Booklist 2010 # 5: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

In my days as a student in high school and college, I have taken two Shakespeare film classes, as well as one literature class on his Comedies and Histories, and had to read some plays as part of the normal English surveys (like Julius Caesar in 10th grade). Even though, I have seen a good chunk of Shakespeare’s oeuvre on the screen through the film classes, as far as reading them goes I have only actually read a couple of plays. This also means that there are certain major plays that I’ve never read or watched as they failed to appear on any of my class syllabi (one of the most glaring examples being The Tempest).  Another one of these plays that I missed was Titus Andronicus.

Titus Adronicus tells the story of an imaginary Roman General, his family’s downfall, and their subsequent revenge. Rome experiences political turbulence after the death of the most recent Emperor whose two sons Bassianus and Saturninus appeal to the masses for control of the throne. Marcus Andronicus, tribune of the people, informs the two brothers that the people have elected Titus Andronicus rather than themselves, having sacrificed twenty-one sons in service to Rome. Titus returns to Rome after his victory against the Goths, dragging the Goth Queen, Tamora, and her sons back to Rome with him as spoils of war. To appease the spirit of his dead son who died on campaign he sacrifices one of Tamora’s sons as per traditional Roman customs, despite her impassioned plea for his life. After being informed of his election, Titus rejects the throne and offers it to Saturninus along with his daughter Lavinia in marriage. However, Bassianus proclaims his betrothal to her and spirits her away with him. Titus’ four remaining sons support Bassianus’ claim and protect her against Titus’ anger who kills one of his own sons in the process of trying to reclaim her and salvage his own honor. Bassianus returns and announces he married Lavinia. Saturninus, the new Emperor, feels betrayed and decides to marry Tamora who urges him to make peace with Titus, while secretly promising revenge at a later date.

The next day as a peace offering the Emperor and Titus go off together with their families on a hunting trip. Tamora conspires with her lover, Aaron the moor and her two sons, to murder Bassianus and rape Lavinia. They accomplish the wicked deed, and cut off Lavinia’s tongue and arms so she can’t report her rapists. Aaron leads Titus’ two sons to the corpse of Bassianus where the Emperor finds them and tries them for murder. Aaron further demoralizes Titus by convincing him that if he cuts off his own hand the Emperor will spare his children from death. This, of course, doesn’t work, and the Emperor executes Titus’ sons. Titus feeling betrayed plots revenge after Lavinia discovers a way to communicate the identity of her rapists by writing it in the sand with a pole guided by her mouth and arm stubs. His youngest son, Lucius, gathers an army of Goths outside of Rome to take the city by force if necessary. In fear of this impending invasion, the Emperor holds peace talks with Titus. As a good faith gesture Tamora the Empress leaves her two sons who raped Lavinia with Titus, thinking the feeble man can do no harm to them. Titus immediately kills the two rapists and cooks them up for the meal he plans to serve. When Tamora and the Emperor arrive, Titus kills Lavinia by alluding to the story of Virginius who killed his own daughter rather than let her suffer the dishonor of rape (see Livy’s Early History of Rome). Titus feeds the Empress her sons (an old literary motif from Greek mythology) and then kills her. The Emperor kills Titus. Lucius kills the Emperor and then justifies his actions in a speech to the public. He punishes Aaron by ordering him to be buried alive breast-deep and starved to death.

Although the events in this story are not based on real history, Shakespeare demonstrates throughout the work his knowledge of classical mythology and literary sources. The play makes copious allusions to the myth of Philomela who after coming to live with her sister, Procne, is raped by her sister’s husband, Tereus, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. As revenge Procne kills their child and feeds his remains to her husband. One can see how this myth provides a source for Shakespeare, although unlike the Greek tragedians who would’ve written a treatment or version of the original myth, he reconstructs the story entirely borrowing only loose elements from it that it becomes an entirely different narrative altogether.

In many ways its a straight forward revenge play. It lacks the sophistication of Shakespeare’s later works, relying heavily on violence and gore. Revenge might be considered the central theme of the play. One event spirals into another; Titus denies Tamora her son, so she avenges herself against his children, who then take further revenge against her remaining sons. The Emperor feels slighted for losing Lavinia to his brother, blaming Titus, so he revels in the opportunity to take his revenge on them. These events capture the cycle of revenge that underly such bloody deeds. At first this might not seem very important a theme, with the tendency of a modern reader to believe this an antiquated concern, until we think of it in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the U. S. War on Terror. Violence and revenge do function as a cycle.

One might also read into this play a futility in fighting for one’s country. Titus gives his sons for his nation, only for the leading rulers to spit his sacrifice back into his face when he no longer fits their interests and ignore his service when trying to save his sons from execution. All his service adds up to nothing, which highlights the emptiness of his sacrifice of Tamora’s eldest son in the beginning, which is the event that spins the cycle of revenge out of control, since he does it on the grounds of custom that further serves the good of a Roman nation now rendered meaningless. When nation means nothing, then customs mean nothing. Later, he kills another one of his sons in the name of Roman honor, which also proves a meaningless act as his enemies besmirch and ride roughshod over his honor. The emperor enjoys his revenge against Titus, despite owing his succession to the throne to Titus’ abdication. In other words, one of the more allusive points of the play is that honor isn’t really worth much without power.  Glory won in battles successfully fought are quickly forgotten. Titus Andronicus reminds us how quickly our fortunes can change if you piss off the wrong people.

A Poem Expressing How I Feel Lately!

Words, words words!
So bursting with meaning
that they spill across my lap,
and I cannot chug fast enough
to relieve my torpid mind
sticky with too much paste.
All the others drink faster,
while I sick up forbidden fruit.
Like frat-boys they laugh
for the lack of comments astute.

The party continues at library doors.
Laughter rings the shelves
from books whispering secrets,
teasing and taunting
they strip-tease my mind,
but these unpracticed hands fumble,
through pages so chaste,
which mock me with seductive words,
put me in my place
that I am left to wonder
how so sober and empty a mind
can feel so drunk and cluttered
every hour of ticking time:
What is Hecuba to me or you to Hecuba?

Booklist 2010 # 4: The Early History of Rome by Livy (trans. Aubrey De Sélincourt)

“There is no reason, I feel, to object when antiquity draws no hard line between the human and the supernatural: it adds dignity to the past, and, if any nation deserves the privilege of claiming a divine ancestry, that nation is our own; and so great is the glory won by the Roman people in their wars that, when they declare that Mars himself was their first parent and father of the man who founded their city, all the nations of the world might well allow the claim as readily as they accept Rome’s imperial dominion.”

Today many scholars and postmodern types accuse modern historians of writing biased, ethnocentric, and imperialistic historical narratives, while readers turning to the ancient world for the first time will find that the historians of that time relished the opportunity to support their own cultural biases and trumpet their own glory. How can a reader not see bias in an author who declares his historical narrative will be “the story of the greatest nation in the world”? Nevertheless, Livy also tells us that “the study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind,” but, of course, the question must be asked: whose history and told from what angle? The answer to that question is that Livy’s narrative is the early history of Rome told from the perspective of a Roman, and therefore provides not only a partially accurate, if not biased history, but also incalculable information into the Roman mind.

Livy, like Virgil in his Aeneid, ascribes the founding of Rome to the Trojan survivor Aeneas shortly after the Trojan war. Aeneas fights a war with Turnus and the Latins for control of the region. A short line of succession follows when two brothers, Numitor and Amulius are born, who squabble over the realm. Amulius disenfranchises his brother’s rights as the eldest, causing Numitor to flee the country. Amulius hopes to protect his line by forcing Numitor’s daughter Rhea Silvia to join the Vestal virgin and therefore not produce any children. However, Mars rapes her in the woods and from this union Romulus and Remus, are born. They are suckled on a wolf’s milk symbolizing their rough, wild, military strength. Then the two brothers take revenge for their grandfather. Romulus founds a city called Rome. The new city consists of outcasts. Realizing they have a shortage of women, they invite the Sabines over for a festival and then steal their women.

The Rape of Sabine Women by Nicholas Poussin

All of this doesn’t exactly endear Rome to their neighbors. The rest of the book is one long cycle of peace and war against the Sabines, the Etruscan, and the Latins. We tend to think of the Romans as Italian, but their neighbors view them as hostile invaders–an armed military camp–among the nations. It is interesting to note that Livy always portrays the Romans as defending themselves against their belligerent neighbors; it is always the other nations attacking Rome, while the Romans are merely engaging is self-defense or self-preservation. From a reader’s viewpoint this cycle of war that makes up a large chunk of the narrative can get quite tedious. Here goes the Volscians again attacking Rome, now the Aequains are joining them. Five pages later, it happens all over again, five pages after that, it happens yet again, repeat for three hundred pages.

The next stage in Roman history is the era of the kings. Romulus was the first king of Roman followed by many others of whom the most famous were the Tarquins. The era of the kings ends with the infamous episode involving the rape of Lucretia. The Tarquins establish themselves not merely as kings, but as complete tyrants, no longer consulting the Senate for decisions and trampling over the common people.

“[A] king, they argued, was, after all, a human being, and there was a chance of getting from him what one wanted, rightly or wrongly; under a monarchy there was room for influence and favour; a king could be angry, and forgive; he knew the difference between an enemy and a friend. Law, on the other hand, was impersonal and inexorable. Law had no ears. An excellent thing, no doubt, for paupers, it was worse than useless for the great, as it admitted no realization or indulgence towards a man who ventured beyond the bounds of mediocrity.”

The reign of the Tarquins end when one of young princes rapes the chaste wife of one his friends. After he rapes Lucretia at sword point, the population rebels and overthrows the Tarquins along with monarchy all together; they establish for themselves the Roman Republic.

However, as the narrative reveals the Roman Republic is not some paradise of liberty either. It isn’t long before the plebeians (commoners) and patricians (nobility) face class warfare with each other; the plebeians demand land reform, government representation, and many of the same rights the patricians possess, while the patricians view the plebeians as encroaching on all their traditional privileges and threatening their liberty. If the majority of the narrative is about the cycle of peace and war with Rome’s neighbors, the other half is about the class struggle between the plebeians and the patricians.

The strongest part of Livy’s narrative are the characters themselves. Livy captures the patricians’ disdain for the common rabble of the populace, while still allowing us to feel the the righteous indignation and frustration the commoners feel towards the nobility. However, individuals also appear larger than life. Coriolanus is one such interesting character whose narrative would later be adapted by William Shakespeare into a play. One of the way Livy achieves the larger than life quality of his individual characters is through his talent at rendering their speech. For example let’s take this episode from Coriolanus who defects from Rome to lead her enemies against his homeland only to be confronted by his mother:

” ‘I would know,’ she said, ‘before I accept your kiss, whether I have come to an enemy or to a son, whether I am here as your mohter or as a prisoner of war. Have my long life and unhappy old age brought me to this, that I should see you first an exile, then the enemy of your country? Had you the heart to ravage the earth which bore and bred you? When you set foot upon it, did not your angery fall away, however fierce your hatred and lust for revenge? When Rome was before your eyes, did not the thought come to you, ‘within those walls is my home, with the gods that watch over it — and my mother and my wife and my children’? Ah, had I never borne a child, Rome would not now be menaced; if I had no son, I could have died free in a free country!”

While at the times the narrative can get a little boring with all it details about war tactics, confusing Latin names, and continual cycle of war, there are also compelling moments like the one above which give the narrative color and life. If you’re interested in ancient history, Roman literature, or catching up on the classics then this a must not miss, but be forewarned that you need to have a lot of patience to tolerate all the tedium to get to the interesting parts. For this reason I still haven’t decided if I will read the other parts of Livy’s history.

Booklist 2010 # 3: Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch

I picked up this book to learn more about Egyptian mythology after some debates with some atheists over at this blog where some people claimed that Christians plagiarized Horus/Dionysus/Mithras/Mitra/Romulus and Remus/take your pick of a Mediterranean deity-hero. As Michael Heiser of Paleobabble notes most serious scholars (read: people with actual Ph. D.s working in relevant fields such as Egyptology and New Testament Studies) don’t take these views seriously. As I read this book I found myself fascinated by the strangeness of Egyptian mythology, and caring little one way or the other about any real or imaginary relationship between Jesus and Horus. The more I read about the subject the more I started to appreciate the subject for itself.

To call Egyptian mythology bizarre and difficult in comparison to the more familiar ground of Roman, Greek, and Israelite myths is an understatement. Not only do we have gods who are half animal and half humanoid (like Sobek the crocodile god), but also we have composite gods who much like a transformer can combine with others gods to form a whole new god. One example of this amalgamation is a statue in which Sobek the crocodile god combines with Ra the sun god into a single new god. For this reason there is debate among Egyptologist on just how many gods exist in the Egyptian pantheon. If you count only individuals gods you might have around thirty. If you count combinations as unique gods, you’ll have a lot more. If you also count different local versions of the same god as unique gods (as some Egyptologists do) then you could have thousands.

Complicating matters further are the records of the myths themselves. In many cases, we don’t have full-fledged mythical narratives, but rather little pieces of myths or summaries. Many times a myth is wedged inside a spell written on a tomb; the majority of the text is the spell, but then the spell will invoke a particular god and when it invokes said god the heiroglypics might hint or tell a piece of a mythic story about that god often related to the spell. Since many of our sources consist of fragments and pieces of myth it makes it difficult to put together a standard collection of Egyptian myths that contain all or most of the known myths like Robert Graves did with Greek mythology; although some collections do exist that contain Egyptian myths, they’re usually never complete collections.

Egyptians believed that deities could manifest themselves in storms, famines, and other natural phenomena. They also believed that spirits of gods could take residence in kings, dwarves, sacred animals, trees, and statues. However, unlike in Greek mythology the gods generally aren’t as anthropomorphic or associated with one particular area of control (i.e. Neptune is the god of the sea, Zeus is the god of the sky, etc.); the connections and roles of the gods in Egyptian mythology are a lot looser. Also, whereas genealogy plays a prominent role in Greek mythology, genealogy is not strict in Egyptian myth, which only adds to the confusion of putting together a comprehensible narrative. Usually gods come in pairs of three, and the relationship of these pairs shift. So in one story Horus might be the son of Osiris and Isis, while in another he might be Isis’s husband. In some cases, a goddess who is the mother of another god in one story can end up the daughter of the same god (who was previously her son) in a different story.

One of the most important myths, with multiple versions, is the death and resurrection of Osiris, which spawned the death cults of Egypt with its infamous mummies. Osiris the king is murdered by his jealous brother Seth who distributes his body parts across Egypt. Isis, Osiris’s wife, hunts down the pieces and uses magic to resurrect his genitals, which allows her to then engage in necrophilia and impregnate herself with her husband’s corpse, and she births Horus. There are also stories about Ra, the sun-god, sending down his right eye and a goddess in the form of an avenging lion to kill all the wicked on Earth, while there are other stories in which gods go out to recover Ra’s lost eye. The stories are diverse, and in many cases the characters shift in different version (sometimes it is Ra’s eye, while other times it Horus’ eye).

Another extremely important myth in Egyptian mytholgy is the “contending of Horus and Seth” in which the two gods fight over the kingship of Egypt by participating in several contests; ultimately Seth tries to get Horus to swallow his semen as a way of proving his dominance and right to the kingship, while Horus tricks Seth into swallowing his semen by rubbing it on lettuce, Seth’s favorite food. There are many mythical tales where Horus and Seth battle for dominion, implying that this an a timeless battle, as the two gods represent civilization and the chaotic desert wilderness respectively.

It’s hard to talk about all the strange aspects of Egyptian mythology. It’s difficult to get a strong grasp on a topic so complex and perplexing as Egyptian mythology without reading multiple books on the topic. I had a list of books I put together to study this topic further, but I found my interest waning and my interest turning to other reading projects (like reading through the major works of Roman literature). Still, this is a great starting point if you have an interest in Egyptian mythology and want to learn more.

Booklist 2010 # 2: On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius

Famed philosopher Lucretius follows in the footsteps of Epicurus in his philosophy. Unlike Epicurus he borrows extensively from poetry to structure his philosophy as a long poem and in theory make it more palatable to a general audience. In truth, this isn’t exactly a fun read, although some parts are enjoyable. 

 His work implores us not to fear death, to not worry about the gods, and to avoid superstition. He details long explainations why we need not fear death (Did we worry about not existing before we lived? What we really worry about is that we will somehow feel pain or discomfort after death, and if there is no soul than we need not worry about it). Although Lucretius like Epicurus believes in the gods, he pictures them as different from the traditional vengeful deities from Greek and Roman myth; instead of as vengeful, he thinks of them as aloof beings who care nothing for human affairs.

His philosophy is atomistic, and can be seen as a move towards science. The book should be read as a work of metaphysics (what exists, what can we know) rather than overly concerned with ethics (how ought we act), although the massive amount of space he uses explaining the nature of the universe, including such natural phenomena as storms, lightning, earthquakes, sickness, etc. as being caused by atoms, has ethical implications since what actually exists and what we can know should affect how we ought to act. One implication of his philosophy is that we need not worry about death or live life in fear of the gods, that we should instead live life in relation to what actually exists.

Booklist 2010 # 1: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Have you ever gone to a highly praised restaraunt only to end up eating mediocre food? After watching Miyazaki’s good if uninspiring animated film adaptation and hearing a bunch of members on Lit Net praise Diana Wynne Jones as a talented fantasist, I figured this book would be a good starting place into her work. Instead of meeting my expectations, I ended up with an overpriced mediocre meal. Although it has some clever bits, the plot suffers from disjointment and arbitrariness.

Sophie, the eldest of three sisters, inherits the hat shop when her father dies. One of her two sisters goes off to learn magic, while the other works in a bakery. Everyone mistreats and disrespects her, but she accepts this fate with good graces as she sees it as her responsibility to accept mistreatment since she’s the eldest. Her two sisters encourage her to stand up for herself. One day, the wicked Witch of the Waste (see a pun on the Wizard of Oz!) enters her hat shop and casts a spell on Sophie, transforming her into an old woman. Worst of all the spell prevents her from telling anyone. She leaves home and finds sanctuary in the strange moving castle of Howl. There she meets a fire demon trapped in an clandestine bargain with Howl, an orphan apprentice to Howl, and the vain cowardly womanizer, Howl, who for all his character faults proves to be a powerful wizard. Howl lives in this moving castle because he is afraid of intimate relationships and is running away from a curse cast by the Witch of the Waste. Sophie falls in love with Howl, and tries to help him break the covenant he made with the fire demon that threatens to steal his soul.

Jones handles her themes and fantastical elements in a sophisticated way. The spell cast on Sophie transforms her outer physical appearance to match how she views herself, as old, unattractive, and always in the way. As the fire demon tells her, she could’ve broken the spell herself long ago, but she is subconsciously chosing to maintain it. She views herself as old, useless, and the one who needs to clean up everything for her younger sister and others (hence her job in Howl’s castle is to clean it). Howl, likewise, is a vain womanizer whose hobby is to make girls in the local villages fall in love with him. He then loses interest once they do. He flees from intimate relationships with these girls and from his own family (as a scene depicting the strained relations with his sister attests).  Sophie’s transformation into an old woman allows him to fall in love with Sophie’s inner self rather than her appearance; he falls in love with her, not her appearance like he does with all the other girls. Likewise, one beautiful woman Howl falls for turns out to be the Witch of the Waste’s demon (see, appearance doesn’t necessary match up with a character’s virtue). It’s always nice to see fantasy elements playing a role in the themes being explored.

For those who have seen the film they might be surprised by the book. The film changes the plot significantly and combines many extraneous characters. So in the book there is a court wizard named Suliman who disappears after he confronts the Witch of the Waste and Mrs Pentstemmon who was Howl’s teacher. In the movie, these two characters are combined, Howl’s teacher is an old female wizard in the position of the Royal Wizard named Mrs. Suliman. In the book, the Witch of the Waste and her demon are basically the main villian(s), but in the film, the Witch is disposed of pretty early and Mrs. Suliman is the main antagonist. The film frames its plot around a war between two kingdoms, which is absent from the book. In many ways, neither plot makes complete sense, but with the film I was overawed by the stunning colors and Miyazuki’s interpretation of the visuals aspects that I could overlook the senseless parts in the plot (why exactly does Mrs. Suliman stop hunting after Howl at the end? Because he conquered his demon? That seems kind of lame).  In some ways, the plot of the book makes more sense, but it isn’t tight enough. We spend endless chapters following Sophie cleaning up the castle or watching people from the villages come to buy spells or Howl throwing temper tantrums because the girl he is persuing isn’t interest, while the main plot elements only come forth as a prominent part of the plot towards the end.

For this reason the typical content of the chapters looks like this: Sophie goes to king to blacken Howl’s name, Sophie cleans, Howl goes off to hit on girl, Sophie talks to Michael about how strange Howl is sometimes, Howl returns all moody, Sophie cleans, Michael sells some spells, fire demon hints at bond between him and Howl that must be broken, Howl goes off to hit on girl, Sophie cleans some more and complains about Howl.

It isn’t hard to see why this might not be the most engaging novel. At times this novel is clever with how the fantastical elements reflect the thematic concerns, but suffers badly from its disjointed and random plot structure.

So the Year is Over . . .

. . . And I’m seven days late! Final count for the year was sixty one books.

1) Clouds by Aristophanes (link)
2) Protagoras by Plato (link)
3) The Arrival by Shaun Tan (link)
4) Wasps by Aristophanes (link)
5) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (link)
6) The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (link)
7) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (link)
8 ) Gorgias by Plato (link)
9) Peace by Aristophanes (link)
10) Lysistra by Aristophanes (link)
11) Women at Thesmophoria Festival by Aristophanes (link)
12) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (link)
13) The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (link)
14) Frogs by Aristophanes (link)
15) The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger* (link)
16) The Idylls by Theocritus (link)
17) Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton (link)
18) The BFG by Roald Dahl (link)
19) The Aeneid by Virgil (link)
20) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’ Engle (link)
21) James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (link)
22) The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (link)
23) The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (link)
24) Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (link)
25) A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin (link)
26) Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (link)
27) The Histories by Herodotus (link)
28) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (link)
29) Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (link)
30) The Pot of Gold by Plautus (link)
31) The Prisoners by Plautus (link)
32) The Brothers Menaechmus by Plautus (link)
33) The Swaggering Soldier by Plautus (link)
34) Pseudolus by Plautus (link)
35) Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (link)
36) The Complete Poems by Catullus (link)
37) The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (link)
38) The Epicurus Reader translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (link)
39) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (link)
40) Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (link)
41) The Girl from Andros by Terence (link)
42) The Eunuch by Terence (link)
43) The Mother-in-Law by Terence (link)
44) Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (link)
45) Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (link)
46) The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (link)
47) Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac (link)
48) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (link)
49) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (link)
50) American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (link)
51) Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (link)
52) The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (link)
53) A Contract with G-d by Will Eisner (link)
54) A Life Force by Will Eisner (link)
55) Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner (link)
56) John Donne’s Poetry edited by A. L. Clements (link)
57) Promethea vol. 1 by Alan Moore (link)
58) The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (link)
59) Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (link)
60) Hard Times by Charles Dickens (link)
61) The Outsiders by  S. E. Hinton (link) **

* All entries with this symbol are re-reads.

** errata: apparently in my blog posts, I counted both The Outsiders and James and the Giant Peach as book # 21. I forgot to record The Outsiders altogether from the list. Instead of updating everything on the list and each individual post to reflect their true #s, which would be time-consuming and tedious, I’m throwing it on the end and counting it as # 61.

Off To Seattle!

I’m headed to Seattle with the family and girlfriend tomorrow. I’ll write up my final post of the year when I get back, which will summarize all my reads for the years and talk about my reading plans for next year.

Be back on Saturday!

Booklist 2009 # 60: Hard Times by Charles Dickens

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, Sir!”

Before this I had only ever read Great Expectations, but now after two of his novels I can say with certainty that I love Charles Dickens. Oh sure, in his Christian piety Dickens punishes us for some unknown sin by rendering the low-class speech of factory worker Stephen Blackpool and the lisp of circus owner Mr. Sleary into mounds of  irritating and unreadable dialogue, proving once again that most writers, even accomplished ones like Dickens, should avoid dialect like a hypochondriac does the swine flu. Oh sure, someone needs to invent a time machine, not to go back to visit Jesus or Moses or dinosaurs, but to slap Charles Dickens in the face and tell him to just say no to sub-plots. Nevertheless, Hard Times for the most part is a great and entertaining novel, especially when it focuses on the main story line of Thomas Gradgrind who espouses a reason-based Utilitarian education at the expense of imagination and how this education ruins the life of his family.

Thomas Gradgrind sponsors a school where his lead teacher Mr. M’Choakumchild grinds the imagination out of children with hard facts. Sissy Jupe, a girl whose father rides horses in the circus, attends the school only to be dismayed when she cannot define a horse in the terms of this fact-based system. In one of the most iconic scenes of the novel, the precocious Bitzer answers that a horse is:

“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth namrely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.”

This speech is followed by the teacher telling Sissy that she now “know[s] what a horse is.” Dickens relishes in the irony of the scene as Sissy who has spent her whole life around horses taking care of them as part of the circus probably knows far more than they do about her horse, but in practical terms rather than hard scientific facts.

After this poor performance, Thomas Gradgrid with his friend, a local factory owner and owner of the bank, Mr. Bounderby, travel to visit Sissy’s father and tell him she’s not working out in the school.  Mr. Bounderby likes to bluster on about his rags-to-riches story, telling everyone he can how he was abandoned by his mother in a ditch and beaten by his drunken grandmother. His personality can be described as an arrogant balloon of hot air. Thomas arrives at the circus to find out that Sissy’s father has abandoned her because he wants her to get an education and his old age is making it difficult to continue in the circus. Despite his belief in only cold hard facts, Thomas shows he has a sentimental side and takes Sissy into his home to be raised in his fact-based method. He also catches his daughter, Louisa and son, Tom Jr. watching the circus and berates them for having an interest in such silly nonsense.

Louisa grows up and enters a loveless marriage with Mr. Bounderby who is twice her senior. A young rake, Mr. Harthouse, comes to town and she finds herself almost engaging in an affair with him. Tom Jr., gains a job at the bank through his connections with Mr. Bounderby and indulges his sinful passions, particularly gambling and drinking, as a response to his imagination being squashed as a child. In between all this, we have the sub-plot of Stephen Blackpool, the virtuous factory worker, trapped in a loveless marriage with a drunken adulterous, and wishing he could marry his true love, Rachael. Eventually the factory workers threaten to go on strike and he refuses because of a promise to Rachael so his fellow workers outcast him. When he confronts Mr. Bounderby he fires him from his job. Stephen leaves town.

Eventually Tom Jr. robs Mr. Bounderby to pay for his habits and blames Stephen Blackpool for the robbery, other characters, such as Bitzer who now works for the bank and Mrs. Sparsit, a nosy woman who works for Mr. Bounderby, suspects other characters of the robbery. One of the other characters who Mrs. Sparsit blames ends up revealing the truth about Mr. Bounderby’s supposed rags-to-riches story, which turns out to be complete BS. After learning about his son’s misdeeds and Louisa’s complete unhappiness, Thomas Gradgrind realizes his method of education have proved a miserable failure. Sissy, who he underestimated and who fails in his method of schooling, maintains her imagination and becomes the moral core that proves the family’s salvation.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on atheist blogs, and I have to admit the endless tirades on those sites where every other poster expounds on the enlightening power of reason, rationality, facts, evidence over the so-called stupefying powers of faith and imagination cannot help by make me recall Gradgrind and M’Choakumchild. It’s like most those posters copied the dialogue of Gradgrind right out of Dickens’s novel. Dickens reminds us that there are more than just the facts. Characters dismiss problems or issues, as do real people, because the statistics say it is not statistically relevant, but Gradgrind learns firsthand how relevant such issues like crime can become when its affects his own family. Dickens wants to remind us that more exists beyond hard cold facts, that the imagination has worth. Dickens makes multiple religious allusions to the gospels as if both to emphasize the importance of faith and imagination, as well as to remind his readers of the true spirit of helping others in needs that directly challenges the selfishness of the rich of his time.

In a more historical sense, Dickens is challenging the Utilitarian theories of his time. Bitzer goes beyond the emotionless Louisa and the criminal Tom Jr. He is a monster of self-interest, caring for no else, but himself and his own advancement. At the end of the novel, he almost ruins Tom Jr. escape from the law because of these personality flaws. Mr. Bounderby is also an example of the Utilitarian theories gone haywire.

The sub-plot with the working class, which as I already mentioned that I didn’t love, provides a nice Marxist undertone of class struggle to the novel. However, Dickens complicates matters when Stephen Blackpool refuses to join the impending strike and becomes a pariah among his class. The working-class community are shown to be just as selfish in that their willing to abandon one of their own if he won’t assist them. Still Dickens makes it clear that Stephen Blackpool and Sissy Jupe are more virtuous than any of the rich characters, despite their low-class upbringings.

Great Paragraph!

“She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.” – Charles Dickens, Hard Times.