The Question of Politics in Literature - Essay Example

The Question of Politics in Literature Throughout history, literature has often been considered the activity of the elite as a means of artistic expression and aesthetic reasoning. Rarely has it been considered as a means of expressing political dissension or support. Despite this, there are several works that have been written in most of the major time periods that deal in some way with questions of politics. These works that show glimpses at least and directly address politics at most include William Blake’s “London” from the Romantic period, Charles Dickens’ Hard Times from the Victorian era, Rudyard Kipling’s “Man Who Would be King” from the later Victorian era and George Orwell’s 1984 written in the period known simply as the 20th century. Beginning with William Blake’s short poem “London”, written in 1794 and included in his collection entitled Songs of Experience, traces of political unrest can be found as the scenes and sounds of a walk down the London streets are reported. The first hints that something is not right within the city can be found in the first lines of the poem, “A mark in every face I meet, / Marks of weakness, marks of woe” (3-4). These comments wouldn’t necessarily suggest a poor political situation, except that the signs of decay and desperation are seen in every face encountered as the speaker walks down what is presumed to be an average London street. This is reinforced in the second stanza as the speaker says, “In every cry of every man, / In every infant’s cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban, / The mind-forged manacles I hear” (4-8). In this, it is apparent that someone is controlling these people, although it remains unclear if the ‘mind-forged manacles’ are of their own creation or someone else’s. However, because of the inclusion of infants, who cannot possibly be imposing harsh times on themselves as well as the mention of bans, which are posted laws, it is indicated that the hardships being experienced are imposed from a higher source, such as the government. This is again reinforced in the third stanza when the speaker indicates that the decay of the city has reached even as far as the churches: “How the chimney-sweepers cry / Every blackening church appals” (9-10) and the city’s defenses as “the hapless soldier[‘s]” sigh is made visible as it “runs in blood down palace-walls” (12). Throughout the poem, then, although no specific mention is made of issues affecting the people, the affects are nevertheless made clear. Something is not working in London and is having a negative effect upon the inhabitants. Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times takes a more straightforward approach to addressing political issues of the times by using them as the basis upon which he builds his characters. Bounderby, for example, frequently reminds anyone willing to listen of his impoverished childhood – how he was born in a ditch, how his mother abandoned him and left him in the care of an alcoholic grandmother. The fact that he is, at the time of the story, a wealthy factory owner and banker serves to illustrate the possibility for improving one’s social station regardless of a person’s beginnings. However, because Bounderby is unable to understand the true condition of the hands, as well as the revelation that he was actually brought up by parents who ensured he was given a good education, Dickens also makes it clear that there remain several problems within the system. Part of this blindness of society to see itself in its true oppressive state is symbolized in the image of the serpents of smoke that rise from the factory chimneys. “It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled” (Ch. 5.). Like the ills of society, in which those stuck in poverty were doomed to remain in poverty as a result of the actions of men in power, the smoke serpents would never become uncoiled in such a way as to dissipate. “The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was lost or found, who turned out bad or good; the melancholy mad elephants, like the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever happened. Day and night again, day and night again. The monotony was unbroken” (Ch. 33). As he tells his tale of wealthy people who have been forced to abandon their emotions and poor people who have been forced to abandon their dreams, Dickens illustrates how the prosperity of the Industrial Revolution has served to blind the new elite to the political issues that must still be addressed. In “The Man Who Would be King”, Kipling introduces not only the general state of affairs in India, but also the idealistic concepts of two simple men as they make their way into less civilized territories to make their fortunes. While the story is presented more in terms of a horror tale, there remain hints of political commentary within the text. For example, when the newspaper journalist discusses the occupations of the two ex-soldiers Dravot and Peachey, who make their living by collecting information proving illegal actions perpetrated by smaller governments upon their people, he makes a blanket statement regarding the colonial government. “They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other” (Kipling, 1888). Instead of seeing these colonized countries as true responsibilities, these Indian states are described as being merely “picturesque scenery, tigers and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty” (Kipling, 1888). The narrator of the story understands his role in the newspaper as presenting stories of India to the outside world that comfort the thoughts of the subscribers while allowing the Empires and Kings to “continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before” (Kipling, 1888). In this, it becomes apparent that the role and duty of government is to see to the comfort, safety and luxurious living of the leaders, ideas that are repeated in the story of the two soldiers that build an empire of their own in Kafristan. Finally, Orwell’s 1984 addresses the ills of politics directly as he investigates the extremes of a ‘utopian’, or rather dystopian, society. The world introduced in 1984 is deliberately reminiscent of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. Winston’s job is to edit the ‘news’, both present and past, to reflect the current dictates of Big Brother, who has control of everything from the constantly changing political agenda to the new definitions and creation of words in the form of Newspeak. “If all others accepted the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became the truth” (Orwell, 1949: 37). This type of behavior is very similar to the way in which Stalin ordered his underlings to ‘doctor’ images that showed him together with his rival, Trotsky, so as to avoid any reminders to the public that the two men were ever considered on the same political side. The story includes such entities as the Thought Police, the Party and the hero worship of Big Brother. When Winston is finally taken to the Ministry of Love as punishment for his participation in the Brotherhood, a resistance group, his great fear of rats is used against him to make him betray Julia and break his spirit to again submissively follow the Party’s dictates. Through these and many other similarities, the book becomes a dark mirror of real world regimes and demonstrates the escalation of literature’s interest in political issues from the Romantic period forward. The Experience of the ‘Other’ The concept of colonization began to spread into the literary world as Europeans began discovering and exploring areas of the world to which they had previously had only limited access. As a result of this influence, many works from the Romantic period on tended to address the challenge of the ‘other’. The changing ideas of colonialism and its affects on the indigent peoples can be traced in the way in which the concept of the ‘other’ is treated in works such as Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” and Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium.” In Wordsworth’s poem, the ‘other’ emerges in two forms. There is first the form of the younger man that Wordsworth used to be. There is secondly the ‘other’ comprised of Wordsworth’s sister, who shares many characteristics with the younger man but still remains different. These are contrasted against the more introspective, meditative Wordsworth who writes the poem. This elder Wordsworth is identified in lines such as “I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, / That on a wild secluded scene impress / Thoughts of more deep seclusion” (Wordsworth, 1888: 5-7). The person that writes of how the picturesque landscape has occupied his thoughts while away and has inspired his thinking to higher and higher forms is compared to the man he was when he first visited, “more like a man / Flying from something that he dreads, than one / Who sought the thing he loved” (Wordsworth, 1888: 70-72). This wild young man who ran about the hillsides is compared still further with the quieter, but not less vacuous form of Wordsworth’s sister. Although she was not much younger than he was, he indicates that her gender prevents her from experiencing the kind of deeper thoughts that nature has inspired in him. “In thy voice I catch / The language of my former heart, and read / My former pleasures in the shooting lights / of thy wild eyes” (Wordsworth, 1888: 116-119). There are plenty of examples of the ‘other’ in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights as well. The most blatant of these is Heathcliff, who is presented as the other from his very first introduction into the story as a wild, half-starved dark child who cannot even speak a ‘proper’ language. Despite efforts to indoctrinate him into the living standards of the Earnshaw home, Hindley cannot accept the new child as an equal and is eventually successful in keeping Heathcliff from being considered of equal social status to himself and Catherine. However, Catherine, knowing how it feels to be one of the ‘others’ by virtue of what was expected of her gender and her adventurous spirit, cannot help but identifying with the ‘wild child’, sparking a lifetime passion between the two that eventually led to their destruction. Catherine is able to overcome her sense of otherness by confining herself within the expected definition of womanhood, but the strain of this is evident in her exuberant welcoming of Heathcliff upon his eventual return. Other examples of the ‘other’ in Wuthering Heights include the sickly child Linton as he struggles to please a father who would never approve of him and Hareton, who grew up as wild and rough as Heathcliff had himself. By allowing the younger Catherine and Hareton to form a relationship, one that proves mutually felt and mutually beneficial, Bronte makes a statement about how the ‘other’ can be overcome in the new societies forming as a result of changes made through the Industrial Revolution. As the revolution moved on and colonialism became more accepted in a prosperous society, Oscar Wilde was able to poke fun at the concept of the ‘other’ in his play “The Importance of Being Earnest.” In this story, Jack Worthing and his best friend Algernon Moncrieff invent alter egos as a means to escape the rigid confines of their upper class late Victorian lifestyles. As Algernon tells Jack, “You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose” (Wilde, Act 1, Scene 1). Trapped within these guises, they each manage to fall in love with women who have come to know them as men named Earnest. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that while Algernon has had his name legally changed as a means of enticing his sweetheart, Cecily, who is also Jack’s ward, into marrying him, Jack’s given name was actually Earnest, given to him by his birth parents. He didn’t know this because he was lost as a baby by his nurse, who turns out to be Cecily’s tutor. At the same time, it is learned that Algernon is, in reality, Earnest’s younger brother. Although each man thought he’d been lying to everyone, it turns out they were both telling the truth all along. Throughout the story, then, most of the main characters turn out to be something other than what they appear to be and the results left audiences laughing. The spirit of the ‘other’ seems to be embodied in William Butler Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium.” As he writes about the inhabitants of Byzantium, he makes it clear that though he is using the name of a very human, and very cultured, city, this is no material city he is discussing. For Yeats, Byzantium represented the highest ideals in art, spirituality and knowledge, a kind of heavenly realm in which nothing ever changes but remains perfectly representative of the inner essence of art, beauty and spirituality. This is a city that cannot be conceived of by the average mortal and can indeed only be partially grasped in partial form by a living poet in the throes of vision. However, it is a land for human spirits, a place where they can throw off the “tattered coats” of life in favor of the eternal purity that is housed here. Reading through the poem, it is possible to grasp Yeats’ concept of an eternal and unnaturally unchanging perfection of being that so transcends form and rises above function that it remains beyond the living human’s ability to understand or fully appreciate. The entire first stanza focuses on the material presence of living things as well as the inevitable aging and death of all these things. Throughout the poem, Yeats continues to contrast images of the material world in terms of decay and death, “A tattered coat upon a stick” (10), with images of the world of Byzantium, his ideal of intellect and art, “such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enamelling (27-28). His continued use of gold to illustrate the ideals of Byzantium imbues art and intellect with everlasting qualities as gold does not tarnish. In addition, it does not decay like the mortal body and becomes a fitting form for the eternal intellect, which becomes the focus of the poem itself. In addition to the symbols of gold as eternal and Byzantium as a city of light and higher existence, Yeats implies the symbol of the sailboat, or a crossing over from one realm to another, in the title of the poem as well as in line 15, “I have sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium” (15-16). Thus, the concept of the ‘other’ has been taken to its greatest extreme, the crossing over from human body to the world of spirit and the ‘higher plane’ that can only be suggested through the explorations of art and literature. Read More