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A Xerox Education Company 75-3102 INMAN, Cecil Mark, 1932- USING THE RELIGIOUS VOICE AS AN APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1974 Education, general

i\ ]

Xerox University MicrofilmsAnn # Arbor, Michigan 48106

© 1974

CECIL MARK INMAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. USING THE RELIGIOUS VOICE AS AN

APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

. DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Cecil Mark Inman, B.A., A.M.

*******

The Ohio State University

1974

Reading Committee: Approved By Dr. Frank Zidonis, Chairman Dr. Donald Bateman Dr. Jane Stewart

Adviser Department of Humanities Education ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply Indebted to Dr. Frank Zidonis for his help and encouragement, for his helpful reading of the manuscript, and for the needed advice that prompted me to make many important revisions.

1 am also indebted to the students at Mount Vernon Nazarene

College who helped me to become a better teacher as I became more aware of their needs and realized that looking at the religious voice in the literature studied was an important and relevant part of the classroom activity.

I thank my wife, Theresa, who so willingly took my share of the family responsibilities so that I could have time to complete the manuscript, gave encouragement when it was needed the most, and put up with my hectic schedule.

I thank my four children: Ruth Anne, Matthew David, Mary

Elizabeth, and Martha Jean, who willingly gave up their time with their dad and made it possible for me to complete this work.

ii VITA

September 30, 1932...... Born— Mount Clemens, Michigan

1956...... B.A., Olivet Nazarene College, Kankakee, Illinois

1957-1959...... Teacher, Mt. Morris Public Schools, Grades 7-8

1959-196 0 ...... Teacher, Howell City Schools, Howell, Michigan, Grades 8-9

1960-196 1 ...... Elementary Area Principal, LakeVille Community Schools, Otisville, Michigan, Teacher, Grade 6

1961...... A.M., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

1961-196 6 ...... Teacher, Midland City Schools, Midland, Michigan, Grades 10-12

1966-1968...... Assistant Professor, English Department, Bethany Nazarene College, Bethany, Oklahoma

1968-Present...... Professor, Co-ordinator of the English Program, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Mount Vernon, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English Education Dr. Frank Zidonis, Chairman Dr. Donald Bateman Dr. Jane Stewart

Minor Field: Twentieth Century American Literature Dr. John Muste Nineteenth Century American Literature Dr. Thomas Woodson

ill TABLE OF CONTENTS

page ACKNOWLEDGE. EATS ii

VITA iii

OIL .PTE A I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

Need for study Literature and the religious voice

PART I. RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE

II. THE THEOCRATIC VOICE...... 9

William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation - The First Book Of Plymouth Plantation - The Second Book ""Not* my will, but Thine be done" Teaching applications

Jonathan Edwards Puritanism restated Reason and science "Resolutions" Personal Narrative God Glorif ied_ in the Work of itedemption A Divine and Supernatural Light Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Narrative of Surprising Conversions Farewell Sermon Teaching applications

Thomas Hooker Typical Puritan Sermonic literature

III. THE liATIONAL VOICE...... 47

Benjamin Franklin Epitome of Enlightenment Essays to Do Good Auto’u lograpiiy The 'junto

iv Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion Plans for moral perfection Poor Richard Letters Teaching applications

Thomas Jefferson Life— very similar to Franklin's Discovery and reason as basis of man's life A reasoned faith— Education ''Ordinances of Religious Freedom" The Jefferson Bible The Life and morals of Jesus Letters Declaration of Independence First Inaugural Address Second Inaugural Address Teaching applications

PART II. RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES IK A 1 ATURIMG AMERICAN LITERATURE...... 92

IV. THE TRANSCENDENTAL VOICE...... 97

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Transcendental Man in Thought Essence of Transcendentalism Cod within - the Over-Soul Intuitive perception of truth Nature "The American Scholar" "Divinity School Address" "Self-Reliance" "The Over-Soul" Poems: "The Mhodora," "The Sphinx," "Each and All," "Give All to Love" Teaching applications

Henry David Tuoreau: The Transcendental Man in Action Thoreau vs. Emerson A_I,Toek on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Walden "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" Teaching applications

V. THE VOICE OF liAN...... 150

v Nathaniel Hawthorne: The arrogance of man's voice "The Birthmark" "The Minister's Black Evil" "Rappaccini's Daughter" "Ethan Brand" "Young Goodman Brown" The Scarlet Letter Teaching applications

Herman Melville— Nature as evil Moby Dick "Hawthorne and His Mosses" "The Enchantatas" "Bartleby, the Scrivener" Billy Budd, Sailor Teaching applications

Henry James Portrait of a Lady "The Beast in the Jungle" The American "The Juily Corner"

PART III. RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES IN MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE...... 133

VI. THE VOICE OF NATURALISM...... 193

Samuel Langhorne Clemens Nature of man "The Man that Corrupted Hadlevburg" Adventures of lluckleberrv Finn Letiers from the Earth Teaching applications

Stephen Crane ■Maggie, a Girl of the Street The Red Badge of Courage "The Open Boat" Poems: "A God in Wrath," "God Lay Dead in Heaven," "The Wayfarer," "A Man Said to the Universe" Teaching applications

Theodore Dreiser "The Second Choice"

vi An American Tragedy

THE VOICES OE MOnEkH HAN 216

Han;, voices Confusion of sound Confused man

Ernest Hemingway "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" "The Snort Happy Life of Francis Hacomber" In (Jur Time The Old ian and the Sea Teaching applications

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatshy Tender is the Eight ’ "Babylon revisited" Teaching applications

William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury Light in .August The Bear

John Updike The Poorhouse Fair kabbit, Hun The Centaur

Halph Ellison Invisible ..an

Nathanael West Hiss Lonelyhearts The Jay of the Locust

VIII. cohclusio; 253

Many voices of man Summary

JiliH.IOoHXPHY 2 66

vii CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

American literature, as is true of all literature, deals with the major concerns of man. Among these major concerns are birth, growth, preservation of self, love, fear, death, and God. It is the purpose of this dissertation to present a method of studying American literature by looking at the religious voice in representative Ameri­ can authors; it is hoped that the student of American literature in junior and senior colleges with religious affiliations or with courses in religion and literature would benefit from such a study. By concen­ trating on a major motif and by emphasizing fewer authors, it is fur­ ther hoped that the students would gain insights into the nature of the contemporary society as contrasted with the society of this country's founding fathers. Further, to look at the religious voice of repre­ sentative American authors would be one method of approaching the re­ levancy problem. What these writers have to present about their re­ ligious thinking would enable the student to examine his own views, compare them to the texts studied, eliminate them if necessary, or add to the views they presently hold, thus making the study of literature a meaningful and relevant experience. As Louise M. Rosenblatt writes in Literature and the Invisible Reader that society should be inter­ ested in "human ecology" and: 2

At stake is whether a society will survive worthy of the name democracy, a society in which the value and the dignity of in­ dividual human beings will be paramount. No educational pro­ cess can be considered 'really relevant' if it does not re­ cognize the need to help youth to develop a carefully con­ sidered sense of humane values. The arts, and especially literature, can contribute to this kind of education in ways not possible for the natural and behavioral sciences.

Abraham Bernstein writes to the prospective English teacher:

Methods courses are in occasional disrepute among some people who feel that for competent teaching knowledge of the material suffices. Hardly, even if your students were willing to learn. Methods in your madness is not madness in your methods; the first will make you an interesting, even a good, teacher; not so the second ....

Content and preparation must go together and Bernstein adds:

For that reason, your training combines the training of the artist and scientist, which is almost pure content, with the training of the salesman and the actor, which is partly con­ tent and chiefly manner, or method.2

Alfred H. Gromman lists five major goals which effective teacher preparation programs should help the preparing teacher reach. Goal number three states that "a candidate for teaching should cultivate

'reading for personal values and social insight." One way to work toward the achievement of this goal is by looking at the religious values presented in American literature.

■^Louise M. Rosenblatt, "Literature and the Invisible Reader" in The Promise of English (NCTE, 1970), pp. 3-4.

2Abraham Bernstein, Teaching English in High School (New York: Random house, 1961), p. 2.

^Alfred H. Gromman, The Education of Teachers of English for American Schools and Colleges quoted in English in a Uecade of Change, ed. Michael F. Shugrue (New York: Pegasus, 1968), p. 98. Dwight L. Burton looks at literature as liberation: "Literature

is liberating in the sense that it helps to free us from the inherent

shackles fastened upon us by our society."^ It helps the student in

his quest for identity, his concern with human values, the conflict

between conformity and individuality, and enables the student "to look

over the brink into the abysses of life and to return unafraid" and

participate in "the cartharsis literature provides."^

Mary Elizabeth Fowler states that teaching today "calls for an un­

derstanding of the nature of change and the ability to adjust to it.11^

To provide this stimulus, she suggests the use of literature: "For

surely, of all the arts, literature is mot immediately implicated with

life itself."^ I noted that in a class of college sophomores studying

selections in American literature that whenever the discussion turned

to the religious attitudes expressed by the literature, the discussion

aroused the interest of the class and what seemed to be a meaningful

class discussion followed. For them, the religious concepts were rele­ vant to their needs for this is a contemporary problem to which liter­

ature speaks. Whenever the discussion turned to "What does this work

^Dwight L. Burton, Literature Study in the High Schools (New York: Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), p. 5.

~*Ibid., pp. 6-9, 12.

^ilary Elizabeth Fowler, Teaching Language, Composition, and Lit­ erature (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965), p. 5.

^Rosenblatt, "Literature and the Invisible Reader," p. 4. 4 say to ne today?" there was lively discussion and much participation oc­ curring in that particular class period. The experience of the work studied can develop the understanding of the student and can become a personal experience. It seems to me that the student can explain his

"experience" with the work if lie knows the "language" of criticism:

. . . so the reader, the performer of the literary text, need not scorn any of the scholarly modes of study that have been developed and applied to literature. But such study is peripheral. Always primary is the individual performer reading the individual text, bringing a unique personality and background, specific interests, anxieties, sensitivities and blind spots to the text.'-'

Professor kosenblatt goes on to say:

In contrast to the dead end of drugs or musically induced hysteria, the reader can return from the literary 'trip* strengthened in his capacity to face the real world around him; in that sense, .literature can be most relevant. But the process thus initiated needs to be fostered and en­ couraged, if it is not to founder in indiscriminate emo­ tionalism, in either sentimentality or fanaticism.'-*

Once the student is involved in the study of literature, and he is involved in the enjoyable experience that has become relevant, the student can be encouraged to reflect on bis experience. Students "will study, not simply books, but the relationship of literary experiences tit their other experiences"-*-^ which, to me, is the essence of real

L-miching.

In her book, Literature as rixploration, Professor "oser.blatt lists

"b.ose.iblatt, "Literature and the Invisible lender," p. lf>. ?Ibid., p. IB.

10Ibid„ p. 19. what she considers to be the primary duties of the English teacher.

These duties are summarized as (1) not to impose a set of preconceived notions

In church-related or church controlled colleges, a study of the religious voice in American literature would greatly enhance the institution's be­ lief in the possibility of changed lives. Such a study would aid in the teaching for positive values as literature contains much that is didac­ tic. And one of the great values of literature is to use literature for didactic purposes. This dissertation stresses the blend of the didactic and the analytic in the study of literature.

HLouise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, revised cd. (hew York: h'oble and hoble, Publishers, Inc., 1968), pp. 66-69. TIiLs work is divided into three parts to provide an opportunity

to look at periods of great change in religious thought in American

literature as a neans of understanding that literature better. The

first section deals with the early period in American literature and

treats the theocratic voices of William Bradford and .Jonathan Edwards

and the rational voices of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. In

the second section of the thesis the maturing American literature is

discussed with a look at the Transcendental voices Halph Waldo

Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and the voices of imperfect man in the

works of h'athaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. In the third section

of this study in which the modern period of American literature is dis­

cussed, the voices of naturalism are heard in Mark Twain and Stephen

Crane, and the voices of modern man of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott

Fitzgerald are heard. Other writers that will be included are Thomas

hooker, Henry Janes, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Hathanael West,

John Updike, and kalph Ellison. The works of authors studied will be discussed to illustrate the major shifts of concern in religious think­

ing. Wlu-re is no attempt here to be exhaustive, but rather to ill;::--

L;:ai. : the major shifts of religioi s attitudes found in American litera­

ture over the past 330 years as a means of helping students see rele­ vancy in the American literature they study.

There should be a balance between the didacticism of some class study methods and the analytical devices of others. "What does this piece of literature say to me?" is a meaningful question for students to ask themselves in an American literature class if it is coupled with "How does the author say what he wants to say?" Either question asked by itself of a work of literature is only part of the value that can be gained from literature. By knowing what the literature has to say to the student and how and why the author is saying what he is say­ ing should enable the student to have a more complete experience with the literature. This kind of activity must take place if man is to re­ main a thinking animal— that quality that distinguishes man from the beasts of the fields. To challenge the thinking of students, the lit­ erature must be relevant to their lives; and to be relevant to their lives, the what, the how, and the why must be looked at: a blending of the didactic and the analytical.

Part I, "Religious Attitudes in Early American Literature," dis­ cusses the Theocratic voices of William Bradford in his Of Plymouth

Plantation and in the writings of Jonathan Edwards. An attempt is made to illustrate that the Puritan philosophy of God working directly in the lives of men is highly evident in the lives of these men as illus­ trated by their published works. The rational voices of Benjamin

Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are discussed next with a look at the in­ fluence that the spirit of rationalism, of Deism, and of the scientific method had on these men as reflected in their writings relating to the religious voice.

In Part II, "Religious Attitudes in a Maturing American Literature, the Transcendental voices of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thor- eau are discussed to illustrate the change of thinking from the total dependence of man on God to dependence on self. A shift of thought is seen in the writings of these men to suggest that man has a spark of the divine within himself, and he is not so fallen after all. Depen­ dence upon self seems to be the rallying cry of this philosophy. The writings of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne seem to suggest to the modern reader that, indeed, there is a touch of the divine in man as suggested by the transcendentalists, but also, there is a touch of the fallen, depraved man within at the same time.

Part III, "Religious Attitudes in Modem American Literature," looks at the naturalistic voice finding expression in the writings of

Mark Twain and Stephen Crane. Adding to the complexity of the voice of modern man are the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The multiplicity is furthered by reference to writers such as Theodore

Dreiser, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, John Updike, Ralph Ellison,

Henry James and Thomas Hooker.

Within each of the chapters occurring in the three sections of this thesis, the teaching implications of the authors discussed will be explored. A final chapter will attempt to summarize the directions this study has undertaken. PART I RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES

IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE

A study of the religious voice in American literature would nec­ essitate a discussion of the relationship of literature and religion in America.^ Protestant Christian thinkers have been ambivalent about the role of literature in Christian life. On the one hand Puritan 2 thinkers have written tirelessly in sermon and tract illustrating the way to the "streets of gold." Yet, on the other hand, the Puritan thinker has illustrated a conviction that only the "real" should be read by those calling themselves Christian. Fiction was not real, and therefore, it was not necessary nor good to read.

The history of literature and of the Christian attitude toward literature, then, has been a development of the acceptance of novels and short stories of "fiction" as presentable materials benefitting the journeying man or woman who was only passing through this life to a "better land." Even with this thought just under the surface in the mind of the average Christian, there is much that can be said of the influence of literature that can tempt man to good as well as to

^1 am grateful to Randall Stewart's American Literature and Chris­ tian Doctrine, Cleanth Brook's The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren, and Sallie McFague TeSelle.'s Liter­ ature and the Christian Life for the inspiration for this thesis.

^See William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Harper and Row, Publisher, 1938). 9 10 evil. But It can be easily seen that of the great literature there

is much that speaks of the Christian moral world-view. To the Chris­ tian there was the "secular world" to be denied and to be avoided as much as possible. The "sacred world" was to be sought after and was to become the Christian's main aim and concern in life. The first was to be guarded carefully against while all the energies of the Chris­ tian were to be used to foster the second. But to dichotomize life into good and bad, pure and impure, evil and goodness, secular and sacred is an error that great writers avoid. Great writers express the "belief about men [that] results in better art— in a poem or novel that is complex, Ironical, and paradoxical, reflecting the reality of man as both good and evil."^

R. W. B. Lewis writes:

This issue is whether one scrutinizes literature for its univocal formulations of particular historical doctrines one cherishes or whether one submits for a while to the actual ingredients and the inner movement and growth of a work to see what attitude and insight, including reli­ gious attitude and insight, the work itself brings into being.^

Yet TeSelle feels "it is necessary that a Christian call a spade a spade and realize what is and is not commensurate with Christian

^Sallie McFague TeSelle, Literature and the Christian Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 22.

^R. W. B. Lewis, "Hold on Hard to the Huckleberry Bushes," in Literature and Religion, ed. by Giles B. Gunn (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1971), p. 90. 11 truth.T. S. Eliot, illustrating the important effect that litera­ ture has on man's behavior,writes that:

The common ground between religion and fiction is behavior. Our religion imposes our ethics, our judgement and criti­ cism of ourselves, and our behavior toward our fellow men. The fiction that we read affects our behavior towards our fellow men, affects our patterns of ourselves.&

It is necessary, then, for the Christian not to take the first posi­ tion— that of isolation from the world and the literature of that world— nor is it wise to impose a narrow Christian view on literature.

Rather, it is the wise man that analyzes literary works to determine what the works are about and their possible effects on the reader.

Therefore, it is vital that the reader be free to select whatever he would like to read and yet be discriminating in the selection. Some­ one has said that the material read becomes part of the reader, and if so, it is doubly important that wise selections of materials be made.

The student has the right to read, and it is up to the instructor to aid the student in his selection and in his understanding of the mean­ ings found in the selections.

Protestant Christian thinking is woven into the literary thought in the United States. Men have wrestled with this question of man's relationship to the collective expression of human values, of man's

^TeSelle, p. 31.

^T. S. Eliot, "Religion and Literature" in The New Orpheus: Essays Toward a Christian Poetic, ed. by Nathan A. Scott, Jr. (New York: Sneed and Ward, 1964), p. 227. 12 relationship to God, to worship, and his understanding of the soul and salvation. Religious thought in American literature comes under many terms and within many camps or sects. Yet there are areas of general agreement in Christian theology. Randall Stewart lists the following basic assumptions:

1. The sovereignty of God (God is infinitely wise, powerful, loving and just, and is truly sovereign in His world). 2. The divinity of Christ (Jesus is the only begotten Son of God). 3. Original Sin (the natural man is imperfect, fallible, prone to evil). 4. The atonement (natural man is redeemed through faith in the efficacy of Christ's atoning death). 5. The inspiration of the Scriptures (the Bible is God's re­ vealed Word) J

Even with these basic assumptions, there is a great deal of dissent in religious thinking in the United States, and this has been true from the beginning. While the Pilgrims separated from the church, the

Puritans wanted to "purify" the Church of England from within. Fin­ ally, they broke away from the established Church and became dissenters.

These men of dissent came to America and helped to establish a tradi­ tion that continues today. The Puritan theology stressed:

1. Absolute sovereignty of God. 2. Predestination: An Omniscient Deity knows from the beginning who will be saved. 3. Providence: God directly intervenes in the world. 4. Natural depravity: Since Adam's fall all men are born in sin and deserve damnation. 5. Election: Through God's mercy a few are saved, but by grace alone, not by their own efforts.

^Randall Stewart, American Literature and Christian Doctrine (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), p. 14. 13

6 . Evil Is Inner: Man needs reform of himself, rather than of Institutions. 7. God Is revealed in the Bible.®

This theology resulted in the attempts of the Puritans to establish a

Godly commonwealth. All areas of man's behavior were covered by the covenant between man and God: church attendance, amusements, dress, prices, and business practices. There were no allowances for religious differences. Dillenberger and Welch write: "Protestants do generally maintain that each individual must think his own thoughts and himself stand directly under God, but they always maintained also that one's life and thinking take their cue from the message of the biblical tradition, however differently that message is understood. The word

Puritan comes down to the modern reader with both positive and nega­ tive aspects. In their narrow world-views, the reaction to the Puri­ tan beliefs is negative; in their love for the things of God and in their seriousness in relating to their fellow man, the reaction is pos­ itive. To the Puritan, their way of coping with life's problems was the biblical way. Homberger writes:

Puritanism, however, was more than an attitude toward forms of worship and church government. It was then, as it is now, a word used to describe a strait-laced way of life, a concern with moral conduct so great as to lead

O Summarized by Bartholow V. Crawford, Alexander C. Kern, and Morriss H. Needleman, American Literature (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1953), p. 3.

^John Dillenberger and Claude Welch, Protestant Christianity: Interpreted Through Its Development (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954), pp. 2-3. 14

some individuals to attempt what we now think of as unwarranted control of the personal lives of their neighbors, a rigid repression of acts and fashions that today are no longer considered evil. Such was Puritanism at its worst. At its best it provided men with a sense of social responsibility, an ear­ nestness about life which had in it both intellectual conviction and intense, sometimes even mystic, piety.^0

On the one hand, the Plymouth Pilgrims were Separatists who were poor and were made up of the working and trade classes. On the other hand, the Puritan Separatists, who settled the Province of Massachu­

setts Bay, were wealthy and well educated and firmly established their

theocratic views in the New World. Leader of the Puritans was univer­

sity-trained John Winthrop while the spokesman for the Plymouth Bay

Pilgrims was William Bradford.

*®Walter Blair, Theodore Hornberger, and Randall Stewart, American Literature: A Brief History (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1964), pp. 10-11. CHAPTER II

THE THEOCRATIC VOICE

William Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation (1620-1647) eloquently speaks of the Pilgrims' total dependence on God. From every page the History speaks of God and His dealings in the lives of these men who were striving to establish a Godly Commonwealth on the shores of the New World where they might worship God in freedom and according to the dictates of their consciences.

William Haller in The Rise of Puritanism writes that "the Puri­ tan movement may be said to have sprung out of the shock of that dis­ appointment"^ that Queen Elizabeth who came to the throne in 1558 did not immediately begin a reform of the Church of England. The excesses of the church in form and popish dress were considered by these early dissenters to prevent God from getting to His people. Some not want­ ing to "separate" from the mother church wished to purify the excesses of the church from within. Other groups withdrew from the formal church and began worshipping in private homes. One such group met to­ gether at Scrooby Manor, the home of William Brewster, just a short walking distance from Bradford's home near Austerfield, Yorkshire,

^Haller, p. 8 .

15 16

England. Those meeting together at Scrooby, Nottinghamshire formed a

"Separatist" congregation. When persecution began to be too great, they removed to Holland which was said to be free of such persecutions.

Bradford writes:

Of their Departure into Holland and their Troubles thereabout, with some of the many Difficulties they found and met withal. Anno 1608

Being thus constrained to leave their native soil and country, their lands and livings, and all their friends and familiar acquaintance, it was much; and thought marvelous by many. But to go into a country they knew not but by hearsay, where they must learn a new language and get their livings they knew not how, it being a dear place and subject to the miseries of war, it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate; a case intolerable and a misery worse than death, Especially seeing they were not acquainted with trades nor traffic (by which that country doth subsist) but had only been used to a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry. But these things did not dismay them, though they did sometimes trouble them; for their desires were set on the ways of God and to enjoy His ordinances; but they rested on His providence, and knew Whom they had believed. Yet this was not all, for though they could not stay, yet were they not suffered to go; but the ports and havens were shut against them, so as they were fain to seek secret means of conveyance, and to bribe and fee the mariners, and give extraordinary rates for their passages. And yet were they often times betrayed, many of them, and both they and their goods intercepted and surprised, and thereby put to great trouble and charge . . . .2

This move had been prepared for by earlier "spiritual diaries" that were common in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. That the spiritual life was a saga, a spiritual warfare

^William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 11. All references are from this edition. 17

O with the devil was corimon thought. The Pilgrim's rrofesaion by Thomas

Taylor and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were expressions of the thought that the spiritual life was a battle and a journey to a better world. S. R. '[orison writes in his "Preface" to his edition of the

History of Plymouth Plantation that:

Bradford’s History is a story of a simple people in­ spired by an ardent faith to a dauntless courage in danger, a resourcefulness in dealing with new problems, an impreg­ nable fortitude in adversity that exalts and heartens one in an age of uncertainty, when courage falters and faith grows din. It is this story, told by a great human being that has made the Pilgrim Fathers in a sense the spiritual ancestors of all Americans, all pioneers.^

With over 450 references to God and to His relationship to the

Pilgrims, Of Plymouth Plantation is the diary of a group of people and their efforts of following what they considered to be God’s will for their lives. They were the "servants of God" and the "eyes of God" were upon them. Numerous references illustrate God’s presence with them and of his blessing, health, success, and strength that is there even in times of trial, hardship, and starvation. Hven with these references to the hardness of the times, praise to God is ever present in Bradford's presentation of tin Pilgrim's journeyings first to

Holland and then to the American wilderness.

•^Haller, p. 142.

^S . H. ''orison, "Introduction" in History of Plymouth Plantation (Hew York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. xii. 18

The "Puritans" called themselves "God's people" and separated from the church and began worshipping in Scrooby. When persecution became too great, they decided to go to Amsterdam, Holland and later to Leyden. In this separatist congregation was the author of their diary, Of Plymouth Plantation. After twelve years of settlement in

Leyden, the congregation decided to remove to the American wilderness.

The Leyden congregation returned to England and divided into two ships, the Speedwell and the Mayflower. After two false starts, the sixty-ton Speedwell broke seal, took on a quantity of water and was finally declared unseaworthy. Bradford attributes this to Captain

McReynolds1 deception of having "over masted" the ship causing the ship to lose its seal. The Pilgrims, like Gideon's army, were reduced in number and were repacked into the 180-ton Mayflower and put to sea

September 6 . Arriving at Cape Cod Harbor in November, and after the famous Mayflower Compact document was signed, they finally landed on

December 21, 1620.

Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour.

In all these problems, Bradford gives God praise for their safe jour­ ney and that none of their group perished save a seaman that was bur­ ied at sea. Bradford records the episode:

September 6 . These troubles being blown over, and now all being compact together in one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous wind, which continued divers days together, which was some encouragement unto them; yet, according to 19

the usual manner, many were afflicted with seasickness. And 1 may not omit here a special work of God's provi­ dence. There was a proud and very profane young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness and cursing them dally with grievous execrations; and did not let to tell them that he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses light on his own head, and it was an astonishment to all his fellows for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.

God had punished the sailor for his terrible treatment of the Pilgrims.

Yet, of the 102 passengers on that first journey of the Mayflower to the New World, 50 of their members had died before the summer of 1621 had arrived.

The "First Encounter" with the Indians occurred as the Brethren were exploring the area searching for a suitable place to settle.

Bradford concludes his description of the encounter with praise to God:

Thus it pleased Cod to vanquish their enemies and give them deliverance; and by His special providence so to dis­ pose that not any one of them were either hurt or hit, though their arrows came close by them and on every side [of] them; and sundry of their coats, which hung up in the barricado, were shot through and through. Afterwards they gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance, and gathered up a bundle of their arrows and sent them into England afterward by the master of the ship, and called that place the First Encounter.

In the explorations made by the Pilgrims, Indian c o m was dis­ covered through the Providence of God in a deserted village; some was saved for seed and planted as soon as possible in that first New 20

England spring:

And here Is to be noted a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that here they got seed to plant them corn the next year, or else they might have starved, for they had none nor any likelihood to get any till the season had been past, as the sequel did manifest. Neither is it likely they had had this, if the first voyage had not been made, for the ground was now all covered with snow and hard frozen; but the Lord is never wanting unto His in their greatest needs; let His holy name have all the praise.

After a bountiful harvest, a Thanksgiving was declared. The friendly

Indians who had helped them plant the corn brought venison and other meats to the three-day feast. It looked like a time of plenty for the coming winter, but the arrival of the Fortune with 35 persons, necessi­ tated that the "Old Coiners" reduce their rations by half to share with these that came poorly provided. Other difficulties followed.

After the second winter in the New World was past, the families were each given a parcel of land so that each family could raise its own corn. After a discussion of communism and private holding of pro­ perty, the decision was made to end the "Common Course and Condition."

By each family being responsible for its own growing and raising of food, more would be produced. This proved to be true, and a plentiful harvest was anticipated. But weather conditions were against them; it looked like the corn would shrivel and die. Yet good rains came, and the Pilgrims were able to harvest a crop. Even in this semi-starvation time, the Pilgrims trusted in God to see them through their many dif­ ficult places: 21

After this course settled, and by that their corn was planted, all their victuals were spent and they were only to rest on God's providence; at night not many times knowing where to have a bit of anything the next day. And so, as one well ob­ served, had need to pray that God would give them their daily bread, above all people in the world. Yet they bore these wants with great patience and alacrity of spirit; and that for so long a time as for the most part of two years.

Bradford repeats over and over again in his History that the Providence of God saw them through difficulty to better days.

These passengers, when they saw their low and poor condition ashore, were much daunted and dismayed, and according to their divers humors were diversely affected. Some wished themselves in England again; others fell a-weeping, fancying their own misery in what they saw now in others; other some pitying the distress they saw their friends had been long in, and still were under. In a word, all were full of sadness. Only some of their old friends rejoiced to see them, and that it was no worse with them, for they could not expect it should be better, and now hoped they should enjoy better days together. And truly it was no marvel they should be thus affected, for they were in a very low condition; many were ragged in apparel and some little better than half naked, though some that were well stored before were well enough in this regard. But for food they were all alike, save some that had got a few pease of the ship that was last here. The best dish they could present their friends with was a lobster or a piece of fish without bread or anything else but a cup of fair spring water. And the long continuance of this diet, and their labours abroad, had something abated the freshness of their former complexion; but God gave them health and strength in a good measure, and showed them by ex­ perience the truth of that word, (Deuteronomy viii.3) "That man liveth not by bread only, but by every word that pro- ceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth a man live."

While the Pilgrims were having difficulty holding on to the gains made in the wilderness of North America, men in England were trying to cheat them. The Pilgrims were charged from 30 to 70 per cent interest on the goods sent. Part of this can be understood by the great risks involved; one never knew if the ship would make port or not. On top 22 of this distress, the Plague struck England, and business halted. Yet with all these problems Bradford refers to God's mercy and care and leaves the reader with the strong impression that in each case, God helped the brethren come out on top in the end:

Thus was all their hopes dashed and the joyful news they meant to carry home turned to heavy tidings. Some thought this a hand of God for their too great exaction of the poor Plantation, but God's judgments are unsearchable, neither dare I be bold therewith. But, however, it shows us the uncertainty of all human things and what little cause there is of joying in them or trusting to them.

The Pilgrims tried to maintain a tight community organization and for­ mation as a defense against the Indians. Also, every member of the community was expected to attend divine services of the church as a defense against sin. These tight community regulations were not to hold for long as trade began with the Dutch at New Amsterdam on Man­ hattan founded in 1626.

Even as danger lurked in the wooded areas, the Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay and other New England colonies began to greatly increase in 1629. Good land was getting scarce and "elbow room," the call of the pioneer, was heard throughout the area. The church could not continue to serve such a wide-spread group, so new churches, of necessity, had to be formed resulting in the further loosening of the hold of both colonial and ecclesiastical forces on the people.

A new disaster was to appear shortly to further hamper the Ply­ mouth brethren. Allerton, their representative to the Adventurers who had invested money in the Plymouth settlement, was found to be cheating 23 them. The Puritans were in debt over 4,770 pounds in 1631 instead of the 400 pounds they had anticipated in 1628. Another potential disas­ ter appeared as Frenchmen killed two men and rifled the outposts of

Machias and Castine. With all of these problems, Bradford praises God for his blessings. With God's blessings came prosperity, greater dis­ persal of the people resulted. Roger Williams left the Puritan settle­ ment and founded Providence to provide greater religious freedom for non-Puritan settlers.

A murder occurred on Kennebec, and a smallpox epidemic spread among the Indians during which 950 out of the 1,000 inhabitants died.

Bradford praised God for what he considered the divine deliverance as no Englishmen were taken by the epidemic. In 1637 the Pequot War was quickly settled as the communities joined forces and 400 Indians were killed by the Puritan forces. Wickedness like a plague broke forth and was controlled by what the Pilgrims considered to be the Bible standard of punishment by putting to death the offenders. Bradford explained the outbreak of wickedness as something imported from the

Old World; not all "New Comers" were followers of the Holy One.

The Elder William Brewster died April 18, 1643 after serving

God faithfully for 36 years. In 1644 part of the Plymouth Pilgrims moved to Nauset or Eastham. War with the Narragansett Indians was averted by treaty. As what seems to illustrate to Bradford God’s intervention in the lives of men occurred as the pirate captain

Thomas Cromwell died from a fall off his horse onto his rapier hilt. 24

This appeared to be God's will to Bradford as those who live by the sword must die by the sword. With over 500 references to God and his workings in the lives of men, this episode seems to be a fitting end for Bradford's History.

The History of Plymouth Plantation should enable the student to sense how totally the early settlers of Plymouth relied on God for every physical need of their lives. Han was not so independent in that day as he appears to be today; God was the primal force in the lives of the Plymouth Brethren. The student can sense the spirit of the theocracy operating at that time on life as lived on the every-day level.

To Sidney Ahlstrom, three elements of the Puritan legacy stand out:

It awakened Protestant concern for the experimental dimension of God's grace. It promulgated a conception of personal and public duty, and of life under God's law that is the effective origin of the American "Social Gospel." It put a high premium on public literacy, the general diffusion of knowledge, a learned clergy, and a reasoned understanding of the faith. It thus conveyed to posterity a deep-seated resistance to the temptations of intellectual sloth and moral indifference.^

It would be useful for the student to discuss the legacy as related to present day attitudes toward work, personal responsibility, and toward

God. Attitudes toward education and morality may be effectively dis­ cussed to enable the student to understand the Puritan position and

^Theology in America (Indianapolis; The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1967), pp. 32-33. 25 and also enable the student to understand his own thinking in these areas of concern, making the study relevant to the present needs of

the student.

Typical of the Puritan turn of mind were men like Thomas Hooker

(1586-1647) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Hooker, whose thirty volumes represented sermonic literature, wrote of the way of salvation and the preparation, penitence, and humiliation necessary to gain as­ surance of grace in Christ, and man's personal and public responsibili­ ties gained as a result of that received grace. Man's greatest need was to make it to heaven and sermonic literature pointed the way for the early American.

Sermonic literature took the attention of the best minds of the day. The pulpit was the center of life intellectually, morally, and politically; it is easy to understand why much of the best writings was found in sermonic literature. The sermon was many things to many peo­ ple of the age; it was an appeal to man's emotions and his reason,

"both on intellectual experience and a glimpse of the magnificent poetic vistas of God's promise to the regenerate soul." And as Horn- berger states, "It provides the real key to the religious life of the colonial age.^ The purpose of the sermon was:

to persuade men to consider honestly the state of their souls. The minister was to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, to awaken his hearers to the supreme importance

^Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 26. 26

of faith and regeneration, to the urgent necessity of assuming an active part in the eternal warfare within man's soul between good and evil, the spirit and the flesh, God and the Devil. The sermon was the essence of Protestantism, more important, in actuality, than any single theological dogma. With the Calvanists, for example, the sermon was the chief means of preserving believers from fatalistic acceptance of their lot. That most men were foreordained to sin and damnation and that there was nothing the individual could do about it, are doctrines which might easily have led to despair and passive indifference. The sermons, however, were based on the even more powerful doctrines that divine grace did come to some men, and that to those who received it, grace was a constant growth, an increasing understanding of perfection, an endless enlarging of one's capacity to deal with doubt and sin and temptation .... Men and women found sermons thrilling because sermons indi­ cated the innumerable ways of analyzing and strengthening the inner life.

Ahlstrom writes of Hooker that:

Perhaps no man better symbolizes at their uncorrupted fountainhead the two traits that the American churches and the American people owe to their Founding Fathers of the seventeenth century: an intense emphasis on religious experience and a sense of moral duty.8

Hooker's sermon, "The Activity of Faith: or Abraham's Imitators," illustrates his "Precision"^ in carefully constructing his sermon with the references to the book of Homans in the Bible and the negative and affirmative aspects of his argument illustrating the precise steps

^Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 25.

^Ahlstrom, p. 113.

9 An early synonym for Puritan according to Ahlstrom, suggested an "unduly meticulous concern for the fine points of God's law," p. 140, footnote. 27 necessary Co arrive at a faith like Abraham, the Father of the Hebrew people. The student in the church-related colleges of America in varying degrees are pilgrims on their journey toward the "Celestial

City" and the main concern for many of them is to formulate a right relationship between themselves and God. The study of literature should aid in that formulation.

Another writer of sermons was the Puritan, Jonathan Edwards, who bridges the gap between the Puritan tradition and the Age of Reason, lie was the legatee of the best of the Puritan tradition. A tradition that illustrated the belief that religious matters were vital in the affairs of men, and that the colonies were run by men who believed that God had a place in the affairs of men. This concept of religion was "exciting because it was vital, and vital because those who pro­ fessed it understood it and drew from it spiritual aid that enlivened 10 and directed the affairs of life.

Edwards graduated from Yale College in 1720 and studied theology in New Haven from 1720-1722. Before becoming a minister to a Presby­ terian church in New York City, Edwards completed the writing of his seventy "Resolutions" before his twenty-first birthday. It is inter­ esting to note that like Benjamin Franklin, he was setting the pattern for his life as he set a goal of reading over his resolutions once a

•lOciarence H. Faust, and Thomas H. Johnson, "Introduction" in Jonathan Edwards' Representative Selections (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), p. xii. 28 week. The first resolution reads:

Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to the glory of God and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration; without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved, so to do, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many soever, and how great soever.

The tone of these "Resolutions" would be worthwhile in nothing to the student: Edwards' great concern to do only whatsoever that would bring glory to God and his emphasis on gaining all that is possible from life somewhat suggestive of Thoreau in his Journal. Resolution number five reads: "Resolved, To live with all my might, while I do live," and number seventeen reads "Resolved, That I will live so, as

I shall wish I had done when I come to die."** A large share of his

Resolutions refer to his attitude and treatment of others. In this present day, it would be good to look at these Resolutions and note that they make good sense in living profitably and comfortably with one's fellow man in this present age:

14. Resolved, Never to do anything out of Revenge. 16. Resolved, Never to speak evil of any one, so that it shall tend to his dishonour, more or less, upon account except for some real good. 20. Resolved, To maintain the strictest temperance, in eating and drinking. 21. Resolved, Never to do anything, which, if I should see in another, I should count a just occasion to despise him for, or to think any way the more meanly of him. 31. Resolved, Never to say anything at all against any body,... 33. Resolved, To do, always, what I can towards making, maintaining and preserving peace ....

^''Resolutions," pp. 38, 39. 29

43. Resolved. Never, henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God's; . . . 52. I frequently hear persons ia old age, say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, That I will live just so as I can think 1 shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age. 56. Resolved. Never to give over, nor in the least to slacken, ray fight with my corruptions, however unsuccess­ ful I may be. 58. Resolved. Not only to refrain from an air of dislike, fretfulness, and anger in conversation, but to exhi­ bit an air of love, cheerfulness and benignity. 70. Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak.12

All of these "Resolutions" suggest a man of compassion and Christ-like spirit. The student of the religious voice in American literature will find value in noting that Edwards worked at the task of becoming what he considered to be a better person. He did not resolve to do his

"own thing" but strived to become the person he felt Christ would have him become. A discussion of the modern man-centered philosophy and the Christ-centered philosophy of the early Americans would prove r-.o interesting experience for the students and the instructor. Such a discussion should set the stage for the formation of values or for the evaluation of presently held values. Some students may have felt that a "conversion" experience was all that was needed, and reading

Edwards would point out the truth that any kind of living takes real work.

^"Resolutions," pp. 38-45. 30

As he tells in his Personal Narrative, written some time in 1739

and about twenty years after his recorded conversion, "I had a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from my childhood." Edwards

entered Yale College before his thirteenth birthday in preparation for

the ministry. In his Narrative, he tells of his great concern for his

soul and going privately into a secret place in the woods to pray five or more times a day. When in college he "made seeking my salvation

the tuain business of my life." Yet, he "sought after a miserable man­ ner," nis "mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of

God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and re­ jecting whom he pleased." Later, he "apprehended the justice and

reasonableness of it." From that point on "the doctrine has very often

appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet," after reading I Timo­

thy 1:17: "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen." He relates in

his Narrative that as he read the words of I Timothy, "there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before." After discussing his experience with his father, he walked alone in his father's pasture, and there came into his "mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God" that he

found difficulty in expressing it; God had become an indwelling prin­ ciple.

^Personal Narrative, pp. 57, 58, 59, 60. 31

For students in church-related colleges and for others in insti­ tutions desiring to study religious phenomena, these readings of Jona­ than Edwards would be invaluable. Hen were moved by the words of God as found in the Bible and became men with strength of character, the kind of man needed to hew a new country from the wilderness. The

United States was founded by men coming out of such a society; the religious nature is the warp crossed by the woof in making up the strength of the fabric in the United States; "for Edwards was a repre­ sentative product, both in background and temperament, of the very ele­ ments of spiritual enlightenment for which all good Puritans yearned with a consuming ardor.Students reading Edwards should understand to a fuller degree the operations of the Puritan mind.

Edwards asserted that the human mind had two faculties— under­ standing and will. The mind included four operations "by which it is capable of perception and speculation, or by which is discerns, and views, and judges of things." To Edwards, sensation was the basis for all understanding, "the apprehension of the ideas which God has willed to communicate to us . . ."*•** and it is that sensation which enabled man to understand and exercise the inclination or will. Love is the chief of the affections and as the fountain of all others, it is from love that all other affections flow. Edwards considered Jesus's

l^Faust and Johnson, "Introduction," p. xi.

•^Ibid., pp. xxv, xxviii. 32 saying; "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets," as the basis of his Biblical authority. For an unre- generate man has "natural" affections while the regenerate man possessed

"supernatural" affections:

The inward principle from whence they, the gracious affections flow, is something divine, a communication of God, a partici­ pation of the divine nature, Christ living in the heart, the Holy Spirit dwelling there, in union with the faculties of the soul, as an internal vital principle, exerting his own proper nature, in the exercise of these faculties.16

Even so, Edwards warned of confusing natural imagination and what was truly spiritual.

When Edwards was twenty-seven, he was invited to preach in Bos­ ton "on the Publick Lecture." His God Glorified in the Work of Redemp­ tion, by the Greatness of Man's Dependence upon Him, in the Whole of It became his first published work and began his career as a theologian of fame. In this sermon Edwards expressed his belief that the redeemed man is totally and thoroughly dependent on God:

. . . .he (God) is the cause and original whence all their good comes, . . . he is the medium by which it is obtained and conveyed, . . . and that he is the good itself given and conveyed, therein it is in him . . . God is the great author of it (good) . . . he is the first cause . . . It is of God that we have our Redeemer. It is God that par­ dons and justifies, and . . . delivers from the dominion of sin . . . the Holy Ghost himself is God, by whose op-

F a u s t an(] Johnson, p. xxxv. 33

eration and indwelling the knowledge of God and divine things, a holy disposition and all grace, are con­ ferred and upheld . . . It is of God that we have the holy scriptures: they are his word . . . The redeemed have all from the grace of God . . . all from the power of God . . .17

Also, in A Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural and na­ tional Doctrine, Edwards speaks of the Spirit of God acting in a dif­ ferent manner in the mind of the redeemed than he would in the unre­ deemed or natural man: "He may indeed act upon the mind of a natural man, but he acts in the mind of the saint as an indwelling vital prin- 18 ciple." A discussion of this God-indwelling principle held by Ed­ wards would lead to another opportunity for the student to evaluate his presently held opinions and beliefs: Does God act upon the mind of the regenerated man, and if so, does this provide the stimulus for the formulation of a strong value system? And also, how does this principle work, and how does one know it works? What are the char­ acteristics of an unredeemed or natural man compared to that of the regenerated man?

Edwards' famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, was preached at Enfield, Connecticut in 1741. Of his 1074 known ser­ mons, this one has undergone countless reprintings. Faust and Johnson note that "it is a curious anomaly that the reputation of one of the

-^God Glorified in Man's Dependence, pp. 92-95.

•^A Divine and Supernatural Light, p. 103. 34 quietest, least spectacular preachers should derive chiefly from his 19 delivery of this imprecatory sermon ..." The text for the sermon was taken from Deuteronomy 32:35— "Their foot shall slide in due time," and continues his metaphor of man as a spider being over a bottomless pit. No self respecting gentleman of the day would be found without copies of current sermons. In fact, Faust and Johnson state:

Sermons were as much in request during the eighteenth cen­ tury as novels are today, and no gentleman's library but held in tooled calf many dozen volumes of sermons written by men.wliose names today have disappeared into a literary limbo.20

In a carefully thought-out list of arguments, Edwards presents a logical discussion of the sinner's condition. Certainly there is no attempt to arouse emotions for effect as was the case in some revival sermons of the day. Rather he develops the logical conclusion from his arguments that "there is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." The "Application" of this "awful subject" is "for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation." The wrath of God is compared to great waters that have been damned and "as the bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string" it is only the "mere pleasure" . . . "of an Angry

God" that keeps these destructive powers from the sinner. Edwards continues the spider metaphor:

^ Representative Selections, "Notes," p. 422.

20Faust and Johnson, "Notes," p. 422. 35

That God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some lothsome Insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of noth­ ing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

Edwards addresses the sinner in the congregation to flee from the wrath of God. This wrath, according to Edwards, is the wrath of the infinite God, fierceness of God, the misery suffered would be from 21 God, is everlasting for "who knows the power of God's anger?" His sermon produced the very emotionalism about which he warned his peo­ ple. Benjamin Trumbull gives the reader a look at the Reverend Ed­ wards in his pulpit:

It was Sunday, July 8 , 1741. He stood calmly in the pulpit with his small sermon-book held in his left hand, turning the pages with his right, and he read in a level, clearly modulated voice; yet, said one listener, the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, future founder of Dartmouth College: "There was such a breathing of distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard."22

After twenty-three years as pastor to the people, on July 1,

Edwards preached his Farewell Sermon to his Northampton congregation before moving to Stockbridge as a missionary to the Indians and pastor

21"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," pp. 162-169.

22Faust and Johnson, "Notes," p. 422, quoting Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut (1797, 1818), II, 145. 36 of the local church. The personal reference, unusual in his sermons, was a restrained admonition to his people that:

When I must give an account of my stewardship, of the service I have done for, and the reception and treatment I have had among, the people he sent me to: and you must give an account of your conduct towards me, and the improvement you have made of these three and twenty years of my ministry.

He felt that truth was on his side of the question as he was "per­

suaded" it was and that the people must answer to God the Judge. He wished for them "a minister of greater knowledge of the Word of God"

that they "may be undeceived before that great day," speaking to the professors of godliness in the congregation. In the second section of his Farewell Sermon, he spoke to those that he would "leave in a

Christless, graceless condition." His pastor’s heart goes out to those

that he would help find rest in Christ, if he could. It was a "sorrow­

ful parting" but there "would be a more sorrowful parting" for them at

the Judgment. In part three of his sermon, Edwards addresses himself

"to those who are under some awakenings" to seek God, and to overcome

temptation, watch and pray "that he who is the infinite Fountain of

light, would open your eyes, and turn you from darkness into light, and

from the power of Satan unto God." In part four, he spoke to the young

people of the congregation urging them to walk "in the ways of virtue

2 3 Farewell Sermon, p. 187. 37 and Christian piety, having their hearts purified and sweetened with the principle of divine love." It was for leading the church to sup­ press "vice among our young people, which gave so great offense, and by which [he] became so obnoxious." He, "from time to time, warned

[the young people] against frolicking (as it is called,) and some other liberties commonly taken by young people in the land." In the fourth and last section of his sermon, Edwards applied himself to the children of the congregation. The love and tenderness he felt toward the "lambs" of his flock is evident throughout by the tone used in his sermon:

Do not neglect to pray for yourselves: take heed you be not of the number of those, who cast off fear, and restrain prayer before God. Constantly pray to God in secret; and often remember that great day, when you must appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, and meet your minister there, who has so often counselled and warned y o u . 24

In this final section the pastor taking leave of the Northampton church also urged five ways to maintain a prosperous church: (1) maintain the family order, as that is the place for education and ordering in the Christian life; (2) avoid contention; (3) "watch against the encroachment of Error; and particularly Arminianism, and the doctrines of like tendency"; (4) give yourself much to prayer; (5) take great care in the selection of a minister, that he be of sound princi­ ple and Christian character.A discussion of this sermon would

^ F a r e w e l l Sermon, pp. 187, 191-195, 196.

25Ibid., pp. 196, 197, 199. 38 reveal a warm, unselfish human being that wanted the best for his con­ gregation. The people had voted him out of their church but not out of his heart. This reading could possibly lead into a discussion of the sermons presented by a Jonathan Edwards and of those heard today.

It could possibly lead to a discussion of the types of sermons wished to be heard by the students or possibly those in the class preparing for the ministry might discuss the sermons they would like to preach.

Following this, some time could be spent on how literature could aid the future minister.

Edwards' sermon, A Divine and Supernatural Light immediately imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, shown to be both a Scrip­ tural and Rational Doctrine, was printed at the request of his North­ hampton hearers, and is a direct contrast to his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Both dealt with regeneration, but whereas the former sermon "is a serene attempt to explain the spiritual ex­ periences of regeneration itself the latter sermon warns the unregen- erate that it is not enough to just attend church to escape the awful pit of hell." In A Divine and Supernatural Light Edwards "argues that the indwelling light of regeneration— of redeeming grace— is the very presence of God"^— "an indwelling vital principle." In the unregen­ erate man, the Spirit of God acts as "an extrinsic, occasional agent; for in acting upon them, he doth not unite himself to them."

^ B r a d l e y , Beatty, Long "Jonathan Edwards" in The American Tradi­ tion in Literature 3rd ed., Vol. l (New York: W. W. Norton and Com­ pany, Inc., 1967), p. 101, footnote. 39

He was attempting to show the church members that came into the church

through the Half-Way Covenant even unto the third generation that if

they wished to avoid the "awful wrath of God" they must be converted

and know that God dwelled within.

In part two of his sermon, Edwards argues that this light is

"given by God, and not obtained by natural means." The natural facul­

ties are not made use of in it, no outward means are used to convey

this light, but this light is "produced by God immediately." He con­

cludes by saying:

As for instance, that notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the word of God: but the sense of the excellency of Christ by reason of that holiness and grace, is neverthe­ less immediately the work of the Holy Spirit.

With 1074 sermons in existence and the fact that his works have no undergone not less than 250 editions and reprints ° indicates the great

interest Jonathan Edwards has stirred in religious circles. But that

fact that he was removed from his pastorate of twenty-three years in­

dicates that the people were unwilling to accept the Puritan concepts

of absolute sovereignty of God, predestination, providence, natural

depravity, election, evil, and God as revealed in the Bible. Times

were changing, people were changing, concepts were changing. Edwards

tried to hold on to these Puritan concepts and tried to make his people

Divine Light, pp. 109-111.

28paust and Johnson, p. cix and footnote, p. cix. 40 hold to them. But a secularization was operating in the New World. It had been 130 years since the Pilgrims had settled Plymouth. The wil­ derness had been pushed back, and settlers were crossing the Cumberland llountains. As St. John De Crevecoeur (1735-1813) states in his Notes of an American Farmer (1782)29 the wilderness had a secular effect on the Americanized European. He was no longer bound to the land, to a king, or even to the church. He could think what he pleased, do what he pleased, and act the way he pleased. He was free to accept or re­ ject whatever he pleased. This provided fertile soil for change. Men were unwilling to be dictated to. The new freedom they experienced in the wilderness poured out over every aspect of their lives. If they couldn't do what they wanted in one place, they could always move to another place for there was unlimited land, they felt, to explore in this vast New World. The effects of unlimited land on the character of the early American would provide a great deal of discussion mater­ ial in the classroom. What the effects were as suggested above and how the results of these effects are felt today would provide rele­ vancy for today's students in the American literature classroom.

The search for a personal faith became Everyman's search: the existential quality of his religion became not what the clergy told him, but became his own personal relationship to God. This relation­ ship became more meaningful to the Pilgrim and the pioneer as he sought

29st. John He Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, the third letter in The American Tradition in Literature (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1967). to make a new life for himself and his family in the wilderness. The meaning of life he found in the vast virgin forests or on the sweeping grassy plains became the basis for a personal knowledge of God. This is seen in the Quaker movement. The Society of Friends founded by

George Fox about 1650 believed in God's immanence as having meaning in their lives as the "inner light." As the Quaker, John Woolman, tells in his Journal, he had to learn to discern between the inner presence of God and his own desires and imaginations so that he could truly be-

OA come as God would want him to be. This was a change from the Puritan belief that God was revealed in the Bible in that the Quakers believed that God revealed himself directly to men and not only throught the

Bible or church, but also through nature. The Quakers also believed that all men were equal before God. This led John Woolman to write the first Abolitionist tract and led the movement in the Quaker meeting to free their slaves. This was the first emancipation of the slaves in the New World. In contrast to Edwards, the Quakers held a view that man could will to serve God. This view was similar to that held by

Jacobus Arminus and which Edwards fought against in his writings. The basic problem as Edwards saw it was "can a man do what he wills, not 31 can he will as he wills." But how does all this relate to the

•^The Journal of John Woolman, in The American Tradition in Lit- erature, 3rd ed., Vol. I, (New York: The W. W. Norton and Company, 1967) , p. 174.

3-1-Faust and Johnson, "Introduction," p. xlix. 42

present day student?

The student in the church-related college comes to the classroom with a particular set of insights, value formations, and moral judg­ ments . This value system has been fostered by the usual impact upon

his mind by his earlier schooling, what society has to offer, his

friends, family adjustments, what personal experiences he has had, and his physical development. Added to the usual impact of these forces on his life is the influence of the church from which he comes. The par­

ticular student in the college classroom of a church-related institu­

tion is a complex organism. The complexity is proliferated by the

fast-paced society in which man lives. Into this complex world moves

the student searching, as does all men, for identify and for meaning.

As he searches for meaning, he struggles "to impose reason and order 32 on the fragmented moments of experience." Down through the ages man has endeavored to formulate a value structure from those fragmented

experiences to enable him to arrive at some degree of self-knowledge.

As the world has become more complex, the calls to man's attention has

become almost boundless, and, as a result, his discriminatory facul­

ties have become satiated. The problem of choosing for his value

system has become complex, also. The questions of honesty, of sincer­

ity, of integrity, of knowing what to believe are multitudinous. But

32walter Loban, Margaret Ryan, and James R. Squire, Teaching Language and Literature: Grades 7-12 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1961), p. 600. A3

Loban concludes that;

The educational problem Is at heart the problem of helping young people select from their culture all constructive values, all striving for wholeness, and of helping them subdue or convert those tendencies that are destructive, negative, wasteful, or smugly complacent.33

Burton adds that "each person needs before him a vision of human life, an archetype, that will give meaning and order to existence."3^ Thus literature provides the stage on which the Inspection, formulation, and selection of values may occur. The church-related college that does not provide this opportunity for its students is doing much less than its total responsibility calls for.

William Bradford lived in a day when to be a dissenter from the established church opened the individual or group to mistreatment and harassment as he illustrates in the opening pages of his Of Plymouth

Plantation. A student in a church-related college may begin his career in higher education having accepted the values imposed on him by his family, friends, and church. If he felt inclined to doubt any of those values, he would suffer a guilty conscience as many times he would feel that he was the only living person that had those doubts. By going back to the literature of an earlier period in the history of the United

States, the student may receive comfort from the fact that this country was founded by dissenters; others have experienced doubts, and this should enable the student to feel that he isn't so "different" after

33Loban, Ryan, and Squire, p. 608.

3^Burton, p. 13. 44 all. The discussion of the religious voice in early American litera­ ture then becomes a highly relevant experience.

As stated in the "Introduction," there should be a balance between the didactic and the analytical; the what, the how, and the why should all be considered. In some classes, the analytical approach to the study of literature had "killed" much of that literature for many stu­ dents. Thus, it is necessary to point out to the student that the analytical will enable him to better understand and appreciate the lit­ erature studied. Yet the analytical must be "peripheral" as indicated by Rosenblatt. By blending the what, how, and why, the student's growth in literature will be unhampered by over-analysis.

The what of Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation is the story of the

Pilgrim's fight with the authorities in England in their attempts to migrate to Holland, their battles with ships and seas, and their strug­ gles to stay alive in the unsettled wilderness of North America. The

History covers 50 years of Bradford's life. The how is the form and structure of the work. Bradford wrote his journal of 270 pages on one side of the folio-sized sheets. Later he went back and filled in ma­ terials on the blank sheets opposite the written page that he had left in his first writing. It would be well to point out how difficult this diary system would make the editing of the work for publication. A copy of a page from the original would be useful here to illustrate the difficulty Morison had in doing his edition. The how would also encom­ pass the sentence structure, the word choice, and the language used by 45 the author. This may be accomplished by looking at representative se­ lections from the work and by calling attention to the differences in capitalization, structure of the sentences, and by choice of vocabulary.

The following examples will illustrate.

Bradford's chapter titles are very informative; the following titles illustrate his capitalization of nouns and the flavor of titles in The First Book.

11. Of their Settling in Holland, and their Manner of Living, and Entertainment there VI. Concerning the Agreements and Articles between them and such Merchants and Others as Adventured Moneys; with Other Things Falling out about Making their Provisions VIII. Of the Troubles that befell them on the Coast and at Sea, being forced after much Trouble to leave one of their Ships and some of their Company behind them

The biblical flavor of Bradford's writing may be seen in any example one would wish to call attention to. Note the following:

Being now come into the Low Countries, they saw many goodly and fortified cities, strongly walled and guarded with troops of armed men. For these and some other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair and beautiful and of a sweet situation, but made more famous by the university wherewith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned men. After they had lived in this city about some eleven or twelve years (which is the more observable being in the time of that famous truce between that state and the Spaniards) and sundry of them were taken away by death and many others began to be well stricken in years (the grave mistress of Experience having taught them many things), those prudent governors with sundry of the sagest members began both deeply to apprehend their present dangers and wisely to foresee the future and think of timely remedy.

Not only may Of Plymouth Plantation be considered escape litera­ ture in that it would illustrate to today's possible dissenter what 46

it would be like to dissent in Bradford's day, it would also liberate,

as Burton puts it, the student from the "emotional censors of so- 35 ciety." To complete this experience with the Pilgrims, it would be

necessary to ask the students, "What does this piece of literature have

to say to me?" or "What insights have I gained from the reading Of Ply­ mouth Plantation?" It would also be useful to discuss the logic of

Bradford's presentation: Is the material one-sided or does the author present both sides of the question? Is the material honest in its pre­ sentation of the Pilgrims' "ardent faith"? Does he show both the bad

as well as the good or is his presentation a propagandist's pamphlet?

What does the material tell about religious attitudes in the 1600's?

How does Bradford's style differ from today's writers? How does the

Biblical flavor of the writing add to or detract from Bradford's pur­ pose? The discussion of these questions should enable the student to have a more complete experience with the literature.

•^Burton, p. 6. CHAPTER III

THE RATIONAL VOICE

As the Puritans were following the teachings of the Genevan re­ former, John Calvin (1509-1564), certain opponents began to appear.

These opponents granted to man a more dignified place in the scheme of things than Calvin was willing to permit. Four systems of thought de­ veloped that opposed Calvin: Antinomianism, Arminianism, Quakerism, and Deism.

Antinomianism "is the denial of any authority beyond the indivi­ dual."^ This controversial position held by Anne Hutchinson resulted in her banishment in 1637 and to the formulation of her belief that salva­ tion came by personal knowledge of God's grace and not through good works. Arminianism, formulated by the Dutch theologian, Jacobus Arminus

(1560-1609), taught that one could achieve salvation through living a moral and upright life; man had the power of choice and could will to follow God and be saved. Tenets of Arminianism include (1) a decree in predestination, in contrast to Calvinism, was a reference to how God worked and not to individual men, (2) Christ died for all men, (3) there is no salvation apart from faith, and (4) man could (and does) 2 fall from grace. Quakerism, or the Society of Friends, was organized

^Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 12.

^Dillenberger and Welch, p. 90. 47 48

under George Fox (1624-1691) in the late 1640's. His followers believed

that it was the duty of every man to follow the Bible and the "inner

light." This "stringent emphasis upon the truth within gave discipline

and order to the lives of the Quakers.” The Quakers believed in: (1)

a loving God; (2) a God that revealed himself to individuals directly

and not just through the Bible, churches, and nature; (3) equality be­

fore God making democracy possible; (4) salvation open to all who seek

it; (5) freedom of the will; (6) objection to war, violence, and per­

secution; and (7) charity and humanitarianlsm. Deism "was neither 4 theology nor a church, but a philosophical position, a state of mind."

The English philosopher, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) is often

called the Father of Deism. He approached the religious issues from a purely rational point of view. Lord Herbert found that men had agreed

on five axioms: (1) There is a Divine Being; (2) That Divine Being is

to be worshipped; (3) Proper worship consists in moral obedience and

piety; (4) Obedience is to be rewarded while disobedience is to be

punished; and (5) This reward and punishment is to continue after this

life.5 Bradley, Beatty, and Long write: "Veneration of the Bible as

the revelation of God is wholly absent from this rational analysis, and

8Dillenberger and Welch, p. 120.

^Blair, Homberger, and Stewart, p. 11.

■*Dillenberger and Welch, p. 128. 49 it is the rejection of revelation which is the distinguishing mark of

Deistic thought."^ Rationalism spread rapidly during the latter half of the seventeenth century aided by the scientific advancement. Spokes­ man in Colonial America for the Deistic position was Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "was the epitome of the Enlighten­ ment, the versatile, practical embodiment of rational man in the eigh­ teenth century."^ Franklin left an enormous legacy of written material to enable the modem scholar to discover much of the temper of the times during which he lived. This legacy depicts for the modern man not only the society of which Franklin was a member but also illustrates for the reader the kind of man Franklin himself was. He accepted the philosophy of rational individualism, the Newtonian concept of the universe that is operating by unchanging laws, and the deistic position of a world of the senses: he had a distrust in organized religions, confidence in the per­ fection of man by education, and a belief in the humanitarian aid to his fellow man as being the best service of God.

Because of his frugality, industry, and wise business practices,

Franklin was able to accomplish much in his lifetime. He was able to retire from active business at 42 and spend a great deal of time in writing and as representative of the Colonies. He developed the first

^Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 13.

^"Benjamin Franklin" in Bradley, Beatty, Long, The American Tra­ dition in Literature-, 3rd ed., Volume I (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1967), p. 211. 50

circulating library, the first volunteer fire company in Philadelphia, bifocals, first learned society, the American Philosophical Society, the

first colonial hospital located in Pennsylvania, and the first univer­

sity founded upon the ideals of secular education. His scientific ex­

periments, especially that of the kite and key in 1752, brought him in­

ternational recognition.

Franklin was also famous for the Junto lasting for thirty years

and formed with three others besides Franklin from Keimer's print shop

and several other friends. The Leather Apron, as the Junto was first

known, met as a group each Friday night at a local tavern and later at

a home. Franklin, following Cotton Mather's lead, devised twenty-four

discussion questions for the Junto:

1. Have you met with anything in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto? particularly in history, morality, poetry, physic, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge? 2. What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in con­ versation? 3. Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause? 4. Have you lately heard of any citizens thriving well, and by what means? 5. Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or elsewhere, got his estate? 6. Do you know of a fellow citizen, who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise or imitation; or who has lately committed an error, proper for us to be warned against and avoid? 7. What un­ happy effects of intemperance have you lately observed or heard; of impudence, of passion, or any other vice or folly? 8 . What happy effects of temperance, of prudence, of mod­ eration, or of any other virtue? 9. Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded? If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects? 10. Whom do you know that are shortly going voyages or journeys, if one should have occasion to send by them? 11. Do you think of any thing at present, in which the Junto may be serviceable t° mankind, to their country, to their friends, or to themselves. 12. Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting that you have heard of? and what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? And whether, think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage him as he de­ serves? 13. Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage? 14. Have you lately observed any de­ fect in the laws of your country, of which it would be proper to move the legislature for an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting? 15. Have you late observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people? 16. Hath any body attacked your reputation lately? And vhat can the Junto do to­ wards securing it? 17. Is ther any man whose friend­ ship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you? 13. Have you lately heard any member's character attacked, and how have you defended it? 19. Hath any man injured you, from whom it is in the power of the Junto to procure redress? 20. In what manner can the Junto, or any of them, assist you in any of your honourable designs? 21. Have you any weighty affair on hand, in which you think the advice of the Junto may be of service? 22. What benefits have you lately received from any man not present? 23. Is there any difficulty in natters of opinion, of justice, and injustice which you would gladly have discussed at this time? 24. Do you see any thing amiss in the present customs or pro­ ceedings of the Junto, which might be amended?^

Any person could be a Junto member by answering four questions

1. Have you any particular disrespect to any present members? Answer. I have not. 2. Do you sincerely declare, that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Answer. I do. 3. Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Answer. No.

^Writings, II, pp. 33-90. 51

4. Do you love truth for truth's sake, and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it your­ self, and communicate it to others? Answer. Yes.

Along with these character-revealing questions, each member of the Junto was to "produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any sub­ ject he p l e a s e d . C e r t a i n l y these standards for the Junto were not

Christian by any means, but these statements will illustrate to the student the bent of Franklin's mind and demonstrate how thoroughly he had inculcated the diestic position. Franklin was adept at selecting from whatever philosophy or teaching that would be useful for him to become a better person illustrating the eclectic nature of the man of the Enlightenment.

About the time Franklin formulated the rules for the Junto, he wrote his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion before he was twenty- three. Here he expressed his belief in one Superior Being with a series of lesser Gods, each in his system like a sun.*® He wrote in 1728:

I conceive for many Ileasons, that he is a good Being; and as 1 should be happy to have so wise, good, and powerful a Being my Friend, let me consider in what manner 1 shall make myself most acceptable to Him. Next to the praise resulting from and due to His Wisdom, I believe He is pleas'd and delights in the Happiness of those He has created; and since without

^Autobiography, p. 299.

*®Carl Van Doran, Benjamin Franklin (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), p. 80. 52

Virtue ilan can have no Happiness in this World, I firmly believe he delights to see me Virtuous, be­ cause he is pleased when he sees Me Happy. And since he has created many Things which seem purely design'd for the Delight of Man, I believe He is not offended, when he sees his Children solace themselves in any manner of pleasant exercises and Innocent Delights; and I think no Pleasure innocent that is to Man hurtful. I love him therefore for His Goodness, and I adore him for his Wisdom.^

Following the form of "Adoration," Franklin revealed much of his value system by listing in his "Petition" and "Thanks":

"That I may be preserved from Atheism and Infidelity, Impiety, and Profaneness, . . . carefully avoid Ir­ reverence and ostentation, Formality and odious Hypo­ crisy, . . . loyal to my prince, and faithful to my country . . . to those about me dutiful, humble, sub­ missive . . . to those below me gracious, condescending, and forgiving . . . refrain from censure, Calummy, and Detraction . . . sincere in Friendship, faithful in trust, and Impartial in Judgment, watchful against pride and against Anger (that momentary Madness) . . . just in all Dealings, temperate in my Pleasures, full of Candour and Ingenuity, Humanity, and Benevolence. . . grateful to my Benefactors, and generous to my Friends . . . avoid Avarice and Ambition, Jealousie, and Intemperance, false­ hood, Luxury, and Lasciviousness . . . possess Integrity and Ev­ enness of iiind, Resolution in Difficulties, and Fortitude under Affliction . . . Tenderness for the Weak and reverent Respect for the Ancient . . . Kind to my Neighbors, good- natured to my Companions, and hospitable to Strangers . . . . be averse to Talebearing, Backbiting, Detraction, Slander and Craft and overreaching, abhor Extortion, Perjury, and every Kind of wickedness . . . honest and open-hearted, gentle, merciful, and good, cheerful in spirit, rejoicing in the Good of others . . . have a constant Regard to Honour and Probity . . . let me be not unmindful gratefully to acknowledge the favours I receive from Heaven."

•^Writings, II, pp. 93-94. 53

Franklin was thankful:

"For peace and liberty, for food and raiment, for corn, and wine and milk, and every kind of healthful nourish­ ment, . . . the common benefits of air and light; for useful fire and delicious water . . . knowledge, and lit­ erature and every useful art, for my friends and their prosperity; and for the fewness of my enemies . . . For Thy innumerable benefits; for life and reason, and the use of speech; for health, and joy, and every pleasant hour,— My good God, I thank Thee,"12 and after each section of this long Petition and Thanks he thanked his

God for each blessing and gift. The working of these attitudes in any man's life would make for a better person.

About a year later he devised his plan to arrive at moral perfec­ tion. Indeed, Franklin seemed not to have believed in a religious con­ version such as taught by Jonathan Edwards. Rather, he rationally worked out what he considered to be the main characteristics of a worthy person and by might and main he set out to accomplish his objectives.

He listed thirteen virtues in order of what he considered to be their

importance:

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or your­ self; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality, llake no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sin­ cerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly,

12Writings, II, pp. 98-100. 54

and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resent­ ing injuries so much as you think they deserve. 10. Clean­ liness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or hab­ itation. 11. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. 13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin strived to perfect each of the virtues in turn, but human na­ ture being what it is, he found difficulty with his plan. He continued to work at this program for moral perfection over the years.

By careful industry and by guarding his money, Franklin was soon out of debt and sole owner of the printing establishment. In 1732 he began printing Poor Richard, the Almanac for 1733. From the beginning this new adventure was profitable and the debate between Richard and

Bridget Saunders continued for years in the almanac entertaining and helping readers to live in this unpredictable life. Poor Richard is filled with "proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as a means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue.Some of the sayings were intended to entertain and some were like pickles intended to "provide an Appetite.Some of these sayings were borrowed from Franklin's vast store of knowledge, gained from reading; others were original efforts:

13Autobiography, pp. 327-8.

1A Ibid., PP. 327-8.

^Writings, II, p. 218. 55

Hunger never saw bad bread (1733). A house without a woman and firelight is like a body without soul or sprite (1733). As charms are nonsense, nonsense is a charm (1734). Do good to thy friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him (1734). He does not possess wealth; it possesses him (1734). Nothing but money is sweeter than honey (1735) . A little house well filled, a little field well tilled, and a little wife well willed, are great riches (1735). Deny self for self's sake (1735). He that can have patience can have what he will (1736). Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it (1736). Hast thou virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of virtue (1738). As we must account for every idle word, so we must for idle silence (1738).

Van Doren calls the following sayings as original with Franklin:

An empty bag cannot stand upright (1740). The sleeping fox catches no poultry Up! Up! (1743) If you'd have it done, go; if not, send (1743) Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other (1743). The used key is always bright (1744). Three removes is as bad as a fire (1758).

Franklin was not a mystic but a moralist. He devised a plan for his

life and worked to put his plan into action. He sometimes failed, but he kept at the task. As he believed that order was highly important,

he placed it third in his list of virtues; he believed that order came

from industry and frugality. He illustrated his belief in these vir- 16 tues by becoming his own master in just four years.

It would be useful for the student to compare Franklin's plan for moral perfection and his Junto rules with the standards taught by the

^ Van Doren, p. 106. 56 religious world in which the student moves: How "Christian" are these rules devised by Franklin? Also, does Jonathan Edwards or Benjamin

Franklin have the more practical or winning approach to the problem of man's service to man?

In response to his parents' letter, Franklin expressed his reli­ gious views he held in 1738: "... I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."

And "I think vital religion has always suffered, when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue; and the Scriptures assure me, that at the last day we shall not be examined what we thought but what we did; and our recommendation will not be, that we said, 'Lord! Lord!' but that we did good to our fellow creatures. See Matt. XXV.n1^ Franklin provides for today's readers a deistic interpretation of a tenet of the Chris­ tian religion.

The Great Awakening had begun with the preaching of Jonathan Ed­ wards at Northhampton, Massachusetts. With men like John Wesley and others in the Colonies, George Whitefield came to Philadelphia late in

1739 to hold services. Intrigued by his ability to draw large crowds,

Franklin attended the services himself. He was impressed by the effect

*^Writings, II, pp. 214-215. 57

Whitefield's preaching had on his community people in that they were drawn closer to things of religious nature. But he was not drawn in himself. Franklin writes that the Reverend Mr. Whitefield "us'd, in- 18 deed, sometimes to pray for my conversion . . . ," hut Franklin doesn't admit to this conversion. Of the Reverend Hemphill, a travel­ ing Presbyterian minister whom Franklin helped find a pulpit, he wrote:

"Among the rest, 1 became one of his constant hearers, his sermons pleasing me, as they had little of the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly the practice of virtue, or what in the religious style are called good works.He had been religiously educated as a Presby- 20 terian and viewed prayer to God as the "fountain of wisdom."

Van Doran writes of Franklin:

Secular as he was, he had often a vision, not unlike religion's, of an enormous universe of order and law which sometimes might be understood. Immortal secrets for mortal men. In the meantime, he could be delighted, reasonable, and humorous about the mysteries.21

He listed in the second half of his Autobiography what he thought were the "essentials of every known religion," and "free of everything that might shock the professors of any religion":

•^Autobiography, p. 357.

^ Ibid., pp. 345-6.

20Ibid., pp. 324-326, 332.

2^Van Doran, p. 182. 58

That there is one God, who made all things. That he governs the world by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped by adoration, prayer and thanksgiving. But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. That the soul is immortal. And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.

The student may compare these statements with the deists, the ration­ alists, and with modem religious tenets and note their similarity.

It is from Franklin's huge correspondence that much can be dis­ covered about the man. Of the 1,796 letters listed by Smyth, several are pertinent to this discussion. In the often quoted letter to the

Reverend Ezra Stiles, Benjamin Franklin stated his views on religion just a few months before he died. In answer to Stiles' request "to know the Opinion of my venerable Friend concerning Jesus of Nazareth,"^3

Franklin responded:

You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a few Words to gratify it. Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of

22Autobiography, pp. 340-41.

23writings, X, pp. 85-86. 59

all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do in what­ ever Sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you parti­ cularly desire, I think the System of Horals and his Re­ ligion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received var­ ious corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the pre­ sent Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that Belief has the good Consequence, as pro­ bably it has, of making his Doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Unbelievers in his Government of the World, with any peculiar Harks of his Displeasure. I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the Goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its Continuance in the next, through without the smallest Conceit of merit­ ing such Goodness. My Sentiments on this Head you will see in the copy of an old Letter enclosed, which 1 wrote in answer to one from a zealous Religionist, whom I had relieved in a paralytic case by electricity, and who, being afraid I should grow proud upon it, sent me his serious though rather impertinent Caution. I send you also the Copy of Another Letter, which will shew something of my Disposition relating to Religion. With great and sincere Esteem and Affection, 1 am, Your obliged old Friend and most obedient humble S e r v a n t . 24 B. Franklin

Tne student will note that in this letter Franklin professes a belief in God but doubts the divinity of Christ, follows the deistic teachings

(paragraph one), feels the teachings of Jesus the best the world has ever seen (paragraph two), believes in an after life (paragraph three),

24Writings^, X, pp. 84-85. 60

and seems convinced of his held beliefs. The letter quoted below af­

firms these statements.

The test of usefulness became the great concern of his life. "1

grew convinc'd that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between

man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life. . . o c . . ' A letter mentioned by Franklin as having been written to a

"zealous religionist, whom [he] had relieved in a paralytic case by

electricity" was written in 1753 to Joseph Huey. This letter weLl illus­

trates one of the tenets of Deism, that of doing good to one's fellow- man as the best service to God. In part, the letter reads:

For my part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have re­ ceived much Kindness from lien, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho' repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator. You will see in this my Notion of good Works, that I am far from expecting [(as you suppose) that I shall ever] ^6 to merit Heaven by them. By Heaven we understand a State of Happiness, infinite in Degree, and eternal in Duration: I can do nothing to deserve such rewards: He that for giving a Draught of Water to a thirsty Person, should expect to be paid

^ Autobiography, p. 296.

2&Found in the rough draft in the American Philosophical Society; Footnote in Smyth, III, p. 144. with a good Plantation, would be modest in his Demands, compar'd with those who think they deserve Heaven for the little good they do on Earth. Even the mix'd im­ perfect Pleasures we enjoy in this World, are rather from God's Goodness than our Merit; how much more such Happiness of Heaven. For my own part I have not the Vanity to think I deserve it, the Folly to expect it, nor the Ambition to desire it; but content myself in submitting to the Will and Disposal of that God who made me, who has hitherto preserv'd and bless'd me, and in whose Fatherly Goodness I may well confide, that he will never make me miserable, and that even the Af­ flictions I may at any time suffer shall tend to my Benefit. The Faith you mention has doubtless its use in the World. I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would 1 endeavour to lesson it in any Man. But I wish it were more productive of good Works, than 1 have generally seen it: 1 mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing; performing Church Ceremonies, or making long Prayers, filled with Flatteries and Com­ pliments, despis'd even by wise Men, and much less cap­ able of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a Duty; the hearing and reading of Sermons may be useful; but, if Men rest in Hearing and Praying, as too many do, it is as if a Tree should Value itself on being water'd and putting forth Leaves, tho' it never produc'd any Fruit. Your great Master tho't much less of these Outward Appearances and Professions than many of his modern Disciples. He prefer'd the Doers of the Word, to the meer Hearers; the Son that seemingly refus'd to obey Father, and yet perform'd his Commands, to him that profess'd his Readiness, but neglected the Work; the heretical but charitable Samaritan, to the uncharitable tho' orthodox Priest and sanctified Levite; and those who gave Food to the hungry, Drink to the Thirsty, Raiment to the Naked, Entertainment to the Stranger, and Relief to the Sick, tho' they never heard of his Name, he de­ clares shall in the last Day be accepted, when those who cry Lord! Lord! who value themselves on their Faith, tho' great enough to perform Miracles, but have neglected good Works, shall be rejected. He profess'd, that he came not to call the Righteous but Sinners to repentance; which imply'd his modest Opinion, that there were some in his Time so good, that they need not hear even him for Improvement; but now-a-days we have scarce a little Parson, that does not think it the Duty of every Man within his Reach to sit under his petty Ministrations; and that wnoever omits them [offends God. I wish to such more humility, and to you health and happiness, being your friend and servant,]22

B. Franklin

Another letter, published as addressed to Thomas Paine, was written by Franklin as a "Rough of Letter dissuading ______from publishing his Piece.There are some doubts as to the authenticity of this letter as having been written to Paine. Albert Smyth says in bis footnote that Paine's deistical writings "were not published until several years after the supposed date of this letter."29 it is conceiv­ able that Paine held the publication of his The Age of Reason (1795) until Franklin had died as a concession and tribute to his friend who had given Paine his start in the ilew World. It would seem that Frank­ lin was correct in advising Paine not to publish as he was soon to lose favor in the fledgling new country and died and was buried in an un­ known grave in England. In this letter Franklin spoke clearly the warn­ ing to Paine that the publication of his material would ruin him. And in so doing Franklin reveals himself to his readers. In that letter

^ T h e passage within brackets is found in the Library of Congress copy only; footnote, Smyth, III, p. 146. Letter quoted pp. 143-146.

28Wrltings, IX, p. 520. 63 written at Philadelphia July 3, 1786 (?), Franklin warns his correspon­

dent :

I have read your Manuscript with some Attention. By the Argument it contains against the Doctrines of a par­ ticular Providence, tho1 you allow a general Providence, you strike at the Foundation of all Religion. For with­ out the Belief of a Providence, that takes Cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favour particular Persons, there is no Motive to Worship a Deity, to fear its Dis­ pleasure, or to pray for its Protection. I will not enter into any Discussion of your Principles, tho’ you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my Opinion, that, though your Reasonings are subtile, and may prevail with some Readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general Sentiments of Mankind on that Subject, and the Consequence of printing this Piece will be, a great deal of Odium drawn upon yourself, Mischief to you, and no Benefit to others. He that spits against the Wind, spits in his own Face. But, were you to succeed, do you imagine any Good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous Life, without the Assistance afforded by Reli­ gion; you having a clear Perception of the Advantages of Virtue, and the Disadvantages of Vice, and possessing a Strength of Resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common Temptations. But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc'd, and inconsiderate Youth of both sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its Security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your P.eligious Education, for the Habits of Virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent Talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a Rank with our most distinguish'd Authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a Youth, to be receiv'd into the Company of men, should prove his Manhood by beating his Mother. I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the Tyger, but to burn this Piece before it is seen by any other Person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal 64

of Mortification from your Enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of Regret and Repentance. If men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be if without it. I intend this letter itself as a Proof of my Friendship, and therefore add no Professions to it; but subscribe simply yours,3^

Franklin was not afraid to express his feelings for that which would do no one any harm and he was alert also not to express any thing

that would do harm to others.

In a letter written by Franklin to "My Dear Young Friend," the

grandson of a Boston friend, dated at Passy, January 7, 1782 is char­

acteristic of Franklin's attitude toward most young up-and-coming young people. Responding to Samual Cooper Johonnat's expression of a long, happy life, Franklin responded:

I received your kind good Wishes of a Number of happy years for me. I have already enjoy'd and consum'd nearly the whole of those slotted me, being now within a few Days of my 73th.— You have a great many before you; and their being happy or otherwise will depend upon your own Conduct. If by diligent Study now, you improve your Mind, and prac­ tice carefully hereafter the Precepts of Religion and Vir­ tue, you will have in your favour the Promise respecting the Life that now is, as well as that which is to come. You will possess true Wisdom, which is nearly allied to Happiness. Length of Days are in her right-hand, and in her left Riches and Honours; all her Ways are Ways of Pleasantness, and all her Paths are Peace!— . . . I pray God to bless you, and render you a Comfort to them and an Honour to your Country. I am, 31 Your affectionate Friend,

B. Franklin

^ Writings, IX, pp. 520-522.

31Ibid., X, pp. 363-364. 65

All the letters quoted Illustrate Franklin's concern for the effi­ cacy of religious matters as applied to the individual life. He did il­ lustrate a lack of faith in established religions as he became a member of no church. Yet he did give from his finances to every organized cnurch in Philadelphia. If Franklin's concern was to find the keys to the principles on which the world turned and apply them to his life, one can observe from the large store of information available to the Frank­ lin scholar that he possessed the traits that enabled him to apply these tenets most admirably to his life and thus serve mankind in such a mag­ nificent manner that he is still remembered today as the father of the

! 'Yankee."

To George Whitefield in a letter dated June 19, 1764 Franklin ex­ pressed his hope for immortality:

Your frequently repeated Wishes and Prayers for my Eternal, as well as temporal Happiness are very obliging. I can only thank you for them and offer you mine in re­ turn. I have myself no Doubts that I shall enjoy as much of both as is proper for me. That Being who gave me Ex­ istence, and tho' almost threescore years has been contin­ ually showering his Favours upon me, whose very Chastise­ ments have been Blessings to me; can I doubt that he loves me? And, if he loves me, can I doubt that he will go on to take care of me, not only here but hereafter? This to some may seem Presumption; to me it appears the best grounded Hope; Hope of the Future, built on Experience of the Past.

Franklin proposed the first fast to be observed in Philadelphia

32yjritings, IV, p. 248. 66

"to promote reformation, and implore the blessing of Heaven on our un- dertaking." J at the organization of the Philadelphia Militia. Also he proposed a motion to the Constitutional Convention "that henceforth

Prayers, imploring the Assistance of Heaven and its Blessing on our

Deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to Business; and that one or more of the Clergy of this city be reques­ ted to officiate in that Service."^ Franklin noted that "The conven­ tion, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary."^

In his Autobiography, he wrote in the opening pages:

And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that 1 owe the mentioned hap­ piness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done; the complexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions.-^

But this conviction was not always the case with Franklin. In those same opening pages of the world famous Autobiography, he carefully ex­ plains to his son his own struggles toward the "Celestial City" and of

33Autobiography, p. 363.

3^Writings, IX, p. 601.

^ Ibid., IX, p. 601, footnote.

^ Autobiographyt p. 228. his travels through the materialistic world somewhat analogus to Bun- 37 yan's Pilgrim's Progress. He developed his mind as he developed his

trade in his brother's print shop. It was while apprenticed there that he writes: "I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to 38 practice it." It was from his wide reading stolen from hours of wor­ ship and from hours of sleep that he "became a real doubter in many 39 points of . . . religious doctrine."

Herbert W. Schneider writes in his essay "Ungodly Puritans":

Franklin "reasserted the stern Puritan morality, but divorced it from the theocratic aims which it originally served," and

In other ways Franklin was no doubt a typical eighteenth- century man of the world, but as a moralist he was a child of the New England frontier. Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin thus represent the two opposite poles of Puritan thought. It was Edwards who attempted to induce Hew England to lead a godly, not a sober, life; it was Franklin who suc­ ceeded in teaching Americans to lead a sober and not a godly life.40

3?See Charles L. Sanford, "An American Pilgrim's Progress" in Benjamin Franklin and the American Character.

•^Autobiography, p. 242.

39lbid., p. 244.

40in Benjamin Franklin and the American Character, p. 83. 68

On the other hand, I. Bernard Cohen, in "The Empirical Temper," calls

Franklin the great empiricist. The "primary ingredient of empiricism:

[is] a respect for the data of experience and the application of reason to them." To master Nature, one must "understand her laws and work within her framework." The wilderness was a proving ground where "faith in Cod needed to be buttressed by hard work and skill in shooting mus­ kets."^ Charles L. Sanford agrees with this sentiment as he writes:

Just as the early frontier hardships had been held to be a test of the fitness of an Elect people in their incessant warfare against sin, so success in subduing the wilderness was tantamount to entering the kingdom of Heaven and seemed to demonstrate a direct causal re­ lationship between moral effort and material reward.

Yet when he proposed a motion to the Constitutional Convention that the sessions be opened with prayer he said: "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs 1 see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of raen."^ In a letter to

Polly Hewson May 6, 1786, Franklin reminded her: "You know the soul is immortal; why then should you be such a niggard of a little time, when you have a whole eternity before you?"44 In one of his many letters to Madame Brillon he wrote: "In each religion there are

^ I n Benjamin Franklin and the American Character, pp. 84-85. A2 "An American Pilgrim's Progress," p. 68.

43;lax Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, quoted by Carl Vein Doran, p. 748.

^^Carl Van Doran, p. 738. 69 essential things, and others which he only forms and fasions; as a loaf of sugar may perhaps be wrapped in brown or white or blue paper,

and tied with a string of flax or wool, red, or yellow; but the sugar is always the essential thing.Abigail Adams said of Franklin:

From my infancy I had been taught to venerate [Franklin's character.] I found him social but not talkative, and when he spoke something useful dropped from his tongue. He was grave, yet pleasant and affable. You know 1 make some pre­ tensions to physiognomy, and I thought I could read in his countenance the virtues of his heart; among which patriotism shone in its full lustre, and with that is blended every virtue of a Christian: for a true patriot must be a re­ ligious man.

Franklin was all this and much more. It was the modern eclectic mind: he studied and selected from all he learned what he considered to be the best; he tried the spirits and found those he considered to be best. For after all is said and done, what does God require of one but "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."^7

And all this Franklin endeavored to do. By looking at these many let­ ters written by Franklin, the student may begin to develop a mental set toward the religious attitudes expressed. Franklin, although not a professed converted Christian as were Bradford and Edwards, lived a

Writings, X, p. 419.

^ Familiar Letter, John and Abigail Adams, Boston, 1376. Quoted by Van Doran, p. 537.

4 7 :-iicah 6:8. 70 life of devoted service to man and to his country and worked out in his life a high standard of service to mankind. The student will be able to note the shift of emphasis from the God-centered world as ex­ pressed by Bradford and Edwards to a rational raan's-eye view of the world as expressed by Franklin and Jefferson. Both men believed in

God and in a Christ, and both worked out in their lives what they felt was their duty to their fellow men. The recognition of this would benefit the modern student as he contemplates the modem world view that man must serve himself first or he is a fool.

The history of one of Franklin's contemporaries, Thomas Jefferson, is very similar to that of Franklin's in many ways. Although Jefferson was born into a family of means and social distinction, and was favored with a college experience at William and Mary, he spent his life in search of the good and useful. Like Franklin he read incessantly and tried to make the world a better place for those around him. Also, like Franklin he served his country even when he wanted just to stay at his beloved lionticello, garden, manage his farms, and enjoy his family.

He was appointed minister plenipotentiary of the United States upon the return of Franklin. Jefferson's religious views seem very much like

Franklin's as Jefferson worked hard for religious freedom in Virginia and in the United States.

If Franklin is the epitome of the Enlightenment as suggested by

Bradley, tnen Thomas Jefferson must run a close second. Merrill D. 71

Peterson in Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation writes:

The controlling assumptions of enlightened thought were so thoroughly assiraulated in Jefferson's mind that he cannot possibly be understood apart from them. First, untrammeled free inquiry in the pursuit of know­ ledge. Nothing was to be taken for granted; everything was to be questioned, taken apart, traced back to its origins, and reconstructed in the light of intelligence .... Second, the object of inquiry is the discovery of the natural order of things . . . Third, reason is the principal agent of criticism and inquiry— reason, that is, not as "eternal verities," but as a method of verification .... Finally, the end of enlightened thought is happiness.48

Jefferson believed in a reasoned faith. The human condition would never advance to a state of perfection, but he felt that it "is sus­ ceptible to much improvement, and most of all, in matters of govern­ ment and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among people is to be the instrument by which it is effected."49

Like Franklin, Jefferson was a Deist. His benevolent God was re­ vealed in nature, and man was free to use his knowledge through reason and inquiry to leave the "false and capricious or twisted in human af­ fairs toward the truth inherent in the natural order of things."-’® He was a student of classical philosophy and literature, of modern scien­ tific rationalism and natural religion, and of English law and history.

D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 47-48.

^ Ibid., p. 48.

5ulbid., p. 29. 72

Whenever he came up against a difficult problem, he would turn to his well-stocked library in search of the answers hidden there. He would carefully document his argument and write out his arguments for or against the particular problem of the day.

Of Jefferson's religion, Peterson writes:

Jefferson reached his own religious convictions along the lines of these propositions. He was a theist whose God was the creator of the universe. Such a God exemplified workmanship and design; all the evidence of nature testified to His perfection; and man could rely on the harmony and beneficence of His work. Such a God coult not be identified with the God of the Bible as commonly known. Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation, one of the classics of Deism, may have convinced Jefferson of the sufficiency of the laws of nature, the superfluousness of revelation, to explain the creation and the simple duties of man.5-1-

Two areas of a man's life were private and were not to be discussed abroad, religion and a man's home life. To Jefferson, intellectual scrutiny could be toward any problem, and it was man's duty to do so. lleligion, as was the case with other subjects, merited man's intellectual scrutiny. As a result there would be many views, and many true be­ liefs would be the outcome; not just one narrow view of life and belief.

The world into which Jefferson was born was much different from that of Franklin. Pennsylvania was a place of religious freedom as the

Penns had desired that the colony would invite any religious group to settle there. Not so with Jefferson's Virginia. In that colony, the

51peterson, p. 51. 73

first settlers were attempting to create a "little England" with the 52 "same social system and distinctions and the same church.1 In that

colony of Tidewater aristocracy the Dale Code had been in effect. A

blasphemer would have a bodkin thrust through his tongue; if a colonist

failed to observe the sabbath, he was tortured with the whip; if he ex­

pressed doubt of the Trinity, he was put to death; if he failed to at­

tend church or if he traveled on Sunday, he was charged 50 pounds.

Each parish was required to build a parsonage and grant a glebe of 200

acres. Bowers writes :

Because the pay was poor, the ministers frequently were utterly unfit, both intellectually and spiritually, for their functions. They were noted for their slovenline|| in religion and the looseness of their private living.

Into this scene came Jefferson; although by this time the rules were

being relaxed, they were still on the statute books. Into this condi­

tion Jefferson brought his "Ordinances of Religious Freedom." For

three months the Ordinances were discussed in committee, and then in

the Virginia Assembly as a committee of the whole from 1776 until 1779.

Tinally Jefferson had John Harvie introduce "The Bill for Establishing

Religious Freedom" into the Virginia Assembly, June 13, 1779. While

Jefferson was in Paris in 1786, the bill was passed. On the gravestone

designed by Jefferson, he listed what he considered to be his greatest

■^Claude G. Bowers, The Young Jefferson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945), p. 193. See "Battle for Religious Freedom", pp. 193- 216.

53Ibid., p. 194. 74 acnievements: "Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Sta­ tute of Virginia for religious freedom and Father of the University of

Virginia." In his Autobiography he wrote of England that she observed

"a bigoted intolerance for all religions but hers,"^ and he disap­ proved of not having an "express declaration ensuring freedom" of re­ ligion, press, and person.^

The Jefferson Bible of 46 pages contained a brief syllabus and ex­ tracts from the evangelists and was later issued as a book almost twice as large entitled The Life and tlorals of Jesus of Nazareth having the explanatory subtitle Extracted Textually from the Gospels of Greek,

Latin, French and English. In this extraction, Jefferson attempted to select only the "genuine" statements of Jesus. Of this Adrienne Koch writes. "Jefferson was aiming to humanize the deified interpretation of Jesus.Christ was first and foremost a man, but one of magnifi­ cent inspiration; his way of life was "unexcelled for integrity."

Two aspects of the teaching of Jesus impressed Jefferson: (1)

"the elementary emphasis upon the inward motive and intention"— the uprightness of the decision, and (2) "the spirit which animates Chris­ tian conduct, the spirit of benevolence, charity, and love of one's fellowman extending from the nearest neighbor to the vast brotherhood

•^Autobiography, Selected Writings, p. 5.

55Ibid., p. 81.

■^Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1943), p. 25. 75 of man."^

Of Jefferson's The Life and Morals of Jesus, Peterson writes

"The simple precept of Jesus infused a universal ethic founded on the natural rights of man. In this sense Jesus was the savior, not of priest and metaphysicians only, but of all men; and Jefferson was the real Christian he professed to be."^® This seems to be further indi­ cated in a letter to John Page that Jefferson wrote from Sliadwell July

15, 1763. The world offers "calamities and misfortunes," he wrote; and we must possess "a perfect resignation to the Divine will" . . .

"and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey's end, when we may deliver up our trust into the hands of him who gave it, and receive such reward as to him shall seem propor- 59 tional to our merit."

Like Franklin, Jefferson wrote thousands of letters and much of these are preserved for the Jefferson student. It is from these letters that one may gain insight into the workings of the mind of Jefferson.

Useful for this work are his letters to Benjamin Rush, John Adams, his nephew Peter Carr, Thomas Jefferson Smith, and William Short.

■^Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1943), p. 25.

58Peterson, p. 961.

•^Selected Writings, pp. 355-356. 76

Expressing his views on the Christian religion in a revealing let­ ter to Ur. Benjamin hush, distinguished American physician and humanitar­ ian and member of the American Philosophical Society, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following from Washington, April 21, 1803:

Uear Sir,— In some of the delightful conversations with you, in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to the afflictions of the crisis through which our country was then laboring, the Christian religion was some­ times our topic; and then promised you, that one day or other, I would give you my views of it. They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know notning of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. At the short interval since these conversations, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public affairs, the sub­ ject has been under my contemplation. But the more I con­ sidered it, the more it expanded beyond the measure of either my time or information. In the moment of my late departure from Monticello, I received from Ur. Priestly, his little treatise of "Socrates and Jesus Compared." This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field, it became a subject of reflection while on the road, and un­ occupied otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or outline of such an estimate of the compara­ tive merits of Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more leisure and information for the task, than myself. This I now send you, as the only discharge of my promise I can probably ever execute. And in confiding it to you, I know it will not be exposed to the malignant perversion of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations and columnies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly 77

proscribed. It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, be­ traying the common right of independent opinion, by ans­ wering questions of faith, which the laws have left be­ tween God and himself. Accept my affectionate saluta­ tions.

Affixed to this letter was Jefferson's "Syllabus of an Estimate of the iierit of the Doctrines of Jesus, compared with those of others":

In a comparative view of the Ethics of the enlightened nations of antiquity, of the Jews and of Jesus, no notice should be taken of the corruptions of reason among the ancients, to wit, the idolatry and superstition of the vul­ gar, nor of the corruptions of Christianity by the learned among its professors. Let a just view be taken of the moral principles incul­ cated by the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philo­ sophy, or of their individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus. 1. Philosophers. 1. Their precepts related chiefly to ourselves, and the governments of those passions which, unrestrained, would disturb our tranquillity of mind. In this branch of philosophy they were really great. 2. In developing our duties to others, they were short and defective. They embraced, indeed, the circle of kin­ dred and friends, and inculcated patriotism, or the love of our country in the aggregate, as a primary obligation: towards our neighbors and countrymen they taught justice, but scarcely viewed them as within the circle of benevo­ lence. Still less they inculcated peace, charity and love to our fellow men, or embraced with benevolence the whole family of mankind. II. Jews. 1. Their system was Deism; that is, the belief in one only God. But their ideas of him and of his attributes were degrading and injurious. 2. Their Ethics were not only imperfect, but often irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason and morality, as they respect intercourse with those around us; and repulsive and anti-social, as respecting other nations. They needed reformation, therefore, in an eminent degree. 78

III. Jesus. In this state of things among the Jews, Jesus appeared, llis parentage was obscure; his condition poor; his education null; his natural endowments great; his life correct and innocent; he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, and of the sublimest elo­ quence . The disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are remarkable. 1. Like Socrates and Epictetus, he wrote nothing himself. 2. But he had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to write for him. I name not Plato, who only used the name of Socrates to cover the whimsies of his own brain. On the contrary, all the learned of his country, entrenched in its power and riches, were opposed to him, lest his labors should undermind their advantages; and the committing to writing his life and doctrines fell on unlettered and ig­ norant men; who wrote, too, from memory, and not till long after the transaction had passed. 3. According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to enlighten and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy and combination of the altar and the throne, at about thirty-three years of age, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor the course of his preaching, which was but of three years at most, pre­ sented occasions for developing a complete system of morals. 4. Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible. 5. They have been still more disfigured by the corrup­ tions of schismatizing followers, who have found an inter­ est in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Gre­ cian sophist, frittering them into subleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an im­ poster. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled up in the style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man. The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in direct communication with it, claimed for him by some of his followers, and denied by others, is foreign to the present view, which is merely an estimate of the in­ trinsic merits of nis doctrines. 79

1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their belief of one only God, and giving them juster no­ tions of his attributes and government. 2 . llis moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends, were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosopners, and greatly more so tiian those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal phil- anthrophy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one fami­ ly, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this head will evince the pe- culiary superiority of the system of Jesus over all others. 3. The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head. 4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrines of a future state, which was either doubted, or disbelieved by the Jews; and wielded it with efficacy, as an important incentive, sup­ plementary to the other motives of moral conduct.0®

After reading the above letters, the student could consider the following questions: How does Jefferson's idea of the philosophers fit with their own thinking? Is the Jewish religion deistic? If so, in what way or to what degree? How does Jefferson's statements on Jesus affect one's thinking on Him? How does Jefferson's statements concern­ ing the teachings of Jesus differ or compare to one's own thinking on his teachings?

It is easy to see from reading his correspondence how Jefferson ar­ rived at his convictions on religious freedom. The capstone of his tnought is expressed in his Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. The

Act is quoted in its entirety to illustrate Jefferson's thinking on what

®®Adrienne Koch and William Peden, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Kew York: The aodern Library, 1944), pp. 566-70. 80 he considered to be one of life's most important questions:

An Act for establishing Religious Freedom [1779].

passed in the Assembly of Virginia

in the beginning of the year 1786.

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from tne plan of the Holy Author of our religion,. who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, oeing themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to fur­ nish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which ne disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make nis pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from au approbation of tueir personal conduct, are an ad­ ditional incitement to ernest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no depen­ dence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fel­ low citizens lie has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt tne principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and con­ form to it; tnat though indeed these are crimnal who do not 81

withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, be­ cause he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purpose of civil government, for its offices to interfere when principles break out, into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to con­ tradict them. Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any re­ ligious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with the powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable, would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do de­ clare that the rights thereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present -or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.^

The class may discuss this Act and determine in their own minds why it

61Selected Writings, pp. 311-313. 82 is so very important in the religious life of the American people: it paved the way for the doctrine of the separation of church and state.

It is evident from the efforts Jefferson exerted to see this Act an ac­ complished fact, that his words in his letter to Benjamin Rust September

23, 1800 were not just beating the wind when he wrote "For I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny

fi 9 over the minds of men." Dumas Malone writes that "The best clue to his political attitudes, as well as his intellectual activities, is to be found in his determination that men should be set free and kept free in order to move forward in the light of ever-expanding knowledge."63 Man must be free in religious matters just as assuredly as he needed politi­ cal freedom if he were to benefit from the knowledge gained for "ecclesi­ astical authority and traditional theology had wholly ceased to have va­ lidity for him."^4 Once again Jefferson seems to speak so close to that of Franklin for both men felt that the authority for man was "found with­ in an individual's own breast in the conscience, which [was] regarded as a special moral sense, as truly a part of man's nature as his sense of right or hearing, his arm or leg."^

A O Selected Writings, pp. 557-558. A O Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, Vol. 2 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1951), p. xvi.

64Ibid. , p. 109.

6 5 i b i d . , p. 108. 83

Jefferson was to write into the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.66

"Liberty" was his chief concern^ and as he stood before the Con­ gress, in the Senate Chamber of the still-unfinished capitol Jefferson read his First Inaugural Address March 4, 1801. He read, in part:

We are all republicans; we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error or opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.68

Bradley writes that "this is probably the first important official recog­ nition of the guarantee of freedom of thought and o p i n i o n . "69 This was another step in Jefferson's fight for freedom of religion, of press, and of person that was so dear to his heart. In many letters to as many friends and political associates, Jefferson was often to express his dis­ may if these freedoms were not spelled out carefully as he had hoped they would be. In the Virginia Declaration of Rights he felt that free­ dom of religion "was only vaguely described,"^ and the Constitution

^ b u m a s , Jefferson tiie Virginian, p. a V.

67Ibid.

^ Selected Writings, p. 322.

^Bradley, Note, p. 319.

^Uumas, I, p. 237. 84 omitted a bill of rights protecting freedom of religion, of press, pro­ tection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, habeas cor­ pus laws, and trials by jury.

In the early days of the Virginia Colony, the people belonged to the Anglican Church. Later more and dissenters were settling in Virginia especially in the Piedmont and on the Ohio frontier as a buffer with the

Indians. In exchange for religious freedom they would take the risks of the sparse settlements on the frontier. Soon more and more groups inclu­ ding the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists were settling in the co­ lony. While Jefferson was serving his first term of office as President, a Committee of the hanbury Baptist Association petitioned the President for religious freedom. Jefferson wrote that the government had control over actions and not opinions and that the government should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,thus building another wall between church and state and help­ ing to eliminate some of the excesses he saw as a youth in Virginia. This concept was expressed again in his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805:

In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left tiiem, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church auth­ orities acknowledged by their several religious s o c i e t i e s . 72

7lSelected Writings, p. 332.

72Ibid., p. 341. 85

In a number of letters written after Jefferson had retired to Hon-

ticello, he expressed his religious beliefs. To William Short he wrote;

"Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves; Jesus a sup- 73 plement of the duties and charities we owe to others." On April 13,

1820 he wrote again to Short "he [Jesus] preached the efficacy of repen­ tance towards forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it."7^ His vas a "rational Christianity" that through self discipline and the application of the true teachings of Jesus to his

fellowmen, one could be sure of the hereafter. As a good Deist, he be­ lieved and practiced that the best service to God was in helping his fellowmen. He belived that it was the uprightness, not the rightness, of moral decisions that was so important. "How" something is done and 75 "why" is made equal in importance with "what" was done. Also, as a good Deist, Jefferson rejected miracles, inspiration, and revelation and he was especially critical of St. Paul as the "principle corrupter of the doctrines of Christ.He attempted to find only the genuine in the words of Christ as indicated earlier in this paper, hence, his Life and ilorals of Jesus.

^ Selected Writings, p. 693.

^Quoted by Adrienne Koch, p. 33.

75Ibid., p. 30. 76 Ibid., p . 35. 86

In a letter of condolence to John Adams on the death of his wife,

Abigail, written from Monticello, November 13, 1818, Jefferson wrote;

Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel that you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure .... time and silence are the only medicine .... that the term is not very distant, at which we are to deposit in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love and never lose again. God bless you and support you under your heavy affliction.^

Adrienne Koch believes that the context of this letter "suggests a con­ ventional formula of sympathy, more than a considered intellectual posi­ tion. "78 QUt it seems to me that this would be intellectually dishonest of a man who put such store in the uprightness of an act. He could have offered condolences without going this far. Rather, it seems to indicate a considered opinion of a man who has thought on the subject for a number of years. In a later letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823) he speaks of

"the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent

Governor of the world."79 And in an eight-line poem left to his beloved daughter llartha, Jefferson wrote "A death bed adieu from Th. J. to II.R." in "Which crowns all my hopes, or which buries my care" and expresses a hope of seeing "two seraphs long shrouded in death" referring to his

^ Selected Writings, p. 690.

7^Koch, p . 34.

^ Selected Writings, p. 706. 87 80 beloved wife and his young daughter, Maria. This does not seem a mere form but rather the final conviction of a dying man. Bradley writes:

"Because of his deistic faith, Jefferson was often accused by his contem­ poraries of being irreligious. To the reader of today, the large number and the tenor of his religious references may suggest precisely the oppo­ site judgment. "8^-

Like Franklin, Jefferson was also concerned for the welfare of the younger generation; he did what he could to help them; often when it was difficult to do so. To Thomas Jefferson Smith, his namesake and the son of Samuel Harison Smith, an old friend and one-time editor of the National

Intelligence, he wrote from Montice11o , February 21, 1825 only sixteen months before he was to die.

This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its coun­ sels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run, and 1 too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God, Reverence and Cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered, be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell.

80quoted by Gilbert Chinard, 2nd ed., revised, Thomas Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1939), p. 532.

^Bradley, Note, p. 326. 88

The portrait of a good man by the most sublime of poets. for vour imitation. Lord, who's the happy man that may to thy blest courts repair, Not stranger-like to visit them, but to inhabit there? 'Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves, Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproved. Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor's fame to wound, Nor hearken to a false report, by malice whispered round. Who vice, in all its pomp and power, can treat with just neglect; And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect. Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood, And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good. Whose soul in usary disdains his treasure to employ, Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy. The man who, by this steady course, has happiness insur'd, When earth's foundations shake, shall stand, by Providence secur'd.

A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life 1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. 2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 3. Never spend your money before you have it. 4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. 5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst, or cold. 6. We never repent of having eaten too little. 7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 8 . iiow much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened. 9. Take things always by their smooth handle. 10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

While still in Paris, Jefferson wrote a lengthy letter August 10,

1787 to his nephew, Peter Carr. For the purposes of this study section

^ Selected Writings, pp. 717, 719. 89 four is very informative:

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of re­ ligion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he most more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind of Livy or Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weight against them. But those facts in the Bible which contridict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still for several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we would class it with their sliov.’ers of blood, speaking statues, beasts, etc. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his naving been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, and that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirm it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the hew Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretension: 1, of those who say he was begotten of God, born of a virgin, suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and as­ cended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was 90

a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the iloman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, and the second by exile or death iii furea .... Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequence. If it ends in a belief there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the com­ fort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a Consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudices on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or descrip­ tion of persons, have rejected it or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness, but the up­ rightness of the decision.^

Jefferson was not afraid to expose his nephew to this kind of thinking

for he felt that it is only by reasoned faith can one really know what he believes. This is not an intellectual poise for the benefit of the young man; it is the same way that Jefferson himself traveled and as he went through life he "fixed reason firmly in her seat and call[ed] to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." The student of the religious voice should not be afraid to examine held opinions and to expose them

to new insights and interpretations. As expressed by Jefferson anything

^ Selected Writings, pp. 431-433. 91

of value will stand, and the person will be a better person for having made the examination. Jefferson's "portrait of a good man" and "A Deca­

logue of Canons" would provide material for discussion for today's young

people: To what degree is this standard possible or impossible to follow

in today's world?

Dumas Malone writes:

Intellectually he exemplified more conspiciously than any of his fellows the liberal and humane spirit, the in­ cessant scientific curiosity and zeal for universal know­ ledge, and the fundamental belief in the powers of human intelligence which characterized what historians call the Enlightenment .... After Benjamin Franklin he may be regarded as the fullest American embodiment of the ideas of the Enlightenment.84

B^DumaB Malone, I, p. XV. PART II RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES IN A

MATURING AMERICAN LITERATURE

Religion was beginning to slip from its central position in the na­ tional life. Congress was forbidden by the Constitution to wake any laws that would lead to the establishment of a state church while the Bill of

.lights provided for religious freedom. Men were permitted to worship in whatever manner they pleased and in whatever church they pleased enjoying the freedom that Jefferson had worked so hard in his lifetime to promote.

These political changes after the Revolution provided the basis for the wide variety of Protestant denominations in the United States. But the

"distinctive feature of the age is the emergence of the rationalistic and humanitarian doctrines of Deism and Unitarianism."^

Deism taught that this first cause of the universe was totally apart from that universe. God created the universe with immutable laws which have operated without further divine intervention. This philosophy re­ sulted in the following intellectual changes that were in discord to the earlier Puritan thought:

Newtonian rationalism embodied the following points: (1) h universe operating by unchanging laws. (2) A har­ monious system. (3) A benevolent deity. (4) Man seeking inner harmony corresponding with the cosmos. (5) Probable immortality. This scheme was at first used by Cotton Mather

*Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 51.

92 93

and others to re-enforce Biblical revelation. It was an easy step to deism, which accepted Newton­ ian assumptions but gave them a different application: (1) A transcendant God operating by natural law rather than by providential intervention. (2) A benevolent God. (3) God revealed in nature, not in the Bible. (4) Freedom of the will. (5) Man naturally altruistic. (6) Men are equal. (7) Evil is result of corrupt institutions, not of man's natural depravity. (8) Man is perfected by education. (9) Humanitarian aid to man is the best ser­ vice of God. (10) distrust of existing religious systems. deism promoted: religious toleration, a concern for ethical standards, a belief in natural rights, political equality, natural altruism, and attempted to harmonize religion and science. Sir Isaac Newton's ration­ alism, placed reason rather than experience as the chief instrument and test of knowledge.

Into this time of philosophical flux came William Ellery Channing

(1780-1842) who gave his famous "Moral Argument Against Calvinism" in

1820 and greatly influenced the young intellectuals of his day including

Emerson. The chief points of difference between Calvinism and Unitarian- ism are summarized by Randall Stewart:

(1) The two beliefs differed in their conceptions of the Deity. Calvinism emphasized God's inexorable justice; Unitarianism stressed His benevolence. The Unitarians questioned the justice of the doctrine of election: A God who says (according to Wigglesworth) "I do save none but mine own elect" seemed arbitrary and capricious. (2) The two beliefs differed in their conception of Christ. According to Calvinism, Christ is literally the Son of God,

^Crawford, Kern, and Needleman, p . 24. 94

the second member of the lloly Trinity. According to Uni­ tar ianism, Christ is divine only in the sense in which all men are divine or have an element, however small, of divinity in their nature. The difference between Christ and ordinary mortals becomes one of degree, not of kind. (3) The two beliefs differed in their conception of man. Calvinism as­ serted the innate depravity of man, his predestination, and the necessity of his salvation through the atoning death of Christ. Unitarianism insisted upon man's innate goodness and his spiritual freedom. The Atonement became unnecessary to Unitarians, who preferred to point to Christ's life as an example to be emulated by men already potentially good.^

31air, Ilornberger, and Stewart go on to write that "The humanistic atti­ tudes which Channing applied to religion were the beginning of a Chris­ tianity characteristically American in its special regard for individual free thought."^ 0 Aalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1832) was descended from nine successive generations of ministers. In 1832 he resigned his pastorate of the Se­ cond Unitarian Church of Boston because he could not find inherent grace in the observation of the Lord's Supper. Emerson increasingly felt that the church had become too formal and had placed God in formalized conven­ tions of dogma and beliefs. He felt that "to be a good minister it was necessary to leave the ministry."-* Unitarianism, he felt, was not doing enough tov/ard the rehabilitation of the individual. After a trip to

Europe and Great Britain and meeting such writers as Landor, Coleridge,

^Blair, Ilornberger, and Stewart, pp. 75-76.

AIbid., pp. 274-27$. 5 Bradley, Beatty, and Long, I, p. 1061. 95

Wordsworth, and Carlyle, Emerson returned to Concord. He gave himself to lecturing and interpreting the new doctrine of Transcendentalism.

This new thought has been defined as a "reliance on the intuition and the conscience, a form of idealism; a philosophical romanticism reaching g America a generation or two after it developed in Europe."

An informal organization known as the "Transcendental Club" met to discuss the new thought of the day. The group included Emerson, Bronson

Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and

William Ellery Channing. Another activity of the group was the publica­ tion of their views in a small magazine, The Dial (1840-1844). The group held different opinions about Aany subjects, but were in general agreement that "within the nature of man there was a something which transcended human experience— an intuitive and personal revelation of what constituted right and wrong.Unitarianism had prepared the way for Transcendentalism "by insisting that man is essentially good and may „8 trust his own perceptions of religious truth. Channing had expressed confidence in man's "rational faculties" while Emerson distinguished be­ tween "reason" and "understanding." To Euersom understanding was the rational faculty and "reason" was the suprarational or intuitive faculty.

^Thrall and Hibbard, p. 443.

^Ibid., pp. 443-444.

®Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 75. 96

Nothing, for Emerson, was to be considered above the integrity of a man's mind. Thoreau believed in living close to nature and in the dig­ nity of manual labor. Brook farm was an experiment in communal living conducted by the group to promote intellectual companionships and to place emphasis on spiritual living. Man was divine in his own right, they believed, and therefore, they urged the brotherhood of all men.

Emerson taught that self-trust and self-reliance was to be practiced at all times as this was really trusting the voice of God speaking intui­ tively within each man.^

^Thrall and llibbard, p. 444. CHAPTER IV

THE TRANSCENDENTAL VOICE

O.W. Firkins, an early Emerson biographer, writes:

The secret of Emerson may be conveyed in one word, the superlative, even the superhuman, value which he found in the unit of experience, the direct, momentary, indi­ vidual act of consciousness. This is the center from which the man radiates: it begats all and explains all. He may be defined as an experiment made by nature in the raising of the single perception or impression to a hith­ erto unimaginable value.

The age of Emerson and Thoreau was that of reflection and of the intel­ lect. "The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become 2 aware of itself." Emerson had inherited the thinking of the German philosophers and had accepted in his own philosophy two very important thoughts: the voice of God was present within the individual heart "and i 3 his existence, likewise, as an external substantive reality." As the

Unitarians had moved away from thinking of God as Trinity, so Emerson had raised man toward God, not lowering Christ nor lessening his divinity, but raising man to little higher than the angels. His belief in the di­ vinity of man resulted in his refusal to serve the Lord's Supper or to

^O.U. Firkins, Ralph Waldo Emerson (Hew York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1915), p. 297.

'•Perry ililler, The American Transcendentalists: Their Prose and Poetry (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1957), p.5.

^Firkins, p. 64. 97 98

pray ritualistic prayers so in 1832 he resigned his pulpit, beginning

one of the schisms that modem sociologists call "the generation gap."

The old concept that man the citizen was to be sacrificed to the

state was being replaced by a new consciousness that the nation existed

for the individual; The individual was the world. The philosopher's

"know thyself" became for Emerson the rallying cry of "Trust thyself:

every heart vibrates to that iron string."

In his first published work, Nature (1836), Emerson writes in his

"Introduction" that "the foregoing generations beheld God and nature face

to face; we, through their eyes."^ He urges his readers not to rely on

these second-hand views of God and nature, but rather, to explore life for

themselves. For every question one might ask there is an answer: Man

"acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth." All science, he writes, has one aim and that is to find a theory of truth. The universe

is composed of Nature and Soul for Emerson; what he calls the "me" and

"not me." "Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man . . . .Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same

things." In nature, all ills of man can be repaired; Emerson writes:

Standing on the bare ground— my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space— all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part and parcel of God.^

^Quotations are taken from The Best of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, Poems, Addresses, ed. by Gordon S. Haight (New York: Walter J. Black, 1941).

^"Nature," p. 76. Stewart writes:

"... one begins to capitalize Nature, for Nature becomes an emanation of God. In romantic poets like Wordsworth, Emerson, Whitman, God is identified with Nature, and Na­ ture is part and parcel of God. One worships Nature, or God-in-Nature, one is not quite sure which, for in much romantic nature poetry, Nature-worship and God-worship seem a bit confused, one with the other."6

Emerson, in communing with Nature, becomes part of what he is later to call the "Over-Soul." For this essence of God is everywhere and in every­ thing, enabling Emerson to relate even to the vegetation around him.

"Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not re­ side in nature but in man, or in a harmony of both." Nature is "medici­ nal," deifies man by its beauty, and becomes the "object of the intellect"

"The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God and without the colors of affection." For Emerson, "Noth­ ing divine dies" and "All Good is eternally productive." The world exis­ ted to satisfy the soul's desire for beauty. There is no explanation for this according to Emerson, only that "God is the all-fair."

In the fourth section of Nature entitled "Language," Emerson summar­ izes his thoughts by listing three concepts:

1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. aan, to Emerson, was aware of a "universal soul within or behind his in­ dividual life," which was called "Reason": "That which intellectually

^Stewart, p. 44. 100

considered we call Reason, considered in relation to Nature, we call

Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man

in all ages and countries embodies it in his language as the Father."

All things pre-exist in the mind of God.

In "Discipline," section five of Nature. the experiences and aspects

of nature "educate both Understanding and the Reason." To Emerson

The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought7by perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and Mind.

The understanding is concerned with the objective realities of man's mix-

ing with life— "with the knowledge of the properties, behavior, and sig­ nificance of material and social reality."® On the other hand, Reason enables man to intuitively discern the truths Nature holds for man. Em­ erson writes; "Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellec­ tual truths." Nature enables man to know that each thing performs its own function according to the rules inherent in the thing as "The exer­ cise of the Will, or the lesson of power, is taught in every event," and even "sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience." Emerson adds: "All things are moral, and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature" for every animal function, he writes, from the sponge up to Hercules, "shall

^"Nature," p. 92.

^Sculley Bradley, Richard Coom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long, "Ralph Waldo Emerson" in The American Tradition in Literature, 3rd ed., Vol. I (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1967), p. 1079. 101 hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong and echo the Ten

Commandments. Therefore is Nature ever the ally of religion . . . ."

Emerson felt that nothing is ever exhausted in its first use but is al­ ways new to a new service as "every natural process is a version of a moral sentence." He also wrote in Nature that there was great unity found in the variety apprehended in nature. It is this unity that leads

Emerson to explain this concept by the Universal Spirit. This Universal

Spirit is found in Thought also. Han is able to see and comprehend the infinite variety of Nature's responses; yet, when Reason takes over, he is able to see and know more than what the Understanding is able to com­ prehend. Writes Emerson, "The besttmoments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher power and the reverential with-drawing of nature before its God."

"Idealism," or section six of Nature, speaks of the transcendental belief "that the essential reality of the things inheres in the idea, to be sought in the mind."9 He calls religion and ethics as the practice of ideas; ethics speaks of the system of human duties commencing from man while religion is the system of those duties coming from God; reli­ gion speaks of the personality of God. Both ethics and religion puts

Nature "underfoot." For Emerson, "the first and last lessons of reli­ gion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are unseen are eternal.'" Emerson concludes this section by stating that

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, "llalph Waldo Emerson", p. 1084. 102

Idealism sees Che world In God. It beholds Che whole circle of persons and things, of accions and events, of counCry and religion, noc as painfully accumulaCed, atom afCer aCom, acC afcer acc, in an aged creeping PasC, buC as one vasC picCure which God painCs on Che insCanC eCemiCy for Che contemplation of Che soul.

In secCion seven enCiCled "SpiriC," Emerson illusCraCes his philoso­ phy chac Nature speaks of SpiriC and is devouC for he wriCes "che hap- piesC man is he who learns from naCure Che lesson of worship." The es­ sence of God ChaC man is unable Co capCure in words, buC "when man has worshipped him inCellecCually, Che noblesC ministry of nature is Co stand as an apparition of God. It is the organ through which Che univer­ sal spirit speaks Co Che individual, and strives Co lead back Che indivi- * dual to it." And, "man has access to the entire mind of Che Creator, is himself the creator in the finite." To Emerson, the entire world pro­ ceeded from the same spirit as man with the difference being that the body of man is subjected to the will whereas the world is not and is therefore, fixed and permanent wnereby man may measure his differences.

Emerson writes in "Prospects" that "in inquiries respecting the loves of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest." The highest reason to Emerson would be to realize the sense of awe in the presence of the great unity found when one contemplates the extreme diversity of life found in nature. The world lacks apparent unity and lies broken and in heaps because man is disunited with himself

■^"Nature," p. 106. Filmed as received without page(s) 103

UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS. I

104

according to Emerson. The solution to this problem is found in the re­

demption of the soul for man cannot understand the universe until he

satisfies the demands of the spirit. Prayer is "a study of truth— a

sally of the soul into the unfound infinite. No man every prayed hearti­

ly without learning something." For Emerson, "the invariable mark of

wisdom is to see the miraculous in the coumon." Because, for Emerson,

poets can see the real in life, he quotes Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), an

early transcendentalist and educational pioneer— "Nature is not fixed but

fluid Spirit alters, molds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of na­

ture is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit it is fluid, it is volatile,

it is obedient. Every spirit builds* itself a house, and beyond its house

a world, and beyond its world a heaven. Know then that the world exists

for you .... Build therefore your own world. As fast as you conform your

life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great propor­

tions." Han must be reunited with himself before he can realize true

beauty.

Professor Joel Porte explains Emerson’s need of a philosophy based

on idealism and not on experience by stating: "Emerson's professed in-

auility to feel the weight of his experience undoubtedly made it rela­

tively easy for him to accept a philosophy which denied the value of ex­

perience in and of itself." He cites Emerson's inability to experience

deeply the death of his young son Waldo at six years of age nor that of

his first wife, Ellen. Porte seems to be stretching a point here. For

a man that went to his wife's grave every day for months had to exper­

ience something. Possibly Emerson was just not the demonstrative type Filmed as received without page(s) 105

UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS. 106 but felt deeply internalizing his grief. Yet Professor Porte adds:

Emerson simply dealt with the natural world the way he did with anything, such as grief or evil, that dis­ pleased him: he refused to believe in its existence.^

Through early training and influences on his life, Emerson was led to ac­ cept the belief that mind, body, spirit, and nature were separate and un­ equal; the soul was the highest and truest. Truth could be known intui­ tively as could be matter, but matter was of a lesser value.^ Emerson writes in "Circles’7:

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see it in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then its counten­ ance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that God is; that he is in me; and that all tilings are shadows of Him.13

The search for spiritual insight, then, is a non-ending pursuit. Emer­ son's idealism "is simply an affirmation of the supreme importance of the moral lav; and . . . that nature exists (or ceases to exist) as a dis- 14 cipline in ethics." Han must be united with himself before, he can realize true beauty, hot only did Emerson believe that Nature was a manifestation of Spirit, he also believed that each man had the ability to commune with the Over-Soul which was Emerson's name for God. This

lljoel Porte, Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists in Conflict (Middletown, Conncticut: V/e sTeyan University Press, 1966), PP• 45-4 6, 52.

12 Ibid., pp. 55-56.

^Quoted by Porte, p. 64.

■^Porte, p. 64. 107 philosophy is expressed in the essay, "The Over-Soul."

To Emerson, there are moments in life that have great authority and affect men's lives to a greater degree than at other times. These moments seem more real than do other experiences gained in life. Man has been trying to explain this thought for himself for thousands of years and hasn't been able to do so. For Emerson, the reason for the failure is that man has neglected to explain the soul. "Man is a stream whose source is hidden," writes Emerson. He is convinced that the origin of these profound experiences of life are found outside of man's own will. As it is with experience so it is with thoughts— they come from "some alien energy": •

that Over-Soul, within every man's particular being is con­ tained and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submissive; that overpowering reality ’•■;ich confutes our tricks and talents and constrains everyone to pass for what he is and to speak from his character and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.^

Man lives in bits and pieces; yet within him is the "soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal OME." The act of seeing and the object seen are one to Emerson. Tt is only by the "vision of that Wisdom" can nan understand life. He is afraid to speak for that Wisdom for lie feels his words would "fall short and cold." The soul of nan is not an organ, a function, a facu!ty, nor the intellect or will, ••ut rather, it is that

^"The Over-Soul," p. 207. 103 which shines into man and through him and makes man what he truly can become. That which man considers to be important and lasting is nothing when the light of the soul shines forth: "With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air." There is no way to compute this activity. Even the moral and mental gains are measured only in their relation to the Supreme Mind. In the relationships between men there is an awareness of the Over-Soul behind and through all men of wisdom. It is this soul that enables man to relate to other men and enables the adult to respond to the child: "The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth."

Emerson quotes Emanuel Swedenborg: "It is no proof of man's understand­ ing to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false— this is the mark and character of intelligence." Han is able to make these distinc­ tions for "the 1 taker of all things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us over things."

Revelation, for Emerson, the manifestation of divine truth, is the communication of the Divine mind with the mind of man. When this occurs, there is a joyful perception, and every moment like this is memorable for "Revelation is the disclosure of the soul." Man would like to know the facts of his present existence and of his future condition; but to an Idealist like Emerson, this is a confession of sin. The future is shut off from man by a veil which instructs man to live in the today.

If man has found his center in Cod, his very being will testify to this:

"the Deity will shine through him through all the disguises of ignorance, 109 of ungenial temperament, of unfavorable circumstance. The tone of seek­ ing is one, and the tone of having is another."

The nan that would be a contributor to society would be shining forth the Presence and would be termed a genius by Emerson for "The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of its works." The soul that "ascends to worship the great God is plain and true . . . ."He at­ tempts not to make himself other than what he is by emblishments of art and experiences in life, but rather, is himself living in the present moment. To Emerson, "sincerity is more excellent than flattery,'1 and sincerity is the most noble compliment anyone can pay a fellow nan. For

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God becomes God; .... Wien we have broken our god of tra­ dition and ceased fron our god of rhetoric, then nay God fire the heart with his presence.^

When the union of man and God is complete and He is an indwelling princi­ ple, then man knows that whatever he does is right. This is possible be­ cause that which is indwelling is that principle that dwells within and over all the world. The great soul flatters not and follows not; it be­ lieves in itself writes Emerson. All the universe is found in an atom— the part becomes the whole and the whole is permeated with the Spirit— the Over-Soul. Emerson concludes his essay by writing that the nan that is living with the divine unity will

cease from what is base and frivolous in his life and be

16"xhe Over-Soul," pp. 220-221. no

content with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.I7

Another expression of Emerson's philosophy was found in "The American

Scholar," the Phi Beta Kappa address given at Harvard College on August

31, 1837. Emerson had hoped "to write for Cambridge men a theory of the

Scholar's office," but had given what Oliver Wendell Holmes had termed,

"Our intellectual Declaration of Independence."1® The address was cor­ dially received and sold 500 copies within the month.^

In this essay on the intellectual man, Emerson has man divided and subdivided until each man has one small part of the whole of man. This condition, states Emerson, results in the scholar having been delegated the job of thinking and as the conditions around man degenerates, man be­ comes a "parrot of other men's thinking." For Emerson, "the true scholar is the only true master." But even the scholar can "take the wrong han­ dle" Emerson felt; the influences he receives and how he receives them are very important to Emerson.

The first of these influences is nature, which, if the scholar is to know self, he must study. What is nature to the scholar? Emerson asks.

There is no beginning or end to this web of God. The suggestion is that nature is God in the Oriental sense of the continuity of all living

17"The Over-Soul," p. 223.

l®Quoted by Bradley, Beatty, and Long, I, p. 1098. Firkins, p. 71. Ill

matter. Yet, he states that the soul is the opposite of nature; that

each part of one echoes the part of the other.

The second influence on the scholar Is what Emerson calls the "mind

of the past." This influence on the scholar comes primarily from books.

The lasting value of these books of the past is precisely in proportion

to how far the writer has transmuted life into truth. No book is ever

perfect, and each generation must write its own book. "Books are the

best of things, well used; abused, among the worst" writes Emerson. The

right use of books is to inspire books for he has the soul contained

within. The man who communes with the soul within creates and by creat­

ing enjoys "the pure efflux of the Deity." Han thinking must not let the works of other men keep him from creating his own works; this is the

worst form of genius, according to Emerson. The genius who is creating

views the writings of other men as "light" and as inspiration to do his

own thing. "There is creative reading as well as creative writing" and

the creative reader rejects those portions of his reading that are not

inspired.

The third element necessary to a scholar's life is "action" for "in­

action is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind."

Actions are "pearls and rubies to his discourse" as any opportunity for

action not taken is the opening through which power is lost. Likewise,

the scholar who has put forth his total effort in worthy activity has

the largest return of this action. "Life is our dictionary," writes Em­

erson, and the true scholar finds in the activity of life the resources 112

for creative living. For the scholar must remember that the principle

of Undulation is the law of nature as well as spirit; each action or

thought reproduces a counter action or thought. "Character is higher

than intellect," and the true scholar lives life unafraid for there is

dignity in labor. Character development is vital to a full life.

What are the duties of the scholar? It is his duty to observe and

to guide men to the facts amidst appearances: "he is to resist the vul­

gar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and

communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and

the conclusions of history." The scholar who masters his own thought

has mastered the thoughts of men who speak his language. He must trust

himself for in self-trust there is freedom and peace. The great man,

Emerson writes, is not he "who can alter matter, but he who can alter my

state of mind." The present and near are worthy of the scholar's time.

The scholar should learn above all else that "the world is nothing, the man is all ..." and it is for him "to know all" and "to dare all." Am­

erican scholars should be up and at the ready, and "a nation of men will

for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the

Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" broadens those thoughts expressed in

"The American Scholar," and were matured over a length of time. The es­

say contains passages from his journal of 1832 and from lectures deliv­

ered between 1836 and 1839. "Self-Reliance" was first published in 1841 113 20 and later revised for the 1847 edition of his Essays.

"Trust thyself" is the keynote of the essay, and the thought begins with the epigraph— "Do not seek [answers] outside yourself." The indivi­ dual is urged to seek a right relationship to God or to what Emerson calls the Over-Soul. The individual has the ability to choose and through ex­ perience and intuition he may make the correct choices. He must first learn to recognize his own thought as having value. To trust himself he must also learn that:

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.21

Ilan must accept the place the Divine Providence has placed him. Yet,

"whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist," for "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." Emerson also wrote that

"good and bad are but names" and are relative to a man's constitution.

To Emerson, "the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." If a man were to conform to dead usages, he would be scattering and losing the force from his life. Yet, by nonconforming the world will try to force men into its mold.

2°Bradley, Beatty, and Long, I, p. 1129.

21"Self-Ueliance," p. 120. 114

Another problem that prevents man from trusting himself Is the foolish consistency which Emerson calls the "hobgoblin of little minds."

The wise man does not concern himself with consistency, but recognizes that honest actions will explain other honest actions.

The Over-Soul or Spirit that pervades the world is there within man for man to commune with and as he does so, so he can communicate with the finer things of life. Indeed, "The relations of soul to the divine spir­ it are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps." Man should live in the present for the soul "becomes," and should not rely on any man-made helps as man is able to know by intuition and that indepen­ dently of anyone else in the universe. Man should resist temptation and to be able to do so, man must rely on the "something godlike" in himself.

This self-reliance is applicable to many areas of life: religion, education and travel, art, society. Self-reliance in religion may be ap­ plied to man's prayer life. "Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view," and is praise and not begging nor attempting to fulfill a personal end. Emerson calls prayers to ful­ fill a personal desire false prayers as he does prayers of discontent.

Man must apply self-help and persevere if he is to achieve in life. In the section on education, Emerson believes that traveling to find some­ thing new or greater than what one left behind is a waste of time. Tra­ veling is just another symptom of education's lack of fulfillment. Man should insist on himself; he should never imitate. Only God can teach man what he is at his best. Art should be of man's own making and design. 115

The theory of compensation works with society as well as with individual

men: what one improves, the other negates or lessens. Civilization has

taken away man's ability to use his own senses just as the advances of

science and industry have their negative aspects; and "the reliance on

Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance." There are many things that keep a man from be­

ing happy, but the peace man looks for can only come from himself and

from the "triumph of the principles." 22 An outline of Self-Reliance presented by David Cook would guide

the student in his study of the essay:

I. Keynote: Trust Thyself II. Hindrances to Self-Reliance A. Conformity B. Consistency III. Source of Self-Trust: Intuition IV. Applicability to Problems of Present Day A. Religion B. Education (Travel) C. Art D. Society

One additional statement of Emerson's philosophy is found in his t; "Divinity School Address." The students had requested that he address

the Harvard Senior Class in Divinity College on Sunday evening, July 15,

1838. In a Journal entry for March he wrote of "his preoccupation with

^David ii. Cook, A Guide for Presenting the Writings of the Major Figures of the American Renaissance on the Secondary Level. (Unpublished MA Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1959), p. 41. 116 the desire to show these students how the 'ugliness and unprofitableness1 of the prevailing theology failed to represent 'the glory and sweeness 23 of the moral nature.'"

Man from the beginning of time has pondered the question of "What am 1?" and "What is?" The way to an answer to these questions for man, in Emerson's philosophy, is by opening his heart to the sentiment of vir­ tue. When this occurs, "then is the end of creation answered, and God is well pleased." This sentiment of virtue "is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws." and "is the essence of all re­ ligion." As a man lives his life in virtue "then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice," The opposite is also true, and the man who lives out of virtue "goes out of acquaintance with his own being." There is a very striking similarity between Emerson's "The man who renounces himself comes to himself" and Christ's admonition to deny self: "he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."^ Positive values produce positive values while negative values produce negative values or a nothingness.

All this, says Emerson, suggests that "the world is not the product of manifold power but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is every­ where active . . . ." and whatever opposes that will is unavoidably con­ fused. Emerson did not believe in evil as a positive force: "Good is

23QUOted by Bradley, Beatty, and Long, note, I, p. 114.

24Matthew 10:39. 117 positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute; it is like cold, which is the privation of heat." The way to power in life is by align­ ment on the side of benevolence while the way to death is through move­ ment toward evil. When man realizes this truth which Emerson calls the religious sentiment, man is happiest. This sentiment is the basis for all good things in life and all forms of worship. In its purest form, the expressions of this sentiment are permanent and sacred. This sen­ timent is forever available to man for "it is an intuition." Jesus

Christ, a member of the race of true prophets according to Emerson, was able to see the truth that "God incarnates Himself in man and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of this world." Bradley observes:

His denial of the miraculous and special divinity of Jesus Christ was the extreme limit of Emerson's radicalism. Be­ ginning with the Unitarian "unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (as contrasted with the trinitarian view), he builds the syllogism early . . . "Jesus Christ was God incarnate; the divine Jesus was also man; therefore another man, by being true to the God incarnate in him, may also be divine in the sense that Jesus was. The div^gity of Christ was a miracle only as all things are ....

Christ said that if man wished to see God, he should see Christ and that

God works through man. Emerson felt that this doctrine taught by Christ had been distorted over the years.

The first distortion is that religion has taught that man must sub­ ordinate his nature to Christ's; Emerson feels that the best teaching

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, note, I, p. 1119. 118

Is that "which gives me to myself," Christ has been deified while his humanity has been supressed thus making men afraid of their manliness.

It is only by man coming to the God in themselves can men be allowed to grow. The way to the conversion of a soul in Emerson's philosophical outlook is by the reception of beautiful sentiments.

The second defect in religious teaching is that this very thought of God Himself indwelling in the souls of men has had limited teaching and application. Man has come to speak of God's revelation to man as something that occurred in the past and as not being possible today.

Emerson becomes one of America's first "God is dead" philosophers as he states that man acts as though this idea were true or was a fact, indeed.

But when man realizes this truth of God in man then man wishes to convey this beauty to the world in all art forms. As the truth of this doctrine becomes more of a reality, the spirit of God in man teaches all those qualities of man that bespeak of the Spirit's presence: courage, piety, love, wisdom. Emerson adds:

The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands— so command­ ing that we find pleasure and honor in obeying.

The true preacher is that one who can "convert life into truth ..." and can deal "out to the people his life— life passed through the fire of

26"j)ivinity School Address," p. 37. 119 thought." An example of this is that of the Lord's Supper: Emerson found no special grace there for the formality of the sacrament took away the "life" from the act. For he felt that

it is still true that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual and not at what is necessary and eternal; that this historical Chris­ tianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the explorations of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. 27 '

When this happens, then is it "beginning to indicate character and reli­ gion [in man] to withdraw from the religious meetings." When there is a loss of worship, "all things go to decay .... Literature becomes fri­ volous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do not mention them."

The solution to these defects of religion is for man to "dare to love God without mediator or veil." Also, do not imitate for "imitation can not go above its model." Emerson urges the class of divinity students as "a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost" to "cast behind you all conformity and acquaint men at first hand to Deity." Beatrice Batson summarizes the "Address": "llan himself knows the truth by his own private, author- itative intuition. He does not need revelation."*0

27"Divinity School Address," p. 40.

2®Beatrice Batson, "The Christian and Modern Literature" in Chris­ tianity and the World of Thought, ed. Hudson T. Armerding (Chicago: The lloody Press, 1968), p. 40. 120

As the student can see from the foregoing discussion, Emerson was

a radical in his day. His quality of thinking made him a rebel in the

eyes of the older generation, but in the eyes of the younger men he was

accepted as an oracle. In direct opposition to what the older genera­

tion had heard Emerson present in his lectures, he was not trying to des­

troy the religious nature in his listeners. As Firkins suggests, "in Em-

erson, Religion had been raised to an almost unheard-of power." 29 Emer­

son had attempted to strip away all that was false and the external trap­

pings in religion and to turn man inward so that he could commune with

the Spirit of the Divine that existed or dwelt in all men. Without care­

ful thought as he reads Emerson, the student may be tempted to throw out

all religious belief, and it is a mistake for the student to take either extreme view of accepting all or rejecting all of Emerson's teachings.

There is much in Emerson's thinking for the student in a college with re­

ligious affiliation to consider, and it is the position of the instructor of the class to illustrate the diversity found in the writings of Emerson

and suggest to the student that he be eclectic and sift through his wri­

tings for concepts that are acceptable and to try to understand why other

concepts expressed in the writings are unacceptable. Possibly, it would

be good to look at Emerson's idealism and question whether or not that

type of existence is possible in today's world. Likex?ise, it may be pro­

fitable for the class to look at Emerson's philosophy of Self-Reliance

and discuss the effects that such a philosophy would have in the lives of

^Firkins, p. 113. 121 the students in the class if this philosophy were to be lived out in to­ day's world. By reading "Nature," "The American Scholar," "Self-Re­ liance," "Divinity School Address," and "The Over-Soul," the student should gain a basic understanding of the main points of Emerson's philo­ sophy. This understanding would enable the student to compare his own opinions with that of Emerson and select from those values that will en­ able the student to live a successful life. The student will also be able to see how thought changes as it goes through the minds of thinking men by looking at the differences in concepts held by the early American writers to those held by men such as Emerson and Thoreau: God has be­ come an inactive Creator while Christ is divine in the same degree that all men are divine; men who would serve God must serve his fellow men and find strength from Nature; and rely on self through intuitive know­ ledge of correct life action.

If the students are experiencing difficulty in following Emerson's concepts, it might be well to look at representative poems that express those concepts in a consolidated form. Poems useful for this purpose would include, among others, the following: "Each and All," "The Pro­ blem," "Give All to Love," "Brahma," "The Khodora," "Waldeinsamkeit,"

"Compensation," and "Fable." "Each and All" illustrates Emerson's be­ lief in the interdependence of things, as "All are needed by each one;/

Nothing is fair or good alone": 122

EACH AND ALL

Little thinks, In the field, you red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. 1 thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn or the alder bough; I brought him home, in his next, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;— He sang to my ear,*— they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woddlands to the case:— The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, "I covey truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:"— As 1 spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curie its pretty wreath, Running over the dub-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; 123

Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;— Beauty through my senses stole; 1 yielded myself to the perfect whole.

After discussing the relationship of the sparrow, the shell, and the vir­ gin to their environment, Emerson concludes the poem with a restatement of his concept as lie allows himself to bask in his surroundings:

Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

The student will readily see Emerson's concept that each item in life is part of every thing else; nothing is whole entirely by itself. This con­ cept is further developed in "The Problem." In "The Problem," Emerson discussed his love of those men who express the unity of all things.

Such men as the clergy, the sculpter, painter, architect, poet, priest, and prophet all have their part in the affirmation of the Holy Ghost as

The passive Haster lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned;

Still floats upon the morning wind. Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost.

The Over-Soul becomes Spirit or the Holy Ghost in this poem. The stu­ dent will understand that the Holy Ghost is the spirit of creativity that enables the men discussed in the poem to illustrate in their work the unity that is found in the Spirit that pervades the world. The

"Brahma" poem speaks of Brahma, the Hindu supreme soul of the universe.

Emerson is reported to have said to his daughter in answer to a reader's 124 difficulty with the poem, that they should "say Jehovah instead of Brah-

' i j \ ma. The poem speaks of the harmony of divine unity, and man's inabil­ ity to comprehend this truth;

They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.

But this is comprehendable for the poet urges the "meek lover of the good" to find him; Jehovah, the supreme soul of the universe.

Emerson's'theory of self-reliance and individualism is found applica­ ble to lovers in his poem, "Give All to Love." The two should or could be one; but if not, then each should be free to cleave to their new-found love and the one should not attempt to detain the other for

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.

"The Rhodora" speaks of the flower that grows in inconspicuous spots in early ilay. In answer to the question of why its beauty is wasted in such a place, the poet writes;

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being and not thinking to question why he concludes:

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

■^Quoted by Bradley, Beatty, and Long, note, I, p. 1233. 125

In the poem, "Waldeinsamkeit," is found Emerson's fondness for nature.

In this "Forest Solitude," Emerson is able to lay aside the problems of life:

Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone S t e m benefit abides.

The "souls that walk in pain" and "though times that wear and forms that fade," Emerson urges his reader to leave all this and go to the forest and not count the time spent there for it is time well invested in man's well being.

"Compensation" expresses Emerson's philosophy that there is a balance in the world: night and day, mountains and valleys, water and land. This same theory of compensation works with man also, and if man is patient, he will be compensated. An interesting poem that further expresses Emerson's belief in the unity of all things and in the principle of compensation is the poem, "Fable." The mountains and the squirrel had a quarrel, and the squirrel speaks his mind to the mountain. Even though the mountains has many advantages of size and apparent value, yet the squirrel feels "no disgrace to occupy [his] place." All must work together to make a world as the poem concludes quite humorously:

If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.

Emerson's concepts were to inspire Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, who strived to put the Emersonian ideas into his poem of democracy, The Leaves of Grass. Emerson was to inspire many writers throughout his long life. 126

While Emerson was writing his essays from his lectures and his lec­ tures from his journals, his neighbor was recording his ideas in his own journals. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) lived almost his entire forty- four years in Concord, Massachusetts, the center of intellectual activity in the America of the day. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, the same year Emerson made his address on "The American Scholar," and "both the man and the essay became Thoreau's early guide." It is difficult to dis­ cuss Thoreau without mentioning Emerson, but this is not to suggest that

Thoreau was a carbon copy of Emerson; he was far from that. F.B. Sanborn writes of Thoreau;

Something, not easily to be defined, passes from himself to his readers, which differentiates Thoreau from the mass of naturalists .... The flavor of the genuine, unmistakable Thoreau is found in his writings, — serious yet suffused with humor; mystical, yet not religious in your fashion or mine; full of tne most sensitive and loyal spirit of friendship, yet also a little cold and pugnacious, and only intelligible from his own point of view.-*-*-

Sanborn quotes Emerson as saying that Thoreau as a person was unaccounted for by anything in his background or life which led Thoreau "to say and write such surprising things." Sanborn explains one source of his genius and character as having come as a combination and modification of inheri­ ted factors from his ancestors as it is with all men. It is man's free will that remodels his inherited factor "under inspiration from divine

3 1 F . B . Sanborn, The Life of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917), p. xiii. The following quotations are from this work. 127 sources, — in which both Thoreau and Emerson had implicit faith." The spectacle of nature," the teachings of the church, and "the interest and debates of the newly established Concord Lyceum" that began when Thoreau was twelve years old in January, 1829, were to make their chief impres­ sion on his maturing mind.

In his essay, written while a Harvard student, "The Sublimity of

Death," Thoreau objects to the question assigned on which to write: that death does not excite sublimity. He asks the question further in the es­ say if anything can be more sublime than the second birth, the Resurrec­ tion:

It is a subject which we approach with a kind of reverential awe. It has inspired the sublimest efforts of the poet and the painter. The trump which shall awake the dead is the creation of poetry; but (to follow out the idea) will its sound excite in us no emotion? or will the Blessed, whom it shall summon to forsake the mouldering relics of mortality, and wing their way to brighter and happier worlds, listen with terror or indifference? Shall he wno is acknowledged while on earth to have a soul for the sublime and beautiful in nature, here­ after, when he shall be all soul, lose his divine privilege? Shall we be indebted to the body for emotions which would adorn Heaven? And yet there are some who will refer you to the casting off of this "moral coil" as the beginning and, I may add, the consummation of all this.

From this discussion it would be easy to conclude that Thoreau believes what he is writing about for the strength of the emotions expressed would suggest a conviction on the part of the writer. Thoreau goes on to argue that fear is not the basis for man, the source of the sublime, but rather, it is for man the reverence for the grand, infinite, awe-inspiritng that is the basis of the sublime. Reverence, writes Thoreau, does not come from fear: 128

The emotion excited by the Sublime is the most un­ earthly and godlike we mortals experience. It de­ pends for the peculiar strength with which it takes hold on and occupies the mind, upon a principle which lies at the foundation of that worship which we pay to the Creator himself. And is fear the foundation of tnat Worship? is fear the ruling principle of our religion? Is it not rather, the mother of superstition?

Yes,— that principle which prompts us to pay an involuntary homage to the Infinite, the Incomprehensible, the Sublime, forms the very basis of our religion. It is a principle, implanted in us by our iiaker,— a part of our very selves. We cannot eradicate it, we cannot resist it, fear may be overcome, death may be despised; but the Infinite, the Sublime, seize upon the soul and disarm it. We may overlook them, or, rather, fall short of them; we may pass them by.— but so sure as we meet them face to face, we yield.

Han must worship, if not God, then something else. The awe-inspiring quality of the Sublime creates in man a need to honor that Sublime. Ke honors because of that need placed within man at creation; this need will be filled by something, and it is up to the individual what that will be.

Another essay written while Thoreau was in college was his essay on Hilton. Thoreau was interested in Hilton as were many of the early writers in hew England. Its structure, subject matter, and mode of ex­ pression makes the essay relevant to the thesis of this work to quote

in its entirety.

"CllAKACTIIllISTICS OF HILT Oh1S POESY"

"Point out particulars in the Speechs of .lolock and the rest (P.L., Book II) which appear to you Characteristic."

•^"The Sublimity of Death," quoted by Sanborn, p. 148. "After short silence, then, and summons read, the great consult began."

Satan, liolock, Belial, Mammon, and Beelzebub, "the flower of heaven once" — but now the pride of Hell, successively harangue the assembly.

First Satan, "author of all ill," takes it upon himself to comfort himself and his mates and followers, by assuring them that all is not lost, but Iieaven may yet be re­ gained. Fit ruler of such a host! By show­ ing them how good has already come out of evil, by refraining to dwell on their mis­ fortunes , and appearing solicitous only to restore their former condition, — though in reality preferring "to reign in Ilell rather than serve in Heaven," — he effectively re­ vives their dropping energies, and proves himself the master-spirit of the host.

From the contents of the preceding book we should expect to observe in Satan's speech, ambition aided by matchless cunning, the former it was, that first sug­ gested the revolt; and what but the latter could have so far carried his plans into execution? The poet has not failed to do his character justice in the present instance, his speech is marked throughout by superior sublety; and when at last tne "devilish counsel," first proposed and in part devised by himself, is adopted, — the spirit of revenge which first prompted the under­ taking, retires before self-interest, and gives place for a while to ambition. Proud, as it were, of this new responsibility, he declares that "none shall par­ take with him this enterprise"; and while they seek to render Ilell more tolerable; reserves to himself the glory of their deliverance; thus proving himself both cunning to devise and prompt to execute.

What a contrast does Satan afford to the exasperated Moloch! Here is no dissimulation, no hellish craft, no nice calculation of chances, no ambition to shine; self interest is swallowed up in revenge. Urged by despair ne counsels to scale the walls of Iieaven, and oppose infernal thunder to the Almighty's engines, hanger he sees none, — but perhaps. "The way seems difficult, and steep to scale." The difficulty is to get at the enemy, lie is a "plain blunt devil," who only speaks right on; no orator as 130

Satan Is; easily exasperated, but not so easily paci­ fied, — the creature of impulse. Next rose Belial, second to none in dissimulation, "nor yet behind in hate." With a fair outside, all is false and hallow within. As is often the case, his faint heart suggests a wise and prudent course; but he is none the less a devil, though a prudent one. Difficulties and dangers innumerable beset his path, — he thanks his stars tnat so much remains; dwells upon the evils to be apprehended from obstinately persevering in a bad cause; and, closing, touches upon the effect of submission to appease the victor. Next Mammon proves himself the same cool and deliberate calculator, who engrosses so large a share of Ilan's homage at the present day. War has no charms for him. Deficient neither in courage nor cunning, he is for adopting the readier and surer way to counteract the Almighty's ven­ geance by seeking to compose the present evils. "Dismissing quite all thoughts of war."

Cui bono? is his motto. Though he looks only upon the dark side of the picture, when he speaks of the pro­ ject to dethrone the King of Heaven," it is the effect not of fear, or despair, but a worldly, or rather a hellish policy. Beelzebub resembles in many respects his infernal master. His harangue breathes throughout a true Pande- monian spirit. The most consummate skill, the fiercest hate and a determined spirit of revenge mark him the devil of devils. Mischief is his element; he loves it for his own sake. The skill with which Milton has adopted every part, and especially the opening of each harangue to the char­ acter of the speaker, is deserving of notice. Indeed, the first two or three lines are characteristic in each case, entirely, of the individual, — a perfect sample of the whole speech. This may nave been the work of chance, but it certainly looks like design. Satan begins his address in a formal and courtier-like manner: — "Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven! For, since no deep within her gulf can hold. Immortal vigor, though oppressed and fallen, I give not Ueaven for lost."

Here is a set speech, cut and dried, as it were, for the occasion. The commencement of the second line betrays a hidden purpose, — some proposition to be made, or project to be unfolded. The very indirectness with which the subject is introduced is a proof of design, a warning of craft to be used in the pursuit of a fav­ orite object. Again, — "iiy sentence is for open war: of wiles, More unexpect, I boast not."

Here is a straightforwardness and singleness of pur­ pose, a contempt for ornament and art. The first three words argue a mind made up. The indicative is simply declares his resolution; as if it only remained to make known what was already resolved. How different the following! "I should be much more open war, 0 Peers! As not behind in hate, i£," etc.

A should and an jLf to begin with! The second word should implies hesitation; the if in the next line is a harbinger of fear and irresolution. Indeed the whole speech is one string of interrogatories, plentifully sprinkled with words expressive of doubt and uncertainty, — such as could, would, should, yet, and or. Timidity is the mother of inquisitiveness. Next Mammon spoke ,— "Hither to disenthrone the King of Heaven We war, if war be best, or to regain Our own right lost:— "

These words, it is true, express uncertainty as to the course to be pursued, yet it is the uncertainty, not of fear and despair, but of self-interest. The second line will not admit of any other interpretation. The manner in which the all-absorbing subject, war, is introduced, gives promise of a ready support in case war should be declared. Beelzebub's elaborate exordium would by no means disgrace His Satanic Majesty,— "Thrones and Imperial Powers! Offspring of Heaven, Ethereal Virtues!"

He has evidently followed some such rule as that laid down by Cicero,— "not to compose the introduction first, but to consider first the main argument, and let that suggest the exordium." Even in these few lines his resemblance to Satan, his ambitious master and ruler, is sufficiently obvious.33

Even though the essay ends abruptly, part of which was evidently lost or destroyed, much benefit from reading of his work can be gained by the present-day student. Not only is the subject matter handled from what appears to be a fundamentalist's position on the origin of evil in the

World, but also the form the essay takes may be studied with profit. The smooth transition from speaker to speaker is handled in a masterly fash­ ion; the quotations from Hilton's Paradise Lost is sufficient to give the intended summary by Thoreau to the content of each speaker's address to the assembly. It is difficult to judge from this essay Thoreau's belief in Hilton's poetic explanation of the origin of evil in the world or if it is a writer's stance taken by the author to answer in essay form, the proposed question.

To further illustrate Thoreau's concern for men's religious nature, the student may look at his essay, "Barbarism and Civilization." In his essay, Thoreau writes that "civilization is the influence of Art, and not nature, on man." In that same ssay, he wrote;

The end of life is education. An education is good or bad according to the disposition or frame of mind it induces. If it tends to cherish and develop the religious sentiment,— continuously to remind man of his mysterious relation to God and Nature,— and to exalt him above the toil and drudgery of this matter-of-fact world, it is g o o d . 34

The biblical flavor of his writings is found in his essays. In "Compulsory

■^Sanborn, pp. 93-97.

34ibid., p. 180. 133

Education" Thoreau paraphrases the New Testament; "What can it profit a man that he hath enough to eat and to drink and the wherewithal he may be clothed, — provided he lose his own soul?" Thoreau's concern for the religious life of man is seen in his essay, "The Qualities of the Recruit" from his first major work, "Service," not published until forty years after his death. In this essay, Thoreau writes of the lessening of the preachers' fervor: "The religion we now have is very lagic; as little does it creep into the sermon of the preacher as does poetry into the lecture of the Professor." Again, he writes in the same essay:

"I like those men who do their Maker the compliment not to fear Him; who grow bolder as great crises approach; who sit, even in the presence of the gods; and shrink not: and are timid, if it must be so, in the presence of mean men; who literally neither fear Cod nor the Devil, but love and respect the one while they hate the other."^5

The poem called by Sanborn the "most symbolic and mystical of all Thor­ eau's poems" is his "Inspiration":

What e'er we leave to God God does, And blesses us: The work we choose should be our own, God lets alone.

He blends the religious life and the rational life in this poem. Yet another poem that expresses Thoreau's concern for his own relationship to God is quoted by Sanborn:

Great God! I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself; That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye;

^Sanborn, p. 246. 134

And next In value, which thy kindness lends, That I nay greatly disappoint my friends; Howe'er they think or hope that It may be, They may not dream how Thou'st distinguished me;

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practice more than my tongue saith; That my low conduct may now show, Nor my relenting lines, That I Thy purpose did not know, Or overrated Thy designs.

With God's help and his own high standards for living, Thoreau is sure to be a success in life. In his essay, "Gratitude," Thoreau writes: "As in his strength, so in his weakness does man's divinity appear."36 in an essay written two months before graduating from Harvard, Thoreau wrote in

"The Superior and Common Han" that "The embryo philosopher . . . acknow­ ledges but two distinct existences, Nature and Spirit; all things else which his obstinate and self-willed senses present to him, are plainly, though unaccountably absurd." William Ellery Channing, a close friend who went on many nature hikes with Thoreau and spent many hours with him up until his death, quoted Thoreau:

Who are the religious? They who do not differ much from mankind generally, except that they are more conservative and timid and useless, but who in their conversation and correspondence talk about kindness and Heavenly Father, instead of going gravely about their business, trusting God ever.37

Thoreau seems to be saying that the religious person that he favors and

^Sanborn, pp. 271, 272.

37William Ellery Channing, Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1966), pp. 89-90. 135

believes to be truly religious is the one that puts God into every ac­

tivity of life. Channing quotes Thoreau as saying, "The red-bird which

is the last of nature is but the first of G o d , "38 comparing spring

and religious revivals, Thoreau is again quoted:

All Nature revives at this season. With her it is really a new life; but with these church-goers it is only a revival of religion or hypocrisy; they go downstream to still muddier waters. It cheers me more to behold the mass of gnats which have revived in the spring s u n . 39

Man should be revived to function in his daily, every moment world. Re­ ligion, worship, prayer — studied in their history out-of-doors was

Thoreau's creed according to Channing. Thoreau said: "May I love and rever myself above all the gods that man has ever invented; may I never let the vestal fire go out in my recesses." Nature was a sacrament to

Thoreau; he felt a pilgrim in life: "I who never partake of the sacra­ ment make the more of it." Out in Nature he felt free where his "head is more in heaven than your feet are on earth," and "where you are not in

false relations with men . . . ." Out in Nature, he could "recover the lost child" that he was for there is "when I have freedom in my thought, and in my soul am free." Thoreau searched for this place of freedom all his life. Channing records an early family story:

An early anecdote remains of his being told at three years that he must die, as well as the men in the catechism. He said he did not want to die, but was reconciled; yet,

38channing, p. 122.

39Ibid., p. 94. 136

coming in from coasting, he said he '‘did not want to die and go to heaven, because he could not carry his sled with him; for the boys said it was not shod with iron, it was not worth a cent.”

This answer prophesied the future man, who never could, nor did, believe in a heaven to which he could not carry his views and principles, some of which, not shod with the vanity of this world, were pronounced worthless.^

F.B. Sanborn, another close friend and biographer of Thoreau, quotes

Channing in 1873: "The high moral impulse never deserted him, and he re­ solved early (1851) to read no book, take no walk, undertake no enter­ prise, but such as he could endure to give an account of to himself." No man could have a higher personal standard than this. Emerson in his fun­ eral eulogy said of Thoreau: "He was a person of a rare, tender, and ab­ solute religion; a person incapable of profanation, by act or thought.

Hawthorne wrote in his Notebooks giving the modern student yet ano­ ther contemporary's views on the man Thoreau. From these statements the student may build a mental picture of this nineteenth centurey "Poet-Natur­ alist." Hawthorne wrote of Thoreau's appearance:

Hr. Thoreau is a singular character; a young man with much of a wild, original Nature still remaining in him; and so far is sophisticated, it is in a way and metuod of his own. He is ugly as sin; long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic manners,— though courteous,— corresponding with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than

^Oghanning, p . 19.

^ISanborn, p. 149. 137

beauty.^

In another essay written In 1835, Thoreau discussed "Conformity in

Things Unessential":

"The clock sends me to bed at ten, and makes me rise at eight. I go to bed awake, and arise asleep; but I have ever held conformity one of the arts of life; and though I might choose my own hours, I think it proper to follow theirs." (Mrs. E. Montagu's Letters.)

"Speak of the duty, inconvenience, and dangers of Conformity, in little things and great."

Neither natural nor revealed religion affords any rules by which we may determine the comparative excellence of different virtues. The Hebrew Code, which Christ came not to destroy but to fulfill, makes no such distinction; vice, under what­ ever form, is condemned in positive and unqualified terms. We are told, in our Savior's exposition of the Law, that one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law until all be fulfilled; and "Whosoever shall break one of the least Commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven." So far, too, as man had deduced a moral code from a philosophical study of Nature, her design and operations,— our remark will hold good of that also. The idea appears to be a prevalent one that Duty consists in certain out­ ward acts, whose performance is more or less obligatory under different circumstances, though it can never be entirely neglected with impunity; and consequently that one duty may interfere with another; and that here may be situations in which a man cannot possibly avoid the vio­ lation of duty. This arises, I think, from conforming Duty to the outward act, instead of making it consist in conformity to the dictates of an inward arbitrator, in a measure independent of Matter, and its relations, Time and Space. Duty is one and invariable; it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with im­ punity. So far as it exists, it is binding, and if all

^Quoted from Hawthorne's Notebook by Sanborn, pp. 236-7. 138

duties are binding, so as on no account to be neglected, how can one bind stronger than another? So far, then, as duty is concerned, we may entirely neglect the distinction of little things and great. Mere conformity to another's habits or customs is never, properly speaking, a duty, though it may follow as a na­ tural consequence of the performance of Duty. The fact that such is the general practice of mankind does not affect a question of duty. 1 am required, it is true, to respect the feelings of my neighbor, within the limits of his own estate; but the fear of displeasing the world ought not in the least to influence my actions. Were it otherwise, the principal avenue to Reform would be closed.

Duty, then, covers these essential elements of life controlled by inward motivation and not by outward pressures.

After reading the essays quoted above, the student may have a sense of Thoreau's belief in man's religious nature. These essays illustrate again the concern of men like Emerson and Thoreau that man can become whatever he wishes to become by determining in his own mind his goals and standards. Both men were not dependent on an external objective God such as followed and worshipped by Bradley and Edwards, but rather, were dependent on their own sense of an internal subjective God such as Na­ ture or the Over-Soul. This shift in religious thinking will benefit the student as he attempts to sort out in his own mind his concepts of

God.

Thoreau lived a short life of less than 45 years; yet he left behind written material that fills thirty volumes including fourteen volumes of journals. For the student of Thoreau, it would be good to help him put

^Sanborn, p. 266. 139 flesh and blood on these bones of Thoreau's literary career. To see the man behind the thoughts expressed is a vital experience for the ma­ turing student. From these physical descriptions, he can relate to the man and then to his words. The student can feel that here is a man, a man that was going through life experiencing the problems of living that life, the frustrations of being misunderstood, of losing his loved ones, of physical weakness: Here is a man such as I am who faced life and lived it to the fullest. Channing wrote a lengthy description of Thor­ eau 's physical features.

In height, he was about the average; in his build spare, with limbs that were rather longer than usual, or of which he made a longer use. ilis face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The features were marked; the nose aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of Caesar (more like a beak, as was said); large, over-hanging brows above the deepest set blue eyes that could be seen,— blue in certain lights, and in others gray,— eyes expressive of all shades of feeling, but never weak or near-sighted; the forehead not unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought were silent, and giving out, when open, a stream of the most varied and unusual and instructive sayings. His hair was a dark brown, exceedingly abundant, fine and soft, and for several years he wore a comely beard.^

"Thoreau was a comic little figure with a receding chin, and not enough high style to carry off a gesture. As a political writer, he was 45 the most ringing and magnificant polemicist America has ever produced."

^Channing, p. 33.

^Stanley Edgar Hyman, "Henry Thoreau in Our Time," in Thoreau ed. by Sherman Paul (Knglev?ood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), p. 24. 140

wrote Stanley Hyman. In his "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau showed his

controversial nature. His witty use of the English language and his

apt turn of phrase are illustrated by many statements from that essay.^6

The student will note Thoreau's independence of mind:

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.

The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government when its tyranny or its inefficiency are unendurable.

His ability to say a great deal in a few words. Of virtue and sin he wrote:

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.

After the first blush of sin, comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Of governments:

That government is best which governs not at all.

Ileforn keeps many scores of newspapers in its services, but not one man.

^Quotes from Walden and 'Civil Disobedience" will be taken from the Norton Critical Edition (Dew York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1366). 141

it costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the state, than it would to obey.

I saw that the state was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost my remain­ ing respect for it, and pitied it.

Of taxes:

I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and, as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now.

I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if 1 could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with,— the dollar is innocent,— but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance.

Of truth:

The lawyer's truth is not truth, but consistency, or a consistent expediency.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not con­ cerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

Of the individual:

There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

It would be useful for the student to look at other examples of his use of the English language. According to Sanborn "Thoreau's constant habit was contrast.His use of oxymoron produced a seeming self- contradiction that caused his readers to come up short and read his

^Sanborn, p. 258. 142 works with deliberate thoroughness. Examples of this figure of speech from Walden are many. Speaking of the farmers whom he called "serfs of the soil", he wrote;

Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemed to eat only his peck of dirt?

Of men and clothing;

We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Contrasting men and fowls;

Our moulting season, like that of fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.

. . . and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, im­ mediately or in the long run.

He wrote of man's great waste:

To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle.

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.

. . . men have become the tools of their tools.

Of the civilized man:

We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you.

Wnen a man dies he kicks the dust.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Man must be aware of his own condition before he can help others: 143

Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings.

Thoreau had much to say of man's condition in life. Some of which are:

. . . for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

iioral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

Our life is frittered away by detail.

We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.

God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.

A written word is the choicest of relics.

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

I love the wild not less than the good.

It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination.

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated.

Nature puts no question and answers none which mortals ask.

The day is the epitome of the year.

A living dog is better than a dead lion.

Of life he wrote: 144

It looks poorest when you are richest.

Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts clean.

The student will find a wealth of thought in much of Thoreau's writing.

Sanborn went on to say that "in much that Thoreau wrote there was a philological side: this needs to be thoughtfully considered." There was a "grace of style" and a "felicity in the choice of words. The stu­ dent of Thoreau's writing can find outstanding examples in just about anywhere he reads of what Channing called the "pithy bon-mots." Exam­ ples listed by Channing include the following:

Cows in the pasture are good milkers. You cannot travel four roads at one time. If you wish the meat, crack the nut. If it does not happen soon, it will late. Take time as it comes, people for what they are worth, and money for what it buys. Time runs before men. As the bill, so goes the song; as the bird, such the nest. A good dog never finds good bones. Cherries taste sour to single birds. No black milk, no white cows. Foul weather and false women are always expected. Occasion wears front-hair. No fish, fresh nor salt, when a fool holds the line. A poor man's cow— a rich man's child— dies. Sleep is half a dinner. A wit sleeps in the middle of a narrow bed. Good heart, weak head. Cocks crow as fortune brightens. A fool is always starting. At a small spring you can drink at your ease. Fire is like an old maid, the best company. Long talk and little time. Better days, a bankrupt's purchase. What men do, not what they promise. Life is not long enough for one man.

The student will notice a strong similarity between these statements by

Thoreau and those by Franklin's Poor Richard.

'■;n I H, f' t ' 145

To that list of pithy expressions may be added many others. Examples of his compact expression with the influences of the Oriental authors are many. For the benefit of the student, the following examples are lifted from Walden:

Man and nature:

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.

Man's self-image:

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which de­ termines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Wisdom;

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. But it is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

The superior life vs. the common;

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other.

Faithless man;

How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.

Change;

All change is a miracle to contemplate.

The life of wisdom:

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to 146

live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnamiraity, and trust.

Searching;

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on their trail.

Biblical allusions;

. . . though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes have their holes, and the savages their wig­ wams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter.

The desire to be one's own self:

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

In another section of Walden he added:

None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin.

When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten.

Thoreau felt that men, like the snake

. . . remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arrousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.

Good sense:

One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. 147

Faith:

If a man has faith he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to.

The thinking man:

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

Reason for living:

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it (life) is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to ‘'glorify God and enjoy him forever."

To read:

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

The analogy of thought as a bullet:

The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his head.

Virtue:

Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a com­ mon man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.

A drawing toward higher things:

I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. 148

Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like are but various fruits which succeed it.

:ian flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead.

Analogy of thought and the carving of wood:

Have each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine.

So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.

The words which express our faith and piety are not de­ finite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankin­ cense to superior natures.

An outline of Walden such as the following would be helpful to the student:

Chapter 1, "Economy"— arranging the circumstances of life in best possible manner for best results: food, shelter, clothing, fuel. Chapter 2, "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 . . . ." simplicity. Chapter 3, "Heading"— "as a noble intellectual exercise." Chapter 4, "Sounds"— "a vibration of the universal lyre." Chapter 5, "Solitude"— healing— "Wnat sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?" Chapter 6, "Visitors"— "I think that I love society so much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the tune to any full-blooded man that comes in my way." Chapter 7, "The Beam-Field"— Planting seeds of character. Chapter 3, "The Village"— A place to visit; a part of life. Chapter 9, "The Ponds"— A place to learn of beauty. Chapter 10, "Baker Farm"— iian wastes his life— Enjoy life, be not bogged down by the unessentials of life. 149

Chapter 11, "Higher Laws"— Man does not exist for self alone; there are other levels to which he must aspire. Chapter 12, "Brute Neighbors"— the human qualities displayed. Chapter 13, "House Warming"— fire as companion. Chapter 14, "Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors"— men are more than just their names. Chapter 15, "Winter Animals"— a view of human-like animals. Chapter 16, "The Pond in Winter"— sounding the pond and cutting the ice. Chapter 17, "Spring"— "Walden was dead is alive again." Chapter 18, "Conclusion."

Channing summarizes Thoreau's works:

The chief attraction of "The Week" and "Walden" to pure and aspiring natures consists in their lofty and practical morality. To live rightly, never to swerve, and to believe that we have in ourselves a drop of the Original Goodness besides the well- known deluge of original sin,— these strains sing through Thoreau's writings.

49 Channing, p. 17. CHAPTER V

THE VOICE OF HAS

Two hundred years had passed since the Puritans and Pilgrims set­ tled New England and founded the Puritan tradition that was to become part of the American personality. While Emerson was promoting transcen­ dentalism— man's ability to know truth intuitively— Thoreau was con­ tinuing to demonstrate the Puritan concept of working and wasting not.

But the concept of sin was undergoing dramatic changes: sin was begin­ ning to be thought of as not so much a part of man's depraved nature but more as a result of man's physical and mental deformities. The Puritan ethic provided a theocratic concept of man's world while later fighters for religious freedom such as Jefferson and Thomas Paine sought for the separation of Church and State. As a result of this sectionalization of what was once a unity, men began to see life in the workaday world as being sectioned off from the religious concerns of Sabbath worship days; the concerns of the everyday were not transferred to the religious life and what was taught on religious days found little lodgement in the hearts of men. Partly from this cause and partly from the advent of the scien­ tific method and the rapid growth of knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the old familiar answers to man's long sought after questions were no longer to suffice. 151

Writers of the nineteenth century looked for new answers for the

age-old questions. Some writers found their answers by looking forward to the new discoveries of the nature of man such as found in the socio­ logical and psychological arenas while others rediscovered their answers by looking backward to an earlier time and restating those age-old ans­ wers. One such writer was Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) explored in his writings the age- old problem of sin. His stories illustrate the results of sin on the na­ ture of man. In many of his short stories, Hawthorne explores the arro­ gance of man's voice as he attempts to be his own maker. For what is sin if it is not the supremacy of self? In each of his short stories discussed in this thesis,, each character who forgets his Maker and at­ tempts to make himself like God in his knowledge, the end for him is destruction. In his classic work, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores tnis theme of man's arrogance and adds to it, the theme of the effects of hidden sin on the mind, soul, and body of his characters. Hawthorne looks back to the Puritan concern for sin and explores its sociological and psychological effects on man and does this in a new symbolic manner.

Perry Miller's statement that the march of civilization is denounced and lamented* seems to fit here in a discussion of Hawthorne's works. Yet this must be taken with reservation. Hawthorne did illustrate that as

*Perry Miller, "The Romantic Dilemma in American Nationalism and the Concept of Nature" in Nature's Nation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 199. 152 each character grew in knowledge he did not grow in maturity sufficient to handle the vast new knowledge wisely, but he does not seem to be con­ demning the knowledge itself. As Herman Melville wrote in his famous essay, "Hawthorne and His Mosses," Hawthorne's works illustrate . . that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitation, in some shape or other, no freely thinking mind is ever free." Frederick Crews calls Hawthorne's keynote "ambivalence" — a fash­ ionable modem psychological term. The writing of Hawthorne became a blending of symbolism and didacticism:

Of all the writers of the New England flowering, Hawthorne, justifiably, seems the most certain to endure. Many have noted that he reflects the New England spirit in his consciousness of sin and anticipates in his symbolism a now common manner of literary expression.^

Hawthorne was able to capture in his writings man's personal assault on the inwardmost depths of his being and his ultimate recognition of the sin that lies buried under the trappings of civilization. Man, to Haw­ thorne, had come a great distance from the days of dwelling in caves, but his psychological and sociological travels have not freed him from the chains of innate depravity nor from the stains of original sin. Many of the characters in Hawthorne's short stories suffer from these very problems as they search for personal answers to these very human pro­ blems . Crews writes that:

^Walter Blair, Theodore Hornberger and Randall Stewart, "Nathaniel Hawthorne," in American Literature: A Brief History, p. 295. 153

The idealist is invariably an escapist; his quest for truth or power or immortality amounts to regressive flight from the challenges of normal adult life, and the knowledge he acquires or embodies is nothing other than an awareness of his own guilty fantasies.3

Hawthorne's life was not a "regressive flight," but rather a bold at­

tempt to explain the problem and nature of sin in the adult life.

In his first collection of short stories, Twice-Told Tales (1337,

1342), Hawthorne included the story of a minister and his foreboding black veil. In "The Hinister's Black Veil: A Parable," the veil chan­ ges the kind Reverend Hooper, in the minds of the members of his congre­ gation, to a sinister figure. The black veil work over the upper part of his face becomes a retelling of the future time when man passes from life unto death and all things become know:

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.^

Parson Hooper's veil was the mystery that all men are to one another; only his veil objectified the mystery. The veil was a sign of grievous affliction, of mourning, of dark sorrows, of secret sin, of grief, of a tortured conscience, of crime committed, or of every possible plight of man. Father Hooper's last words on his deathbed bespeak its signifi­ cance: "Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled face round the circle of pole spectators. "Tremble also at

*1 Frederick Crews, The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psycholo­ gical Themes. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 93.

^1 Corinthians 13:12. 154

each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"

In this short parable, Hawthorne has attempted to illustrate the fact of the universality of human experience. Crews believed that "the real struggle in the tale is not between Hooper and the others but between conscious and unconscious thoughts within each individual," Crews fur­ ther writes that

. . . like Melville and Poe; and like the 'Romantic conser­ vative' Freud, Hawthorne resisted his whole achievement on the premise that the only important truth is that which has been represeed. We may doubt the premise and yet recognize that the achievement is something formidable.-1’

Mosses From an Old Manse, Hawthorne's second collection of short stories and sketches, was first published in 1846. Although not well received by the reading public of the day, Melville was able to evaluate

Hawthorne's work in 1850 by publishing in Kvart A. Huyckinck's periodi­ cal, The Literary World, his essay in which he reveals his interest in the "blackness" of Hawthorne's works. In this collection was published

Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark," Aylmer, the chemist, strived for control over the creative forces of life. His love for his beauti­ ful wife blended with his love of science. Georgiana was beautiful save

■*Crews, p. 110. 155 for one flaw: that being a mark on her cheek— a crimson mark in the shape of the smallest pygmy hand. To the other men who admired Geor­ gians this birthmark was a mark of beauty, while to her husband, Aylmer, the mark was a tragic flaw in an otherwise perfect creation. Hawthorne wrote:

It was the fatal flow of humanity which Mature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her pro­ ductions , either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that perfection must be wrought by toil and pain.6

The mark soon became Aylmer's main concern and obsession and Georgiana's horror. He dreamed that he was attempting to remove the birthmark and the hand had fastened itself on her heart; nevertheless, ignoring this warning, he was determined to remove the blemish. The wife agreed to its removal and they proceeded with the preparations. Hawthorne demon­ strates Aylmer's great knowledge as he attempts to entertain his wife and prepares her for the operation. However, many of these demonstra­ tions fail, and reading like a Gothic horror story, foreshadow Aylmer's final failure which, indeed, he must as anyone must who attempts to change what the Creator has begun:

The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the hand by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birth­ mark — that sole token of human imperfection — faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.

^All quotations are from The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Gew York: Hanover House, 1959), p. 228. 156

Aylmer, in his arrogance, attempted to be more than man; and as a re­

sult, he lost his opportunity for happiness. Crews writes that

. . . one might almost say that the emotional sense emanating from a deed like Aylmer's is one of the satanic triumph, of momentary victory over inhibition.

A second selection from '‘losses is another short story that illus­

trates another human shortcoming — the loss of faith in the goodness of man. Hawthorne symbolically presents the story of "Young Goodman Brown"

as a young husband leaving his young wife, Faith. The allegory of the

pilgrim journey is told as the husband prepares to leave his wife to

journey on "his present evil purpose."

Brown travels to the woods, a woods so dense that he imagines an

Indian behind every tree and the possibility of the devil himself at his elbow. Speak of the devil and Goodman sees a man seated at the foot

of an old tree. The middle-aged gentleman accompanies Brown on his journey. So alike are they that the author suggests that they could pass

for father and son. Yet the stranger has a staff "which bore the like­

ness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent." The Goodman wishes not to continue his journey into the forest, but the serpentman

argues away his defenses: first that of his father not taking such a journey, of good works, of the governor and council., of the minister, of

^Crews, p. 265. 157 the religious townspeople, and of his wife. Sitting down on a stump, he asked the question after seeing Goody Gloyse, Brown's catechism teacher, recognizing the devil, "What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: Is that any reason why

I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?" A wise man never converses with the devil nor takes a journey to prove his manliness and strength of refusing him. "Faith" had kept him from the journey, and now he felt that he had gone "too far! too far!"

Young Goodman Brown's despair reaches its apex when he hears a voice of a *7oman going to the witches' service that sounded like his own Faith's voice. The symbolic pink ribbon fluttered down and caught on a branch of a tree, and Brown cries "My Faith is gone," meaning both the wife and the symbol used by Hawthorne to illustrate his theme. Immediately the forest is full of the most horrible sounds and sights, and Goodman Brown rushes to the "Witches' Sabbath." Looking around the assembled company, he can­ not find his Faith. He writing reaches an emotional pitch: the description of the witches service, the scene in the forest, and the laboratory scene in "The Birthmark" all bespeak the Gothic romance. The words of the ser- pentman echo the theme of "The Birthmark":

"It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power— than my power at its utmost — can make manifest in deeds."

By wanting to know more than man is capable of knowing, Goodman Brown, like Aylmer, lost his most prized possession and returned from the forest

"a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate 15 S man . . . By a loss of faith and trust, Young Goodman Brown isolated himself from the warmth and flow of humanity, a possibility shared by all mankind.

Also found in the Mosses collection was Hawthorne's allegorical tale, "Rappaccini's Daughter," that re-echoes the theme of intellectual arrogance as found in "The Birthmark." In this short story, Rappaccini, a famous scientist, has developed a super-human in his daughter, Beatrice.

She is isolated from her kind by the poisonous nature that she has in­ haled from the strange exotic plants growing in the garden next to the

Paduan palace. Into this old edifice comes a young medical student, Gio­ vanni Gusconti, and the real story begins. The nature of this work is suggested by Hawthorne in the introduction as he attributes his work to a M. de 1' Aubepine, who suffered from "an inveterate love of allegory."

The allegorical retelling of the story of man's beginning in the

Garden of Eden is marred by the sinister overtones of evil. The vapors from the plants, the very appearance of the plants themselves, and the beautiful Beatrice was one with then, beautiful but to be avoided as

Rappaccini himself avoided the vapors and the touch of the plant with the purple clusters in the midst of the garden. The sin that Dr. Giacomo

Rappaccini was guilty of was that he cared "infinitely more for science than for mankind." His patients were only subjects for experimentation and as expendable as white mice. Then begins a warfare in the mind of

Giovanni, a warfare of good and evil, of beauty and blackness. Beatrice had become, like the purple shrub, a poisonous creation of her father; her very breath meant death. The story becomes a battle in the heart of 159

Giovanni for his love of the beautiful Beatrice and his fear of the poi­ sonous world in which she moved and drew her life’s essence.

It would be interesting for the student to study the parallels in the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden and in Hawthorne’s 'Rappaccini's

Daughter." The similarities and contrasts found in these two accounts would make for a stimulating class discussion. Along with this could be discussed the question: What is Hawthorne attempting to say to his read­ ers through this story? Does the story have a message, or is it just ano­ ther example of the Gothic romance? Does Beatrice die because of her evil nature or because she has inhaled the vapors from the plant in the middle of the garden? Can evil and goodness occupy the same location?

Another story with the theme of man's arrogance and misuse of his fellowman is "Ethan Brand ; A Chapter from an Abortive Romance.” In this story as in " Rappaccini's Daughter" is found the man that has super­ ior intellect and misuses his knowledge in an attempt to gain something that is not for man to achieve; Happaccini wished to develop a superwoman in his daughter while Ethan Brand wished to know the Unpardonable Sin.

Eighteen years earlier he had left his lime kiln in search of the Unpardon­ able Sin. Having found it, he returned to his old kiln on Mount Gravlock.

Bartram, the present lime-burner, wishes to know what Brand had found and so much of the night is spent in discussion. What is the Unpardonable

Sin? "The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brother­ hood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims," answered Brand. Into the scene come several former 160 acquaintances of Brand's: Lawyer Giles, the doctor, the white-haired father, and a traveling amusement man — and old German Jew. The stu­ dent would find it profitable to discuss for what purpose that the auth­ or included each of these strange men in his story and also the inci­ dent of the dog chasing its tail. The imbalance of intellect over the heart is seen in the midnight musings of Ethan Brand. After he bids

Bartram and his son, Joe, to go to bed, Brand traces his fall from grace until he became a fiend. Unable to stand his satanic condition, Brand jumps into the lime kiln and becomes part of the lime.

It would be a useful experience for the student and time well-spent in the classroom to look at the word choices and phrasing used by Haw­ thorne. He blends the Puritan concepts of sin with the romantic flour­ ishes of the Gothic to present a modern parable. The suggestion that

Ethan Brand's heart had hardened and had become "burnt into what look(ed) like special good lime" is a particularly interesting twist ending for the modern student raised on the fare of the television screen. The sin committed by Ethan Brand,

demanding a necessity of evil more powerful than the prin­ ciple of good, it violates what Hawthorne calls the sympathy of nature and the sanctity of the human heart.

And

the question posed repeatedly in Hawthorne's fiction is whether or not man, having withdrawn can ever return and enter fully into the community.®

®Donald Crowley, Nathaniel Hawthorne (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1971), pp. 94, 95. Hawthorne explored his interest in sin to its fullest in his masterpiece,

The Scarlet Letter.

Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter appeared in 1850 and has become "an ack­ nowledged masterpiece of modern world literature" and "has continued to express the symbolic terms of a persistent, dark riddle in the American spiritual experience."9 in his American Notebook, Hawthorne wrote:

The Unpardonable Sin might consist of a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope of purpose of making it better, but from a cold philo­ sophical curiosity, — content that it should be wicked in whatever kind of degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart?^

Chillingworth, Rappaccini, Ethan Brand, and Aylmer were guilty of this sin, that of using human beings as things, as objects of experimentation.

Edward Wagenknecht explains Hawthorne's purpose: "In Hawthorne's moral­ ity, as in that of Henry James, damnation may even be incurred by estab­ lishing control over another's soul for benevolent purposes, since it is impious to put oneself in the place of God."^ As each character tries to act as God, he becomes obsessed with the idea and is unable to stop his quest. Crews quotes from Freud's Collected Papers III suggesting the cause for the unhappy ending of most of Hawthorne's characters:

^Bradley, Beatty, Long, "Nathaniel Hawthorne" in The American Tradi­ tion in Literature, 3rd ed., Vol. 1, (New York: W. W. Norton and Com­ pany, Inc., 1967), p. 596.

^Quoted by Edward Wagenknecht, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Han and Writer (New York; Oxford University Press, l9bl), p. 191. 11 . 162

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that Inhabit the human breast, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

Many of Hawthorne's works suggest the biblical rendition of the words of

Christ when he said:

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man and

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adultries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blas­ phemies: These are the things which defile a rnan.^-3

Ethan Brand, Aylmer, Rappaccini, and Chillingworth all seem to have made the mistake of assuming their superior knowledge and hence, their super­ ior power over the souls of other men. To Hawthorne, this act of super­ iority was sin. Ethan Brand used fellow men as experimental objects;

Aylmer tried to achieve perfection that is not possible in this world;

Rappaccini looked on his fellow man as a scientific instrument to be used as he saw fit; and Chillingworth peered into the soul of another man, and in so doing, became a fiend. These romantic manifestations are seen throughout Hawthorne's works. The "black flower of civilized so­ ciety" is contrasted in the opening pages of the book with the wiid rose­ bush; the dark, somber colors of the dress with the bright red of the embroidered "A"; the stranger Ur. Chillingworth in the opening pages of the work to the future references that iliustrate his moral and physical decay; the sprite, Pearl, and her mother, Hester; the superior form of

13Matthew 15:11, 19-20b. 163 the Rev. Dimmesdale and his gradual wasting away and death in the third

and final pillory scene of the novel; the sun that shines on Pearl and

refuses to do so on Hester in the forest scene; the symbolism expressed

in the names of the main characters themselves, and in the symbolic "z\".

Hawthorne leaves little to the reader's imagination, but carefully ex­ plains the symbolic meaning of his romance as he goes about the story.

M l of these areas suggested above make for vital discussion in the classroom. Coupled with how the author goes about his story is also the important question of why. It would be profitable for the student to compare the religious attitudes expressed in The Scarlet Letter with those religious opinions of today: How are they alike? How have they changed? Are today's concepts of morality more wholesome than the Puri­ tan? Are there some "eternal truths" expressed by Hawthorne or are these "truths" just the romantic notions of the authors? Another ques­ tion for discussion would be Crews' statement that "Hawthorne's ambiguity

. . . is not a didactic strategy but a sign of a powerful tension between his attraction to and his fear of his deepest themes" and also "he re­ veals a special insight into the minds of characters who are absorbed in

finding sin in the breasts of others.A look at Hawthorne's style would emphasize much of his technique. Samples such as the following would suggest his romantic bent, and the symbolic overtones of his work:

l^Crews, pp. 7-8. 164

The rose bush: ...Its delicate gents, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

The red "A": In the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth surrounded with and elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A .... so fantastically em­ broidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.

Hester Prynne on the pillory platform: Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.

Roger Chillingworth: By the Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companion­ ship with him, stood a white man clad in a strange array of civilized and savage costume. He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed age. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and be­ come manifest by unmistakable tokens.

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale: His eloquence and religious fervor had already given the ernest of high eminence in his profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth, which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self- restraint.

Of Pearl's clothing: The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic in­ genuity, which served, indeed, to brighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. 165

Of Hester receiving pleasure from her needlework: To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as a sin.

Of Hester perceiving someone staring at the scarlet letter: Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, woulds't thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? — Such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own fraility, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.

The romantic descriptions of Pearl: But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price, — purchased with all she had, — her mother's only treasure! .... God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race and decent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven. The child had a native grace which does not in­ variably coexist with the faultless beauty;

She seemed rather an airy sprite......

. . . gathering handfuls of wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet letter.

It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life.

Also, how is The Scarlet Letter, as Charles Feidelson puts it, "a kind of exposition of the nature of symbolic perception"?^ Chapter XI speaks of "The Interior of a Heart" and describes Chillingworth's plan for

^Charles Feidelson, Jr. , Symbolism and American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 10. 166

revenge on his wife's paramour, Reverend Dimmesdale. This chapter de­

velops the themes present in the other stories discussed in this thesis;

the effect of sin on the heart, mind, and body. Chapter XII, the second

pillory scene, links together the symbolism found in the scarlet letter,

the child Pearl, the meteor in the sky, and the suffering Rev. Dimmes­ dale. Chillingworth finds Dimmesdale on the pillory platform and gently chides him for studying too hard. There seems to be a suggestion here that Dimmesdale goes home weakly but willingly with Chillingworth — a resignation to his fate. In Chapter XVI, "A Forest Walk," Hester and Ar­ thur reveal to each other their true feelings after a lapse of seven years. Hester confessed that she has sinned against Arthur by not tell­ ing him that Roger was her husband. After Arthur struggles with this news, he finally forgives her for the deception and says:

May God forgive us both! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!

This speech suggests that the darkest aim of man is to use another human being for evil purposes. It would be well for the student to compare the events described in Chapter XVIII with those in the remaining chapters of the book: What is Hawthorne saying to his readers? Is he making a statement on the nature of sin and its results? — "The soul that sinneth it shall die."^ The minister's encounter with Mistress Hibbins would

16Ezekiel 18:20. indicate such a conclusion just as the ending of the story bears out.

Yet, Hawthorne suggests that there is a forgiveness for sin as the auth­ or has Arthur confess his sin before he dies on the platform of the fi­ nal pillory scene of the novel. Through public confession the Reverend

Arthur Dimmesdale finds peace of soul and preparation for death; through penitence and service to mankind, Hester Prynne finds peace of mind and a revered place in the community; through loss of his host, the parasite

Roger Chillingworth fades away "like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun" and finds his hatred of Dimmesdale "transmuted into golden love." Pearl, "the richest heiress of her day," finds a new life in the

Old World. Thus, it is true for Hawthorne as it is for other American authors that as Harry Levin writes "... American fiction sprang from religious allegory, a form of which gave ample scale to the moralistic impetus. Hawthorne seemed to believe the truths he wrote about, and as Uagenknecht writes:

There was a dark side of him, but he faced the light. If there was a potential Ethan Brand in him or a young Goodman Brown, he watched him and guarded against him and strangled him. In the end darkness encompassed the weakness of his body and dragged him down, but his soul passed' into the light which derives from God and illuminates the wljigle ex­ hilarating, infinitely varied realm of world art.'

George Woodberry felt that Hawthorne's spirituality came from his genius

The truth was that Hawthorne led a life apart in his own genius, and this life of the Spirit rose out of his daily

^Harry Levin, The Power of Blackness; Hawthorne, Poe, Melville (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 20.

18 Wagenknecht, p. 201. 168

and habitual existence, or flowed through It like a hidden stream, and did not merge with the tide of the hours as they passed.

Blair summarizes Hawthorne’s contribution to religious allegory in Amer­

ica:

Like Hawthorne, Melville was concerned with the darker side of human fate. Both insisted upon the reality of evil in the world; both were skeptical of the optimism of Emerson and his benevolent theory of the Universe; both presented the tragedies of the mind and soul. Hawthorne agreed with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, where man is re­ presented as going through life weighed down by a burden of sin.20

Teaching applications should include a comparison of Emerson with

Hawthorne and Melville. Emerson presented a metaphysic that was dis­

tinctly man-oriented and believed that man was closer to God than he was to the animals. As Emerson was optimistic about man's condition in the world and felt that he was able to overcome the obstacles placed in his path by life, so Hawthorne and Melville were pessimistic in that they

felt the oppressive power of the "bent to sin" and both often scrutinized the blackness of the human heart, realized the truth that there is a

great deal of good and evil in the breast of each man. Both authors wrote

in fear that the evil force would gain supremacy and illustrated in their writings what happens to man when this happens. What optimism they

shared was found in the reverse of this event: When good transcends, then man is capable of knowing, as Emerson had written, the bit of God that is

^George E. Woodberry, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston: Houghton Miff- Hifflin and Company, 1902), p. 98. 20 Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 89. 169 within each man.

Additional questions such as the following might be discussed: Why

is the veil so horrible to the people? In what way is "Rappaccini's

Daughter" a retelling of the Garden of Eden story? What is the student's

understanding of the Unpardonable Sin? Is the same Unpardonable Sin com­

mitted in "Ethan Brand" and in The Scarlet Letter? After reading these

selections by Hawthorne, the student should be able to discern the Puri­

tan concept of the nature of sin blended with the more modern devices of

the story teller's art. Also by reading these selections, the student

should be able to explore his own concepts of the nature of sin and de­

monstrate how far removed these concepts are from the Puritan. Do Em­

erson and Thoreau concern thenselves with the nature of sin in man or

do their concerns deal only with the positive side of man's existence?

And finally, what elements of the Gothic romance are found in these se­

lections by Hawthorne, and what effect do these Gothic elements have on

one's understanding of the religious voice in his works?

Just as he wrote in his "Hawthorne and his liosses" that it was

"that blackness" in Hawthorne that so fixed and fascinated him, Melville

himself was fascinated by the blackness of mankind that he saw wherever

he looked. His earliest experiences in life were those that fed his

ideas of the innate depravity in man: the horrors of whaling, the cruel­

ties of naval life, the suffering of mankind, and the corruption of

government. Yes, he had experienced the blackness of mankind, and evil

was a reality to him. 170 21 In Melville's classic work, Hoby Dick, man is presented by the monomaniacal Captain Ahab, \/ho, like Ethan Brand, Alymer, Chillingworth, and Rappaccini, was obsessed by one compelling desire. Ahab's desire to rid himself of the supernatural white whale caused his destruction for he refused to recognize the Biblical truth that "Vengeance is mine; 1 22 will repay saith the Lord." Ahab ignored all pleas, suggestions, and even common sense to pursue his sole object of avenging his lost leg on the giant brute whale. Stewart writes: "The story perhaps represents man's hopeless but heroic attempt to search out the inscrutable, to know the unknowable; the tragedy of man becomes the tragedy of his lim- 23 ited comprehension." If this be so, then iloby Dick is comparable in theme to the writings of Hawthorne. The tragedy results when each man forgets his limitations and begins to think that he can know all, and

Ahab's tragedy comes when he refuses to listen to his fellow officers and pursues the whale with the one thought of his destruction in revenge for the damage done to his leg. Unknown to Ahab, the whale, Moby Dick, had damaged not only his physical body, but his psychic body as well.

iloby Dick had become a legend and had been seen by many seamen; the gothic whale was reported as having destroyed ships that had tried to

21 Herman Melville, aoby Dick (New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1948). /JL1 quotations are from this edition.

^Romans 12:19. 23 Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 90. 171 capture him. Ahab desired to capture and kill this whale that had out­ witted all its pursuers. He began to hate the whale because it seemed to be invincible. Just as in the writings of Hawthorne, tragedy struck when man began to desire more knowledge, power, or pride than man is capable of having normally. Man's ability to gain new knowledge seems to be unlimited; yet, the same man who has gained great knowledge does not seem to be able to detect when he has gone too far, and it is from this lack of comprehension of this fact that results in death. Moby

Dick is a story of whaling, its pleasures, fears, and anxieties. It is a story of a pursuit of the whale that goes beyond the normal pursuit;

Captain Ahab calls upon the power of lightening and blackness and pre­ pares supernatural devices to aid him in the pursuit. On the surface, the novel is an adventure story of the men on the whaling ship, the Pe- quod, as they search for whales. Symbolically, the story takes on much more and is open to many interpretations. The whale is white, the color of purity and goodness; yet, he becomes a supernatural object in the

Gothic tradition, and the white whale becomes the horror of the deep — a super-sized malignant intellect. Captain Ahab says:

He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is what I hate.

The inscrutable is to remain so the climax of the novel indicates. Ish- mael, the book's narrator, tells the reader that Ahab was "intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge." Hate and the desire for revenge combine in the breast of Captain Ahab to form a concern that 172 must be expurgated to achieve satisfaction, and that, only In death.

William Gleim calls Iloby Pick a parable as it "describes something that might actually happen, and it conveys a hidden spiritual meaning which is parallel in sense with the obvious meaning, ..." and contains "con­ cealed allusions to Biblical teachings.The white whale is the uni­ verse with all its hidden meanings, a mystery, a malevalent principle.

By his very use of the large store of knowledge of whaling and cetology,

Melville gives realism to the actual world into which he diffuses his beliefs of the evil of nature. To the Captain Ahab and to the men on the

Pequod, Moby Dick is a supernatural evil force that is actively planning their destruction just as reported accounts have indicated that he had maliciously destroyed other ships and men. It would be an exciting ex­ perience for the student to compare the actual world presented by Moby

Dick and the supernatural world that Melville weaves into the novel. It would also be a rewarding experience to look at the references to evil in the universe found in the book; and trace how Ahab believes the evil to be personified in Moby Dick and is unable to recognize anything that he himself does as being evil. He is unable to comprehend that what he is doing and plans to do is outside the Biblical standard for man. Also, it would be profitable for the student to look at the references to na­ ture and try to determine if nature is an innocent bystander or if she

24william S. Gleim, The Meaning of Iloby Dick (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962, 1933), pp. 15, 9. 173 is a malignant force. Also, as Gleim puts it, is the primitive or na­ tural religion as represented by Queequeg superior to the Christian faith? And, is Moby Dick a parable of the "elusiveness of the meaning of life"?25 is tiie story, as Newton Arvin calls it, "a conflict between the human wishes and nonhuman forces, a desire to comprehend the meaning of nature and the destiny of man"?^ Is Iloby Dick a microcosm of man's rationality joined with the more primitive beliefs of the supernatural forces rampant in the world? How do the writings of Herman Melville "re­ present the struggle of man against his destiny at various levels of ex­ perience"?^ And finally, what is the meaning of Father llapple's sermon on Jonah and the Whale, and what does it tell the reader about the mean­ ing of Iloby Dick? Is Father Mapple saying, as Randall Stewart suggests, that the "hardness of obeying God ...consists in disobeying ourselves"?28

Another fascinating story is "Bartleby the Scrivener," part of the

Piazza Tales^ collection (1859). This story grows on the reader just as Bartleby and his conflict with life grows on the sensibility of the

^-*Gleim, pp. 58, 81.

^Newton Arvin, Herman Melville (Clifton, N.J.: William Sloane Associates, 1950), p. 185.

^Bradley, Beatty and Long, p. 909.

^Randall Stewart, p. 98.

Herman Melville, Great Short Works ed. by Warner Berthoff (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1969). All references to Melville’s short works are from this edition. 174 lawyer who employs him and i3 the narrator of the story. The lawyer moves from having the conviction at the beginning of the story that

"the easiest way of life is the best," to the acceptance of Bartleby's

"I would prefer not" toward the end of the short work, to the conclusion that Bartleby slept "with kings and counselors" as he lay dead in the prison yard. His "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Bartleby!" universalizes the ex­ perience narrated by the elderly lawyer who considered himself "an emi­ nently safe man." Bartleby's passive resistance seems very modern as the events in the twentieth century have borne out. The narrator tells the reader that "Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance." The story traces this aggravation felt by the narrator to the final acceptance of Bartleby and his code, an act of charity such as described by the New Testament.

Much has been made of the autobiographical nature of Melville's works. It seems that it would be wise to discuss the "autobiographical fault" here and to point out that all creative work begins in autobio­ graphy but ends in the fictionalization of those beginnings. There seems to be a great number of apparent parallels in the lives of Melville and Bartleby. Yet, it must be pointed out that making one-to-one rela­ tionships in the life of Melville and in the fictional life of Bartleby would be a dangerous exercise; recognizing the similarities and their fictional limitations would aid the student on his way to becoming a mature reader.

A third selection from Melville's short works is "The Encantadas or 175

Enchanted Isles." The Galapagos Islands 600 miles off the west coast of

South America contain strange barren rock formations. These ten sketches appeared first in Putnam's magazine (karch, April, and .lay, 1354) before printed as a unit in The Piazza Tales, Helville writes in "Sketch First":

Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an outside city lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and the vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct volcanoes than of Isles; looking much as the world at large might, after a penal con­ flagration.

The epigraph introducing this sketch and the description given by the author leaves the reader with the feeling that these Enchanted Isles are places that men go when life provides them with some particularly diff- cult situation for this is "evilly enchanted ground." "Sketch Second" describes "two sides of a tortoise" as both "black and bright" suggest­ ing that there is a bright side even to these terrible cinder-piled is­ lands. The reader gets the feeling that ;’.elville is not just describing the tortoise but is also describing mankind when he writes:

That these tortoises are victims of a penal, or malignant, or perhaps a downright diabolical enchanter, seems in nothing more likely than in that strange infatuation of hope­ less toil which so often possesses them .... Their crown­ ing curse is their drudging impulse to straightforwardness in a belittered world.

"Sketch Third" describes hock kodondo, which resembles a ship in full sail; "Its birdlime gleams in the golden rays of the sun like the white­ wash of a tall lighthouse, or the lofty sails of a cruiser." Describing the fish of kodondo, he once again sounds like he is writing about hu­ man beings: "Poor fish of kodondo! in your victimized confidence, you 176

are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature." "Sketch Fourth" presents "A Pisgah View from

the Rock." "Sketch Fifth" describes the enchanted ship, "The Frigate,

and Ship Fly-away." In "Sketch Sixth" Melville describes "Barrington

Isle and the Buccaneers" in which speaks the author of the Buccaneers:

Could it be possible, that they robbed and murdered one day, reveled the next, and rested themselves by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets, and seatbuilders on the third? Not very probable, after all. For consider the vacillations of a man. Still, strange as it may seem, I must also abide by the more charitable thoughts; namely, that among those adven­ turers were some gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable of genuine tranquility and virtue.

"Sketch Seventh" describes the battle between the lawless mariners and the dog-king of Charles's Isle. The author states that "The history of the king of Charles's Island furnishes another illustration of the dif­

ficulty of colonizing barren islands with unprincipled pilgrims."

"Sketch Eighth" relates the story of the "Norfolk Isle and the Chala Wi­

dow." The party of three — two men and a woman — landed on Norfolk

Isle to try out tortoise oil which was highly valued in those days. The

French captain had promised to return for liunilla, her husband Felip, and

her brother Truxill. But Melville writes the truth of the situation:

The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths; but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle earth but un­ kept promises of joy.

Seven weeks went by and after a successful hunt and trying out of much

oil, the two men fashioned a catamaran and sought to try their luck at

fishing along a reef half a mile from shore. Disaster struck as the 177

flimsy craft broke apart and Hunilla watched from her shore-secured bower:

Death in a silent picture; a dream of the eye; such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.

Her husband's body was washed to shore, but she found only her brother's hat. Her husband, "lock-jawed in grim death," arm outstretched, "clasped his bride, true to her even in death's dream." Universalizing the exper­

ience, the author writes what appears to be another statement on the im­ personal evil of ?!ature:

Ah, Heaven, when man thus keeps his faith, wilt Thou be faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot break faith who never plighted it.

Hunilla, in her consecrated search for her brother's body, was lost en­

tirely as "time was her labyrinth." Long-last, the narrator and his ship­ mate spy her signalling to them from a lofty island promitory. The auth­

or writes of her enduring quality:

To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary, that pain in other beings, though love and sympathy made her own, was unre- piningly to be borne. A heart of yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from the sky.

Melville is suggesting, possibly, that all men must suffer to mature.

"Sketch ’■Jinth" traces the career of the Hermit Oberlus on Hood's Isle,

and European creature "bringing into this savage region qualities more

diabolical than are to be found among any of the surrounding cannibals."

Oberlus seems to be a male counterpart to Hunilla, but he lacks the noble

qualities of the tortoise that she possessed. He reverts to an animal

existence and becomes as someone has said, "Ahab without the grand 178

vision." Melville writes:

. . . that selfish ambition, or the love of rule for its own sake, far from being the peculiar infirmity of noble minds, is shared by beings which have no mind at all. 'Jo creatures are so selfishly tyrannical as some brutes; as any one who has observed the tenants of the pasture must occasionally have observed.

Suffering not wisely applied to man's character produces a brute. The

Enchanted Isles "become the voluntary tarrying place of all sorts of re­

fugees; some of whom too sadly experience the fact, that flight from ty­

ranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home."

"Sketch Tenth" discusses the runaways, castaways, solitaries, hermitages

rotted away by the years, and grave-stones or boards describing the death

of some lonely island passenger. With all the desolation, horror, and

descriptions of the uncivilized elements to be found on the Enchanted

Isles, Melville concludes these sketches with a humorous, yet sober poem

depicting the nature of man as a journeying pilgrim on the face of bare

Mother Earth here in the Enchanted Isles or some other more hospitable

spot:

Oh, Brother Jack, as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. Just so game, and just so gay, But now, alack, they've stopped my pay. ”o more I peep out of my blinkers, Here I be — tucked in with clinkers.

Here, in these inaginary and surrealistic aspects blended with the real

and exotic, Melville attempts to present a deeper realization of reality,

an allegoried vision of the nature of the universe with no apparent sense of order and no natural succession of events. As TJarner Berthoff puts it, 179

Melville,

fills out time, covenanting with his readers to compel time's successions closer to that ideal "fullness" in which the life we inherit and the life we imagine are not hopelessly out of joint. 5-■ and that

One may say, risking misunderstanding, that the con­ spiracy of fiction is thus, ideally, a religious con­ spiracy: i.e., a ritual enterprise for the binding to­ gether of minds and souls in space (otherwise divided and uncivil) and in time (otherwise fractured and un- historical).

Thus, Melville was attempting to bind together "minds and souls in space," to illustrate a universal truth of life that all men undergo certain sim­ ilar experiences and that it is man's reaction to these experiences that make men what they are or are not. Melville seems to face life with a humor that is part of man's desperate attempt to hold on to the world and make some sense of the disorder it presents:

Melville's humor is inseparable from the imaginative in­ telligence supporting his gravest undertakings in fiction. The impressions of life and destiny it delivers are not ma­ terially different from what emerges in those works of his, like "3enito Cereno" and Billy Budd, where comic extravagance is subordinated almost completely to wit of another kind, the wit of moral and psychological understanding and of gained narrative sequence which tragic action even more exactingly requires of the writer who attempts it. It is on this ground, among the intense images of spiritual passion and change given to us in Melville's most nurelv original tales, that we most feel his greatness as a writer, and that his work seems finally to surpass in power and truth even so masterful a humorist as Dickens, from whom

3°Warner Berthoff, "Introduction" in Great Short Uorks of Herman Melville (Dev/ York: harper and Mow, Publishers, 197D), p. 12. 31 Berthoff, note, p. 12. 180

in the 1840's and *50's Uelville (like Dostoievsky) learned many excellent lessons.32

If Melville had been showing his readers the incongruities of human na­ ture in man's reactions to the vicissitudes of life in his short tales, then in Billy Budd he most clearly comes to a statement of acceptance of the evil that overcomes the most tenacious of individuals. Billy Budd called an "inside narrative" by its author, traces the short but explo­ sive history of three of Melville's outstanding characters. Billy, fore- topman, the young, handsome hero dressed in the white of his innocence, represents the good in the world— an almost Christ-like goodness. Captain

Edward Vere, truth personified, noble in nature, keeper of the rules, is nan confronted with good and evil in the world. John Claggart, master-at- arns, dark and at the sane time with a pallor of complexion that "seemed to hint of something defective or abnormal in the constitution and blood," an experienced representative of the cosmic forces of evil, was born with

"a depravity according to nature." Claggart's envious passion toward the peacemaker Billy Budd sets the stage for the evil to work itself to a fever pitch— his monomania, like that of Hawthorne's characters and like that of Ahab, provides tne fuel for the climax.

Claggart accuses Billy of planning a mutiny. Vere calls Billy in to his cabin and has Claggart accuse Billy to his face. Billy is so stunned by the accusation that he is unable to speak as lie is seized by a fit of stuttering. Suddenly Billy strikes Claggart a death blow on

^Berthoff, p. 14. 181 the forehead, and Claggart ''fell over lengthwise, like a heavy plank tilted from erectness." Vere who has a fatherly interest in the boy nevertheless calls for a drunhead court and feels that although Claggart was "struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!" Vere keeps the rules of the game and to preserve naval authority, he must see to

Billy's trial and punishment. Evil is in the world touching the lives of men, and how men react to that evil is what determine the outcome of life according to Melville. This seems to look forward to Hemingway and his philosophy of playing the game well. Billy has played the game well and continues to do so until the very end. Billy is hanged from the main- yard and the scene contains elements of the supernatural. Like Christ's

"Forgive them for they know not what they do," Billy cries, "God bless

Captain Vere," and as at the signal to hang Billy,

. . . the vapory fleece hanging low in the East was shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy as­ cended ; and, as ascending, took the full rose of the dawn.

The spar from which Billy was suspended was to the men on the ship "a piece of the Cross." The story concludes with the poem, "Billy in the

Barbies," that seems to indicate that although Billy was hanged and his body buried at sea, the men felt that he had lain down to a time of rest and peaceful sleep; Melville seems to have come to some understanding of the nature of evil in the world. Bradley writes:

Billy Budd, .:elville's testament of reconciliation, provides a clarifying contrast with the novels of the earlier period, with the young novelist's heartbreaking rebellion against the over­ whelming capacity for evil in man and the universe, and the inescapable doom, as in ioby hick, of those who pit themselves 182 against the implacable Leviathan. In Billy Buddthe author is at least reconciled to the enigma that innocence must suffer because others represent the "depravity according to nature."33

Innocence must suffer in this world as the capacity for evil in man's

heart is as great as his capacity for good. As Emerson had indicated,

Cod can be within the heart of man as he directly relates to the Over-

Soul; but the churches in the fundamentalist's tradition teach that the

capacity will be filled with either evil or goodness— it does not long

remain empty. Billy Budd was filled with adolescent innocence and seemed

unaware of the evil side of man's nature while Claggart was unaware seem­

ingly that he was full of evil intentions toward Billy, the more so as

lie reacted negatively to the innocence that shown out of Billy. Man sins when iie is unaware of the two sides of man's nature, or when he is un­ willing to let life be what it will. Each of the characters described

in this chapter seemed to share this fault. William Tindall, in discuss-

ing Billy Budd, calls the subject of the story "a quandary or what Mel­

ville calls 'the intricacies involved in the question of moral responsi­

bility.'" The quandary or conflict in the mind of Captain Vere "is between

the balanced claims of justice and equity, order and confusion, lav; and

grace, reason and feeling, or, as Melville puts it, 'military duty' and 3 / 'moral scruple.'"

It would be good for the student to discuss the Biblical allusions

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. yyO.

■^William York Tindall, "The Ceremony of Innocence" in Great moral dilemmas in Literature, Past and Present (Mew York; Cooper Square Pub­ lishers, Inc., 1964), p. 74. 133 found in Billy Budd. Tindall lists the following:

Billy -• Adan and Jesus Billy's innocence - Adam's before the Fall Billy's title as "peaccnaker,: - implies the Beatitudes Billy's death - Crucifixion and Ascension Vere - Abraham, sacrificing Isaac Claggart -- false witnesses, Serpent of Eden, /manias woes Melville allow for an "out" of the dilemma in wnicli man finds him­ self or is Perry Miller's statement true that ". . . . neither in Iloby hick nor in Pierre is there any 'escape' or 'retreat' into Christianity"?

Also, what does Miller mean by his statement "In Pierre explicitly (in hoby Ulclc implicitly), the issue lies not between heaven and hell but between country and city"?^ ililler quotes a new definition of sin; "Sin is when a man trifles with himself, and is untrue to his own constitu- 36 tion." What does .iiller suggest by this statement? What is meant by the following statement by TeSelle:

Moby Dick is a cosmological novel with a vengeance: it raises the question of the why of things; it is concerned with appearance and reality; it is symbolic representation of man's search for absolute knowledge.

Yes, it was the blackness in Hawthorne that so fascinated Ilelville, and it is that blackness in Melville that so intrigues the modern day reader, ilelville wrestled with the confusion in his own mind and from the exper­ iences he had early in life so that he could leave with his readers his belief of the nature of evil in the world. Today the student can read

35Perry .Iiller, "Melville and Transcendentalism" in Nature's Hation, pp. 194, 195. ------

^Miller, p. 284. ■^TeSelle, p. 178. 184 the works of one of America’s outstanding authors and conclude that each man must work out his own life in a universe that offers good as well as evil for his choosing. Melville looked at life through duel lens of good and evil with a keen sense of the enduring quality of man as did

Henry James, Melville's mantle bearer.

Henry Janes (1843-1916) spent most of his life visiting England,

Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and later, after settling in Lon­ don, America. Chiefly noted for his international novels, he explored the themes of innocence and knowledge such as interested Melville, the

American initiate in suave European cities and homes, and in psychologi­ cal processes:

James was perhaps the first novelist to recognize fully the complexities which may grow out of the relationship of the sensitive person to another, and to record them with fine distinction and microscopic detail.^

In The Portrait of a Lady (1881),39 James follows the career of Is­ abel Archer, the American innocent, to the book's conclusion as the wife of a "collector." For her husband, Isabel becomes just another object d' art in the facade that he has gathered about himself. Isabel is hard­ ly aware that men can be evil even as Christopher Newman in The American

(1877) is unaware:

Portrait of a Lady records Isabel's steady weaning, then

^^Blair, Hornberger, and Stewart, p. 299.

^^Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956). All references will be to this edition. 135

from reading books to being wholly alive, from the solitude of intellectualism to the free individuality of an aristocratic self-realization.^0

It isn't until Isabel marries Gilbert Osmond that she realizes her true condition and strives to make the most of what could become a tragic situation. Her marriage becomes for her an open door to see life as it actually is, and not what she thought it was while reading books in her father's study. Her desire for perfection in the man she was to marry and her inexperience drives her to reject the direct honesty of the mas­ culine offers she receives but forces her to accept the false and endure the corrupt symbols of a corrupt society represented by Osmond. She sees perfection in the imperfect because she desires to see what she wills. Desiring freedom and independence coupled with the lack of self- discipline, she uses the freedom given to her by her father's will and by Ralph's money to become entrapped in the limitations imposed on her by a carefully restrictive marriage.

The male counterpart of Isabel Archer is Christopher Newman of

The American,^ Henry James' alter-ego. Newman is a self-made man with an exaggerated attitude toward women. His devotion to the idea of mo­

ther and womanhood requires an innocent, Claire de Bellegarde. Newman

is taken in by his idea and seems not to possess any practical sense.

^^John Rodenbeck, "The Bolted Door in James' Portrait of a Lady" in Modern Fiction Studies (Vol. 10, No. 4), pp. 330-331.

^Henry James, The American (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Win­ ston, 1949). All references will be from this edition. 186

The democratic instinct of a Newman would never come to be happy with the standards, forms, and ceremonies of the French. Somehow, he is un­ able to recognize this fact. As forms are tended to express underlying feelings or virtues, the novel presents the de Bellegarde family with the forms but without the underlying virtues clashing headlong with the

American, Newton, who has the virtues but not the forms. James presents the manners in this story as a club that is used to beat those that don't have the underlying virtues of birth and position. The static society of the de Bellegardes cannot abide the fluid society represented by the

Newmans of the world. That evil is present in the novels of James but in a more subtle manner than those of Melville is readily apparent to the careful reader. There are no violent scenes of death nor are there overt explosions of evil; the evil is quiet and unobtrusive but just as deadening.

Another type of writing by James was the Gothic short story repre­ sented by "The Beast in the Jungle" (1901) and "The Jolly Corner" (1908).

As his famous supernatural story, The Turn of the Screw (1S98), depicts the "pathological effects of an evil influence from the past upon the in- / 9 nocence of the children," so the two short stories above deal with the effects of a psychological idea on the minds and lives of the leading men characters. John Marcher spends his entire life possessed with the "con­ viction, lodged in his brain, part and parcel of his imagination from

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 587. 187

far back, that experience would be marked for him, and whether for good or ill, by some rare distinction, some incalculable violence or unprece­ dented stroke.llarcher is so convinced of this experience to come that he goes through life avoiding all experiences waiting for that one special event. As a result, he becomes the mein that has the rare dis­ tinction of having nothing happen to him even to the point of losing by death the only woman that loved him. The symbolic "beast" in the story's title springs within his breast when he makes that discovery.

"The Jolly Corner" has a similar theme as Spencer Brydon returns to his home after spending thirty-three years in Europe. Fascinated by the thought of what he would have become if he had stayed in New York, Spen­ cer attempts to discover "his other self" in his night-time explorations of his old family home "The Jolly Corner." The elements of the Gothic mansion, the empty echoing rooms, and the doors that close by themselves, are vividly present as Spencer becomes increasingly fearful and finally faints, and falls down part of a flight of stairs. He comes to with his head pillowed in the lap of Alice Staverton. In contrast to John llarcher,

Spencer Brydon has the sense to hold on to life and enjoy what he has left and to forget about his other self. James is concerned with much of the same problems as were Hawthorne and Melville. Yet his concern with sin was with the subtle effects of sin in the breast of the non­ violent man or woman; the sin was there but not openly displayed as in a Chillingworth or an Ahab.

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long , p. 763. Quoted from Preface of New York edition of James' collected works. PART III RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES IN

MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Science and the scientific method were making vast changes in the

thinking of man. The idea that man was thought of previously as the

special creation of God was now being questioned. Geology was developing

its theories of the antiquity of the earth with new methods of reading

the ages of the rock formations. Darwin and his The Origin of the Species

(1859) traced the development of man and animal from simpler to more com­ plex forms. Astronomy was developing its ideas of the vast size of the universe with Earth becoming only one planet out of the many possible planets and the infinite number of solar systems apparently out in space.

Man, as well as the other animals, was felt to be determined by accidents of heredity, environment, and natural selection. These new findings were

the bases for what many considered to be a conflict between science and religion. Literature attempted to depict life and what it could possibly mean. Modern American literature was a blend of what went before this time and was to include elements of romanticism, realism, and naturalism.

Local color, the moral novel, muck-racking, historical romance, and the sentimental romance all have a part in modern literature in differing degrees. As the twentieth century began, the novel and story of social problems became dominent with the novel becoming more psychological and 189 socialistic. While these changes were occurring, the nature of reli­ gious thought was undergoing additional alterations.

Nineteenth century liberal Protestant thought engendered a respect for science and the scientific method, a tentativeness or scepticism, an emphasis upon the principle of continuity, and a confidence in man and his future. The essence of religion common to all religions was the feeling of being absolutely dependent on God. These was a duality of consciousness— a consciousness of sin and the consciousness of grace.

To Hordern, Liberalism was an attempt to modernize Christian theology as

"all beliefs must pass the bar of reason and experience."^- There was a rational structure to the world apart from man's mind, and all reality was a manifestation of a divine mind according to the "absolute idealism" of Josiah Noyce. "The world was inherently rational and reason was 2 slowly overcoming the irrational."

Sociologists argued that man was a product of his environment; what he was was determined by the society within which he lived. New scienti­ fic discoveries in biology urged the belief that man was the sum of his physiological make-up. On the other hand, psychologists argued that man was the product of his physical make-up and the total sum of his psycho­ logical reactions to stimuli. These new scientific beliefs resulted in further shifts in the religious beliefs in America.

■^Hordern, p. 84.

2Ibid., p. 85-86. 190

Rooted in Christian tradition were the following four principles:

(1) authority of Christian experience, (2) centrality of Jesus Christ,

(3) criticism of the tradition from within, and (4) social idealism.-*

As a result of these four principles, certain changes were occurring in religious thinking: (1) the immanence of God became God dwelling in the world and working through nature (pantheism), and (2) God transcen­ dent became the reality of God apart from the world (deism). To this was added the humanity of Christ, the dignity of man or the sacredness of personality, and the belief that the nature of religious authority was inward and subjective aided by reason, conscience, and intuition. On the other hand the Fundamentalist movement reacted and reasserted the be­ lief that God acts by supernatural intervention in nature which was a re­ turn to seventeenth century Puritan thought. The movement reasserted be­ lief in the virgin birth of Christ; the deity of Christ, complete and infallible, shown in divine knowledge, miracles, and moral perfection; the physical resurrection and return of Christ in the flesh to judge the world; and the doctrine of the atonement.^ The liberals were humanizing

God or ascribing to God the spiritual characteristics which were con­ sidered good in man. This resulted in the following trends in liberalism:

(1) the humanists, following naturalistic thinking, denied the existence

^Dillenberger and Welch, p. 228.

4Ibid., p. 228. 191 of God, immortality, and the supernatural in general; (2) they embraced

the scientific method, the personalist philosophy, and an empirical phil­

osophy of religion; (3) and exerted an evangelical liberalism. Into

this complicated world came the sound of many voices. On the one hand were the voices of men striving to keep a sense of God alive within man while on the other hand were the voices thundering out of the belief

that God did not exist. While the country was expanding from coast to

coast, new natural resources were being discovered, and new inventions

exploited, the literature was beginning to experience the power of this expansion. Walt Whitman in his Leaves of Grass expounded on the beauty

of the human body and sang the beauty of democracy within the Emersonian

concept of intuitive knowledge of transcendentalism blended with a psy­

chological realism. Emily Dickinson in her romantic manner questioned belief in God and yet expressed a profound faith as did Sidney Lanier.

Complicating further the religious voice in America, the voices of real­

ism and naturalism were beginning to be heard in the land.

Gradually realistic objective forms in science began to spill over

into the literature. The realistic writer tried to present actuality as

he perceived it as objectively as possible using "infinite detail, honest­

ly and truthfully interpreting life," and as much as he possibly could,

to avoid subjective writing and including his own personal prejudices.^

^Uordern, pp. 96-97. 6'fhrall and Hibbard, A Handbook to Literature (New York: The Ody­ ssey Press, 1936), p. 357. 192

Naturalism, on the other hand, was distinguished by an "emphasized realism and calculated to present actuality, a detached, scientific ob­ jectivity, a wide inclusiveness of details, a freedom of subject matter, and a treatment of the natural man in any or all his strengths and weak­ nesses. The writing of naturalism leaves the impression that the world is a place of chaos. "The naturalistic writer is scientific, de­

tached, impersonal; the realist is kindly even while he is stem; the

romantic, like Pippa, knows in his palpitating heart that all's right

O with the world." Modern American literature is a combination of all

types of writing. Elements of naturalism may be found in the writings

of Samuel Longhome Clemens, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser. The voice of modern man may be heard in the writings of Ernest Hemingway,

F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Updike, Ralph Ellison, and

Nathanael West. The voices of man in the twentieth century became a

cacophony.

^Thrall and Hibbard, A Handbook to Literature, (Mew York; The Odyssey Press, 1936), p. 267.

^Ibid., p. 268. CHAPTER VI

THE VOICE OF NATURALISM

Samuel Longhorne Clemens (1835-1910) spoke out of the regionlsts

tradition of the comic journalists. Like Bret Hart, Twain's works spoke

to Americans from the lives of ordinary people preparing the way for

later works that depicted the lives of ordinary people under the sway

of environment and the "growing spirit of naturalistic and sociological

determinism.William Dean Howells was to call Twain "The Lincoln of

our literature."

From his two masterpieces that are considered to be world classics,

Tom Sawyer (1376) and Huckleberry Finn (1835), grew his fame as the great

American humorist. These two accounts of a boy's life on the Mississippi

River near Hannibal, Missouri, record for Twain's readers the by-gone days of childhood. The nostalgic account of boyhood is wrapped around a highly critican attitude toward the puritanical upbringing the boys had

and to the social and moral climate of the day. If Twain had a great

love for his age, he had the ability to view that age with "qualified

affection while satirizing the economic and spiritual disorders, the

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 8.

193 194 narrow Insularity of mid-nineteenth-century America.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn^ describes the life of Iluck

Finn and his friend, the Negro slave Jim, in a series of episodes as they travel down the great llississippi River. Bradley summarizes

Twain's Huckleberry Finn:

Twain's novel is, as Fielding called his early work, a "comic epic in prose"; comic, because it employs great strokes of wit and humor— and the scourge of laughter— to attack the evils of mankind and the con­ sequent sins of society; epic, because its moving force, the great River, is also a stream in time and in history, bearing its raft of argonauts to various shores where life the relics, wrecks, and hopes of a civilization in transition. ^

Huck's views on prayer give the reader insight into his realistic nature.

He tried prayer but concluded "there ain't nothing in it." He had gone out to the woods and prayed a long time for some fish hooks, but it didn't work for him as he was "so ignorant and so kind of low-down and ornery." After killing a wild pig and pretending that he himself had been killed, Huck hid out on Jackson's Island. Noticing that the people were on the ferry-boat shooting off the cannon and throwing bread with a mercury filling on the water, he watched as a loaf of "quality" bread floated up to him. It was the belief in those days that bread cast on

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 195.

■^Hark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ed. by Bradley, Beatty, and Long. (New York; W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1962). All references are from this edition.

•^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 267. 195 the water would float to the body that the gun shots had raised. Huck concluded from this experience that "the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it."

Prayer worked for some people but lluck concluded it wouldn't for him, for it worked for "only just the right kind." Later in the book Huck saves

Jim from some men looking for runaway slaves by pretending his family has smallpox and this scares the hunters away. Huck comes from that ex­ perience saying:

. . . and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show ....

Huck knows it's wrong not to give Jim up, but concludes he would feel bad either way. Later in the novel he writes a note to Miss Watson about her runaway nigger Jim. He felt good about doing the right thing.

But after considering the problem and how much he liked Jim, Huck de­ cides not to send the letter and to go to hell instead. In this work,

Mark Twain illustrates his belief in man's determining his own future and not having it completely determined by sociological and psychological forces at work in his environment and heredity. Huck would do whatever was necessary to do to keep Jim free. Twain makes this statement on the evils of slavery with force by illustrating what the slave trade does to both the slave and the owners and what it does to the society as a whole.

The Shepherdson-Grangerford feud illustrates well Twain's thought that religion was just show and did not have value during the trials of life. Both families attend church, go through the forms of worship, and 196 take their guns along. They either "kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall." Huck says:

It was pretty ornery preaching— all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

It was a rough Sunday, for after dinner *iiss Sophia Grangerford and Harney

Shepherdson run off to get married. The feud flares up again in a deadly manner; the young boy, Buck, is killed and Huck cries, probably the only time in the novel, because he was "so sick" from all the killing.

The next episode presents the frauds, the Duke and Dauphin, as they use religion to hide behind as they attempt to rob the Wilks girls of their inheritance. The scoundrels perform a revival feat to earn some money, and later pretend to be the Wilkses relative to gain the confidence of the Wilks girls. The description of the funeral director is typical of Twain's critical humor:

When the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softly soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all shipshape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passage-ways, and done it all with nods, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

Huck's account of Peter Wilks funeral continues Twain's criticism of the customs of the day. "They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick nne .... pretty skreaky and colicky . . . and Peter was the only one that had a 197 good thing . . . The dog fighting a rat in the basement interrupted the funeral sermon, and Huck makes this event appear to the assembled group the most interesting part of the funeral. Evil is thwarted and right triumphs as Huck saves the money, and the Duke and Dauphin are run out of town on a rail. Huck feels the burden of man's inhumanity to man even here as the two frauds get the tar and feathers that were coming to them; he expresses his sorrow at their mistreatment.

Huck continues throughout the book to be the realist as he attempts to solve the problems of life. Twain uses Huck as his narrator to express the ridiculous levels to which man will go to achieve something he wants; it is the romantic Tom that is injured in the final episode of the book.

Huck concludes:

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize ire and I can't stand it. 1 been there before.

Huck, Twain's spokesman, is unhappy with the human race and feels he can be happier alone out in the uncivilized wilderness; at least, he would take his chances there. Civilization means a religion of sorts, and lluck has had enough of that.

Twain's indictment on the human race becomes more severe as he gets older. The tragic events in his own life provide the empathy for his conclusion that life is a bad joke. His later writings do not have the humorous edge to them. The short story, "The Han that Corrupted Hadley- 198 13 burg," Illustrates man's essential evil nature. The town was convinced of its honesty and uprightness: "It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions." It taught honesty to its young and was known to be incor­

ruptible. Something happens to Hadleyburg;

But at last, in the drift of time, Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend a passing stranger— possibly without knowing it, certainly without caring, for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared not a rap for strangers or their opinions.

Hadleyburg had sinned, as Twain illustrates, by being egocentric and self- satisfied illustrated by Biblical truths. To test and try the town, the stranger provides a false sack of gold with instructions on how the owner of the sack is to be found. He pretends to have been aided by a member of the town, and it is to this benefactor that the gold is to be deliv­ ered. nineteen select men of the city succomb to the lure of the great wealth hidden in the sack. Twain illustrates that the honesty and the uprightness of the town is only surface, but in reality, the town was mean, hard, and stingy. The town, recognizing that life itself was a temptation changed the town motto from "Lead us not into temptation" to

"Lead us into temptation" so that future generations would be able to handle temptation when it came their way as surely it would at one time or another. The religious values seem not to have much force in the

■^iark Twain, "The ilan that Corrupted Hadleyburg" in The American Tradition in Literature 3rd ed., Vol. II, ed. by Bradley, Beatty, and Long (New York: W.V7. Norton and Company, Inc., 1967). All references are from this edition. 199 daily life of Hadleyburg.

Letters from the Karth^ further illustrates Twain's belief in the depraved nature of man. Satan is banished for a celestian day from heaven to Earth. In a letter to the angels St. Michael and St. Gabriel,

Satan writes:

Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel, at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God."

Satan goes on to explain how man feels that he is God's pet, how God ad­ mires , how man prays to God and God listens— "a quaint idea"— Twain writes, and how he thinks he is going to heaven. Twain goes on to explore each idea man has about himself, heaven, and God and sarcastically explodes each idea as being "man-made." He discusses the Christian religion, the Bible, Creation, the Moral Sense, Noah and the Ark, the nature of disease, man's temperament, sex, and war. The Letters conclude with a comparison of the "Merciful God" and his words to destroy all the nations around about the Israelite nation.

For the student raised in a religious environment as the majority of the students in a church-related or church controlled college would be, reading Letters from the Earth would be a disturbing and unsettling exper­ ience. After discussing Twain's use of the incongruities in his story-

•^Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth ed. by Bernard DeVoto (Green­ wich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1962). All references are from this edition. 200

telling, the student should be able to better understand Twain's style

in Letters. Discussion of the content of Letters should lead to a look

at Twain's logic and the form that logic takes. A comparison of Twain's

denunciations of the Deity and what the student believes about God would

provide stimulating discussion material. Another useful exercise would

be to locate passages in his works that illustrate his ability to use the

exact word; passages of description and character delineation such as the

following would be useful in this discussion:

The introduction to Huck Finn makes the reader believe the story is basi­

cally true as told by the boy:

You don't know about me, without you have to read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Hr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Huck's spelling leaves the reader to accept the boy narrator:

The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.

Twain's exaggeration in the description of Pop:

lie was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl— a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.

The description of nature make the scenes come alive in the mind of the 201 reader:

The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights.

It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would cone a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arras as if they were just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest— _£aL! It was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the underside of the world, like rolling empty barrels downstairs, where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

Huck's superstitious nature can be humorous:

(Jim) He said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake- skin in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway, it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

In Twain's later work, What is Han? (1906), he expressed his mechan­ istic philosophy:

To me, Man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of b o m temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and training; a machine whose one 202

function is to secure the spiritual contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose will is absolute and must be obeyed; and always is obeyed.

The student could compare these statements to Twain's Letters and to

Henry Adams' chapter "The Dynamo and the Virgin" of The Education of Hen­ ry Adams; to what degrees do these three works illustrate the mechanistic theory, and which admit of a faith that is possible in man's life? It would be also an interesting problem for the student to discuss what might be the basis by which each writer arrived at the conclusions that are presented in each work. Compare, for example, the anti-naturalistic statements of a Huck Finn with the statements Twain makes in Letters and tJhat is Man? By using his statement on "How to Tell a Story"— "To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes pur­ poseless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art . . . ."— tell if it is possible to deter­ mine where the incongruities and absurdities end and truth begins?

It would be instructive to discuss Huckleberry Finn as a picaresque novel, and Huck as a picaro. The seven chief qualities of a picaresque novel are summarized by Thrall and Hibbard as;

1. Chronicles a part or whole of the life of a rogue. 2. The chief figure is drawn from a low social level. 3. The novel presents little plot. Rather it is a series of episodes only slightly connected. 4. Little character interest with external character change only; central figure starts as a picaro and ends as a picaro. 5. Realistic in presentation; plainness in language, freedom of vocabulary, and a vividness of detail. 6 . Satire is a prominent; may satirize both social castes and national or racial peculiarities. 203

7. Hero usually stops just short of being an actual criminal.I5

How does Huck fit the description of a rogue-picaro? Identify how

Huckleberry Finn fits the form of the picaresque novel? How does Huck fit the characteristics of the realistic character and how does Tom fit the notions of the romantic? What makes a character realistic or roman­ tic? How is Huckleberry Finn a novel of social protest?

A writer that wrote in the naturalistic school from the very begin­ ning of his career was Stephen Crane (1871-1900). Naturalism, as an ex­ cessive form of realism, drew from its American adherents, plots and characters that illustrated the concepts held to be true for these wri- 16 ters. Crane's first novel, Haggle, a Girl of the Streets, was printed privately in 1893 with a loan of $700 from his brother, under the pseu­ donym of Johnston Smith. In 1896 after the successful The Red Badge of

Courage, the novel was printed in New York by D. Appleton and Company.

From the beginning, Haggle was considered to be an offensive book. De­ picting life in the New York Bowery, the story begins with a cinder fight between the boys of Rum Alley and Devil's Row. Pete stops the fight and the boys leave for their own streets. But Jim and Bill get into another fight until it is stopped by Jim's father. Sister ilaggie and Jim's father yell at Jim for fighting and when they arrive at the tenement, his mother

^Thrall and Hibbard, pp. 311-312.

^Stephen Crane, Haggle, a Girl of the Street in The Complete Novels of Stephen Crane ed. by Thomas A. Cullason (New York: Doubleday and Com­ pany, Inc., 1967). All references are from this edition. 204

yells at him too. When she begins to wash his injured face and he yells

from her rough treatment, the father tells her to leave the boy alone;

they fight, and the father leaves the apartment and gets drunk. In chap­

ter three, Baby Tommie dies, and Jim and Maggie are growing up amidst

squalid conditions with a drunken father and mother.

Maggie "blossomed in a mud puddle" and like all things in a mud pud­

dle, she wasn't long to survive. Maggie is seduced by Pete and is left

to make it on her own rejected by both Jim and her mother. Jim feels that

Maggie has gone to the devil and her mother wails of her condition, aided by a religious figure in sinister black. Maggie is also rejected by Pete,

and she takes to the streets as a prostitute. Unable to live in this manner, Maggie ends her life in the river. Crane carefully constructs

the story to illustrate his belief that Maggie is a victim of her family, her society, and her environment— the slums. The references to Christian­ ity in the book are black and foreboding; the Biblical story of "The

Good Samaritan" is re-enacted with Maggie as the one "fallen among thieves."

But in this re-enactment, there is no Good Samaritan to rescue her, and her life is tragic to the end. Jean Cazemajou writes:

The problem this story hinges on is not primarily a social one, and Crane is not merely content with studying the causes and consequences of prostitution. Mainly concerned with the "soul" of the young prostitute, he tries to challenge the belief of Sunday School religion. Can an 'occasional street girl1 be expected to end up in Heaven, irrespective of the indignant frowns of 'many excellent people'?*?

■*-7jean Cazemajou, Stephen Crane, Pamphlets on AmericanWriters (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1969), p. 15. 205

Possibly the author was attempting to ask this question-"Who sinned?"—

Maggie and Pete, Jim and his mother, the father and mother. Crane was depicting what he considered to be the determined life of the girl Mag­ gie in the streets of the Bowery and he was saying, in effect, that this is the life and the results of that life and that there is no other pos­ sible life for her to hope to live. The religious world had nothing to offer. Crane "achieved a sense of inevitability"*-® in his writings by careful control of his materials. Maurice Bassan writes:

Crane's major target was the nature of man himself, his hypocrisy, his weakness, his pitiful capitulation before the gods of respectability.19

Jonald Pizer feels that Maggie dealt less with the evils of slum life and more on the harm done by a "false moral environment imposed on that life," and that Crane was a naturalistic writer in the sense that

he believed that environment molds lives. But he is much more than this for his primary concern is not a dispassionate pessimistic tracing of inevitable forces but a satiric assult on weaknesses in social morality.^

Maggie illustrated many truths daring for its time: life in the slums was hell, environment was a powerful force, the double standard, the de­

grading power of drink, the moral standard imposed by the church was a

*®Eugene Current--Garcia and Walton R. Patrick, Realism and Romanti­ cism in Action (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1962), p. 59.

l^iiaurice Bassan, ed. Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Es­ says (Englewood Cliff, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967), p. 3.

^Donald Pizer, "Stephen Crane's Maggie and American Naturalism" in Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliff, N.J.; Prenticc-llali, Inc., 1967), pp. 116-117. 206 fake, and that the destiny of the characters in the story was fixed by their living in the slums. The student might discuss Crane’s use of irony in iaggie. Also, Don Pizer's statement that "Crane wishes us to understand the inadequacies of our lives so that we may improve them."2^

Is this possible in a naturalistic world?

22 The hed Badge of Courage (1395), one of the first examples of Am­ erican impressionism, tells of Henry Fleming's encounters with reality on and off the battlefield. The horrors of war, and Henry's desire to be a hero are in sharp contrasts. Crane paints his story with vivid colors as he pastes the "red wafer" of a sun in the sky. Through a series of ironic events, Henry is hit in the head by a runaway soldier after he himself had run away and was returning to the battle front. His "red badge of courage" had changed his attitude toward war, and he was fin­ ally able to become a hero. This seems to echo Crane's idea that false ideas toward life color man's motivations and make life out to be some­ thing that it is not.

"The Open Boat"- presents Crane's experience after the tug Commo­ dore 's pumps failed, and he was forced to share a small boat with three

2*Pizer, p. 117.

^Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage: Text and Criticism (hew York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1960). .U1 references are from this edition.

23stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" in The Complete Short Stories and Sketches (hew York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1963). All references are from this edition. 207 other men. Crane makes use again of his ability to paint pictures with words making use of the changing nature of the sea and sky as they change colors. The cook, the oiler, the correspondent, and the injured captain toil together to escape death. The central intelligence is the corres­ pondent , and he relates the experiences of the four men as well as what emotional experiences they face as they try to outwit the sea and land their boat. The waves were high and they were unable to see anything else but the sea or sky. The water changes from green, to gray, to black as time moves forward and Crane reports that

There was a terrible grace in the move of the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.

By taking turns the men keep the boat from being swamped; the oiler, be­ ing the most seaworthy, took much of the toil upon himself to row and keep the boat headed toward the breakers. The correspondent took turns rowing and wondering if he were going to drown. A tower was noticed on the shore, and Crane writes:

This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual— nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.

Even the shore was "lonely and indifferent." The irony is seen as the boat is swamped and the four men head for shore. M l the men make the shore, even the wounded captain, but the oiler was found dead on the beach.

To Crane, life was not what it seemed; life was ironic as was the coming of death. 2 A Crane's first volume of poetry was of the "iraagist impressionism" school reflecting his response to Emily Dickinson's work, and their works seem very much alike. "A God in Wrath" speaks of the god who was beating a man. He cried for help, and the people came running and

The people cried, "Oh, what a wicked man!" And— "Oh, what a redoubtable god!"

How ironic; man sees what he chooses to see and believes what he chooses to believe. In his poem "God Lay Dead in Heaven," Crane depicts the end of earth and mankind. The conclusion illustrates Crane's belief in wo­ man's efficacious position and man's inefficiency:

But of all sadness this was sad— A woman's arms tried to shield The iiead of a sleeping man From the jaws of the final beast.

In "The Wayfarer," man discovers the "pathway to truth." But because the weeds had overgrown the path and were sharp as knives, the wayfarer de­ cides to look for another road. Truth was painful; just as it was as

Crane tried to illustrate what he considered to be the truth in Ilaggie and The hed Badge of Courage. "A ilan Said to the Universe" is a statement of his basic belief in man's position in life and in nature's indifference

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in one A sense of obligation."

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 940. As writers of naturalistic tales include the seamier side of life, it is important for the informed reader to be aware of the concepts pre­ sented. The writer does seem to be more concerned with sex in its bio­ logical and medical aspects, a chaotic world, of lower forms of life, and the more sordid details of that life. The student would be wise to remember that a literary selection whether falling in the classic, roman­ tic, realistic, or naturalistic tradition is one man's view on life as he saw it at that particular time that he wrote that particular selection.

In studying Stephen Crane, it would be interesting to discuss expression­ ism and impressionism and try to relate these elements to his works. Ex­ pressionism took its cue from painting and attempted to present an intel- lectualization of the appearances of objects. Thus in Crane's works, the reality of the sun becomes a wafer pasted in the sky, the general becomes

"a gigantic figure on a gigantic horse," the army a reptile, and colors represent the narrator's attitude toward the object seen. Another inter- 25 esting study would be Crane's use of color and animal imagery, also, his ability to paint word pictures. The following examples suggest his ability with words:

In passages from "The Open Boat," the student can sense the terrible power of the waves and the characters attitudes toward their predicament:

In the wan light the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed

Ann Broughton Templin, The Use of Color in Stephen Crane's Poetry, Unpublished I1A Thesis (Columbus: The Ohio State University, 1965). 210

steadily astern. Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they had had leisure, there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the colour of the sea changed from slate to emerald green streaked with amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect upon the colour of the waves that rolled toward them.

The impression of the sensitive situation;

The very ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change seats in the dinghy. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sevres. Then the man in the rowing-seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done with the most ex­ traordinary care.

The agony of not knowing what fate had in store:

As for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage of them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be drowned— if I am going to be drovmed, why, in the name of seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be derived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning, and save me all tiiis trouble? The whole af­ fair is absurd.— But no; she cannot drown me. Not after all this work."

Selections from The lied Badge of Courage also illustrate Crane's use of impressions and color. The army is described in animal imagery and nature becomes tne elements of effect and not photographic representation;

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the re­ tiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, rest­ ing. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army 211

awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, once could see across it the red, eye-like gleam of hostile campfires set in the low brows of distant hills.

Henry's ambition to become a hero changes as time passes at the battle scene and Crane represents the changes in color imagery.

At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions.

Color imagery is used again along with the impression the scene makes on the young hero:

From across the river the red eyes were still peering. In the astern sky there was a yellow patch like a rug laid for the feet of the coming sun; and against it, black and pattern-like, loomed the gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantic horse.

Another example of Crane's use of animal imagery:

There was an occasional flash and glimmer of steel from the backs of all those huge crawling reptiles.

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) reflected a different naturalism than

Stephen Crane; Dreiser's was a "mechanistic concept" in his early writings.

Yet his

portrayal of character shows the realization that human aspirations reflect spiritual sources which are gravely thwarted by the impulse to survive and by the consequent goals of economic society.^

26Bradley, Beatty, and Long, pp. 977-978. 212

Sister Carrie does not discuss the morality of Carrie's success and

llurstwood's decay, but rather clearly illustrates Dreiser's belief that 27 man is helpless "in the inscrutable laws of fate and nature." Dreiser's

short stories "The Second Choice" and "Free" illustrate his concept that,

like Henry Adams, men were creatures of the sociological and physiological

forces at work that men were powerless to change. A growing pessimism was to be found in the literature such as in the later works of Mark

Twain. 28 Shirley in "The Second Choice" is in love with Arthur Bristow, a

romantic, dashing cad. But Arthur is finished with Shirley, and she is powerless to do anything about the situation. Arthur has gone on to other

conquests. Barton Williams, "stout, phlegmatic, good-natured, well-mean­

ing" was rather a bore compared to the handsome Arthur. In the "dull drift of things" Arthur had swept her off her feet and then had left her

flat. She did not want to settle down to the humdrum life like that of her parents and neighbors. But what is a girl to do? "A dreadful sense of helplessness and of impending disaster" had come over her, and siie knew that her "too gay and ethereal" time with Arthur would not last. To love, to marry, to live on an ordinary street like her parents, and to have

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 978. 28 Theodore Dreiser, "The Second Choice" and "Free" in The American Tradition in Literature 3rd ed., Vol. II, ed. by Bradley, Beatty, and Long (Dew York; W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1967). All references are from this edition. 213

children, that was her only future. What else could she hope for?

Shirley swallowed her pride and went back to Barton— the steady but dull

Barton. "Free" is similar to "The Second Choice" in theme but deals with

the end of life. While Shirley is just beginning life, Rufus Haymaker is

near the end of life as he waits for his wife to die— he had already been

waiting so long. "Here he was, sixty years of age, weary of all this, of

life really— a man who had never been really happy in all the time that

he had been married . . . ." Life to his wife had become the practical

problem of position, place, and prestige; and Rufus was tired of it all.

Mrs. Haymaker had never really tried to understand him nor had she tried

to appreciate his work. Ernestine was dying, and he was glad; he was

finally to be free. But these black thoughts haunted him: he wished for

her death and yet, he did not want it to happen. Finally, Mrs. Haymaker

had died in the night, and Rufus’s final words are most devastating:

"Free!" he said, after a time. "Free! I know now how that is. I am free now, at last! Free! . . . Free! . . Yes— free . . . to die!"

Man was a helpless pawn in the game of life. This idea is probably no

more clearly delineated than in his classic naturalistic novel, An Rmer- 29 ican Tragedy (1925).

Using an actual murder (Chester E. Gillette's murder of Grace Brown on July 11, 1906), as the basis for his novel, Dreiser carefully portrays

29Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (Cleveland: The World Pub­ lishing Company, 1948). M l references are from this edition. 214 the tragie life of the young man Clyde Griffiths as he ineffectively tries to cope with his life. At each turn Clyde is thwarted in every attempt he makes to improve his lot in life. Dreiser, the twelfth in a family of thirteen children, knew poverty and was exceptionally respon­ sive to environment. Almost like Huck's cry in Huckleberry Finn— "a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show"

Life is against Clyde at every turn. He has an affair with a young wo­ man at the mill. Later the boss' daughter takes an interest in him.

Finding that Roberta is pregnant, he plans to murder her. Clyde decides to drown her while they are out for a boat ride on an isolated lake, but he is unable to do the deed. The boat accidentally overturns, and Clyde swims to shore, leaving the helpless girl (who cannot swim) to drown.

Clyde's crime was the result, according to Dreiser, of unfortunate circum­ stances in his environment. If man is the sum total of the chemicals in his body, then he is not responsible for the events in his life. Clyde's weak nature was unable to do anything about the forces working in his life. Society was on trial along with Clyde because of its rampant ma­ terialism. To be successful in life was to be materialistically minded, and Clyde, following the dictates of society, made the mistake of taking society literally. Dreiser attempted to describe life as he saw it, and to him, life was a naturalistic dilemma. An American Tragedy

is not only a minutely detailed picture of one unhappy young man's life; it is a commentary upon human life in general. Dreiser, in the days when the story was written, 215 30 saw that life as predominantly hopeless and meaningless.

The tragedy is not the tragedy of Clyde Griffiths, but rather the Ameri­ can tragedy in that the novel is an indictment on the quality of life in the American society. Dreiser's careful description of the Griffiths family in the opening chapter of the novel is a negative representation of the religious ideas of Asa and Elvira Griffiths. Using the journalis­ tic techniques of an acute observer, the author documents to a surfeit the characters and the situations in which they find themselves; all of which are based on Dreiser's observations and direct knowledge of people and places. Within Clyde's sister Esta "was a chemism of dreams which somehow counteracted" all the things her father taught or believed, and she ran away with a handsome, no-account actor. Dreiser explains Asa and Elvira's faith:

For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa, insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme control. They would seek for something else— some malign, treacherous, deceiving power which, in the face of God's omniscience and omnipotence, still beguiles and betrays— and find it eventually in the error and perverseness of the human heart, which God has made, yet which He does not control, because He does not want to control it.

Dreiser leaves the impression that Clyde is a victim of circumstances.

In "Book Two" he suggests that it is the particular set of circumstances

3°H.L. Mencken, "Introduction" in An American Tragedy (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1948), pp. 11-12. SO iaa 2±3

that provides the bases for Clyde's desperate act:

. . . no smallest door of escape anywhere. And yet again at moments the salutation suggested by The Times-Union again thrust*-in itself forward, psychogentically, born of his own turbulent, eager and disappointed seeking. And hence persisting.

And indeed, it was as though "genii at the accidental rubbing of Aladdin's

lamp . . . some leering and diabolic wish or wisdom concealed in his own

nature . . . offered him a choice between an evil which threatened to

destroy him (and against his deepest opposition) and a second evil which,

however it might disgust or sear or terrify, still provided for freedom

and success and love." The author, like every writer, has stacked his

cards to provide the outcome from the events described that he wishes to

occur in the naturalist's manner. The "efrit" of Clyde's "own darker

self" wins the battle as it must for Dreiser will have it so. Planning

to stage a boating accident, Clyde is unable to perform the deed; he acci­

dentally hits Roberta with his camera, and the boat is overturned. Clyde

swims to shore leaving Roberta to drown. "Book Three" deals with an ex­

haustive description of the case against Clyde illustrating his inability

to work out the details of the accident; he doesn't seem to be able to

know when to lie and when to tell the actual events of the case. In the

long drawn out court room scene of the novel, the lawyer Jephson tries to

prove Clyde's moral and mental cowardice, and adds, "After all, you didn't make yourself, did you?" In his summing up Belknap, Jephson's law part­

ner, stated that the situation in which Clyde found himself had affected his "perhaps too pliable and sensual and impractical and dreamy mind."

finally in the prison, Clyde tries to understand the case himself, and 2 * 4 lie attempts to discover if he is guilty in the sight of man or God.

Dreiser leaves a doubt in the mind of the reader whether or not Clyde has found peace with himself and with God even as he walks to the elec­ tric chair. In the concluding scene of the book, the Griffiths are back on a street corner in San Francisco singing and witnessing for their

God. This scene, like the opening one of this book, is a negative look at a miserable, useless existence. The reader is not sure that Dreiser leaves any hope; one thing for sure is evident: Dreiser has the Griffiths family with two women helpers continuing to work out their roles in life.

For the naturalist writer, man is caught in the web of circumstances of heredity and environment. The religious world depicted by Dreiser and of which Clyde and the more desirable Rev. Duncan Kc.tillan were a part is not a welcomed one; rather, the religious world shown in the novel is made up of all the undesirable elements; religion, to Dreiser, is not the answer to man's predicament.

The student would find much in An American Tragedy to study. The over-powering detail that Dreiser presents illustrates the "all-inclusive­ ness" of the naturalist; he must prevent life as he saw it and present enough information to document an heightened realism. The overwhelming evidence would indicate that that is "the way it happened." Does Drei­ ser overload his die to make the story come out the way he wishes or does verisimilitude operate while one is reading the story? Is there a para­ llel between Dreiser's hone life with a religious father and that of

Clyde Griffiths? Is evil always punished and good rewarded? How are

Dreiser's journalistic experiences illustrated in the novel? Relate the 215 c

following to Dreiser's works:

No other American novelist lias documented his stories quite so carefully or has written a social record of Amer­ ican life so convincingly authentic. Though Dreiser's work is often dull and sometimes reveals the author's lack of a sense of humor, it is important as the first entirely "naturalistic" American fiction.

All of the foregoing questions would be useful and relevant to the class members. Naturalism becomes yet another voice calling for the attention of the readers in American literature. CHAPTER VII

THE VOICES OF MODERN MAN

As suggested in Chapter Six, the literature of the modern period in

America is the sum total of what went before. The easy answers of an earlier age were not longer serviceable; the problems of life are much more complex for man now lives in a complex age. The voices of modern man have risen to a crescendo, and as a result, man finds himself in a confused state of mind. Is God within man? Has God left man to his own devices? Is God dead? Can man know God intuitively? Ernest Hemingway believed that man must malce a place for himself in life and that man's success in life was determined by how well he played the game. F. Scott

Fitzgerald illustrated in his writings that man must be his own god for

God would not and could not be there to help him out of his predicament.

William Faulkner depicted in his writings that men place themselves in these predicaments, and they can not expect God to come through for them and rescue then out of their troubles. Yet, Faulkner has characters that because of the quality of their lives, endure. John Updike, through careful reference to the seemingly insignificant elements and events of life, illustrates man's struggles to make it in this life. As in life, some of Updike's characters are successful and some are defeated; there seems a carefully delineated duality of purpose in his works that

216 217 illustrates this very important truth. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible

Han presents to the modem reader the implications of what it means to be black in what has been an over-powering white world. Nathanael West presents a naturalistic and impressionistic look at the modern world; the characters of West's two short novels are victims of their environ­ ments, and as a result, are defeated in their attempts to make it in this life. Elements of the romantic, realistic, and naturalistic frames of reference are found in the writings of modern authors; the reader must pick and choose what he will, and an informed reader will benefit from the many voices of m o d e m American literature.

Ernest Hemingway (1399-1961), like Dreiser, worked as a journalist in preparation for his writing career. He was a reporter for the Kansas

City Star, a correspondent on the Italian front in World War I; he tra­ veled in Europe, hunted big game in Africa, reported the Spanish Revolu­ tion, and served again as a correspondent during World War II. Hemingway lived in various parts of the world, settling first in Cuba and finally in Idaho where he evidently took his own life. His stories as well as his novels illustrate his concept of life: that it is not the outcome that is important, but rather it is how you play the game that counts.

War was a condition of man, and Hemingway depicts in his writings man en­ gaged in warfare either overtly or subjectively within the breast of man himself. His characters seem to be himself as he attempts to work out 218 his manhood within the chaos of life. In Our Time*' is a series of short stories interspersed with photographic paragraphs in the journalistic tradition that illustrates Hemingway's belief that all of life is a bat­ tle. The title taken from the Anglican Prayerbook's Evening Office,

"Give peace in our time, 0 Lord" suggests that Hick Adams has returned to nature for healing. On the river in Upper llichigan, Nick Adams, Hem­ ingway's alter ego, struggles through a fisherman's ritual to regain his peace of mind and composure after having been through hell in the recent war. The short stories trace the young Nick from his initiation into the realities of life at the birth of the Indian boy and the self-inflic­ ted death of the father through a type of maturity at the end of the col­ lection. In the opening story, Nick illustrates his immaturity by feel­ ing that he would never die. Chapter three, "The End of Something," illustrates Nick's loss of interest in the romantic Narjorie and in the romantic life: "It isn't fun any more. Not any of it." Nick no longer finds pleasure in love. In "The Three bay Blow" Nick is disenchanted with life: baseball, the romantic view of life, drinking, friendship, love. Nick was being "thoroughly practical" and none of these things were important now. "The Wind blew it out of his head," he says. Nick is further initiated into the realities of life in "The Battler" as he encounters e::-prize-fightcr, Ad Francis, and Buggs, his guardian, at a

^Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958). All references are from this edition. 219 camp in the swamp along the railroad. The remainig stories continue the maturing process through his spinal injury, during battle on the Italian front, his recouperation, his return to the States, and his re-introduc­ tion to hone life. "He tried so to keep his life from being complicated.

Still, none of it had touched him." Life is simply not that way; life is complicated and every man touches one another. Nick, in the conclud­ ing two sections of the short story collection, attempts to unconplicate his life by going through the ritual of the fisherman. Like Emerson who felt healing was available through communion with Nature, Nick felt strength returning to him as he rested in nature on "The Big Two-lIc:arted

.liver." i Another story of man’s battle with nature is Hemingway's Pulitzer o Prize (1953) winning short novel, The Old lian and the Sea . As Bradley states ‘all causes in Hemingway's tragic vision are already lost, because that is nature and the way things are; but the loser's need must not be

O lost.' Santiago's eighty-four day battle with the eighteen-foot tibu- ron must end in defeat. The cause for which the old man fought for so many days was an impossibility in Hemingway's outlook on life. Bvcn

Santiago's prayers are to no avail; he catches the huge shark and suf­ fers greatly in the process. His Our Fathers and Hail Aarys did not help him as he suffered to land the giant marlin. A very large liako

^Hmest Hemingway, The Old ...in and the Sea (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953). All references are from this edition.

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 1454. 220 shark picked up the scent and started swimming after the skiff and the marlin. "It was too good to last, he thought." Resigned to the fate that was to overtake hin, Santiago hit the attacking shark "without hope hut with resolution and complete malignancy." The indifference of the ocean held the bloody scene of Santiago fighting a losing battle with such formidable odds. He had lost the battle, but he had broken his long streak of bad luck and had secured the respect of the fishermen that he had lost because he was so old.

"The Short Happy Life of Francis llacomber"^ illustrates again Hem­ ingway's belief that it is not important that man must die, but rather, it is important how man approaches that death, llacomber and his wife are out in the African bush hunting lion. The lion charges, llacomber wounds the lion; and a frightened llacomber runs off. Robert Wilson, the hunter and safari guide, saves llacomber by shooting the lion. Next they decide to hunt buffalo and encounter three of the huge animals. The bulls are located running across the open prairie. Two are killed, but the third bull, wounded, went into the bush. The fear llacomber had wile hunting the lion was gone now, and he was feeling very brave, liargot, his wife, despised him for his fear and now was awed by his bravery. The three of them iiunt for the wounded bull. As Wilson and Lacomber shot at the

^Ernest Hemingway, "The Short Happy Life of Francis llacomber" in The American Tradition in Literature (New York: W.U. Norton and Com­ pany, Inc., lyt>7). All references are from this edition. 221 charging bull, trying to stop the huge aniual, Ars. llacomber, afraid that the animal was about to gore her husband, fired the Maninlicker; and instead of hitting the buffalo, hit her husband at the base of the brain.

Francis Hacomber's newfound bravery provided a happy but short life.

In "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"^ Hemingway sets the scene in an inner-city tavern. The men who come to the tavern cone and go, but one old man acts afraid to leave, and the bartender is hesitant to close up the place. Here, in the confusing rush of business and of people, is a place where men have found to be a haven in the hectic noise and confu­ sion of life. The tavern is a clean, well-lighted place, a place away from the worries and frustrations of everyday life, a place that every man needs to save his sanity. To Hemingway, fate has prevented man from winning his cause, but man must face the storm, the wild animal, the empty barren room like a man. The experiences of life must be faced.

"Death became, in his fiction, the extreme limit of experience and the final test of the genuine ordeal.

It would be an interesting and informative experience for students to examine Hemingway's use of death. Is death always the outcome? Does each character face failure in one form or another? Are there any happy characters in Hemingway's fiction? It would also be instructive for the

-’Hrnest Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" in The Short Stor­ ies of Lrnoat Hemingway (Hew York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956).

^Bradley, Beatty, and Long, p. 1455. 222 students to examine Hemingway's clean cut form of expression. Does he work too hard to keep his prose clean and fresh? Or does the writing become too sterile? The student could look at the following examples:

The Old lian and the Sea he was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably heavy. It was the weight of the fish and he let the line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first of the two reserve coils. As it went down slipping lightly through the old man's fingers, he still coulf feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible.

Hemingway's description: The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple.

"Tne Short Ilappy Life of Francis Macomber": It had started the night before when he had wakened and heard the lion roaring somewhere up along the river. It was a deep sound and at the end there were sort of coughing grunts that made him seem just outside the tent, and when Francis llacomber woke in the night to hear it, he was afraid.

In Our Time: Gee, it's awful when they go by you and then you have to watch them go farther away and get smaller and smaller and then all bunched up on the turns and then come around towards into the stretch and you feel like swearing and goddamming worse and worse.

Death: Aaera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and tnen smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster as when they speed up a cinema­ tograph film. Then he was dead.

Violence is everywhere in Hemingway's writing. Yet he carefully shows man midst this violence trying to make something of his life. Heming­ way's characters are hurt by the violence in the world, hurt physically, 223 mentally, and possibly, socially.

Telling the world that things are not what they should be and that

the "Jazz Age” was ”a new generation grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in nan shaken” came F. Scott Fitzgerald. The

£reat_ Gatsby, considered by critics to be his finest work, and the short

story, "Babylon Revisited" is typical of the 1920's. The Great Gatsby

and Tender is the Wight are somewhat autobiographical and typical of his works. These two novels contain many religious symbols. These sym­ bols are reversed, giving a sinister quality to the writings. Or, as ex­

pressed by b.S. Savage: "The Great Gatsby is a profane myth in which

the religious symbols are inverted."^ The corruption of the American

dream is depicted. Found in Tender is the Right is Richard Diver - na­

tural idealist, spoiled priest, the genteel American romantic hero. The

religious symbols fall into several categories including images of Cod,

priests, people, and things.

As Fitzgerald attempted to give a picture of what life looked like

to him, he carefully constructed references that illustrated not only

his Roman Catholic upbringing, but also his disillusionment with the world as he saw it. Both novels are pessimistic in their outlooks on

life. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates the destruction of a

romantic who believed he could reconstruct, and therefore, relive the

^D.S. Savage, "The Significance of F. Scott Fitzgerald" in F . Scott Fitzgerald; A Collection of Critical assays (Fnglewood Cliffs, A.J.. Prentice-Hali, Inc., 1J63) , p. 153. 224 past while in Tender is the Night ne created an idealist that is trapped and finally destroyed by his idealism.

The destruction of Jay Gatsby and Dr. Richard Diver makes use of religious images. Images of God are frequent in The Great Gatsby.

Probably the number one image is that of

the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic— their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down him­ self into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many pointless days under sun and rain, brook on over the solemn dumping ground.

Deferences are made to this dim-eyed giant throughout the book and con­ nected"^ with the owl-eyed man seen first in Gatsby's library and later at the funeral as he responds to "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on" by saying "Amen to that." The dim-eyed Dr. Eckleburg over­ looks, somewhat like Kafka's king in The Castle, the "valley of ashes" that suggests the nothingness of man's existence;

This is a valley of ashes— a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally with a transcendent effort of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (hew York: Charles Scrib­ ner's Sons, 1925), p. 23. All references are from this edition. o Suggested by .obert Sklar, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoon (Kew York; Oxford University Press, 19b^), p. iy5. 225 This reference to din-sightedness is suggested again in the "little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time to tine groaning faintly."

Still another reference to Dr. Eckleburg is made after George Wil­ son has been crazed by his wife Ilildred's death. He looks at the gigan­ tic sign and says "God sees everything" and Omniscient God is reduced to a faded out advertisenent. George decides in his demented condition to aid God in revenging ilildred's death, making further mockery of God's power.

further, there are many references to God and ejaculations of "Oh

God" throughout the book. One such reference is Gatsby's "I'll tell you

God's truth," and he proceeds to spin a web of lies that can be anything but "God's truth," Of course, he probably believes that what tells is

"God's truth" as "these ideas of himself "sprang from his Platonic concep­ tion of himself. He was a son of God— a phrase which, if it means any­ thing, means just that— and he must be about llis Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty."

Gatsby is first seen by the narrator of the story, Dick Carrav/ay, in the late evening looking out across the bay as "he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way" suggesting a priest reach­ ing out to his people. Their image is furthered by the description of

Gatsby's face as "he smiled understandirigly— much more than understand- ingly . . . with a quality of eternal reassurance in it." Later Gatsby is described as "glowing" and "that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of 226 recurrent light.11 Gatsby becomes more than just Jay Gatsby; he becomes

an inverted religious symbol.

Another possible religious symbolism can be seen in Hick Carraway.

Nick Carraway as narrator explains to the reader his reaction to Mil­ dred's whiskey: "I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight .... I was within and without, simultaneous­ ly enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life," Nick tries to read the copy of Simon Called Peter and admits that "either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things, because it didn't make any sense to me." Another inversion: a simple story of one of the

Lord's disciples becomes impossible to read or understand, suggesting that this is the way it is in life.

Another inverted reference is the name of Jordan Baker. Jordan symbolizes the heavenly, but here is a name owned by a woman that does not know how to tell the truth and is described as a pathological liar.

Finally, Gatsby is described as having "committed himself to the following of a grail." The grail suggests a pure kind of Christianity, but here it refers to Gatsby's search for daisey who represents anything but a grail. Gatsby's methods in achieving his wish to regain daisey's love is anything but Christian.

The novel ends oh a pessimistic note as Nick tells the reader the futility of man's search for any future; "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" becoming possibly a summary of the novel.

Religious images in Tender is the Night are plentiful but they are 227 not as fully developed as in The Great Gatsby. References are made to

God, Christ, the priest, and to stories found in the Bible. The total effect of these many religious references are a negation of the values presented in the references.

The novel begins with Rosemary Hoyt's immature view of life on the

French Riviera. Her mother tells her they will stay three days and then go home. On the beach are two distinct groups of people— the white­ skinned and the dark-skinned, the in and not-in, the good and evil. The story continues with llrs. Speer's thought that she must "spiritually" wean her daughter from under her care.

rosemary's later visit to the movie studio is shown as a visit to the underworld. "There and there figures spotted the twilight, turning up ashen faces to her like souls in purgatory watching the passage of a mortal through.

Rosemary's reaction to the Divers is presented in:

Her naivete responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers, unaware of its complexity and its lack of innocence, unaware tiiat it was all a selec­ tion of quality rather than quantity from the run of the world's bazaar; and that the simplicity of behavior also, the nursery-like peace and good will, the emphasis on the simpler virtues, was part of a desperate bargain with the gods and had been attained through struggles she could not have guessed at.

The "gods" suggests a non-Christian or pagan bargain.

■^F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Right (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933), p. 23. All references are from this edition. 228

She thought of the Divers, heard them singing faintly a son3 "like

a hymn .... their children slept, their gate shut for the night." A strong biblical reference is made here by Fitzgerald. The Diver fanily

is shown at peace with the world and like the family in Luke 11, the

rest of the world is shut out. In actuality, the Divers are open to the world as shown by the following references.

Hicole is described as a "viking iladonna", a representation of beau­ ty, of purity, the ..other of Christ. Uicole is tue reverse of these, hicole becomes involved with the powers of evil as she and Tommy Barban go to the motel together. "Tommy ordered two cognacs, and when the door closed behind the waiter, he sat in the only chair, dark, scarred and handsome, his eyebrows arched and upcurling, a fighting Puck, an earnest

Satan." Richard Diver, on the other hand, is described in the positions, actions, and clothing of the priest, a good example of the inverted im­ age. Sklar quotes Fitzgerald as calling Diver a "spoiled priest."

Rosemary gives the reader a view of Diver as priest. She "touched him, feeling the smooth cloth of his dark coat like a chasuble. She seemed about to fall to her knees . . . ." She saw "him as something

fixed and God-like," like the Eekelburg billboard. In attempting to make Hicole independent of him, Dr. Diver has forced her away from him­ self saying, "I can't do anything for you anymore. I'm trying to save myself." His priestly function is described again. "Dick nodded gravely,

looking at the stone floor, like a priest in the confessional— he was

torn between a tendency to ironic laughter and a fortnight of bread and water." Again, the Provencal girl "fell on her knees and cried", 229

suggesting worship. A final picture of Diver as priest is seen at the

end of the novel as "He raised his right hand and with a papal cross he

blessed the beach from the high terrace." He is also described as "de­ moniac and frightened, the passions of many men inside him and nothing

simple that he could see." He had come away for his "soul's sake and he had lost himself." As a student at Hopkins, he had been "unstayed by the irony of the gigantic Christ in the entrance hall." He is a sus­

tained picture of the inverted religious image in the novel.

While visiting the battle field, Rosemary and Dick talk about the war. Dick responds to Abe's comment: "This took religion and years of

plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact religion that existed be­

tween the classes." Dick has the ability to simplify anything, even

those things that cannot be simplified.

There are other religious references in the text that give the rea­ der the impression that Fitzgerald had a religious bent to this thinking.

Reference is made to the Christmas trees, the silver cord and the golden bowl, a pantheistic animal, the reference to Christ's healing of the crippled nan in taking up his bed and walking, a nun, an expression of an exasperated Christ, "heavenly peace" and "The sky was low at night,

full of the presence of a strange and watchful God.”

Looking at these inverted religious images in The Great Gatsby and

in Tender is the Might, one can easily sense his mental set on religious natters. It is thought Fitzgerald is trying to show his readers tiiat those

religious views he had been taught as a youngster and held dear by mil­

lions of adults are not always saying what they appear to be saying. 230 Possibly, one could even say that those religious views are a delusion of man.

It would be interesting for the student to discuss what religion, if any, Fitzgerald suggests in his writings. What religion is Fitzgerald or his characters substituting for Christianity? Also, is Fitzgerald a religious writer, and if so, what sort of religious writer is he? Is his presentation of the Jazz Age a sentimental one? As a member of this desperate age that he documented in his works, Fitzgerald not only an­ nounced the beginning of the Flapper Age, but also its end.

Typical of his power as a writer of short stories is his "Babylon kevisited."^ In this tragic, sad story the Jazz Age is represented in

Charles J. Wales. Returning to Paris, the scene of his decline, Charlie observed. "I spoiled this city for myself. I didn’t realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everytaing was gone, and I was gone." Life did not hold much for aim any more, only his nine-year-old daughter, ilonoria:

Fortunate if she didn't combine the traits of both that had brought them to disaster. A great wave of protectiveness went over aim. He thought he knew what to do for her. He believed in character; lie wanted to jump back a wuole gen­ eration and trust in character again as the eternal valuable element. Everything else wore out.

Charlie had lost his money in the stock market crash in 1929; he had lost his wife Helen by locking her out of the house in the rain and snow, and

"^F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon kevisited" in The American Tradi­ tion in Literature (Jew York; U.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1967). All references are from this edition. 231 she had died o£ attendant heart trouble; and his wife's sister was the guardian of his only child. He realized the wasted, dissipated years.

He wanted to wake up for all this and wanted to have his child back un­ der his own care. But because an almost drunk couple arrived at the

Peters home asking Charlie to dinner and upsetting his sister-in-law,

Harion, the Peters refused to let Charlie have his daughter. He express­ es the terrible emptiness of it all:

All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word "dis­ sipate"— to dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something. In the little hours of the night every move from place to place was an enormous human jump, an increase of pay­ ing for the privilege of slower and slower motion.

And in conclusion, Charlie thinks:

He would come back some day; they couldn't make him pay forever. But he wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact. He wasn't young any more, with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself. He was ab­ solutely sure Helen wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone.

Fitzgerald has Charlie cover the spectrum from pleasure in the life of the idle rich to the emptiness and despair of a wasted life and concludes that only character lasts.

By looking at the Jazz Age as represented by Fitzgerald in The Great

Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and "Babylon Revisited," the student will be able to form a picture of what one man feels life was like in the period after World War I. The student will be able to sense the horrible uselessness and waste that these stories illustrate. The student will also have an opportunity to discuss what were the conditions in the Uni­ ted States that provided the bases for the society presented in the works 232

of Fitzgerald. Also, what was happening to the rest of the people in

the country while the idle rich were destroying themselves? Students

sometimes think that what is printed is true, and it would be good to

discuss for whom the story is truth and for whom it is not.

Another writer of the modern period is the Pulitzer Prize (1954,

1957) and the IJobel Prize for Literature (1950) recipient, William Faulk­ ner (1897-1962). Representative of his huge literary output are The

Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), and The Bear (1935,

1942) . Faulkner makes a strong comment on the disillusioned search for 12 the American dream. By its very title, The Sound and the Fury sets

the stage for the author’s comments on life. What is life "but a tale

told by a fool full of sound and fury signifying nothing," a horrifying

indictment on the human condition. Benjy Compson, the thirty-three-year old idiot who senses rather than thinks and is stimulated by association

that give the reader his first confusing report of the Compson family and the bases for the title of the book, illustrates so graphically the

terrible sense of the lo-s of love. Edward Volpe calls this loss of

love "the central theme of decay in modern society.The Sound and

the Fury is the story of the decay of the Compson family as it coincides with the loss of love within the family. Faulkner seems to be saying

1 2 William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (Hew York: Vintage Books, 1946). All references from this edition.

^Edward L. Volpe, A Header's Guide to William Faulkner (Hew York: Farrar, Straus and Croux, 1964), p. 104. 233

that the only thing that will last is love. Distorted love destroys; abnormal love kills; love expressed toward others enriches and fulfills nan's search for meaning in life. lirs. Compson's distorted love toward her children destroys then directly proportional to the degree of love shown or withheld; Benjy is smothered by her love, Quentin's incestuous

thoughts of love toward his sister results in his suicide; Jason's lack of love from his mother and hatred toward his sister, Caddy, and her daughter creates a hardened, unloved, unsuccessful man. Dilsey's love

for her own children and for those of the Compson family holds the fam­ ily together' without this love the family would have fallen apart long ago. "Dilsey endures." She relies on love and spiritual insight given

to her from the church she attends. Without this element of hope in the novel, Faulkner would have created a literary "Frankenstein." Dilsey has the strength to endure the "sound and the fury" that is to destroy

the Compson family for she is the only character in the book that possesses

a religious faith. The fourth section of the novel is Dilsey's view point on life, and one can safely say that this is the author's view

point as well. As Benjy is happy again at the end of the novel because everything is in its "ordered place," just so the reader receives the im­

pression that life can be like that regardless of the noise and confusion,

if one is willing to work at the task. The horror of which the novel

deals is unfolded to the reader through the minds and eyes of three Comp­

son family members and Dilsey, the Negro servant, in the order in which

they experience or think about life.

The student would benefit by studying the effect of time, love, or 234 death in relationship to each of the Faulkner characters. For example, does the distortion of real time in The Sound and the Fury add to or dis­ tract from the impact the novel has on the reader, Does his use of the stream-of-consciousness technique aid his literary purpose or does it de­ tract from the reader's enjoyment of the novel. What the sexual relation­ ships in the novel are would provide a clearer understanding of the rage and despair experienced by many of the characters. Dilsey, in her own persistent manner, looks beyond the present and predicts:

"Xse seed de first en de last," she said looking at the cold stove, "I seed de first en de last." She set out some cold food on a table. As she moved back and forth she sang a hymn. She sang the first two lines over and over to the complete tune.

Is this, then, the message of the novel?

In Light in August*^, Faulkner traces the short life of Joe Christ­ mas as he searches for a meaning to his life. The .IcEachern family that adopts Joe rejects him, and he kills Hr. HcEachcrn. The mulatto Joe

Christmas seems to represent a reverse Christ doing all those things that are in direct opposition to that of a Christ figure. The curse of slavery was on the land and Christmas was part Negro and so the curse was on him as well, liaised by the childless Jr. and Mrs. llcEachem from five years of age, Christmas learned how to lie, cheat, and steal to save himself from the hard, ruthless quasi-religious stepfather. Christmas committed all the sins that ;IcEachern was trying to save him from by

^William Faulkner, Light in August (New York: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1971). All references are from this edition. 235

whipping and praying for him. Yet it was ilrs. HcEachcrn that he hated

as he was to hate and misuse all women; for women were part of his reli­

gious hatred:

It was not the hard work which he hated, nor the punishment and injustice. He was used to that before he ever saw either of then. He expected no less, and so he was neither outraged nor surprised. It was the woman: that soft kindness which he believed himself doomed to be forever victim of and which he hated worse than he did the hard and ruthless justice of men.

Interwoven with the tragic story of Joe Christmas, Faulkner relates

the happy-comic story of Lena Grove. Gotten with child by Lucas Burch,

she sets out from her brother's home in Alabama to find her lover. She

had reached Mississippi, a far piece from what had been her hone: "the

evocation of far, is a peaceful corridor paved with unflagging and tran­

quil faith and peopled with kind and nameless faces and voices . . .

Byron Bunch, the foreman at the planing mill in Jefferson tries to help

Lena. Uhile the peace and gentleness and kindness is being shown to and

by Lena, Joe Christmas leaves a trail of ugliness and evil wherever he

goes; while Lena is the personification of a Christ-like spirit seeking

and finding, Joe is the reverse, crucified and sexually mutilated, Joe

ends iiis tragic life at thirty-three years of age. All of the religious

references are negative. -IcEachern was a religious bigot, hev. Gail High­

tower was an ecclesiastical failure, Mrs. EcEachern was a broken, down­

trodden woman, and the kegro church at the edge of Jefferson is destroyed

by Christmas. The name Christmas and the Christological references are negative or reversed as suggested above. The student could trace these

references and gain a better understanding of Faulknerian purpose. A 236 study of the presentation of time in the novel would illustrate Faulk­ ner's concept of how the past is always with man and is the bases for later action. The student would benefit greatly by relating the follow­ ing paragraph to Faulkner's works:

The fiction of William Faulkner has as many different planes of interest as that of any contemporary American writer. On one level much of it is sheer horror, and twentieth-century throw­ back to the Gothic romance. On another it is Hawthornesque in its exploration of the methods and effects of symbolism and allegory. On still another it is a vast and intricate legent of the disintegration of the Old South, epiclike in conception and not unworthy of comparison to James Joyce's portrayal of Lublin in Ulysses. To the student of technique, it is notable for its bold experimentation with narrative point of view, while the reader'with an eye for style finds it full of some of the lushest rhetoric of our time. All in all, Faulkner's stories are almost incredibly subtle. They make such great demands of their readers that the surprising thing is that they have been as popular as they have.15

"The Bear"^ deals again with Yoknapatowpiia County in Jiississippi,

Faulkner's imaginative literary construction. Isaac UcCaslin is a six­ teen-year-old initiate testing his mettle in the ancient rite of the hunt.

From his family, neighbors, Indians, the dog lion, and the bear, Ike learns the facts of life. One fact that he learns is that the skeletons in the family closet make it uncomfortable for him. Finally he rejects his inheritance because of his grandfather's infidelity. Ike had learned the lessons of the hunt well working on the task for six years, and after

■^Blair, Uornberger, and Stewart, p. 286.

•^William Faulkner, "The Bear" in The American Tradition in Litera­ ture , Vol. II, ed. by Bradley, Beatty, and Long. All references are from this edition. 237 making his peace with nature and with the bear, he realized that the wilderness as a way of life was passing away along with the family tra­

dition of hunting and plantation living, l'aulkner wrote:

If Sam Fathers had been his mentor and the backyard rabbits and squirrels his kindergarten, then the wilderness the old bear ran was his college and the old male bear itself, so long unwifed and childless as to have become its own ungen­ dered progenitor, was his alma mater.

It was from these experiences that Ike gains the strength of character to try to right the wrongs of his family. Becoming like the Nazarene,

Ike took up carpentry and lived, trying to overcome the "curse" on the land:

'Don't you see? he cried. 'Don't you see' This whole land, the whole South, is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, like under the curse? Granted that my people brought the curse onto the land; maybe for that reason their descendants alone can— not resist it, nor combat it— maybe just endure and outlast it until the curse is lifted. Then your peoples' turn will cone because we have forfeited ours. 3ut not now. Hot yet. Don't you see?'

Ike was searching for his manhood; to find it he had to right the wrongs that he could, live for "truth" that "covers all things which touch the heart— honor and pride and pity and justice and courage and love," re­ ject the inheritance of his ancestry, and make a life for himself re­ gardless of its consequences. The episode of the silver cup with its

fifty pieces of gold illustrate quite graphically how unreliable mater­

ial values are in the world and contrasts vividly with the eternal values

for wuich iKe was searching. Again, as in The Sound and the Fury, the

Hegro members associated with the AcCaslin clan possess the enduring quality along with nature itself. The story of Isaac McCaslin and his 238 entire family becomes more than just a story of a family; It becomes the story of mankind, of life, of the eternal land, and the unchanging forces that make life what it is. Also trying to illustrate the quality of modern life is the contemporary writer, John Updike.

Kenneth Hamilton, in writing of the significance of John Updike's works in modem American literature, penned:

Those who would dismiss his work as uninvolved in the tragedies of our tine ignore his clear sight of the context of the ordin­ ary .... But he holds to a faith that does not despair finding order in chaos and a stillness at the heart of the maelstrom. ^

Updike's novels The Poorhouse Fair, Kabbit, Run, and The Centaur contain much that is tragic in life, but like life, in the despair and uncertain­ ty there is much that is good also. Hamilton suggests that in the pass­ age from childhood to adolescence three "mysteries" are encountered: sex, religion, and art; and "Updike's fiction is largely preoccupied with showing how these mysteries, woven early into the texture of our lives,

18 color all the episodes of our mature existence." 19 The Poorhouse Fair (1959) traces the events of Fair Jay at the

Poorhouse and the lives of the elderly inmates of the place, especially

John F. Hook a ninety-four-year-old ex-school teacher who respects real­ ity. Like many of the modern writers, Updike explores man's search for

^Kenneth Hamilton, John Updike (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdinans Publishing Company, 1967), p. 6. 13 °Ibid., p. 11.

^John Updike, The Poorhouse Fair (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Pub­ lications, Inc., 1959). All references are from this edition. 239 identity, and like many of his contemporaries, he finds hope in the small happenings which provides wisdom and faith in the later years of life. Conner, the Poorhouse perfect, finds Hook offensive in the excel­ lence of mind, for Hook argues that "There is no goodness without belief.

There is nothing but busy-ness," summarizing Conner’s life and conduct to perfection. Hook, the realist, sees life as it is while Conner views life through the sieve of his own self-construction which prevents him from really knowing what life is about, lie is like the visitors to the fair described by Updike:

Heart had gone out of these people; health was the principal thing about the faces of the Americans that come crowding through the broken wall to the poorhouse fair .... History had passed on beyond them. They remembered its moment and came to the fair to be freshened in the recollection of an older America ....

Conner does not believe in a life after death and is offended by an anon­ ymous letter sent by inmate Gregg: "Yr duty is to help, not hinder these old people on the way to their final Reward." To Conner, the only value left for the old folk is the well-run institution and the new, improved hospital wing, but he forgets the human side and would like to treat the old folk like the injured cat that he had put out of its misery, kvery event in tne book seems to thwart Conner and his etherized ideas: the broken brick wall, the weather, the inmates, the townspeople. Yet the sky is never quite clear nor are the old people really secure in the traditions that they hold dear. Hamilton writes;

. . . faith is the living fruit of the homent of insight that dies unless continually renewed by the dedication of the whole man. because the mind cannot comprehend faith, 240 Kierkcgard insists, intellectual maturity is irrelevant to belief. Purity of heart, that wills one thing, that is wholly decisive.^

Changing from elderly heros to the young, Updike presents Rabbit, bun (1960),21 which relates the rise and fall of Harry Angstrom, the ex­ basketball champion. Rabbit finds life confusing and whenever he encoun­ ters some difficulty, he runs. Like in the game of basketball, Rabbit feels life should operate on the same rules, making himself a champion.

But life doesn’t operate like basketball, and Harry, idealistic and self-centered, cannot find his place. The motto of the novel is by Pas­ cal : "The motion of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circum­ stances." Like other novels discussed in this study, Rabbit, Run illus­ trates the hardness of men's hearts that rejects the grace offered to them. Rabbit seems to favor "blankness" and is attracted to the blank­ ness of the prostitute Pvuth's eyes and strives to create a blankness in his own mind; whenever he is up against something he doesn't like, he runs. The Episcopalian minister Jack Eccles, talking to Angstrom after he has left his wife fails to secure a response from Rabbit that he should go back to his wife and child. Rabbit is doing what he feels in­ side to do, living somewhat intuitively. The picture of the Reverend

Lcclcs is a negative one; he seems to be weak and ineffectual. The

^Hamilton, p. 28.

21john Updike, Rabbit, Run ('.lew York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960). Ail references will be from tais edition. 241 symbolisra of the stained glass window of the church lighted from within

suggests the negative results of Rabbit's life: the light goes out to­ ward the end of the novel.

Eccles discusses the Angstroms with the Lutheran minister, Fritz

Kruppenbach, and finds he is at odds with him for it is not the minister's job to meddle in people's lives. Kruppenbach states emphatically:

"There is your role: to make yourself an exemplar of faith. There is where comfort comes from: faith, not what little finagling a body can do here and there; stirring the bucket, In running back and forth you run from the duty given you by God, to make your faith powerful, so when the call comes you can go out and tell them, 'Yes, he is dead, but you will see him again in Heaven. Yes, you suffer, but you must love your pain, because it is Christ's pain!"

Lccles rejects this "spiel" and leaves the rectory full of anger and de­ pression. lie goes to the drugstore, orders a soda, and recognizes that

"It is here that in truth they come to find the antidotes to their lives":

Kruppenbach offered him Christ, but Lccles settled for a soda and "two

Coca-Cola glasses full of miraculous clear water" as a restorative just

as Rabbit rejects the good in life for negative values. Rabbit speaks

of God and faith, loves order and perfection, hates imperfection and dis­ order in others; yet deserts his pregnant wife and two-year-old son: his

life is exactly what he abhors. After the accidental drowning of their

baby, Rabbit is visited by his former basketball coach, Tothero, who

tells his former star. "Right and wrong aren't dropped from the sky. Ue.

To make then. Against misery. Invariably, Harry, invariably . . . mis­

ery follows their disobedience." Updike seems to reflect the Puritan belief in the biblical truth: "De sure your sins will find you out," and. 242 22 "the wages of sin is death." Able to tell only the truth as he saw it, Rabbit cries out at the burial that his wife was the one who drowned their daughter. Unable to understand their shocked attitudes, he runs away from the cemetery just as lie had run away from all the difficulties he had encountered throughout his life. At the end of the novel, unable to think anything out, Rabbit runs again, runs away from the prostitute that he has made pregnant. M l his talk of God and of his baby in Hea­ ven has made no impression on him and how he orders his life. 23 Updike's third novel, The Centaur , is his attempt at a mythologi­ cal theme that is the reverse of Rabbit, Run. George Caldwell, a high school science teacher, is all the things Ilarry Angstrom is not: a good father and husband, a steady worker, and an explorer of the problems of life. Kort writes: "The fictional world Updike has built, then, has a split in it like a Centaur's body, one part of it 'afloat in a starry firmament of ideals' and the other 'sunk in a swamp' The novel at­ tempts to overlay the story of Chiron and Prometheus and that of George

Caldwell and his son Peter. Teaching becomes a burden to Caldwell which to kort is the central problem of the novel, liis ineffectiveness as a teacher results in having an arrow shot through his heel. The remainder

22,,Romans 0:23. , „

^^Jolin Updike, The Centaur (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publishing, Inc., 1963). All references are from this edition.

^Wesley A. Kort, "The Centaur and the Problem of Vocation," in Shriven Selves: Religious Problems in Recent American Fiction (Phila­ delphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 65. 243 of the story traces Caldwell's fear and longing for death and his inef­ fectiveness in working out the problems of everyday living. The epi­ graph by Karl Barth suggests Updike's purpose:

Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man, earth the creation conceivable to him. He himself is the creature on the boundary between heaven and earth.

It seems consistent that The Centaur deals with man's predicament that he was made "a little lower than the angels" struggling to discover his place in the universe. He wonders and puzzles over the nature of God, of prayer, of death, of sex, of joy, of pain, of goodness, and many other questions that he is unable to fathom. These questions and their possi­ ble answers bring the inconceivable heaven down to conceivable earth.

Possibly there are no answers to some of man's questions; yet, man must struggle for some kind of an answer. Caldwell laments his life, his body, and his lack of success in life; Peter, his son, solves his pro­ blems the best that he can— at least, he feels he is doing something as he himself many times wished his father would. Caldwell in all his long­ ing for and expecting of death was unprepared to die; finally Chiron, noblest of all the Centaurs, and a great teacher, accepted death after having suffered from a leg would from a poisoned arrow. As a mythic symbol of general man and of Caldwell specifically, Chiron who could not die, asked to die as an atonement for Prometheus. Ills prayer was answered and Chiron exchanged his immortality for release from pain and

for death. Just so, Caldwell exchanged his life for death and freedom

from pain so that his son Peter could live. Caldwell, after a particular- 244 f ly fough day, concludes: "God takes care of you if you let Him." Each man must provide his own best possible answers to the puzzling questions of life. Chapter Five suggests that Caldwell is really an outstanding teacher and not as bad as he tries to make himself appear. Yet, his answers to life's problems, although negative, are answers. He, as

Chiron, dies a noble death having set his will and is now assisting in regulating the life of Peter as do all fathers assist in the regulations of their sons' lives. The quality of the father's answers to the per­ plexing problems of life has a direct bearing on the quality of the son's future answers.

One man's answer to the black experience in America is seen in

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952).^5 He is invisible because of the people with whom he comes in contact: it is "a matter of the construc­ tion of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality." The viewer chooses not to see him because he wishes not to see the black man. One of the two epigraphs Ellison uses is from Herman Helville's Benito Cereno and suggests his literary purpose:

"You are saved," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; "you are saved" what has cast such a shadow upon you?1'

There is a shadow cast upon the narrator of The Invisible ilan. The "Pro­ logue" concludes with the statement, "But what did _I do to be so blue?"

^Ralph Ellison, Invisible Ilan (Hew York; The Hew American Library, 1952). All references are from this edition. 245 Although Ellison's persona is black, he could represent any man that is the scapegoat in society for the culture of that society seems to re­ quire such. The first person narrator tells his reader that he had been looking for something all his life. Like all men, he had accepted the answers given to him, but also like all men, those answers were not his; he had to find those himself. The novel traces the explorations into life by the Negro narrator: first at his graduation and the grotes­ que party thrown by the "elite1' of the town; then his experience at dis­ pleasing Hr. Norton, the white trustee of a Southern Negro college, by letting him see the "real" Negro life of the South as the vet tells Hr.

Norton:

"Nothing has meaning. He takes it but he doesn't digest it. Already he is— well, bless my soul! Behold! A walking zombie! Already he learned to repress not only his emotions but his hu­ manity. He's invisible, a walking personification of the Nega­ tive, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!"

The words of the school's Founder and those of the blind minister, Homer

A. Barbes, about benevolence and truth were just empty phrases as the narrator is kicked out of school and given a negative recommendation to seven business firms in New York. Hr. Bledsoe, president for the college tells him: "You're nobody, son. You don't exist— can't you see that?"

The letters tell his prospective employers to "Keep this Nigger-Boy Run­ ning." Arriving in New York "the train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale." This symbol­ ism of rebirth is consistent throughout the novel, suggesting the inno- cent's initiation into v'orldly knowledge such as that explored by Henry

James in his novels. He secured a job with Liberty Taints and begins a

surrealistic nightmare that ends with the burning of the plant. Awaken­

ing finally as a patient in an experiment to perform an electrical pre-

frontal lobotomy, the narrator is probed and prodded and examined as

though he were an animal undergoing scientific tests. Then he is re­

leased from the factory hospital and then the next phase of his life be­

gins as he begins to faint and is rescued by ?!ary Ranbo, Negro crusader

for her race. The innocent initiate finds time and time again that truth

is not what he thought and life was greeting him with one deception after

another. He concludes: "’That and how much had I lost by trying to do

only what v/as expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

What a waste, what a senseless waste!" The next phase of the narrator's

awakening begins as he works for the Brotherhood and finds 'las the Des­

troyer and discovers that they are just about the same thing, as both or­

ganizations are destroyed in a race riot; he has exchanged Booker T.

Washington for Frederick Douglass. The Brotherhood betrayed all that the

narrator felt that he had been fighting for and Harlem exploded in a

race riot. Trying to escape from the blood hungered rioters, the narra­

tor falls down a manhole and symbolically dying, achieved freedom from

his illusions and a wholeness unknown to him until this point in Lis life.

The "Fpilogue" completes what the "Prologue" had started and tells his

listeners:

Let me be honest with you— a feat which, by the way, I find of the utmost difficulty, When one is invisible he finds such 247

problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other, depending upon who happens to be looking through him at the time. and that-—

Life is to he lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many— This is not prophecy, but description.

And again—

And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down, I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man— but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate.

And finally—

And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived.

The invisible man, Ellison's picaresque hero, has put words to his ex­ perience and has suggested a way for all men to be men.

If Ilalph Ellison is suggesting that there is hope for the survival of modern nan and that John Updike finds hope in the myriad forms found in everyday life, then modern man has a hope. Yet, them is the pessi­ mistic thundering found in the writings of Nathanael West that there is no hope; and as Josephine Ilerbst suggests

West's concern for the world stopped with a delineation of its dire predicament; in the severity of his vision he con­ demns mankind to a deterministic cycle as completely as the adherents of econonic-determiiiism but without their 243 26 futuristic goals.

Nathan Weinstein (1903-1940) or Nathanael West as he signed his four no­ vels, creates a fictional world that is horrifying to contemplate. In 27 Miss Lonelyhearts and in The Oav of the Locust things are not what they seen and the characters perform in a surrealistic world where reigns madness and absurdity. Miss Lonelyhearts, a short novel of fifty-eight pages contains fifteen scenes, each presenting a look at the absurd world of Miss Lonelyhearts. This writer of lonely heart answers to the problems of the world is a man that believes that "Christ was the answer," but "he had to stay from the Christ business:"'if he didn't want to get sick." Looking like a Baptist minister, he is unable to continue this farce of being the priest of twentieth-century America. All these reli­ gious references in the novel are negative. Shrike, symbolically a bird of prey and the feature editor, tried to get him to use art as an answer to the problems of the world. But to Miss Lonelyhearts, life was a joke that had gone sour; to get a drink he had to walk to Dele- hanty's Speakeasy through the park without grass, "the gray sky looked as if it had been rubbed with a soiled eraser," a newspaper "struggled in the air like a kite with a broken spine," and Shrike tells his friend, l’orget the Crucifixion, remember the Renaissance." The story is one of

26jor.ophine Hcrbst, "Nathanael West" in Nathanael Itost; A Collec­ tion of Critical kssays, ed. by Jay Martin (FngTewoocTlUiffs, N.J.; Prentice-liall, Inc., 1971), p. 24.

27Nathanael Vest, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Hay of the Locust (New York: New Directions Publishing Corpor.ation, 1933). All references will be from this edition. violence: the sacrificial lamb that is crushed with a rock, order that goes berserk, the girlfriend that Miss Lonelyhearts makes miserable, the faith in literature, Beauty, and personal expression that had been hopelessly lost, the frustrated sexual desire; all the simple answers to life's problems were useless. Shrike is drunk and utters "Don't call sick those who have faith. They are the well. It is you who are sick." Miss Lonelyhearts'attempts to gain that faith, but each tine he is prevented from gaining his goal. Finally, in a bout with fever, Miss

Lonelyhearts is "conscious of two rhythms that were slowly becoming one.

Wien they become one, his identification with God was complete. His heart was the one heart, the heart of God. And his brain was likewise

God's." The cripple Doyle has come to avenge himself for Miss Lonely- heart's treatment of Mrs. Doyle. Believing that he can heal the cripple,

Miss Lonelyheart runs down the stairs to succor the cripple. But in­ stead, Doyle shoots Miss Lonelyhearts, and they roll down the stairs to­ gether. /Mss Lonelyhearts is dead and his vision of healing the dis­ tressed people of the world is dead also, for only God has the power to effect such a healing. Miss Lonelyhearts' efforts are misdirected in every event of the story. The short novel is heavy with oppressive sym­ bols of despair.

West's second novel, The Day of the Locust, suggests a terrible de­ struction as is evident by the title. Alan Moss writes:

It is this ruthless outline of collapse that Nathanael West created more savagely and poetically than any other contem­ porary writer in his two important novels, Hiss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust— blueprints of the faithless Christ- 250

symbols that in the end stood for the American common man, like bitter flowers, as he lay on the ground at the stockade of his own defeat.

Just as Miss Lonelyhearts had good intentions and failed to fulfill any of them, Tod Hackett of The Day of the Locust is unable to fulfill his life for the novel deals with the "horrible emptiness of mass lives.

He fails to complete whatever he attempts to do. Tod Hackett is in the capital city for dream making and illusions, Hollywood. He was going to paint a great picture to prove his talent. Life is a masquerade; how the people dress, the styles of their homes, the decorations in their homes; and the people themselves such as Harry Griever, Romola Martin,

Homer Simpson, Claude Estee, Faye Greener, and Earl Shoop; like the Holly­ wood movie sets, the rest of the world described by Eest is a fake also; a "Sargasso Sea .... of the imagination." Even the descriptions of the churches— "Church of Christ, Physical," "Church Invisible," "Taber­ nacle of the Third Coning," "Temple Moderne"— suggest the terrible fake­ ness found in the masquerade. In the concluding chapter of the novel,

Hackett describes the huge crowd of people waiting outside Kahn's Per­ sian Palace Theatre for the celebrities to arrive for the world premiere of a new inovie. The crowd is described as having "slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor" for most of their lives until they finally retire

-®Alan Ross, "The Dead Center; An Introduction to Nathanael West" in The Complete Works of Nathanael Uest (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1R57), p. ix.

29ll>id., p. xi. to sunny California. But oranges, ocean waves, and seeing planes land become routine, and they desire something dramatic to break their terri­ ble boredom. The movies that they have seen in their lives make them aware that "nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies." They had labored under a mistake. Finally the crowd broke into a hysterical nob and the description given to the final pages suggests the utter uselessness of the whole event. The people had come to California to retire and to die and only death was left; the absurdi­ ty of the novel is complete as Hackett is carried away in a police am­ bulance with a broken leg and as he goes he is imitating the sound of the siren as loud as he can. Like the coming of the locust where every­ thing is destroyed, the people swarm and destroy the very thing that they have longed for; life becomes a nightmare.

The many voices cry out to the modern reader from the pages of to­ day's American literature. What are the solutions? Are there solutions

What voice does one hear most clearly? Is modern life a chaos as sug­ gested by such divergent writers as a Hemingway or an Updike? Or can truth be found in some form or quality in each of the voices? A modern reader, equipped to understand the why and how can better understand the predicament called modern life. To be so equipped, the modern rea­ der must approach with an open mind the religious voice expressed in the literature. The many voices calling for modern man's attention nec­ essitate a well-read, informed reader. All these voices speak of man's condition in t’.w- world, and all illustrate to some degree the values that life has to offer. But it is up to the individual reader to select those values that are important to him and reject those that are unim­ portant and know why this is true for him. As a result of this selec­ tion and rejection process, values will be formulated and the values accepted will enable the student to live more effectively in this trying world. CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

The authors selected for this study, "Using the Religious Voices

as an Approach to the Study of American Literature," illustrates the

changes in attitudes in periods of intellectual ferment. In handling

this vast period of 350 years, the writer felt that he must be care­

fully restrictive but yet convey those periods in American writings

that show the greatest amount of change from one period to the next.

There is no attempt to say that these changes are complete or conclu­

sive and that no previous thought is ever mentioned again by later writers. But rather, that these periods of ferment speak of a period

in which reaction set in toward the thinking expressed by authors of

an earlier period. The modern religious voice is an expression of the

intellectual ferment of the previous periods.

The Pilgrims, Puritans, and Quakers built their lives around what

they considered to be God's will for them. This is seen in the writings

of William Bradford and Jonathan Edwards. The rise of rationalism and

deism is illustrated by the writings of Benjamin Franklin and Thonas

Jefferson. Reacting to both Puritan and deistic thought were Nathaniel

Hawthorne and Herman Melville. That God was within man was expressed

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William Faulkner. The

voice of man became dominant in the writings of Mark Twain, Henry James,

253 254

Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. That God is dead and man is a victim of his environment is expressed by Stephen Crane and Theodore

Jreiser. Modern man blends these earlier voices, and their importance as illustrated in the writings of Nathanael West, John Updike, and

Ralph Ellison.

From the beginning the colonists depended fully on God for their every need. William Bradford in his history of Plymouth Plantation il­ lustrates the Christian thesis of "not my will, but thine be done."

Bradford wrote of God's wonderful help to man; from Bradford's dependence on God to supply man's needs, it is a short jump to the deistic philo­ sophy that "God helps those who help themselves." Although Benjamin

Franklin did have some doubts about the divinity of Christ, he was con­ sidered to be the most tolerant of man. "The rationalists believed man to be a rational creature, and many people cherished a new confidence in the availability and efficacy of man's reason."* Thinking of God as well as on other religious thinking was to undergo careful weighing of the facts for Jefferson who believed in man's rational ability to dis­ cern the correctness of a given situation.

It was a short step from the worship of reason to the worship of the rational creature, man. To Emerson man had the "over-soul" within, a part of the divinity. In "Self-Reliance," man was told to "Trust thyself" while prayer was a "sililoquy." Emerson felt that man did not

^Stewart, p. 24. 255 need more reason but rather more "soul." "By 'Soul' he meant the in­ tuitively faculty, or intuition, as opposed to the rational faculty, or reason," and as Transcendentalist, he urged the "intuitive perception of truth, the Truth which lies beyond the reach of logic and reason and the 2 physical senses."' Emerson's writings inspired Walt Whitman and Henry

David Thoreau, but Thoreau did not accept all of Emerson's teachings.

Thoreau accepted Emerson's teachings of self-reliance and wished to live simply as his experiment at Walden Pond illustrated. In his essay,

"On the Duty, of Civil Disobedience," Thoreau expressed his principles of conscience and not self-interest.

While the perfectability of man was being tested and thought through by Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau, Hathaniel Hawthorne and Her­ man Helville were writing about man's arrogance in attempting to become perfect. Wan was an imperfect being; he was human, and therefore it was impossible for him to be perfect. Hawthorne's short stories illus­ trate over and over again the sin of intellectual arrogance. In The

Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne depicts the sin of intellectual arrogance as Roger Chillingworth takes revenge upon the Reverend Arthur Dirunes- dale for his hidden sin while Dimmesdale suffers mentally enough so that he dies. Hester, the strongest of the trio, translates what

Stewart calls "the sacredness of the individual into the individual

^Stewart, p. 37. 256 3 a law unto himself." Hawthorne illustrated "the unpardonable sin," alienation, and redemption in his writings, attempting to delve "the depths of our common nature." Stewart writes:

I call Hawthorne, Melville, and James "counter-romantic" because they recognize Original Sin, because they show conflict between good and evil, because they show nan's struggle toward redemption, because they dramatize the necessary role of suffering in the purification of the self. They do not apotheosize the self, as romantics like Emerson and Whitman do, but warn against its perver­ sities, its obsessions, its insidious deceptions.4

Melville's Captain Ahab, that "ungodly, god-like man" attempted to wreak vengeance on the white whale. After his first encounter with the whale and his leg had been scared off, defiant Ahab visualized Moby

Dick as the personification of evil in the universe. In his pursuit of the vhale, Ahab loses touch with humanity; in his monomania, he de­ sires to revenge himself on that hump of evil. Melville's greatness lies in his ability to dramatize mnr’n tragic efforts to assert his free will against fate and evil. Billy Budd has a physical defect as does Ahab. Although Ahab's scar is visible from the top of his head and is said to go to the sole of his remaining foot, Billy's defect is his stutter that seems to cause his violent reaction to Jin Claggart's lie, causing the death of both men. "Billy Budd certainly is a brill­ iant and moving statement of the ultimate Christian lesson of resigna-

■^Stewart, p. 85.

4Ibid., p. 106. 257

„5 tion to Hod's over-ruling Providence ....

Environment was inportant to Mark Twain, In bis classic, The Ad­ ventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain illustrates bis belief that r.en are molded by their environment, buck, Uidow Douglas, Pop, and Jim, illus­ trate this belief. But in his struggles toward the right, Hucl; goes against the enrivonnental forces and says, "I can not pray a lie.” And if he is to go to hell, then lie'll go to hell rather than turn Jim in.

"Muck's grim '.\11 right then, I'll go to hell,' is one of the most power­ ful antinaturalist's declarations in all literature."*’ Twain's stories deal with the innocent and his efforts to become wise. Henry James' characters share this same innocence and growth toward wisdom. Isabel

Archer in Portrait of a Lady, John Marcher in "The Beast in the Jungle,"

Christopher Hcwman in The American and Spencer Brydon in "The Jolly

Corner" illustrates James' concern with the "insidiousness of egotism."7

Cieanth Brooks in The Hidden God, writes, "The man who lacks cour­ age and is a mere slave to his fears, is not truly free and not truly

t '• human."'’ This statement seems to illustrate Ernest Hemingway's major concern, that being man's struggle to be a human being against odds in

■’Stewart, p. 102.

111id ., p. 121.

7Ibid., p. 104. fj Cieanth Brooks, p. 15. 258 a world that seems bent on destroying his humanity. In "A Clean, Uell-

Lighteu Place" the cafe is a hold-out against darkness and evil of the world in the streets outside where man finds himself in a meaningless universe. "The best that he can hope to do is to find some little area of order which he himself has made within the engulfing dark of the ul­ timate nothing."^ "The Short Happy Life of Francis Itacomber" places the reader in Africa on a buffalo hunt. After shortly overcoming his great fear of dying, Maconber is accidentally killed. Hemingway is i trying to say that the "duration of time does not make a satisfactory life but that a satisfactory life is made rather by a complete satis­ faction of the spirit.Hick Adams in In Our Time, is attempting to find peace midst the horrors of war and the grind of daily existence by a ritualistic cleansing on the "big Two-Hearted River." In The Old

Man and the Sea, Hemingway seems to be saying that it matters not if you win the fight, but rather what matters most is how well you have fought the fight. Many of his characters lose the fight, but they fight well. Hemingway's characters who do not have God admit this honestly. Rut, "even men and women who do not have God must try to make up for him in some sense, quixotic as that gesture will seem, and,

^brooks, p. 10.

10Ibid., p. 18. 259 in ultimate terms at least, desperate as that gesture must be."^

William Faulkner depicts man as a heroic, tragic figure. To say that nan is a product of his evil environment is a misconception for 12 Faulkner's characters have the ability to choose evil or good.

Through suffering, man learns the deepest truths of self and life. It is through the daily tests of living that one is able to see values of eternal truths. "Evil for Faulkner involves the violation of the na- tural and the denial of the human." "Man will prevail," Faulkner said in his Mobel prize acceptance speech; the concern of his writings illus­ trates his belief that man will prevail according to the degree of dis­ cipline and effort employed. Isaac McCaslin, in "The Bear," refuses to accept the heritage of his family. In The Sound and the Fury, it is

Dilscy, the Megro housekeeper, that endures, Lena Grove, a touch of na­ ture symbolism in her name, endures in Light in August. So the author worth reading is the writer that depicts man as he feels he is. It is

’the novelist or poet [that] praises neither God nor nan, but the worth and value of human reality [as] experienced in its true dimension and depths, shunning all attempts to pauperize, limit, and distort that reality"^* that readies true worth and universality.

■^Brooks, p. 21.

^^Tbid., p. 24.

^^ihiu., p. 43.

■^TeSclle, p. 94. Each author presents what Janes referred to as windows on life;

the particular author sees life in his own particular way— out of his particular window. The novelists of any value present their view of

reality, not as truth, but as a truth for the reader to accept or re­ ject. "Faulkner is all true— he is poetically the most accurate nan

alive: he has looked straight into the heart of the natter, and got it down for good.' Faulkner used the decaying Southern aristocracy to reach universals while F. Scott Fitzgerald described the period between

the two b'orld Wars. The Great Gatsby is considered to be one of the most penetrating novels of the 1920's. "Babylon Revisited" is typical of his short stories written of the jazz age. Tender is the night re­

lates the story of a mental breakdown and is somewhat autobiographical as is most of his fiction. Fitzgerald's writings illustrate man's at­

tempts to depend on self; there is no need for a God.

L’mile Zola's naturalism readied across the Atlantic and impressed

American writers such as Stephen Crane. "The effect in general was to

reduce the st-’tv.re of the. individual, and to deprive him to autonomy 1 and responsibility." 1 liner son and Whitman praised man for his position just a little lower than the angels; Hemingway and Faulkner showed nan's

capacity for both good and evil; and Crane and Dreiser's writings

^JFron The London Times Literary Supplement, September 17, 1954. Quoted by Randall Stewart, p. 140. 16 Stewart, p. 109. 261 reduced nan to total submission to his environment. America's first naturalist novel, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, showed the effects of the New York City Bowery on a girl that "blossomed in a mud puddle" and whose life ended in the East River. The confusions and fears a soldier possessed in The Red Badge of Courage illustrate that man is a product of his environment and the accidents of circumstances. In "The Open

Boat" four men are merely insects under a high and cold universe; three of the four men survive the landing which seems another switch or quirk of circumstances. Theodore Dreiser, in An American Tragedy, takes 6n- vironment and heredity to paint a sympathetic picture of Clyde Griffiths who becomes the victim of circumstances. Man seems to have fallen as far as possible from his exalted position and still remain a man. Stew­ art writes, "I am inclined to think that we do not find as much natural­ ism in American literature as some have supposed .... I am inclined to believe that the naturalistic philosophy has proved incongenial, in 17 the main, to the American temperament." Lionel Trilling's "Opposing 13 self" is missing from the account of Clyde Griffith, but it is found in most American novels to differing degrees. "The Opposing Self1' is

the dissent of the Puritan all over again. It is only in the dissent of the early Americans and this "opposing self" of the modern writer

■^Stewart, p. 121. IQ Quoted by Stewart, p. 124. 262 that true tragedy can result; for only under these conditions can a true hero be possible.

Nathanael West seens to be typical of the youth of the modern per­ iod, interested in the bizarre and grotesque; "he was preoccupied with 19 disease, corruptibility, witchcraft, occultism, and mysticism." Tie was attempting ’’to express, for the modern sensibility, moral indigna­ tion without righteousness, and a tragic sense without a vision of redemp- 20 tion." West's second novel, Miss Lonelyhearts, that novel in the ?1 form of a comic strip" illustrates that life is an illusion for Miss

Lonelyhearts, the nev/spaperman who writes the lovelorn column, and for the masses of desperate, lonely people that write the letters to Miss

Lonelyhearts for help. His Christ-figure role is a failure as it must be for anyone who would assume such a role without understanding its implications. His fourth novel, The Hay of the Locust, tells of the disintegration of the artist Tod Ilackett, one of many characters that

"are all bit players in a violent modern drama of impersonal collective

forces.llepresentative of the Neo-orthodox writers of the contenpo-

1 ° Jay Martin, "Introduction" in Nathanael West: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice Hall, Inc., 1371), p. 2.

^Martin, p. 2. o 1 t ' Nathanael West, "Some Notes on Hiss Lonelyhearts ' in Nathanael West; A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Pren- tice-Uall, Inc., 1W71), p. 66.

22porbst, p. 13. 263 rary period would include John Updike. By making use of deceptively ordinary incidents involving ordinary people, he is not afraid to face the chaos of life and the horror of the maelstrom to illustrate what he considers to be a truth of men's condition. In The Poorhouse Pair,

Updike depicts his theme "The struggle for the soul of America."’ In

Rabbit, Hun, Updike displays a socially irresponsible young man, Harry,

"Rabbit" Angstrom. The Centaur, George Caldwell, a socially responsible high school teacher, illustrates the theme that in the surrender of one's own life for others there is perfect freedom.

"Man is the creator of his own reality" expresses Ralph Ellison's view of nan. There is an existential freedom or a transcendence of de- 0 / termination in his novel. * The novel, The Invisible rfan, is "about innocence and human error, a struggle through illusion to reality."’

This picaresque work illustrates to the reader what it means to be a

Uegro in search of his identity in modern America. The hero is invisible because men refuse to see him, and later in the novel he is invisible because he wills this to be so.

American literature in the brief 350 year history lias moved from a

“3]iami.lton, John Updike, p. 17.

•^Robert Bone, "Ralph Ellison and the "-e.e of Imagination" in The '.errili Studies in the Invisible "'an (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E . Merrill Publishing Company, 1071), p. 25.

"■’Ralph Ellison, "The Art of Fiction" An Interview" in The Merr­ ill Studies in the Invisible Han (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1971), p. 45. 264 theistic world, to deisn, to rationalism, to a monistic world of nr’nd or matter, and finally to a blend of some or all of these isms. The literature has attempted to relate the nature of man as faithfully as possible, blending the elements of romanticism, realism, and natural­ ism, the writers have attempted to find the exact expression, the proper characters, and the right plots that would best display man in his pre­ dicament. The religious voice is basic to man's condition, and the na­ ture of its expression is woven into the very nature of life in America from its beginning in 1620 to the present. Through the use of the reli­ gious voice the student would find the study of American literature an exciting, relevant experience. And as a result of that study, the stu­ dent should be better able to sort out his value system from the myriad voices calling for his attention by looking at the what, the how, and the why of that literature, IJhen one freshman honor student asked if the instructor had looked for material for the class to read that con­ tained religious implications, the answer must be that all great liter­ ature deals with the basic problems of man: birth, death, love, hate, hell, and God; a discussion of which is relevant to today's students.

The freshman concept of easy answers to life's problems no longer suf­ fices for the informed reader, by looking at the shift in attitudes toward Cod found in American literature, the student can better under­ stand his own ambivalent feelings. And by discussing these changes in the religious voice in that literature, the student should be able to formulate values that would enable him to live effectively in this pro­ 265 sent modern world by the maturing of his attitudes toward life itself.

The study of American literature should blend the didactic and the analytical as the student looks at the religious voice expressed by that literature. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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