The Memoirs of a Sleepwalker - Essay Example

Close Reading Essay for Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker. Chosen Sentence Death is but a shifting of the scene, and the endless progress of eternity, which, to the good, is merely the perfection of felicity, is, to the wicked, an accumulation of woe.” (Brown, p. 61) This sentence is uttered by Clithero in his long explanation of what happened to him in previous times. He adds this little reflective comment as he is reaching the end of his story, at the point where he describes talking to Mrs Lorimer, and witnessing her fall to the floor.

She appears to have died of shock following the news of the death of her brother. The whole scene is overshadowed by thoughts of death, and Clithero appears to be thinking about the death of Wiatte, the death of Mrs Lorimer, and his own future death, all at the same time. The sentence stands out because it makes a philosophical point in the middle of the narrative. This can be seen by the use of abstract nouns such as death, eternity, the good, felicity and woe. The sentence takes the reader into another dimension, beyond the literal happenings between human beings on earth, and into the realm of the afterlife.

There is an assumption in this sentence that people are divided into two categories: those who are good and those who are evil. A second assumption is that good people will be going to “perfection of felicity” which signifies the happiness of heaven, or “an accumulation of woe” which refers to the sufferings of hell. This is the terminology of religion, and echoes the thoughts of Huntly, who is trying to figure out who is responsible for yet another death, namely that of his friend Waldegrave.

The sentence is important in the plot of the novel because it touches one of the key themes: the acceptance of guilt and the feeling of impending doom that is associated with it. Unlike the carefree Indians, the white men in the novel are all depicted as being moral beings who either denounce religion and live by reason, or like both Clithero and Huntly, try to live by the moral precepts of Christianity. There are deep theological issues which are touched upon in the sentence quoted. Clithero sees himself as guilty, although technically he is not a deliberate murderer, since circumstances all conspired to bring him into close contact with the various deaths that occurred.

He perceives himself as predestined to a life of suffering on earth, and eternal punishment thereafter. His acknowledgement makes him into a tragic character, rather than a villain or just a weak man. When the sentence is seen against the context of the whole novel, it takes on a much less definite and negative meaning. We see that this is only Clithero’s view, and we see Huntly going along with this view at first, but then as the book develops, there are other possible interpretations of guilt and innocence.

The example of the Indians begins to put things into a different perspective, suggesting that the world is not set up on such a severe either/or footing, and that there may be grey areas where human actions are morally mixed and where the afterlife is much less certain. This gives hope that humans need not be terrified by fear of punishment the afterlife, and that past events need not determine the fate of any individual who is unfortunate enough to experience bad things in his or her early life.

References Brown, Charles B. Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006.