A Post Modernist View on the Works of Ernest Hemingway - Assignment Example

A Post Modernist View on the Works of Ernest Hemingway Everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is no ideology. ~ V.N. Volosinov Ideology is a word best defined by its component words, quite literally, meaning a study of ideas. These ideas may or may not be doctrines and set in political, social and philosophical moulds. It has been a known fact that history has evolved for the better or worse, at the behest of a handful of people with epoch-making ideologies. These people may have been politicians, social activists, or men-of-letters. Charles Darwin’s theory of human evolution and survival of the fittest may be safely labeled as the ideology of a man backed amply by scientific evidence. What then, is the difference, if any, between ideology and idiosyncrasies? Can there be a clear divide between the rudimentary and the reasonable? Can language approach to tread the fine line between the visibly apparent and the apparently visible? Can literature thus, in that respect, be a clear mirror image of its origin? Volosinov, in his comment, attempts to bridge the gap between the questions and their responses. If everything ideological does possess meaning, and the meaning is made clear in a language relevant to the context, then clearly language has served its purpose. The question remains; can a language which has evolved through eons of dramatic upheavals; a language that has borne the brunt of invaders and annexations, a language that has welcomed and imbibed all cultural influences with open arms; can such a language have a strong, independent and objective ideology of its own? Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos. ~Kenneth Tynan Over the past ten centuries, the English language, as has the United Kingdom, gone through much incest and abuse. The Germanic and Latinate influences in the language paved the way for many a great writers, poets, and playwrights to influence history with their works of unparalleled play of words. What made people like Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, Virginia Wolfe, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Phillip Larkin amongst others, the iconic figures of English literature of their times? What is it about their written word that took the English language to a greater precipice and added new dimensions? What, in the first place, is the dimension of the English language that defines and shapes it? It is evidently the ‘standards’ standardized by these writers themselves. The lyrical quality, the play of metaphor, the myth and the mythology, the ever-changing , yet totally compartmentalized social fabric, the stiff upper-lip, the perfect gentleman and the ever gracious lady, the depiction of British obstinacy, patriotism, mannerisms, ethos, gender play; over time, all of this became an inherent part of the Englishness of English. A postmodernist response to a study of English literature would be simple and clear, for postmodernism harbors on the theory of objectivity rather than subjectivity( Guerin 253). The common thread that runs through the works of these great writers over centuries is that of the packaging of meaning in the folds of syllabic, iambic, and syntactical equilibrium. Even though, there has been a great surge in post-colonial literature in English and the works of Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are in no way of any less literary value. However, in trying to re-tell or invert the perspective, these authors have only added to the Englishness of a social discourse, which, to begin with, is already an amalgam of varied cultural influences. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the development of the distinctive American fiction led to a greater seepage of European culture in the social milieu. Modern novelists like Arnold Bennett, Doris Lessing, John Updike, and Ernest Hemmingway are the writers who chose to experiment with the genre of the English novel while staying closest to the American reality (Singh 2002-03). Being minimalistically intrusive, they remained in the background and made their presence as a narrator almost inconspicuous. As we attempt to scrabble at the underbelly of English nativity and its white-blooded spoor through an ever-changing ideology, it would be pertinent to bring into view Ernest Hemmingway’s short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Hemingway, in this comic yet emotionally intriguing story, attempts to deal with the social, ethical, and personal problems of the people of his times. At the same time, he also dares to draw out a contrast between the ideologies of two English-speaking nations. The ‘givens’ of the Englishness of a British culture versus the ‘takes’ of an American culture pops up in the description of Wilson, Margaret and Macomber; the men being starkly different yet unified in their desire to ‘hunt’ and be ‘heroes’ to their staff and in particular to their women. The story may be assumed to be set in the times of the Great Depression and the extravagance of the Macombers to take a safari trip to South Africa amid such an economic crisis, is something that is reflected subtly through the text. The story opens with the lines: “It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.” The natural ease with which the conversation follows and the pretence continues, throws a subtle light at the inherent Englishness in the nature of American men and women; especially the stoic, well-built male who is a personification of ‘grace under pressure’. Also, the mental make-up of refusing to accept defeat or setbacks becomes visible in the following lines. "I wish it hadn't happened. Oh, I wish it hadn't happened," she said and started for her tent. She made no noise of crying but they could see that her shoulders were shaking under the rose-colored, sun-proofed shirt she wore. The major themes in the story follow the progress curve of Hemingway’s non-fictional work Green Hills Of Africa. The four parts: Pursuit and Conversation, Pursuit Remembered, Pursuit and Failure, and Pursuit as Happiness, are very neatly etched out in this short story, thus embodying the no-frills, no-long-winded drills mode of storytelling. Hemingway’s growing dissatisfaction with contemporary American culture is visible throughout this story in which he depicts a deliberate cultivation of the brutal and the primitive through big game hunting. It was in 1820, the English critic Sydney Smith had asked sneeringly” In the four quartets of the globe, who reads an American book? “Interestingly enough, in his essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville responded “Believe me, my friends, that men not very much inferior to Shakespeare are this day being born on the banks of Ohio. And the day will come when you shall say, who reads a book by an Englishman that is a modern?” ( Singh 2002-03 : p 226) If we were to compare Hemingway’s work to a contemporary like Virginia Woolf, it becomes imperative to take a few steps back from the current discourse and acquire a macro perspective. . "English fiction without the nieces of Earls and the cousins of generals,” Woolf comments, "would be an arid waste. It would resemble Tolstoy!” In her short story Kew gardens Woolf uses modernist narratives to order the text by symbol, pattern or metaphor rather than by a linear sequence. If the patterns to which history conforms are for other modernist writers apocalyptic and typological; for Virginia Woolf they are patterns of art and human sensibility. The ‘stream of consciousness’ technique which is rampant in almost all of her works is typified in this story through the ‘fall of words’: “Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I says, she says, I says, I says, I says­" "My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar, Sugar, flour, kippers, greens, Sugar, sugar, sugar." The imagery drawn out in the movement of the snail and the parallel pointer towards the random motion of people around the garden nullifies any misconception of an overtly articulate effort to lean towards the classic mode. Infact, the description of the snail’s movement bears a close resemblance to the gait of the lion and the run of the buffaloes in ‘The Short Happy life of Francis Macomber’. The movement of the people around the garden reminds one of the wild chases made by the hunting men. The structural integrity and objective description of the four pairs of people walking into the garden is indicative of the absence of the author’s individuality as a narrator in the story. Unlike English literature, American literature seems to have emerged into something to the tune of romantic escapism. The flight from civilization and continual attempts of individual self-assertion, often by a male character whose sole companion would be a native-American or a dark skinned outsider living on the fringes of the society. Such a romance then becomes the literature of rebels that defy the middle-class conformity to enable the emancipation of the liberal tradition. Thus, language becomes a tool for matter-of-fact speech, instead of the metaphorically ornate representations of traditional literary English. Since 1945, two tendencies have been evident in English literature. One of these is identifiable with post-modernism considered as a phase of western culture, and is characterized by the continuing interest in experimental techniques, the influence of philosophy and literary theory; and a creative interchange with continental, American and Latin-American literatures. The second tendency is a reaction against aesthetic and philosophical radicalism in favor of the reassertion of more traditional modes: this tendency has an English and anti-cosmopolitan streak. The reassertion of traditional modes was especially evident in the works of poets like Donald Davie, John Wain and Philip Larkin. Poetry in the twentieth century emerged as an Imagist movement, in a terse and telling response to the ornate and floral poetry of the Victorian era. The emphasis was on the use of free verse as also the delineation of the text from the ‘obvious’ and ‘trouble-free’ zone to textual imagery and metaphoric construct. The two World Wars during these times led to a further upheaval in poetic expression and brought with them disillusionment and despair. Poets like Stevie Smith and Sylvia Plath discovered a common ground in their poetry that depicted subordination, possession and despondency for lack of an emotional anchor in their social existence. As Plath confesses to Smith, ” The sense of the poet or person surrendering to some other force suggests a Romantic tradition of poetic inspiration; however, this tradition, with its exulting of the masculine subject, could also work to re-inscribe feminine subordination: 'I married a real poet, and my life is redeemed: to love, serve and create’.”(Corcoran 2007: Linda Anderson 12 ) The desperate urges to liberate the soul and attain freedom are recurring themes in the works of both the poets. The prosaic expressions of “the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks ---Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky” in Blackberrying by Plath and “It always has to be somebody else of course; Will my soul be required of me tonight perhaps?” in Scorpion by Smith, paint a picture of thistled souls seeking redemption. There is no dearth of nature standing in for the theme of loneliness and a hopeless state of mind. “To waft over grass till it comes to the blue sea, I am very fond of grass, I always have been, but there must Be no cow, person or house to be seen.” -Scorpion “A last hook brings me To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space” -Blackberrying If we were to compare these works of poesy to those of Shakespeare and Milton, we notice the absence of alliteration and assonance, which were considering the essential ingredients of memorable work. However, the appearance of hard-hitting consonants magnified by the lack of rhyme in the poetry of the 20th century, only adds to the distress of hard-hitting times; a true reflection therefore, and no less English as Englishness allows. The recurrent use of the word ‘hook in Blackberrying, generates a feeling of contraption and pain and is symbolically inclined to depict the strained relationships between men and women of these times.: “One more hook, and the berries and bushes end”, followed by phrases like “slapping its phantom laundry at me” and “A last hook brings me to the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock”. In Scorpion, the dark emptiness and morbid reality in the poet’s mind is described by words like ‘night’, ‘scorpion’ and ‘Out-Patients’ Department’. The disturbing element wafting through the poem, finds peace and calm in the ‘sea’ and the ‘grass’, even if in loneliness. The use of nature imagery to depict a wide range of emotions and thought-processes is an eternal style in English poetry. It always was and will be, on account of the expanse of the English countryside that first inspired poets like Chaucer to bring poetry to its walk its infant steps. It remains a debatable issue whether poetry, in contradiction to other forms of fiction, is concerned with evaluation and whether this difference precipitates into the basic ideology of English found in its literature and criticism. However, a literary consensus remains that “any verbal behavior is goal-directed, but the aims are different and the conformity of the means used to the effect aimed at is a problem that evermore preoccupies inquirers into diverse kinds of verbal communication” (Lodge 2004: p32). The annals of time stand a verbose testimony to the meanderings of the language of the elitist upper class and its colonial Englishness. References Corcoran, Neil, 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry: Linda Anderson. 12 Gender, feminism, poetry: Stevie Smith, Sylvia Plath, Jo Shapcott . Cambridge University Press. Guerin, Wilfred L. , Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman and John R. Willingham ,2004. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Lodge, David and Nigel Wood 2004. Modern Criticism and Theory. 2nd Edition. Singapore: Pearson Education. Singh, Meera Amol, 2002-03. The Wonderful World of English Literature. Delhi: Vishal Publishers. Read More