Critical Disagreement Essay Example for Free

Critical Disagreement Essay Few modern writers reveal a more consistent intellectual development than Ernest Hemingway. In both his themes and the meaning he has found in them he has moved steadily and even logically from the earliest work of In Our Time to the significant orientation of The Fifth Column. The logic of this development has for the most part remained unnoticed by critics who have failed to realize that Hemingway, far from being a child of nature, is in fact an intellectual. They have presented him, consequently, as a sort of savage endowed with style, gifted but brainless. A Farewell to Arms ( 1929) takes us to the Italian front and includes a vivid account of the terrible retreat from Caporetto. An American lieutenant in the Italian Red Cross falls in love with an English nurse and she with him. Both have previously suffered more attrition than human nerves can stand, and in their passionate attachment they find a psychological refuge from the incessant horror of war. They escape to brief happiness in Switzerland, but in giving birth to a child the girl dies. The ending is far from inevitable. It is a comment on the looseness of Hemingways artistry that the moving picture version of this novel was equipped with alternative sad and happy conclusions. In A Farewell to Arms it is society as a whole that is rejected, social responsibility, social concern. Lieutenant Henry is in the War, but his attitude toward it is purely that of a spectator, refusing to be involved. He is leading a private life as an isolated individual. Even personal relations, of any depth or intimacy, he avoids; he drinks with the officers and talks with the priest and visits the officers brothel, but all contacts he keeps, deliberately, on a superficial level. He has rejected the world. Such an attitude is possible only to a sensitive and reflective person. Henry is no naive barbarian. He was studying architecture in Italy when the War began; he makes ironical remarks about sculptures and bronzes; his reflections and conversation contain allusions to Samuel Johnson, Saint Paul, Andrew Marvell, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. His flight from responsibility is the ultimate of the flight that Jake and Brett and Mike were trying to effect with drink and bullfights and sex. He is evading responsibility and emotion, taking refuge in simple primary sensations. Successfully, so far as the War is concerned: I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain . . . Abstract words, such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. Characterization Hemingways greatness lies not in the range of his characterization or the suppleness of his style but in the astonishing perfection of these limited objectives. As Wilhelm points out, â€Å"the oppressive weight of death and anxiety in this object composition, subtly framed for the readers perusal, undercuts the scenes mask of well-beingtwo wartime colleagues bonding rather sophomorically in their desire for women. Henry imbues the elements of this expansive still life with symbolic import, foreshadowing events to come. Because objects are frequently used for characterization, Henrys possessions provide visual clues to the reader, but only as fragments in the larger narrative that withhold their essential meaning until the texts conclusion†. (Wilhelm) The very intensity of Hemingways nihilism in his first stories and novels proved, however, that his need for an ideal expression in art was the mark of a passionate romanticist who had been profoundly disappointed. The anguish of his characters was too dramatic, too flawless; it was too transparent an inversion. The symbols Hemingway employed to convey his sense of the worlds futility and horror were always more significant than the characters who personified emotions, and the characters were so often felt as personified emotions that the emotions became sentimental. The gallery of expatriates in The Sun Also Rises were always subsidiary to the theme that the period itself was lost; the lovers in A Farewell to Arms were, as Edmund Wilson has said, the abstractions of a lyric emotion. Hemingway had created a world of his own socially more brilliant than life, but he was not writing about people living in a world; he was dealing in stock values again, driving his characters between the two poles of a tremulous inner exaltation and an absolute frustration. What he liked best was to invoke the specter of damnation. But A Farewell to Arms is a tragedy, and the lovers are shown as innocent victims with no relation to the forces that torment them. They themselves are not tormented within by that dissonance between personal satisfaction and the suffering one shares with others which it has been Hemingways triumph to handle. A Farewell to Arms, as the author once said, is a Romeo and Juliet. And when Catherine and her lover emerge from the stream of actionthe account of the Caporetto retreat is Hemingways best sustained piece of narrativewhen they escape from the alien necessities of which their romance has been merely an accident, which have been writing their story for them, then we see that they are not in themselves convincing as human personalities. And we are confronted with the paradox that Hemingway, who possesses so remarkable a mimetic gift in catching the tone of social and national types and in making his people talk appropriately, has not shown any very solid sense of character, or indeed, any real interest in it. The people in his short stories are satisfactory because he has only to hit them off: the point of the story does not lie in personalities, but in the emotion to which a situation gives rise. This is true even in The Sun Also Rises, where the characters are sketched with wonderful cleverness. But in A Farewell to Arms, as soon as we are brought into real intimacy with the lovers, as soon as the author is obliged to see them through a searching personal experience, we find merely an idealized relationship, the abstractions of a lyric emotion. Against the gaiety, the warmth of A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway portrays, of course, the cumulative degeneration of the human temperament under the conditions of war. The novel is a series of human defeats within one continuous and terrible sequence: the rains, the cholera, the soldiers who mutilate themselves rather than go on fighting, the growing weariness of the Italian army which led up to Caporetto, the degeneration of Rinaldi himself who is symptomatic of the novels pattern, and at its start is so quick and alive. Contrasted against this in turn, in the love of Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley we have another antithesis of increasing joy. The love and the despair are constantly related, intensely intertwined, and in the end almost gain the feeling of life and death themselves: the death preying upon the living organism of the lovers hope, eating into the flesh and destroying the form from page to page. Yet each change of form, each advance of destruction makes the life of the novel more vital, the life we know must yield, but in the manner of its yielding asserting itself beyond its destruction. A Farewell to Arms in this sense lies quite outside of the pattern of Hemingways development which we have been showing. For the feeling of tragedy in the novel comes precisely from the struggle to participate in life despite all the odds, from the efforts of the lovers to fulfill themselves in a sterile world, from the exact impact of the human will which Hemingway has negated. Yet even here we must notice that Lieutenant Henry turns his back upon our society after Caporetto. Following his personal objectives he abandons his friends, his responsibilities as an officer, the entire complex of organized social life represented by the army and the war. This farewell to arms is accomplished without request or permission. Lieutenant Henry, in fact, deserts, and his action is prophetic of his authors own future movement. You and me, says Nick to the Rinaldi of In Our Time, weve made a separate peace. And Hemingways separate peace was to embrace the woods of Michigan as well as Caporetto, the activities of normal times as well as war, and even at last the ordinary purposes of the individuals life within his society, as well as the collective purposes of society as a whole. Conclusion A Farewell to Arms is even more strictly the story of one man; here, even more than in The Sun Also Rises, the reader feels the cleft between the primary and secondary figures. Both books have the foreshortening of time which is more properly the privilege of the drama than of the traditional novel a technique toward which, since Hemingway demonstrated its immense value, American fiction has been striving with remarkable persistence. Back in the nineteenth century, when people like Henry James and Paul Bourget were taking such distinctions seriously, books like these would have been classified as novelas. I have some difficulty in feeling any wide gap between books in which Hemingway is reporting upon young men who are in character-tastes, occupations, age very much like himself, and books in which he drops the pretense of fiction in order to discuss the same materials in definite reference to himself. And why, to come directly to the main question, do we have to consider Death in the Afternoon and Green Hills of Africa such failures, anyway? One may not be particularly interested in bullfighting and still find that the considered statement, by an accomplished artist, regarding the effect on his own personality of the study of the worlds most stylized form of violence is a document of extraordinary interest, particularly if the artist is making a special effort to see himself clearly at the time. We can also agree with Edmund Wilson that as a book about animals Green Hills of Africa is dull, as we can agree with Max Eastman that as a manual of tauromachy Death in the Afternoon is silly, and still be passionately interested in Hemingways report on himself as a killer. I imagine the answer is that we were concerned by the apparent disappearance of a novelist who seemed to be losing his grip. Hemingway himself was aware of the danger and discoursed upon it for the benefit of the German traveler in the beginning of Green Hills of Africa. He also seemed to feel the danger of losing his memory for sharply characterized sensations, so essential to his kind of writing. In the books after 1930 he seems disproportionately intent on catching things before he forgets them. Works Cited Balbert, Peter. Courage at the Border-Line: Balder, Hemingway, and Lawrences the Captains Doll. Papers on Language Literature 42. 3 (2006) Bloom, Harold, ed. Ernest Hemingways a Farewell to Arms. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Giles, Todd. Simon and Schusters Hemingway Audio Collection. The Hemingway Review 26. 1 (2006) Onderdonk, Todd. Bitched: Feminization, Identity, and the Hemingwayesque in the Sun Also Rises. Twentieth Century Literature 52. 1 (2006) Trodd, Zoe. Hemingways Camera Eye: The Problem of Language and an Interwar Politics of Form. The Hemingway Review 26. 2 (2007) Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Seven Decades of Criticism Seven Decades of Criticism. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1998. Whitlow, Roger. Cassandras Daughters: The Women in Hemingway. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Wilhelm, Randall S. Objects on the Table: Anxiety and Still Life in Hemingways A Farewell to Arms. The Hemingway Review 26. 1 (2006)

whitsun wedding :: essays research papers

Frost's poem is melancholy and nostalgic in tone and soothing, almost hypnotic, in rhythm. Peaceful and serene in the natural scene it describes, it seems to sway between restful repose and death. Sleep and death, and a seeming longing for both, are evoked by the images of night, long travel, winter and isolation. The simple, formulaic phrasing and rhythm of the poem belie something hidden, beneath and in the past, which is more complex. Frost, differently from Hayden's free verse, uses the formal structure and rhythm of his verse in juxtaposition to the more troubling, less controllable, undercurrent of death. The nervous horse, keenly attune to its environment and master, is juxtaposed to the easy flow of the poem and the falsely assuring repetition of the last line. Similarly the juxtaposition of 'lovely' with 'dark and deep' woods (like a grave!) is unsettling. The tone of the poem starts off comical and almost light-hearted- a father dancing in a recklessly with his son, knocking over pots and pans. But the son clings onto his father like "death" while the mother is clearly discontented with the situation. "Whisky on your breath could make a small boy dizzy" connotes excess, a situation beyond acceptable limits - too much for the boy and too much for his mother. The verse jerks back and forth in tone and imagery; from movements of dance, to battered movements. 'Waltzing' and 'beating time' are juxtaposed to a tight hold on the wrist, battered knuckle and scraped ear. Lightness and humor change to satire and a critical edge. Like Frost, Roethke uses the rhythm of his verse to carry the reader along, like a waltz, but one that becomes increasingly dizzying as the reader realizes the confusion, even terror, the child feels. The child's reference to his father as 'you' helps the reader feel the emotions more immediately and drives home the physical closeness of father and child. It also enforces a tone that is almost accusatory. Hayden's poem moves from a description of the father, to the speaking "I" of his young son, to the matured recognition and remorse of the now grown poet. The shattering paradox of a laboring father who warms the house and polishes his son's good shoes but is greeted with indifference is not lost on the reader. Yet, the affection demonstrated by the father is through the provision of physical comforts (survival) and the son seems to yearn for something more, or at least is not able to see the affection demonstrated in his father's labors.

Presences of Others Essay

It is shown that people have the tendency to perform better when in a group this is called social facilitation. There have been other studies done contradicting this and with more difficult experiments it actually hurts a person’s performance in a group. As Zajonc stated; a state of arousal is linked to performance without the presence of others. When an individuals is faced with a more difficult task it may lower that persons self esteem and then lead to that person not performing at his or her best. Most people are afraid of being judged and this will affect all of our normal everyday behaviors due to a low self esteem issues. Now with simple tasks a person’s performance can be a positive and a stimulating experience allowing a person to perform better and set higher goals for themselves and have higher self esteem. I am a person who can identify with these, in starting school a few years back I was very intimidated and self conscious about being in a class room with people I did not know. I watched everything I said or did and did not want to even raise my hand because I did not want to be embarrassed if I answered incorrectly or sounded stupid. At first in my class I did not perform very well with the group, but as I got to know everyone my positivity started coming out and I was able to benefit with being in a group and excelled. The article I read in the Journal of Social Psychology was about a widely accepted finding that in social psychology, that the mere presence of others reduces anxiety. Based on Wrightsman’s widely accepted findings, that his study which he originally demonstrated that the reduction of anxiety is less in the presence of others (at least firstborns). Though Epley raised some questions on the methodology of Wrightsman’s study and about the real reason there was an anxiety reduction, Epley stated that it was probably due to the distractions or social comparison and not just the  presence of others. I believe that depending on the situation the group may be in. I also found that also it depends on the situation and task at hand that a group is in and if the conditions are peaceful or hectic. The next article I read stated that the presence and type of situation and the connection between the two with the presence of an audience and how they react to the performance. Partic ipants were performing various tasks both in group settings and alone. In group settings word association was better performed compared to problem solving tasks which were more successful while performed alone. It all depends on the task at hand and in what situation the task is being performed in and under what conditions. Reference Journal of Social Psychology. Aug1978, Vol. 105 Issue 2, p301. 2p.

The Necessity Of A Political Society Essay - 1511 Words

To demonstrate the necessity of a political society, Hobbes uses the state of nature as a device, by presenting the intolerable state of permanent conflict in a pre-political society. The key to comprehending a political or an apolitical society is to understand its components- people. Hobbes’ individual is a physical object, nothing more than a sophisticated machine. (Hobbes, 2008) The simplicity of the hobbesian man emphasizes the animal nature and the basic instinct of survival. The individual is seen as an entity whose utmost desire is self-preservation. Due to the absence of any kind of regulations, people are living in the state of nature, where there is no such thing as justice or injustice, right or wrong. Moral notions have no application and are replaced by the laws of nature. Hence, the state is not immoral, but rather amoral. Correlated with the state of nature, the quest of self-preservation leads to a constant estate of war, fueled by scarce resources and self-regard. The individual is portrayed in a perpetual state of searching for something, never at rest. (Hobbes, 2008) The constant state of war in which humanity would be struggling to survive lies in the conditions of the state of nature. Firstly, individuals desire power, and in Hobbes’ state of nature, power means obtaining what one desires. Secondly, obtaining power in the present means securing a safer future, building a glorified reputation and pre-empting invaders. Thus, the three principleShow MoreRelated The Loss of Freedom in Modern America Essay843 Words   |  4 PagesModern America nbsp; Society exists in two realms: public and private.nbsp; Thousands of years ago, the public realm was clearly defined as the political arena, where men interacted one with another, and the private realm dwelled among the work and labor of man.nbsp; The progression from ancient Greece to modern day society has blurred the defining line between the two due to the increasing influence of money. nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; In Greek society, the public realm wasRead MoreThe Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt Essay1632 Words   |  7 Pagesbetween individuals. All interaction within the public realm requires the individual to have attained freedom. As society continues to develop, however, and the Modern Age takes over the rise of the Social Realm disrupts the hierarchy of these three human activities. Arendt writes about how this disruption damages the natural order. Each of the three human activities has it’s own place in society and by disrupting the natural order this shift towards the Social Realm causes issues for mankind. The PrivateRead MoreRousseau And Freedom Essay901 Words   |  4 Pagesmodern society. According to Rousseau, the creation of a need results from passion established in a person and that increases the desire people have on an object or any activity. In the arguments concerning the necessity of freedom, natural man is considered to be physically free from any control or manipulation from other humans. Psychologically and spiritually, the physical man is also considered to be free from enslavement of any artificial needs that usually characterize the modern society (RousseauRead MoreThe Social Functions Of Political Systems1001 Words   |  5 PagesModule 5 Essay Questions 1. What kinds of political systems are there and what are the social functions of political systems?   There are several types of political systems that can be categorized including bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. Bands and tribes are considered uncentralized political systems, whereas chiefdoms and states are described as being more centralized (Kilman Module 5). It’s important to note that these forms of political systems aren’t static, meaning constant or unchangingRead MoreThe Democratic Ideal And The Modern Challenges916 Words   |  4 Pagesdemocracy is the highest political principles of the US. The democratic ideal comprises equality, participation, minority protection, inclusion, voting rights, human rights and civil liberties (Edwards, Wattenberg Lineberry, 12-13). However, the modern reality shows, that the ideal is far from reality and faces the numerous challenges. The research shows the widening of the gap between the democratic ideals and practice owing to the following factors: the polarizing of the political life, lowered toleranceRead MoreThe Hu man Condition By Hannah Arendt919 Words   |  4 Pagesencounter with Nazis which led to her interest and participation in political activities. Hannah Arendt developed her philosophy of education during her time in the United States. Her philosophy is shaped by the political turmoil that played out in public schools at that time. Arendt was influenced by many philosophers. â€Å"One sees Jasper’s influence in The Human Condition in which Arendt developed this idea of action: public, political behavior based on communication† (Snelgrove, 4). Hannah Arendt wasRead MoreThomas Hobbes And Nicholas Machiavelli Essay1481 Words   |  6 Pageswherein man is not depraved and fallen — but is rather able to create. In effect, these idealist exalted man’s abilities rather than man’s depravity and banishment from the garden of eden. Machiavelli acknowledged that the practice of creating a political order in time meant only temporal glory is attainable, for fortuna will always win. Nonetheless, the heretical optimism of humanism created more problems than resolutions; creating stasis in chaos, time, change, creating a novel type of ethics, placingRead MoreA Vikings Civilized World1265 Words   |  5 Pagesculture. The Vikings’ political system was essential to the Vikings’ everyday lives by giving them a stable lifestyle and a reliable colony.Traditions and religion were an important part of the Vikings’ culture. Their interaction with the environment was crucial to survival in the Vikings and their civilization. Interacting with the environment, the Vikings managed to locate and design food and shelter. The civilized traits in the Vikings’ world were demonstrated through its political, culture, and interactionRead MoreValues And Its Impact On Society1014 Words   |  5 PagesValues have been forged in the framework of society, since they have been conceived by mankind. Individual freedom, political equal ity, economic equality, stability order, welfare of the public, common values, and education are common values rooted in a society. However, values in society can differentiate in two distinct forms. Values can embody the far fetch aspirations of a society or can be a benefit in society. The value, I view as the most important is welfare for the public, and an unalienableRead MoreHobbes And Rousseau s Theory Of Ownership1136 Words   |  5 Pagestextual evidence how Hobbes understands the idea of ownership in his book â€Å"Leviathan†; what Rousseau interprets of ownership in â€Å"Discourse on the Origins of Inequality†; Marx’s views on the idea of ownership; and then answer whether or not a political society needs to protect the right to ownership. Thomas Hobbes was raised and trained to be a humanist. His approach to analyzing the body of politics was to define it as a composition of individuals and humans. In his book, â€Å"Leviathan† he considered