at the end of lines, and simply indicating slightly longer pauses at line breaks.

Commentary

Emily Dickinson’s life proves that it is not necessary to travel widely or lead a life full of Romantic grandeur and extreme drama in order to write great poetry; alone in her house at Amherst, Dickinson pondered her experience as fully, and felt it as acutely, as any poet who has ever lived. In this poem, the simple experience of watching a bird hop down a path allows her to exhibit her extraordinary poetic powers of observation and description.

Dickinson keenly depicts the bird as it eats a worm, pecks at the grass, hops by a beetle, and glances around fearfully. As a natural creature frightened by the speaker into flying away, the bird becomes an emblem for the quick, lively, ungraspable wild essence that distances nature from the human beings who desire to appropriate or tame it. But the most remarkable feature of this poem is the imagery of its final stanza, in which Dickinson provides one of the most breath-taking descriptions of flying in all of poetry. Simply by offering two quick comparisons of flight and by using aquatic motion (rowing and swimming), she evokes the delicacy and fluidity of moving through air. The image of butterflies leaping “off

Banks of Noon,” splashlessly swimming though the sky, is one of the most memorable in all Dickinson’s writing.

“After Apple-Picking”

C omplete Text

M y long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. 5

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass 10

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 15

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear. 20

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound 25

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 30

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap 35

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his 40

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

Summary After a long day’s work, the speaker is tired of apple picking. He has felt drowsy and dreamy since the morning when he looked through a sheet of ice lifted from the surface of a water trough. Now he feels tired, feels sleep coming on, but wonders whether it is a normal, end-of-the-day sleep or something deeper.

Form This is a rhyming poem that follows no preordained rhyme scheme. “After

Apple-Picking” is basically iambic, and mostly in pentameter, but line-length variants abound. Line 1, for example, is long by any standard. Line 32 is very short: one foot. The poem’s shorter lines of di-, tri-, and tetrameter serve to syncopate and sharpen the steady, potentially droning rhythm of pentameter. They keep the reader on her toes, awake, while the speaker drifts off into oblivion.

Commentary First, a comment on form. Throughout the poem, both rhyme and line-length are manipulated and varied with subtlety. The mystery of the rhymes—when will they come and how abruptly—keeps words and sounds active and hovering over several lines. We find the greatest separation between rhyming end-words at the poem’s conclusion. S leep comes seven lines after its partner, h eap, and in the interim, s leep has popped up three times in the middle of lines. Sleep is, in fact, all over the poem; the word appears six times. But the way it is delivered here, the last rhyme is masterful. H eap first rhymes internally with s leep, then again internally with sleep, and then again, and only pairs up with the end-word s leep in the poem’s last line. At this point, we’ve nearly forgotten h eap.Sleep seems to rhyme with itself, with its repetition, like a sleepy mantra or a sleep-inducing counting of sheep. The poem arrives at final s leep not through a wham-bang rhyming couplet but more

“sleepily.”

“There are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority.” This is Robert

Frost in 1946, in an essay for T he Atlantic Monthly. “After Apple-Picking” is about picking apples, but with its ladders pointing “[t]oward heaven still,” with its great weariness, and with its rumination on the harvest, the coming of winter, and inhuman sleep, the reader feels certain that the poem harbors some “ulteriority.”

“Final sleep” is certainly one interpretation of the “long sleep” that the poet contrasts with human sleep. The sleep of the woodchuck is the sleep of winter, and winter, in the metaphoric language of seasons, has strong associations with death. Hints of winter are abundant: The scent of apples is “the essence of winter sleep”; the water in the trough froze into a “pane of glass”; the grass is “hoary” (i.e., frosty, or Frosty). Yet is the impending death destructive or creative? The harvest of apples can be read as a harvest of any human effort—study, laying bricks, writing poetry, etc.—and this poem looks at the end of the harvest.

The sequence and tenses of the poem are a bit confusing and lead one to wonder what is dreamed, what is real, and where the sleep begins. It’s understandable that the speaker should be tired at the end of a day’s apple picking.

But the poem says that the speaker was well on his way to sleep before he dropped the sheet of ice, and this presumably occurred in the morning. The speaker has tried and failed to “rub the strangeness” from his sight. Is this a strangeness induced by exhaustion or indicative of the fact that he is dreaming already? Has he, in fact, been dreaming since he looked through the “pane of glass” and entered a through-the-looking-glass world of “magnified apples” and the “rumbling sound /

Of load on load of apples coming in”? Or is the sheet of ice simply a dizzying lens whose effect endures? If, in fact, the speaker was well on his way to sleep in the morning, does this lend a greater, more ominous weight to the long sleep “coming on” at the poem’s end?

Summary

“ After Apple-Picking”

Summary

“After Apple-Picking”

The overall tone of the poem might not support such a reading, however; nothing else about it is particularly ominous—and Frost can do ominous when he wants to. How we ultimately interpret the tone of the poem has much to do with how we interpret the harvest. Has it been a failure? Certainly there is a sense of incompleteness—”a barrel that I didn’t fill.” The speaker’s inner resources give out before the outer resources are entirely collected. On the other hand, the poet speaks only of “two or three apples” remaining, and these only “may” be left over. Do we detect satisfaction, then? The speaker has done all that was within his power; what’s left is the result of minor, inevitable human imperfection. Is this, then, a poem about the rare skill of knowing when to quit honorably? This interpretation seems reasonable.

Yet if the speaker maintains his honor, why will his sleep be troubled? There were “ten thousand thousand”—that is to say, countless—fruit to touch, and none could be fumbled or it was lost. Did the speaker fumble many? Did he leave more than he claims he did? Or are the troubled dreams a nightmare magnification and not a reflection of the real harvest? Lines 28-29 are important: “I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.” If there has been failure or too great a strain on the speaker, it is because the speaker has desired too great a harvest. He saw an impossible quantity of fruit as a possibility. Or he saw a merely incredible quantity of fruit as possibility and nearly achieved it (at the cost of physical and mental exhaustion).

When we read “After Apple-Picking” metaphorically, we may want to look at it as a poem about the effort of writing poetry. The cider-apple heap then makes a nice metaphor for saved and recycled bits of poetry, and the long sleep sounds like creative (permanent?) hibernation. This is one possible metaphoric substitution among many; it seems plausible enough (though nowise definitive or exclusive). However, our search for “ulteriority” may benefit from respecting, not replacing, the figure of the apples. Apple picking, in Western civilization, has its own built-in metaphorical and allegorical universe, and we should especially remember this when we read a poet whose work frequently revisits Eden and the

Fall (c.f. “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the

Same,” “It is Almost the Year Two Thousand,” “The Oven Bird”). When the poet speaks of “the great harvest I myself desired,” consider also what apples represent in Genesis: knowledge and some great, punishable claim to godliness—creation and understanding, perhaps. This sends us scurrying back to lines 1and 2, where the apple-picking ladder sticks through the tree “Toward heaven still.” What has this harvest been, then, with its infinite fruits too many for one person to touch? What happens when such apples strike the earth—are they really of no worth? And looked at in this new light, what does it mean to be “done with apple-picking now”?

All of these questions are enough to make one forswear metaphor and limit oneself to a strict diet of literalness. But that isn’t nearly as much fun.

Main Ideas

Themes

Main Ideas

Themes

Youth and the Loss of Innocence Youth appears prominently in Frost’s poetry, particularly in connection with innocence and its loss. A Boy’s Will deals with this T heme explicitly, tracing the development of a solitary youth as he explores and questions the world around him. Frost’s later work depicts youth as an idealized, edenic state full of possibility and opportunity. But as his poetic T one became increasingly jaded and didactic, he imagines youth as a time of unchecked freedom that is taken for granted and then lost. The theme of lost innocence becomes particularly poignant for Frost after the horrors of World War I and World War II, in which he witnessed the physical and psychic wounding of entire generations of young people. Later poems, including

“Birches” (1916), “Acquainted with the Night” (1928), and “Desert Places” (1936), explore the realities of aging and loss, contrasting adult experiences with the carefree pleasures of youth.

Self-Knowledge Through Nature Nature figures prominently in Frost’s poetry, and his poems usually include a moment of interaction or encounter between a human S peaker and a natural subject or phenomenon. These encounters culminate in profound realizations or revelations, which have significant consequences for the speakers. Actively engaging with nature—whether through manual labor or exploration—has a variety of results, including self-knowledge, deeper understanding of the human condition, and increased insight into the metaphysical world. Frost’s earlier work focuses on the act of discovery and demonstrates how being engaged with nature leads to growth and knowledge. For instance, a day of harvesting fruit leads to a new understanding of life’s final sleep, or death, in “After Apple-Picking” (1915).

Mid-career, however, Frost used encounters in nature to comment on the human condition. In his later works, experiencing nature provided access to the universal, the supernatural, and the divine, even as the poems themselves became increasingly focused on aging and mortality.

Throughout Frost’s work, speakers learn about themselves by exploring nature, but nature always stays indifferent to the human world. In other words, people learn from nature because nature allows people to gain knowledge about themselves and because nature requires people to reach for new insights, but nature itself does not provide answers. Frost believed in the capacity of humans to achieve feats of understanding in natural settings, but he also believed that nature was unconcerned with either human achievement or human misery. Indeed, in

Frost’s work, nature could be both generous and malicious. The speaker of

“Design” (1936), for example, wonders about the “design of darkness” (13) that has led a spider to kill a moth over the course of a night. While humans might learn about themselves through nature, nature and its ways remain mysterious.

Community vs. Isolation Frost marveled at the contrast between the human capacity to connect with one another and to experience feelings of profound isolation. In several Frost poems, solitary individuals wander through a natural setting and encounter another individual, an object, or an animal. These encounters stimulate moments of revelation in which the speaker realizes her or his connection to others or, conversely, the ways that she or he feels isolated from the community. Earlier poems feature speakers who actively choose solitude and isolation in order to learn more about themselves, but these speakers ultimately discover a firm connection to the world around them, as in “The Tufts of Flowers” (1915) and “Mending Wall”

(1915). Longer dramatic poems explore how people isolate themselves even within social contexts. Later poems return the focus to solitude, exploring how encounters and community only heighten loneliness and isolation. This deeply pessimistic, almost misanthropic perspective sneaks into the most cheerful of late Frost poems, including “Acquainted with the Night” and “Desert Places.”

Motifs

Manual Labor Labor functions as a tool for self-analysis and discovery in Frost’s poetry.

Work allows his speakers to understand themselves and the world around them.

Traditionally, pastoral and romantic poets emphasized a passive relationship with nature, wherein people would achieve understanding and knowledge by observing and meditating, not by directly interacting with the natural world. In contrast,

Frost’s speakers work, labor, and act—mending fences, as in “Mending Wall”; harvesting fruit, as in “After Apple-Picking”; or cutting hay, as in “Mowing”

(1915). Even children work, although the hard labor of the little boy in “Out,

Out—” (1920) leads to his death. The boy’s death implies that while work was necessary for adults, children should be exempted from difficult labor until they have attained the required maturity with which to handle both the physical and the mental stress that goes along with rural life. Frost implies that a connection with the earth and with one’s self can only be achieved by actively communing with the natural world through work.

New England Long considered the quintessential regional poet, Frost uses New England as a recurring setting throughout his work. Although he spent his early life in

California, Frost moved to the East Coast in his early teens and spent the majority of his adult life in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The region’s landscape, history, culture, and attitudes fill his poetry, and he emphasizes local color and natural elements of the forests, orchards, fields, and small towns. His speakers wander through dense woods and snowstorms, pick apples, and climb mountains.

North of Boston, the title of Frost’s second collection of poetry, firmly established him as the chronicler of small-town, rural life in New England. Frost found inspiration in his day-to-day experiences, basing “Mending Wall,” for instance, on a fence near his farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and “The Oven Bird” (1920) on birds indigenous to the nearby woods.

The Sound of Sense

Frost coined the phrase the s ound of sense to emphasize the P oetic Diction, or word choice, used throughout his work. According to letters he wrote in 1913 and

1914, the sound of sense should be positive, as well as proactive, and should resemble everyday speech. To achieve the sound of sense, Frost chose words for tone and sound, in addition to considering each word’s meaning. Many poems replicate content through rhyme, Met er, and A lliteration. For instance, “Mowing” captures the back-and-forth sound of a scythe swinging, while “Out, Out—” imitates the jerky, noisy roar of a buzz saw. Believing that poetry should be recited, rather than read, Frost not only paid attention to the sound of his poems but also went on speaking tours throughout the United States, where he would read, comment, and discuss his work. Storytelling has a long history in the United

States, particularly in New England, and Frost wanted to tap into this history to emphasize poetry as an oral art.

Main Ideas

Symbols

Main Ideas

Symbols

Trees Trees delineate borders in Frost’s poetry. They not only mark boundaries on earth, such as that between a pasture and a forest, but also boundaries between earth and heaven. In some poems, such as “After Apple-Picking” and “Birches,” trees are the link between earth, or humanity, and the sky, or the divine. Trees function as boundary spaces, where moments of connection or revelation become possible.

Humans can observe and think critically about humanity and the divine under the shade of these trees or standing nearby, inside the trees’ boundary space. Forests and edges of forests function similarly as boundary spaces, as in “Into My Own”

(1915) or “Desert Places.” Finally, trees acts as boundaries or borders between different areas or types of experiences. When Frost’s speakers and subjects are near the edge of a forest, wandering in a forest, or climbing a tree, they exist in liminal spaces, halfway between the earth and the sky, which allow the speakers to engage with nature and experience moments of revelation.

Birds and Birdsong In Frost’s poetry, birds represent nature, and their songs represent nature’s attitudes toward humanity. Birds provide a voice for the natural world to communicate with humans. But their songs communicate only nature’s indifference toward the human world, as in “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things” (1923) and “Never

Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same” (1942). Their beautiful melodies belie an absence of feeling for humanity and our situations. Nevertheless, as a part of nature, birds have a right to their song, even if it annoys or distresses human listeners. In “A Minor Bird” (1928), the speaker eventually realizes that all songs must continue to exist, whether those songs are found in nature, as with birds, or in culture, as with poems. Frost also uses birds and birdsong to symbolize poetry, and birds become a medium through which to comment on the efficacy of poetry as a tool of emotional expression, as in “The Oven Bird” (1920).

Solitary Travelers

Solitary travelers appear frequently in Frost’s poems, and their attitudes toward their journeys and their surroundings highlight poetic and historical themes, including the figure of the wanderer and the changing social landscape of New England in the twentieth century. As in R omanticism, a literary movement active in England from roughly 1750 to 1830, Frost’s poetry demonstrates great respect for the social outcast, or wanderer, who exists on the fringes of a community. Like the romanticized notion of the solitary traveler, the poet was also separated from the community, which allowed him to view social interactions, as well as the natural world, with a sense of wonder, fear, and admiration. Able to engage with his surroundings using fresh eyes, the solitary traveler simultaneously exists as a part of the landscape and as an observer of the landscape. Found in “Stopping By

Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923), “Into My Own,” “Acquainted with the

Night,” and “The Road Not Taken” (1920), among other poems, the solitary traveler demonstrates the historical and regional context of Frost’s poetry. In the early twentieth century, the development of transportation and industry created the social type of the wandering “tramp,” who lived a transient lifestyle, looking for work in a rapidly developing industrial society. Like Frost’s speakers and subjects, these people lived on the outskirts of the community, largely away from the warmth and complexity of human interaction.

"Come In" by Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is perhaps America's best loved poet. In popular perception he is the poet of the countryside and his poetry is indeed full of serene, bucolic imagery of strolls in woods, singing birds and majestic night skies. I too, long enjoyed Frost as a quintessential "nature" poet who evoked in me all the charm and beauty of the timeless New England landscape.

But that was until Joseph Brodsky opened my eyes to a completely different Frost, one who Brodsky quotes Lionel Trilling describe as a "terrifying poet". Joseph Brodsky was a Russian poet and essayist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. I have mentioned his collection of critical essays titled "On Grief and Reason" in a post before. The title essay is a discussion of two of Frost's well-known poems,"Come In" and "Home Burial". In this essay Brodsky persuasively shows Frost's remarkably dark vision and his contention that "nature for this poet is neither friend nor foe, nor is it the backdrop for human drama; it is this poet's terrifying self-portrait." I wish I could link to the entire essay as it is the best piece on Frost I have ever read but unfortunately it does not seem to be available on the web. I would encourage all those interested in Frost or poetry to find a printed copy of Brodsky's essay. It is well worth a read.

Here is the poem, "Come In", which appeared in the 1942 collection "A Witness Tree":

"Come In"

As I came to the edge of the woods,

Thrush music -- hark!

Now if it was dusk outside,

Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird

By sleight of wing

To better its perch for the night,

Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun

That had died in the west

Still lived for one song more

In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark

Thrush music went --

Almost like a call to come in

To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars;

I would not come in.

I meant not even if asked;

And I hadn't been.

And here are some fragments of commentary by Brodsky about this poem :

When a twentieth century poet starts a poem with finding himself at the edge of the woods there is a reasonable element of danger -or, at least a faint suggestion of it. The edge, in its very self, is sufficiently sharp.

In "Too dark in the woods for a bird," a bird, alias bard, scrutinizes "the woods" and finds them too dark. "Too" here echoes-no! harks back to - Dante's opening lines in T he Divine Comedy: o ur bird/bard's assessment of that selva differs from the great Italian's. To put it plainly, the afterlife is darker for Frost than it is for Dante. The question is why, and the answer is either because he disbelieves in the whole thing or because his notion of himself makes him, in his mind, slated for damnation.

Still, should you choose to read "Come In" as a nature poem, you are perfectly welcome to it. I suggest, though, that you take a longer look at the title. The twenty lines of the poem constitute, as it were, the title's translation. And in this translation, I am afraid, the expression "come in" means "die".

West Running Brook by Robert Frost: Summary and Critical Analysis West Running Brook is the poem by Robert Frost in dialogue form between a spouse, which also hints and develops a thematic tension about a subject that is philosophically significant. Many allegorical interpretations have been made about the basic idea about the only one brook running west when all the others flow towards the east.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

One of the most striking interpretations is an autobiographical one: Frost refused to belong to any poetic or any other kind of school, or "gang" as he called them. More generally, it is also about whether to follow traditional paths in life, in thought, or in anything. By running down to the west, the brook distinguishes itself from all other brooks, which run east to the ocean. The wife sees that contrariness as a symbol of the relationship with her husband. But the husband is much more thoughtful; the husband then indulges in a long discussion about existence. He sees that wave not simply as a symbol of their relationship, but as a symbol of existence. Man’s existence flows away like water, and yet is continually thrown back towards its sources. Man moves toward death, and yet in a contrary way resists death.

It is this contrariness which makes man stronger than death, and which enables him to endure. It was from this pure contrariness that man evolved. Finally, the man and his wife agree that they have had a joint insight into reality. By being contrary and asserting his independence, man like the brook becomes individual. The poem gains complexity by moving on two levels, the personal and the strictly philosophical. Contrariness is necessary in personal relationships. It is only when people are free to disagree that they can be truly close to one another. They represent the rational approach to life. The implication of the symbolic weight which he gives the wave is that contrariness is not only necessary to man. The most fully developed appreciation of the stream as an emblem occurs in "West-Running Brook". The white water is simultaneously with them, behind them, and beyond them. It becomes the stream of life itself. The poem also has certain implicit references about the white and black contrasts, the domination of the black by the white, which was at the time an issue behind the partition of the northern and southern states and the conflict between the Negro of the west and of the east. It may also be that the west-running brook is American originality that eschewed the European models in art and literature.

Similarly, the concluding lines of "West-Running Brook" underscore the love that makes the marriage meaningful. The husband and the wife in the poem are two different people, but they are united because their differences are blended harmoniously. What the poem ultimately reveals is that contrariness is necessary in personal relationships. It is only when people are free to disagree that they can be truly close to each other.

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is one of the most well-known

poems by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. The poem

appears in Stevens's widely influential debut collection,

Harmonium, which was published in 1923. The meaning of the

poem is notoriously ambiguous, but its two equal-length stanzas

present clear enough scenarios. An old woman has died, and in

the first stanza the speaker issues instructions to others for the

funeral or wake. In the second stanza, the speaker appears to be in

a quieter room with the woman's cold, dead body. Here, the

speaker seems to issue a mysterious plea for reality to be stripped

of illusory appearances. Readers have often interpreted the poem

as showing the ultimate triumph of life over the silence of death.

This isn't necessarily some heroic victory, but rather a wider point

about the nature of experience.

“The Emperor of Ice-Cream” Summary

Bring in the big strong man who makes cigars, and tell him to get to work making ice

cream from lusty curds of milk. Tell the women they can wear whatever they normally

wear, and tell the boys to bring flowers wrapped up in old newspaper. Let reality

triumph over illusion. There's only one real emperor: the emperor of ice cream. Inside a drawer of the pine dresser (which is missing three of its glass knobs) you'll find a bedsheet belonging to the dead woman, one which she herself stitched with elaborate patterns. Lay it over her body and make sure her face is covered. If her feet (with their bunions and toes like horns) stick out at the bottom, it's just to remind us that she's cold and dead. Fix the lamplight on her in full glare. There's only one real emperor—the emperor of ice cream.“The Emperor of Ice-Cream” Themes

Reality vs. Appearances

“The Emperor of Ice Cream” is one of Wallace Stevens’s most famous and most notoriously ambiguous poems. It’s hard to pin down the poem’s themes precisely—indeed, that’s probably deliberate on Stevens’s part—but the poem definitely presents a juxtaposition between the way things appear to be and the way things actually are. The mysterious speaker of the poem seems to construct an argument in favor of acknowledging reality—including the finality of death—over being deceived by illusory appearances.

The poem takes place at a wake or funeral, with preparations taking place in what appears to be someone's home. The first stanza is about making these ritualistic preparations for the ceremony, while the second stanza discusses how to handle the dead body (revealed to be that of an old woman). In both sections, the speaker fixates on the contrast between “being” and “seeming”—between reality and appearances.

For example, the speaker tells the “wenches” to put on the “dress […] they are used to wear.” The word “wenches” might refer female servants, prostitutes, or simply girls; in any case, these are implied to be working-class women whose typical “dress” wouldn't be fancy. Flowers, meanwhile, should be brought wrapped in “last month’s newspapers.”

These two instructions perhaps reflect the speaker’s wish to strip any illusory appearances from reality. That is, the women shouldn’t dress in a way that is somehow different, and the flowers similarly don’t require fancy ribbons or wrapping paper. In fact, the flowers’ covering might even be thought of as actually capturing reality, as the newspapers report actual events. The poem suggests that there’s no real benefit to dressing things up to seem better than they are—especially in the face of death (again, this all takes place at a wake or funeral of some sort).

This idea is strengthened by the last two lines of the first stanza: “Let be be finale of seem. / The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.” The first of these two lines addresses this theme head on: let “be” (how things actually are) “be" the "finale” (the ending) of “seem” (false appearances). In other words, let reality dispel the magic of illusions. Perhaps this relates to death, with the speaker expressing the way that death, as life’s only real certainty, strips away any world of appearances that people might construct for themselves during their earthly lives.

The repeated line about the “emperor of ice cream” also seems to strengthen this reading. An “emperor of ice-cream” is a kind of oxymoron: emperors are supposed to be mighty, powerful figures, meaning that being an emperor of ice-cream sounds like a kind of joke title. This might be similar to the fable of the emperor’s new clothes, suggesting that power is itself a kind of illusion (and therefore an appearance that needs to be replaced by r eality). The speaker’s instructions for the handling of the dead body also contribute to this implicit argument against illusory appearances. Though the speaker wants the body to be covered with “embroidered fantails” (a decorative sheet) as a kind of tribute to the woman, it doesn’t matter whether it fully covers her. If her feet poke out, then so be it; they are simply a reflection of the stark reality that this woman is “cold,” dead, and

“dumb.”

Accordingly, the “lamp” should “affix its beam”—it should cast an unflinching light on reality for all to see. And as if to underscore this point, the poem then repeats its key line: “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.” People shouldn’t put so much emphasis on appearances, the poem suggests, and should instead embrace the reality of life, death, and who they are.

Life, Death, and Sensuality

Though it’s not spelled out explicitly, “The Emperor of Ice Cream” appears to suggest that life is fleeting and, because of that, precious. The poem often focuses on life's sensuality—the experience and pleasure of the world as known through the senses, such as taste. It opposes that sensuality to the “cold” and numbness of death. In doing so, it gently nudges its readers to contemplate this opposition. That is, the poem seems to argue for the importance of living life to its fullest, because death is inevitable. Savoring joy and pleasure—eating that delicious “ice-cream”—is thus all that really matters.

The poem takes place at a wake (an obvious representation of death) but everything about the speaker’s instructions for the wake celebrates the sensuous pleasures of being alive. In particular, the poem’s focus on ice cream foregrounds the importance of sensory enjoyment. Indeed, the first instruction issued by the speaker is to fetch a strong cigar-maker—“the muscular one.” The mention of the man's muscles has sexual undertones, which is likewise supported by the presence of “wenches,” a sexually loaded and archaic term for women. In this way, then, the kitchen scene of the poem is subtly governed by the presence of sensual and sexual pleasure.

Yet this pleasure won't last forever. After all, cigars burn out, ice cream melts. Like sex, these suggest a fleeting, precious kind of enjoyment. Ironically, the dead body in the poem does the opposite of ice cream, easily becoming cold. Ice cream, then, is a complicated symbol. On one hand, it speaks to life's sensual pleasure. On the other hand, in linking with the "cold" dead body, it represents the knowledge of inevitable death, which creates the need to embrace sensuality in the first place.

The speaker’s other instructions also link sensuality with the vividness of life. The image of “flowers in last month’s newspapers” contrasts symbols of life's briefness and beauty—flowers—with the discarded waste of the past: newspapers. Again, this can be read as a subtle argument in favor of valuing life through the enjoyment of the senses.

In other words, it’s worth stopping to smell the flowers, since time inevitably marches forward and everything will eventually become old news.

This idea also applies to the use of the specific bedsheet for covering the body. The dead woman, when she was alive, once engaged in a kind of sensory pleasure: the embroidery of beautiful patterning (“fantails”). This embroidery was an aesthetic pursuit not necessary to the cloth itself. Mentioning the embroidery acknowledges the worth of this kind of human activity, which is motivated by beauty rather than just survival. Additionally, one of the most engaging aspects of the poem is its beautiful use of sound

patterning through consonance, assonance, and alliteration. This is established right

from the beginning, as the mysterious speaker begins the instructions for the servants.

The /l/ consonance in the first line, the /i/ assonance in lines 2-3, and many other

examples throughout the poem are in themselves sensuous events, pleasing to the

reader’s ear. These sounds help build a vivid picture of a scene alive with sensuality.

In this reading, then, the "emperor" of the poem’s title doesn't necessarily have anything

to do with power and authority in the usual sense. This isn't a real emperor, perhaps, but

a personification of the love of sensuous beauty and pleasure, of celebrating life in all its

fleeting glory. The speaker states emphatically that all other emperors pale in

comparison to the "emperor of ice cream." No amount of power, the poem suggests, can

compare to the power of one's own senses. ay through the line with trochees. Such a reading also emphasizes the word "is." Doing so harkens back to the speaker's injunction, "Let be be finale of seem." Placing a stress on this present-tense form of the verb "to be" once again captures the speaker's interest in living in the present.

However one interprets this final line, its surprising length and distinctive rhythm add to its cryptic tone, providing a satisfying ending to this striking poem.

Rhyme Scheme

There is no real rhyme scheme to speak of in "The Emperor of Ice Cream." The poem

does have some instances of rhyme, however. These occur in lines 7 and 8, 13 and 14,

and 15 and 16. As a result, each stanza ends with a rhyming couplet. Lines 13 and 14 use their rhyming pair—"come" and "dumb"—to show the silence of

the dead woman, her sheer deadness . Both words are soft-sounding, evoking the

quietness of the room in which her body lays at rest.

Meanwhile, lines 7, 8, 15 and 16 all use the same rhyme, with the /eem/ sound. These

rhymes give these particular statements extra weight and authority. This makes sense

given that these lines essentially offer the speaker's final thoughts and instructions for

each stanza. So lines 7 and 8 comment on the hustle and bustle of the first stanza's

kitchen scene, while lines 15 and 16 refer to the dead woman.

There's a logic to these four lines taken in isolation. Let "being," or reality, be the end of

"seem," or false appearances. Life and everyday sensation—"the emperor of

ice-cream"—is all there is. People should accept this, and acknowledge the reality of

death too: "Let the lamp affix its beam." The poem then reiterates its main point in the

last line (stated, of course, in the same elusive and mysterious terms). The rhyming

words link all of these lines together, creating a logical chain between them.

Additionally, by employing rhyme, especially words that rhyme with "ice-cream," the

speaker emphasizes the sumptuousness of language, creating a surface that readers can

take pleasure in, just as they should take pleasure in their immediate senses.

“The Emperor of Ice-Cream” Speaker

The question of the speaker is one of the most mysterious aspects of "The Emperor of

Ice-Cream." The poem has a very weird tone, but it's fairly easy to ascertain what is

going on (or appears to be going on). The speaker is helping with the preparations of a

funeral or wake, and appears to be an authority on what happens. Accordingly, the poem

pretty much consists of the speaker barking instructions at those around—with some more abstract instructions too (lines 7 and 15) that don't seem to really refer to any

particular people.

The speaker seems to be concerned with both the practical requirements of the occasion

and the philosophical implications of what's being witnessed. The speaker uses

imperative verbs throughout—"Call," "Let," "Bring" and so on—which indicate that the

speaker is, for one reason or another, in charge.

There's also something particularly Shakespearean about the speaker's tone. This could

almost be a soliloquy from one of Shakespeare's plays, which are often full of similar

uses of imperatives and unusual grammar—grammar that's almost gymnastic in the way

that it bends and plays with the sense of the sentences. Of course, the probable allusion

to Hamlet supports this theory too (see Poetic Devices)!

“The Emperor of Ice-Cream” Setting

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" never specifies its setting, but it appears to be some kind

of funeral or wake. In particular, the poem looks at the initial preparations for the

ceremony—with the speaker barking orders at others in an attempt to get the whole

thing organized.

The first scene is full of life and somewhat chaotic. It appears to be in the kitchen, a

kind of behind-the-scenes tour of the funeral preparations. Though some critics have

suggested that the presence of cigars and ice cream link the poem to Florida or Cuba, it's

impossible to say for sure (though Elizabeth Bishop herself suggested that ice cream

was common at funerals in Key West!).

The second scene appears to be in a different room, perhaps the dead woman's bedroom.

(It's worth remembering that one of the original meanings of "stanza" is "room.") This stanza is quieter and more contemplative, the hushed silence of the dead woman's room

contrasting with the hustle and bustle of the kitchen.

Literary and Historical Context of “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”

Literary Context

Wallace Stevens is one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century, whom literary critic

Harold Bloom called the "best and most representative" American writer of the era. He is

generally considered part of the Modernist tradition, though his output is so singular that it

doesn't really fit in with other Modernist figures like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

Instead, Stevens is often linked with Romantic writers like William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe

Shelley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although Stevens lived almost a century after these

writers, he shares many of their concerns, most particularly the belief that each individual's

imagination shapes their experience of the world. Like these writers, Stevens was interested in

using poetry not only to exercise his imagination, but also to think through his ideas. In this

lineage, Stevens also shares affinities with his contemporary Hart Crane, another Modernist

poet with Romantic leanings.

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream," one of Stevens's most famous and enduring poems, was

published in his debut collection Harmonium (1923). This collection was not an instant success,

but is nowadays considered one of the most important and widely influential of all

English-language poetry books published in the 20th century. Looking at that collection is

particularly informative for understanding how such a strangely bizarre and wonderful poem

could come to be. The imperative voice (the use of instructional verbs like "call" and "bid" etc.)

can be found in numerous poems in the collection. " A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" is

one other example among many. Elsewhere in the collection there are numerous allusions to Shakespeare (supporting the idea that the poem's titular line alludes to Hamlet), and mentions of embroidery and dresses. In its subtle contemplation of the meaning of life and death, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" also compares well with the perhaps equally famous " The Snowman ."

Many readers are understandably perplexed by this poem, so it's important to also know a little bit about Stevens's general philosophy about poetry. For Stevens, especially at this phase of his writing life, poetry wasn't really something that people had to "get" or "make sense of"—the experience of reading the poem mattered as much as the meaning of the poem. It's worth checking out Stevens's ars poetica (poem about the art of poetry), " Of Modern Poetry," for more of his philosophy.

Historical Context

One of the notable things about "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is that it doesn't really have much of an historical context. The poem was published in Stevens's 1923 collection, Harmonium , so in terms of major world events it falls between the two World Wars. But part of the power of

Stevens's poetry is that it doesn't really seem all that concerned with the context in which it was written—it prefers to construct a world of its own.

Stevens famously worked as insurance executive for most of his life, writing poetry by night.

He lived a quiet suburban life in Connecticut, apart from frequent trips to Florida, a state he greatly loved. The contemplative reveries of Stevens's poetry, and the way his poems seem to to have their own world, has often been linked to the fact that he was able to live a life of quiet prosperity, away from many of the tumultuous events of his time.

There are numerous theories about this particular poem's context. Some people believe that the poem is based on Stevens's experiences in Florida, where he often travelled for business. His fellow poet Elizabeth Bishop asserted that ice cream was a regular part of funerals in Key West,

Florida, but this is hard to verify. The presence of cigars in the poem also suggests a link with

Cuba F rom Litcharts

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“Anecdote of the Jar” Summary

This poem is famous for its sparseness. What happens? The action is summed up in the first line: "I placed a jar in Tennessee." The rest of the poem is concerned with what happens after the jar has been "placed." In the second stanza, the jar "made the slovenly wilderness surround" the hill the jar is on. In the second stanza, the jar causes the wilderness to "sprawl" and become "no longer wild." In the final stanza, the jar takes "dominion everywhere," and does not "give of bird or bush." Whatever the jar is doing, there is a clear progression from cause (placing the jar) to effect (taking dominion everywhere). The jar gets stronger as the poem progresses. In fact, it is "Like nothing else in Tennessee.”Subscribe Now

The action of the poem is inextricably bound up in what you think the "jar" might mean. There have been many interpretations of the poem, but if we limit ourselves to "summarizing" the action, then, in a basic way, the poem is about displacement and difference. The jar on the hill seems to displace nature, which is made to "surround the hill" and which (in comparison to the roundness of the jar) is "slovenly." In the second stanza, the wilderness is changed, "no longer wild," while the jar "was round upon the ground." Finally, the jar, "gray and bare," takes "dominion everywhere," its man-made roundness replacing nature.

Perhaps the most frequently anthologized of Stevens’s poems, “Anecdote of the Jar” reflects Stevens’s preoccupation with appearances or surfaces. “The world is measured by the eye,” he said in one of his many aphoristic comments, and this difficult poem plays with the issues of what the eye measures and how. The poem’s interpretation is far from agreed upon, as any identification of the jar (art? technology? any single point of reference?) tends to limit the poem unacceptably.

The poem’s twelve lines describe the placement of a jar—a mason jar, as one critic suggests? a vase?—on a hill in Tennessee; once placed, the jar reorders the landscape. “It made the slovenly wilderness/ Surround that hill.” The description suggests the distortions of the landscape in the curved sides of a plain glass jar. The new order is only that, a new order; it is not beauty. The jar takes over the scene: “It took dominion everywhere.” Yet it is “gray and bare.” The double negative in the last two lines causes confusion: “It did not give of bird or bush,/ Like nothing else in...

A Short Analysis of Wallace Stevens’s ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ By Dr Oliver Tearle

How can one even attempt to offer an analysis of ‘Anecdote of the Jar’, one of the most baffling and elusive short poems of the twentieth century? Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) wrote ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ in 1918 and it was published a year later; this apparently makes it in the public domain, so we have cited the poem below. What is the meaning of Stevens’s poem? Difficult poems call for at least a stab at trying to unpick their ambiguities and determine their meaning, and we think ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ no different. So let’s roll our sleeves up and attempt a little analysis of this – one of Wallace Stevens’s best-known poems.

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

To offer a summary of ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ is, on the face of it, not much help in analysing its meaning. What actually happens in the poem remains odd and baffling: the speaker tells us that he placed a jar on a hill in Tennessee, and the wilderness of the surrounding land seemed to grow up around the jar, until it was no longer wild. The jar is described as tall and impressive as it stands on the hill. The jar takes over everything, despite being grey and bare (and presumably empty). It does not seem to care for the nature around it, and is like nothing else in the whole of Tennessee.

What is this enigmatic little poem about? Let’s start with the title. This is presented to us as an ‘Anecdote of the Jar’: not an ode to a jar, or even a song (indeed, several critics of the poem, such as Helen Vendler and Pat Righelato, have interpreted ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ as a tacit response to Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ – a sort of American poet’s response to the European poetic tradition). An anecdote is light and amusing, often inconsequential. Should we not take this bizarre poem too seriously?

The poem contains a number of particularly inscrutable lines. The jar, we are told, ‘did not give of bird or bush’. Does this simply mean the jar did not care – being an inanimate object – for the living world of nature that surrounds it? Or that the jar brings nothing forward, contributes nothing to the natural world, unlike the bird and the bush? Should we keep in mind the proverb ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ here? Is this a poem about convenience?

We take nature, in the form of food, and process it, selling it on in jars – and of course America is the birthplace of consumer capitalism. A jar is, among other things, a symbol of this.

We might also interpret ‘Anecdote of the Jar’, more widely, as a poem about man’s conquest over nature. Note how the placing of the jar on top of the hill means that the wilderness – the natural world – has to grow around the jar, and that, in the end, nature loses its wildness. The jar seems to infect everything around it, and removes the very wildness that makes the natural world what it is.

The repetition of ‘round’ words – ‘round’, ‘Surround’, ‘around’, ‘round’, ‘ground’ – emphasise not only the round shape of the jar but also the difference between the manmade jar and the ‘wilderness’ of nature (and of America?) that surrounds it and ‘sprawl[s] around’ it.

There is, not can there probably ever be, one definitive reading or analysis of ‘Anecdote of the Jar’. It contains multitudes. How do you interpret Wallace Stevens’s poem? Continue to explore his work with our analysis of his famous poem, ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’. Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell: Summary and Critical Analysis

Skunk Hour is a confessional poem. In it, the poet reveals his personal secret confesses that he is living meaninglessly and suffering from the loss of faith, courage and even desire for life. The poem is dedicated to his friend and junior poetess Elizabeth Bishop, who also wrote poetry about the necessity of simple powers of the mind and spirit to live a meaningful and happy life.

Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

The title of the poem means “disgusting period”: the word ‘skunk’ denotes to a small and badly smelling rat like animal, but as an adjective (before the noun ‘hour’) it means ‘extremely hateful’; the word ‘hour’ must mean ‘period’, ‘time’ or ‘phase’. The title points to the disgusting phase of life that the poet was living when he had lost the courage, desire and purpose of living life. The first part of the poem is pessimistic: stanzas 1 to 6 express frustrations, doubt and failures. But the poem ends with a deep realization about why his life was becoming meaningless and painful: he sees a dirty small animal enjoying life, having the physical, mental and spiritual strength to live on. He realizes by looking at the simple skunk that he was not having the fertile mind, spirit and body to bring up the energies to live actively.

The poem can be divided into four main parts or stages of development of images. The first part presents an old woman in a lonely island trying to maintain her old ways by buying cultural antiques. But she fails. The second part begins with “the season is ill”, an expression of frustration. The speaker mentions how a “summer millionaire” has gone bankrupt and auctioned his yacht. Another businessman fails to attract customers by decorating his shop, and so he’d rather marry”. Besides, there is also a hint of violence: A red fox stain covers ‘Blue Hill’. The third part of the poem shows how the persona wanders in intense agony and spiritual crisis. He climbs a hill and finds the degraded modern condition. His spirit cries. His mind is not right. He echoes the sayings of Saint John, King Lear and Satan, all of which express emotional crisis. In the last two stanzas, we find the speaker looking at a skunk and its kittens fearlessly coming to a city street and eating garbage. The skunks’ passion or strong desire for life, their fertility and naturalness and their originality makes the speaker feel that he doesn’t have these powers and qualities of living a meaningful life. He learns a lesson, and a new life begins for him. This is the therapy for an ill soul, of modern man. He must be physically, mentally, psychologically and spiritually fertile, or creative. He must have the determination and spirit to live. He must fight and struggle against degradation and artificiality.

Each part is in two stanzas. The process seems to represent a journey back to health through art, imagination or creative experience. What couldn’t be healed by anything is revealed to the sufferer in a simple incident. The revelation or epiphany at the end is unbelievable. Modern life’s corrupting influences have led men to express frustration and despair: “I myself am hell”. Solitude, trivialization, psychic problem, drug, and moral corruption are the causes. Only the resolution (decision) to use the individual’s own potential will help, as in this poem.

The skunk serves as a symbol of fertility (creativity), the persistence of life, independence, naturalness and the like. Only the realization and use of these potentials for revitalization of the inner energy will rescue modern man from his suicidal frustration. The poem is creating a general symbol of the modern human condition. The language is simple, but suggestive, too. The poem is essentially obscure like the thought and express of a mental patient. But the observation of the shifting context helps us generalize about the development and meaning.

The theme of the poem is the loss and gain of spiritual powers by the poet, or his speaker, representing the modern American or modern man. The speaker was almost giving up life and extinguishing his powers due to self-disgust. His mind was getting more and more disordered. He was losing hope and faith. When he saw the others, he only generalized that all of them were railing to maintain their old values, and failing to live. But when he himself reached the climax of frustration and depression, he one day, fortunately, learn the right lesson by looking at a skunk that is still living with full zeal an active and meaningful life, in its original and natural way. Thus, we see that the theme of the poem is the quest of the speaker, his journey through failure to success. The speaker has moved from depression to the spiritual rebirth of his natural energies, from a decadent world to individual revitalization. That process is also suggested by the pattern of the poem that moves from a dying old human mother who is failing to maintain her values to a young animal mother which is able to live so fully and actively.

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Summary Thoreau recalls the several places where he nearly settled before selecting Walden Pond, all of them estates on a rather large scale. He quotes the Roman philosopher Cato’s warning that it is best to consider buying a farm very carefully before signing the papers. He had been interested in the nearby Hollowell farm, despite the many improvements that needed to be made there, but, before a deed could be drawn, the owner’s wife unexpectedly decided she wanted to keep the farm. Consequently, Thoreau gave up his claim on the property. Even though he had been prepared to farm a large tract, Thoreau realizes that this outcome may have been for the best. Forced to simplify his life, he concludes that it is best “as long as possible” to “live free and uncommitted.” Thoreau takes to the woods, dreaming of an existence free of obligations and full of leisure. He proudly announces that he resides far from the post office and all the constraining social relationships the mail system represents. Ironically, this renunciation of legal deeds provides him with true ownership, paraphrasing a poet to the effect that “I am monarch of all I survey.”

Thoreau’s delight in his new building project at Walden is more than merely the pride of a first- time homeowner; it is a grandly philosophic achievement in his mind, a symbol of his conquest of being. When Thoreau first moves into his dwelling on Independence Day, it gives him a proud sense of being a god on Olympus, even though the house still lacks a chimney and plastering. He claims that a paradise fit for gods is available everywhere, if one can perceive it: “Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where.” Taking an optimistic view, he declares that his poorly insulated walls give his interior the benefit of fresh air on summer nights. He justifies its lack of carved ornament by declaring that it is better to carve “the very atmosphere” one thinks and feels in, in an artistry of the soul. It is for him an almost immaterial, heavenly house, “as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers.” He prefers to reside here, sitting on his own humble wooden chair, than in some distant corner of the universe, “behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair.” He is free from time as well as from matter, announcing grandiosely that time is a river in which he goes fishing. He does not view himself as the slave of time; rather he makes it seem as though he is choosing to participate in the flow of time whenever and however he chooses, like a god living in eternity. He concludes on a sermonizing note, urging all of us to sludge through our existence until we hit rock bottom and can gauge truth on what he terms our “Realometer,” our means of measuring the reality of things Analysis The title of this chapter combines a practical topic of residence (“Where I Lived”) with what is probably the deepest philosophical topic of all, the meaning of life (“What I Lived For”). Thoreau thus reminds us again that he is neither practical do-it-yourself aficionado nor erudite philosopher, but a mixture of both at once, attending to matters of everyday existence and to questions of final meaning and purpose. This chapter pulls away from the bookkeeping lists and details about expenditures on nails and door hinges, and opens up onto the more transcendent vista of how it all matters, containing less how-to advice and much more philosophical meditation and grandiose universalizing assertion. It is here that we see the full influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Thoreau’s project. Emersonian self-reliance is not just a matter of supporting oneself financially (as many people believe) but a much loftier doctrine about the active role that every soul plays in its experience of reality. Reality for Emerson was not a set of objective facts in which we are plunked down, but rather an emanation of our minds and souls that create the world around ourselves every day. Thoreau’s building of a house on Walden Pond is, for him, a miniature re-enactment of God’s creation of the world. He describes its placement in the cosmos, in a region viewed by the astronomers, just as God created a world within the void of space. He says outright that he resides in his home as if on Mount Olympus, home of the gods. He claims a divine freedom from the flow of time, describing himself as fishing in its river. Thoreau’s point in all this divine talk is not to inflate his own personality to godlike heights but rather to insist on everyone’s divine ability to create a world. Our capacity to choose reality is evident in his metaphor of the “Realometer,” a spin-off of the Nilometer, a device used to measure the depth of the river Nile. Thoreau urges us to wade through the muck that constitutes our everyday lives until we come to a firm place “which we can call Reality, and say, This is.” The stamp of existence we give to our vision of reality—“This is”—evokes God’s simple language in the creation story of Genesis: “Let there be. . . .” And the mere fact that Thoreau imagines that one can choose to call one thing reality and another thing not provides the spiritual freedom that was central to Emerson’s Transcendentalist thought. When we create and claim this reality, all the other “news” of the world shrinks immediately to insignificance, as Thoreau illustrates in his mocking parody of newspapers reporting a cow run over by the Western Railway. He opines that the last important bit of news to come out of England was about the revolution of 1649, almost two centuries earlier. The only current events that matter to the transcendent mind are itself and its place in the cosmos. Summary One of the many delightful pursuits in which Thoreau is able to indulge, having renounced a big job and a big mortgage, is reading. He has grand claims for the benefits of reading, which he compares, following ancient Egyptian or Hindu philosophers, to “raising the veil from the statue of divinity.” Whether or not Thoreau is ironic in such monumental reflections about books is open to debate, but it is certain that reading is one of his chief pastimes in the solitude of the woods, especially after the main construction work is done. During the busy days of homebuilding, he says he kept Homer’s Iliad on his table throughout the summer, but only glanced at it now and then. But now that he has moved in not just to his handmade shack, but into the full ownership of reality described in the preceding chapter, reading has a new importance. Thoreau praises the ability to read the ancient classics in the original Greek and Latin, disdaining the translations offered by the “modern cheap” press. Indeed he goes so far as to assert that Homer has never yet been published in English—at least not in any way that does justice to Homer’s achievement. Thoreau emphasizes the work of reading, just as he stresses the work of farming and home-owning; he compares the great reader to an athlete who has subjected himself to long training and regular exercise. He gives an almost mystical importance to the printed word. The grandeur of oratory does not impress him as much as the achievements of a written book. He says it is no wonder that Alexander the Great carried a copy of the Iliad around with him on his military campaigns. Thoreau also urges us to read widely, gently mocking those who limit their reading to the Bible, and to read great things, not the popular entertainment books found in the library. Thoreau gradually extends his criticism of cheap reading to a criticism of the dominant culture of Concord, which deprives even the local gifted minds access to great thought. Despite the much- lauded progress of modern society in technology and transportation, he says real progress—that of the mind and soul—is being forgotten. He reproaches his townsmen for believing that the ancient Hebrews were the only people in the world to have had a Holy Scripture, ignoring the sacred writings of others, like the Hindus. Thoreau complains the townspeople spend more on any body ailment than they do on mental malnourishment; he calls out, like an angry prophet, for more public spending on education. He says, “New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all.” Thoreau implicitly blames the local class system for encouraging fine breeding in noblemen but neglecting the task of ennobling the broader population. He thus calls out for an aristocratic democracy: “[i]nstead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

Analysis

This chapter shows us how subtly Thoreau can segue from the personal to the public, and from observation to diatribe. He begins by simply stating that now that the work on his house has been finished, he has time to read the Homeric epic that has been sitting on his table untouched all summer. Reading here seems broached as a private pastime, an entertainment for the individual mind after the day’s work is done. But little by little he moves from the particular to the general, commenting not just on his ability to read Homer in the original but on the merits of all people being able to do so. This point leads him to a meditation on modern publishing and its stultification of the American audience, which in turn leads him to a bitter reflection on the parochialism of his compatriots who do not even know that the Hindus have a sacred writing like that of the Hebrews. By the end of the chapter, he has driven himself into a thunderous rage—as the large number of rhetorically powerful question marks and exclamation marks in the last paragraph suggest—over the American prejudice against education. He begins in the individual mode, referring to his copy of the Iliad and his leisure time. But by the end the reference has shifted to “we” rather than “I,” so that the word “us” is the last word of the chapter, appearing in the gloomy and despairing image of “the gulf of ignorance that surrounds us.” Thoreau begins the chapter as a quiet meditation about an evening’s reading pleasure but somehow ends it as a raging sermon about the state of the world.

It is in this chapter that Thoreau’s social background is most fully felt, especially the advantages of a Harvard education and a familiarity with the classics and with ancient languages. Earlier in the work, his words do not betray his origins; in discussing home construction or domestic economy, he is simply a fiery thinker and a practical man. But when he discourses on the necessity of reading Aeschylus in the original Greek, disdaining the contemporary translations offered by the “modern cheap and fertile press,” we feel that he is a member of the elite speaking to us. Although he calls out at the end of the chapter for “noble villages of men” in which education is spread broadly through the population instead of thinly over the aristocrats, we feel he must realize the impracticality of expecting woodcutters to read Aeschylus in Greek. This tension introduces the dark subject of Thoreau’s snobbism, which recurs later in his exchange with John Field and his family. Thoreau may sincerely appreciate the merits of poverty and values the lifestyle of common laborers, but his lofty words about the classics recall that in fact he is a Harvard-educated man slumming in the backwoods, and that his poverty is chosen rather than forced on him by circumstances.

Sounds and Solitude

Summary Sounds and Solitude

Summary: Sounds

As if dispelling the bookish air of the preceding chapter, Thoreau begins to praise a sharp alertness to existence and cautions against absorption in old epic poems. “Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?” he asks, making it clear that we should not be content with book- learning, but should look around and “see” things in our lives. But these things we are to “see” are not grand ideas; the sort of vision Thoreau has in mind is that of idle sitting on a doorstep in the warm sunlight, as he describes himself doing. He hears a sparrow chirp, and contemplates the sumac and some other plants.

Thoreau’s tranquility is interrupted by the “scream” of the Fitchburg Railroad, which passes near his home. His thoughts turn to commerce. While he lauds the active resourcefulness, even calling it “bravery,” of tradesmen, he fears that an excessive zeal for business will ruin the wit and thoughtfulness of the nation. On Sundays Thoreau hears the bells of churches. At night he often hears the owls, “midnight hags,” whose moans he interprets as “Oh-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!” He rejoices that owls exist, for they can do their “idiotic and maniacal hooting” for men, voicing the “unsatisfied thoughts which all have.” Thoreau notes that even without a rooster or any other kept animals, his home is full of the sounds of beasts. Nature is creeping up, he says, to his very windowsill.

XEvery Book on Your English Syllabus Summed Up in Quotes from The Great British Bake- Off…

Every Book on Your English Syllabus Summed Up in Quotes from The Great British Bake- Off…

Summary: Solitude

Thoreau describes a “delicious evening” in which he feels at one with nature, “a part of herself.” It is cool and windy, but nevertheless the bullfrogs and night animals give it a special charm. When he returns to his home, he finds that visitors have passed by and left small gifts and tokens. Thoreau remarks that even though his closest neighbor is only a mile away, he may as well be in Asia or Africa, so great is his feeling of solitude. Paradoxically, he is not alone in his solitude, since he is “suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature . . . as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant.” It is not that he is giving up society, but rather that he is exchanging the “insignificant” society of humans for the superior society of nature. He explains that loneliness can occur even amid companions if one’s heart is not open to them. Thoreau meditates on the deep pleasure he feels in escaping the gossips of the town. Instead of their poisonous company, he has the company of an old settler who lives nearby and tells him mystical stories of “old time and new eternity,” and the company of an old woman whose “memory runs back farther than mythology.” It is unclear whether these companions are real or imaginary. Thoreau again praises the benefits of nature and of his deep communion with it. He maintains that the only medicine he needs in life is a draught of morning air.

Analysis

While the preceding chapter on reading emphasizes the connections between the individual and society (if not the inferior society of Concord, then the grand society of great past authors), these two chapters focus on the individual by himself. Yet, paradoxically, this removal from society does not mean that Thoreau is alone, for he continually asserts that nature offers better society than humans do. What Thoreau means by “solitude,” we discover, is not loneliness or isolation, but rather self-communion and introspection. It has little to do with the physical proximity of others, since he says that a man can be lonely when surrounded by others if he does not feel real companionship with them.

Solitude is thus more a state of mind than an actual physical circumstance, and for Thoreau it approaches a mystical state. Solitude means that he is on his own spiritually, confronting the full array of nature’s bounty without any intermediaries. The importance of worldly affairs, even the ones that occupy him in the first chapters, fades. Far less activity, whether physical or mental, occupies these chapters, than had occupied earlier ones. Thoreau is emptying his life of busy work in order to confront the reality of the cosmos. There are no more messages from great minds to decipher; Thoreau here does not listen to another’s words or heed another’s authority, but rather perceives empty sounds like the hooting of owls, the scream of the Fitchburg train, and the bells of the local church. These sounds are different from the words of Aeschylus and Homer mentioned in the last chapter not only because they are audible rather than silent, but also because they have no wisdom or message to convey. The wail of the train does not signify anything; it merely wails. The sparrow chirps, but there is no clue as to what, if anything, it wishes to communicate.

Unlike the earlier vision of an existence full of ideas and meanings, these chapters offer a vision of a universe strangely absurd, a “tale told by an idiot,” to echo Macbeth, as Thoreau is consciously doing. Thoreau describes the owls’ hooting as “idiotic and maniacal,” and he compares the nocturnal birds to “midnight hags,” referring directly to Macbeth’s description of the three witches as “secret black and midnight hags” (IV, i, 63). And just as the witches express Macbeth’s deep unconscious desire for kingship, so too is Thoreau grateful to the owls for voicing the “unsatisfied thoughts” that men cannot express consciously. Macbeth’s vision of a chaotic and violent universe may seem to have little to do with Thoreau’s tranquil mood in these chapters. But his emphatic allusions to Shakespeare’s play suggest that the basic idea of the mysterious and inscrutable universe is the same in both, as well as the idea that the individual human mind is the source of meaning in it, for good or for bad. Thus Thoreau praises the idea of being a “seer,” just as Macbeth is a visionary hero who sees himself king of Scotland and sees an imaginary dagger before his eyes. Macbeth creates a mental vision of horror that becomes reality for him; Thoreau is also creating a vision of himself similarly powerful and independent, but without succumbing to the voices of the hags.

Summary Thoreau states that he likes companionship as much as anyone else, and keeps three chairs ready for visitors. But he is aware of the limitations of his small house, aware that “individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries.” Thus he often moves the conversation to the pine forest outside his door. As a host he is not conventional. He is not concerned with offering savory delicacies to his guests, and if there is not enough food to go around, he and his guests go without. Caring more about providing his visitors spiritual, rather than material, sustenance, Thoreau proudly comments that he could nourish a thousand as easily as twenty. If they go away hungry afterward, he says, at least they have his sympathy.

Yet despite such discomforts, Thoreau’s guests keep coming. Indeed he says he has more visitors than he used to have when living in town. And the overall quality of his socializing has improved as well. Because of his relative isolation, those visitors whom Thoreau does receive are rarely on trivial errands, so that the less interesting ones are “winnowed,” as he puts it, from the better ones. They make the considerable journey from town only if they are deeply committed to seeing him. He also meets an interesting collection of vagabonds and wayfarers. Thoreau often finds admirable qualities in these rude characters, and sees them as agreeable, deferential visitors. In contrast, Thoreau disdains beggars, remarking that “objects of charity are not guests.” He entertains children on berry-picking expeditions. As an ardent abolitionist, he is also inclined to help runaway slaves on the Underground Railway, though he does not boast about it.

Thoreau also receives visits from those living or working nearby. Among them he gives special attention to a French Canadian-born woodsman of happy and unpretentious ways, identified by scholars as a certain Alex Therien. Unlike Thoreau, Therien cannot read or write. Thoreau describes him as living an “animal life,” and admires his physical endurance and his ability to amuse himself. Thoreau notes that Therien was never educated to the level of “consciousness,” but that on occasion he reveals a wisdom all his own. Reluctant to expound his ideas and unable to write them down, Therien is humble and modest. Still, Therien reveals at times “a certain positive originality, however slight,” suggesting to Thoreau that perhaps “there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life.” He compares Therien to Walden Pond itself, saying that Therien’s mind is as deep as Walden is “bottomless,” though it may appear “dark and muddy.”

Thoreau notes that women and children appear to enjoy the woods more than men. He says men of business, and even farmers, tend to focus not on the pleasures of rural life, but on its limitations, such as the distance from town. Even when they claim to like walks in the forest, Thoreau can see that they do not. Their lives are all taken up, he says, with “getting a living,” and they do not have the time to live.

Analysis The visitors mentioned in this chapter’s title do not interfere with the preceding “Solitude,” because Thoreau’s ideal guests do not interrupt one’s self-communion but merely broaden it. Concerned that socializing not limit one’s personal space or elbowroom, he describes how his guests push their chairs as far away from each as possible, as far as the walls of his house allow. When this area is not sufficient, they take the chat outdoors. Thoreau refers to a conversation as if it were a physical thing, like a football game, requiring a large playing field; he describes “the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest” when conversation turns philosophical. But, of course, Thoreau is speaking metaphorically here, and the space required for a good talk is mental rather than physical. More than a practical issue of space management, it is a philosophical statement about every human’s need for freedom to stretch his or her soul. It is even a political statement as well, since Thoreau says that nations are the same way, perhaps alluding to the American pioneers’ westward expansion. When he recommends an outdoor conversation in the pine trees, Thoreau argues that a good conversation could expand to fill the whole forest or perhaps the whole universe.

Thoreau’s characterization of his various guests shows us a lot about his social and moral views as well. We find out his opposition to slavery when he mentions, almost in passing, that he occasionally aids fugitive slaves. That he does not boast about this shows his humility. We see that Thoreau has a well-developed sense of hospitality toward strangers, irrespective of class or occupation; he welcomes wayfarers of all sorts. He is no snob in his admission of visitors, at a time when the game of calling cards and the ranking of guests was a standard part of civilized life. But his treatment of beggars is a bit surprising. When he declares that “objects of charity are not our guests,” he obviously means that no equality is possible between a beggar and a homeowner, but he also seems uncomfortably close to saying that the desperately poor do not deserve the same respect as better-off travelers. Thoreau does have some prejudices. His attitude toward the Canadian-born woodcutter Alex Therien also reveals a somewhat unjust discrimination against the uneducated, even as he appears to appreciate the man. At first Thoreau praises Therien as a Homeric figure, larger than life, possessing noble instincts and a generous heart. He appreciates that Therien loves his work and displays good humor at every turn. He even says that Therien displays a kind of unformed natural genius. But then Thoreau suddenly demotes Therien from epic hero to animal. Of course, Thoreau loves animals, and his remark is not meant as an insult. But his assessment that Therien is “too immersed in his animal life” indicates that Thoreau is unable or unwilling to treat him as an equal. We imagine Thoreau saying to himself that, being educated, he deserves to have poets and philosophers as his guests, and the bestiality of Therien—no matter how much of a genius he is in his animal state— somehow makes him an inappropriate companion. Thoreau may go off to live in nature, but he cannot bring himself to call a natural man his equal.

Summary

The Bean-Field Summary The Bean-Field

Summary Thoreau plants two and a half acres of beans, along with smaller amounts of potatoes, turnips, and peas, and farms them throughout the summer months. Working barefoot, he lays out his plot, pausing at times to observe the wildlife around him. He hoes his beans each day and settles into the daily routine of the farm worker. The rains that come help his crops, but the woodchucks destroy a significant portion of them. Thoreau, anticipating that the soil of his bean plot will be rich, discovers that “an extinct nation had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for this very crop.” Thoreau finds evidence of this previous occupation everywhere, excavating arrowheads, shards of pottery, and other artifacts among the “ashes of unchronicled nations” while digging.

Thoreau often leans on his hoe and enjoys the “inexhaustible entertainment” of his environment, the sights and sounds of nature. But he also hears military exercises echoing from the nearby town, resounding across the bean-field. Thoreau says he finds himself reassured on such days, confident that his liberties would be defended in the event of a conflict. Thoreau says that, on hearing the gunfire, “I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish … and looked around for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon.” In his rural enclave, however, he feels distant from the necessity of war.

In all, Thoreau spends just under fifteen dollars on his crops, earning almost twenty-four dollars and making a profit of almost nine dollars. No great eater of beans himself, he barters most of his crop for rice, keeping the turnips and peas for his own sustenance. In providing advice on husbandry, Thoreau recommends fresh soil, vigilance against pests, and an early harvest that beats the first frost. But despite the profit he makes, Thoreau states that his purpose in cultivating crops is not so much to earn money but to develop self-discipline. He says that it is the cultivation of the farmer, and not the crop, that makes husbandry a worthwhile pursuit. Thoreau marvels that people care so intently about the success of their farms and so little about the state of the “crop” of men.

Thoreau reflects that nature does not care whether the year’s crop succeeds or fails, as the sun shines on plowed and fallow ground alike. Thoreau maintains that part of any crop is meant as a sacrifice to the woodchuck. Although the field infested with weeds is a curse to the hungry farmer, Thoreau says it is a blessing to the hungry bird. In such a world, Thoreau concludes, the farmer should not feel anxious, but should simply accept the blessings that nature bestows upon him.

Analysis The mythical side of Thoreau’s Walden venture is clearly evident in the imagery he borrows from classical mythology to describe his bean cultivation. Downplaying or even ignoring the pragmatic aspect of farming or its actual results (the harvest), Thoreau makes agriculture into a symbolic and transcendent activity. It has a “constant and imperishable moral,” as if it were an exercise in morality rather than a pursuit of material sustenance. He remarks that manual labor “to the scholar yields a classic result,” dubbing himself an industrious farmer, or agricola laboriosus, in Latin. We feel that Thoreau is more interested in the classical role he is playing than in the actual beans he will one day reap. Similarly, when Thoreau refers to his hard work in hoeing the fields, he compares himself to the Greek mythological figure of a North African giant who wrestled with Hercules. He remarks that “[m]y beans … attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus,” emphasizing the sheer vitality rather than the material productivity of his endeavors. Thoreau compares farming to art as well, repeatedly referring to the music produced by his hoe as it strikes the earth rather than to the agricultural benefits of hoeing. He states that “my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches,” a French folk song, with the beans as his audience. Similarly, he describes himself as “dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand.” The point of all these references to myth and art is that they emphasize the impracticality of Thoreau’s agricultural efforts and by extension his whole stay at Walden Pond. The Bean-Field Summary The Bean-Field

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The religious symbolism of his farming is equally apparent. Unlike the typical subsistence farmer, who would clearly understand the end result of his work, Thoreau claims not even to know the point or final goal of all his labor. He asks, “Why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows.” In acknowledging that God alone knows why he is engaged in bean cultivation, Thoreau is ignoring the material side of farming and transforming it into an almost biblical parable about the mysteries of human endeavor on earth: we cannot claim to know why we live, for only God knows. Like the Book of Ecclesiastes, which says that for every human life there is a time to reap and a time to sow, the emphasis here is on the mystical and symbolic process of agriculture rather than on the market value of its saleable products. Thus the careful calculations found in the first chapter, “Economy,” and later in this chapter (reporting that a hoe costs fifty-four cents), seem less important when he says he does not even know why he is farming: calculations do not matter when the end result is not important. In fact he claims that in the future he will not sow beans at all but will rather practice an agriculture of morals, sowing “such seeds … as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like.” In short, although Thoreau’s mythical bean-field allusions majestically enhance the spiritual and philosophical side of his Walden project and of the work we are reading, it also undermines Thoreau’s frequent attempts to portray his ideas as the simple and practical-minded thoughts of any common field worker close to nature. Inspirational and thought-provoking as his literary work is, it is certainly not the product of the mind of an ordinary New England small farmer.

Thoreau’s discovery that his bean-fields are on the site of ancient Native American plots gives an interesting, multicultural touch to this chapter, which is full of Greek, Roman, and biblical allusions from Western culture. But he does not claim that the land belongs to the original inhabitants any more than it belongs to the invading westerners. The soil he cultivates is full of Native American artifacts, but they mingle with “bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators.” The land, in other words, is a mixed bag of traces of different cultures, a mosaic of different origins. He thus shows little interest in claiming it belongs purely and singly to any culture, native or European. This apathy implies a non-possessive attitude. Unlike many American settlers who claimed an absolute right to their conquered homesteads, Thoreau views himself as an interloper in territories that are not his own: “I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens.” He is not quite apologizing for intruding upon alien lands, but is at least registering that he is disturbing the spirits (or at least the remains) of others who came before him. Since many early Americans believed that white people brought culture to a virgin land, Thoreau shows a forward-thinking fairness in acknowledging that he is only one in a long line of people who have lived on this land since “primeval years.” His focus is on living in harmony with the land rather than on asserting some idea of cultural ownership over it.

Summary: The Village Around noon, after his morning chores are finished, Thoreau takes a second bath in the pond and prepares to spend the rest of his day at leisure. Several times a week he hikes into Concord, where he gathers the latest gossip and meets with townsmen at the main centers of activity, the grocery, the bar, the post office, and the bank. Stores of all kinds try to seduce him with their advertised wares, but Thoreau has no interest in consumer splurges, and makes his way back home without lingering too long in the marketplace. He often makes his way back to Walden Pond in the dark, which is challenging. But with practice he grows accustomed to the way, feeling his path out by the neighboring trees or the rut of the path below. Other people, he notes, are not as adapted to nighttime walking. Even in the village itself, he says, many lose their way in the darkness, sometimes wandering for hours. Thoreau does not consider such dislocation to be a bad thing. Through being lost, he says, one truly comes to understand oneself and “the infinite extent of our relations.”

On one of his journeys into Concord, Thoreau is detained, arrested, and jailed for his refusal to pay a poll tax to “the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house.” After a night in jail he is released, and returns to Walden Pond, remarkably unexcited about his incarceration. Thoreau calmly muses about how, except for governmental intrusion, he lives without fear of being disturbed by anyone. He does not find it necessary to lock up his own possessions and always welcomes visitors of all classes. He says that theft exists only in communities where “some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”

Summary: The Ponds

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate between When Thoreau has enough of town life, he spends his leisure time in the country. At times Thoreau takes a boat on the pond and plays his flute, and he goes fishing at midnight as well, drifting between waking and dreaming until he snaps awake when he feels a tug on his line. This fishing vignette allows Thoreau to segue into an extended meditation on the local Concord ponds, especially Walden.

Although Walden Pond itself is not particularly grand, Thoreau says, it is remarkably deep and pure. Depending on the point of view and the time of day, the water of the pond may appear blue, green, or totally transparent. It makes the body of the bather appear pure white, rather than yellowish as the river water does. Thoreau reports that Walden Pond is said by some to be bottomless. White stones surround the shore, allowing Thoreau to venture a wry etymology of its name (“walled-in”), and hills rise beyond. Other ponds, such as Flints’, have their distinctive qualities, and Thoreau’s emphasis is on their uniqueness rather than their generic similarities.

In exploring the outlying areas, Thoreau notes the well-worn paths of previous generations now long gone. He comments on the unpredictable fluctuations in the depth of the pond, and speculates on some possible origins of the name Walden. Thoreau muses about how his fellow townsmen think the pond resulted from the sinking of a hill into the earth as punishment for Native American wrongdoing that took place there. He says that his “ancient settler” friend, referred to earlier in the work, claims to have dug the pond. Thoreau says that he does not object to these stories. He notices that the surrounding hills contain the same kind of stones that surround Walden’s walled-in shores. Animals found at the pond, including ducks, frogs, muskrats, minks, and turtles, all make an appearance in Thoreau’s account. Growing more mystical by the end of the chapter, Thoreau focuses on the serenity and peacefulness of the ponds in a way that suggests a higher meaning. He says that they are beyond human description or knowledge, and are “much more beautiful than our lives.”

Analysis: The Village and The Ponds On Walden Pond Thoreau is no misanthrope, but indulges quite freely in his taste for social interaction, as his interactions with the village indicate. He heads off to the village every day not for the practical purpose of gathering supplies, but simply “to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there,” which he finds “as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.” This statement is revealing, showing that Thoreau neither dismisses nor overvalues human society, neither rejecting it totally nor finding anything more important than gossip in it. Instead, he places it on the same level as frogs and leaves, without much meaning but pleasant in its own limited way. When compared to nature, society seems nice and harmless. Thoreau makes himself a kind of naturalist of social life, perceiving humans as creatures in their native habitat. Men on the main street appear to him “as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow.” His remark that ordinary villagers strike him as “curious” echoes similar remarks that the townspeople make elsewhere about Thoreau himself: that he is a freak for wanting to live so far from town. Thoreau is showing that social existence also has its own peculiar strangeness and that being isolated on Walden Pond is no more bizarre than living like a prairie dog in town.

The Village and The Ponds Summary The Village and The Ponds

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Yet social life for Thoreau is not always so peaceful and harmless. If the visitor loses his natural good sense within the village, and is seduced by its illusory appeals, it becomes a risky place to be. As Thoreau’s description of the village’s layout proceeds, it uses more and more words of aggression, onslaught, and danger. Every traveler has to “run the gauntlet,” he says, when exploring the place. The houses are arranged as if in a battle-line, so that the villagers “might get a lick at” the visitor before he can “escape.” Advertising signs “catch him.” In portraying the dangers of village life, Thoreau is indirectly mocking the villagers’ beliefs that it is nature that is hostile and threatening. Thoreau says that he has never been “distressed in any weather” out in the open, unlike the distraught townspeople who lose their way at night and stray far from the well-trod streets of the village. For Thoreau, being lost in this way is neither dangerous nor inadvisable. Being disoriented with regard to society—losing the path to the village—is far less serious, implies Thoreau, than being disoriented with regard to our own selves. It is better to find oneself and risk one’s social standing, if need be, just as Thoreau himself does when as a conscientious objector he is jailed for nonpayment of a tax. In commenting on this point, he ironically reverses the idea that he is a wild rebel, saying instead that it is society that has “run amok” of him. His casual tone in reporting the jail incident (“One afternoon . . .” he begins coolly, as if relating another squirrel sighting or fishing trip) illustrates how unimportant it is in his life, which has generally been successful in “escap[ing]” not just jail but all social constraints.

Thoreau’s description of Walden Pond in the beautiful “Ponds” chapter hints at a symbolic significance to this mysterious, deep, and pure body of water. Blue or green when seen from different angles, yet “as colorless as an equal quantity of air” when a glass of it is held up to the light, Walden Pond is profoundly indefinable. Thoreau mentions that some people “think it is bottomless,” or infinitely deep. Other waters make the human bather appear yellowish, but Walden gives the human body an alabaster whiteness, like a figure by Michelangelo. Since Michelangelo was a religious artist, and white a Christian symbol of purity, Walden’s infinity and mystery makes it seem divine. Indeed, water, in Christianity, through the sacrament of baptism, is a powerful symbol of a higher life in Christ. Thoreau is never an explicitly Christian writer, but subtly Walden Pond seems to perform some of the functions traditionally performed by the church. Its fascinating “glassy surface” reflects heaven, “a perfect forest mirror” of the sky above. It seems a little bit of heaven on earth, and the chapter’s last line suggests that it is better than heaven, because it can be found on earth: “Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.” The living human has access to and may choose to live near the earthly pond, as Thoreau does. In a sense the pond may represent the natural soul of humankind, a bit of heaven we can discover within us, “walled-in” within our external social selves, just as Walden is walled in by its stones

Baker Farm and Higher Laws Summary Baker Farm and Higher Laws

Summary: Baker Farm Thoreau sometimes roams beyond Walden Pond and Flints’ Pond to outlying groves and woods, surveying the land. One day, caught in a rainstorm on a fishing trip, Thoreau takes cover in a hut near Baker Farm that he imagines to be deserted. But inside he finds John Field and his family, poor Irish immigrants. A conversation ensues, although it is more a lecture by Thoreau to Field on how he should live his life, telling Field that if he reevaluates his priorities and economizes, he can pull himself out of poverty. Thoreau says that the wild state of nature is best and that “the only true America” is that place where one can do without luxuries such as tea, coffee, butter, and beef. Thoreau insists that he speaks to Field as a fellow philosopher, but Field is not overly receptive to Thoreau’s points. Thoreau concludes that the Irishman is not interested in taking risks, and lacks the “arithmetic” to see the wisdom of Thoreau’s financial management advice. He leaves the Field home with no mention of having shared a moment of warmth or humor with the family. Moreover, Thoreau makes the unfair speculation that Field suffers from “inherited Irish poverty.” Before departing, Thoreau notes that even the well is dirty, its rope broken, and its bucket “irrecoverable.” Yet, having asked for a drink of water, Thoreau says he does not refuse the dirty “gruel” that “sustains life here.” Thoreau proclaims, “I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned.”

Summary: Higher Laws On the walk home, Thoreau passes a woodchuck, and is seized with a primitive desire to devour it. He notices his own dual nature, part noble and spiritual, part dark and savage, and declares that he values both sides of himself. Thoreau believes in the importance of the hunt as an early stage in a person’s education and upbringing, noting that intellectual and spiritual individuals then move on to higher callings, leaving “the gun and fish-pole behind.”

Although he is a skilled fisherman, Thoreau confesses his reluctance for the practice in recent days, borne of a sense that the fish is neither fully nourishing nor fully clean. His impulse toward vegetarianism, however, is based on his instincts and his principles rather than on any actual experience of poor health. Thoreau also avoids the consumption of alcohol, tea, and coffee on the same grounds. To him the simplest fare is the best, and the consumption of animal flesh is a moral debasement that far fewer would indulge in if they had to slaughter beasts themselves. Thoreau feels strongly that the minister should not partake of the hunt, and he himself finds grains and vegetables both more filling and less difficult to prepare. Thoreau says that one should delight in one’s appetite, rather than obey it dutifully. Yet, while there is much to be gained from savoring a meal, taste should not be taken to the point of indulgence. Thus there is water to quench thirst, rather than wine. This simplicity of taste marks his other pleasures as well: Thoreau prefers a breath of fresh air to the strains of a musical composition. Thoreau aspires to distinguish his higher nature from his more animalistic tendencies. It is never a fully successful effort, yet even in failure he says it is a pursuit that yields considerable rewards. As the animal nature fades, one approaches divinity. Thoreau says we have a choice: we may strive to be either chaste or sensual, either pure or impure. In the end, Thoreau says, it is up to each individual to care for his or her body and his or her soul, saying that “[e]very man is the builder of a temple.” The proof of that care will be evident in the face and in the features, he says, which will acquire the visage of nobility when one engages in right thought and action and the visage of degradation when one engages in wrong thought and action. To conclude, Thoreau invokes the figure of John Farmer, an allegorical representation of the common man who hears the music of higher spheres, questions his life of hopeless toil, and decides to live his life with a “new austerity.” Farmer “redeem[s]” himself by letting his “mind descend into his body,” and becomes able to “treat himself with ever increasing respect.”

Analysis: Baker Farm and Higher Laws Most of the material in these two sections, and afterward, was added after Thoreau left Walden. In general, these sections were not begun in earnest until 1851, and Thoreau did not impose chapter divisions until 1853, more than five years after he abandoned his cabin in the woods. As a result, much of the writing that appears in the latter portion of Walden does not feel as closely related to his self-reliance project as the earlier chapters do, though they still remain connected by themes and ideas. The Baker Farm episode raises questions that are central to the earlier part of the work, giving us the opportunity to see what happens when Thoreau applies his ideas about domestic economy onto the lives of others. Thoreau demonstrates a strange lack of generosity on his part when considering John Field and his family. He describes Mrs. Field’s “round greasy face and bare breast,” representing her as an ineffectual housekeeper “with the never absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere.” Here, in a single breath, he is calling a woman who offers him shelter unwashed, unkempt, and unproductive—and with no apparent remorse. In a similarly ungenerous manner, he describes the Field baby as “wrinkled” and “cone-headed.” And when this baby naturally regards Thoreau with the self-confidence of infancy, Thoreau sees not its sweet innocence, but rather its self-delusion in behaving as though it were “the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world” instead of an ugly and malnourished creature. John Field himself is described as honest and hard working, but “shiftless,” a poor money manager. This verdict, which is quite damning given Thoreau’s insistence on keeping one’s accounts simple and healthy, may explain the mild animosity he shows the family (perhaps without realizing it): the Fields are the negative examples of economy, while he is the positive example of it. That he himself once contemplated living on Baker Farm, as he tells us, and that he too is living in the backwoods on a subsistence level suggests that he sees the Fields as his counterparts. But the difference between him and the Fields is what matters most to Thoreau: they do not share his enlightened philosophy of self-reliance, and so they fail where he has succeeded.

Baker Farm and Higher Laws Summary Baker Farm and Higher Laws Thoreau seems remarkably unfriendly in what he tells us of his interaction with this poor family. He does not chat with the Fields, but launches immediately into a lecture about how Thoreau’s shanty cost as much to buy outright as the Fields spend annually on rent, and about how cutting down on coffee and meat would save them money. We can imagine the annoyance of such a guest appearing unannounced in one’s home, handing out advice unsolicited. Furthermore, he leaves with no mention of sharing any human connection or having a laugh with the Fields. He merely asks for a drink of water (which he has to shut his eyes to gulp down, aware of its poor quality), and departs. This display of rudeness—not just in outward manners, but also in his categorical imposition of his own views on others without reporting their side of the story— forces us to see a side of Thoreau different from that of the solitary dreamer and conscientious objector we have seen before. Here we see that Thoreau’s fervent convictions may actually stand in the way of human relations. Perhaps his isolation is making him not just self-reliant but also somewhat antisocial, or at least grossly insensitive to the situations of others. By idealizing and simplifying humans, as his allegorical depiction of “John Farmer” at the end of the chapter suggests, he may have difficulties thinking about the complexities of real people’s lives.

One of the most distressing aspects of Thoreau’s attitude toward the Fields is his focus on their Irish heritage, which he associates—in stereotypical nineteenth-century Anglo-American style— with laziness and self-neglect. In a final note of pity, he suggests that Field is poor not because he lacks Thoreau’s advantages of education or because the plight of immigrants is difficult, but simply because he was “born to be poor.” Thoreau almost implies a kind of racist belief in genetic predisposition to economic performance when he refers to Field’s “inherited Irish poverty.” The notion of free self-determination that Thoreau extols throughout Walden seems inapplicable, in his mind, to the poor Irish: with their inherited poverty, they can never break free to become self-reliant like he has. Thoreau praises poverty, but only when it is self-imposed rather than when it is determined by social forces. Combined with his curt treatment of the Fields, this prejudice leaves a bitter aftertaste. There is no brotherhood of the poor in his mind; Thoreau focuses on what separates himself and the Fields, and their Irish background is one difference. Thoreau’s views on the causes of Irish poverty are startlingly conservative, given his much-vaunted status as a radical.

Main Ideas Key Facts Full Title The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Author Samuel Clemens, usually known by his pen name, Mark Twain Type Of Work Novel Genre Concerned with Tom’s personal growth and quest for identity, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer incorporates several different genres. It resembles a bildungsroman, a novel that follows the development of a hero from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. The novel also resembles novels of the picaresque genre, in that Tom moves from one adventurous episode to another. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer also fits the genres of satire, frontier literature, folk narrative, and comedy.

Language English Time And Place Written 1874–1875; Hartford, Connecticut

Date Of First Publication The novel appeared in England in June 1876, and six months later in the United States.

Narrator An adult who views the adult world critically and looks back on the sentiments and pastimes of childhood in a somewhat idealized manner, with wit and also with nostalgia

Point Of View The narrator narrates in the third person, with a special insight into the workings of the boyish heart and mind.

Tone Satirical and nostalgic

Tense Past Setting (Time) Not specified, but probably around 1845 Setting (Place) The fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri (which resembles Twain’s hometown of Hannibal)

Protagonist Tom Sawyer Major Conflict Tom and Huck perceive their biggest struggle to be between themselves and Injun Joe, whose gold they want and whom they believe is out to kill them. Conflict also exists between Tom and his imaginative world and the expectations and rules of adult society.

Rising Action Tom and Huck’s witness of Dr. Robinson’s murder; the search for the boys’ bodies in the river when they escape to Jackson’s Island; Tom’s testimony at Muff Potter’s trial; Tom and Huck’s accidental sighting of Injun Joe at the haunted house; Tom and Becky’s entrapment in the cave

Climax Huck overhears Injun Joe’s plan to kill the Widow Douglas, and Tom encounters Injun Joe when he and Becky are stranded in the cave.

Falling Action Huck gets help from the Welshman and drives Injun Joe away from the Widow Douglas; Tom avoids conflict with Injun Joe and navigates himself and Becky out of the cave; Judge Thatcher seals off the cave, causing Injun Joe to starve to death; Tom and Huck find Injun Joe’s treasure; Huck is adopted and civilized by the Widow Douglas.

Themes Moral and social maturation; society’s hypocrisy; freedom through social exclusion; superstition in an uncertain world

Motifs Crime; trading; the circus; “showing off” Symbols The cave; the storm; the treasure; the village Foreshadowing When he is frustrated by his fight with Becky, Tom declares his intention to become a pirate, foreshadowing his later excursion to Jackson’s Island; Tom’s great fear of Injun Joe foreshadows his later encounters with him; Tom’s obsession with the oath he and Huck have taken never to speak about Dr. Robinson’s murder foreshadows the fact that Tom will later break the oath and testify at Muff Potter’s trial

Plot OverviewSummary Plot Overview An imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two disciples were David and Goliath.

Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their romance collapses when she learns that Tom has been “engaged” before—to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American “half-breed” Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom’s anxiety and guilt begin to grow.

Tom, Huck, and Tom’s friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their newfound freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.

Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky’s favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon Muff Potter’s trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window.

Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Huck’s tools, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it.

Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal’s Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.

Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky’s father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves to death.

A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom’s robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.

Summary—Chapter 1: Tom Plays, Fights, and Hides

Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He’s full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him, somehow. The novel opens with Aunt Polly scouring the house in search of her nephew, Tom Sawyer. She finds him in the closet, discovers that his hands are covered with jam, and prepares to give him a whipping. Tom cries out theatrically, “Look behind you!” and when Aunt Polly turns, Tom escapes over the fence. After Tom is gone, Aunt Polly reflects ruefully on Tom’s mischief and how she lets him get away with too much.

Tom comes home at suppertime to help Aunt Polly’s young slave, Jim, chop wood. Tom also wants to tell Jim about his adventures. During supper, Aunt Polly asks Tom leading questions in an attempt to confirm her suspicion that he skipped school that afternoon and went swimming instead. Tom explains his wet hair by saying that he pumped water on his head and shows her that his collar is still sewn from the morning, which means that he couldn’t have taken his shirt off to swim. Aunt Polly is satisfied, but Sid, Tom’s half-brother, points out that the shirt thread, which was white in the morning, is now black. Tom has resewn the shirt himself to disguise his delinquency.

Tom goes out of the house furious with Sid, but he soon forgets his anger as he practices a new kind of whistling. While wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, his town, he encounters a newcomer, a boy his own age who appears overdressed and arrogant. Tom and the new arrival exchange insults for a while and then begin wrestling. Tom overcomes his antagonist and eventually chases the newcomer all the way home.

When he returns home in the evening, Tom finds Aunt Polly waiting for him. She notices his dirtied clothes and resolves to make him work the next day, a Saturday, as punishment.

Summary—Chapter 2: The Glorious Whitewasher

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

On Saturday morning, Aunt Polly sends Tom out to whitewash the fence. Jim passes by, and Tom tries to get him to do some of the whitewashing in return for a “white alley,” a kind of marble. Jim almost agrees, but Aunt Polly appears and chases him off, leaving Tom alone with his labor.

A little while later, Ben Rogers, another boy Tom’s age, walks by. Tom convinces Ben that whitewashing a fence is great pleasure, and after some bargaining, Ben agrees to give Tom his apple in exchange for the privilege of working on the fence. Over the course of the day, every boy who passes ends up staying to whitewash, and each one gives Tom something in exchange. By the time the fence has three coats, Tom has collected a hoard of miscellaneous treasures. Tom muses that all it takes to make someone want something is to make that thing hard to get.

Summary—Chapter 3: Busy at War and Love

Aunt Polly is pleasantly surprised to find the work done, and she allows Tom to go out in the late afternoon. On his way, he pelts Sid with clods of dirt in revenge for his treachery in the matter of the shirt collar. He then hastens to the town square, where a group of boys are fighting a mock battle. Tom and his friend Joe Harper act as generals. Tom’s army wins the battle.

On his way home for dinner, Tom passes the Thatcher house and catches sight of a beautiful girl. He falls head over heels in love with her. Quickly forgetting his last love, a girl named Amy Lawrence, Tom spends the rest of the afternoon “showing off” on the street. The girl tosses him a flower, and, after some more showing off, Tom reluctantly returns home.

At dinner, Sid breaks the sugar bowl, and Tom is blamed. Tom’s mood changes, and he wanders out after dinner feeling mistreated and melodramatic, imagining how sorry Aunt Polly would be if he turned up dead. Eventually, he finds his way back to the beautiful girl’s house and prepares to die pitifully beneath her window. Just then, a maid opens the window and dumps a pitcher of water on his head. Tom scurries home and goes to bed as Sid watches in silence.

Analysis—Chapters 1–3

The first word of the novel—Aunt Polly’s shout of “TOM!”—immediately establishes Aunt Polly’s role as disciplinarian and Tom’s role as troublemaker. Tom and Aunt Polly’s initial confrontation quickly characterizes Tom as clever enough to escape punishment and Aunt Polly as someone who threatens harsh discipline but who, for all her bluster, is really quite fond of her nephew. “Every time I hit him,” she says, “my old heart most breaks.” Aunt Polly knows that she must discipline Tom in order to help him mature successfully into responsible adulthood, but there is a part of her that balks at impinging on the freedom of such a creative and headstrong child. That the softhearted Aunt Polly is Tom’s only authority figure in the home explains Tom’s relatively large degree of freedom. Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, offers an even more extreme example of a child who lives outside of the normal structures of authority, whether parental, social, or legal.

By depicting the fighting, playing, and trading in which the children engage as elaborate rituals, Twain emphasizes that the world of childhood is governed by its own social rules, which serve as a kind of practice for, and microcosm of, adulthood. The reality of the surrounding adult social world manifests itself in the brief appearance of the slave boy, Jim, abruptly reminding us that the novel is set in the slaveholding South. Unlike Twain’s later novel Huckleberry Finn, however, slavery and criticism of slavery exist in Tom Sawyer only in the background; Tom’s idyllic childhood adventures remain the novel’s focus.

The scene in which Tom persuades his peers to do all his whitewashing work establishes Tom’s position as a leader among his peers and as an initiative-taking mastermind. Though a troublemaker, Tom at times presents a hint of maturity that his comrades lack. Joe Harper, Tom’s friend who acts as the opposing general in the mock battle, serves as a sidekick throughout the novel, mostly following Tom’s lead. Because of his comparatively dull nature and flat characterization, Joe highlights Tom’s vibrancy. Sid, Tom’s half-brother, is presented as Tom’s opposite—whereas Tom is a mischief-maker with a noble heart, Sid is a well-behaved child whose heart is basically evil.

Tom’s pursuit of his “Adored Unknown” (we find out later that the girl’s name is Becky Thatcher) also helps to pinpoint his level of maturity. The fact that he is interested in a girl shows him to be mature compared to his friends, but his “showing off” for Becky, along with his melodramatic desire to die under her window after Aunt Polly falsely blames him for breaking the sugar bowl, spring from the sensitivity and sensibility of a young boy. Furthermore, the fluidity of Tom’s imagination—he moves with ease from one game or occupation to the next—testifies to his youthful manner of experiencing the world.

Summary—Chapter 4: Showing Off in Sunday School

Mr. Walters fell to “showing off,” with all sorts of official bustlings and activities. . . . The librarian “showed off”. . . . The young lady teachers “showed off”. . . . The little girls “showed off” in various ways, and the little boys “showed off.”

Sunday morning arrives, and Tom prepares for Sunday school with the help of his cousin Mary. As Tom struggles halfheartedly to learn his Bible verses, Mary encourages and entices him with the promise of “something ever so nice.” Tom’s work ethic then improves, and he manages to memorize the verses. Mary gives him a “Barlow” knife as reward. Tom then dresses for church, and he, Mary, and Sid hurry off to Sunday school, which Tom loathes.

Before class begins, Tom trades all the spoils he has gained from his whitewashing scam for tickets. The tickets are given as rewards for well-recited Bible verses, and a student who has memorized two thousand verses and received the appropriate tickets can trade them in for a copy of the Bible, awarded with honor in front of the entire class.

Judge Thatcher, the uncle of Tom’s friend Jeff Thatcher, visits Tom’s class that day. The judge’s family includes his daughter, Becky—the beautiful girl Tom notices the previous afternoon. The class treats the judge as a celebrity—the students, teachers, and superintendent make a great attempt at showing off for him. As usual, Tom is the best show-off—by trading for tickets before class, Tom has accumulated enough to earn a Bible. Mr. Walters, Tom’s Sunday school teacher, is flabbergasted when Tom approaches with the tickets. He knows that Tom has not memorized the appropriate number of verses, but since Tom has the required tickets, and since Mr. Walters is eager to impress Judge Thatcher, the Bible-awarding ceremony proceeds.

The Judge pats Tom on the head and compliments him on his diligence. He gives him the chance to show off his purported knowledge, asking him, “No doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. Won’t you tell us the names of the first two that were appointed?” Tom does not know their names, of course, and eventually blurts out the first two names that come to his mind: David and Goliath. The narrator pleads, “Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.”

Summary—Chapter 5: The Pinch-bug and His Prey

After Sunday school comes the church service, which includes a long, tedious sermon. At one point, the minister describes how, at the millennium (the 1,000-year period during which Christ will reign over the earth, according to Christianity) the lion and the lamb will lie down together and a little child shall lead them. Tom wishes that he could be that child—as long as the lion were tame.

Bored, Tom takes from his pocket a box containing a “pinchbug,” or a large black beetle. The insect pinches him and slips from his grasp to the middle of the aisle at the same time that a stray poodle wanders into the church. The dog investigates the pinchbug, receives one pinch, circles the insect warily, and then eventually sits on it. The bug latches onto the poodle’s behind, and the unfortunate dog runs yelping through the church until its master flings it out a window. The general laughter disrupts the sermon completely, and Tom goes home happy, despite the loss of his bug.

Summary—Chapter 6: Tom Meets Becky

On Monday morning, Tom feigns a “mortified toe” with the hope of staying home from school. When that ploy fails, he complains of a toothache, but Aunt Polly yanks out the loose tooth and sends him off to school. On his way to school, Tom encounters Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunkard. Huck is “cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town,” who fear that he will be a bad influence on their children. But every boy, including Tom, admires Huck and envies him for his ability to avoid school and work without fear of punishment. Huck and Tom converse, comparing notes on charms to remove warts. Huck carries with him a dead cat, which he plans to take to the graveyard that night. According to superstition, when the devil comes to take the corpse of a wicked person, the dead cat will follow the corpse, and the warts will follow the cat. Tom agrees to go with Huck to the cemetery that night, trades his yanked tooth for a tick from Huck, and continues on to school.

Tom arrives late, and the schoolmaster demands an explanation. Tom notices an open seat on the girls’ side of the room, next to Becky Thatcher. He decides to get in trouble on purpose, knowing that he will be sent to sit with the girls as punishment. He boldly declares, “I stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn!” The horrified teacher whips Tom and sends him to the seat next to Becky.

Tom offers Becky a peach and tries to interest her by drawing a picture on his slate. Becky initially shies from Tom’s attentions, but she soon warms to him and promises to stay at school with him during lunch. Becky and Tom introduce themselves, and Tom scrawls “I love you” on his slate. At this point, the teacher collars Tom and drags him back to the boys’ side of the room.

Analysis—Chapters 4–6

Twain renders Tom’s cousin Mary as an idealized character whose total goodness leads her to forgive the faults of others. Unlike Sid, who behaves well but delights in getting Tom in trouble, Mary behaves well and attempts to keep Tom out of mischief. Her motherly caring for Tom is manifest not only in her eagerness for Tom to learn Bible verses but also in her name, which evokes that of Mary, mother of Jesus.

In the Sunday school scenes, Twain gently satirizes the tradition of making children memorize Bible verses. He points out the cheapness of the prize—“a very plainly bound Bible”—and relates the story of a German boy who “had once recited three thousand verses without stopping” and afterward suffered a nervous breakdown. In calling the boy’s collapse “a grievous misfortune for the school” (since the school relied on the German boy to perform for guests), Twain implies that the students are memorizing verses not for real spiritual growth but for the sake of making their teachers and superintendent look good. Twain furthers this implication by illustrating Mr. Walters’s eagerness to display a “prodigy,” or extremely talented youth, for Judge Thatcher.

Twain’s critique is compassionate, however. His intention is not to expose anything inherently unworthy in his characters but to point out universal human weaknesses. When Judge Thatcher visits, everyone at Sunday school shows off—the superintendent, librarian, teachers, boys, and girls—in an attempt to attract the local celebrity’s attention. Tom arranges to earn an honor he doesn’t deserve, teachers dote on students they usually treat severely, and the superintendent gives a reward to a child (Tom) whom he knows doesn’t deserve it. By exposing the superficiality of the Sunday school’s workings, Twain makes Tom’s own dramatic inclinations seem not a departure from, but an exaggeration of, his society’s behavior.

As Twain describes the church service in Chapter 5, he again shows Tom’s faults replicated in the behavior of adults. Tom is restless and inattentive in the usual childlike manner, but he is not alone—the congregation as a whole drifts toward slumber, and “many a head by and by began to nod.” Tom’s desire to be the child leading the lion and the lamb, while misguided, demonstrates that he is at least listening to some of the sermon. That the rest of the congregation is so easily distracted supports the idea that Tom’s lack of interest in and misunderstanding of the sermon constitute the universal response to the monotonous minister.

By releasing the pinchbug and creating havoc, Tom succeeds in doing what the sermon cannot—he gets the congregation’s attention. With more people caring about the pinchbug than about the minister’s fire and brimstone, the church service begins to seem as ridiculous as the struggle between the poodle and the insect. Again, however, Twain’s satire is not cruel. Nobody is accused of being irreligious or wicked for falling asleep during the service. Rather, Twain exposes the comic and sometimes ridiculous elements of traditions, such as churchgoing, that bind the community together.

In the scene following the church service, we meet Huckleberry Finn, one of the most famous figures in American literature. Huck enjoys what Tom and every other mischievous boy secretly wishes he could attain—complete freedom from adult authority. Unlike Tom, who is parentless but has Aunt Polly to limit his liberty, Huck has no adults controlling him at all. His father is the town drunkard, leaving Huck to wander as he pleases—“everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had.” From a boy’s perspective, Huck can do all the important things—swimming, playing, cursing, fishing, walking barefoot—without enduring the burdens of church, school, personal hygiene, or parental harassment.

Given Tom’s inability to keep his mind from wandering during the church sermon, Huck and Tom’s earnest enthusiasm for superstition in their conversation about the causes of warts is particularly notable. Tom may not be interested in memorizing Bible verses, but he and his companions are fascinated by the intricate details of charms, magical cures, and other varieties of folk wisdom. The boys’ unwavering belief in the efficacy of the wart cures resembles religious fervor in its dependence upon explanations that exist outside the bounds of human understanding. They want so strongly to believe in the supernatural that when a charm seems not to work, they are quick to furnish what they consider a rational explanation for its failure rather than concede that their charms don’t work at all.

Summary—Chapter 7: Tick-Running and a Heartbreak

The teacher now places Tom next to Joe Harper. After trying to study for a while, Tom gives up and he and Joe play with the tick, each attempting to keep the bug on his side of the desk by harassing it with a pin. They begin arguing midway through the game, and the teacher again appears behind Tom, this time to deliver a tremendous whack to both boys.

During lunch, Tom and Becky sit in the empty schoolroom together, and Tom persuades her to “get engaged” to him—an agreement they render solemn by saying “I love you” and kissing. Tom begins talking excitedly about how much he enjoys being engaged and accidentally reveals that he was previously engaged to Amy Lawrence. Becky begins to cry and says that Tom must still love Amy. Tom denies it, swearing that he loves only Becky, but she cries harder and refuses to accept the brass andiron knob he offers her as a token of his affection. When Tom marches out, Becky realizes that he won’t return that day and becomes even more upset.

Summary—Chapter 8: A Pirate Bold to Be

For the rest of the afternoon, Tom wanders about in a forest, first deciding that he will become a pirate, next trying a futile charm to locate his lost marbles, and finally encountering Joe Harper. The boys play Robin Hood and then go home, in agreement that “they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.”

Summary—Chapter 9: Tragedy in the Graveyard

That night, Tom sneaks out of bed and goes to the graveyard with Huck. They hide in a clump of elms a few feet from the fresh grave of Hoss Williams and wait for devils to appear. After a while, three figures approach the grave. The boys believe with horrified delight that these are the devils, but they turn out to be three adults from the town carrying out a midnight mission of their own. Tom and Huck are surprised to discover the young Dr. Robinson accompanied by two local outcasts, the drunken Muff Potter and Injun Joe.

Dr. Robinson orders the other two men to dig up Hoss Williams’s corpse, presumably for use in medical experiments. After they finish the job, Potter demands extra payment, and Robinson refuses. Injun Joe then reminds Robinson of an incident that happened five years earlier, when Injun Joe came begging at the Robinsons’ kitchen door and was turned away. Injun Joe now intends to have his revenge. A fight ensues; Dr. Robinson knocks Injun Joe down and then is attacked by Potter. He uses Hoss Williams’s headstone to defend himself, knocking Potter unconscious. In the scuffle, Injun Joe stabs Dr. Robinson with Potter’s knife.

The terrified boys flee without being detected by the men. Eventually, Potter awakens and asks Injun Joe what happened. Injun Joe tells the drunk Potter that Potter murdered Dr. Robinson in a drunken fury, and Potter, still dazed, believes him. Injun Joe promises not to tell anyone about the crime, and they part ways. Before Injun Joe leaves the graveyard, however, he notes smugly that Potter’s knife remains stuck in the corpse.

Summary—Chapter 10: Dire Prophecy of the Howling Dog

The boys run to a deserted tannery and hide, unaware of Injun Joe’s plot to blame Potter for the murder. They decide that if they tell what they saw and Injun Joe escapes hanging, he will probably kill them. Consequently, they decide to swear in blood never to tell anyone what they saw. After taking the oath, they hear the howls of a stray dog, which they interpret as a sign that whomever the animal is howling at will die. Tom and Huck assume the dog’s howls are for them, but when they go outside, they see that the dog is facing Muff Potter.

Tom goes home and crawls into bed. Sid, still awake, takes note of Tom’s late arrival and tells Aunt Polly about it the next morning. She lectures Tom and asks how he can go on breaking her heart; her heavy sorrow is for Tom a punishment “worse than a thousand whippings.” Tom goes off to school dejected. On his desk he finds the brass andiron knob he tried to give to Becky the day before, and his anguish deepens.

XAnalysis—Chapters 7–10 As his Robin Hood game shows, Tom assimilates and adheres to the conventions of the heroic and romantic stories in which he is so steeped. He memorizes situations and even exact dialogue from these stories in order to re-create them in his own games. Tom’s courtship of Becky also follows the conventions of romantic literature, albeit in a somewhat adulterated form.

With the ability to memorize and re-create situations according to stories and literature, Tom shows that he has highly developed mental skills. Yet, in his conduct and interaction with others, Tom is still immature. This imbalance is evident when Tom accidentally reveals his previous engagement to Amy Lawrence and only watches, unsure of how to act, when Becky cries. His subsequent depression and decision to become a pirate manifest his preference for the youthful world of make-believe and literature over that of real-life relationships. Tom’s actions at this point also foreshadow his later adventures with Huck and Joe on Jackson’s Island.

The graveyard scene constitutes a turning point in the plot, as it is the first of Tom’s adventures that has any moral significance. Up to this point, Tom’s adventures have been playful and innocent. As Tom and Huck witness Dr. Robinson’s murder, the sordid adult world imposes itself upon their childhood innocence. When they see the figures approaching the grave, both boys assume them to be devils, among the most terrifying things they can envision. Ironically, the presumed devils turn out to be real men who become more frightening than any childhood superstition or imagined vision.

After witnessing the crime, Tom and Huck’s immediate inclination is to flee, both physically and symbolically. They run from the scene of the crime back into their world of childhood games by signing a “blood oath” to keep what they have seen a secret. Knowing nothing about Injun Joe’s plan to blame hapless Muff Potter for the crime, Huck and Tom assume that Injun Joe will either be caught or will escape. They are understandably afraid of what these wicked men might do to them if they find out that the boys were present at the scene of the crime. As we later see, however, even after Potter is falsely accused and arrested, Tom and Huck are unable to overcome their fears and tell the authorities what they have seen. Instead, their belief in superstition, their adherence to the blood oath, and their assumption that God will strike down Injun Joe for wickedly lying guide their actions. Even though the boys fear Injun Joe, they also fear superstition and, ultimately, God or a higher force that they hope will cancel out the more immediate threat from the murderous Injun Joe.

Summary—Chapter 11: Conscience Racks Tom

The day after Tom and Huck witness Dr. Robinson’s murder, some townspeople discover the doctor’s corpse in the graveyard, along with Potter’s knife. A crowd gathers in the cemetery, and then Potter himself appears. To Tom, Huck, and especially Potter’s shock, Injun Joe describes how Potter committed the crime. Consequently, the sheriff arrests Potter for murder.

Tom’s pangs of conscience over not telling the truth about the murder keep him up at night, but Aunt Polly assumes that just hearing about the horrid crime has upset him. Tom begins sneaking to the window of Potter’s jail cell every few days to bring him small gifts.

Summary—Chapter 12: The Cat and the Pain-Killer

Becky Thatcher falls ill and stops coming to school. Tom’s depression worsens, so much so that Aunt Polly begins to worry about his health. She gives him various ineffective “treatments,” which culminate in an awful-tasting serum called “Pain-killer.” Tom finds this last treatment so intolerable that he feeds it to the cat, which reacts with extreme hyperactivity. Aunt Polly discovers what Tom has done, but she begins to realize that “what was cruelty to a cat might be cruelty to a boy, too,” and sends him off to school without punishment. Becky finally returns to school that morning, but she spurns Tom completely.

Summary—Chapter 13: The Pirate Crew Set Sail

Feeling mistreated, Tom resolves to act on his earlier impulse to become a pirate. He meets Joe Harper, who is likewise disaffected because his mother has wrongly accused and punished him for stealing cream. They find Huck Finn, always up for a new adventure, and the three agree to slip away to Jackson’s Island, an uninhabited, forested isle three miles downriver from St. Petersburg.

That night, the three boys take a raft and pole their way to the island, calling out meaningless nautical commands to one another as they go. At about two in the morning they arrive on the island, build a fire, and eat some bacon that Joe has stolen for them. For the rest of the night they sit around and discuss pirate conduct. Eventually, however, they think about the meat they stole and reflect on the shamefulness of their petty crime—after all, the Bible explicitly forbids stealing. They decide that “their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing” and fall asleep.

Analysis—Chapters 11–13

Twain discourages us from feeling sympathy for Injun Joe, the novel’s most pronounced villain. We learn that Dr. Robinson once mistreated Injun Joe by chasing him off when he came begging one night, but Injun Joe’s willingness to murder a man as retribution for this relatively minor offense and his decision to pin the crime on a pathetic drunk who instinctively trusts him confound our ability to feel sorry for him.

Joe’s status as a “half-breed” (he is half “Injun,” or Native American, and half white) makes him an outsider in the St. Petersburg community. The novel contains racist suggestions linking Injun Joe’s villainy to the presumed contamination of his white blood. Joe tells Dr. Robinson, “The Injun blood ain’t in me for nothing,” suggesting that the alien, “Injun” part of Joe is what inspires his evil. When Injun Joe reappears in disguise later in the novel, he comes dressed as a deaf and mute Spaniard. In a way, Joe’s choice of disguise is logical, given his dark features, but the outfit also reinforces Injun Joe’s foreignness.

As in Chapter 8, Becky’s rejection turns Tom to thoughts of piracy. Twain mocks the convention in adult romances that unrequited love drives men to desperate acts. Only Huck, who joins Joe Harper and Tom as they act on Tom’s pirate fantasy, adds an authentic outlaw element to the adventure. Huck smokes and is something of an outsider in St. Petersburg society. However, whereas Injun Joe is completely ostracized by the St. Petersburg community, Huck Finn is allowed some mobility within it, as Huck’s roles—as Tom’s companion and, later, as the Widow Douglas’s adoptee—show.

The boys’ trip to the island and their plans for a pirate career demonstrate their imaginative energy and their innocence. Through several exchanges, the three reveal that they know very little about what being a pirate actually entails. The children’s books they have read furnish their entire conception of an outlaw’s life. Tom’s remarks about pirates that “they have just a bully time … [they] take ships, and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places [but] they don’t kill the women—they’re too noble” demonstrate the degree to which Tom idealizes these figures. Furthermore, the boys’ remorse over the stolen bacon—an actual, and comparatively small, offense—shows that they don’t see the storybook misdeeds they venerate as actual sins or punishable offenses. In their shame at having stolen the bacon, they defer to the Ten Commandments and to their own consciences, irrationally deciding that such mean behavior is unworthy of their idealized image of a pirate. Up to this moment, we have seen Tom maturing mentally, as he dreams up scheme after scheme. He has matured through his eye-opening experiences, such as his witness of Dr. Robinson’s murder, and he has matured emotionally, as he falls for and is rejected by Becky Thatcher. Tom’s rejection of sinful behavior, however, marks the first instance of his moral maturation. We know he has the capacity to memorize and imagine a whole new world of pirates on the high seas, but now we see that he understands right versus wrong as well.

Summary—Chapter 14: Happy Camp of the Freebooters

The next day, the boys wake on Jackson’s Island and find that their raft has disappeared, but the discovery hardly bothers them. In fact, they find relief in being severed from their last link to St. Petersburg. Huck finds a spring nearby, and the boys go fishing and come up with a bountiful and delicious catch. After breakfast, Tom and Joe explore the island and find pirate life nearly perfect. In the afternoon, however, their enthusiasm and conversation fade, and they begin to feel the first stirrings of homesickness.

In the late afternoon, a large group of boats appears on the river, and, after some confusion, the boys realize that the townspeople are searching for them, assuming they have drowned. This realization actually raises the boys’ spirits and makes them feel, temporarily, like heroes. After dinner, however, both Tom and Joe begin to consider the people who may be missing them terribly. Hesitantly, Joe suggests the possibility of returning home, but Tom dismisses the suggestion. That night, however, Tom decides to cross the river back to town to observe the local reaction to their absence. Before he leaves, he writes messages on two sycamore scrolls, then puts one in his pocket and one in Joe’s hat.

Summary—Chapter 15: Tom’s Stealthy Visit Home

Tom swims from the end of a sandbar to the nearby Illinois shore and stows away on a ferry to cross back to the Missouri side. At home, Tom finds Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Mrs. Harper sitting together. He hides under a bed and listens to their conversation. With the exception of Sid, they all talk about how much they miss the boys and wish they had been kinder to them. Tom learns that the search crew has found the raft downstream, so everyone assumes that the boys capsized in midstream and drowned.

After the company has gone to bed, Tom goes to his aunt’s bedside and almost places one of his sycamore scrolls on her table, but he decides against it. He returns to the island, finds Huck and Joe making breakfast, and tells them of his adventures.

Summary—Chapter 16: First Pipes—“I’ve Lost My Knife”

The boys find turtle eggs on the sandbar that afternoon and eat fried eggs for supper that night and for breakfast the following morning. They strip naked, swim, and have wrestling matches and a mock circus on the beach. Homesickness mounts, however, and Tom finds himself writing “BECKY” in the sand. Joe suggests again that they return home, and this time Huck sides with him. The two boys prepare to cross the river, and Tom, feeling suddenly lonely and desperate, calls to them to stop. He then tells them of a secret plan that he has devised. After hearing his plan (we do not yet know what it entails), both boys agree to stay and their spirits are rejuvenated. That afternoon, Tom and Joe ask Huck to teach them how to smoke. Huck makes them pipes, and they sit together smoking and commenting on how easy it is. They imagine the effect they will produce when they go home and smoke casually in front of their friends. Eventually, however, both boys begin to feel sick, drop their pipes, and declare that they need to go look for Joe’s knife. Huck finds them later, fast asleep in separate parts of the forest, probably after having vomited. That evening, Huck takes out his pipe and offers to prepare theirs for them, but both boys say they feel too sick—because of soThat night, a terrible thunderstorm hits the island. The boys take refuge in their tent, but the wind carries its roof off, so they have to take shelter under a giant oak by the riverbank. They watch in terror as the wind and lightning tear the island apart. When the storm passes, they return to their camp and find that the tree that had sheltered their tent has been completely destroyed. The boys rebuild their fire out of the embers of the burnt tree and roast some ham. After sleeping for a time, they awaken midmorning and fight their homesickness by pretending to be Indians. At mealtime, however, they realize that Indians cannot eat together without smoking the peace pipe, and so Tom and Joe make a second effort at smoking. This time, they don’t become nearly as ill.

Summary—Chapter 17: Pirates at Their Own Funeral

Back in the village, everyone remains in deep mourning. Becky Thatcher regrets her coldness toward Tom, and their schoolmates remember feeling awful premonitions the last time they saw the boys. The next day, Sunday, everyone gathers for the funeral. The minister gives a flattering sermon about the boys, and the congregation wonders how they could have overlooked the goodness in Tom and Joe. Eventually, the entire church breaks down in tears. At that moment, the three boys, according to Tom’s plan, enter through a side door after having listened to their own funeral service.

Joe Harper’s family, Aunt Polly, and Mary seize their boys and embrace them, leaving Huck standing alone. Tom complains, “[I]t ain’t fair. Somebody’s got to be glad to see Huck,” and Aunt Polly hugs Huck too, embarrassing him further. The congregation then sings “Old Hundred.”

Analysis—Chapters 14–17

At earlier points in the novel, Tom’s melodramatic self-pity leads him to wish he were dead so that his persecutors would be miserable and sorry for having treated him so unkindly. By running away, he realizes this fantasy to die temporarily and see the reactions of those he has left behind. Ultimately, instead of being a chance to escape adults, the trip to Jackson’s Island is reassurance for Tom and Joe that the adults in their lives still love them and need them. Twain uses humorous irony to criticize the hypocrisy of adult society, which only perceives the worth of its members once they have passed away. While alive, most of the adults in St. Petersburg fail to recognize the worth of Tom, Huck, and Joe (Aunt Polly is an exception). When the town presumes the children dead, however, it frantically calls out search boats and mourns. With all of their mental maturity, even the adults of the town cannot justify the regret they have for not appreciating the boys more during their lives. Ironically, Tom’s understanding of how the town will react to the boys’ survival proves that even though he is young and preoccupied with imagination and games, he possesses greater knowledge of human psychology than the town members themselves.

mething they ate, they claim.

Tom and Joe’s desire to smoke a pipe reveals that forbidden activities fascinate Tom and his comrades for the prestige that such activities bring them. Whether in fights, in front of girls, or in the classroom, Tom and his friends are constantly showing off. Such performances are critical parts of Tom’s boyhood, because they earn him the respect of his peers and liven up the regular routines of small-town life. It is clear that he and Joe want to learn how to smoke so that they will appear special in the eyes of their friends, not because they expect to enjoy the activity. Tom declares, “I’ll come up to you and say, ‘Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.’ . . . And then you’ll out with the pipes . . . and then just see ‘em look.” Indeed, the phrase “just see ‘em look” captures the motivation behind many of Tom’s activities.

This quotation reveals also that Tom is not only a perpetual performer but also a director. As with his funeral, Tom has planned the scene where his friends see him smoke. He seems to relish getting his actors—whether the neighborhood children whom he cons into whitewashing his fence or the pinch-bug he unleashes on the poodle—to perform the parts he has written for them. Even when Joe and Huck rebel against Tom’s authority, wanting to return home in Chapter 16, Tom manages to regain control by sharing his brilliant idea to return triumphantly at their own funeral. His successful persuasion of the boys proves, once again, his understanding of psychology. Tom knows that Huck and Joe too are curious about how they will be missed.

Unlike Tom, who cares very much about appearances, Huck does not concern himself with what others think of him. His existence outside of society permits him to deny its expectations, and he does not feel the need to show off or fit in like the rest of the St. Petersburg boys. In fact, Huck seems genuinely uncomfortable as the recipient of affection. When, amid the joy following the boys’ return, Aunt Polly welcomes Huck with a hug, the self-sufficient Huck is genuinely embarrassed.

Summary—Chapter 18: Tom Reveals His Dream Secret

The morning after Tom returns from the island, Aunt Polly rebukes him for having made her suffer so much and for not having given her some hint that he was not actually dead. Tom argues that doing so would have spoiled the whole adventure, but he admits that he “dreamed” about everyone back in town. Telling her his dream, Tom relates everything he saw and overheard when he crossed the river and sneaked into the house a few nights earlier. Aunt Polly seems amazed by the power of Tom’s vision and forgives him for not having visited her. Sid, meanwhile, wonders suspiciously how this dream could be so precise and detailed.

At school, Tom is declared a hero and basks in the adulation of his peers. He decides to ignore Becky and instead pays attention to Amy Lawrence again. When Becky realizes that he is ignoring her, she gets within earshot and begins issuing invitations to a picnic. Soon she has asked the whole class to come except Tom and Amy. They go off together, leaving Becky to stew in jealousy.

X At recess, however, Becky manages to turn the tables by agreeing to look at a picture book with Alfred Temple, the new boy from the city with whom Tom fights at the beginning of the novel. Tom grows jealous and becomes bored with Amy. With a great sense of relief, he heads home alone for lunch. Once Tom is gone, Becky drops Alfred, who, when he realizes what has transpired, pours ink on Tom’s spelling book to get him in trouble. Becky sees Alfred commit the act and considers warning Tom in the hopes of mending their troubles. But, overcome by Tom’s recent cruelness to her, she decides instead that Tom deserves a whipping and that she will hate him forever.

Summary—Chapter 19: The Cruelty of “I Didn’t Think”

Back home, Aunt Polly has learned from Mrs. Harper that Tom’s dream was a fake and that he came home one night and spied on them. Aunt Polly scolds him for making her look like a fool in front of Mrs. Harper and then asks why he came home but still did nothing to relieve everyone’s sorrow. Tom replies that he was going to leave a message for her, but he was afraid it would spoil the surprise, so he left it in his pocket. She sends him back to school and goes to look in the jacket that he wore to Jackson’s Island, resolving not to be angry if the message is not there. When she finds it, she breaks down in tears and says, “I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!”

Summary—Chapter 20: Tom Takes Becky’s Punishment

Back at school, Tom attempts a reconciliation with Becky, but she blows him off and looks forward to seeing him whipped for the inky spelling book. She proceeds to find a key in the lock of the teacher’s desk drawer; the drawer contains a book that only the teacher, Mr. Dobbins, is allowed to read. She opens it and discovers that it is an anatomy textbook that Mr. Dobbins possesses since his true ambition is to be a doctor. She opens it to the front page, which shows a naked figure, and at that moment Tom enters. His entry startles her so much that she rips the page. She begins to cry, blames him for making her rip it, and realizes now that she will be whipped.

The class files in, and Tom stands stoically for his own whipping, assuming that he must have spilled the ink himself accidentally. Mr. Dobbins finds the ripped book and begins to grill each member of the class in turn. When he reaches Becky, she seems ready to break down, but she is saved when Tom rises and declares, “I done it!”—thus incurring a second whipping but becoming a hero again in Becky’s eyes.

Analysis—Chapters 18–20

In these chapters, Tom fluctuates between petty, immature behavior—lying to his aunt about his alleged dream and trying to make Becky jealous at the expense of Amy’s feelings—and nobler conduct—saving Becky from punishment. The fact that Tom’s story about his dream fools his aunt but not Sid may ironically indicate that in some way children are more perceptive than adults. On the other hand, perhaps Aunt Polly is deceived because true maturity includes love and the forgiveness that comes along with it. Perhaps Sid is too morally immature to understand that such trickery is excusable in a person that one loves.

Once Tom realizes the damage he has done, he feels remorse for the second time in the novel, which indicates that his moral growth is continuing. He feels genuine affection for Aunt Polly and wants to secure her approval. His manipulation of her seems to happen almost instinctively, as he gets carried away by his own flights of fancy.

The snubbing war between Tom and Becky forms a counterpart to the make-believe military battle fought between generals Tom and Joe early in the novel. Descriptions of the elaborate strategies Tom and Becky employ to make each other jealous make up the bulk of these chapters. Both behave in a petty, childish fashion, trying to prove to one another how little each needs the other. Until Tom takes Becky’s punishment, the two remain trapped in this cycle of nasty behavior. Tom’s act of self-sacrifice breaks the cycle and enables the pair to reunite. By taking Becky’s whipping and winning her back, Tom also brings his pirate adventure to its full conclusion, since it begins with Becky’s rejection of him. Twain directs our sympathy in these chapters toward Amy and Alfred, whom Tom and Becky use and then discard. Both characters, who vanish from the novel after Chapter 18, remain tools. Not only are they tools for Tom and Becky in their love war, but they are also rather dull characters for Twain himself—he doesn’t even consider going beyond the letter “A” in giving them names. Mr. Dobbins too serves as nothing more than a tool for Tom’s development. Mr. Dobbins’s threatening authority, although undermined in our eyes by the discovery of his secret desire to be a doctor and his humorous obsession with his medical textbook, allows Tom a chance to act heroically.

Summary—Chapter 21: Eloquence—and the Master’s Gilded Dome

Summer has almost arrived and the schoolchildren are restless. Mr. Dobbins becomes even more harsh in his discipline, provoking the boys to conspire against him. At the end of the year, the town gathers in the schoolhouse for the “Examination,” in which students recite speeches and poems and engage in spelling and geography competitions. Tom struggles through “Give me liberty or give me death,” finally succumbing to stage fright, and a series of young ladies then recites the hilariously awful poems and essays they have written. Finally, the schoolmaster turns to the blackboard to draw a map of the United States for the geography class, and at that moment a blindfolded cat is lowered from the rafters by a string. The animal claws at the air and yanks off Mr. Dobbins’s wig, revealing a bald head that the sign-painter’s boy gilded while Mr. Dobbins slept off a bout of drinking.

Summary—Chapter 22: Huck Finn Quotes Scripture

At the beginning of summer, Tom joins the Cadets of Temperance in order to wear one of their showy uniforms. Unfortunately, to join he must swear off smoking, tobacco chewing, and cursing—prohibitions that prove very difficult. He resolves to hang on until Judge Frazier, the justice of the peace, dies, because then he can wear his red sash in the public funeral. When the judge recovers, Tom resigns from the Cadets. The judge suffers a relapse and dies that night.

Vacation begins to drag. Becky Thatcher has gone to the town of Constantinople to stay with her parents, and the various circuses, parades, and minstrel shows that pass through town provide only temporary entertainment. The secret of Dr. Robinson’s murder still tugs at Tom’s conscience. Tom then gets the measles, and when he begins to recover, he discovers that a revival has swept through the town, leaving all his friends suddenly religious. That night brings a terrible thunderstorm, which Tom assumes must be directed at him as punishment for his sinful ways. The next day he has a relapse of the measles and stays in bed for three weeks. When he is finally on his feet again, Tom finds that all his friends have reverted to their former, impious ways.

Summary—Chapter 23: The Salvation of Muff Potter

Muff Potter’s trial approaches, and Tom and Huck agonize about whether they should reveal what they know. They agree that Injun Joe would kill them, so they continue to help Potter in small ways, bringing him tobacco and matches and feeling guilty when he thanks them for their friendship. The trial finally arrives, and Injun Joe gives his account of the events. A series of witnesses testifies to Potter’s peculiar behavior, and in each case Potter’s lawyer declines to cross-examine. Finally, Potter’s lawyer calls Tom Sawyer as a witness for the defense, much to everyone’s amazement. Tom, deeply frightened, takes the witness stand and tells the court what he saw that night. When he reaches the point in the story where Injun Joe stabs the doctor, Injun Joe leaps from his seat, pulls free of everyone, and escapes through a window.

Summary—Chapter 24: Splendid Days and Fearsome Nights

Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. . . . There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging. Tom is acclaimed as a hero and enjoys the adulation and gratitude of Muff Potter and the rest of the town during the day. At night, however, he is tormented by visions of Injun Joe coming to kill him. Injun Joe has vanished, despite the town’s and a detective’s best efforts to locate and capture him.

Analysis—Chapters 21–24

Mr. Dobbins’s humiliation at the hands of the sign-painter’s boy and the revelation that he drinks too much links him with the Sunday school superintendent and the minister as a person in a position of power who falls victim to Twain’s deft satire. Dobbins is a prime example of an authority figure who, ironically, has no true authority, because he is clearly dissatisfied with who he is. Both Mr. Dobbins’s obsession with his anatomy textbook and his false hair manifest his desire to be something that he is not.

In a footnote, Twain claims that the flowery, overstated compositions presented in the Examination scene are not his own creations but rather “are taken without alteration from a volume entitled ‘Prose and Poetry, by a Western Lady.’” One composition begins “Dark and tempestuous was night” in a pretentious version of the clichéd first line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Twain is criticizing the shallowness of small-town intellectual pretension, but his footnote suggests that his criticism is specifically directed toward women, and this scene is somewhat misogynistic (woman-hating). However one may interpret it, the Examination scene criticizes the same flaw to which the character of Dobbins falls prey: trying to be something one is not.

Like the Sunday school scene in which Tom claims a Bible, Twain ends the Examination chapter with a shocking event—the cat lifting the wig—but avoids describing the event’s aftermath. There may be several reasons for Twain’s omission of the specifics, but one explanation concerns the novel’s universality. Twain’s criticism is generally directed toward universal human foibles; importantly, he leave blanks for us to fill in, so that each reader ponders the events within his or her own frame of reference.

In Chapter 22, Twain again pokes fun at the fickleness of the townspeople’s religious belief. When a revival sweeps town, all the boys “get religion,” but they go back to their old ways within a few weeks. Tom’s understanding of God evolves out of his superstitious way of viewing the world—when a thunderstorm strikes, he believes that God has aimed it at him as a personal punishment.

Tom’s decision to testify at Muff Potter’s trial marks an important moment in his process of maturation from childhood to adulthood. His fear for his physical safety and his superstitious unwillingness to go back on his blood oath with Joe Harper are what have kept him from doing the right thing. Both are sentiments associated with childhood. While Twain does not give us a direct depiction of Tom’s internal moral crisis, he builds an atmosphere of increasing anxiety and indicates that Tom’s silence may have serious implications for the wrongly accused Muff Potter. When Tom eventually changes his priorities and acts out of concern for Muff instead of out of concern for himself, he conquers his fear and achieves a greater level of maturity.

If Tom Sawyer were a simple bildungsroman, a narrative of moral and psychological growth, then Tom’s decision to testify would be an appropriate ending. However, Tom Sawyer is also an adventure story, and to add suspense and danger to the plot, Twain allows Injun Joe to escape. Psychologically, Tom may be on the road to adulthood, but he still has to conquer Injun Joe outside the courtroom before his adventures can conclude.

Summary—Chapter 25: Seeking the Buried Treasure

One day Tom has a desire to hunt for buried treasure. He encounters Huck Finn, and the two discuss possible places to find treasure, what form the loot might take, and how kings have hundreds of diamonds but only one name. They then set off for the nearest dead-limbed tree, since such trees are typical hiding places for treasure. When they arrive, they discuss what they would do with the treasure. Huck plans to spend it all on pie and soda, and Tom decides that he would get married, an idea that Huck finds absurd.

That afternoon, the boys dig in a number of places around the tree but find nothing. At first, Tom blames a witch, and he then realizes that they are going about it all wrong: they need to find where the shadow of the tree limb falls at midnight. They return that night and dig for a time, again without result. Eventually frustration and fear of the darkened woods make them give up, but they hesitantly agree to try next in the “ha’nted” house, a deserted building nearby.

Summary—Chapter 26: Real Robbers Seize the Box of Gold

The following day, Tom and Huck set out for the house, only to realize that it is Friday—the most unlucky day of the week. They decide to pretend they are Robin Hood for the rest of the afternoon and make their way to the haunted house on Saturday. They explore the house’s deserted ground floor, then head upstairs as two mysterious men enter downstairs. One is “a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant about his face”; the other is a deaf and mute Spaniard with a long white beard and green goggles who has been hanging around St. Petersburg recently. The boys watch the two strangers through the floorboards. When the deaf and mute Spaniard speaks, the boys recognize his voice—it is Injun Joe’s.

Terrified, the boys listen as the two men talk about criminal activities, including a “dangerous” job that Injun Joe plans. After a while, the two men doze off. Tom wants to leave, but Huck is too frightened that the men might wake up. Eventually, the men wake and prepare to go. Before they leave, they bury some money they have stolen—$600 in silver—because it is too heavy to carry. While hiding it, they encounter an iron box, which they unearth using the tools that the boys left on the ground floor. The box is full of gold coins, and the boys think, ecstatically, that the two men will rebury it. However, Injun Joe notices that the boys’ tools are new and have fresh earth on them, and he decides that someone must be hanging around the house. Injun Joe even starts to go upstairs, but the steps collapse under his weight. He gives up, deciding to take the treasure to another hiding place: “Number Two—under the cross.”

The men leave with the loot, and Huck and Tom descend, wishing furiously that they had not left their tools behind for Injun Joe to find. They resolve to keep an eye out for the “Spaniard” in the hopes of following him to “Number Two.” Then the awful thought occurs to Tom that perhaps Injun Joe’s planned “job” will be on Tom and Huck. The boys talk it over, and Huck decides that since only Tom testified, Injun Joe’s wrath will probably be directed only at him. Huck’s words, of course, offer little comfort to Tom.

Analysis—Chapters 25–26

Initially, Tom’s desire to hunt for treasure appears to be just another juvenile adventure along the lines of the boys’ trip to Jackson’s Island. It is only when Injun Joe appears that we realize that the narrative is no longer skipping from adventure to adventure but is instead driving toward an ending. By offering different settings in which the action unfolds, Twain allows us to see Tom’s developing maturity and the effects that it has on his interactions with his friends, Becky, and his family. Twain allows us to trace this development in these various relationships without prioritizing one over the others, thus establishing the importance of each facet in a boy’s life.

Tom has pretty much abandoned Joe by this point in the novel. When he wants to play Robin Hood earlier in the novel, he goes out with Joe; now, however, the stronger, more well-defined character of Huck has taken Joe’s place. Whereas Joe and Tom seem to be roughly equivalent characters, Huck is clearly more independent (given his way of life, he has to be) and in certain ways more mature than Tom. Despite his relative maturity, Huck nevertheless defers to Tom’s imagination and initiative when it comes to planning their activities. He does so largely because he is slightly in awe of Tom’s book-learning and his superior knowledge about the rules governing their various activities, even when he does not fully understand what they mean.

Although Huck generally seems tougher than Tom, when the robbers are asleep, Huck is the one who is too afraid to move. This sudden fear may seem out of character, but, in general, Huck’s survival seems the result of his flight from difficulties, so it makes sense that he would attempt to avoid conflict and danger. Tom, on the other hand, tends to confront his problems and attempts to devise clever solutions. In a way, Huck is more of a realist—more likely than Tom to recognize the point at which an imaginative game ends and real life, with its real dangers, begins.

Twain raises the level of suspense by suggesting that Injun Joe may be seeking revenge on Tom and Huck. It is important to note that Injun Joe’s unnamed partner is more of a device for Twain than a true sidekick. It takes a certain level of maturity to develop a true partnership. Tom develops this maturity as the novel progresses, but Injun Joe certainly does not. Injun Joe’s partner serves merely as a device to enable dialogue, which gives the boys—and us—access to Injun Joe’s thoughts. Were Injun Joe alone in the house, there would be no conversation for the boys to overhear. The disclosures Injun Joe makes and the gaps he leaves generate the mystery of this portion of the narrative.

Once the hidden gold is introduced into the plot, the novel becomes more an adventure story and less a realistic portrayal of boyhood. Twain may also have chosen to introduce the hidden gold to provide a grown-up counterpart to the trinket-for-ticket exchanges that take place in the early chapters. Here, Tom’s newfound maturity has as a counterpart a larger, more intricate economic system—one in which there is considerably more at stake.

Summary—Chapter 27: Trembling on the Trail

The next morning, after a night of troubled sleep, Tom considers the possibility that events of the previous day were a dream. He finds Huck, and Huck rids him of this idea. The two boys speculate about where hiding place “Number Two” might be, deciding that “Two” probably refers to a room number in one of the town’s two taverns. Tom visits the first tavern and learns that a lawyer occupies room number two. In the second tavern, room number two remains locked all the time. The tavern-keeper’s son claims that no one ever enters or leaves the room except at night. He claims to have noticed a light on in the room the previous night. The boys decide to find all the keys they can and try them in the room’s back door. Meanwhile, if Injun Joe appears, the boys plan to tail him to see where he goes, in case they are wrong about the room.

Summary—Chapter 28: In the Lair of Injun Joe

On Thursday, the boys make their way to the tavern. Tom slips inside, and Huck waits for him. Suddenly Tom rushes by, shouting for them to run. Neither stops until he reaches the other end of the village, where Tom recounts that he found the door unlocked and Injun Joe asleep on the floor, surrounded by whiskey bottles. The tavern is a “Temperance Tavern,” meaning that it purportedly serves no alcohol. The boys realize that the room must be off-limits because it is where the tavern secretly serves whiskey. The boys decide that Huck will watch the room every night. If Injun Joe leaves, Huck will get Tom, who will sneak in and take the treasure.

X Summary—Chapter 29: Huck Saves the Widow

The next day, the Thatchers return from Constantinople. When Tom sees Becky, he learns that her picnic is planned for the following day, so the Injun Joe predicament drops to secondary importance. The children plan to go downriver to a famous cavern, and Becky’s mother tells Becky to spend the night with one of her friends who lives near the ferry. Tom then persuades Becky to disobey her mother and go with him to the Widow Douglas’s house instead, where the kind woman will probably give them ice cream and let them spend the night.

As they take the ferry down the river, Tom worries briefly that Injun Joe may go out that night, and he may miss the action. But the promise of fun with Becky soon drives such worries from his mind. The children arrive at a “woody hollow,” play in the forest, and eat lunch. Afterward, they climb up to McDougal’s cave and spend the afternoon excitedly exploring the passages. They stagger out that evening happily covered in clay and board the ferry for home.

Huck sees the ferry arrive in town, and a short time later he sees two men pass him carrying a box. Assuming them to be Injun Joe and his companion, he decides that there is no time to fetch Tom—the two men are escaping with the gold. He follows them to the Widow Douglas’s house, where Injun Joe describes to his friend how he plans to slit the widow’s nostrils and notch her ears like a sow as revenge for an incident in which her husband, then justice of the peace, had him horsewhipped for vagrancy.

While the two villains wait for the widow’s light to go out, Huck races down the hill to the house of an old Welshman and his sons. They let him in, and when he tells them what is about to happen, they seize their guns and rush toward the widow’s house. Huck follows them for a time, hears a burst of gunfire, and then flees for his life.

Summary

, Which opens with Tom’s belief that his adventures were only a dream, prepares us for the dreamlike quality of the novel’s conclusion. Before Tom and Huck find out about Injun Joe’s treasure, St. Petersburg seems a safe, sleepy town with year-round summery weather perfect for children’s make-believe and games. However, once fantasy adventures of piracy and Robin Hood turn into real encounters with outlaws, murder, and stolen treasure, Tom and Huck seem well prepared to handle the scenario precisely because of their many rehearsals. Although much of the novel concerns Tom’s gradual acclimation to the adult world, the surprising plot twist brought about by Tom and Huck’s discovery of Injun Joe’s plan seems to reaffirm their childhood activities and to suggest that these imaginative activities should not be abandoned as soon as adult responsibilities emerge.

Twain has already poked fun at church, school, and Sunday school, so his unveiling of the Temperance movement’s hypocrisy—the “Temperance Tavern” serves alcohol in a secret room—follows naturally. Because the novel focuses on Tom’s journey toward adulthood, and because Twain views the adult world as hypocritical and pretentious, it can be argued that Twain views Tom’s maturation as an unfortunate loss of freedom and honesty. However, Twain seems to be redefining the concept of maturity. Whereas conventional understanding links maturity with adulthood, Twain distinguishes between real maturity—the kind Tom displays when he testifies against Injun Joe and saves Becky from punishment—and the false maturity of the Temperance Tavern and the Sunday school. The older townspeople may be more learned than Tom by virtue of their age, and thus more intellectually mature, but Twain makes no similar correlation between age and moral maturity.

When Tom leaves Huck by himself to handle Injun Joe because he is excited by the prospect of picnicking with Becky, he behaves immaturely and gets himself into trouble. In Chapter 30, we find out that Tom and Becky haven’t actually gone to the Widow Douglas’s house; they are lost in the cave. The stage seems set for a final confrontation between Tom and Injun Joe at the Widow Douglas’s, but Huck, not Tom, is to prove the hero. Tom has been the planner all along, persuading the reluctant Huck to go along with his schemes. By staying when Tom irresponsibly leaves for the picnic, Huck finally assumes control of the Injun Joe plot and proves his superior maturity.

Summary—Chapter 30: Tom and Becky in the Cave The next morning, a Sunday, Huck creeps to the Welshman’s house and learns that the whole town is out looking for the deaf and mute Spaniard and his companion—both of whom the old man and his sons chased away the night before. (The Welshman does not yet know the Spaniard’s true identity.) Huck then describes how he followed the intruders the previous night. He tries not to mention the treasure, but eventually he describes the deaf and mute man’s speech and so has to admit that the Spaniard is actually Injun Joe. The Welshman tells him that the package the two men were carrying contained burglary tools, which relieves Huck considerably, because it means that the treasure must still be in the tavern.

Soon everyone has heard about the events at the widow’s house, but the Welshman keeps the identity of the boy who saved the widow a secret, in order to make it a great surprise. At church that morning, everyone discusses the excitement, and then Mrs. Thatcher asks Mrs. Harper where Becky is. Mrs. Harper says that Becky did not stay with her, and then Aunt Polly appears, wondering where Tom is. Eventually everyone realizes, to a collective horror, that Tom and Becky must still be in the cave.

A search party is organized and sets out for the cave immediately. The day drags on with no word from the missing children, and Huck, meanwhile, acquires a fever. The Widow Douglas, who remains ignorant of Huck’s actions the previous night, takes care of him. Eventually, the searchers in the cave begin to give up—the only traces found of the children are the words “BECKY & TOM,” written on the cave walls in candle-smoke soot, and one of Becky’s ribbons. In the days that follow, the town discovers that Temperance Tavern serves liquor. When Huck wakes from his feverish sleep at one point, he asks Widow Douglas if anything has been found at the Temperance Tavern. She tells him that alcohol has been discovered and the tavern shut down, so Huck assumes the treasure is gone. Tom and Becky remain lost.

Summary—Chapter 31: Found and Lost Again The story returns to Tom and Becky on the day of the picnic. They wander away from the larger group, exploring and using smoke to make marks on the walls so that they can find their way back. Eventually, they come to a large room filled with bats, and the bats attack them and chase them into unknown passages. After escaping the bats, they realize how far from the others they are and decide to go back, but they cannot go the way they came, as the bats are blocking it. Tom chooses another passage to follow, and, after a while, they realize they are completely lost. Tom hasn’t made any marks, and even finding the bats again seems impossible.

The couple wanders on, occasionally calling for help. Becky sleeps for a time. When she wakes up, they realize that their parents will not miss them until the following day. Despair sets in for a while. They then hear the voices of rescuers and call in reply. The search parties do not hear them, and the children find their way blocked by crevices and pitfalls. The voices grow fainter and eventually cease. The children grope their way to a spring and sit down, knowing they will soon run out of candles.

While Becky sleeps, Tom explores side passages with the aid of a kite line. He sees a candle on the other side of a pitfall and then sees Injun Joe holding it and retreats in terror. Not wanting to frighten Becky, he doesn’t tell her what he has seen, and he continues to explore other passages. Summary—Chapter 32: “Turn Out! They’re Found!”

Tuesday night arrives, and Tom and Becky still have not been found. Only Judge Thatcher and a few companions continue searching the cave. Then, in the middle of the night, news arrives that the children have turned up, and St. Petersburg celebrates. The children are taken to the Thatcher house, where a weakened Tom describes their escape. The kite string ran out while he was exploring a gallery, and he was about to turn back when he saw a speck of daylight in the distance. He abandoned the string and crawled forward until he could push through a hole and see the Mississippi River. He then went back and found Becky, and from there, the two crawled out and went to the nearest house, five miles downstream from the cave.

Judge Thatcher and the last searchers learn that the children have been found. Tom and Becky are bedridden for most of the rest of the week. Tom goes to see the invalid Huck that Friday, but the Widow Douglas warns him to avoid any upsetting topics. Tom learns about Injun Joe’s attempt against the widow and also hears that Injun Joe’s companion was found drowned while trying to escape.

Two weeks after he finds his way out of the cave, Tom talks to Judge Thatcher and is told that the door of the cave has been shut and bolted from the outside to prevent anyone else from getting lost. Tom becomes horrified and tells the judge that Injun Joe remains in the caverns.

Analysis—Chapters 30–32

At the end of Chapter 29, the novel seems to be moving toward a final confrontation at the Widow Douglas’s house, but that resolution is thwarted when the Welshman chases off Injun Joe. Twain also removes Huck from the action by having him get sick. This temporary elimination of two main characters leaves the novel’s focus on Tom and Becky, lost in the cave. Twain narrates the episode of their entrapment with superb realism and suspense. We experience vividly their hunger and their fear, their swings between hope and despair.

We can view the cave scene as a miniature version of Tom’s entire journey toward maturity. Tom’s immaturity and his lack of foresight lead him and Becky to stay away from the others for too long and to forget to make marks on the walls so that they can find their way back to the entrance. Once they are lost, however, Tom rises to the occasion. He assumes responsibility for his mistakes, behaves generously toward Becky, and takes practical measures like saving candles and finding a spring to sit by once the candles are nearly gone. Tom takes the initiative to explore the side passages around the spring, while Becky, who is less rugged, sleeps or lies in a daze. Eventually, Tom’s persistence and continued resourcefulness lead him and Becky out of the cave. As Tom matures, his adaptability develops, along with his willingness to accept his own mistakes.

Tom’s dramatic nature and active imagination have made him terribly afraid of Injun Joe, but we have every reason to believe that Injun Joe may be more afraid than Tom. Tom’s explanation for Injun Joe’s flight from him in the cave is that Injun Joe didn’t recognize him. Tom is convinced that Injun Joe wants to kill him for having testified at his trial, but it is likely that Injun Joe really doesn’t care too much about Tom. Rather, Injun Joe seems more concerned about his own fate.

Although Twain relates Tom and Becky’s three days in the cave from the points of view of Tom and Becky, he depicts their climactic escape from the cave from the point of view of the townspeople, who have been suffering while searching for three days. When Tom and Becky return, the town explodes in celebration, in a manner that parallels the boys’ return from Jackson’s Island earlier in the novel. In both cases, the town believes Tom to be dead, and in both cases, we see the children’s reappearance through the eyes of the community—the angle from which the suspense is greatest.

Chapters 33–Conclusion Summary Chapters 33–Conclusion Summary—Chapter 33: The Fate of Injun Joe

A party rushes down to the cave, unlocks the door, and finds Injun Joe starved to death inside. He evidently has eaten the few bats he could catch, used every candle stump he could find, and made a cup out of rock and placed it under a dripping stalactite to catch a spoonful of water a day. “Injun Joe’s Cup,” Twain informs us, has since become one of the chief tourist attractions in the cave.

The morning after Injun Joe’s funeral, Tom tells Huck his theory that the gold never was in Room No. 2 at the Temperance Tavern. Instead, he believes that it remains hidden in the cave. That afternoon, the boys take a raft down to the place where Tom and Becky exited the cave and crawl inside. Tom comments on how much he wants to start a gang of robbers and use this part of the cave as a hideout. The boys discuss how grand it would be to be robbers and eventually reach the place where Tom encountered Injun Joe.

Tom points out a cross that is burned on the wall of the cave and tells Huck that this, not the tavern, must be where the gold is hidden. Huck becomes frightened that Injun Joe’s ghost could be lurking around, but Tom points out that the cross would keep him away. Comforted by Tom’s words, Huck helps him search the area. The boys find nothing and decide to dig under the rock. There they find a collection of guns, moccasins, a belt, and the treasure.

The boys decide to leave the guns behind, reasoning that they will be useful for their band of robbers in the future. They drag the gold out of the cavern and put it on their raft back to St. Petersburg. On their way to hide the treasure, however, they encounter the Welshman, who insists that they accompany him to a party at the Widow Douglas’s house. He sees the box they are lugging but assumes they have been collecting old iron.

Summary—Chapter 34: Floods of Gold

Nearly every person of importance in the village has gathered at the Widow Douglas’s house. While the boys change into nice clothes, Huck tells Tom that he wants to escape out the window because he cannot stand such a large crowd. Tom tells him not to worry. Sid comes in and informs them that the party is being given in honor of the Welshman, Mr. Jones, and his sons, and that Mr. Jones plans to surprise everyone by announcing that Huck was the real hero. Sid then says, in a self-satisfied way, that the surprise will fall flat because he has already spoiled it. Tom yells at Sid for being such a nasty sneak and chases him out of the room.

At the supper table, Mr. Jones tells his secret and everyone pretends to be surprised. Widow Douglas then announces that she plans to give Huck a home and educate him. Tom bursts out, “Huck don’t need it. Huck’s rich.” Everyone chuckles at the joke, and Tom runs outside and brings in the gold. Everyone is shocked. When the money is counted, it adds up to over twelve thousand dollars.

Chapters 33–Conclusion

Summary Chapters 33–Conclusion Page 1Page 2Page 3 Summary—Chapter 35: Respectable Huck Joins the Gang

Huck Finn’s wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas’s protection introduced him into society—no, dragged him into it, hurled him into it—and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear.

See Important Quotations Explained The news of the gold shocks the village and inspires dozens of treasure hunters. The money is invested and provides both boys an allowance of almost a dollar a day—equal to the minister’s salary.

Becky tells her father about how noble Tom has been, and the judge decides that Tom should go to the National Military Academy and then become a lawyer. Huck, meanwhile, suffers terribly under the burden of being civilized. He bears wearing clean clothes, sleeping in sheets, and eating with a knife and fork for three weeks; he then runs away. The town searches for him, but to no avail. Tom finds him, eventually, sleeping in an abandoned slaughterhouse, and Huck tells his friend that he simply is not cut out for a respectable life. The Widow Douglas makes him dress nicely and forbids him to spit, swear, or smoke.

Tom replies that Huck can do as he pleases, but if he wants to join Tom’s gang of robbers, he has to be respectable. Otherwise, he says, Huck’s sour reputation will drag down the whole gang. Huck agrees to try the widow’s house again for a month—provided that Tom allows him to belong to the gang.

Summary—Conclusion

Twain writes that the story must end here because it is strictly a story about a boy. Were the story to continue, he states, it would quickly become the story of a man. He adds that most of the characters in the story are still alive and that he might one day explore how they turned out.

Analysis—Chapters 33–Conclusion

In a way, the town rewards Tom for his disobedience. It hails him as a hero in relation to three actions that are marked by mischief—his return from Jackson’s Island, his testimony against Injun Joe, and his return from the caverns. A model boy would never get lost in a cave or be able to lie “upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and [tell] the history of the wonderful adventure.” Tom’s adventuresome spirit leads him into risks that others would not attempt, and his payoff is heroism.

Twain’s message, however, is not that disobedience is a virtue. Others who disobey, such as Injun Joe, fall prey to Twain’s criticism without any heroic tempering. Although Injun Joe, Tom, and Huck are all inherently mischievous, Injun Joe harms others to satisfy his inclinations. Tom and Huck, though true to their mischievous natures, never allow themselves to harm others—they feel bad even about stealing bacon. A third category of characters in the novel includes those who obey outwardly but harbor malevolence on the inside—Sid, for example. These hypocrites are the subtle antiheroes of the novel.

After his triumphant return from the cave, Tom regains his sense of perspective and leads Huck back to the cave to find the treasure. Their plan for a “robber band,” which Tom will in fact establish in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, marks a return to the world of boyhood fantasy, as it resembles the pirate band they create on Jackson’s Island and the outlaws they pretend to be in Sherwood Forest. Tom and Huck also return to their boyhood mind-set in the cave when they argue about superstition. But the way Tom deflects Huck’s arguments, enabling the conversation topic to move beyond superstition so that the boys can get the gold, displays his increasing maturity.

When the Widow Douglas adopts Huck, not only his treasure but also his life become subject to adult control. As Huck and Tom change upstairs in the Widow Douglas’s house before her dinner party, Huck is so worried about the life that awaits him that he attempts to persuade Tom to escape. Tom dismisses Huck’s fears, promising to “take care of [Huck],” but Huck’s worries prove well founded. Not long after he and Tom go downstairs together, the secret of their riches is revealed, and they are quickly ushered into the daunting adult world.

X Tom is far more ready than Huck to enter the adult community. When we first meet Huck, Twain writes, “Tom envied him his gaudy outcast condition”; now Tom urges Huck to embrace respectability. The Tom we meet in the first chapter, with jam on his face and mischief on his mind, has given way to a boy who defends the adult order by preventing Huck from escaping out the window. Tom is not yet a man and still has plans for a robber gang, but Judge Thatcher is already talking about sending him to the military academy and law school. When Tom finds Huck after he has attempted to run away from the Widow Douglas’s house, he couches his appeal to return in the language of childhood, telling Huck that he needs to be respectable to be in the robber band. But we sense that Tom is using this rhetoric to appeal to Huck because, with his newfound money and status, Tom has a stake in adult society that he wants to defend.

Twain’s closing words wrap up matters for Tom and Huck and usher them into adult society without actually showing them as adults. Their gold, which has been pursued without the adults’ knowledge as a kind of game, is no longer a game. The gold has become a business so serious that Judge Thatcher, the most significant and authoritative figure in the adult hierarchy, assumes control of it. Gone are Huck’s plans to spend it all on candy, although on a dollar a day, he will happily be able to enjoy his share of sweets.

There is a note of sadness in Twain’s concluding statement that Tom’s story will soon become “the history of a man.” The woods and fields around St. Petersburg, where Tom plays Robin Hood, pirates, and Indians, have given way to the world of money invested at interest. The freedom of childhood, represented by Huck, has been absorbed by the adult order. The novel, which mixes a nostalgia for the carefree days of youth with illuminating criticism of adult society, cannot but regret the conclusion of childhood, even while recognizing—as Tom tries to enable Huck to recognize—the importance of moving toward maturity and sophistication.

Characters

Character List

· Tom Sawyer The novel’s protagonist. Tom is a mischievous boy with an active imagination who spends most of the novel getting himself, and often his friends, into and out of trouble. Despite his mischief, Tom has a good heart and a strong moral conscience. As the novel progresses, he begins to take more seriously the responsibilities of his role as a leader among his schoolfellows.

· Aunt Polly

Tom’s aunt and guardian. Aunt Polly is a simple, kindhearted woman who struggles to balance her love for her nephew with her duty to discipline him. She generally fails in her attempts to keep Tom under control because, although she worries about Tom’s safety, she seems to fear constraining him too much. Above all, Aunt Polly wants to be appreciated and loved.

· Huckleberry Finn

The son of the town drunk. Huck is a juvenile outcast who is shunned by respectable society and adored by the local boys, who envy his freedom. Like Tom, Huck is highly superstitious, and both boys are always ready for an adventure. Huck gradually replaces Tom’s friend Joe Harper as Tom’s sidekick in his escapades.

· Becky Thatcher

Judge Thatcher’s pretty, yellow-haired daughter. From almost the minute she moves to town, Becky is the “Adored Unknown” who stirs Tom’s lively romantic sensibility. Naïve at first, Becky soon matches Tom as a romantic strategist, and the two go to great lengths to make each other jealous.

· Joe Harper Tom’s “bosom friend” and frequent playmate. Joe is a typical best friend, a convention Twain parodies when he refers to Joe and Tom as “two souls with but a single thought.” Though Joe mostly mirrors Tom, he diverges from Tom’s example when he is the first of the boys to succumb to homesickness on Jackson’s Island. As the novel progresses, Huck begins to assume Joe’s place as Tom’s companion. · Sid Tom’s half-brother. Sid is a goody-goody who enjoys getting Tom into trouble. He is mean-spirited but presents a superficial show of model behavior. He is thus the opposite of Tom, who is warmhearted but behaves badly.

· Mary

Tom’s sweet, almost saintly cousin. Mary holds a soft spot for Tom. Like Sid, she is well behaved, but unlike him, she acts out of genuine affection rather than malice.

· Injun Joe

A violent, villainous man who commits murder, becomes a robber, and plans to mutilate the Widow Douglas. Injun Joe’s predominant motivation is revenge. Half Native American and half Caucasian, he has suffered social exclusion, probably because of his race.

· Muff Potter A hapless drunk and friend of Injun Joe. Potter is kind and grateful toward Tom and Huck, who bring him presents after he is wrongly jailed for Dr. Robinson’s murder. Potter’s naïve trust eventually pushes Tom’s conscience to the breaking point, compelling Tom to tell the truth at Potter’s trial about who actually committed the murder.

· Dr. Robinson A respected local physician. Dr. Robinson shows his more sordid side on the night of his murder: he hires Injun Joe and Muff Potter to dig up Hoss Williams’s grave because he wants to use the corpse for medical experiments.

· Mr. Sprague

The minister of the town church. · The Widow Douglas A kindhearted, pious resident of St. Petersburg whom the children recognize as a friend. Tom knows that the Widow Douglas will give him and Becky ice cream and let them sleep over. She is kind to Huck even before she learns that he saved her life.

· Mr. Jones

A Welshman who lives with his sons near the Widow Douglas’s house. Mr. Jones responds to Huck’s alarm on the night that Injun Joe intends to attack the widow, and he takes care of Huck in the aftermath.

· Judge Thatcher

Becky’s father, the county judge. A local celebrity, Judge Thatcher inspires the respect of all the townspeople. He takes responsibility for issues affecting the community as a whole, such as closing the cave for safety reasons and taking charge of the boys’ treasure money.

· Jim

Aunt Polly’s young slave.

· Amy Lawrence Tom’s former love. Tom abandons Amy when Becky Thatcher comes to town.

· Ben Rogers

One of Tom’s friends, whom Tom persuades to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence.

· Alfred Temple

A well-dressed new boy in town. Like Amy Lawrence, Alfred gets caught in the crossfire of Tom and Becky’s love games, as Becky pretends to like him in order to make Tom jealous. · Mr. Walters The somewhat ridiculous Sunday school superintendent. Because he aspires to please Judge Thatcher, Mr. Walters rewards Tom with a Bible, even though he knows that Tom hasn’t earned it.

· Mr. Dobbins

The schoolmaster. Mr. Dobbins seems a slightly sad character: his ambition to be a medical doctor has been thwarted and he has become a heavy drinker and the butt of schoolboy pranks.

Tom Sawyer

Characters Tom Sawyer When the novel begins, Tom is a mischievous child who envies Huck Finn’s lazy lifestyle and freedom. As Tom’s adventures proceed, however, critical moments show Tom moving away from his childhood concerns and making mature, responsible decisions. These moments include Tom’s testimony at Muff Potter’s trial, his saving of Becky from punishment, and his heroic navigation out of the cave. By the end of the novel, Tom is coaxing Huck into staying at the Widow Douglas’s, urging his friend to accept tight collars, Sunday school, and good table manners. He is no longer a disobedient character undermining the adult order, but a defender of respectability and responsibility. In the end, growing up for Tom means embracing social custom and sacrificing the freedoms of childhood.

Yet Tom’s development isn’t totally coherent. The novel jumps back and forth among several narrative strands: Tom’s general misbehavior, which climaxes in the Jackson’s Island adventure; his courtship of Becky, which culminates in his acceptance of blame for the book that she rips; and his struggle with Injun Joe, which ends with Tom and Huck’s discovery of the treasure. Because of the picaresque, or episodic, nature of the plot, Tom’s character can seem inconsistent, as it varies depending upon his situation. Tom is a paradoxical figure in some respects—for example, he has no determinate age. Sometimes Tom shows the naïveté of a smaller child, with his interest in make-believe and superstitions. On the other hand, Tom’s romantic interest in Becky and his fascination with Huck’s smoking and drinking seem more the concerns of an adolescent.

Whether or not a single course of development characterizes Tom’s adventures, a single character trait—Tom’s unflagging energy and thirst for adventure—propels the novel from episode to episode. Disobedient though he may be, Tom ends up as St. Petersburg’s hero. As the town gossips say, “[Tom] would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”

Characters

Huckleberry Finn

Characters Huckleberry Finn In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain created a character who exemplifies freedom within, and from, American society. Huck lives on the margins of society because, as the son of the town drunk, he is pretty much an orphan. He sleeps where he pleases, provided that nobody chases him off, and he eats when he pleases, provided that he can find a morsel. No one requires him to attend school or church, bathe, or dress respectably. It is understandable, if not expected, that Huck smokes and swears. Years of having to fend for himself have invested Huck with a solid common sense and a practical competence that complement Tom’s dreamy idealism and fantastical approach to reality (Tom creates worlds for himself that are based on those in stories he has read). But Huck does have two traits in common with Tom: a zest for adventure and a belief in superstition.

Through Huck, Twain weighs the costs and benefits of living in a society against those of living independently of society. For most of the novel, adult society disapproves of Huck, but because Twain renders Huck such a likable boy, the adults’ disapproval of Huck generally alienates us from them and not from Huck himself. After Huck saves the Widow Douglas and gets rich, the scale tips in the direction of living in society. But Huck, unlike Tom, isn’t convinced that the exchange of freedom for stability is worth it. He has little use for the money he has found and is quite devoted to his rough, independent lifestyle. When the novel ends, Huck, like Tom, is still a work in progress, and we aren’t sure whether the Widow Douglas’s attempts to civilize him will succeed (Twain reserves the conclusion of Huck’s story for his later novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). Injun Joe

Characters Injun Joe Injun Joe is Tom Sawyer’s villain. His actions are motivated, from beginning to end, by unadulterated malevolence. When Injun Joe explains his motivation for revenge against Dr. Robinson and later against the Widow Douglas, we see that his personal history involves others mistreating and excluding him. Yet the disproportion between the wrongs Injun Joe has suffered—at least as he enumerates them—and the level of vengeance he hopes to exact is so extreme that we aren’t tempted to excuse his behavior. In contrast, Muff Potter’s misdeeds are inconsequential compared to the punishment he stands to receive. One might also compare Injun Joe to Sid: both are motivated by malice, which they paper over with a convincing performance of innocence.

Though his appearance changes when he disguises himself as a deaf and mute Spaniard, Injun Joe undergoes no real character development over the course of the novel. He never seems to repent for his crimes or change his spiteful outlook. His reappearances in different parts of the novel help to provide a thread of continuity, as they bring the murder-case plot, the treasure-hunt plot, and the adventures-in-the-cave plots together into a single narrative. Injun Joe’s presence also adds suspense to the novel, because we have very little sense of whether Tom and Huck’s constant fear that Injun Joe will hurt them has any basis in reality.

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Moral and Social Maturation

When the novel opens, Tom is engaged in and often the organizer of childhood pranks and make-believe games. As the novel progresses, these initially consequence-free childish games take on more and more gravity. Tom leads himself, Joe Harper, Huck, and, in the cave, Becky Thatcher into increasingly dangerous situations. He also finds himself in predicaments in which he must put his concern for others above his concern for himself, such as when he takes Becky’s punishment and when he testifies at Injun Joe’s trial. As Tom begins to take initiative to help others instead of himself, he shows his increasing maturity, competence, and moral integrity.

Tom’s adventures to Jackson’s Island and McDougal’s Cave take him away from society. These symbolic removals help to prepare him to return to the village with a new, more adult outlook on his relationship to the community. Though early on Tom looks up to Huck as much older and wiser, by the end of the novel, Tom’s maturity has surpassed Huck’s. Tom’s personal growth is evident in his insistence, in the face of Huck’s desire to flee all social constraints, that Huck stay with the Widow Douglas and become civilized.

Society’s Hypocrisy

Twain complicates Tom’s position on the border between childhood and adulthood by ridiculing and criticizing the values and practices of the adult world toward which Tom is heading. Twain’s harshest satire exposes the hypocrisy—and often the essential childishness—of social institutions such as school, church, and the law, as well as public opinion. He also mocks individuals, although when doing so he tends to be less biting and focuses on flaws of character that we understand to be universal.

Twain shows that social authority does not always operate on wise, sound, or consistent principles and that institutions fall prey to the same kinds of mistakes that individuals do. In his depiction of families, Twain shows parental authority and constraint balanced by parental love and indulgence. Though she attempts to restrain and punish Tom, Aunt Polly always relents because of her love for her nephew. As the novel proceeds, a similar tendency toward indulgence becomes apparent within the broader community as well. The community shows its indulgence when Tom’s dangerous adventures provoke an outpouring of concern: the community is perfectly ready to forgive Tom’s wrongs if it can be sure of his safety. Twain ridicules the ability of this collective tendency toward generosity and forgiveness to go overboard when he describes the town’s sentimental forgiveness of the villainous Injun Joe after his death.

The games the children play often seem like attempts to subvert authority and escape from conventional society. Skipping school, sneaking out at night, playing tricks on the teacher, and running away for days at a time are all ways of breaking the rules and defying authority. Yet, Twain shows us that these games can be more conventional than they seem. Tom is highly concerned with conforming to the codes of behavior that he has learned from reading, and he outlines the various criteria that define a pirate, a Robin Hood, or a circus clown. The boys’ obsession with superstition is likewise an addiction to convention, which also mirrors the adult society’s focus on religion. Thus, the novel shows that adult existence is more similar to childhood existence than it might seem. Though the novel is critical of society’s hypocrisy—that is, of the frequent discord between its values and its behavior—Twain doesn’t really advocate subversion. The novel demonstrates the potential dangers of subverting authority just as it demonstrates the dangers of adhering to authority too strictly.

Freedom through Social Exclusion St. Petersburg is an insular community in which outsiders are easily identified. The most notable local outsiders include Huck Finn, who fends for himself outside of any family structure because his father is a drunkard; Muff Potter, also a drunk; and Injun Joe, a malevolent half-breed. Despite the community’s clear separation of outsiders from insiders, however, it seems to have a strong impulse toward inclusiveness. The community tolerates the drunkenness of a harmless rascal like Muff Potter, and Huck is more or less protected even though he exists on the fringes of society. Tom too is an orphan who has been taken in by Aunt Polly out of love and filial responsibility. Injun Joe is the only resident of St. Petersburg who is completely excluded from the community. Only after Injun Joe’s death are the townspeople able to transform him, through their manipulation of his memory, into a tolerable part of St. Petersburg society.

Main Ideas

Themes

Main Ide

Huck’s exclusion means that many of the other children are not allowed to play with him. He receives no structured education and often does not even have enough to eat or a place to sleep. Twain minimizes these concerns, however, in favor of presenting the freedom that Huck’s low social status affords him. Huck can smoke and sleep outside and do all the things that the other boys dream of doing, with very little constraint. Huck’s windfall at the end of the novel, when the boys find the treasure, threatens to stifle his freedom. The Widow Douglas’s attentions force Huck to change his lifestyle, something Huck would probably never choose to do on his own. By linking Huck’s acquisition of the treasure with his assimilation into St. Petersburg society, Twain emphasizes the association between financial standing and social standing. Besides the obvious fact that money is an important ingredient in social acceptance, social existence clearly is itself a kind of economy, in which certain costs accompany certain benefits. The price of social inclusion is a loss of complete freedom. Superstition in an Uncertain World

Twain first explores superstition in the graveyard, where Tom and Huck go to try out a magical cure for warts. From this point forward, superstition becomes an important element in all of the boys’ decision-making. The convenient aspect of Tom and Huck’s superstitious beliefs is that there are so many of them, and they are so freely interpretable; Tom and Huck can pick and choose whichever belief suits their needs at the time. In this regard, Twain suggests, superstition bears a resemblance to religion—at least as the populace of St. Petersburg practices it.

The humorousness of the boys’ obsession with witches, ghosts, and graveyards papers over, to some extent, the real horror of the circumstances to which the boys are exposed: grave digging, murder, starvation, and attempted mutilation. The relative ease with which they assimilate these ghastly events into their childish world is perhaps one of the least realistic aspects of the novel. (If the novel were written today, we might expect to read about the psychic damage these extreme childhood experiences have done to these boys.) The boys negotiate all this horror because they exist in a world suspended somewhere between reality and make-believe. Their fear of death is real and pervasive, for example, but we also have the sense that they do not really understand death and all of its ramifications.

Main Ideas

Motifs

Main Ideas Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Crime The many crimes committed in the novel range from minor childhood transgressions to capital offenses—from playing hooky to murder. The games the boys prefer center on crime as well, giving them a chance to explore the boldness and heroism involved in breaking social expectations without actually threatening the social order. The boys want to be pirates, robbers, and murderers even though they feel remorse when they actually commit the minor crime of stealing bacon. The two scenes in which Tom plays Robin Hood—who, in stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is both a criminal and a hero—are emblematic of how Tom associates crime with defending values and even altering the structure of society.

Trading

The children in the novel maintain an elaborate miniature economy in which they constantly trade amongst themselves treasures that would be junk to adults. These exchanges replicate the commercial relationships in which the children will have to engage when they get older. Many of the complications that money creates appear in their exchanges. Tom swindles his friends out of all their favorite objects through a kind of false advertising when he sells them the opportunity to whitewash the fence. He then uses his newly acquired wealth to buy power and prestige at Sunday school—rewards that should be earned rather than bought. When Tom and Joe fight over the tick in class, we see a case in which a disagreement leads the boys, who have been sharing quite civilly, to revert to a quarrel over ownership.

The jump from this small-scale property holding at the beginning of the novel to the $12,000 treasure at the end is an extreme one. In spite of all Tom and Huck’s practice, their money is given to a responsible adult. With their healthy allowance, the boys can continue to explore their role as commercial citizens, but at a more moderate rate. The Circus

The boys mention again and again their admiration for the circus life and their desire to be clowns when they grow up. These references emphasize the innocence with which they approach the world. Rather than evaluate the real merits and shortcomings of the various occupations Tom and Hank could realistically choose, they like to imagine themselves in roles they find romantic or exciting.

Showing Off

Tom’s showing off is mostly directed toward Becky Thatcher. When he shows off initially, we guess that he literally prances around and does gymnastics. Later, the means by which Tom and Becky try to impress each other grow more subtle, as they manipulate Amy and Alfred in an effort to make each other jealous.

In the Sunday school scene, Twain reveals that showing off is not strictly a childhood practice. The adults who are supposed to be authority figures in the church are so awed by Judge Thatcher and so eager to attract his attention and approval that they too begin to behave like children. The room devolves into an absolute spectacle of ridiculous behavior by children and adults alike, culminating in the public embarrassment in which Tom exposes his ignorance of the Bible.

Main Ideas

Symbols

Main Ideas Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Cave

The cave represents a trial that Tom has to pass before he can graduate into maturity. Coming-of-age stories often involve tests in which the protagonist is separated from the rest of the society for a period of time and faces significant dangers or challenges. Only after having survived on the strength of his personal resources is Tom ready to rejoin society. The Storm

The storm on Jackson’s Island symbolizes the danger involved in the boys’ removal from society. It forms part of an interruptive pattern in the novel, in which periods of relative peace and tranquility alternate with episodes of high adventure or danger. Later, when Tom is sick, he believes that the storm hit to indicate that God’s wrath is directed at him personally. The storm thus becomes an external symbol of Tom’s conscience.

The Treasure

The treasure is a symbolic goal that marks the end of the boys’ journey. It becomes a indicator of Tom’s transition into adulthood and Huck’s movement into civilized society. It also symbolizes the boys’ heroism, marking them as exceptional in a world where conformity is the rule.

The Village

Many readers interpret the small village of St. Petersburg as a microcosm of the United States or of society in general. All of the major social institutions are present on a small scale in the village and all are susceptible to Twain’s comic treatment. The challenges and joys Tom encounters in the village are, in their basic structure, ones that he or any reader could expect to meet anywhere.

Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in

Two Acts and a Requiem

Author Arthur Miller Type Of Work Play Genre Tragedy, social commentary, family drama Language English (with emphasis on middle-class American lingo) Time And Place Written Six weeks in 1948, in a shed in Connecticut Date Of First Publication 1949 Original Publisher The Viking Press Climax The scene in Frank’s Chop House and Biff’s final confrontation with Willy at home Protagonists Willy Loman, Biff Loman Antagonists Biff Loman, Willy Loman, the American Dream Setting (Time) “Today,” that is, the present; either the late 1940s or the time period in which the play is being produced, with “daydreams” into Willy’s past; all of the action takes place during a twenty-four-hour period between Monday night and Tuesday night, except the “Requiem,” which takes place, presumably, a few days after Willy’s funeral Setting (Place) According to the stage directions, “Willy Loman’s house and yard [in Brooklyn] and . . . various places he visits in . . . New York and Boston” Falling Action The “Requiem” section, although the play is not really structured as a classical drama Tense Present Foreshadowing Willy’s flute theme foreshadows the revelation of his father’s occupation and abandonment; Willy’s preoccupation with Linda’s stockings foreshadows his affair with The Woman; Willy’s automobile accident before the start of Act I foreshadows his suicide at the end of Act II Tone The tone of Miller’s stage directions and dialogue ranges from sincere to parodying, but, in general, the treatment is tender, though at times brutally honest, toward Willy’s plight Themes The American Dream; abandonment; betrayal Motifs Mythic figures; the American West; Alaska; the African jungle Symbols Seeds; diamonds; Linda’s and The Woman’s stockings; the rubber hose

Themes

Main Ideas Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The American Dream Willy believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream—that a “well liked” and “personally attractive” man in business will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. Oddly, his fixation with the superficial qualities of attractiveness and likeability is at odds with a more gritty, more rewarding understanding of the American Dream that identifies hard work without complaint as the key to success. Willy’s interpretation of likeability is superficial—he childishly dislikes Bernard because he considers Bernard a nerd. Willy’s blind faith in his stunted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and his own life.

Abandonment Willy’s life charts a course from one abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater despair each time. Willy’s father leaves him and Ben when Willy is very young, leaving Willy neither a tangible (money) nor an intangible (history) legacy. Ben eventually departs for Alaska, leaving Willy to lose himself in a warped vision of the American Dream. Likely a result of these early experiences, Willy develops a fear of abandonment, which makes him want his family to conform to the American Dream. His efforts to raise perfect sons, however, reflect his inability to understand reality. The young Biff, whom Willy considers the embodiment of promise, drops Willy and Willy’s zealous ambitions for him when he finds out about Willy’s adultery. Biff’s ongoing inability to succeed in business furthers his estrangement from Willy. When, at Frank’s Chop House, Willy finally believes that Biff is on the cusp of greatness, Biff shatters Willy’s illusions and, along with Happy, abandons the deluded, babbling Willy in the washroom.

Betrayal

Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. Willy believes that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in him. When Biff walks out on Willy’s ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront (he associates it with “insult” and “spite”). Willy, after all, is a salesman, and Biff’s ego-crushing rebuff ultimately reflects Willy’s inability to sell him on the American Dream—the product in which Willy himself believes most faithfully. Willy assumes that Biff’s betrayal stems from Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affair with The Woman—a betrayal of Linda’s love. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a “phony little fake,” has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies. Motifs

Main Ideas Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. Mythic Figures Willy’s tendency to mythologize people contributes to his deluded understanding of the world. He speaks of Dave Singleman as a legend and imagines that his death must have been beautifully noble. Willy compares Biff and Happy to the mythic Greek figures Adonis and Hercules because he believes that his sons are pinnacles of “personal attractiveness” and power through “well liked”-ness; to him, they seem the very incarnation of the American Dream.

Willy’s mythologizing proves quite nearsighted, however. Willy fails to realize the hopelessness of Singleman’s lonely, on-the-job, on-the-road death. Trying to achieve what he considers to be Singleman’s heroic status, Willy commits himself to a pathetic death and meaningless legacy (even if Willy’s life insurance policy ends up paying off, Biff wants nothing to do with Willy’s ambition for him). Similarly, neither Biff nor Happy ends up leading an ideal, godlike life; while Happy does believe in the American Dream, it seems likely that he will end up no better off than the decidedly ungodlike Willy.

The American West, Alaska, and the African Jungle These regions represent the potential of instinct to Biff and Willy. Willy’s father found success in Alaska and his brother, Ben, became rich in Africa; these exotic locales, especially when compared to Willy’s banal Brooklyn neighborhood, crystallize how Willy’s obsession with the commercial world of the city has trapped him in an unpleasant reality. Whereas Alaska and the African jungle symbolize Willy’s failure, the American West, on the other hand, symbolizes Biff’s potential. Biff realizes that he has been content only when working on farms, out in the open. His westward escape from both Willy’s delusions and the commercial world of the eastern United States suggests a nineteenth-century pioneer mentality—Biff, unlike Willy, recognizes the importance of the individual.

Symbols

Main Ideas Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Seeds Seeds represent for Willy the opportunity to prove the worth of his labor, both as a salesman and a father. His desperate, nocturnal attempt to grow vegetables signifies his shame about barely being able to put food on the table and having nothing to leave his children when he passes. Willy feels that he has worked hard but fears that he will not be able to help his offspring any more than his own abandoning father helped him. The seeds also symbolize Willy’s sense of failure with Biff. Despite the American Dream’s formula for success, which Willy considers infallible, Willy’s efforts to cultivate and nurture Biff went awry. Realizing that his all-American football star has turned into a lazy bum, Willy takes Biff’s failure and lack of ambition as a reflection of his abilities as a father.

Diamonds To Willy, diamonds represent tangible wealth and, hence, both validation of one’s labor (and life) and the ability to pass material goods on to one’s offspring, two things that Willy desperately craves. Correlatively, diamonds, the discovery of which made Ben a fortune, symbolize Willy’s failure as a salesman. Despite Willy’s belief in the American Dream, a belief unwavering to the extent that he passed up the opportunity to go with Ben to Alaska, the Dream’s promise of financial security has eluded Willy. At the end of the play, Ben encourages Willy to enter the “jungle” finally and retrieve this elusive diamond—that is, to kill himself for insurance money in order to make his life meaningful.

Linda’s and The Woman’s Stockings

Willy’s strange obsession with the condition of Linda’s stockings foreshadows his later flashback to Biff’s discovery of him and The Woman in their Boston hotel room. The teenage Biff accuses Willy of giving away Linda’s stockings to The Woman. Stockings assume a metaphorical weight as the symbol of betrayal and sexual infidelity. New stockings are important for both Willy’s pride in being financially successful and thus able to provide for his family and for Willy’s ability to ease his guilt about, and suppress the memory of, his betrayal of Linda and Biff.

The Rubber Hose The rubber hose is a stage prop that reminds the audience of Willy’s desperate attempts at suicide. He has apparently attempted to kill himself by inhaling gas, which is, ironically, the very substance essential to one of the most basic elements with which he must equip his home for his family’s health and comfort—heat. Literal death by inhaling gas parallels the metaphorical death that Willy feels in his struggle to afford such a basic necessity.

Characters

Willy Loman

Characters Willy Loman Despite his desperate searching through his past, Willy does not achieve the self-realization or self-knowledge typical of the tragic hero. The quasi-resolution that his suicide offers him represents only a partial discovery of the truth. While he achieves a professional understanding of himself and the fundamental nature of the sales profession, Willy fails to realize his personal failure and betrayal of his soul and family through the meticulously constructed artifice of his life. He cannot grasp the true personal, emotional, spiritual understanding of himself as a literal “loman” or “low man.” Willy is too driven by his own “willy”-ness or perverse “willfulness” to recognize the slanted reality that his desperate mind has forged. Still, many critics, focusing on Willy’s entrenchment in a quagmire of lies, delusions, and self-deceptions, ignore the significant accomplishment of his partial self-realization. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents this incapacity as the real tragedy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in his attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream.

Ben’s final mantra—“The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds”—turns Willy’s suicide into a metaphorical moral struggle, a final skewed ambition to realize his full commercial and material capacity. His final act, according to Ben, is “not like an appointment at all” but like a “diamond . . . rough and hard to the touch.” In the absence of any real degree of self-knowledge or truth, Willy is able to achieve a tangible result. In some respect, Willy does experience a sort of revelation, as he finally comes to understand that the product he sells is himself. Through the imaginary advice of Ben, Willy ends up fully believing his earlier assertion to Charley that “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.”

Biff Loman

Characters Biff Lo man Unlike Willy and Happy, Biff feels compelled to seek the truth about himself. While his father and brother are unable to accept the miserable reality of their respective lives, Biff acknowledges his failure and eventually manages to confront it. Even the difference between his name and theirs reflects this polarity: whereas Willy and Happy willfully and happily delude themselves, Biff bristles stiffly at self-deception. Biff’s discovery that Willy has a mistress strips him of his faith in Willy and Willy’s ambitions for him. Consequently, Willy sees Biff as an underachiever, while Biff sees himself as trapped in Willy’s grandiose fantasies. After his epiphany in Bill Oliver’s office, Biff determines to break through the lies surrounding the Loman family in order to come to realistic terms with his own life. Intent on revealing the simple and humble truth behind Willy’s fantasy, Biff longs for the territory (the symbolically free West) obscured by his father’s blind faith in a skewed, materialist version of the American Dream. Biff’s identity crisis is a function of his and his father’s disillusionment, which, in order to reclaim his identity, he must expose.

Happy Loman

Characters Happy Loman Happy shares none of the poetry that erupts from Biff and that is buried in Willy—he is the stunted incarnation of Willy’s worst traits and the embodiment of the lie of the happy American Dream. As such, Happy is a difficult character with whom to empathize. He is one-dimensional and static throughout the play. His empty vow to avenge Willy’s death by finally “beat[ing] this racket” provides evidence of his critical condition: for Happy, who has lived in the shadow of the inflated expectations of his brother, there is no escape from the Dream’s indoctrinated lies. Happy’s diseased condition is irreparable—he lacks even the tiniest spark of self-knowledge or capacity for self-analysis. He does share Willy’s capacity for self-delusion, trumpeting himself as the assistant buyer at his store, when, in reality, he is only an assistant to the assistant buyer. He does not possess a hint of the latent thirst for knowledge that proves Biff’s salvation. Happy is a doomed, utterly duped figure, destined to be swallowed up by the force of blind ambition that fuels his insatiable sex drive.

Linda Loman and Charley

Characters Linda Lo man and Charley Linda and Charley serve as forces of reason throughout the play. Linda is probably the most enigmatic and complex character in Death of a Salesman, or even in all of Miller’s work. Linda views freedom as an escape from debt, the reward of total ownership of the material goods that symbolize success and stability. Willy’s prolonged obsession with the American Dream seems, over the long years of his marriage, to have left Linda internally conflicted. Nevertheless, Linda, by far the toughest, most realistic, and most levelheaded character in the play, appears to have kept her emotional life intact. As such, she represents the emotional core of the drama. If Linda is a sort of emotional prophet, overcome by the inevitable end that she foresees with startling clarity, then Charley functions as a sort of poetic prophet or sage. Miller portrays Charley as ambiguously gendered or effeminate, much like Tiresias, the mythological seer in Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. Whereas Linda’s lucid diagnosis of Willy’s rapid decline is made possible by her emotional sanity, Charley’s prognosis of the situation is logical, grounded firmly in practical reasoned analysis. He recognizes Willy’s financial failure, and the job offer that he extends to Willy constitutes a commonsense solution. Though he is not terribly fond of Willy, Charley understands his plight and shields him from blame. Plot Overview

Sum mary Plot Ove rview As a flute melody plays, Willy Loman returns to his home in Brooklyn one night, exhausted from a failed sales trip. His wife, Linda, tries to persuade him to ask his boss, Howard Wagner, to let him work in New York so that he won’t have to travel. Willy says that he will talk to Howard the next day. Willy complains that Biff, his older son who has come back home to visit, has yet to make something of himself. Linda scolds Willy for being so critical, and Willy goes to the kitchen for a snack.

As Willy talks to himself in the kitchen, Biff and his younger brother, Happy, who is also visiting, reminisce about their adolescence and discuss their father’s babbling, which often includes criticism of Biff’s failure to live up to Willy’s expectations. As Biff and Happy, dissatisfied with their lives, fantasize about buying a ranch out West, Willy becomes immersed in a daydream. He praises his sons, now younger, who are washing his car. The young Biff, a high school football star, and the young Happy appear. They interact affectionately with their father, who has just returned from a business trip. Willy confides in Biff and Happy that he is going to open his own business one day, bigger than that owned by his neighbor, Charley. Charley’s son, Bernard, enters looking for Biff, who must study for math class in order to avoid failing. Willy points out to his sons that although Bernard is smart, he is not “well liked,” which will hurt him in the long run.

A younger Linda enters, and the boys leave to do some chores. Willy boasts of a phenomenally successful sales trip, but Linda coaxes him into revealing that his trip was actually only meagerly successful. Willy complains that he soon won’t be able to make all of the payments on their appliances and car. He complains that people don’t like him and that he’s not good at his job. As Linda consoles him, he hears the laughter of his mistress. He approaches The Woman, who is still laughing, and engages in another reminiscent daydream. Willy and The Woman flirt, and she thanks him for giving her stockings.

The Woman disappears, and Willy fades back into his prior daydream, in the kitchen. Linda, now mending stockings, reassures him. He scolds her mending and orders her to throw the stockings out. Bernard bursts in, again looking for Biff. Linda reminds Willy that Biff has to return a football that he stole, and she adds that Biff is too rough with the neighborhood girls. Willy hears The Woman laugh and explodes at Bernard and Linda. Both leave, and though the daydream ends, Willy continues to mutter to himself. The older Happy comes downstairs and tries to quiet Willy. Agitated, Willy shouts his regret about not going to Alaska with his brother, Ben, who eventually found a diamond mine in Africa and became rich. Charley, having heard the commotion, enters. Happy goes off to bed, and Willy and Charley begin to play cards. Charley offers Willy a job, but Willy, insulted, refuses it. As they argue, Willy imagines that Ben enters. Willy accidentally calls Charley Ben. Ben inspects Willy’s house and tells him that he has to catch a train soon to look at properties in Alaska. As Willy talks to Ben about the prospect of going to Alaska, Charley, seeing no one there, gets confused and questions Willy. Willy yells at Charley, who leaves. The younger Linda enters and Ben meets her. Willy asks Ben impatiently about his life. Ben recounts his travels and talks about their father. As Ben is about to leave, Willy daydreams further, and Charley and Bernard rush in to tell him that Biff and Happy are stealing lumber. Although Ben eventually leaves, Willy continues to talk to him.

Back in the present, the older Linda enters to find Willy outside. Biff and Happy come downstairs and discuss Willy’s condition with their mother. Linda scolds Biff for judging Willy harshly. Biff tells her that he knows Willy is a fake, but he refuses to elaborate. Linda mentions that Willy has tried to commit suicide. Happy grows angry and rebukes Biff for his failure in the business world. Willy enters and yells at Biff. Happy intervenes and eventually proposes that he and Biff go into the sporting goods business together. Willy immediately brightens and gives Biff a host of tips about asking for a loan from one of Biff’s old employers, Bill Oliver. After more arguing and reconciliation, everyone finally goes to bed.

Act II opens with Willy enjoying the breakfast that Linda has made for him. Willy ponders the bright-seeming future before getting angry again about his expensive appliances. Linda informs Willy that Biff and Happy are taking him out to dinner that night. Excited, Willy announces that he is going to make Howard Wagner give him a New York job. The phone rings, and Linda chats with Biff, reminding him to be nice to his father at the restaurant that night.

As the lights fade on Linda, they come up on Howard playing with a wire recorder in his office. Willy tries to broach the subject of working in New York, but Howard interrupts him and makes him listen to his kids and wife on the wire recorder. When Willy finally gets a word in, Howard rejects his plea. Willy launches into a lengthy recalling of how a legendary salesman named Dave Singleman inspired him to go into sales. Howard leaves and Willy gets angry. Howard soon re-enters and tells Willy to take some time off. Howard leaves and Ben enters, inviting Willy to join him in Alaska. The younger Linda enters and reminds Willy of his sons and job. The young Biff enters, and Willy praises Biff’s prospects and the fact that he is well liked.

Ben leaves and Bernard rushes in, eagerly awaiting Biff’s big football game. Willy speaks optimistically to Biff about the game. Charley enters and teases Willy about the game. As Willy chases Charley off, the lights rise on a different part of the stage. Willy continues yelling from offstage, and Jenny, Charley’s secretary, asks a grown-up Bernard to quiet him down. Willy enters and prattles on about a “very big deal” that Biff is working on. Daunted by Bernard’s success (he mentions to Willy that he is going to Washington to fight a case), Willy asks Bernard why Biff turned out to be such a failure. Bernard asks Willy what happened in Boston that made Biff decide not to go to summer school. Willy defensively tells Bernard not to blame him. Charley enters and sees Bernard off. When Willy asks for more money than Charley usually loans him, Charley again offers Willy a job. Willy again refuses and eventually tells Charley that he was fired. Charley scolds Willy for always needing to be liked and angrily gives him the money. Calling Charley his only friend, Willy exits on the verge of tears.

At Frank’s Chop House, Happy helps Stanley, a waiter, prepare a table. They ogle and chat up a girl, Miss Forsythe, who enters the restaurant. Biff enters, and Happy introduces him to Miss Forsythe, continuing to flirt with her. Miss Forsythe, a call girl, leaves to telephone another call girl (at Happy’s request), and Biff spills out that he waited six hours for Bill Oliver and Oliver didn’t even recognize him. Upset at his father’s unrelenting misconception that he, Biff, was a salesman for Oliver, Biff plans to relieve Willy of his illusions. Willy enters, and Biff tries gently, at first, to tell him what happened at Oliver’s office. Willy blurts out that he was fired. Stunned, Biff again tries to let Willy down easily. Happy cuts in with remarks suggesting Biff’s success, and Willy eagerly awaits the good news.

Biff finally explodes at Willy for being unwilling to listen. The young Bernard runs in shouting for Linda, and Biff, Happy, and Willy start to argue. As Biff explains what happened, their conversation recedes into the background. The young Bernard tells Linda that Biff failed math. The restaurant conversation comes back into focus and Willy criticizes Biff for failing math. Willy then hears the voice of the hotel operator in Boston and shouts that he is not in his room. Biff scrambles to quiet Willy and claims that Oliver is talking to his partner about giving Biff the money. Willy’s renewed interest and probing questions irk Biff more, and he screams at Willy. Willy hears The Woman laugh and he shouts back at Biff, hitting him and staggering. Miss Forsythe enters with another call girl, Letta. Biff helps Willy to the washroom and, finding Happy flirting with the girls, argues with him about Willy. Biff storms out, and Happy follows with the girls.

Willy and The Woman enter, dressing themselves and flirting. The door knocks and Willy hurries The Woman into the bathroom. Willy answers the door; the young Biff enters and tells Willy that he failed math. Willy tries to usher him out of the room, but Biff imitates his math teacher’s lisp, which elicits laughter from Willy and The Woman. Willy tries to cover up his indiscretion, but Biff refuses to believe his stories and storms out, dejected, calling Willy a “phony little fake.” Back in the restaurant, Stanley helps Willy up. Willy asks him where he can find a seed store. Stanley gives him directions to one, and Willy hurries off.

The light comes up on the Loman kitchen, where Happy enters looking for Willy. He moves into the living room and sees Linda. Biff comes inside and Linda scolds the boys and slaps away the flowers in Happy’s hand. She yells at them for abandoning Willy. Happy attempts to appease her, but Biff goes in search of Willy. He finds Willy planting seeds in the garden with a flashlight. Willy is consulting Ben about a $20,000 proposition. Biff approaches him to say goodbye and tries to bring him inside. Willy moves into the house, followed by Biff, and becomes angry again about Biff’s failure. Happy tries to calm Biff, but Biff and Willy erupt in fury at each other. Biff starts to sob, which touches Willy. Everyone goes to bed except Willy, who renews his conversation with Ben, elated at how great Biff will be with $20,000 of insurance money. Linda soon calls out for Willy but gets no response. Biff and Happy listen as well. They hear Willy’s car speed away. In the requiem, Linda and Happy stand in shock after Willy’s poorly attended funeral. Biff states that Willy had the wrong dreams. Charley defends Willy as a victim of his profession. Ready to leave, Biff invites Happy to go back out West with him. Happy declares that he will stick it out in New York to validate Willy’s death. Linda asks Willy for forgiveness for being unable to cry. She begins to sob, repeating “We’re free. . . .” All exit, and the flute melody is heard as the curtain falls.

Summary

Act I

Sum mary Act I

Opening scene to Willy’s first daydream

Summary The play begins on a Monday evening at the Loman family home in Brooklyn. After some light changes on stage and ambient flute music (the first instance of a motif connected to Willy Loman’s faint memory of his father, who was once a flute-maker and salesman), Willy, a sixty- three-year-old traveling salesman, returns home early from a trip, apparently exhausted. His wife, Linda, gets out of bed to greet him. She asks if he had an automobile accident, since he once drove off a bridge into a river. Irritated, he replies that nothing happened. Willy explains that he kept falling into a trance while driving—he reveals later that he almost hit a boy. Linda urges him to ask his employer, Howard Wagner, for a non-traveling job in New York City. Willy’s two adult sons, Biff and Happy, are visiting. Before he left that morning, Willy criticized Biff for working at manual labor on farms and horse ranches in the West. The argument that ensued was left unresolved. Willy says that his thirty-four-year-old son is a lazy bum. Shortly thereafter, he declares that Biff is anything but lazy. Willy’s habit of contradicting himself becomes quickly apparent in his conversation with Linda.

Willy’s loud rambling wakes his sons. They speculate that he had another accident. Linda returns to bed while Willy goes to the kitchen to get something to eat. Happy and Biff reminisce about the good old days when they were young. Although Happy, thirty-two, is younger than Biff, he is more confident and more successful. Biff seems worn, apprehensive, and confused. Happy is worried about Willy’s habit of talking to himself. Most of the time, Happy observes, Willy talks to the absent Biff about his disappointment in Biff’s unsteadiness. Biff hopped from job to job after high school and is concerned that he has “waste[d] his life.” He is disappointed in himself and in the disparity between his life and the notions of value and success with which Willy indoctrinated him as a boy. Happy has a steady job in New York, but the rat race does not satisfy him. He and Biff fantasize briefly about going out west together. However, Happy still longs to become an important executive. He sleeps with the girlfriends and fiancées of his superiors and often takes bribes in an attempt to climb the corporate ladder from his position as an assistant to the assistant buyer in a department store.

Biff plans to ask Bill Oliver, an old employer, for a loan to buy a ranch. He remembers that Oliver thought highly of him and offered to help him anytime. He wonders if Oliver still thinks that he stole a carton of basketballs while he was working at his store. Happy encourages his brother, commenting that Biff is “well liked”—a sure predictor of success in the Loman household. The boys are disgusted to hear Willy talking to himself downstairs. They try to go to sleep.

Analysis It is important to note that much of the play’s action takes place in Willy’s home. In the past, the Brooklyn neighborhood in which the Lomans live was nicely removed from the bustle of New York City. There was space within the neighborhood for expansion and for a garden. When Willy and Linda purchased it, it represented the ultimate expression of Willy’s hopes for the future. Now, however, the house is hemmed in by apartment buildings on all sides, and sunlight barely reaches their yard. Their abode has come to represent the reduction of Willy’s hopes, even though, ironically, his mortgage payments are almost complete. Just as the house is besieged by apartment buildings, Willy’s ego is besieged by doubts and mounting evidence that he will never experience the fame and fortune promised by the American Dream.

Willy’s reality profoundly conflicts with his hopes. Throughout his life, he has constructed elaborate fantasies to deny the mounting evidence of his failure to fulfill his desires and expectations. By the time the play opens, Willy suffers from crippling self-delusion. His consciousness is so fractured that he cannot even maintain a consistent fantasy. In one moment, he calls Biff a lazy bum. In the next, he says that Biff is anything but lazy. His later assessment of the family car is similarly contradictory—one moment he calls it a piece of trash, the next “the finest car ever built.” Labeling Biff a lazy bum allows Willy to deflect Linda’s criticism of his harangue against Biff’s lack of material success, ambition, and focus. Denying Biff’s laziness enables Willy to hold onto the hope that Biff will someday, in some capacity, fulfill his expectations of him. Willy changes his interpretation of reality according to his psychological needs at the moment. He is likewise able to reimagine decisive moments in his past in his later daydreams. Ironically, he asks Linda angrily why he is “always being contradicted,” when it is usually he who contradicts himself from moment to moment.

The opening pages of the play introduce the strangely affected and stilted tone of the dialogue, which transcends the 1950s idiom of nonspecific pet names (an ungendered “pal” or “kid” for adult and child alike) and dated metaphors, vocabulary, and slang. Some critics cite the driving, emphatic, repetitive diction (“Maybe it’s your glasses. You never went for your new glasses”; “I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England”) and persistent vexed questioning (“Why do you get American when I like Swiss?” “How can they whip cheese?”) as a particularly Jewish-American idiom, but the stylization of the speech serves a much more immediate end than stereotype or bigotry. Miller intended the singsong melodies of his often miserable and conflicted characters to parallel the complex struggle of a family with a skewed version of the American Dream trying to support itself. The dialogue’s crooked, blunt lyricism of stuttering diction occasionally rises even to the level of the grotesque and inarticulate, as do the characters themselves. Miller himself claims in his autobiography that the characters in Death of a Salesman speak in a stylized manner “to lift the experience into emergency speech of an unabashedly open kind rather than to proceed by the crabbed dramatic hints and pretexts of the ‘natural.’ ”

Summary Willy is lost in his memories. Suddenly, the memories of his sons’ childhood come alive. Young Biff and Happy wash and wax their father’s car after he has just returned from a sales trip. Biff informs Willy that he “borrowed” a football from the locker room to practice. Willy laughs knowingly. Happy tries to get his father’s attention, but Willy’s preference for Biff is obvious. Willy whispers that he will soon open a bigger business than his successful neighbor Uncle Charley because Charley is not as “well liked” as he is. Charley’s son, Bernard, arrives to beg Biff to study math with him. Biff is close to failing math, which would prevent him from graduating. Willy orders Biff to study. Biff distracts him by showing him that he printed the insignia of the University of Virginia on his sneakers, impressing Willy. Bernard states that the sneakers do not mean Biff will graduate. After Bernard leaves, Willy asks if Bernard is liked. The boys reply that he is liked but not “well liked.” Willy tells them that Bernard may make good grades, but Happy and Biff will be more successful in business because they are “well liked.”

Still in his daydream of fifteen years ago, Willy brags to Linda that he made $1200 in sales that week. Linda quickly figures his commission at over $200. Willy then hedges his estimation. Under questioning, he admits that he grossed only $200. The $70 commission is barely adequate to cover the family’s expenses. In a rare moment of lucidity and self-criticism, Willy moans that he cannot move ahead because people do not seem to like him. Linda tells him that he is successful enough. Willy complains that he talks and jokes too much. He explains that Charley earns respect because he is a man of few words. His jealousy of his neighbor becomes painfully clear. Willy thinks people laugh at him for being too fat; he once punched a man for joking about his “walrus” physique. As Linda assures him that he is the handsomest man ever, Willy replies that she is his best friend in the world. Just as he tells her that he misses her terribly when he is on the road, The Woman’s laughter sounds from the darkness.

Analysis One of the most interesting aspects of Death of a Salesman is its fluid treatment of time: past and present flow into one another seamlessly and simultaneously as various stimuli induce in Willy a rambling stream-of-consciousness. It is important to remember that the idyllic past that Willy recalls is one that he reinvents; one should not, therefore, take these seeming flashbacks entirely as truth. The idyllic past functions as an escape from the present reality or a retrospective reconstruction of past events and blunders. Even when he retreats to this idyllic past, however, Willy cannot completely deny his real situation. He retreats into his daydreams not only to escape the present but also to examine the past. He searches for the mistake that he made that frustrated his hopes for fame and fortune and destroyed his relationship with Biff. Willy’s treatment of his life as a story to be edited and rewritten enables him to avoid confronting its depressing reality. It is important to examine the evolution of Willy’s relationship with his family, as the solid family is one of the most prominent elements of the American Dream. In the present, Willy’s relationship with his family is fraught with tension. In his memories, on the other hand, Willy sees his family as happy and secure. But even Willy’s conception of the past is not as idyllic as it seems on the surface, as his split consciousness, the profound rift in his psyche, shows through. No matter how much he wants to remember his past as all-American and blissful, Willy cannot completely erase the evidence to the contrary. He wants to remember Biff as the bright hope for the future. In the midst of his memories, however, we find that Willy does nothing to discourage Biff’s compulsive thieving habit. In fact, he subtly encourages it by laughing at Biff’s theft of the football.

As an adult, Biff has never held a steady job, and his habitual stealing from employers seems largely to be the reason for this failing. Over the years, Biff and Willy have come to a mutual antagonism. Willy is unable to let go of his commitment to the American Dream, and he places tremendous pressure on Biff to fulfill it for him. Biff feels a deep sense of inadequacy because Willy wants him to pursue a career that conflicts with his natural inclinations and instincts. He would rather work in the open air on a ranch than enter business and make a fortune, and he believes that Willy’s natural inclination is the same, like his father’s before him.

Willy’s relationship with Happy is also less than perfect in Willy’s reconstruction of the past, and it is clear that he favors Biff. Happy tries several times to gain Willy’s attention and approval but fails. The course of Happy’s adult life clearly bears the marks of this favoritism. Happy doesn’t express resentment toward Biff; rather, he emulates the behavior of the high-school-aged Biff. In the past, Willy expressed admiration for Biff’s success with the girls and his ability to get away with theft. As an adult, Happy competes with more successful men by sleeping with their women—he thus performs a sort of theft and achieves sexual prowess.

Willy’s relationship with Linda is even more complex and interesting. In one of his moments of self-doubt, she assures him that he is a good provider and that he is handsome. She also sees through his lie when he tries to inflate his commission from his latest trip. Although she does not buy his pitch to her, she still loves him. His failure to make her believe his fantasy of himself does not lead her to reject him—she does not measure Willy’s worth in terms of his professional success. Willy, however, needs more than love, which accepts character flaws, doubts, and insecurity—he seeks desperately to be “well liked.” As such, he ignores the opportunity that Linda presents to him: to view himself more honestly, to acknowledge the reality of his life, and to accept himself for what he is without feeling like a failure. Instead, he tries to play the salesman with her and their sons.

Summary

Act I (continued)

Sum mary Act I (continued)

After The Woman’s laughter through Ben’s first appearance in Willy’s daydream

Summary The Woman is Willy’s mistress and a secretary for one of his buyers. In Willy’s daydream, they sit in a hotel room. She tells him that she picked him because he is so funny and sweet. Willy loves the praise. She thanks Willy for giving her stockings and promises to put him right through to the buyers when she sees him next. The Woman fades into the darkness as Willy returns to his conversation with Linda in the present. He notices Linda mending stockings and angrily demands that she throw them out—he is too proud to let his wife wear an old pair (Biff later discovers that Willy has been buying new stockings for The Woman instead of for Linda). Bernard returns to the Loman house to beg Biff to study math. Willy orders him to give Biff the answers. Bernard replies that he cannot do so during a state exam. Bernard insists that Biff return the football. Linda comments that some mothers fear that Biff is “too rough” with their daughters. Willy, enraged by the unglamorous truth of his son’s behavior, plunges into a state of distraction and shouts at them to shut up. Bernard leaves the house, and Linda leaves the room, holding back tears.

The memory fades. Willy laments to himself and Happy that he did not go to Alaska with his brother, Ben, who acquired a fortune at the age of twenty-one upon discovering an African diamond mine. Charley, having heard the shouts, visits to check on Willy. They play cards. Charley, concerned about Willy, offers him a job, but Willy is insulted by the offer. He asks Charley if he saw the ceiling he put in his living room, but he becomes surly when Charley expresses interest, insisting that Charley’s lack of skill with tools proves his lack of masculinity. Ben appears on the stage in a semi-daydream. He cuts a dignified, utterly confident figure. Willy tells Charley that Ben’s wife wrote from Africa to tell them Ben had died. He alternates between conversing with Charley and his dead brother. Willy gets angry when Charley wins a hand, so Charley takes his cards and leaves. He is disturbed that Willy is so disoriented that he talks to a dead brother as if he were present. Willy immerses himself in the memory of a visit from his brother. Ben and Willy’s father abandoned the family when Willy was three or four years old and Ben was seventeen. Ben left home to look for their father in Alaska but never found him. At Willy’s request, Ben tells young Biff and Happy about their grandfather. Among an assortment of other jobs, Willy and Ben’s father made flutes and sold them as a traveling salesman before following a gold rush to Alaska. Ben proceeds to wrestle the young Biff to the ground in a demonstration of unbridled machismo, wielding his umbrella threateningly over Biff’s eye. Willy begs Ben to stay longer, but Ben hurries to catch his train.

Analysis

Just as the product that Willy sells is never specified, so too does The Woman, with whom Willy commits adultery, remain nameless. Miller offers no description of her looks or character because such details are irrelevant; The Woman merely represents Willy’s discontent in life. Indeed, she is more a symbol than an actual human being: she regards herself as a means for Willy to get to the buyers more efficiently, and Willy uses her as a tool to feel well liked. Biff sees her as a sign that Willy and his ambitions are not as great as Willy claims. Willy’s compulsive need to be “well liked” contributes to his descent into self-delusion. Whereas Linda loves Willy despite his considerable imperfections, Willy’s mistress, on the other hand, merely likes him. She buys his sales pitch, which boosts his ego, but does not care for him deeply the way Linda does. Linda regards Willy’s job merely as a source of income; she draws a clear line between Willy as a salesman and Willy as her husband. Willy is unable to do so and thus fails to accept the love that Linda and his sons offer him.

Willy was first abandoned by his father and later by his older brother, Ben. Willy’s father was a salesman as well, but he actually produced what he sold and was successful, according to Ben, at least. Ben presents their father as both an independent thinker and a masculine man skilled with his hands. In a sense, Willy’s father, not Willy himself, represents the male ideal to Biff, a pioneer spirit and rugged individualist. Unlike his father, Willy does not attain personal satisfaction from the things that he sells because they are not the products of his personal efforts—what he sells is himself, and he is severely damaged and psychically ruptured. His professional persona is the only thing that he has produced himself. In a roundabout manner, Willy seeks approval from his professional contacts by trying to be “well liked”—a coping strategy to deal with his abandonment by the two most important male figures in his life.

Willy’s efforts to create the perfect family of the American Dream seem to constitute an attempt to rebuild the pieces of the broken family of his childhood. One can interpret his decision to become a salesman as the manifestation of his desperate desire to be the good father and provider that his own salesman father failed to be. Willy despairs about leaving his sons nothing in the form of a material inheritance, acutely aware that his own father abandoned him and left him with nothing.

Willy’s obsession with being well liked seems to be rooted in his reaction to his father’s and brother’s abandoning of him—he takes their rejection of him as a sign of their not liking him enough. Willy’s memory of Ben’s visit to his home is saturated with fears of abandonment and a need for approval. When Ben declares that he must leave soon in order to catch his train, Willy desperately tries to find some way to make him stay a little longer. He proudly shows his sons to Ben, practically begging for a word of approval. Additionally, he pleads with Ben to tell Biff and Happy about their grandfather, as he realizes that he has no significant family history to give to his sons as an inheritance; the ability to pass such a chronicle on to one’s offspring is an important part of the American Dream that Willy so highly esteems.

Act I (continued)

Sum mary Act I (continued)

From Ben’s departure through the closing scene

Summary Willy’s shouts wake Linda and Biff, who find Willy outside in his slippers. Biff asks Linda how long he has been talking to himself, and Happy joins them outside. Linda explains that Willy’s mental unbalance results from his having lost his salary (he now works only on commission). Linda knows that Willy borrows fifty dollars a week from Charley and pretends it is his salary. Linda claims that Biff and Happy are ungrateful. She calls Happy a “philandering bum.” Angry and guilt-ridden, Biff offers to stay home and get a job to help with expenses. Linda says that he cannot fight with Willy all the time. She explains that all of his automobile accidents are actually failed suicide attempts. She adds that she found a rubber hose behind the fuse box and a new nipple on the water heater’s gas pipe—a sign that Willy attempted to asphyxiate himself. Willy overhears Biff, Happy, and Linda arguing about him. When Biff jokes with his father to snap him out of his trance, Willy misunderstands and thinks that Biff is calling him crazy. They argue, and Willy maintains that he is a “big shot” in the sales world.

Happy mentions that Biff plans to ask Bill Oliver for a business loan. Willy brightens immediately. Happy outlines a publicity campaign to sell sporting goods; the business proposal, which revolves around the brothers using their natural physical abilities to lead publicity displays of sporting events, is thenceforth referred to as the “Florida idea.” Everyone loves the idea of Happy and Biff going into business together. Willy begins offering dubious and somewhat unhelpful advice for Biff’s loan interview. One moment, he tells Biff not to crack any jokes; the next, he tells him to lighten things up with a couple of funny stories. Linda tries to offer support, but Willy tells her several times to be quiet. He orders Biff not to pick up anything that falls off Oliver’s desk because doing so is an office boy’s job. Before they fall asleep, Linda again begs Willy to ask his boss for a non-traveling job. Biff removes the rubber hose from behind the fuse box before he retires to bed

Analysis

One reason for Willy’s reluctance to criticize Biff for his youthful thefts and his careless attitude toward his classes seems to be that he fears doing damage to Biff’s ego. Thus, he offers endless praise, hoping that Biff will fulfill the promise of that praise in his adulthood. It is also likely that Willy refuses to criticize the young Biff because he fears that, if he does so, Biff will not like him. This disapproval represents the ultimate personal and professional (the two spheres are conflated in Willy’s mind) insult and failure. Because Willy’s consciousness is split between despair and hope, it is probable that both considerations are behind Willy’s decision not to criticize Biff’s youthful indiscretions. In any case, his relationship with Biff is fraught, on Willy’s side, with the childhood emotional trauma of abandonment and, on Biff’s side, with the struggle between fulfilling societal expectations and personal expectations.

The myth of the American Dream has its strongest pull on the individuals who do not enjoy the happiness and prosperity that it promises. Willy pursues the fruits of that dream as a panacea for the disappointments and the hurts of his own youth. He is a true believer in the myth that any “well liked” young man possessing a certain degree of physical faculty and “personal attractiveness” can achieve the Dream if he journeys forth in the world with a can-do attitude of confidence. The men who should have offered him the affirmation that he needed to build a healthy concept of self-worth—his father and Ben—left him. Therefore, Willy tries to measure his self-worth by the standards of an American myth that hardly corresponds to reality, while ignoring the more important foundations of family love, unconditional support, and the freedom of choice inherent to the American Dream. Unfortunately, Willy has a corrupted interpretation of the American Dream that clashes with that set forth by the country’s founding fathers; he is preoccupied with the material facets of American success and national identity.

In his obsession with being “well liked,” Willy ignores the love that his family can offer him. Linda is far more realistic and grounded than Willy, and she is satisfied with what he can give her. She sees through his facade and still loves and accepts the man behind the facade. She likewise loves her adult sons, and she recognizes their bluster as transparent as well. She knows in her heart that Biff is irresponsible and that Happy is a “philandering bum,” but she loves them without always having to like or condone their behavior. The emotional core of the family, Linda demands their full cooperation in dealing with Willy’s mental decline. If Willy were content finally to relinquish the gnarled and grotesquely caricatured American tragic myth that he has fed with his fear, insecurity, and profound anxiety and that has possessed his soul, he could be more content. Instead, he continues to chase the fame and fortune that outruns him. He has built his concept of himself not on human relationships that fulfill human needs but on the unrealistic myth of the American hero. That myth has preyed on his all-too-common male weaknesses, until the fantasy that he has constructed about his life becomes intolerable to Biff. Willy’s diseased mind is almost ready to explode by the end of Act I. The false hope offered by the “Florida idea” is a placebo, and the empty confidence it instills in Willy makes his final fall all the more crushing.

Act II

Sum mary Act II

Opening scene through scene in Howard’s office Summary

When Willy awakes the next morning, Biff and Happy have already left, Biff to see Bill Oliver and Happy to mull over the “Florida idea” and go to work. Willy, in high spirits with the prospect of the “Florida idea,” mentions that he would like to get some seeds and plant a small garden in the yard. Linda, pleased with her husband’s hopeful mood, points out that there is not enough sun. Willy replies that they will have to get a house in the country. Linda reminds Willy to ask his boss, Howard, for a non-traveling job as well as an advance to pay the insurance premium. They have one last payment on both the refrigerator and the house, and they have just finished paying for the car. Linda informs Willy that Biff and Happy want to take him to dinner at Frank’s Chop House at six o’clock. As Willy departs, moved and excited by his sons’ dinner invitation, he notices a stocking that Linda is mending and, guilt-ridden with the latent memory of his adultery with The Woman, admonishes her to throw the stocking away.

Willy timidly enters Howard’s office. Howard is playing with a wire recorder he has just purchased for dictation. He plays the recorded voices of his family: his cloyingly enthusiastic children (a whistling daughter and a son who recites the state capitals in alphabetical order) and his shy wife. As Willy tries to express admiration, Howard repeatedly shushes him. Willy asks for a non-traveling job at $65 a week. Howard replies that there is no opening available. He looks for his lighter. Willy finds it and hands it to him, unconsciously ignoring, in his nervous and pathetically humble distraction, his own advice never to handle or tend to objects in a superior’s office, since that is the responsibility of “office boys.” Willy keeps lowering his salary request, explaining his financial situation in unusually candid detail, but Howard remains resistant. Howard keeps calling him “kid” and assumes a condescending tone despite his younger age and Willy’s reminders that he helped Howard’s father name him.

I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. Desperate, Willy tries to relate an anecdote about Dave Singleman, an eighty-four-year-old salesman who phoned his buyers and made his sales without ever leaving his hotel room. After he died the noble “death of a salesman” that eludes Willy, hundreds of salesmen and buyers attended his funeral. Willy reveals that his acquaintance with this venerable paragon of salesmanship convinced him to become a salesman himself rather than join his brother, Ben, on his newly purchased plot of timberland in Alaska. Singleman’s dignified success and graceful, respected position as an older man deluded Willy into believing that “selling was the greatest career a man could want” because of its limitless potential and its honorable nature. Willy laments the loss of friendship and personality in the business, and he complains that no one knows him anymore. An uninterested Howard leaves the office to attend to other people, and he returns when Willy begins shouting frantically after accidentally switching on the wire recorder. Eventually, Willy becomes so distraught that Howard informs him that he does not want Willy to represent his company anymore. Howard essentially fires Willy, with the vague implication of reemployment after a period of “rest.” He suggests that Willy turn to his sons (who he understandably assumes are successful given Willy’s loud bragging) for financial support, but Willy is horrified at the thought of depending on his children and reversing the expected familial roles. He is far too proud to admit defeat, and Howard must insist repeatedly on the cessation of Willy’s employment before it sinks in.

Analysis Biff’s decision to seek a business loan raises Willy’s spirits, and the way in which Willy expresses his optimism is quite revealing. The first thing Willy thinks about is planting a garden in his yard; he then muses to Linda that they should buy a house in the country, so that he could build guesthouses for Biff and Happy when they have families of their own. These hopeful plans seem to illustrate how ill-suited Willy is to his profession, as it stifles his natural inclinations. Indeed, the competitive, hyper-capitalist world of sales seems no more appropriate for Willy than for Biff. Willy seems happiest when he dreams of building things with his own hands, and when his instincts in this direction surface, he seems whole again, able to see a glimmer of truth in himself and his abilities.

Willy’s wistful fantasy of living in the forests of Alaska strengthens the implication that he chose the wrong profession. He does not seem to like living in an urban setting. However, his fascination with the frontier is also intimately connected to his obsession with the American Dream. In nineteenth-century America, the concept of the intrepid explorer entering the unknown, uncharted wilderness and striking gold was deeply imbedded in the national consciousness. With the postwar surge of consumerism in America, this “wilderness” became the bustling market of consumer goods, and the capitalist replaced the pioneer as the American hero. These new intrepid explorers plunged into the jungle of business transactions in order to find a niche to exploit. Ben, whose success involved a literal jungle in Africa, represents one version of the frontier narrative. Dave Singleman represents another. Willy chose to follow Singleman’s path, convinced that it was the modern version and future of the American Dream of success through hard work.

While Willy’s dissatisfaction with his life seems due in part to choosing a profession that conflicts with his interests, it seems also due in part to comparing all aspects, professional and private alike, of his own life to those of a mythic standard. He fails to realize that Ben’s wealth is the result of a blind stroke of luck rather than a long-deserved reward for hard work and personal merit. Similarly, Willy misses the tragic aspect of Singleman’s story of success—that Singleman was still working at the age of eighty-four and died on the job. Mourning for him was limited to the sphere of salesmen and train passengers who happened to be there at his death—the ephemeral world of transience, travel, and money, as opposed to the meaningful realm of loved ones.

Summary

Act II

Sum mary Act II Willy’s humiliating interview with Howard sheds some light on his advice for Biff’s interview with Oliver. This advice clearly has its roots in Willy’s relationship with his boss. Despite being much younger than Willy, Howard patronizes Willy by repeatedly calling him “kid.” Willy proves entirely subservient to Howard, as evidenced by the fact that he picks up Howard’s lighter and hands it to him, unable to follow his own advice about such office boy jobs.

Willy’s repeated reminders to Howard that he helped his father name Howard illustrate his psychological reliance on outmoded and insubstantial concepts of chivalry and nobility. Like his emphasis on being “well liked,” Willy’s harping upon the honor of bestowing Howard’s name— one can draw a parallel between this naming and the sanctity and dignity of medieval concepts of christening and the dubbing of knights—is anachronistically incompatible with the reality of the modern business world.

Willy seems to transfer his familial anxieties to his professional life. His brother and father did not like him enough to stay, so he endeavors to be “well liked” in his profession. He heard the story of Dave Singleman’s success and exaggerated it to heroic, mythical proportions. Hundreds of people attended Singleman’s funeral—obviously, he was a man who was “well liked.” Dave Singleman’s story hooked Willy as the key to emotional and psychological fulfillment. However, the inappropriateness of Willy’s ideals reveals itself in his lament about the loss of friendship and camaraderie in his profession. Willy fantasizes about such things, and he used to tell his sons about all of his friends in various cities; as Willy’s hard experience evidences, however, such camaraderie belongs only to the realm of his delusion.

Act II (continued)

Sum mary Act II (continued ) Willy’s daydream involving Ben through Willy’s conversation with Charley in his office

Summary After Howard leaves, Willy immerses himself in memories of a visit from Ben. Ben asks Willy to go to Alaska and manage a tract of timberland he has purchased. Linda, slightly afraid of Ben, says that Willy already has a nice job. Ben departs as Willy tries desperately to gain a word of approval from him, comparing the intangible success of the honorable Dave Singleman to the concrete possibilities of timber. Bernard arrives to accompany the Lomans to the big football game at Ebbets Field. He begs Biff to allow him to carry his helmet. Happy snaps and insists on carrying it. Biff generously allows Bernard to carry his shoulder pads. Charley ambles over to tease Willy a little about the immature importance he is placing on the football game, and Willy grows furious.

In the present, the grown-up Bernard is sitting in his father’s reception room when his father’s secretary, Jenny, enters to beg him to deal with Willy. Outside, Willy, still immersed in his memory, argues with an invisible Charley from the past about Biff’s football game. Bernard converses with Willy and mentions that he has a case to argue in Washington, D.C. Willy replies that Biff is working on a very big deal in town. Willy breaks down and asks Bernard why Biff’s life seemed to end after his big football game. Bernard mentions that Biff failed math but was determined to go to summer school and pass. He adds that Biff went to see Willy in Boston, but after he came back, he burned his sneakers with the University of Virginia’s insignia. Attempting a candid conversation with the wounded Willy, Bernard asks him what happened in Boston that changed Biff’s intentions and drained his motivation. Willy becomes angry and resentful and demands to know if Bernard blames him for Biff’s failure. Charley exits his office to say goodbye to Bernard. He mentions that Bernard is arguing a case before the Supreme Court. Willy, simultaneously jealous and proud of Bernard, is astounded that Bernard did not mention it.

In his office, Charley counts out fifty dollars. With difficulty, Willy asks for over a hundred this time to pay his insurance fees. After a moment, Charley states that he has offered Willy a non-traveling job with a weekly salary of fifty dollars and scolds Willy for insulting him. Willy refuses the job again, insisting that he already has one, despite Charley’s reminder that Willy earns no money at his job. Broken, he admits that Howard fired him. Outraged and incredulous, he again mentions that he chose Howard’s name when he was born. Charley replies that Willy cannot sell that sort of thing. Willy retorts that he has always thought the key to success was being well liked. Exasperated, Charley asks who liked J. P. Morgan. He angrily gives Willy the money for his insurance. Willy shuffles out of the office in tears.

Analysis Willy’s conversation with Bernard revives Willy’s attempt to understand why Biff never made a material success of his life despite his bright and promising youth. He wants to understand why the “well liked” teenage football player became an insecure man unable to hold a steady job. He assumes there is some secret to success that is not readily apparent. If he were not wearing the rose-colored glasses of the myth of the American Dream, he would see that Charley and his son are successful because of lifelong hard work and not because of the illusions of social popularity and physical appearances. Biff’s failure in math is symbolic of his failure to live up to his father’s calculated plan for him. Willy believes so blindly in his interpretation of the American Dream that he has constructed a veritable formula by which he expects Biff to achieve success. The unshakeable strength of Willy’s belief in this blueprint for success is evidenced later when he attempts to plant the vegetable seeds. Reading the instructions on the seed packets, Willy mutters, as he measures out the garden plot, “carrots . . . quarter-inch apart. Rows . . . one-foot rows.” He has applied the same regimented approach to the cultivation of his sons. Biff struggles with this formula in the same way that he struggles with the formulas in his textbook.

Charley tries to bring Willy down to earth by explaining that Willy’s fantasies about the way the business world functions conflict with the reality of a consumer economy. Charley refuses to relate to Willy through blustering fantasy; instead, he makes a point of being frank. He states that the bottom line of business is selling and buying, not being liked. Ironically, Charley is the only person to offer Willy a business opportunity on the strength of a personal bond; Howard, in contrast, fires Willy despite the strong friendship that Willy shared with Howard’s father. However, the relationship between Willy and Charley is shaped by an ongoing competition between their respective families, at least from Willy’s point of view. Willy’s rejection of Charley’s job offer stems partly from jealousy of Charley’s success. Additionally, Willy knows that Charley does not like him much—his offer of a job thus fails to conform to Willy’s idealistic notions about business relationships. Willy chooses to reject a well-paying, secure job rather than let go of the myth of the American business world and its ever-receding possibilities for success and redemption.

Act II (continued)

Sum mary Act II (continued ) For Willy, the American Dream has become a kind of Holy Grail—his childish longing for acceptance and material proof of success in an attempt to align his life with a mythic standard has assumed the dimensions of a religious crusade. He places his faith in the elusive American Dream because he seeks salvation, and he blindly expects to achieve material, emotional, and even spiritual satisfaction through “personal attractiveness” and being “well liked.” Willy forces Biff and Happy into the framework of this mythic quest for secular salvation—he even calls them “Adonis” and “Hercules,” envisioning them as legendary figures whose greatness has destined them to succeed in according to the American Dream.

Act II (continued)

Sum mary Act II (continued )

The scene in Frank’s Chop House

Summary Happy banters with the waiter, Stanley. Happy is flirting with a pretty girl named Miss Forsythe when Biff arrives to join him. After she responds to his pick-up line by claiming that she is, in fact, a cover girl, Happy tells her that he is a successful champagne salesman and that Biff is a famous football player. Judging from Happy’s repeated comments on her moral character and his description of her as “on call,” Miss Forsythe is probably a prostitute. Happy invites her to join them. She exits to make a phone call to cancel her previous plans and to invite a girlfriend to join them. Biff explains to Happy that he waited six hours to see Oliver, only to have Oliver not even remember him. Biff asks where he got the idea that he was a salesman for Oliver. He had actually been only a lowly shipping clerk, but somehow Willy’s exaggerations and lies had transformed him into a salesman in the Loman family’s collective memory. After Oliver and the secretary left, Biff recounts, he ran into Oliver’s office and stole his fountain pen.

Happy advises Biff to tell Willy that Oliver is thinking over his business proposition, claiming that eventually the whole situation will fade away from their father’s memory. When Willy arrives, he reveals that he has been fired and states that he wants some good news to tell Linda. Despite this pressure, Biff attempts to tell the truth. Disoriented, Willy shouts that Biff cannot blame everything on him because Biff is the one who failed math after all. Confused at his father’s crazed emphasis on his high school math failure, Biff steels himself to forge ahead with the truth, but the situation reaches crisis proportions when Willy absolutely refuses to listen to Biff’s story. In a frenzy as the perilous truth closes in on him, Willy enters a semi-daydream state, reliving Biff’s discovery of him and The Woman in their Boston hotel room. A desperate Biff backs down and begins to lie to assuage his frantic father. Miss Forsythe returns with her friend, Letta. Willy, insulted at Biff’s “spite,” furiously lashes out at his son’s attempts to explain himself and the impossibility of returning to Oliver. Willy wanders into the restroom, talking to himself, and an embarrassed Happy informs the women that he is not, in fact, their father. Biff angrily tells Happy to help Willy, accusing him of not caring about their father. He hurries out of the restaurant in a vortex of guilt and anguish. Happy frantically asks Stanley for the bill; when the waiter doesn’t respond immediately, Happy rushes after Biff, pushing Miss Forsythe and Letta along in front of him and leaving Willy babbling alone in the restroom.

Analysis

Willy’s encounters with Howard, Bernard, and Charley constitute serious blows to the fantasy through which he views his life; his constructed reality is falling apart. Biff has also experienced a moment of truth, but he regards his epiphany as a liberating experience from a lifetime of stifling and distorting lies. He wishes to leave behind the facade of the Loman family tradition so that he and his father can begin to relate to one another honestly. Willy, on the other hand, wants his sons to aid him in rebuilding the elaborate fantasies that deny his reality as a defeated man. Willy drives Biff to produce a falsely positive report of his interview with Oliver, and Happy is all too willing to comply. When Biff fails to produce the expected glowing report, Happy, who has not had the same revelation as Biff, chimes in with false information about the interview.

Willy’s greatest fear is realized during his ill-fated dinner with Biff and Happy. In his moment of weakness and defeat, he asks for their help in rebuilding his shattered concept of his life; he is not very likable, and he is well aware of it. Biff and Happy’s neglect of him fits into a pattern of abandonment. Like Willy’s father, then Ben, then Howard, Biff and Happy erode Willy’s fantasy world. The scene in Frank’s Chop House is pivotal to Willy’s unraveling and to Biff’s disillusionment. Biff’s epiphany in Oliver’s office regarding Willy’s exaggeration of Biff’s position at Oliver’s store puts him on a quest to break through the thick cloud of lies surrounding his father at any cost. Just as Willy refuses to hear what he doesn’t want to accept, Biff refuses to subject himself further to his father’s delusions. Willy’s pseudo-religious quest for success is founded on a complex, multilayered delusion, and Biff believes that for his father to die well (in the medieval, Christian sense of the word—much of the play smacks of the anachronistic absurdity of the medieval values of chivalry and blind faith), he must break through the heavy sediment of lies to the truth of his personal degradation. Both Willy and Biff are conscious of the disparity between Dave Singleman’s mythic “death of a salesman” and the pathetic nature of Willy’s impending death. Willy clings to the hope that the “death of a salesman” is necessarily noble by the very nature of the profession, whereas Biff understands that behind the veneer of the American Dream’s empty promises lies a devastatingly lonely death diametrically opposed to the one that Singleman represents and that the Dream itself posits. Happy and Linda wish to allow Willy to die covered by the diminishing comfort of his delusions, but Biff feels a moral responsibility to try to reveal the truth.

Boston hotel room daydream through Willy’s departure from Frank’s Chop House

Summary Upon his sons’ departure from Frank’s Chop House, Willy is immersed in the memory of the teenage Biff’s visit to see him in Boston. In his daydream it is night and he is in a hotel room with his mistress, while in the present he is presumably still in the restroom of Frank’s Chop House. Biff is outside knocking on the hotel room door, after telephoning the room repeatedly with no result. The Woman, who is dressing, pesters Willy to answer the door. She flirtatiously describes how he has “ruined” her, and she offers to send him straight through to the buyers whom she represents the next time he visits Boston on business. Willy, who is clearly nervous about his surprise visitor, finally consents to her appeals to answer the door. He orders her to stay in the bathroom and be quiet, believing it may be a nosy hotel clerk investigating their affair.

Willy answers the door, and Biff reports that he failed math. He asks Willy to persuade the teacher, Mr. Birnbaum, to pass him. Willy tries to get Biff out of the room quickly with promises of a malted drink and a rapid trip home to talk to the math teacher. When Biff mockingly imitates his teacher’s lisp, The Woman laughs from the bathroom. She exits the bathroom, wearing only a negligee, and Willy pushes her out into the hallway. He tries to pass her off as a buyer staying in the room next door who needed to shower in Willy’s bathroom because her room was being painted. Biff sits on his suitcase, crying silently, not buying his father’s lies. Willy promises to talk to the math teacher, but Biff tells him to forget it because no one will listen to a phony liar. He resolves not to make up the math test and not to attend college, effectively negating his contracted role in Willy’s inflated version of the American Dream. He deals the most serious blow by accusing Willy of giving Linda’s stockings away to his mistress. Biff leaves, with Willy kneeling and yelling after him.

Stanley pulls Willy out of his daydream. Willy is on his knees in the restaurant ordering the teenage Biff to come back. Stanley explains his sons’ absence, and Willy attempts to tip him, but Stanley stealthily slips the dollar bill back into Willy’s coat as he turns. Willy asks him to direct him to a seed store, and he rushes out, frantically explaining that he must plant immediately, as he does not “have a thing in the ground.” Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground. See Important Quotations Explained

Analysis Willy settles on Biff’s discovery of his adultery as the reason for Biff’s failure to fulfill Willy’s ambitions for him. Before he discovers the affair, Biff believes in Willy’s meticulously constructed persona. Afterward, he calls Willy out as a “phony little fake.” He sees beneath Willy’s facade and rejects the man behind it; to be exposed in this way as a charlatan is the salesman’s worst nightmare. Assuming a characteristically simplistic cause-and-effect relationship, Willy decides that Biff’s failure to succeed is a direct result of the disillusionment that he experiences as a result of Willy’s infidelity. Despising Willy for his affair, Biff must also have come to despise Willy’s ambitions for him.

In this reckoning, Willy again conflates the personal with the professional. His understanding of the American Dream as constituting professional success and material gain precludes the idea that one can derive happiness without these things. Ironically, in Willy’s daydream this desired tangible proof of success is acquired by means of the immaterial and ephemeral concepts of “personal attractiveness” and being “well liked.” Willy believes that Biff, no longer able to respect him as a father or a person, automatically gave up all hopes for achieving the American Dream, since he could not separate Willy’s expectations of him from his damaged emotional state. In a sense, Willy is right this time—Biff’s knowledge of Willy’s adultery tarnishes the package deal of the total Dream, and Biff rejects the flawed product that Willy is so desperately trying to sell him.

Willy’s earlier preoccupation with the state of Linda’s stockings and her mending them foreshadows the exposure and fall that the Boston incident represents. Until the climactic scene in the restaurant, when Biff first attempts to dispel the myths and lies sinking the Loman household, the only subconscious trace of Willy’s adultery is his insistence that Linda throw her old stockings out. The stockings’ power as a symbol of his betrayal overcomes Willy when Biff’s assault on his increasingly delicate shield of lies forces him to confront his guilt about his affair with The Woman. When Biff, the incarnation of Willy’s ambition, rejects the delusion that Willy offers, Willy’s faith in the American Dream, which he vested in his son, begins to dissolve as well.

Act II (continued)

Sum mary Act II (continued )

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Willy’s delirious interest in a seed shop reveals his insecurity about his legacy. Poor and now unemployed, Willy has no means to pass anything on to his sons. Indeed, he has just given Stanley a dollar in a feeble attempt to prove to himself, by being able to give, that he does indeed possess something. The act of giving also requires someone to whom to give, and Stanley becomes, momentarily, a surrogate son to Willy, since Biff and Happy have abandoned him. Similarly, in desperately seeking to grow vegetables, Willy desires tangible proof of the value of his labor, and hence, life. Additionally, the successful growth of vegetables would redeem Willy’s failure to cultivate Biff properly. In declaring “Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground,” Willy acknowledges that Biff has broken free from the roots of the long-standing Loman delusion. Finally, Willy’s use of gardening as a metaphor for success and failure indicates that he subconsciously acknowledges that, given his natural inclinations toward working with his hands and creating, going into sales was a poor career choice.

The boys’ confrontation with Linda, Biff’s final confrontation with Willy, and Willy’s decision to take a late-night drive

Summary Biff and Happy return home later that night with a bouquet of roses for Linda. She knocks the roses to the ground and shouts at them to pack and never come back. Happy claims that Willy had a great time at dinner. Linda calls her sons a variety of names and accuses them of abandoning their sick father in a restaurant bathroom. Happy, incredulous and defensive, denies everything, but Biff accepts the judgment and wholeheartedly endorses his own degradation and status as “scum of the earth.” After searching the house for Willy, Biff hears him outside, and Linda explains that he is maniacally planting a garden regardless of the darkness. Outside, Willy discusses a guaranteed $20,000 proposition with Ben. Ben warns that the insurance company might not honor the policy. Willy retorts that since he has always paid the premium, the company cannot refuse. He says that Biff will realize how important he is once he sees the number of people who attend his funeral. Ben warns that Biff will call him a coward and hate him. Willy is, of course, contemplating suicide, which would allow his family to cash in on his life insurance policy. Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be . . .

Biff tells Willy that he is leaving for good and that he will not keep in touch. Biff wants Willy to forget him. Willy curses his son and declares that Biff is throwing his life away and blaming his failures on him out of spite. Biff confronts Willy with the rubber hose. Biff states that he has stolen himself out of every job since high school and that during the three-month period when he was completely out of touch with his family he was, in fact, in prison for stealing a suit. He reproaches Willy for having filled him with so much hot air about how important he, Biff, was that he was unable to take orders from anyone. Further, he accuses the family of never telling the truth “for ten minutes in this house.” He exposes Happy’s exaggeration of his position—Happy is not the assistant buyer, as he claims, but rather one of two assistants to the assistant buyer—and he says that he does not want to do anything but work in the open air. Biff is determined to know who he is and for his father to know likewise who he is. He urges Willy to accept their own commonness—they are both “a dime a dozen,” not destined for leadership or worthy of prizes. Crying and exhausted, Biff trudges upstairs to bed. Suddenly happy, Willy mutters that Biff must like him because he cried, and his own delusions of his son’s success are restored in light of this meager proof. Linda and Happy tell him that Biff has always loved him, and even Happy seems genuinely moved by the encounter. Everyone retires to bed, except Willy. He urges Linda to sleep and promises that he will join her soon. Willy converses with Ben, predicting that Biff will go far with $20,000 in his pocket. Suddenly, Willy realizes he is alone; Ben has disappeared. Linda calls from upstairs for him to come to bed, but he does not. Happy and Biff listen. They hear the car start and speed away.

Analysis Willy’s final confrontation with Biff exposes the essential gridlock of their relationship. Biff wants Willy to forget him as a useless bum. Once Willy finally lets go of him, Biff can be free to be himself and lead his life without having to carry the weight of his father’s dreams. But Willy cannot let go of the myth around which he has built his life. He has no hopes of achieving the American Dream himself, so he has transferred his hopes to Biff. Fulfilling Biff’s request would involve discarding his dreams and ambitions forever and admitting that he has long believed in the American Dream for naught. Each man is struggling with the other in a desperate battle for his own identity.

During the confrontation, Biff makes no attempt to blame anyone for the course that his life has taken. He doesn’t even mention the affair with The Woman, which Willy imagines as the sole reason for his son’s lack of material success. After so many years, Biff doesn’t consider his disillusionment a function of either Willy’s adultery or the inherent foolishness of Willy’s ambitions. Ironically, Biff blames Willy’s fantastic success in selling him on the American Dream of easy success as the reason for his failure to hold a steady job. Biff’s faith in Willy’s dreams is the real reason that he could not advance in the business world. He could not start from the bottom and work his way up because he believed that success would magically descend upon him at any moment, regardless of his own efforts or ambitions.

Willy’s happy reaction to Biff’s frustrated tears demonstrates that Willy has again missed an opportunity to take refuge in the love of his family. He responds to Biff’s tears as material evidence that Biff “likes” him. Linda corrects him with the words “loves you.” Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his tortured day. Because Willy has long conflated successful salesmanship with being well liked, one can even argue that Willy’s imagining that Biff likes him boosts his confidence in his ability to sell and thus perversely enables his final sale—his life.

In Willy’s mind, his imminent suicide takes on epic proportions. Not only does it validate his salesmanship, as argued above, but it also renders him a martyr, since he believes that the insurance money from his sacrifice will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream. Additionally, Ben’s final mantra of “The jungle is dark, but full of diamonds” turns Willy’s suicide into a metaphorical moral struggle. Suicide, for Willy, constitutes both a final ambition to realize the Dream and the ultimate selfless act of giving to his sons. According to Ben, the noble death that Willy seeks is “not like an appointment at all” but like a “diamond . . . rough and hard to the touch.” In the absence of any true self-knowledge, Willy is able, at least, to achieve a tangible result with his suicide. In this way, Willy does experience a sort of revelation: he understands that the product he sells is himself and that his final sale is his own life. Through the imaginary advice of Ben, Willy ultimately believes his earlier assertion to Charley that “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than all In an analysis of Willy’s obsession with the American Dream as a religious crusade, his suicide represents the ultimate apotheosis into the Dream itself, the final expiation for the sins of conflated professional and personal failure. A kind of perverse, American working-class Christ- figure, Willy dies not only for his own sins but also for the sins of his sons, who have failed to achieve their potential within the American Dream.

Requiem

Sum mary Requiem Summary He’s a man way out there in the blue . . . A salesman is got to dream, boy. See Important Quotations Explained

To Linda’s considerable chagrin and bewilderment, Willy’s family, Charley, and Bernard are the only mourners who attend Willy’s funeral. She wonders where all his supposed business friends are and how he could have killed himself when they were so close to paying off all of their bills. Biff recalls that Willy seemed happier working on the house than he did as a salesman. He states that Willy had all the wrong dreams and that he didn’t know who he was in the way that Biff now knows who he is. Charley replies that a salesman has to dream or he is lost, and he explains the salesman’s undaunted optimism in the face of certain defeat as a function of his irrepressible dreams of selling himself. Happy becomes increasingly angry at Biff’s observations. He resolves to stay in the city and carry out his father’s dream by becoming a top businessman, convinced he can still “beat this racket.” Linda requests some privacy. She reports to Willy that she made the last payment on the house. She apologizes for her inability to cry, since it seems as if Willy is just “on another trip.” She begins to sob, repeating, “We’re free. . . .” Biff helps her up and all exit. The flute music is heard and the high-rise apartments surrounding the Loman house come into focus. Analysis

Charley’s speech about the nature of the salesman’s dreams is one of the most memorable passages in the play. His words serve as a kind of respectful eulogy that removes blame from Willy as an individual by explaining the grueling expectations and absurd demands of his profession. The odd, anachronistic, spiritual formality of his remarks (“Nobody dast blame this man”) echo the religious quality of Willy’s quest to sell himself. One can argue that, to a certain extent, Willy Loman is the postwar American equivalent of the medieval crusader, battling desperately for the survival of his own besieged faith.

Charley solemnly observes that a salesman’s life is a constant upward struggle to sell himself— he supports his dreams on the ephemeral power of his own image, on “a smile and a shoeshine.” He suggests that the salesman’s condition is an aggravated enlargement of a discreet facet of the general human condition. Just as Willy is blind to the totality of the American Dream, concentrating on the aspects related to material success, so is the salesman, in general, lacking, blinded to the total human experience by his conflation of the professional and the personal. Like Charley says, “No man only needs a little salary”—no man can sustain himself on money and materiality without an emotional or spiritual life to provide meaning. When the salesman’s advertising self-image fails to inspire smiles from customers, he is “finished” psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. According to Charley, “a salesman is got to dream.” The curious and lyrical slang substitution of “is” for “has” indicates a destined necessity for the salesman—not only must the salesman follow the imperative of his dreams during his life, but Miller suggests that he is literally begotten with the sole purpose of dreaming.

In many ways, Willy has done everything that the myth of the American Dream outlines as the key path to success. He acquired a home and the range of modern appliances. He raised a family and journeyed forth into the business world full of hope and ambition. Nevertheless, Willy has failed to receive the fruits that the American Dream promises. His primary problem is that he continues to believe in the myth rather than restructuring his conception of his life and his identity to meet more realistic standards. The values that the myth espouses are not designed to assuage human insecurities and doubts; rather, the myth unrealistically ignores the existence of such weaknesses. Willy bought the sales pitch that America uses to advertise itself, and the price of his faith is death.

Linda’s initial feeling that Willy is just “on another trip” suggests that Willy’s hope for Biff to succeed with the insurance money will not be fulfilled. To an extent, Linda’s comparison debases Willy’s death, stripping it of any possibility of the dignity that Willy imagined. It seems inevitable that the trip toward meaningful death that Willy now takes will end just as fruitlessly as the trip from which he has just returned as the play opens. Indeed, the recurrence of the haunting flute music, symbolic of Willy’s futile pursuit of the American Dream, and the final visual imprint of the overwhelming apartment buildings reinforce the fact that Willy dies as deluded as he lived.