Illusion and Reality in Literature - Research Paper Example

Illusion and Reality: An Analysis of a Novel and Two Poems Novels and poems could be based on a true story or purely fictional. However, it is rare for a novel and/or a poem to be entirely fictional. Authors usually incorporate their own actual experiences into their literary works. But what makes a novel or a poem remarkable is not whether it is based on a true story, or purely fictional, or a combination of both, but how the author uses the boundary between illusion and reality. This research paper presents an analysis of a novel—Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra—and two poems by Edgar Allan Poe—A Dream within a Dream and The Raven. The theme of the analysis is illusion and reality. Various questions are addressed in the analysis, such as what illusion(s) does the author/piece deal with? Why does reality evade the characters? What does this author regard as the reality in the situation s/he is probing? Does the author perchance believe that humanity needs illusions? Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Nearly four hundred years of Quixote analysis have resulted in anything but an agreement about the real theme of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s novel. As stated by Leo Spitzer, “we are still far from understanding [the Quixote] in its general plan and in its details as well as we do, for instance, Dante’s Commedia or Goethe’s Faust—and we are relatively further from an understanding of the whole than of the details” (Ziolkowski 15). However, what is clear from the novel is that when illusion becomes the favored reality, reality itself becomes simply faceless and almost certainly needless. Miguel de Cervantes presents to the world of literature a novel, or more specifically, a character that has successfully blurred the line dividing reality and illusion—Don Quixote de la Mancha. In the 16th century, an old man living in Spain has fallen into insanity from reading a vast number of books on knighthood or chivalry. Don Quixote, believing himself to be a real knight, he embarks on a quest with his chaperon, Sancho Panza, to restore the age of knighthood and change the world. He sees taverns as castles, herds of sheep as armies, and windmills as giants (Echevarria 12). Don Quixote’s tale is simple-- a mere fascination with knightly and noble romances which led him to the bizarre idea of making a journey as a dedicated knight, which becomes greater than its intended humorous impact. The narrative has progressed into an interpretation of the mystical features of reality and their effects, and in the case of Don Quixote, their great appeal on the ordinary person (Fambrough 163). The most important theme in the story is the disappearing line that distinguishes reality from illusion, and the manner in which the author organizes his novel creates this theme and introduces the insight that this blurred line, although being of no consequence for Don Quixote and those who took part in his knightly adventures, is also becoming unimportant for majority of his audiences or readers. Determined to disprove the allegation that his fanciful heroes are only illusions, Don Quixote retorts that the reality of their existence (Weiger 85): … is so certain that I am prepared to say that with my own eyes I saw Amadis de Gaula, who was a man of tall build, fair complexion, well-kempt though black beard, half mild and half severe in countenance, succinct in words, slow to anger and quick to calm that anger; and in the way in which I have delineated Amadis I could, in my opinion, paint and describe all the many knights-errant that populate the histories of the world, for by the apprehension that I have of the fact that they were as their histories relate, and by the deeds that they performed and condition they had, and, by virtue of good philosophy, their features, their complexion and stature, can be deduced. Miguel de Cervantes relates a specific mental picture of a fictional character to the process of reading on several instances. Furthermore, Don Quixote, persuaded by the minister, does in fact continue to portray thoroughly some more romance heroes (Weiger 85). The excerpt above, thus, not only is proof of an eccentric’s fascination with the reality of his fantasies but is consistent with de Cervantes’ depiction of the activity of reading and its outcomes. One does not have to be insane to perceive, in the imagination, the life of imaginary characters. When Don Quixote narrates his story of the Knight of the Lake, he is certain that his audiences will ‘perceive’ what he is relating to them (Weiger 86): Is there a greater joy than to see, so to speak, here now revealed in front of us a large lake of pitch, boiling and bubbling, and swimming about in it many serpent, snakes and lizards?... And could there be anything better to see, after having seen this, than to see coming out of the door of the castle a goodly number of maidens, whose festive and showy costumes, were I to set forth and describe them as the histories tell us, would be a never-ending tale?... What must it be to see, then, what they tell us?... What, to see him having water poured?... What, to see him served by all the maidens?... And, believe me, your grace, and as I’ve told you before, read these books and you will see. Don Quixote is very keen in emphasizing the signs that people seek when they disagree or agree with his insights. The persistence of Sancho on the phantoms’ names who threw him in the blanket leads to Don Quixote’s detailed series of names in the later adventure (Ziolkowski 49). However, this interpretation does not suggest that Don Quixote is a pretender; instead, in his desire to communicate the illusions he sees, he gives up the need to have those fantasies proven for himself, hence proving his knightly journeys. The excerpt above is an effort to convince the speaker to perceive in the romances what Don Quixote perceives. The stress on ‘perceiving’ in this excerpt reveals that he fully understands his speaker. Don Quixote probably did not hear the speaker explain the contradictions of the romances, but it is important to mention that the speaker’s way of seeing literary creations is for the heart to visualize the pleasure “of beauty and harmony that it sees or contemplates in the things that [the sense of] sight or the imagination place in front of it” (Weiger 87). It is not surprising, therefore, that the speaker’s response to Don Quixote’s performance is admiration. He is astonished by the ‘concerted absurdities’ (Weiger 87) and by the manner wherein Don Quixote has portrayed the quest. Obviously, he is also astonished by Don Quixote’s eccentricity. But certainly explanation for his astonishment is the nature of his own description of the act of reading that the recitation of Don Quixote has carried out. This same mechanism motivates the efforts of Don Quixote to express his illusions in several circumstances as he struggles to convey the images that his imagination captures. A specific form of inclination toward illusion is found in the windmill chapter. It is reasonable to interpret it by referring to the finale of the journey of the fulling mills. The reaction of Don Quixote to Sancho’s ridicule of the failure of his master to see the real nature of these other mills could simply be associated with the windmills: “Am I obliged, being, as I am, a knight, to recognize and distinguish sounds and know which ones come from fulling mills and which ones don’t? What’s more, it could be, as indeed it is, that I have never seen them in my whole life, whereas you, base peasant that you are, must have seen them, since you were born and brought up among them” (Saavedra 145). The reason that de Cervantes expressed through Don Quixote strengthens the idea that besides, but not, obviously, rather than, the philosophical depiction of the reality-illusion theme innate in these changes, the penchant of Don Quixote somewhat unsurprisingly leads him to experience illusions. The philosophical importance of the quixotic illusion depends on the actualization of that illusion: “Seeing in his imagination what he did not really see nor was there to see, he raised his voice” (Saavedra 662). Readers who took part in Don Quixote’s adventure are informed that the whole narrative was filled with illusion and that the actual knight is merely an ordinary individual who fell into insanity. But (Echevarria 53): It is on the very wings of madness that his wisdom soars upward, that it roams the world and becomes richer there. For if Don Quixote had not gone mad, he would not have left his house. And then Sancho too would have stayed home, and he could never have drawn from his innate being the things which—as we find in delighted amazement—were potentially contained in it. At times an illusory reality is preferred, and in this story, the readers and Sancho have become so captivated and wrapped up in the knightly world that made them forget what is real and what is not. It is the reality of Don Quixote and it is more interesting and fascinating than reality, thus it could be regarded as reality itself. Don Quixote de la Mancha is a fictional narrative that fiddles with the boundary between illusion and reality. Novels can usually introduce and absorb readers into unfamiliar worlds, but Don Quixote calls for a total abandonment of any nuance of reality. Miguel de Cervantes formed an idealistic, romantic madman who captivates people’s imagination with his knightly quest. Don Quixote embodies a man who constructs his own reality and fully surrenders himself to it, while encouraging others to go along with him. Illusion is only illusion because it is not considered real, but once illusion becomes one’s reality, it can become a more preferred reality. A Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe asks what is required to differentiate between the dream or illusion and reality and asserts strongly at the conclusion of the first stanza, “All that we see or seem/ Is but a dream within a dream” (Sova 59). In the next stanza, Poe conveys the pain of being unable to ‘grasp the grains of sand within his hand’ (Richardson xxix) and raises the question “can I not grasp/ them with a tighter clasp?” (Richardson xxix) The discovery that he does not have the ability to save even a single grain of sand from “the pitiless wave” (Richardson xxix) results in his ultimate question: “Is all that we see or seem/ But a dream within a dream?” (Sova 59). Although A Dream within a Dream does not involve anything as gruesome or gloomy as the typical literary works of Poe, it would be a lie to say that it was not just as puzzling or inexplicable. The poem tells its readers that life is just an illusion. Reality is not real. Human beings do not have the capacity or power to know what is real and what is unreal. A Dream within a Dream was created several months before the Poe passed away, and during a time wherein he suffered disappointment with his work and more severe sense of defeat and grief. His question of whether people’s lives are only an illusion or a ‘dream within a dream’ suggests a resemblance to the allegory of the cave of Plato. Plato hypothesizes that people imprisoned in a cave with a fire at their back and walls in front of them on which their sputtering shadows appear become convinced that those shadows are the reality. Even when taken out of the cave and faced with objects in the outside world, they will not favor this reality over the ‘reality’ that they have experienced and embraced—the shadows on the walls (Sova 59-60). In a similar way, Poe asks if all the things the poet sees and experiences is only an illusion or a dream, which makes reality unreachable and outside his comprehension. A sorrowful sense of inevitability can be sensed as the poet recognizes his loss. His thoughts obscure all the things that he has experienced with a loved one; ending in the realization that everything was a dream within the bigger illusion of human life. He recognizes that this point of view does not make the consequence any less absolute or inevitable, but he is entangled in an effort to lessen the piercing agony by blurring the boundary between illusion and reality. Basically, Poe is trying to raise the likelihood of going back to happier moments through the act of dreaming. Here, dreams are used as a way of dealing with the grief of losing someone important. The literary creations of Poe are filled with characters that express the feelings of sorrow, agony, and grief. Nevertheless, in A Dream within a Dream, Poe looks at the way in which powerful emotions can lead to an act of escapism. It is in distorting reality and reinforcing illusion that makes finding the way through pain and grief possible (Barnes 35). His exceptional portrayal and analysis of the bewildering effect of dreams encourages his readers to doubt reality, while also broadening their understanding about dreams and on how they can use illusions to cope with harsh realities. In Poe’s misery, there was a path of illusions which ends in an emotional haven where he could be with his loved ones once more. His waking moments would then be a life within a morose reality. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe The Raven is about a mourning lover visited “upon a midnight dreary” by the bedeviled raven, which he in his loneliness calls “Prophet!... thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!” (Poe 1944, 4) The disturbing and poignant interaction between the raven and the downhearted narrator evolves and shifts throughout the poem, as the narrator is, at the outset, obviously amazed by the intelligence of the raven, then enraged, and finally falling into utter depression. The theme of illusion and reality within the poem revolves around the narrator’s effort to create illusions about his deceased loved one, Lenore, so as to cope with the overwhelming grief he is experiencing. Poe narrated (Poe 1944, 2): Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, ‘Lenore!’ This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the world, ‘Lenore!’ Merely this and nothing more. As the speaker becomes agitated and because he has to hold on to Lenore’s memores, he goes through inner chaos as he attempts to confront his new reality, a life without Lenore, with new illusions (Poe 2009, 303). He called her name, hoping that the visitor will be his lost love Lenore. He is submerged in dreams and illusions of eternal love. The raven itself could be the product of the narrator’s illusions. Even though reason informs the narrator that the raven’s ‘Nevermore’ is only a learned word, he is already outside true reality (Poe 2009, 303-304). Having suffered a tumultuous change in his emotions, from wistful sadness to absurd expectation, by the latter part of the poem, the narrator is already on the verge of madness. The blurring of the line between illusion and reality begins to set in. The young man now is in a state that cannot be explained—he is perched between disorientation and insanity (Dobson 88). He initially believed that the raven was a prophet or a courier from heaven, as a phantom of his deceased Lenore, and as a blissful memory. However, in the latter part of the poem his thoughts changed entirely as he began to see the raven as an apparition of emptiness. Edgar Allan Poe as a remarkable and brilliant catalyst of imagination has rarely returned to the indistinct and the illusory as sources of impact. He makes a strange and eerie connection between illusion and reality to deliver the impact of The Raven. The narrator’s gradual descent into complete darkness and hopelessness is made stronger by the true reality of his new situation. However, he regains his sanity, ironically, by dreaming about his Lenore and creating illusions about their broken love. Conclusions Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and Edgar Allan Poe have something in common—both use illusion as a coping mechanism and reality as a balancing force. Don Quixote acted out his visions of storybook heroes that he admires, especially the knights. He embarks on a chivalric adventure, with plenty of illusions to guide his way. He used these illusions to escape the physical weaknesses brought about by old age. He embraces the illusion of being a real knight, young and lively, as his reality. Similarly, in A Dream within a Dream and The Raven, the narrator tries to escape the harsh reality of losing a loved one by retreating into a world of illusions or dreams. In dreams he finds happiness for he is reunited with his loved ones in his dreams. Works Cited Barnes, Nigel. A dream within a dream: the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Michigan: Peter Owen Limited, 2009. Print. Dobson, Joanne. The raven and the nightingale: a modern mystery of Edgar Allan Poe. Michigan: Doubleday, 1999. Print. Echevarria, Roberto. Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’: A Casebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print. Fambrough, Preston. “Dostoevsky’s Other Quixote.” Studies in the Humanities 31.2 (2004): 163. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Raven. New York: BompaCrazy.com, 1944. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems. New York: Cosimo Inc., 2009. Print. Richardson, Charles. Poems. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902. Print. Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote. UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1993. Print. Sova, Dawn. Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print. Weiger, John. The Substance of Cervantes. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Ziolkowski, Eric. The Sanctification of Don Quixote. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 2007. Print. Read More