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Hard Times
Charles Dicken
Plot Overview
T HOMAS GRADGRIND, A WEALTHY, RETIRED MERCHANT in the industrial city
of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of
rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children,
Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows
them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a
school and charitably takes in one of the students, the kindly and
imaginative Sissy Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, acircus entertainer.
As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated,
self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner
confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important
in her life. Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind’s friend Josiah
Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice
her age. Bounderby continually trumpets his role as a self-mademan who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an infant.
Tom is apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at
the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children.
In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—Dickens’s term for the
lowest laborers in Coketown’s factories—named Stephen
Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor
factory worker. He is unable to marry her because he is already
married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears for months
and even years at a time. Stephen visits Bounderby to ask about
a divorce but learns that only the wealthy can obtain them.
Outside Bounderby’s home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old
woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby.
James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London,
arrives in Coketown to begin a political career as a disciple of
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Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately
takes an interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With
the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has
fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about
trying to corrupt Louisa.
The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named
Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join
because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions
between employers and employees. He is cast out by the other
Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them.
Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s integrity, visits him before he
leaves Coketown and helps him with some money. Tomaccompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the
bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to him.
Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually he packs up and
leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country.
Not long after that, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is
Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the
bank for several nights just before disappearing from the city.
Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa,
and Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that night.
However, Louisa instead flees to her father’s house, where she
miserably confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her
married to a man she does not love, disconnected from her
feelings, deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with Harthouse.
She collapses to the floor, and Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-
reproach, begins to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of
rational self-interest.
Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces
him to leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious that his wife
has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When
Stephen tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a
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mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him,
but he dies soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael.
Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really responsible for
robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak him out of England
with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her
early childhood. They are nearly successful, but are stopped by
Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who
embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that
Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the
lisping circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer’s
grasp, and the young robber escapes from England after all.
Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, dragsMrs. Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see
Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby
recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving
mother, whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a
self-made man after all. Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and
sends her away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will
die alone in the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his
philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the
poor. Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies without ever
seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large and
loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children.
Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy’s family and learns at last
how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings.
Analysis of Major Characters
Thomas Gradgrind
Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times,
and one of the central figures through whom Dickens weaves a
web of intricately connected plotlines and characters. Dickens
introduces us to this character with a description of his most
central feature: his mechanized, monotone attitude and
appearance. The opening scene in the novel describes Mr.
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Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young students, and it is
appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard facts
that he crams into his students’ heads. The narrator calls attention
to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs, square shoulders,” all of
which suggest Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity.
In the first few chapters of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind expounds his
philosophy of calculating, rational self-interest. He believes that
human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and
he is “ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature,
and tell you what it comes to.” This philosophy has brought Mr.
Gradgrind much financial and social success. He has made his
fortune as a hardware merchant, a trade that, appropriately, dealsin hard, material reality. Later, he becomes a Member of
Parliament, a position that allows him to indulge his interest in
tabulating data about the people of England. Although he is not a
factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces the spirit of the Industrial
Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be
reduced to a number of scientific principles.
While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic,Gradgrind undergoes a significant change in the course of the
novel, thereby earning the narrator’s sympathy. When Louisa
confesses that she feels something important is missing in her life
and that she is desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind
begins to realize that his system of education may not be perfect.
This intuition is confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed
Bounderby’s bank. Faced with these failures of his system,
Gradgrind admits, “The ground on which I stand has ceased to be
solid under my feet.” His children’s problems teach him to feel
love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler
man, ultimately “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith,
Hope and Charity.”
Louisa Gradgrind
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Although Louisa is the novel’s principal female character, she is
distinctive from the novel’s other women, particularly her foils,
Sissy and Rachael. While these other two embody the Victorian
ideal of femininity—sensitivity, compassion, and gentleness—
Louisa’s education has prevented her from developing such traits.
Instead, Louisa is silent, cold, and seemingly unfeeling. However,
Dickens may not be implying that Louisa is really unfeeling, but
rather that she simply does not know how to recognize and
express her emotions. For instance, when her father tries to
convince her that it would be rational for her to marry Bounderby,
Louisa looks out of the window at the factory chimneys and
observes: “There seems to be nothing there but languid andmonotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out.”
Unable to convey the tumultuous feelings that lie beneath her own
languid and monotonous exterior, Louisa can only state a fact
about her surroundings. Yet this fact, by analogy, also describes
the emotions repressed within her.
Even though she does not conform to the Victorian ideals of
femininity, Louisa does her best to be a model daughter, wife, and
sister. Her decision to return to her father’s house rather than
elope with Harthouse demonstrates that while she may be
unfeeling, she does not lack virtue. Indeed, Louisa, though
unemotional, still has the ability to recognize goodness and
distinguish between right and wrong, even when it does not fall
within the strict rubric of her father’s teachings. While at first
Louisa lacks the ability to understand and function within the gray
matter of emotions, she can at least recognize that they exist andare more powerful than her father or Bounderby believe, even
without any factual basis. Moreover, under Sissy’s guidance,
Louisa shows great promise in learning to express her feelings.
Similarly, through her acquaintance with Rachael and Stephen,
Louisa learns to respond charitably to suffering and to not view
suffering simply as a temporary state that is easily overcome by
effort, as her father and Bounderby do.
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Josiah Bounderby
Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is
more interested in money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is
himself a fiction, or a fraud. Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride isillustrated by his oft-repeated declaration, “I am Josiah Bounderby
of Coketown.” This statement generally prefaces the story of
Bounderby’s childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to
impress its listeners with a sense of the young Josiah
Bounderby’s determination and self-discipline. However, Dickens
explodes the myth of the self-made man when Bounderby’s
mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that her son had a decent, loving
childhood and a good education, and that he was not abandoned,after all.
Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created by
industrialization and capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline
formerly determined the social hierarchy, in an industrialized,
capitalist society, wealth determines who holds the most power.
Thus, Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit,an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, has become his
servant, while his own ambition has enabled him to rise from
humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and
a bank. However, in depicting Bounderby, the capitalist, as a
coarse, vain, self-interested hypocrite, Dickens implies that
Bounderby uses his wealth and power irresponsibly, contributing
to the muddled relations between rich and poor, especially in his
treatment of Stephen after the Hands cast Stephen out to form a
union.
Stephen Blackpool
Stephen Blackpool is introduced after we have met the Gradgrind
family and Bounderby, and Blackpool provides a stark contrast to
these earlier characters. One of the Hands in Bounderby’s
factory, Stephen lives a life of drudgery and poverty. In spite of
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the hardships of his daily toil, Stephen strives to maintain his
honesty, integrity, faith, and compassion.
Stephen is an important character not only because his poverty
and virtue contrast with Bounderby’s wealth and self-interest, butalso because he finds himself in the midst of a labor dispute that
illustrates the strained relations between rich and poor. Stephen is
the only Hand who refuses to join a workers’ union: he believes
that striking is not the best way to improve relations between
factory owners and employees, and he also wants to earn an
honest living. As a result, he is cast out of the workers’ group.
However, he also refuses to spy on his fellow workers for
Bounderby, who consequently sends him away. Both groups, richand poor, respond in the same self-interested, backstabbing way.
As Rachael explains, Stephen ends up with the “masters against
him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only
wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right.” Through
Stephen, Dickens suggests that industrialization threatens to
compromise both the employee’s and employer’s moral integrity,
thereby creating a social muddle to which there is no easy
solution.
Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides,
Stephen becomes a martyr, or Christ figure, ultimately dying for
Tom’s crime. When he falls into a mine shaft on his way back to
Coketown to clear his name of the charge of robbing Bounderby’s
bank, Stephen comforts himself by gazing at a particularly bright
star that seems to shine on him in his “pain and trouble.” This star
not only represents the ideals of virtue for which Stephen strives,
but also the happiness and tranquility that is lacking in his
troubled life. Moreover, his ability to find comfort in the star
illustrates the importance of imagination, which enables him to
escape the cold, hard facts of his miserable existence.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored
in a literary work.
The Mechanization of Human Beings
Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century England’s
overzealous adoption of industrialization threatens to turn human
beings into machines by thwarting the development of their
emotions and imaginations. This suggestion comes forth largely
through the actions of Gradgrind and his follower, Bounderby: as
the former educates the young children of his family and his
school in the ways of fact, the latter treats the workers in his
factory as emotionless objects that are easily exploited for hisown self-interest. In Chapter 5 of the first book, the narrator draws
a parallel between the factory Hands and the Gradgrind children
—both lead monotonous, uniform existences, untouched by
pleasure. Consequently, their fantasies and feelings are dulled,
and they become almost mechanical themselves.
The mechanizing effects of industrialization are compounded by
Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of rational self-interest. Mr. Gradgrindbelieves that human nature can be measured, quantified, and
governed entirely by rational rules. Indeed, his school attempts to
turn children into little machines that behave according to such
rules. Dickens’s primary goal in Hard Times is to illustrate the
dangers of allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting
that without compassion and imagination, life would be
unbearable. Indeed, Louisa feels precisely this suffering when she
returns to her father’s house and tells him that something hasbeen missing in her life, so much so that she finds herself in an
unhappy marriage and may be in love with someone else. While
she does not actually behave in a dishonorable way, since she
stops her interaction with Harthouse before she has a socially
ruinous affair with him, Louisa realizes that her life is unbearable
and that she must do something drastic for her own survival.
Appealing to her father with the utmost honesty, Louisa is able to
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make him realize and admit that his philosophies on life and
methods of child rearing are to blame for Louisa’s detachment
from others.
The Opposition Between Fact and Fancy
While Mr. Gradgrind insists that his children should always stick to
the facts, Hard Times not only suggests that fancy is as important
as fact, but it continually calls into question the difference
between fact and fancy. Dickens suggests that what constitutes
so-called fact is a matter of perspective or opinion. For example,
Bounderby believes that factory employees are lazy good-for-
nothings who expect to be fed “from a golden spoon.” The Hands,in contrast, see themselves as hardworking and as unfairly
exploited by their employers. These sets of facts cannot be
reconciled because they depend upon perspective. While
Bounderby declares that “[w]hat is called Taste is only another
name for Fact,” Dickens implies that fact is a question of taste or
personal belief. As a novelist, Dickens is naturally interested in
illustrating that fiction cannot be excluded from a fact-filled,
mechanical society. Gradgrind’s children, however, grow up in anenvironment where all flights of fancy are discouraged, and they
end up with serious social dysfunctions as a result. Tom becomes
a hedonist who has little regard for others, while Louisa remains
unable to connect with others even though she has the desire to
do so. On the other hand, Sissy, who grew up with the circus,
constantly indulges in the fancy forbidden to the Gradgrinds, and
lovingly raises Louisa and Tom’s sister in a way more complete
than the upbringing of either of the older siblings. Just as fiction
cannot be excluded from fact, fact is also necessary for a
balanced life. If Gradgrind had not adopted her, Sissy would have
no guidance, and her future might be precarious. As a result, the
youngest Gradgrind daughter, raised both by the factual
Gradgrind and the fanciful Sissy, represents the best of both
worlds.
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The Importance of Femininity
During the Victorian era, women were commonly associated with
supposedly feminine traits like compassion, moral purity, and
emotional sensitivity. Hard Times suggests that because theypossess these traits, women can counteract the mechanizing
effects of industrialization. For instance, when Stephen feels
depressed about the monotony of his life as a factory worker,
Rachael’s gentle fortitude inspires him to keep going. He sums up
her virtues by referring to her as his guiding angel. Similarly, Sissy
introduces love into the Gradgrind household, ultimately teaching
Louisa how to recognize her emotions. Indeed, Dickens suggests
that Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of self-interest and calculating
rationality has prevented Louisa from developing her natural
feminine traits. Perhaps Mrs. Gradgrind’s inability to exercise her
femininity allows Gradgrind to overemphasize the importance of
fact in the rearing of his children. On his part, Bounderby ensures
that his rigidity will remain untouched since he marries the cold,
emotionless product of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind’s marriage.
Through the various female characters in the novel, Dickenssuggests that feminine compassion is necessary to restore social
harmony.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Bounderby’s Childhood
Bounderby frequently reminds us that he is “Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown.” This emphatic phrase usually follows a description of
his childhood poverty: he claims to have been born in a ditch and
abandoned by his mother; raised by an alcoholic grandmother;
and forced to support himself by his own labor. From these
ignominious beginnings, he has become the wealthy owner of
both a factory and a bank. Thus, Bounderby represents the
possibility of social mobility, embodying the belief that any
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individual should be able overcome all obstacles to success—
including poverty and lack of education—through hard work.
Indeed, Bounderby often recites the story of his childhood in order
to suggest that his Hands are impoverished because they lack his
ambition and self-discipline. However, “Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown” is ultimately a fraud. His mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals
that he was raised by parents who were loving, albeit poor, and
who saved their money to make sure he received a good
education. By exposing Bounderby’s real origins, Dickens calls
into question the myth of social mobility. In other words, he
suggests that perhaps the Hands cannot overcome poverty
through sheer determination alone, but only through the charityand compassion of wealthier individuals.
Clocks and Time
Dickens contrasts mechanical or man-made time with natural
time, or the passing of the seasons. In both Coketown and the
Gradgrind household, time is mechanized—in other words, it is
relentless, structured, regular, and monotonous. As the narrator
explains, “Time went on in Coketown like its own machine.” Themechanization of time is also embodied in the “deadly statistical
clock” in Mr. Gradgrind’s study, which measures the passing of
each minute and hour. However, the novel itself is structured
through natural time. For instance, the titles of its three books
—“Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering”—allude to agricultural
labor and to the processes of planting and harvesting in
accordance with the changes of the seasons. Similarly, the
narrator notes that the seasons change even in Coketown’s
“wilderness of smoke and brick.” These seasonal changes
constitute “the only stand that ever was made against its direful
uniformity.” By contrasting mechanical time with natural time,
Dickens illustrates the great extent to which industrialization has
mechanized human existence. While the changing seasons
provide variety in terms of scenery and agricultural labor,
mechanized time marches forward with incessant regularity.
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horse with “golden stars stuck on all over him.” The pegasus
represents a world of fantasy and beauty from which the young
Gradgrind children are excluded. While Mr. Gradgrind informs the
pupils at his school that wallpaper with horses on it is unrealistic
simply because horses do not in fact live on walls, the circus folk
live in a world in which horses dance the polka and flying horses
can be imagined, even if they do not, in fact, exist. The very name
of the inn reveals the contrast between the imaginative and joyful
world of the circus and Mr. Gradgrind’s belief in the importance of
fact.
Smoke Serpents
At a literal level, the streams of smoke that fill the skies above
Coketown are the effects of industrialization. However, these
smoke serpents also represent the moral blindness of factory
owners like Bounderby. Because he is so concerned with making
as much profit as he possibly can, Bounderby interprets the
serpents of smoke as a positive sign that the factories are
producing goods and profit. Thus, he not only fails to see the
smoke as a form of unhealthy pollution, but he also fails torecognize his own abuse of the Hands in his factories. The smoke
becomes a moral smoke screen that prevents him from noticing
his workers’ miserable poverty. Through its associations with evil,
the word “serpents” evokes the moral obscurity that the smoke
creates.
Fire
When Louisa is first introduced, in Chapter 3 of Book the First, the
narrator explains that inside her is a “fire with nothing to burn, a
starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow.” This
description suggests that although Louisa seems coldly rational,
she has not succumbed entirely to her father’s prohibition against
wondering and imagining. Her inner fire symbolizes the warmth
created by her secret fancies in her otherwise lonely, mechanized
existence. Consequently, it is significant that Louisa often gazes
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into the fireplace when she is alone, as if she sees things in the
flames that others—like her rigid father and brother—cannot see.
However, there is another kind of inner fire in Hard Times— the
fires that keep the factories running, providing heat and power for
the machines. Fire is thus both a destructive and a life-giving
force. Even Louisa’s inner fire, her imaginative tendencies,
eventually becomes destructive: her repressed emotions
eventually begin to burn “within her like an unwholesome fire.”
Through this symbol, Dickens evokes the importance of
imagination as a force that can counteract the mechanization of
human nature.
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Plot Overview
R OBINSON CRUSOE IS AN ENGLISHMAN from the town of York in the
seventeenth century, the youngest son of a merchant of German
origin. Encouraged by his father to study law, Crusoe expresses
his wish to go to sea instead. His family is against Crusoe going
out to sea, and his father explains that it is better to seek a
modest, secure life for oneself. Initially, Robinson is committed to
obeying his father, but he eventually succumbs to temptation and
embarks on a ship bound for London with a friend. When a storm
causes the near deaths of Crusoe and his friend, the friend is
dissuaded from sea travel, but Crusoe still goes on to set himself
up as merchant on a ship leaving London. This trip is financially
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successful, and Crusoe plans another, leaving his early profits in
the care of a friendly widow. The second voyage does not prove
as fortunate: the ship is seized by Moorish pirates, and Crusoe is
enslaved to a potentate in the North African town of Sallee. While
on a fishing expedition, he and a slave boy break free and sail
down the African coast. A kindly Portuguese captain picks them
up, buys the slave boy from Crusoe, and takes Crusoe to Brazil.
In Brazil, Crusoe establishes himself as a plantation owner and
soon becomes successful. Eager for slave labor and its economic
advantages, he embarks on a slave-gathering expedition to West
Africa but ends up shipwrecked off of the coast of Trinidad.
Crusoe soon learns he is the sole survivor of the expedition andseeks shelter and food for himself. He returns to the wreck’s
remains twelve times to salvage guns, powder, food, and other
items. Onshore, he finds goats he can graze for meat and builds
himself a shelter. He erects a cross that he inscribes with the date
of his arrival, September 1, 1659, and makes a notch every day in
order never to lose track of time. He also keeps a journal of his
household activities, noting his attempts to make candles, his
lucky discovery of sprouting grain, and his construction of a cellar,
among other events. In June 1660, he falls ill and hallucinates
that an angel visits, warning him to repent. Drinking tobacco-
steeped rum, Crusoe experiences a religious illumination and
realizes that God has delivered him from his earlier sins. After
recovering, Crusoe makes a survey of the area and discovers he
is on an island. He finds a pleasant valley abounding in grapes,
where he builds a shady retreat. Crusoe begins to feel moreoptimistic about being on the island, describing himself as its
“king.” He trains a pet parrot, takes a goat as a pet, and develops
skills in basket weaving, bread making, and pottery. He cuts down
an enormous cedar tree and builds a huge canoe from its trunk,
but he discovers that he cannot move it to the sea. After building
a smaller boat, he rows around the island but nearly perishes
when swept away by a powerful current. Reaching shore, he
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hears his parrot calling his name and is thankful for being saved
once again. He spends several years in peace.
One day Crusoe is shocked to discover a man’s footprint on the
beach. He first assumes the footprint is the devil’s, then decides itmust belong to one of the cannibals said to live in the region.
Terrified, he arms himself and remains on the lookout for
cannibals. He also builds an underground cellar in which to herd
his goats at night and devises a way to cook underground. One
evening he hears gunshots, and the next day he is able to see a
ship wrecked on his coast. It is empty when he arrives on the
scene to investigate. Crusoe once again thanks Providence for
having been saved. Soon afterward, Crusoe discovers that theshore has been strewn with human carnage, apparently the
remains of a cannibal feast. He is alarmed and continues to be
vigilant. Later Crusoe catches sight of thirty cannibals heading for
shore with their victims. One of the victims is killed. Another one,
waiting to be slaughtered, suddenly breaks free and runs toward
Crusoe’s dwelling. Crusoe protects him, killing one of the
pursuers and injuring the other, whom the victim finally kills. Well-
armed, Crusoe defeats most of the cannibals onshore. The victim
vows total submission to Crusoe in gratitude for his liberation.
Crusoe names him Friday, to commemorate the day on which his
life was saved, and takes him as his servant.
Finding Friday cheerful and intelligent, Crusoe teaches him some
English words and some elementary Christian concepts. Friday,
in turn, explains that the cannibals are divided into distinct nations
and that they only eat their enemies. Friday also informs Crusoe
that the cannibals saved the men from the shipwreck Crusoe
witnessed earlier, and that those men, Spaniards, are living
nearby. Friday expresses a longing to return to his people, and
Crusoe is upset at the prospect of losing Friday. Crusoe then
entertains the idea of making contact with the Spaniards, and
Friday admits that he would rather die than lose Crusoe. The two
build a boat to visit the cannibals’ land together. Before they have
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a chance to leave, they are surprised by the arrival of twenty-one
cannibals in canoes. The cannibals are holding three victims, one
of whom is in European dress. Friday and Crusoe kill most of the
cannibals and release the European, a Spaniard. Friday is
overjoyed to discover that another of the rescued victims is his
father. The four men return to Crusoe’s dwelling for food and rest.
Crusoe prepares to welcome them into his community
permanently. He sends Friday’s father and the Spaniard out in a
canoe to explore the nearby land.
Eight days later, the sight of an approaching English ship alarms
Friday. Crusoe is suspicious. Friday and Crusoe watch as eleven
men take three captives onshore in a boat. Nine of the menexplore the land, leaving two to guard the captives. Friday and
Crusoe overpower these men and release the captives, one of
whom is the captain of the ship, which has been taken in a
mutiny. Shouting to the remaining mutineers from different points,
Friday and Crusoe confuse and tire the men by making them run
from place to place. Eventually they confront the mutineers, telling
them that all may escape with their lives except the ringleader.
The men surrender. Crusoe and the captain pretend that the
island is an imperial territory and that the governor has spared
their lives in order to send them all to England to face justice.
Keeping five men as hostages, Crusoe sends the other men out
to seize the ship. When the ship is brought in, Crusoe nearly
faints.
On December 19, 1686, Crusoe boards the ship to return to
England. There, he finds his family is deceased except for two
sisters. His widow friend has kept Crusoe’s money safe, and after
traveling to Lisbon, Crusoe learns from the Portuguese captain
that his plantations in Brazil have been highly profitable. He
arranges to sell his Brazilian lands. Wary of sea travel, Crusoe
attempts to return to England by land but is threatened by bad
weather and wild animals in northern Spain. Finally arriving back
in England, Crusoe receives word that the sale of his plantations
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has been completed and that he has made a considerable
fortune. After donating a portion to the widow and his sisters,
Crusoe is restless and considers returning to Brazil, but he is
dissuaded by the thought that he would have to become Catholic.
He marries, and his wife dies. Crusoe finally departs for the East
Indies as a trader in 1694. He revisits his island, finding that the
Spaniards are governing it well and that it has become a
prosperous colony
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored
in a literary work.
The Ambivalence of Mastery
Crusoe’s success in mastering his situation, overcoming his
obstacles, and controlling his environment shows the condition ofmastery in a positive light, at least at the beginning of the novel.
Crusoe lands in an inhospitable environment and makes it his
home. His taming and domestication of wild goats and parrots
with Crusoe as their master illustrates his newfound control.
Moreover, Crusoe’s mastery over nature makes him a master of
his fate and of himself. Early in the novel, he frequently blames
himself for disobeying his father’s advice or blames the destiny
that drove him to sea. But in the later part of the novel, Crusoe
stops viewing himself as a passive victim and strikes a new note
of self-determination. In building a home for himself on the island,
he finds that he is master of his life—he suffers a hard fate and
still finds prosperity.
But this theme of mastery becomes more complex and less
positive after Friday’s arrival, when the idea of mastery comes to
apply more to unfair relationships between humans. In Chapter
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XXIII, Crusoe teaches Friday the word “[m]aster” even before
teaching him “yes” and “no,” and indeed he lets him “know that
was to be [Crusoe’s] name.” Crusoe never entertains the idea of
considering Friday a friend or equal—for some reason, superiority
comes instinctively to him. We further question Crusoe’s right to
be called “[m]aster” when he later refers to himself as “king” over
the natives and Europeans, who are his “subjects.” In short, while
Crusoe seems praiseworthy in mastering his fate, the
praiseworthiness of his mastery over his fellow humans is more
doubtful. Defoe explores the link between the two in his depiction
of the colonial mind.
The Necessity of Repentance
Crusoe’s experiences constitute not simply an adventure story in
which thrilling things happen, but also a moral tale illustrating the
right and wrong ways to live one’s life. This moral and religious
dimension of the tale is indicated in the Preface, which states that
Crusoe’s story is being published to instruct others in God’s
wisdom, and one vital part of this wisdom is the importance of
repenting one’s sins. While it is important to be grateful for God’smiracles, as Crusoe is when his grain sprouts, it is not enough
simply to express gratitude or even to pray to God, as Crusoe
does several times with few results. Crusoe needs repentance
most, as he learns from the fiery angelic figure that comes to him
during a feverish hallucination and says, “Seeing all these things
have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die.” Crusoe
believes that his major sin is his rebellious behavior toward his
father, which he refers to as his “original sin,” akin to Adam and
Eve’s first disobedience of God. This biblical reference also
suggests that Crusoe’s exile from civilization represents Adam
and Eve’s expulsion from Eden.
For Crusoe, repentance consists of acknowledging his
wretchedness and his absolute dependence on the Lord. This
admission marks a turning point in Crusoe’s spiritual
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consciousness, and is almost a born-again experience for him.
After repentance, he complains much less about his sad fate and
views the island more positively. Later, when Crusoe is rescued
and his fortune restored, he compares himself to Job, who also
regained divine favor. Ironically, this view of the necessity of
repentance ends up justifying sin: Crusoe may never have
learned to repent if he had never sinfully disobeyed his father in
the first place. Thus, as powerful as the theme of repentance is in
the novel, it is nevertheless complex and ambiguous.
The Importance of Self-Awareness
Crusoe’s arrival on the island does not make him revert to a bruteexistence controlled by animal instincts, and, unlike animals, he
remains conscious of himself at all times. Indeed, his island
existence actually deepens his self-awareness as he withdraws
from the external social world and turns inward. The idea that the
individual must keep a careful reckoning of the state of his own
soul is a key point in the Presbyterian doctrine that Defoe took
seriously all his life. We see that in his normal day-to-day
activities, Crusoe keeps accounts of himself enthusiastically andin various ways. For example, it is significant that Crusoe’s
makeshift calendar does not simply mark the passing of days, but
instead more egocentrically marks the days he has spent on the
island: it is about him, a sort of self-conscious or autobiographical
calendar with him at its center. Similarly, Crusoe obsessively
keeps a journal to record his daily activities, even when they
amount to nothing more than finding a few pieces of wood on the
beach or waiting inside while it rains. Crusoe feels the importance
of staying aware of his situation at all times. We can also sense
Crusoe’s impulse toward self-awareness in the fact that he
teaches his parrot to say the words, “Poor Robin Crusoe. . . .
Where have you been?” This sort of self-examining thought is
natural for anyone alone on a desert island, but it is given a
strange intensity when we recall that Crusoe has spent months
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teaching the bird to say it back to him. Crusoe teaches nature
itself to voice his own self-awareness.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Counting and Measuring
Crusoe is a careful note-taker whenever numbers and quantities
are involved. He does not simply tell us that his hedge encloses a
large space, but informs us with a surveyor’s precision that the
space is “150 yards in length, and 100 yards in breadth.” He tellsus not simply that he spends a long time making his canoe in
Chapter XVI, but that it takes precisely twenty days to fell the tree
and fourteen to remove the branches. It is not just an immense
tree, but is “five foot ten inches in diameter at the lower part . . .
and four foot eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two
foot.” Furthermore, time is measured with similar exactitude, as
Crusoe’s journal shows. We may often wonder why Crusoe feels
it useful to record that it did not rain on December 26, but for himthe necessity of counting out each day is never questioned. All
these examples of counting and measuring underscore Crusoe’s
practical, businesslike character and his hands-on approach to
life. But Defoe sometimes hints at the futility of Crusoe’s
measuring—as when the carefully measured canoe cannot reach
water or when his obsessively kept calendar is thrown off by a
day of oversleeping. Defoe may be subtly poking fun at the urge
to quantify, showing us that, in the end, everything Crusoe countsnever really adds up to much and does not save him from
isolation.
Eating
One of Crusoe’s first concerns after his shipwreck is his food
supply. Even while he is still wet from the sea in Chapter V, he
frets about not having “anything to eat or drink to comfort me.” He
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soon provides himself with food, and indeed each new edible item
marks a new stage in his mastery of the island, so that his food
supply becomes a symbol of his survival. His securing of goat
meat staves off immediate starvation, and his discovery of grain is
viewed as a miracle, like manna from heaven. His cultivation of
raisins, almost a luxury food for Crusoe, marks a new comfortable
period in his island existence. In a way, these images of eating
convey Crusoe’s ability to integrate the island into his life, just as
food is integrated into the body to let the organism grow and
prosper. But no sooner does Crusoe master the art of eating than
he begins to fear being eaten himself. The cannibals transform
Crusoe from the consumer into a potential object to be consumed.Life for Crusoe always illustrates this eat or be eaten philosophy,
since even back in Europe he is threatened by man-eating
wolves. Eating is an image of existence itself, just as being eaten
signifies death for Crusoe.
Ordeals at Sea
Crusoe’s encounters with water in the novel are often associated
not simply with hardship, but with a kind of symbolic ordeal, ortest of character. First, the storm off the coast of Yarmouth
frightens Crusoe’s friend away from a life at sea, but does not
deter Crusoe. Then, in his first trading voyage, he proves himself
a capable merchant, and in his second one, he shows he is able
to survive enslavement. His escape from his Moorish master and
his successful encounter with the Africans both occur at sea. Most
significantly, Crusoe survives his shipwreck after a lengthy
immersion in water. But the sea remains a source of danger and
fear even later, when the cannibals arrive in canoes. The Spanish
shipwreck reminds Crusoe of the destructive power of water and
of his own good fortune in surviving it. All the life-testing water
imagery in the novel has subtle associations with the rite of
baptism, by which Christians prove their faith and enter a new life
saved by Christ.
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Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to
represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Footprint
Crusoe’s shocking discovery of a single footprint on the sand in
Chapter XVIII is one of the most famous moments in the novel,
and it symbolizes our hero’s conflicted feelings about human
companionship. Crusoe has earlier confessed how much he
misses companionship, yet the evidence of a man on his island
sends him into a panic. Immediately he interprets the footprint
negatively, as the print of the devil or of an aggressor. He neverfor a moment entertains hope that it could belong to an angel or
another European who could rescue or befriend him. This
instinctively negative and fearful attitude toward others makes us
consider the possibility that Crusoe may not want to return to
human society after all, and that the isolation he is experiencing
may actually be his ideal state.
The Cross
Concerned that he will “lose [his] reckoning of time” in Chapter
VII, Crusoe marks the passing of days “with [his] knife upon a
large post, in capital letters, and making it into a great cross . . .
set[s] it up on the shore where [he] first landed. . . .” The large
size and capital letters show us how important this cross is to
Crusoe as a timekeeping device and thus also as a way of
relating himself to the larger social world where dates andcalendars still matter. But the cross is also a symbol of his own
new existence on the island, just as the Christian cross is a
symbol of the Christian’s new life in Christ after baptism, an
immersion in water like Crusoe’s shipwreck experience. Yet
Crusoe’s large cross seems somewhat blasphemous in making
no reference to Christ. Instead, it is a memorial to Crusoe himself,
underscoring how completely he has become the center of his
own life.
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Crusoe’s Bower
On a scouting tour around the island, Crusoe discovers a
delightful valley in which he decides to build a country retreat or
“bower” in Chapter XII. This bower contrasts sharply withCrusoe’s first residence, since it is built not for the practical
purpose of shelter or storage, but simply for pleasure: “because I
was so enamoured of the place.” Crusoe is no longer focused
solely on survival, which by this point in the novel is more or less
secure. Now, for the first time since his arrival, he thinks in terms
of “pleasantness.” Thus, the bower symbolizes a radical
improvement in Crusoe’s attitude toward his time on the island.
Island life is no longer necessarily a disaster to suffer through, butmay be an opportunity for enjoyment—just as, for the
Presbyterian, life may be enjoyed only after hard work has been
finished and repentance achieved
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Analysis of Major Characters
Robinson Crusoe
While he is no flashy hero or grand epic adventurer, Robinson
Crusoe displays character traits that have won him the approval
of generations of readers. His perseverance in spending months
making a canoe, and in practicing pottery making until he gets it
right, is praiseworthy. Additionally, his resourcefulness in building
a home, dairy, grape arbor, country house, and goat stable frompractically nothing is clearly remarkable. The Swiss philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau applauded Crusoe’s do-it-yourself
independence, and in his book on education, Emile, he
recommends that children be taught to imitate Crusoe’s hands-on
approach to life. Crusoe’s business instincts are just as
considerable as his survival instincts: he manages to make a
fortune in Brazil despite a twentyeighyear absence and even
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leaves his island with a nice collection of gold. Moreover, Crusoe
is never interested in portraying
. When Crusoe tells us that he has gotten married and that his
wife has died all within the same sentence, his indifference to herseems almost cruel. Moreover, as an individual personality,
Crusoe is rather dull. His precise and deadpan style of narration
works well for recounting the process of canoe building, but it
tends to drain the excitement from events that should be thrilling.
Action-packed scenes like the conquest of the cannibals become
quite humdrum when Crusoe narrates them, giving us a detailed
inventory of the cannibals in list form, for example. His insistence
on dating events makes sense to a point, but it ultimately ends upseeming obsessive and irrelevant when he tells us the date on
which he grinds his tools but neglects to tell us the date of a very
important event like meeting Friday. Perhaps his impulse to
record facts carefully is not a survival skill, but an irritating sign of
his neurosis.
Finally, while not boasting of heroism, Crusoe is nonetheless very
interested in possessions, power, and prestige. When he firstcalls himself king of the island it seems jocund, but when he
describes the Spaniard as his subject we must take his royal
delusion seriously, since it seems he really does consider himself
king. His teaching Friday to call him “Master,” even before
teaching him the words for “yes” or “no,” seems obnoxious even
under the racist standards of the day, as if Crusoe needs to hear
the ego-boosting word spoken as soon as possible. Overall,
Crusoe’s virtues tend to be private: his industry, resourcefulness,
and solitary courage make him an exemplary individual. But his
vices are social, and his urge to subjugate others is highly
objectionable. In bringing both sides together into one complex
character, Defoe gives us a fascinating glimpse into the
successes, failures, and contradictions of modern man.
Friday
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Probably the first nonwhite character to be given a realistic,
individualized, and humane portrayal in the English novel, Friday
has a huge literary and cultural importance. If Crusoe represents
the first colonial mind in fiction, then Friday represents not just a
Caribbean tribesman, but all the natives of America, Asia, and
Africa who would later be oppressed in the age of European
imperialism. At the moment when Crusoe teaches Friday to call
him “Master” Friday becomes an enduring political symbol of
racial injustice in a modern world critical of imperialist expansion.
Recent rewritings of the Crusoe story, like J. M. Coetzee’s Foe
and Michel Tournier’s Friday, emphasize the sad consequences
of Crusoe’s failure to understand Friday and suggest how the talemight be told very differently from the native’s perspective.
Aside from his importance to our culture, Friday is a key figure
within the context of the novel. In many ways he is the most
vibrant character in Robinson Crusoe, much more charismatic
and colorful than his master. Indeed, Defoe at times underscores
the contrast between Crusoe’s and Friday’s personalities, as
when Friday, in his joyful reunion with his father, exhibits far moreemotion toward his family than Crusoe. Whereas Crusoe never
mentions missing his family or dreams about the happiness of
seeing them again, Friday jumps and sings for joy when he meets
his father, and this emotional display makes us see what is
missing from Crusoe’s stodgy heart. Friday’s expression of loyalty
in asking Crusoe to kill him rather than leave him is more heartfelt
than anything Crusoe ever says or does. Friday’s sincere
questions to Crusoe about the devil, which Crusoe answers onlyindirectly and hesitantly, leave us wondering whether Crusoe’s
knowledge of Christianity is superficial and sketchy in contrast to
Friday’s full understanding of his own god Benamuckee. In short,
Friday’s exuberance and emotional directness often point out the
wooden conventionality of Crusoe’s personality.
Despite Friday’s subjugation, however, Crusoe appreciates Friday
much more than he would a mere servant. Crusoe does not seem
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to value intimacy with humans much, but he does say that he
loves Friday, which is a remarkable disclosure. It is the only time
Crusoe makes such an admission in the novel, since he never
expresses love for his parents, brothers, sisters, or even his wife.
The mere fact that an Englishman confesses more love for an
illiterate Caribbean ex-cannibal than for his own family suggests
the appeal of Friday’s personality. Crusoe may bring Friday
Christianity and clothing, but Friday brings Crusoe emotional
warmth and a vitality of spirit that Crusoe’s own European heart
lacks.
The Portuguese Captain
The Portuguese captain is presented more fully than any other
European in the novel besides Crusoe, more vividly portrayed
than Crusoe’s widow friend or his family members. He appears in
the narrative at two very important junctures in Crusoe’s life. First,
it is the Portuguese captain who picks up Crusoe after the escape
from the Moors and takes him to Brazil, where Crusoe establishes
himself as a plantation owner. Twenty-eight years later, it is againthe Portuguese captain who informs Crusoe that his Brazilian
investments are secure, and who arranges the sale of the
plantation and the forwarding of the proceeds to Crusoe. In both
cases, the Portuguese captain is the agent of Crusoe’s extreme
good fortune. In this sense, he represents the benefits of social
connections. If the captain had not been located in Lisbon,
Crusoe never would have cashed in on his Brazilian holdings.
This assistance from social contacts contradicts the theme ofsolitary enterprise that the novel seems to endorse. Despite
Crusoe’s hard individual labor on the island, it is actually another
human being— and not his own resourcefulness—that makes
Crusoe wealthy in the end. Yet it is doubtful whether this insight
occurs to Crusoe, despite his obvious gratitude toward the
captain.
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Moreover, the Portuguese captain is associated with a wide array
of virtues. He is honest, informing Crusoe of the money he has
borrowed against Crusoe’s investments, and repaying a part of it
immediately even though it is financially difficult for him to do so.
He is loyal, honoring his duties toward Crusoe even after twenty-
eight years. Finally, he is extremely generous, paying Crusoe
more than market value for the animal skins and slave boy after
picking Crusoe up at sea, and giving Crusoe handsome gifts
when leaving Brazil. All these virtues make the captain a paragon
of human excellence, and they make us wonder why Defoe
includes such a character in the novel. In some ways, the
captain’s goodness makes him the moral counterpart of Friday,since the European seaman and the Caribbean cannibal mirror
each other in benevolence and devotion to Crusoe. The captain’s
goodness thus makes it impossible for us to make oversimplified
oppositions between a morally bankrupt Europe on the one hand,
and innocent noble savages on the other.
Chinua Achebe hThings Fall Apart
Plot Overview
O KONKWO IS A WEALTHY AND RESPECTED WARRIOR of the Umuofia clan, a
lower Nigerian tribe that is part of a consortium of nine connected
villages. He is haunted by the actions of Unoka, his cowardly and
spendthrift father, who died in disrepute, leaving many village
debts unsettled. In response, Okonkwo became a clansman,
warrior, farmer, and family provider extraordinaire. He has a
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twelve-year-old son named Nwoye whom he finds lazy; Okonkwo
worries that Nwoye will end up a failure like Unoka.
In a settlement with a neighboring tribe, Umuofia wins a virgin and
a fifteen-year-old boy. Okonkwo takes charge of the boy,Ikemefuna, and finds an ideal son in him. Nwoye likewise forms a
strong attachment to the newcomer. Despite his fondness for
Ikemefuna and despite the fact that the boy begins to call him
“father,” Okonkwo does not let himself show any affection for him.
During the Week of Peace, Okonkwo accuses his youngest wife,
Ojiugo, of negligence. He severely beats her, breaking the peace
of the sacred week. He makes some sacrifices to show hisrepentance, but he has shocked his community irreparably.
Ikemefuna stays with Okonkwo’s family for three years. Nwoye
looks up to him as an older brother and, much to Okonkwo’s
pleasure, develops a more masculine attitude. One day, the
locusts come to Umuofia—they will come every year for seven
years before disappearing for another generation. The village
excitedly collects them because they are good to eat whencooked.
Ogbuefi Ezeudu, a respected village elder, informs Okonkwo in
private that the Oracle has said that Ikemefuna must be killed. He
tells Okonkwo that because Ikemefuna calls him “father,”
Okonkwo should not take part in the boy’s death. Okonkwo lies to
Ikemefuna, telling him that they must return him to his home
village. Nwoye bursts into tears.
As he walks with the men of Umuofia, Ikemefuna thinks about
seeing his mother. After several hours of walking, some of
Okonkwo’s clansmen attack the boy with machetes. Ikemefuna
runs to Okonkwo for help. But Okonkwo, who doesn’t wish to look
weak in front of his fellow tribesmen, cuts the boy down despite
the Oracle’s admonishment. When Okonkwo returns home,
Nwoye deduces that his friend is dead.
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Okonkwo sinks into a depression, neither able to sleep nor eat.
He visits his friend Obierika and begins to feel revived a bit.
Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma falls ill, but she recovers after
Okonkwo gathers leaves for her medicine.
The death of Ogbuefi Ezeudu is announced to the surrounding
villages by means of the ekwe, a musical instrument. Okonkwo
feels guilty because the last time Ezeudu visited him was to warn
him against taking part in Ikemefuna’s death. At Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s
large and elaborate funeral, the men beat drums and fire their
guns. Tragedy compounds upon itself when Okonkwo’s gun
explodes and kills Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s sixteen-year-old son.
Because killing a clansman is a crime against the earth goddess,
Okonkwo must take his family into exile for seven years in order
to atone. He gathers his most valuable belongings and takes his
family to his mother’s natal village, Mbanta. The men from
Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s quarter burn Okonkwo’s buildings and kill his
animals to cleanse the village of his sin.
Okonkwo’s kinsmen, especially his uncle, Uchendu, receive him
warmly. They help him build a new compound of huts and lend
him yam seeds to start a farm. Although he is bitterly disappointed
at his misfortune, Okonkwo reconciles himself to life in his
motherland.
During the second year of Okonkwo’s exile, Obierika brings
several bags of cowries (shells used as currency) that he hasmade by selling Okonkwo’s yams. Obierika plans to continue to
do so until Okonkwo returns to the village. Obierika also brings
the bad news that Abame, another village, has been destroyed by
the white man.
Soon afterward, six missionaries travel to Mbanta. Through an
interpreter named Mr. Kiaga, the missionaries’ leader, Mr. Brown,
speaks to the villagers. He tells them that their gods are false and
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that worshipping more than one God is idolatrous. But the
villagers do not understand how the Holy Trinity can be accepted
as one God. Although his aim is to convert the residents of
Umuofia to Christianity, Mr. Brown does not allow his followers to
antagonize the clan.
Mr. Brown grows ill and is soon replaced by Reverend James
Smith, an intolerant and strict man. The more zealous converts
are relieved to be free of Mr. Brown’s policy of restraint. One such
convert, Enoch, dares to unmask an egwugwu during the annual
ceremony to honor the earth deity, an act equivalent to killing an
ancestral spirit. The next day, the egwugwu burn Enoch’s
compound and Reverend Smith’s church to the ground.
The District Commissioner is upset by the burning of the church
and requests that the leaders of Umuofia meet with him. Once
they are gathered, however, the leaders are handcuffed and
thrown in jail, where they suffer insults and physical abuse.
After the prisoners are released, the clansmen hold a meeting,
during which five court messengers approach and order theclansmen to desist. Expecting his fellow clan members to join him
in uprising, Okonkwo kills their leader with his machete. When the
crowd allows the other messengers to escape, Okonkwo realizes
that his clan is not willing to go to war.
When the District Commissioner arrives at Okonkwo’s compound,
he finds that Okonkwo has hanged himself. Obierika and his
friends lead the commissioner to the body. Obierika explains that
suicide is a grave sin; thus, according to custom, none of
Okonkwo’s clansmen may touch his body. The commissioner,
who is writing a book about Africa, believes that the story of
Okonkwo’s rebellion and death will make for an interesting
paragraph or two. He has already chosen the book’s title: The
Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
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imself as a hero in his own narration. He does not boast of his
courage in quelling the mutiny, and he is always ready to admit
unheroic feelings of fear or panic, as when he finds the footprint
on the beach. Crusoe prefers to depict himself as an ordinary
sensible man, never as an exceptional hero.
But Crusoe’s admirable qualities must be weighed against the
flaws in his character. Crusoe seems incapable of deep feelings,
as shown by his cold account of leaving his family—he worries
about the religious consequences of disobeying his father, but
never displays any emotion about leaving. Though he is generous
toward people, as when he gives gifts to his sisters and the
captain, Crusoe reveals very little tender or sincere affection in hisdealings with them.
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored
in a literary work.
The Struggle Between Change and Tradition
As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall
Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect
various characters. The tension about whether change should be
privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal
status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and
religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that
he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate
them. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is
also due to his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-
worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which
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society judges him. This system of evaluating the self inspires
many of the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long
scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a
refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below
everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a
more elevated status.
The villagers in general are caught between resisting and
embracing change and they face the dilemma of trying to
determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the
villagers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques
that the missionaries bring. This European influence, however,
threatens to extinguish the need for the mastery of traditionalmethods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking. These
traditional methods, once crucial for survival, are now, to varying
degrees, dispensable. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows how
dependent such traditions are upon storytelling and language and
thus how quickly the abandonment of the Igbo language for
English could lead to the eradication of these traditions.
Varying Interpretations of Masculinity
Okonkwo’s relationship with his late father shapes much of his
violent and ambitious demeanor. He wants to rise above his
father’s legacy of spendthrift, indolent behavior, which he views
as weak and therefore effeminate. This association is inherent in
the clan’s language—the narrator mentions that the word for a
man who has not taken any of the expensive, prestige-indicating
titles is agbala, which also means “woman.” But, for the most part,Okonkwo’s idea of manliness is not the clan’s. He associates
masculinity with aggression and feels that anger is the only
emotion that he should display. For this reason, he frequently
beats his wives, even threatening to kill them from time to time.
We are told that he does not think about things, and we see him
act rashly and impetuously. Yet others who are in no way
effeminate do not behave in this way. Obierika, unlike Okonkwo,
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“was a man who thought about things.” Whereas Obierika refuses
to accompany the men on the trip to kill Ikemefuna, Okonkwo not
only volunteers to join the party that will execute his surrogate son
but also violently stabs him with his machete simply because he is
afraid of appearing weak.
Okonkwo’s seven-year exile from his village only reinforces his
notion that men are stronger than women. While in exile, he lives
among the kinsmen of his motherland but resents the period in its
entirety. The exile is his opportunity to get in touch with his
feminine side and to acknowledge his maternal ancestors, but he
keeps reminding himself that his maternal kinsmen are not as
warlike and fierce as he remembers the villagers of Umuofia tobe. He faults them for their preference of negotiation, compliance,
and avoidance over anger and bloodshed. In Okonkwo’s
understanding, his uncle Uchendu exemplifies this pacifist (and
therefore somewhat effeminate) mode.
Language as a Sign of Cultural Difference
Language is an important theme in Things Fall Apart on severallevels. In demonstrating the imaginative, often formal language of
the Igbo, Achebe emphasizes that Africa is not the silent or
incomprehensible country that books such as Heart of Darkness
made it out to be. Rather, by peppering the novel with Igbo words,
Achebe shows that the Igbo language is too complex for direct
translation into English. Similarly, Igbo culture cannot be
understood within the framework of European colonialist values.
Achebe also points out that Africa has many different languages:the villagers of Umuofia, for example, make fun of Mr. Brown’s
translator because his language is slightly different from their
own.
On a macroscopic level, it is extremely significant that Achebe
chose to write Things Fall Apart in English—he clearly intended it
to be read by the West at least as much, if not more, than by his
fellow Nigerians. His goal was to critique and emend the portrait
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of Africa that was painted by so many writers of the colonial
period. Doing so required the use of English, the language of
those colonial writers. Through his inclusion of proverbs, folktales,
and songs translated from the Igbo language, Achebe managed
to capture and convey the rhythms, structures, cadences, and
beauty of the Igbo language.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Chi
The concept of chi is discussed at various points throughout the
novel and is important to our understanding of Okonkwo as a
tragic hero. The chi is an individual’s personal god, whose merit is
determined by the individual’s good fortune or lack thereof. Along
the lines of this interpretation, one can explain Okonkwo’s tragic
fate as the result of a problematic chi —a thought that occurs to
Okonkwo at several points in the novel. For the clan believes, as
the narrator tells us in Chapter 14, a “man could not rise beyond
the destiny of his chi.” But there is another understanding of chi
that conflicts with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator relates,
according to an Igbo proverb, that “when a man says yes his chi
says yes also.” According to this understanding, individuals will
their own destinies. Thus, depending upon our interpretation of
chi, Okonkwo seems either more or less responsible for his own
tragic death. Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: whenthings are going well for him, he perceives himself as master and
maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he
automatically disavows responsibility and asks why he should be
so ill-fated.
Animal Imagery
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In their descriptions, categorizations, and explanations of human
behavior and wisdom, the Igbo often use animal anecdotes to
naturalize their rituals and beliefs. The presence of animals in
their folklore reflects the environment in which they live—not yet
“modernized” by European influence. Though the colonizers, for
the most part, view the Igbo’s understanding of the world as
rudimentary, the Igbo perceive these animal stories, such as the
account of how the tortoise’s shell came to be bumpy, as logical
explanations of natural phenomena. Another important animal
image is the figure of the sacred python. Enoch’s alleged killing
and eating of the python symbolizes the transition to a new form
of spirituality and a new religious order. Enoch’s disrespect of thepython clashes with the Igbo’s reverence for it, epitomizing the
incompatibility of colonialist and indigenous values.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to
represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Locusts
Achebe depicts the locusts that descend upon the village in highly
allegorical terms that prefigure the arrival of the white settlers,
who will feast on and exploit the resources of the Igbo. The fact
that the Igbo eat these locusts highlights how innocuous they take
them to be. Similarly, those who convert to Christianity fail to
realize the damage that the culture of the colonizer does to the
culture of the colonized.
The language that Achebe uses to describe the locusts indicates
their symbolic status. The repetition of words like “settled” and
“every” emphasizes the suddenly ubiquitous presence of these
insects and hints at the way in which the arrival of the white
settlers takes the Igbo off guard. Furthermore, the locusts are so
heavy they break the tree branches, which symbolizes the
fracturing of Igbo traditions and culture under the onslaught of
colonialism and white settlement. Perhaps the most explicit clue
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that the locusts symbolize the colonists is Obierika’s comment in
Chapter 15: “the Oracle . . . said that other white men were on
their way. They were locusts. . . .”
Fire
Okonkwo is associated with burning, fire, and flame throughout
the novel, alluding to his intense and dangerous anger—the only
emotion that he allows himself to display. Yet the problem with
fire, as Okonkwo acknowledges in Chapters 17 and 24, is that it
destroys everything it consumes. Okonkwo is both physically
destructive—he kills Ikemefuna and Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s son—and
emotionally destructive—he suppresses his fondness forIkemefuna and Ezinma in favor of a colder, more masculine aura.
Just as fire feeds on itself until all that is left is a pile of ash,
Okonkwo eventually succumbs to his intense rage, allowing it to
rule his actions until it destroys him.
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Analysis of Major Character
Okonkwo
Okonkwo, the son of the effeminate and lazy Unoka, strives to
make his way in a world that seems to value manliness. In so
doing, he rejects everything for which he believes his father stood.
Unoka was idle, poor, profligate, cowardly, gentle, and interested
in music and conversation. Okonkwo consciously adopts oppositeideals and becomes productive, wealthy, thrifty, brave, violent,
and adamantly opposed to music and anything else that he
perceives to be “soft,” such as conversation and emotion. He is
stoic to a fault.
Okonkwo achieves great social and financial success by
embracing these ideals. He marries three women and fathers
several children. Nevertheless, just as his father was at odds with
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the values of the community around him, so too does Okonkwo
find himself unable to adapt to changing times as the white man
comes to live among the Umuofians. As it becomes evident that
compliance rather than violence constitutes the wisest principle
for survival, Okonkwo realizes that he has become a relic, no
longer able to function within his changing society.
Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the classical sense: although he is a
superior character, his tragic flaw—the equation of manliness with
rashness, anger, and violence—brings about his own destruction.
Okonkwo is gruff, at times, and usually unable to express his
feelings (the narrator frequently uses the word “inwardly” in
reference to Okonkwo’s emotions). But his emotions are indeedquite complex, as his “manly” values conflict with his “unmanly”
ones, such as fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma. The narrator
privileges us with information that Okonkwo’s fellow clan
members do not have—that Okonkwo surreptitiously follows
Ekwefi into the forest in pursuit of Ezinma, for example—and thus
allows us to see the tender, worried father beneath the seemingly
indifferent exterior.
Nwoye
Nwoye, Okonkwo’s oldest son, struggles in the shadow of his
powerful, successful, and demanding father. His interests are
different from Okonkwo’s and resemble more closely those of
Unoka, his grandfather. He undergoes many beatings, at a loss
for how to please his father, until the arrival of Ikemefuna, who
becomes like an older brother and teaches him a gentler form ofsuccessful masculinity. As a result, Okonkwo backs off, and
Nwoye even starts to win his grudging approval. Nwoye remains
conflicted, however: though he makes a show of scorning
feminine things in order to please his father, he misses his
mother’s stories.
With the unconscionable murder of Ikemefuna, however, Nwoye
retreats into himself and finds himself forever changed. His
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reluctance to accept Okonkwo’s masculine values turns into pure
embitterment toward him and his ways. When missionaries come
to Mbanta, Nwoye’s hope and faith are reawakened, and he
eventually joins forces with them. Although Okonkwo curses his
lot for having borne so “effeminate” a son and disowns Nwoye,
Nwoye appears to have found peace at last in leaving the
oppressive atmosphere of his father’s tyranny.
Ezinma
Ezinma, Okonkwo’s favorite daughter and the only child of Ekwefi,
is bold in the way that she approaches—and even sometimes
contradicts—her father. Okonkwo remarks to himself multipletimes that he wishes she had been born a boy, since he considers
her to have such a masculine spirit. Ezinma alone seems to win
Okonkwo’s full attention, affection, and, ironically, respect. She
and he are kindred spirits, which boosts her confidence and
precociousness. She grows into a beautiful young woman who
sensibly agrees to put off marriage until her family returns from
exile so as to help her father leverage his sociopolitical power
most effectively. In doing so, she shows an approach similar tothat of Okonkwo: she puts strategy ahead of emotion.
Mr. Brown
Mr. Brown represents Achebe’s attempt to craft a well-rounded
portrait of the colonial presence by tempering bad personalities
with good ones. Mr. Brown’s successor, Reverend Smith, is
zealous, vengeful, small-minded, and manipulative; he thus
stands in contrast to Mr. Brown, who, on the other hand, is
benevolent if not always beneficent. Mr. Brown succeeds in
winning a large number of converts because he listens to the
villagers’ stories, beliefs, and opinions. He also accepts the
converts unconditionally. His conversation with Akunna
represents this sympathetic stance. The derisive comments that
Reverend Smith makes about Mr. Brown after the latter’s
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departure illustrate the colonial intolerance for any kind of
sympathy for, and genuine interest in, the native culture. The
surname Brown hints at his ability to navigate successfully the
clear-cut racial division between the colonizers and the colonized
Beloved
Toni Morrison
Plot Overview
B eloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Sethe, a former
slave, has been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver.Sethe’s mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, lived with them until her death
eight years earlier. Just before Baby Suggs’s death, Sethe’s two sons,
Howard and Buglar, ran away. Sethe believes they fled because of the
malevolent presence of an abusive ghost that has haunted their house at
124 Bluestone Road for years. Denver, however, likes the ghost, which
everyone believes to be the spirit of her dead sister.
On the day the novel begins, Paul D, whom Sethe has not seen since
they worked together on Mr. Garner’s Sweet Home plantation in
Kentucky approximately twenty years earlier, stops by Sethe’s house.
His presence resurrects memories that have lain buried in Sethe’s mind
for almost two decades. From this point on, the story will unfold on two
temporal planes. The present in Cincinnati constitutes one plane, while a
series of events that took place around twenty years earlier, mostly in
Kentucky, constitutes the other. This latter plane is accessed and
described through the fragmented flashbacks of the major characters.
Accordingly, we frequently read these flashbacks several times,sometimes from varying perspectives, with each successive narration of
an event adding a little more information to the previous ones.
From these fragmented memories, the following story begins to emerge:
Sethe, the protagonist, was born in the South to an African mother she
never knew. When she is thirteen, she is sold to the Garners, who own
Sweet Home and practice a comparatively benevolent kind of slavery.
There, the other slaves, who are all men, lust after her but never touch
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her. Their names are Sixo, Paul D, Paul A, Paul F, and Halle. Sethe
chooses to marry Halle, apparently in part because he has proven
generous enough to buy his mother’s freedom by hiring himself out on
the weekends. Together, Sethe and Halle have two sons, Howard and
Buglar, as well as a baby daughter whose name we never learn. Whenshe leaves Sweet Home, Sethe is also pregnant with a fourth child. After
the eventual death of the proprietor, Mr. Garner, the widowed Mrs.
Garner asks her sadistic, vehemently racist brother-in-law to help her run
the farm. He is known to the slaves as schoolteacher, and his oppressive
presence makes life on the plantation even more unbearable than it had
been before. The slaves decide to run.
Schoolteacher and his nephews anticipate the slaves’ escape, however,and capture Paul D and Sixo. Schoolteacher kills Sixo and brings Paul D
back to Sweet Home, where Paul D sees Sethe for what he believes will
be the last time. She is still intent on running, having already sent her
children ahead to her mother-in-law Baby Suggs’s house in Cincinnati.
Invigorated by the recent capture, schoolteacher’s nephews seize Sethe
in the barn and violate her, stealing the milk her body is storing for her
infant daughter. Unbeknownst to Sethe, Halle is watching the event from
a loft above her, where he lies frozen with horror. Afterward, Halle goes
mad: Paul D sees him sitting by a churn with butter slathered all over hisface. Paul D, meanwhile, is forced to suffer the indignity of wearing an
iron bit in his mouth.
When schoolteacher finds out that Sethe has reported his and his
nephews’ misdeeds to Mrs. Garner, he has her whipped severely, despite
the fact that she is pregnant. Swollen and scarred, Sethe nevertheless
runs away, but along the way she collapses from exhaustion in a forest.
A white girl, Amy Denver, finds her and nurses her back to health.When Amy later helps Sethe deliver her baby in a boat, Sethe names this
second daughter Denver after the girl who helped her. Sethe receives
further help from Stamp Paid, who rows her across the Ohio River to
Baby Suggs’s house. Baby Suggs cleans Sethe up before allowing her to
see her three older children.
Sethe spends twenty-eight wonderful days in Cincinnati, where Baby
Suggs serves as an unofficial preacher to the black community. On the
last day, however, schoolteacher comes for Sethe to take her and her
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children back to Sweet Home. Rather than surrender her children to a
life of dehumanizing slavery, she flees with them to the woodshed and
tries to kill them. Only the third child, her older daughter, dies, her throat
having been cut with a handsaw by Sethe. Sethe later arranges for the
baby’s headstone to be carved with the word “Beloved.” The sheriff takes Sethe and Denver to jail, but a group of white abolitionists, led by
the Bodwins, fights for her release. Sethe returns to the house at 124,
where Baby Suggs has sunk into a deep depression. The community
shuns the house, and the family continues to live in isolation.
Meanwhile, Paul D has endured torturous experiences in a chain gang in
Georgia, where he was sent after trying to kill Brandywine, a slaveowner to whom he was sold by schoolteacher. His traumatic experiences
have caused him to lock away his memories, emotions, and ability to
love in the “tin tobacco box” of his heart. One day, a fortuitous
rainstorm allows Paul D and the other chain gang members to escape.
He travels northward by following the blossoming spring flowers. Years
later, he ends up on Sethe’s porch in Cincinnati.
Paul D’s arrival at 124 commences the series of events taking place in
the present time frame. Prior to moving in, Paul D chases the house’s
resident ghost away, which makes the already lonely Denver resent him
from the start. Sethe and Paul D look forward to a promising future
together, until one day, on their way home from a carnival, they
encounter a strange young woman sleeping near the steps of 124. Most
of the characters believe that the woman—who calls herself Beloved—is
the embodied spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter, and the novel provides a
wealth of evidence supporting this interpretation. Denver develops an
obsessive attachment to Beloved, and Beloved’s attachment to Sethe isequally if not more intense. Paul D and Beloved hate each other, and
Beloved controls Paul D by moving him around the house like a rag doll
and by seducing him against his will.
When Paul D learns the story of Sethe’s “rough choice”—her infanticide
—he leaves 124 and begins sleeping in the basement of the local church.
In his absence, Sethe and Beloved’s relationship becomes more intense
and exclusive. Beloved grows increasingly abusive, manipulative, and
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parasitic, and Sethe is obsessed with satisfying Beloved’s demands and
making her understand why she murdered her. Worried by the way her
mother is wasting away, Denver leaves the premises of 124 for the first
time in twelve years in order to seek help from Lady Jones, her former
teacher. The community provides the family with food and eventuallyorganizes under the leadership of Ella, a woman who had worked on the
Underground Railroad and helped with Sethe’s escape, in order to
exorcise Beloved from 124. When they arrive at Sethe’s house, they see
Sethe on the porch with Beloved, who stands smiling at them, naked and
pregnant. Mr. Bodwin, who has come to 124 to take Denver to her new
job, arrives at the house. Mistaking him for schoolteacher, Sethe runs at
Mr. Bodwin with an ice pick. She is restrained, but in the confusion
Beloved disappears, never to return.
Afterward, Paul D comes back to Sethe, who has retreated to Baby
Suggs’s bed to die. Mourning Beloved, Sethe laments, “She was my best
thing.” But Paul D replies, “You your best thing, Sethe.” The novel then
ends with a warning that “[t]his is not a story to pass on.” The town, and
even the residents of 124, have forgotten Beloved “[l]ike an unpleasant
dream during a troubling sleep.”