UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Literature
19 March 2009
Q3 Essay: Tess’s Ending
In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy ends the novel on the somber note of Tess’s death. It concludes the tragedy of Tess’s life on a distant, alienating way, jarring from the novel’s passionate characters and motives by not depicting the actual scene of her death. Instead, the finale focuses on two living characters directly affected by Tess, Liza-Lu and Angel Clare. While some may argue that this ending detracts from Tess’s importance in the novel and ultimately cheapens her life, the ending is actually very appropriate for the message of Tess’s tale, and how it affects others in society. Imagery is used predominantly in the ending chapter to emphasize the solemnity and tragedy of the scene, as seen in the description of the two characters. It is also used when describing the setting, a cheery morning belonging to a universe that doesn’t care about the unjust death of Tess, the sorrow of men, the death of mankind’s pretty ideals. This emphasizes even more the tragic quality of the execution, delineating the world not as the fair and beautiful world of Victorian society’s creation but an apathetic and self-serving one not guided by a kind divinity or moral human beings. Symbolism is also used to craft the mood and message of the final ending, such as thee two people walking away from Tess. All this is bound together by Hardy to make his point on his readers—Tess’s life proves that the world is not the just and happy place that people would have it to be. The question is, what will one do about it? By leaving the future actions of the characters who know this message ambiguous, Hardy leaves this question for the reader and society to answer.
The use of imagery is predominant in setting the mood of tragedy and apathy in the ending. The tragedy is woven in by the presence of Angel Clare and Liza-Lu, the two characters who arguably were the ones who loved Tess best, fleeing from her death. “Their pale faces seemed to have shrunk to half their natural size. They moved on hand in hand and never spoke a word, the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto’s Two Apostles.” The apathy of the world they live in to their pain is obvious by the cheeriness of the day, “amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July morning” However, the actions of the characters, by walking away from the bright and orderly city that sacrifices Tess, gives the novel ending it most vital hope, the quality that had always pervaded the whole novel. First it was the girlish hopes for happiness, justice; then when hope faded, actions were taken to secure these things. Actions that may not have accorded well with a hypocritical society that could not stomach the death of a vile man, but could easily ignore the downfall of a young girl with only blame to heap on her head. With Tess’s death, the characters that loved her best are galvanized into taking action again, against unfairness and striking for happiness that all men have a right to, those basic ideals that Tess died for, even against an unjust society’s mandates. They abandon the city, which stands for all the things that converged to ruin Tess’s life: wealth overriding even justice; pretensions to morality that demonize those who do not follow the rules and anglicize those who do; deliberate ignorance of the base and ugly in life in an attempt to make life more idealized than it truly is to the point of blotting out those who stand for such things. And with this action lies hope for the characters, that perhaps with this newfound knowledge the two can strike out for a better world. However, the ending is, just as life is, tempered with doubt as well. Is it folly to hope that men can change the world and society to a better place? Or the redeeming quality of mankind, that it can do so, painfully, stumblingly, but surely?
Symbolism is also present in the ending, adding a layer of depth to the tale. With the mention “the drooping of their heads being that of Giotto’s Two Apostles” Hardy emphasizes the divine quality of Tess again. Only this time, she acts as the Jesus figure in the novel, sacrificed so that the world can know of the truth in life—that the universe is cold; humans are not enlightened beings but often pretentious figures pretending they are superior to others; and that nature and its impulses, while often decried, is often the most truest and most honest things of human life. Not God, not philosophies, not social responsibilities, but our fleshy selves with its unruly desires and actions—birth, life, and death. Hardy is very pointedly comparing Angel and Liza-Lu to disciples—they will have to be the main purveyors of Tess’s message. With the death of their divinity, it is up to frail mankind to hold a new fire to society—questioning what humans really are. Not enlightened, not always good, not always bad, pretentious, and striving to establish their own uniqueness and importance as in the case of Angel and Alec. With the existence of a man and a woman who walks away with this knowledge, one can find similarities to Adam and Eve. Does Hardy see the birth of a new society starting with this couple? Or is it another mark for failure by mankind, to sin again and suffer another slow fall from grace—to let Tess’s message go for naught?
In the end, Hardy tempers his ending with much ambiguosity. The reader never discovers what route Angel and Liza-Lu takes to purvey Tess’s message in the world. The reader is left unsure whether to feel hope for the couple and a happy closure that at least Tess’s death wasn’t for naught. Such an ending would emphasize the redemptive qualities of mankind despite its evils and faulty systems. Or Angel and Liza-Lu could have simply abandoned society completely to its vices, emphasizing the decline of mankind into further hypocrisy and pretensions while individuals can only survive by fleeing altogether. This would delineate the inability of mankind to escape its circumstances, that humans are mired in their flawed human natures that would continue to trample on others to maintain its pretensions of religion, morality and enlightenment. But by leaving the ending fairly open-ended, Hardy made his point that it is up to the reader as well to purvey Tess’s message as well. There are three disciples of Tess’s ministry that leave the book at the ending. How the reader reacts to this, what one’s actions are determines whether Tess’s ending is truly the tragedy or not. As the author, Hardy is charging others to take responsibility for the truth of man’s dual nature of base and enlightened. Will one accept it, or fight against its evils, intended or not?
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Q3 essay: Joyce Carol Oates feminist reading
UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Literature
4 March 2009
Feminist Reading of Joyce Carol Oates
In Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Where are you going, where have you been?” Oates explores the effects of society’s expectations on the young, particularly on teenage girls. Through the main character Connie, Oates shows her readers the full effects of a society that emphasizes emotions, fleeting pleasurable experiences, and the tying in of romantic love as the fulfillment of adolescent dreams. Oates, by sketching Connie’s ultimate helplessness in the face of reality, shows her criticism of such standards. By use of imagery, Oates emphasizes the allure of the modern world with its promises of true love and hence excitement and social esteem for a girl. Details, however, also delve into the essential shallowness of such a world. Symbolism is used to shed light on the dangers of reality that exist hidden underneath the bright world of impressions and dreams that Connie buys into. Finally, with extensive dialogue throughout the story, Oates shows her audience the extent of Connie’s weakness in the face of male persistence, showing her ultimate lack of maturity in a society that has emphasized the need for girls like her “to be sweet and pretty and give in”. By all these techniques, the author delineates the need for change in a system that has made male attention and social popularity the driving goal for women. A system that emphasizes looks and attention above all is one that victimizes both the women who seek appearances, and the men who must adhere to them to win over women. In a sense, this short story is a rejection of romantic love and sexuality as marks of maturity and value for women: ideals that modern Western society has ingrained for decades.
Connie is sketched by Oates to be a typical teenage girl, who chafes under her mother’s authority and expectations, seeks romantic attention from older boys and in other times is carried away by materialistic hobbies such as shopping or daydreams. She encapsulates at heart the basic needs of the teenage youth to break away from tradition and blaze a new path in life, the childish dreams where anything is possible, and the needs to be accepted by society as a valuable member. However, society has channeled those desires into less wholesome and pure activities. Connie is taught that to be wanted by men and experience true love like the media portrays it is a mark of social value. Hence, being a physically attractive woman is essential for experience of such things—“She was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.” When she dreams of better things, she dreams of romantic love to fulfill all her desires—“dreaming and dazed…her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs” Ultimately, all of Connie’s energy and youth goes into getting male attention as the only mark of validation. It is this typical teenage girl’s self absorption and need for male validation that Oates sketches out, and in doing so, she criticizes the materialistic society that teaches girls so. A society that found that in order to sell their products more effectively, it was easier to groom girls to believe and search for dreams of love than how to respect their own selves irregardless of men and personal appearances. However, such values not only harm women and their self autonomy, but men as well. The reader can see the cracks in the disguise of Arnold Friend’s debonair persona “As if he was smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was a mask…tanned down onto his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten about his throat” The details presented show a tragic tableau of a girl who blindly follows what society has deemed will make her happy, and a man who follows the ideals of female fantasy to get what he wants. Both characters are false to their public persona, and are made almost comical in how they take up disguises in order to seek self esteem. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere that was not home” And in this desperate attempt for validation, things become twisted and dark—Arnold Friend’s barely disguised threats to Connie if she doesn’t fulfill his desires—“But if you don’t come out we’re gonna wait until your people come home and then they’re all going to get it”; Connie’s basic shallowness and immaturity such as abandoning her friend for a boy, contemptuous of the women in her family for not being pretty and exciting. Though never mentioned explicitly, Oates’s use of details paint a picture of tense individuals in a society that cannot supply them with a true ideal in life, whose attempts to stay within the boundaries set by society are tempered with frustration.
Symbolism is used to add depth to the story. Music has a particular place for Connie. It is the stuff of dreams, and hence often about love. “’My sweet little blue-eyed girl’” It is the sign of her self-absorption and childishness, giving importance and meaning to everything in her newly unfolding life, “it might have been the music…She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive.” For Connie, it is almost a religious, divine experience, and in many places, serves as her stand-in to religion. “The music was always in the background like music at a church service” or the fact that she chooses to listen to the radio program on Sunday rather than go to church. Music, among other things, promises her fulfilling, exciting things: grand opportunities and experiences just beyond the horizon. It is the symbol for her teenage youth, found at teenage haunts such as the drive-in restaurant, teenage items such as ostentatious gold cars, and hanging around Connie on a Sunday afternoon like perfume. At the end, when she leaves with Arnold Friend, the symbol has changed along with Connie. Arnold murmurs a line of music “My sweet little blue-eyed girl” and it no longer has the simple connotation of romance. Now music has become false to her, “a half sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes.” a shallow tool of the society that she is leaving behind as she leaves. This marks Connie’s maturity, as she realizes all her teenage dreams of love and attention proving false and insignificant. These dreams, used by Arnold Friend to manipulate her into leaving with him, are left behind for a wider world beyond feminine submission to romance and men as in the movies and promised in songs. Arnold Friend also takes on a symbol in literature of the dashing tempter of the world, dressed in black, driving a gold car, decked out in all the familiar things of an appearance-driven world. However, the male seducer in literature usually proves to be a scoundrel that ruins the purity of the heroine and leaves her in appropriate distress to be rescued by a hero who would whisk her back into the arms of society’s conventions. In Oates’s tale, Connie is empowered by her leaving with Arnold, taking on new knowledge of a world without the illusions of romantic love and exalted human experiences.
By dialogue, Oates brought home the extent of Connie’s innocence in the face of real danger, and also just how much she was just a typical teenage girl. She poses and preens for attention “craning her neck to glance and mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.”, takes much of her actions from pop culture, including her slang and dreams. She does not initially react to Arnold Friend as a danger because he comes in a blaze of glory, recognizably brass as the men in the movies, and hip to teenage culture’s fads. “She recognized most things about him…that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they didn’t want to put in words.” Her words and actions to Arnold at first are also studied and almost scripted, taken from a tradition of teen culture that demands the girl to be not too eager, cool, distant but ultimately still available. “She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure…Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder. She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.” As the story progresses, she gets more and more panicky, reacting to Arnold’s words in a more childlike way, instead of taking action to protect herself. “’Shut up! You’re crazy!’ Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put her hands against her ears as if she’d heard something terrible.” The reader develops sympathy for Connie, despite her shallowness and posing—she is depicted as the little girl she still is. And hence, the reader has to wonder at the end of the story how the current system of inculcating rosy dreams and ideals to girls is justified in existing. If it can’t protect Connie from Arnold, what good is it for her to trust in true love and the innate goodness of the universe?
Ultimately, Connie discovers the flimsiness of the world she was brought up in. That love can be used for a darker agenda by men instead of sweet ideas of protection and admiration. That the things of the world she loved such as music and boys can be used to violate her free will. Oates showed that Connie reaches maturity not by following the dictates of society which prescribes make-up, edgier fashions, edgier behaviors and boyfriends as marks of adulthood for women. Connie grows up by realizing that there is good and evil in the world, a basic part of the human condition. At the end of the tale, Oates is subtly advocating for the end of such traditions in society that ultimately delay maturity of women as they pursue surface things, and for a broader society that can include the widespread maturation of women as fellow human beings struggling in an uncertain world, instead of idealistic beings to be cosseted and protected. A society that Connie can enter into, with her newfound knowledge of life.
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Literature
4 March 2009
Feminist Reading of Joyce Carol Oates
In Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Where are you going, where have you been?” Oates explores the effects of society’s expectations on the young, particularly on teenage girls. Through the main character Connie, Oates shows her readers the full effects of a society that emphasizes emotions, fleeting pleasurable experiences, and the tying in of romantic love as the fulfillment of adolescent dreams. Oates, by sketching Connie’s ultimate helplessness in the face of reality, shows her criticism of such standards. By use of imagery, Oates emphasizes the allure of the modern world with its promises of true love and hence excitement and social esteem for a girl. Details, however, also delve into the essential shallowness of such a world. Symbolism is used to shed light on the dangers of reality that exist hidden underneath the bright world of impressions and dreams that Connie buys into. Finally, with extensive dialogue throughout the story, Oates shows her audience the extent of Connie’s weakness in the face of male persistence, showing her ultimate lack of maturity in a society that has emphasized the need for girls like her “to be sweet and pretty and give in”. By all these techniques, the author delineates the need for change in a system that has made male attention and social popularity the driving goal for women. A system that emphasizes looks and attention above all is one that victimizes both the women who seek appearances, and the men who must adhere to them to win over women. In a sense, this short story is a rejection of romantic love and sexuality as marks of maturity and value for women: ideals that modern Western society has ingrained for decades.
Connie is sketched by Oates to be a typical teenage girl, who chafes under her mother’s authority and expectations, seeks romantic attention from older boys and in other times is carried away by materialistic hobbies such as shopping or daydreams. She encapsulates at heart the basic needs of the teenage youth to break away from tradition and blaze a new path in life, the childish dreams where anything is possible, and the needs to be accepted by society as a valuable member. However, society has channeled those desires into less wholesome and pure activities. Connie is taught that to be wanted by men and experience true love like the media portrays it is a mark of social value. Hence, being a physically attractive woman is essential for experience of such things—“She was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.” When she dreams of better things, she dreams of romantic love to fulfill all her desires—“dreaming and dazed…her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs” Ultimately, all of Connie’s energy and youth goes into getting male attention as the only mark of validation. It is this typical teenage girl’s self absorption and need for male validation that Oates sketches out, and in doing so, she criticizes the materialistic society that teaches girls so. A society that found that in order to sell their products more effectively, it was easier to groom girls to believe and search for dreams of love than how to respect their own selves irregardless of men and personal appearances. However, such values not only harm women and their self autonomy, but men as well. The reader can see the cracks in the disguise of Arnold Friend’s debonair persona “As if he was smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was a mask…tanned down onto his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten about his throat” The details presented show a tragic tableau of a girl who blindly follows what society has deemed will make her happy, and a man who follows the ideals of female fantasy to get what he wants. Both characters are false to their public persona, and are made almost comical in how they take up disguises in order to seek self esteem. “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere that was not home” And in this desperate attempt for validation, things become twisted and dark—Arnold Friend’s barely disguised threats to Connie if she doesn’t fulfill his desires—“But if you don’t come out we’re gonna wait until your people come home and then they’re all going to get it”; Connie’s basic shallowness and immaturity such as abandoning her friend for a boy, contemptuous of the women in her family for not being pretty and exciting. Though never mentioned explicitly, Oates’s use of details paint a picture of tense individuals in a society that cannot supply them with a true ideal in life, whose attempts to stay within the boundaries set by society are tempered with frustration.
Symbolism is used to add depth to the story. Music has a particular place for Connie. It is the stuff of dreams, and hence often about love. “’My sweet little blue-eyed girl’” It is the sign of her self-absorption and childishness, giving importance and meaning to everything in her newly unfolding life, “it might have been the music…She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive.” For Connie, it is almost a religious, divine experience, and in many places, serves as her stand-in to religion. “The music was always in the background like music at a church service” or the fact that she chooses to listen to the radio program on Sunday rather than go to church. Music, among other things, promises her fulfilling, exciting things: grand opportunities and experiences just beyond the horizon. It is the symbol for her teenage youth, found at teenage haunts such as the drive-in restaurant, teenage items such as ostentatious gold cars, and hanging around Connie on a Sunday afternoon like perfume. At the end, when she leaves with Arnold Friend, the symbol has changed along with Connie. Arnold murmurs a line of music “My sweet little blue-eyed girl” and it no longer has the simple connotation of romance. Now music has become false to her, “a half sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes.” a shallow tool of the society that she is leaving behind as she leaves. This marks Connie’s maturity, as she realizes all her teenage dreams of love and attention proving false and insignificant. These dreams, used by Arnold Friend to manipulate her into leaving with him, are left behind for a wider world beyond feminine submission to romance and men as in the movies and promised in songs. Arnold Friend also takes on a symbol in literature of the dashing tempter of the world, dressed in black, driving a gold car, decked out in all the familiar things of an appearance-driven world. However, the male seducer in literature usually proves to be a scoundrel that ruins the purity of the heroine and leaves her in appropriate distress to be rescued by a hero who would whisk her back into the arms of society’s conventions. In Oates’s tale, Connie is empowered by her leaving with Arnold, taking on new knowledge of a world without the illusions of romantic love and exalted human experiences.
By dialogue, Oates brought home the extent of Connie’s innocence in the face of real danger, and also just how much she was just a typical teenage girl. She poses and preens for attention “craning her neck to glance and mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.”, takes much of her actions from pop culture, including her slang and dreams. She does not initially react to Arnold Friend as a danger because he comes in a blaze of glory, recognizably brass as the men in the movies, and hip to teenage culture’s fads. “She recognized most things about him…that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they didn’t want to put in words.” Her words and actions to Arnold at first are also studied and almost scripted, taken from a tradition of teen culture that demands the girl to be not too eager, cool, distant but ultimately still available. “She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure…Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder. She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.” As the story progresses, she gets more and more panicky, reacting to Arnold’s words in a more childlike way, instead of taking action to protect herself. “’Shut up! You’re crazy!’ Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put her hands against her ears as if she’d heard something terrible.” The reader develops sympathy for Connie, despite her shallowness and posing—she is depicted as the little girl she still is. And hence, the reader has to wonder at the end of the story how the current system of inculcating rosy dreams and ideals to girls is justified in existing. If it can’t protect Connie from Arnold, what good is it for her to trust in true love and the innate goodness of the universe?
Ultimately, Connie discovers the flimsiness of the world she was brought up in. That love can be used for a darker agenda by men instead of sweet ideas of protection and admiration. That the things of the world she loved such as music and boys can be used to violate her free will. Oates showed that Connie reaches maturity not by following the dictates of society which prescribes make-up, edgier fashions, edgier behaviors and boyfriends as marks of adulthood for women. Connie grows up by realizing that there is good and evil in the world, a basic part of the human condition. At the end of the tale, Oates is subtly advocating for the end of such traditions in society that ultimately delay maturity of women as they pursue surface things, and for a broader society that can include the widespread maturation of women as fellow human beings struggling in an uncertain world, instead of idealistic beings to be cosseted and protected. A society that Connie can enter into, with her newfound knowledge of life.
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