The History of Russelas by Samuel Johnson - Essay Example

The History of Russelas Satire is referred to as the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule in the context of a story, play, film or poem or narrative which is criticizes the negative face of the society. The various issues sought to be criticized in a society is stupidity of people, their vices, abuses, follies, and shortcomings. Although the humour in satire is meant for fun, it serves a greater purpose which mostly is creatively and constructively addressing the wrongs of the society using wit as a weapon. Satire is mostly characterized by strong irony and sarcasm. Various authors of old and new literature have used satire in their works. This paper looks at the various incidences in which Samuel Johnson used satire in the book, The History of Russelas. Johnson in the novel The History of Russelas explores the life of the prince of the Abyssinia kingdom. The book, exploring the differences in the life of the prince in the valley where they had quality life and had access to any manner of luxury and that of the nobles, explores the satirical side of life in a palace. The comparison of the two different lives of the people living in the kingdom draws the irony of the different statuses of people in habiting the society. Although written in the 1880s, the differences in social status of the people in the society were apparent, just they currently exist. In its own diction, satire explores the various issues in the society that appear weird and funny. Out of normality, the family of the king was hidden in a valley, surrounded by mountains and forests. Whether for beautification purposes or for safety, the setting of the home was weird. What, with the seclusion form the hustle and bustle of the palace? Away from the people and into the wilderness, a place that did not have people, different kinds of animals inhabiting the region, that freely mingled with the servants of the kingdom. What was the essence of the family being kept far away from the normality of life? It did not make sense. Some may argue that the king found it safer there, while others may hold that the king wanted a peaceful life for his family. For people to live in harmony, they need to coexist together and show true brotherhood and sisterhood. The king chose to put his family in seclusion from the public and the reality of life. How were they supposed to coexist with the rest of the people if they were not used to living with them? They were used to the animals inhabiting the valley, and the usual servants who served them and took care of them from the time of their birth. They were not used to new faces, or new visitors. How were they expected to live with the rest of the people the day that they were left out of the valley? The prince was to marry someday, while the daughters would too get married. How were they supposed to find their companions if they did not leave the valley? For twenty six years, the prince never left the valley; he saw no new faces, neither the face of the sun outside the valley. How was he expected to rule the people after taking over from his father as the heir of the kingdom? The actions of the king did not make much sense. His intentions beat logic when a person thinks of the reasons why he chose to provide them with the kind of lifestyles that he deserved. Perhaps he was to get them their life partners. However, how were they to live from the time they were released form the valley? Maybe he intended to get them families and keep them there forever. Whichever plan that he had, the actions of the king did not make sense. The family, whether royal or not should have been left to freely mingle with the society. Contrary to this, he would have left them walk around the kingdom and see other people and the kind of work and lives that they lived. The prince found the life of living in the valley boring, in contrast to the life of that of the people living outside the valley in the free world. As he grew up, not only did he get used to the music that was being played by the servants employed by their father as a way of entertaining them, but also became tired of being in seclusion. He began acting abnormally, staying in seclusion and choosing not to eat. He listened to no more music, and ate less and at times did not eat at all. He worried many people in the valley, mostly the servants. While he lived there with his family, they did not show much concern like the servants. Who was bent to bear the biggest burden in case anything happened to him? It was ironical that even his mother did not bother herself much with the issues affecting him, just as it is supposed to be. Comfortable life where a person lacks nothing is full of plenty and has access to all amenities means that a person is supposed to be happy. Most of the people living in poverty wish for wealth in order to have happiness in their lives. This is however not the case according to the prince. He hates his life and associates the lifestyle to problems. He feels less entertained, even with the normal band playing daily for them as a way of entertaining them. He finds the food unpleasant, yet it had been prepared in the best manner possible, specifically to please them. While other people enjoy the meals, he finds food too awful to eat. It is ironical how he finds the obvious things that should be entertaining to be boring. People are a disturbance to him, as he opts to stay alone in the forest. When Russelas made up his mind to escape from the valley which he referred to as captivity, he considered the past life that he had lived as wasted. Seeing a loss of his days and time, his wasted months in captivity, he wished he could be like the birds of the sky or the animals of the forest. This came upon him the day he was sitting by the banks of the river and saw a lady running away from her abusive boyfriend. The cry of the woman for his help touched him, prompting him to leap into action after the man. However, on arriving at the top of the mountain and realizing that he was too weak to catch up on them, he sat down in a mood of meditation and started his unending lamentations. Comparing the valley as a prison is satirical, especially from the mind of the son of a king. It is anybody’s expectation that the kind of life the prince lived to have been full of fun. Moreover, he should have been more excited living with servants around him. But to him, this was not the life he wanted. He wished he could be free like other people, do everything that he wished without having to be under the care of anybody. Envying the birds of the sky and the kids in the forest, he was amused at the unlimited freedom that they enjoyed. Comparing his life with theirs, he found them to be independent and more at peace, yet full of fun. Russelas’ reference to the valley that was his home as the valley of happiness is ironical (Johnson 19). From the onset of the book, a glim picture of the valley has been painted. So dark is the picture that the audience already adopts a bad image on the kind of place that it was. The author describes it as a place where freedom was never known. Entering and leaving the compound was effortless without being spotted. There was a single gate, constructed like an entrance to a cave or a prison and manned by fierce sentries who never left the guard. It was a place where the prince was not allowed to leave, while the public itself was not allowed to enter into the valley. Anybody who left the gate never returned. From the time he became of a knowledge age, he despised the living conditions he had faced from an early age. However, on this particular day when he experienced the feeling of freedom, he referred to the valley as the valley of happiness, which more satirical and ironical. He was even more depressed after realizing that he could not stage an escape, after realizing that all the areas were secured for anybody to try an escape. The prince planning on an escape is more perturbing and generally humorous than the seriousness that he desired the freedom. Even the rich cry, so do they have problems of their own. The world outside could have had a notion that being a prince granted him the best life that he wished to live. He had anything at his disposal, and could have access to anything that he wanted. Many people could have wished for such a life, imagining that it would be fun to live as a prince. Contrary to this expectation, the prince was unhappy with the choices made for him. He felt more a prisoner and less independent than he wished to be. Thus, his idea and desire for escaped appeared more easier and more promising for a better life than choosing to remain in the valley of happiness. Russelas’ desperate desire to escape overpowers him the day he discovered that the artist could make a machine that could propel him off the ground like a bird and make him fly away from the valley. Both of them, with the dream of flying higher and faster than the birds are stooped if not absurd. How would they expect to make wings that could fly? The artist had done research and watched the wings of a bat and how they worked. However, their idea of making a device similar to the wings that would enable them to fly is naive and full of humour. How, in the world would anybody choose to take such an experiment and proceed with it to the end? All in all, it gives people hopes that anything is possible with hope and faith. Their fantasy of flying faster than the birds themselves is more satirical than being a desired dream. In the narration of his life and how he came to the happy valley, Imlac pointed that his father was perhaps the richest man in Abyssinia. He acknowledged that he had a lot of wealth, having been involved in merchant business in Africa and the red sea. By Imlac’s acknowledgement that his father wanted more wealth than he already had and thus kept with his work, Russelas did not see the sense in it. He did not see the use of having more money than he needed. It is ironical that he considered Imlac’s father to have been greedy for wealth, while his own father had more than they could, and yet did not consider him to be greedy. Two different versions of freedom are portrayed during the narration of Imlac’s journey to the happy valley. He points out that reason he wanted to get out of the free world and join the happy valley was to free his thoughts of the things that he had witnessed. Coming back home after many years of travelling around the world looking in his numerous poetic escapades and business trips, he found that his father had died fourteen years before. On his death, he had divided his fortune amongst his brothers and left nothing for Imlac. The rest of his fortune, he had been buried with it. This, according to Imlc hurt him significantly. Notwithstanding this, he was faced with the reality that little people remembered him and thus he felt more of a foreigner than a native. It was due to these reasons that he dreaded to join the valley crew and forget the world. Subsequently, it is very ironical that the two had distinct desires. Russelas envisioned the worlds to be a free and an enjoyable place where he would have the freedom to choose his wife and kids, his freedom of choice of the kind of schools that his children would attend and the kind of life that he wished. However, Imlac warned that “the world that you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests, and boiling with whirlpools.” The poet further continued to war him that “sometimes you will be overwhelmed by the waves of violence and sometimes dashed against rocks of treachery.” This advice came along Russelas’ way when he requested Imlac to help him device a means of escaping. To them, freedom meant different things. While to Imlac the best freedom was freedom of mind, to Russelas it was freedom of choice. It is satirical that while one desperately wants to leave the valley, the other desperately wanted to join other people living in the valley. Their escape from the palace in the valley was met with new experiences that were very different form the life at the valley. They found good people at Cairo, who were very happy in the commercial city. Their lack of understanding of the value of money and how to use it is satirical and ironical. The daughter and son of a king who did not know what business were and the use of money sounds very unreal. Regardless of this, they were free and were experiencing the joy of being part of a free world. As a signifying factor of how boring the valley life had been to them, they found the milk given to them by the herdsmen to be sweeter than that of the valley. More ironical however, is the fact that the two roamed in the streets of Cairo without anybody recognizing them as the prince and the princess of the great king. They blended with the locals so easily and beautifully that nobody could have suspected that they belonged to the royal family. Russelas even attended a public lecture by a philosopher without being recognized by other people. Nekayah found out that money is not the reason for happiness. During the different studies she conducted on private family lives, she discovered that in poverty, there was perhaps more joy and happiness between the parents and the children more than in the rich families. Further, she realized that in rich families that were synonymous to kingdoms, the children grew rebellious of their parents in old age. She found this to be a major cause of sadness in these families. It would be anybody’s expectation that Nekayah, being from a royal family would support the illusions of wealth into believing that happiness existed in homes where money was plenty. This was however not true. She found that true happiness was not brought by money. Instead, it brought more problems than it solved. Choosing to live simple life and opt to learn the philosophy of life is unlikely for anybody from the royal family. The audience would have expected that the two would choose to go back to the valley of happiness after meeting with varying conditions from those of the palace. However, they went on with their lives; opting to learn the different issues affecting people in the society, mire particularly issues pertaining to happiness. Nekayah on the theme of marriage discovers quite a lot of things as she narrated to the prince. She posited that the marriage was a form of companionship in which men and women were supposed to be helpful of each other and where there was mutual benefits and understanding (Johnson 112-118). To her, people who opted to get married an older age were likely to be lesser happy than those who chose to marry at van early age. In her narration, her findings contradicted those of Pekuah who found women to be attending to their husbands in the camp of the Arab. The actions of Nekayah and Russelas were contrary to the expectations of the reader, from the time they escaped from the camp. They chose to learn and understand life in the various perspectives, especially that which affected happiness of people. The various ways in which people chose to find happiness made more significance in their studies than the elements of life. They neither went back to the palace, nor felt tired of learning the different elements that made life worth living. After their experience, they decided to go back to the palace in Abyssinia. Works Cited Johnson, Samuel. The History of Russelas, Prince of Abyssinia: A Tale. Rue Montmorency: Smith, 1831. Print. Read More