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At the first scene of Tony Kushner’s drama Angels in America (1993), Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz's eulogy for Sarah Ironson exposes the play's crucial themes and motifs. The Rabbi, a member of the “Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews” (Millennium, 9), commemorates Sarah’s life and in particular her great voyage to America. However, he continues to express pessimism about the present world by saying, “You can never make that crossing that she made, for such great voyages in this world do not any more exist” (Millennium, 10). However, due to the Rabbi’s age and his clear bias against today’s life in “the melting pot where nothing melted” (Millennium, 10), his speech is juxaposed with one of the play’s re-definition of identity. The Rabbi may be correct in stating that there are no longer physical voyages of mass migration in the world; however, when concerning metaphysical voyages, the play’s primary characters present the antithesis to Rabbi Chemelwitz’s theory. Today’s life journeys no longer pertain to physical expansion, but rather mental expansion, which lead us into discovering our personal identities while at the same time resisting social expectations and standards. Harper, Louis, and Joe best exemplify this inward expansion of identity despite overwhelming social pressures.

Harper Pitt travels frequently throughout the play in order to find her true identity and escape her marriage. Subsequently, she cathartically breaks free from Joe in order to pursue her individuality. Upon meeting Harper for the first time, the audience is aware of her strange disposition and fear of solitude. In her first scene, Mr. Lies, her imaginary travel agent, appears to directly reflect her subconscious need to voyage far away from her husband and her current lifestyle. Furthermore, Harper goes on various voyages with the help of her Valium addiction. She travels to Antarctica, and even into Prior’s dream on her trips, which further stresses Harper’s desire to get away from her current lifestyle. The play also portrays her dependence on Valium as more than just an addiction, but also as a desperate method of escape. When Harper finally breaks free from her marriage with Joe, she has reached the turning point in her voyage. She decides to give her entire stash of Valium to Joe because she no longer needs to escape through drugs, and instead will escape on her own, without the help of the pills or Mr. Lies. Harper is next seen on an airborne jumbo jet, which effectively ties Harper’s metaphysical life voyage with a physical one.

Louis Ironson’s voyage of identity is both dynamic and contradictive, which results in a journey that is successful in some areas, but still incomplete at the play’s close. While he thinks his inward journey is complete and he has come to terms with the world, he progresses from selfishness to a level of extreme remorse. This supplies his character with contradicting qualities. In Perestroika, Louis criticizes Joe for hiding his sexuality; however, in Millennium, Prior reveals to us that Louis has an overtly “butch” facade at family events in attempt to hide his own sexuality. Louis is an extreme liberal who is somehow attracted to a sexually confused republican. Furthermore, while he was raised as Jewish, he considers himself an agnostic and can’t seem to find a religion that suits him. These contradicting character traits augment the confusion of Louis’s voyage. Louis begins the play in fear of Prior’s disease, showing his weakness and selfishness; however, as the plot progresses, Louis finds himself missing Prior and his guilt growing. Louis finally does realize his mistakes, and attempts to apologize despite Prior’s appropriate harassment, and Louis goes as far as to cover himself in bruises and cuts to match the physical pain that Prior has been feeling. While Louis has made strides in improving himself, he was unable to complete his journey in the course of the play. Louis’s voyage successfully resulted in his self-improvement, but at the conclusion of the play, Louis is still arguing politics and religion with Belize, which reflects the ongoing search for his true identity.

Joe Pitt’s identity crisis is perhaps the most interesting and clearly represented voyage in the play, as he progresses from trying to change his identity to ultimately accepting it. Similar to Louis, Joe is a character full of contradictions regarding his lifestyle. Being raised Mormon in Salt Lake City, Utah, it is apparent that Joe’s homosexuality is not an appropriate practice within his cultural context. When Joe comes out to his mother over the phone, she rebukes him by categorizing his identity as “a sin” and she claims she “thought [she] raised [him] better than that” (Millennium, 16). Not only does Joe try to hide his homosexuality from his mother, he tries to deny it by marrying Harper. Furthermore, he is employed through a law firm that denies rights to homosexuals. Upon meeting Louis, Joe becomes infatuated, and they even share a short relationship together despite his marriage to Harper. Joe shares an immensely important moment with Louis on the beach in which they are discussing Joe’s Mormon faith. Louis notes the temple garment that Joe is wearing and Joe refers to it as “Protection” and “A second skin” (Perestroika, 69). In a rush of utter ecstasy, Joe removes the garment saying “No past now. I could give up anything” (Perestroika, 73). This portrays Joe’s sincerity in his voyage, and his willingness to commit to becoming a new person. However, at the play’s conclusion, Joe is unable to reap the benefits of his identity reformation despite his attempts to shed his “skin”. He is ultimately left with two unsuccessful relationships, both homosexual and heterosexual.

While the Rabbi argues there are no more great voyages in our generation, he excludes the growing social dissatisfaction toward personal orientations, and inward struggles in the approach of the new millennium. Overcoming societal pressures in order to reach a true personal identity is the true voyage of our time. Joe’s voyage is unsuccessful at the close of the play because Joe knew he needed change, but he did not know what to change. Whereas Harper knew exactly what she wanted, and consequently she achieved it. The concept of change is a powerful theme in the play; however, without knowledge of what lies ahead change is a futile attempt.

Percival Everett writes Erasure with an incredibly avant-garde structure for a fiction novel. The primary narrative is actually a frame story in which a plethora of writings stemming from a myriad of genres are skillfully embedded. The work features a brooding, African-American protagonist named Thelonius Ellison, nicknamed Monk, and serves as his adult diary or journal of sorts. The main entries advance a plot while also providing insight into how Monk came to be the man he is at present, but the journal is riddled with asides and short entries of creative writing ideas (presumably for use in later, yet unwritten stories or just for fun) and pithy observations. The journal suggests that Monk has confected an identity in life that is not affected by race, but the plot brings him to a common but rarely depicted conflict of Man vs. Race that forces him to wrestle with his authorial identity; this conflict evinces the powerful, social forces that White society inherently impose upon him and how those forces impinge upon the ability for Blacks to self-identify, magnifying the conflict through the lens of a profession.

Monk is a literary professor and linguist in an upper-class, Black family of doctors. His journal opens with a melancholy explanation of itself that terms it “unfortunate” that he lacks the will to commit suicide if even only so that he could ensure left behind no unfinished works for people to find and read after his death. Monk says early in the novel that “The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it” (Everett 2). He furthers the point to say that he does not even believe in race, and he expounds with the clarification that he believes there are those who would treat him unfairly because they believe in race; essentially, he alludes to the perspective that race is merely a social construct that does not necessarily have to be perceived but is and, therefore, causes people to perceive and treat each other a certain way.

Monk transitions to discussing his career as an author thus far, and his entries delineate events that exemplify for the reader how race is an insurmountable obstacle that refuses to let him ignore it both in his social and professional life. For example, he joined the then defunct Black Panther Party in college for no other reason than to attempt embracing his Blackness, presumably prior to his likely conscious decision to no longer acknowledge race. As an author, he publishes academic novels such as the reimaginings of Euripides’s plays or parodies of French, poststructuralist works. He excerpts a review of one such work in his journal to exemplify the kind of reception his works get, and in essence, it calls his work, characters, language, and subtle plot revision laudable, “but one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus’ The Persians has to do with the African American experience.”

One of the elegant nuances of Everett’s writings is shown in how Monk’s journal entries convey only the shallowest and most ephemeral discontentment for how racial bias affects him while enough substance is still provided for the reader to glean a greater, underlying resentment that perhaps even Monk has yet to realize in himself during the early portions of the novel. His angst over such things seems buried only to come to a head as a result of events that occur in the middle chapters. A Black, female author named Juanita Mae Jenkins publishes a work called We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, and the novel is praised by critics as an intensely realistic portrayal of the Black experience. Monk deplores the praise Jenkins’s novel receives, but even more so, he hates how his editor reacts, attempting to nudge him in the same direction to drive his sales. Of course, this is not the first time, but then, Marilyn, an author he somewhat respects as a writer and as a woman whom he knows he does not love, finally start to make love again after she breaks up with her boyfriend, and Monk stops when he sees Jenkins’ book on the nightstand.

Monk’s reaction to We’s Lives in Da Ghetto and, in particular, the positive reception it gets from White America, is such that he is forced to acknowledge race due to his anger at what it says about the real African-American experience. Irrefutably, he is a Black man, yet he is repeatedly denied the identity he has chosen for himself because White America does not accept his identity as authentic Blackness. It is salient to note that this so thoroughly angers him that it impedes his ability to perform sexually even after looking forward to sex with Marilyn. The psychological impact manifests psychosomatically with what could be argued to be erectile dysfunction to one extent or another all because the man he has chosen to be is one that society tells him is inapplicable. He deems Jenkins’s work to be one that merely exploits Blackness to produce a commodity for the market as opposed to legitimate art.

The more important facet of Monk’s reaction to Jenkins’s work comes from the next book Monk writes—a story within a story in that the entire work is written within Erasure. Monk pens a novel called, My Pafology, which he later renames even more rudimentarily, Fuck. The book amounts to little more than an oversimplification of Richard Wright’s Native Son. He publishes it under the pseudonym, Stagg R. Leigh, drawing on the name of the African-American folklore from the nineteenth century of a Black man named Stagger Lee who killed a White man on Christmas over a theft that he felt disrespected him as a man. Because Stagger Lee and Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Native Son, are both depictions of Black men who hold shallow definitions of manhood and both murder White people, Monk uses them to create his own shallow, Black archetype.

Monk claims in his journal to not want success from this novel but, rather, proof that the world knows better—that White America is simply exploiting an image of Blackness that is not so. In his attempt to do so, he renders Wright’s work far less meaningful, stripping it of its nuances to satirize Whites’ fixation on false representations of Blackness. His agent, Yul, is more than reluctant to publish Fuck when Monk first discusses it with him because he feels that even the publishing houses that produce the works that have offended Monk will not publish Fuck because they are offended by what it says about Jenkins’s work and all the others.

Ultimately, the false image of Blackness is superimposed upon Monk’s identity by way of Stagg R. Leigh. Yul informs him that Random House has agreed to publish Fuck. This comes after Monk has, within the same chapter, railed against the idea of sending the book out with any qualifiers explaining that it is a parody because the greatest offense the industry could inflict upon him is not realizing this without such a qualifier. As they appear to not realize that it is, indeed, not to be taken seriously, Monk is incredibly upset; however, he is trapped between a rock and a hard place. His sister, who took care of his mother heretofore, is now dead and unable to do so; consequently, Monk has uprooted his life to take care of his mother, which has proven obscenely expensive and taxing. His older brother contributes nothing. In other words, circumstances force Monk to embrace the identity that he loathes.

Monk cannot live with the work he has created, or more to the point, he cannot live with as the person he has been forced to become. It is as though deterministic forces have driven Monk to this point of pointlessness even against his struggles in the opposite direction. “I had to defeat myself to save myself,” he writes in his journal in the only entry to explicitly address identity, “my own identity. I had to toss a spear through the mouth of my own creation, silence him forever” (Everett 259). The nuanced racism of postbellum America is often less understood than the more direct manifestations of antebellum America. Monk commits suicide because the need to self-identify is as critical to human survival as water, oxygen, and human interaction. All human interaction loses meaning when one does not feel it is the self interacting with the other, so the psychological ramifications of cultural colonization are vitally dire.

Abstract

The present study deals with Identity crisis of women in where shall we go this summer? by Anita Desai. Her works significantly highlight the complexities of human relationships especially in women and also exhibit different facets of feminine psyche. It also presents a variety of characters facing identity crisis in different situations and attempts to realize the difference between illusion and reality. The study focuses primarily on the emotional exploration of the inner mind of Indian women and the mystic tensions of women seeking their identity in male dominated society. It also gives a biographical sketch of the eminent Indian writer Anita Desai. The novel is about time as a liquidator, as a preserver and about what the slavery of time does of people. It describes Nanda Kaul’s motherly feelings of humiliation and desolation due to life time of alienation. the novel Where Shall We Go This Summer? It describes the tension between a sensitive wife Sita and the rational Raman. The protagonist is a nervous, sensitive, middle-aged woman who finds herself alienated. Her sense of alienation is because of her own emotional imbalance.

Introduction

Anita Mazumdar Desai was born on June 24, 1937 in Mussorie, a hill station north of Delhi, as the daughter of a D.N. Mazumdar, a Bengali businessman, and her mother Toni Nine, of German origin. She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English at school and in the city streets. She has said that she grew up surrounded by western literature and music, not realizing until she was older that this was an anomaly to her world where she also learned the Eastern culture and customs. She once wrote: ‘I see India through my mother’s eyes, as an outsider, but my feelings for India are my father’s of someone born there’.

She had a composite mind inheriting a multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultural tradition, enjoying familiarity with Christian, Muslim and Hindu cultures and German, Bengali, and English language. Desai prefers to concentrate more on the character or scene rather than going round about it. So, she prefers the private world of character rather than the public.

Desai like many of her European counterparts (Woolf, Cloude Simon, Michael, Buttor, and Alain Robbie Grilled) is much concerned in elaborating a new commanding posture for the author. Desai do not consider truthful in a ‘preconceived plot’. This is because, she thinks, plot is just an idea occupying one’s subconscious mind. She prefers the pattern and rhythm to a plot and her characters are the ‘embodiment of unexplained mystery’. Desai’s novels deal mostly with women characters and based on the problem of the position of women in their family. Women in Desai’s works are confined within the cyclic parameters of home-womb tomb.

In her fourth novel, Where shall We Go this Summer? Anita Desai presents an intense identity crisis of the central character Sita, a sensitive woman in her early forties. She is represented by her childhood on Manori Island twenty years ago. The past becomes a psychic residue in her ‘personal unconsciousness’, the backdrop of her life, and her obsessive preoccupation which gives her the strength to leave her home, husband, two children and the urbanized life of Bombay for Manori island, where she thinks she would be able to live under a magic spell:

She saw that island illusion as a refuge, a protection. It would hold her baby safely unborn, by magic. Then there would be the sea- it would wash the frenzy out of her, drown it. Perhaps the tides would lull the children, too, into smoother, softer beings. The grove of trees would shade them and protect them. (WSWGTS 91)

This vision is the motivating force that urges Sita’s leaving her home, much to the dismay of her husband Raman, who sees the absurdity of the plan- a pregnant woman leaving for an unreal place as if she were bewitched:

She had escaped from duties and responsibilities, from order and routine, from life and the city, to the unlivable island. She had refused to give birth to a child in a world not fit to receive the child. She had the imagination to offer it an alternative - a life unlived, a life bewitched. (WSWGTS 128)

Sita is a rebellious, non-conformist woman, disgusted by and trying to liberate herself from the patriarchal norms. As a new woman she too is seething in discontentment with her being enclosed within the ‘four walls’ of her house with the expected behavior of an ideal ‘mother’ and ‘wife’. In protest she curves a niche of her own, escapes to her desired island of ‘Manori’ in search of an ‘independent female’ status separated from the ‘male’ liberated from patriarchal bondage, wanting to be a woman as an independent existential being. She is an adaptive in the house of her husband but that is not to say that she is financially challenged of mal treated. But the feminist woman in her makes her dismissive of her status. When she was heavily pregnant with her fifth child, she was unhappy, apprehensive at the thought of losing its innocence in this world where nothing except ‘food, sex and money matters’.

Sita’s problem seems to be due to the mal-adjustment with her husband; the home life and the surrounding atmosphere nauseating her. She is fed up with her husband, a businessman, whose complete lack of feeling brings her to the verge of insanity. A deep change takes place in Sita, a proud mother of four children:

Four children with pride, with pleasure- sensual, emotional, Freudian, every kind of pleasure- with all the placid serenity that supposedly goes with pregnancy and parturition. Her husband was puzzled, therefore, when the fifth time she told him she was pregnant, she did so with a quite paranoiac show of rage, fear, and revolt. He started at her with a distaste that told her it did not become her- a woman now in her forties, greying, aging, to behave with such a total lack of control. Control was an accomplishment that had slipped out of her hold. (WSWGTS 29)

Tragically, her dream of getting love and affection from her husband ends in a nightmare. The point at issue is that her husband ignores her instincts. She likes him to treat her in a gentle and tender way which he cannot do. As a result, in the long run the husband-wife relationship is dragged into difficulties that come out in the form of identity crisis, for both Raman and Sita stand for binary oppositions. Raman is a creature of society, more accommodative, apathetic whereas Sita is hyper-sensitive, an introverted personality and a pessimist. She not only hates Raman for his lack of feeling but also derides the ‘subhuman placidity, calmness and sluggishness’ and the routine manner of her husband’s family. As a reaction against these, she speaks with rage and anguish and with ‘sudden rushes of emotion’.

In order to seek a means of escape, she takes to smoking, abuses her children for trifles, and flies into a rage when the servants talk in the kitchen because she thinks they are quarrelling. Finally, she like Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, chooses three things- exile, silence and cunning. All this is the ultimate rejection of the values that her husband represents. She has resolved to go to Manori Island as a kind of self-exile in her search for identity. In silence and in her revival of the past, she is away from home, and civilization, thus reminding one of Billy Biswas in Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. She has her vision to fulfill on the island as one sees it in the early part of the novel:

She had come here in order not to give birth. An explanation she had repeated to herself and her husband so often that, instead of acquiring lucidity-‘Ah! Oh, now I understand!’-it seemed steadily more strange, mistaken. Yet she had arrived, she was on the island, in order to achieve the miracle of not giving birth. Wasn’t this Manori, the island of miracles? Her father had made it an island of magic once, worked miracles of a kind. His legend was still here in this house-in the green tinge of the night shadows, the sudden slam of a wooden shutter, the crepitation of rain on the roof-and he might work another miracle, posthumously. She had come on a pilgrimage, to beg for the miracle of keeping her baby unborn. (WSWGTS 28)

Sita’s journey to the island is a quest for integration of the self. Actually, the island is a heaven to Sita, one which wonderfully holds the master key to her final liberation from the existential anxiety, hopelessness and suffering. She believes that her problems will be magically solved by the island, she will be relieve from her mental anxiety and will be calm and comfortable in the island. The psychological cosmos of Sita’s life mingles with her father’s fantasy. Before her marriage, she led a glorious life style in an island. She remains lovely company of her sister Rekha, Jeeven and her mystic father who had always been surrounded by his disciples. Sita comes to the island with foolish hopes. She already has four children. At the age of forty, she conceives the fifth one. But, she would not like to deliver her child in the destructive land. So, she comes to Manori in order to not give birth to the fifth one.

Her escaping to ‘Manori’ is identical to Maya’s garden. Maya’s hankering for her father’s garden. Sita’s returns to the island are important significant gestures, not hysteric reactions of mad women but attempts to let out their pent up frustration, to restore their selves. With this fear firmly seated in her mind, she turns towards discovering an escape route in the island, to confer in her a kind of solace.

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The clash of identities between Sita and Raman takes an unhappy dimension. It has other interesting points of focus. At the root of the husband- wife conflict, there is the theme of tradition versus modernism. By temperament and upbringing, Sita’s root is in tradition represented by her father and Manori island. Her sudden encounter with Bombay follows with a hasty marriage to Raman. It threatens her very root of existence for Raman and Bombay stands for modernism. Where Shall We Go This Summer? is a faithful record of the post-war state of reality, characterized by a sense of muddle, confusion, meaninglessness, pervasive horror and fear. The only thing that represents tradition is Sita’s memory of the past; and her conviction that the past still continues to exist in its full form is countered by the debris of the past itself. The present, however, is not religious enough to retain the glory of the past, with her husband and others in the family.

Dystopian governments often work hard to erase identity through specific social constructs; they work to force the people they govern into a “cookie-cutter” mold. In literature, this molding is often fought by a person within the society, and that fight leads at least one person to become a more extreme individual as V in V for Vendetta, Moira in The Handmaid’s Tale, and I-330 in WE all did. In older dystopian novels, the narrator is often not that individual but someone close to the person fighting the mold. In novels that have an audience more centered on young adults and teens, the main character becomes the character fighting against the government-restricted identity. Finding the fight for individualism and freedom in identity is a theme held in common within The Handmaid’s Tale, WE, and V for Vendetta.

Governmental control of women’s rights and identities in The Handmaid’s Tale, along with Moira’s extreme defiance of this control, gives the reader the idea that identity is a key concept within the dystopia that Moira calls home. The Republic of Gilead’s government is continuously trying to take the women’s “old” identities away and give them “new” identities. By changing their names, giving them jobs or titles, assigning them colors that correlate to these jobs, and taking away their rights, the Republic of Gilead is brainwashing and forcing these women into a frame of identity that are established and controlled. In her life before Gilead, the main character’s name was June, but while in The Republic of Gilead, she is Offred. With this name, the government has essentially named her as the property of Fred (the Commander). The Republic of Gilead started to remove women’s rights after the suspension of the Constitution. Once they gained control, women lost the right to have money, to hold a job, and eventually they lost the right to read or write. Through losing these rights, women also lost a sense of character because they could no longer identify themselves through their success, intelligence, and financial security. Though there were several subtle declarations that the government made, the forced change of identity did not become apparent until the jobs or titles and the colors of these titles were put in place. Giving the women titles such as Handmaid, Martha, Wife, and Econowife forces them into the idea that these are their identities; the colors red, green, blue, and multi-colored are a part of that new identity. Women become Handmaids when they are still fertile. Once their fertility ceases, they become Unwomen and live in the “colonies.” The Marthas are women who cook and clean in the homes and the Wives are the women who seem to have been in some sort of power or married to a man of power before the Republic of Gilead took over. The Econowives are often looked down upon, almost as second class women as they “are not divided into functions. They have to do everything; if they can” (Atwood, page 24). These titles and roles are basically the only identification for these women in the Republic of Gilead. The shaping of identity in the Republic of Gilead causes many women to be uncomfortable, but no one seems more angry than Moira, Offred’s friend. Moira is the citizen in Gilead society who cannot, and will not, fit the government’s mold of identity.

The Republic of Gilead adheres to an extremist form of fundamental Christianity, in which homosexuality is a sin. Moira is not the “ideal” women from the very beginning, since Moira is a lesbian. Because she is still fertile and can have children, she is forced to be a Handmaid because being a lesbian in this society is impossible. Moira is taken to the Red Center where the “Aunts” continually try to brainwash all of the fertile women into feeling that these roles and this society is the best. By brainwashing these women, the government was able to take control of their identities and shape them because “thoughts mold identities more than looks…” (Eisiminger 4). The Aunts would show pornographic videos so the Handmaids could see “what they [men] thought of women, then” along with Unwoman protest documentaries in which the women were “wasting their time like that, when they should have been doing something useful” (Atwood 118). After arriving at the Red Center, Moira tries to escape. The first time she is unsuccessful and is subsequently tortured. The second time, Moira succeeded by taking apart a toilet, capturing and threatening an Aunt, stealing her uniform, and simply walking out of the Red Center like she knew what she was doing. This escape, and the unknown possibility of success outside of the Red Center, leaves hope for Offred to have courage, and to remember her life before. Moira’s ability to retain some of her identity from before, despite her becoming a prostitute at Jezebel’s, tells the reader that some identity is better than none.

In the dystopian novel We, Yevgeny Zamyatin made the government mostly successful in removing individual identity, except in one cipher, Cipher I-330. Within Cipher D-503’s diary, the reader begins to see the unfolding of a society in which the government has removed all ideas of individuality and identity. In this society of the One State, D-503 explains perfectly what the One States goals are as he talks with a new cipher, I-330. D-503 seems to believe entirely in the idea and goal of the One State, that “...No one is ever ‘one’, but always ‘one of’. We are so identical…” (WE, page 8). By removing all individual identity and giving them the same mechanical identity as the government, the One State makes ciphers believe that the government’s mechanization of identity is theirs and they do not have their own. The One State and the Benefactor instigate the Table of Hours to prevent growth of the imagination, which may develop and foster the mechanical identity. Preventing the progress of imagination within the society becomes a key to stunting the growth of identity. Yang Jianfang finds that, “…the more central an identity is to an individual, the more likely this identity is to impact cognitions, feelings, and actions…” (Jianfang 167). These feelings, cognitions, and actions all relate to imagination, since imagination is found to sometimes create these feelings and cognitions which influence actions. Within the Table of Hours there are two personal hours, leaving everything else in day scheduled. D-503 hopes for the removal of these Personal Hours. He “believe[s] that sooner or later, one day, we’ll find a place in the general formula for these hours too, one day all of the 86,400 seconds will be accounted for in the Table of Hours.”(We page 13). By removing these two hours, the government would remove all freedom. Within these Personal Hours, a cipher is allowed to draw, write, meet with another cipher, walk, or run where they please. Ciphers are also allowed to lower the blinds in their rooms in order to have sex with another during these two Personal Hours; these are the only times the blinds can be lowered, and both ciphers must have a permission from the One State. If a cipher is doing anything other than having sex, the blinds may not be lowered.

This obvious lack of privacy encourages a sense of unity but a lack of identity. These ciphers have nothing that is their own, nothing that they can hide from other ciphers as something personal. By giving ciphers a name of combined letters and numbers, the government has also found another way to succeed in removing individual identity. Skip Eisiminger states that “… all names are intrinsic parts of their bearers’ identity and deserve respect” (Eisminger 2). Indeed, the government’s lack of respect towards the ciphers' names and identities exemplifies the negative sentiments of the government regarding the idea of individual identity. D-503 identifies more as a machine than as a human because he is given the name of a machine. The sense of identity is still engrained into the subconscious of these ciphers as D-503 shows even as he finds identity and individualism to be unsettling. Many of the female ciphers that D-503 comes into contact with are described by D-503 using their names. D-503 describes O-90 as having soft edges, a roundness, and a half moon as a mouth. These adjectives are correlated to her name in which the letter “O” is circular and round. D-503 also gives I-330 characteristics that are sharp, angled, and harsh as the letter “I” in her name. As little as these identifying characteristics are, they show that even a cipher as brainwashed as D-503 still has a sense of identity within his subconscious. These successes in removing identity by the One State are thwarted by cipher I-330 in various ways. Many of her choices are self-harming and seem very small, but her use of D-503 shows that her goal is to get rid of the One State, thereby restoring the individual sense of identity. D-503 is always told to meet I-330 at the Ancient House, often during times when he is supposed to be somewhere else according to the Table of Hours. During his time there, D-503 sees I-330 put on the clothes of the Ancients and drink and smoke as the Ancients did. In making her own choices, I-330 identifies herself as a rebel. Her goal to use D-503 to break down the One State is a fight that, though unsuccessful, keeps I-330 going and makes her an individual with an identity and an imagination.

Within V for Vendetta, the government’s control over identity is far less strict than within We, but it still amounts to control over individualism and identity. The government control through concentration camps and the regulations and controls outside of the concentration camp restricts the amount of individuality and identity that the futuristic British are allowed. The majority of the men and women taken to these concentration camps are homosexuals and radicals that opposed the government. The threat of the concentration camps cause many people to be the government’s ideal citizens. To help keep people within this “ideal” mold of distinctiveness, the government began instituting controls through the use of the eye, the ear, the mouth, and curfews. By enforcing curfews, the government could control the whereabouts and activities of the population. Moreover, the government used the news to help keep the knowledge to the citizens limited. The “mouth” of the government, or television, was used to give only the knowledge that they felt the citizens needed to hear. By changing the bombing of the houses of Parliament into a “scheduled demolition undertaken at night to avoid traffic congestion…[and the fireworks] a freak effect of the blast” (Moore and Lloyd 17) the government could keep tabs and compress any ideas of revolution or revolt. Using the mouth and television to give the citizens approved information, the government can alter identities to be more of the mold that they are gearing towards. The “ear” of the government placed microphones in homes of citizens and bugged telephones. Based on what was said, the government could come in and “black bag,” or kidnap, the citizen.

By reducing the expression of self-identification and cultural differences, the government made the idea of autonomy less and less prominent within this society. Lack of freedom of speech keeps citizens from identifying themselves through agreeing or disagreeing with topics and discussions. Answering these extreme methods with extreme measures of his own, V stages his fight for freedom to expresses identity as an extreme, almost terroristic fight. V spent time in one of the concentration camps. His entire identity -- name, demeanor, goals, characteristics -- are based on that concentration camp and the room he was forced to stay in. His room number, five, was written in Roman Numerals as a V, creating an entire new persona. After destroying the camp, he set out to find those who made him become this. V also conveys his harsh experience to Evey in a simulation, to break her and create a new person. He claims that he is setting her free from “happiness…the most insidious prison of all” (Moore and Lloyd 168) but in reality, she is gaining a new identity which becomes clear when she becomes V’s successor by the same name. Through his fight, V shows how much the government has control over identities using these regulations. He fights to end this control and give the people their own chances at freedom, individuality, and their own chosen identity.

The amount of effort that dystopian governments put into forcing people to become something they are not and to have an identity that is not theirs is somehow always thwarted in a typical novel’s pages. Among Moira in The Handmaid’s Tale, I-330 in We, and V in V for Vendetta, there will always be a character to prove that having one’s own identity is a better and brighter choice. To these protagonists, fighting the government for the freedom to express individualism is worth the battle, beatings, torture, and even death.

Works Cited

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Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Print. Eisiminger, Skip. "With Respect To The Name: Names And Identity." Vocabula Review 15.10 (2013): 1-6. Literary Reference Center. Web. 7 Dec. 2014 Jianfeng, Yang. “Linking Proactive Personality to Moral Imagination: Moral Identity as a Moderator”. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal 41.1 (2013):165- 175. SPORTDiscuss with Full Text. Web. 4 Dec. 2014. Moore, Alan, David Lloyd, Steve Whitaker, Siobhan Dodds, Jeannie O'Connor, Steve Craddock, Elitta Fell, and Tony Weare. V for Vendetta. New York: Vertigo/DC Comics, 2005. Print. Zamyatin, Yevgeny, and Natasha Randall. We. New York: Modern Library, 2006. Print.

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. The Sociological Perspective
3. Social Inequality
4. Social Institutions, Marriage and the Family, Education and Religion
5. Conclusions

Introduction

The problem of identity imagination is one of the most important in modern sociology. It is impossible to analyze social processes, functioning and evolution of social systems without referring to the study of the nature of the individual as a subject of social behavior and social relations without studying the needs, interests, spiritual world of a person, not analyzing complex and diversified ties with the social micro and macro environment. Personality is studied by different sciences.

Philosophy interested in the personality as the subject of cognition and creativity. Psychology analyzes personality as a stable integrity of mental processes and properties. A sociologist examines the personality as element of social life, reveals the mechanism of its formation is influenced by social factors, the mechanism of feedback to the social world, its changes and development of public relations.

The Sociological Perspective

I believe that the path of becoming me a socialized individual or person has started from the moment of my birth. The personality is a long process of initiation of the individual to the social that is his sociological. This is the broadest concept, which characterizes the formation of personality. Socialization is defined as the process of assimilation by the individual throughout life, social norms, and cultural values of the society to which he/she belongs. Socialization covers all social processes, through which the individual learns certain knowledge, norms, and values allowing functioning as an equal member of society. A leading and guiding principle of socialization is purposeful action (training, education). However, socialization includes also natural, spontaneous processes affecting the formation of personality.

The socialization of my personality includes the language acquisition of my social community, appropriate ways of thinking characteristic to a given culture, the forms of rationality and sensibility, the adoption of norms, values, traditions, customs, patterns, techniques, and activities. The individuals socialize by joining to different social activities, developing their characteristic social roles. In this regard, the socialization of the individual can be considered as the ascent from the individual to the social. However, socialization provides individualization, because it is required for the ascent to the individual. A human masters the world of culture selectively, through the perspective of the own interests and worldview. Learning culture, people form their abilities, needs, and values. Thus, there is no socialization without individualization (Jovchelovitch 2015).

The cultural environment, in which we are born and reach maturity, affects our behavior to such extent that it may seem we are deprived of any right of personality or free choice. It may seem that we are just put in the pre-set forms which society has prepared for us. The fact that from birth to death we are involved in fellowship with others undoubtedly shapes our identity, the values that we share, and our behavior. Socialization also contributes to the formation of our individuality and freedom. In the process of socialization each of us develops a sense of identity and the ability to think and to act independently.

Identification is the processes related to the field of consciousness, of self-discovery: identification with others, view other people as a continuation of self, transfer self in the other. This idea can be easily illustrated on the example of language learning. In childhood none of us has invented a language. However, we are all constrained by the rules of linguistic use. At the same time, understanding language is one of the main factors that make possible our self-awareness and creativity. Without language we would not be creatures are aware of themselves, and would live mainly in the here-and-now.

Language proficiency is necessary for symbolic enrichment of human life, to realize our own individual characteristics and practical skills to adapt to the environment. My parents, especially my mother and grandmother, understood this and actively attracted me to the language and cultural values. In early childhood my mother used to sing me the lullabies, grandmother read interesting tales and told fascinating stories. Thus, the process of my socialization took place with the growing up a sense of beauty and sense of language inside of me.

Social Inequality

Social inequality for many means economical-financial capabilities. To break this simple approach, here I will describe social differences to what extent people allow themselves to express their personalities. Personality for its public nature is active, particularly on the interests. However, regarding the requirements of others, dealing with activity is much more complicated.

Under the influence of society, state, traditions, public opinion, authority of elders, social group or its leader, under direct or indirect pressure from other people a person may adjust the own activity and to direct it in the direction of the requirements of those entities or public institutions to adapt some of the interests to the ones of others, become flexible, pliant, and even submissive, that is to take a relatively passive interests of other stance (Plummer 2016).

This form of expression position of the individual, which is characterized by passivity, uncritical, compliance, and opportunism regarding the influence on one is called conformism – an active attitude of the individual. There are several varieties of conformity. Let’s allocate three of them. Conformism can express:

1. adjustable relation of personality to the demands of the other, of course, authoritative, influential personality (personal-authoritarian conformism);
2. the same requirements of large, medium or small social group to which one belongs (internally group conformism);
3. the same relation to the requirements of society, its institutions, the dominant social groups, government (public or social conformity).

The concept of conformism often matched with the concept of non-conformism – a passive position in life of the individual. As for my position in life, it was very active. It’s forming accounts for the years of my youth. At that time I was already quite developed person in mental and social terms. I read a lot of books mainly of psychological and philosophical nature, was fond of the classics, often debated with my mother on various topics.

In addition, adolescence is a period when there is a sense of uniqueness, of individuality, in a negative variant occurs the opposite – a diffuse “I”, role and personal uncertainty. Typical for this phase is also “playing a role” when a young man does not choose the roles completely, and like trying them on yourself.

Social Institutions, Marriage and the Family, Education and Religion

The first social institution which affects the socialization of any human being is the family. For me family was the outpost which hosted my focused and harmonious development. It laid the foundations on which were built the house of my personality. It gave me those standards and principles which I have implied to all the important steps in my life.

The family as an important factor of socialization is a complex social phenomenon. It is the oldest natural rising community of people bound by blood. However - this is a small contact group of people who interact, a particular form of interaction. Finally, it is a special social institution governing the reproduction of man with the help of a special system of roles, norms, and organizational forms.

In our society the marriage and therefore the family is associated with monogamy (culturally approved sexual relationship between one woman and one man). Many other cultures tolerate or encourage polygamy, in which an individual may be married with two or more partners at the same time. During the postwar period the models of family life has undergone great changes. A large proportion of women currently included in the scope of the paid workforce, the number of divorces is growing, and a significant proportion of the population lives either in single-parent families or families with a stepfather or stepmother.

Cohabitation (when two people live together in extramarital sexual communication) is becoming a widespread phenomenon in many countries. Marriage has ceased to be the basis of the economic activities and condition of regular sexual relations. It is obvious that various forms of social and sexual relations will exist in the future. Marriage and family remain sustainable well-established institutions, although they have to withstand large stresses and strains. The character of the family clan structure is determined in the end of the socio-historical conditions.

The inequality of women in society entails inequality in the family. On the other hand, the development of democracy, rights, and freedoms of women lead to promotion of gender equality in the family. Family power may be based on traditional views on the economic experience or moral authority. Methods of providing a family of power are multi-faceted.

One of these methods is upbringing – the training of people to ensure that they can perform the necessary, useful activity. Sometimes contemporary works of processes of training and upbringing differentiate and even contradict each other. Upbringing is seen as a negative process of indoctrination education. In fact, these are two closely related sides of a single process of identity formation. In this respect it is useful to refer to the long history of education. Upbringing has always been considered almost the main mission of education: in the era of Antiquity, and in the age of Enlightenment, and in Modern times.

To continue, a specific and yet very important form of education is self-education of personality. Here the subject and object of education is one and the same person. In this case, the person is consciously trying to develop a certain human, in particular moral, volitional and physical qualities. Self-education usually carried out in parallel with such processes as self-examination, introspection, and self-education. In one word – it is together with the process of self-identity.

When society plays the role of the subject of educational activities, then this form of education is called the public. Public education is an indispensable tool in self-preservation and development of humanity, its civilization, material and spiritual culture. Therefore, each society creates and improves its education system.

The upbringing system includes its purpose (Abbott & Wilson 2015). The most common, that is to say, the integrative purpose of the educational activities of the society is to transmit a social and spiritual experience to a new generation of people, to prepare the new generation to a productive labour and other social activities. In relation to personality, the goal is to have socially important traits. Such shaping is carried out by hereditary of assimilation by the person of past experiences, the following active and conscious education of certain public functions in diverse areas of production, culture, and communication. If education aims to foster positive, socially important personality traits, then it is humanistic, progressive oriented. Humanistic education seeks to shape such a person, which would be highly developed in a spiritual, cultural and physical relationship.

In addition to the general objectives of education, there are other, more narrow, specific goals, set by society in general, and by social groups and individuals in particular. All of these goals interact in one way or another. However, educational processes may shape in the personality both positive and negative qualities. It depends in particular on the content and direction of those and other educational processes, their interactions, the specific conditions under which the personality lives and acts, from the worldview, the nature of beliefs, critical or non-critical attitude toward what she/he is told, from the totality of the interests.

In my family to the upbringing was given a great, and I would even say, a professional value. My mother, as an educator, was well aware that formed in childhood traits most often remain dominant throughout life. So she combined all-round development of the child with the upbringing in me a sense of responsibility for the actions. Indeed, a sense of autonomy and personal self-worth or shame is developed in early childhood.

The growth of an independent child at this stage sets in the future such qualities as the sense of responsibility, respect, discipline and order. Although now, from the standpoint of already nearly formed personality, I realize that I, as the first child in the family, has had much more freedom than responsibility, and this contributed to the formation of selfishness. I understand this and my parents, so when I was five years old, I had a brother. I still remember that feeling of passion when I, still a child, first picked him up. Since that time in my life appeared a man whom I should care.

I have new responsibilities, I often heard, sometimes not very pleasant words “you're the older sibling”. This contributed to the suppression of the ego, and the formation of a sense of responsibility for the fate of the other. f course at first I was jealous, because I did not like that the attention that once belonged to only me, now divided into two, and more often it goes to a little brother. However, now I already performed a different social role – the role of older sibling, and I all the more realized.

When I was three, I was sent to kindergarten. It was a totally different, new, social environment, and I had to find ways to adapt it. Since I was a very introverted kid, it was for me quite a challenge. As well as here to the process of my education were added people quite foreign to me, the leaders, and it was quite difficult to understand that now I have to obey not only mum. So first I went to kindergarten with displeasure. Since that time, I can talk about the formation of my social imagination.

The sociality of man is its relationship with the social community. Human sociality can be explained only through the study of the social relations of the individual with a variety of groups (classes, professional, settlement, demographic). Finally, the society oversees the implementation of man assumed the role in strict compliance with the defined role norms because it is through the concept of social role becomes clear the mechanism of occurrence of the individual in social life, or the mechanisms of socialization.

Thus, education as a social institution develops under conditions of constant contradictions of social needs and the state of education, and social needs of social groups in relation to education. Hence is the inconsistency of the institution, the gap between the elements, discrepancy of level of development of individual features, and the inconsistency of their implementation. As for religion, I would not tell too much, just make a remark that it is the central in my life and Jesus Christ is my Savior and my life guider. This influenced my sociological nature greatly. Everyone I socialize with remains with no doubt what is the most important part what occupied my heart and shaped my identity mostly.

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Conclusions

Sociological imagination of a personality is comprised of quite many factors. Our status, a new social group - all contribute to the new changes in my consciousness, my further development as a person, imposes the new obligations and puts other, more complex, tasks. What are the ways of their solution depends only on us personally, from the necessary features formed in our character and features that are missing. After all, it is like the words of Protagoras: “Know thyself and thou shalt know the world”.

The Plague is an exploration of caricatures and how they respond in desperate situations. Albert Camus does this by putting multiple characters in the same situation, the controlled variable, but changing the philosophies each represent, the manipulated variable. This experiment judges the philosophical tenacity of each caricature through adversity. Specifically, Camus looks at the tenacity of existentialism versus religion. To cope with the plague, Dr. Rieux and Father Paneloux both create purposes for themselves based on their beliefs, abilities, and needs of the society; however, their contrasting ideologies ultimately determine which caricatures survives philosophically. In The Plague, Camus develops the idea that in desperate situations, individuals will create a purpose for themselves based on their philosophies: those with philosophies solely dependent on the individual, and separate from higher power survive philosophically; in contrast, individuals with philosophies dependent on higher power will have their beliefs broken down by adversity, and do not survive philosophically.

To philosophically survive the plague, the caricatures must develop a purpose for themselves based on their niches and beliefs. Both Father Paneloux, and Dr. Rieux do such. Paneloux, a well-respected Jesuit priest of Oran, provides sermons to give the plague a purpose for the townspeople: the plague is a test and punishment from God, and he will spare the faithful and kill the sinners. In the beginning, the sermons and the Week of Prayer attract many people because many of these individuals would be asking, “Why us?” or “Why is this happening?” during this adversity. Paneloux assigns the plague a function, and gives the public a how-to-guide for surviving the plague. By practicing Christian virtues and repenting sins, this gives some townsfolk hope the will survive the plague and purpose. Further, Paneloux engages and unites the townsfolk in activity to survive the monotony of a quarantined town with the Week of Prayer. In the beginning of the plague, Paneloux’s philosophical beliefs help him and the townsfolk handle the plague by providing purpose, hope and unity.

However, unity under Paneloux’s philosophy is only effective on the surface. Because many townsfolk are not religious, and participation in sermons was met with an attitude of, “Anyhow, it can do no harm” (89), the hope and purpose Paneloux provides only resonates with some and the unity lasts temporarily, drying when plague times worsen and the reality that the plague is here to stay settles in the town. At the height of the plague with extreme summer heat, high winds, and manmade fires in a desperate attempt to destroy the infection, the town “retained the attitude of sadness and suffering, but they had ceased to feel the sting” (175). By this time, the townsfolk retained a hopeless, “habit of despair” (175), submitting to the separation from loved ones, monotony of a quarantined town, fear of the plague, and daily deaths. By Paneloux’s last sermon, there is only a group of men in the church, and the crowds that the Week of Prayer attracted are gone. Paneloux’s philosophical purpose only assists the town temporarily and shallowly, until they experience the worst hardships, a direct reflection of how his philosophies only assist him until he experiences the worst hardships.

Rieux’s purpose contrasts Paneloux’s both in ideology and effectiveness. With the help of his friends, Rieux uses his medical abilities to aid the sick, and the group organize and create sanitary groups to deal with the plague practically, attempting to bring order by using a systematic approach to prevent the disease from spreading, aid the plague-stricken, and deal with the dead. In addition, this order Rieux and his friends impose is a fight against the plague’s disorder. Rieux’s niche and the purpose he creates for himself encourages others to fight back by participating in sanitary groups: “These groups enable [the] townsfolk to come to grips with the disease, and convinced them that, now that plague was amongst [them], it was up to them to fight back” (128). Further, the groups unites the townsfolk, by showing that because it is “some men’s duty” (128) to fight back, it is “the concern of all” (128). The systematic approach to the plague Rieux uses reflects his philosophy and personality: he approaches his life objectively, and is an atheist because he thinks logically, the existence of a God is invalid considering the amount of suffering he’s seen as a doctor.

While Paneloux uses his ideology and niche to aid the townsfolk shallowly in the beginning, Rieux’s niche effectively aids the townsfolk throughout the plague. Rieux provides objective resolution and purpose with the sanitary groups, helping the town come to terms with the fact that the plague is here to stay, and therefore the townsfolk should fight the disorder with order. This purpose appeals to most; it fights against monotony and despair in a realistic fashion. On the other hand, Paneloux’s ideology isn’t as appealing to the majority, and the temporary unity it provides disappears during the worst times.

As a controlled variable, Paneloux and Rieux are similar in the rigidity their philosophies. When Paneloux experiences Mr. Othon’s son’s suffering, he begs, “My God, spare this child...!” (206), but the child dies in pain. He reflects upon the child’s death after: “That sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand” (208). In this reflection, he essentially states that individuals should love the suffering of a child, because we can not understand such; a grotesque, immoral statement. His inflexible beliefs causes Paneloux to go to extremes to justify why God would let such suffering happen. Paneloux is unable to comprehend this, and he argues in his last sermon that because of the incomprehensible injustice of a child’s suffering, one must choose to believe entirely in God or not at all, emphasizing that one must believe entirely in God. This in an attempt to philosophically justify the suffering of the child to himself, emphasizing his rigidity. Instead of losing his faith, Paneloux “consents to have his eyes destroyed” (219).

Rieux is a rigid character, and this reflects in his attitude towards his beliefs. Camus shows this through Rambert’s reaction to Rieux’s coldness: “You’re using the language of reason, not the heart; you live in a world of… of abstractions” (82). Further, his rigidity reflects in the smallest idiosyncrasies: “When crossing a street he steps off the pavement without changing his pace” (27). This detail shows Rieux’s predominant attitude: once he sets his mind on something, he persistently sees it to the end. Rieux’s indifference appears almost superhuman, noted when he reacts numbly after receiving the telegram of his wife’s death. He reflects that “this suffering was nothing new. For many months… it was the self-same suffering going on and on” (281). Rieux’s cold, calculative and rigid character reflects in his philosophies and medical purpose: even though suffering and death is inevitable, individuals must struggle against it.

With this controlled variable, Camus puts the caricatures’ philosophies to test with the suffering of Mr. Othon’s son. When Paneloux’s philosophies do not assist the townsfolk during the worst of the plague, it directly reflects how his philosophies also do not assist him during such times. Paneloux’s failed attempts to justify the suffering of the child reflect in his metaphorical death. As he dies, Paneloux clutched his crucifix, and passively submits to his death with “blank serenity” (223). This shows Paneloux’s “consent to have his eyes destroyed,” by rigidly clutching his ideology, and submitting to the ugly implications of such. Further, his death was labeled a “doubtful case” (223), accenting the metaphorical representation of Paneloux’s inability to justify the suffering of a child, but need to hold onto his appeal to higher power, and the resulting philosophical death because of this.

Rieux remains philosophically intact after witnessing the child’s suffering, evident when he discusses the suffering with Paneloux: “Salvation’s much too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health; and for me his health comes first” (209). In this quote, the reader can see Rieux’s individual purpose, helping “man’s health”, and his reluctance to give himself a purpose outside his abilities. Further, he comments on Paneloux’s rationalization of the child’s suffering: “I’ve a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture” (208). The rationalization behind this comment, and his continued focus on “man’s health” reflect his existential philosophy that suffering is inevitable, but we as people must fight against it anyways.

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Paneloux’s need for God to be the reason behind the plague, it’s victims and his purpose causes his ideology to fail. Because he appeals to externalized faith, Paneloux is not in control of his philosophy, and when he sees adversity that directly contradicts such, he must continue to appeal to God. However, Rieux’s existential philosophy is solely dependent on his internal being, giving him control, and allowing him to survive through the worst adversities. This reflects in the purposes they create for themselves, and how effective their purpose is for the community. As a doctor, Rieux sees unfair deaths often, but when Paneloux sees a single unfair death, his philosophy immediately break down. By controlling the environment and the adversity that tests their philosophies, Camus ensures his experiment tests the tenacity of existentialism and religion. Even though the characters’ backgrounds and personalities are different, the similar extent of rigidity in the caricatures’ attitudes towards their philosophies ensures this doesn’t impede. Through this, Camus finds that because existentialism is dependent solely on the individual, and because it acknowledges the inevitability of suffering and death, it is more resilient than religion’s externalized philosophy.

In the poem, “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda there is an overwhelming amount of hidden textual messages. Neruda exaggerates his conflict between his unconditional love for a woman, and his rigid attitude toward her if she does not return his affections. Neruda writes this poem with several emotions that are changed within each stanza from love, to terror. A few of the emotions Neruda writes with words of love and compassion; however, he also states the dangers of love, where he writes in a stern manner because of his fear. He is internally conflicted with the idea of love and the happiness and pain it brings. Neruda expresses this idea in his poem with the use of personification, imagery, and sentimentality. Neruda begins the poem by describing his powerful love for a woman which makes it clear that he will do anything to please this woman. Yet, this poem also states the dangers of being in love exhibiting the risks, and anxiety of opening oneself up to love and making oneself vulnerable.

Neruda states this idea about vulnerability of love with authority with the statement, “I want you to know one thing” (line 1). Neruda sets the tone for the poem in this one sentence with a warning to the woman that he is in charge of the future conflict of love between them. Although Neruda starts with a dark serious tone he uses personification to convey his message of authorized love. He does this by comparing the delicacy of nature to the allure of love such as, “the wrinkled body of the log” (line 10), and “as if everything that exists,/ aromas, light, metals,/ were little boats/ that sail/ toward those isles of your that wait for me” (lines 12-16). These lines depict Neruda’s enticement of this woman’s beauty. The woman is compared to “mother nature” the center in which the beautiful parts of nature like the “aromas, lights, and metals” all come from. Neruda is infatuated with her beauty which drives his emotions of love towards her. In the third stanza the mood of the poem changes dramatically to his vulnerability of love, “if little by little you stop loving me/ I shall stop loving you little by little” (lines 18-19). Neruda is expressing the extent of his vulnerability when loving this woman. He states he will stop loving her before she may stop loving him because of how scared he is to be hurt by love and the perception of him being in control. Neruda symbolizes this idea in the fifth stanza through imagery. Neruda writes, “To leave me at the shore/ of the heart where I have roots” (line 28-29), Neruda is referring to an island which symbolizes himself and his heart in relation to the woman he loves. His roots tether him to the island where he has learned and adapted but to love this woman means he must branch out from the island. This require Neruda to leave his safe place which terrifies him. However, Neruda then states that if the woman will leave him at the shore of his safe island, “that on that day/ at that hour/ I shall lift my arms/ and my roots will set off/ to seek another land” (lines 31-35), he will find another lover and will not wait for her to come back to him.

Although Neruda is scared to be so vulnerable he still craves love. He specifically wants this woman’s love, but if she does not reciprocate the feelings then he will take charge and leave. Neruda is constantly reminding the readers of his authority over his heart and his love by always stating that he will find another woman or stop loving before the possibility of getting hurt. Although Neruda is trying to have a stern appearance he returns to his sentimentality at the end of the poem. In the last stanza, Neruda returns to the tone of love and compassion. The last stanza begins with the keyword “But”(line 36) which stands alone to emphasize the powerful meaning behind this word. Before this point Neruda argues of the pain of love and he will move on before he gets hurt; however, with the word “but” he enters into a compromise with love. Despite the fear and vulnerability, Neruda is so in love that he returns to writing in this loving tone. He writes, “if each day/ each hour/ you feel that you are destined for me/ with implacable sweetness” (lines 37-40) and“in me all that fire is repeated/ in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten” (lines 41-42).

Neruda finally states his true feeling of love for this woman and believes if the feelings between the two are reciprocated then nothing will get in the way of their love. He will never stop loving the woman if she loves him back. The entire poem is based on Neruda’s emotions towards the woman, but get to the core emotions by the end of the poem of pure love, and the fear of not having mutual love. Although these are several other literary techniques Neruda uses such as alliteration, assonance, diction, tone, etc. , he focuses on the use of personification to express the beauty of his love for the woman. Neruda also uses imagery to express to the reader the painful struggle love has with making oneself vulnerable and leaving the comfort of the already known. Lastley, throughout Neruda’s poem he uses sentimentality, but in the last paragraph he focuses on this device to convey his true emotions of pure love for this woman. In the final analysis of the poem it is clear that Neruda uses personification, imagery and sentimentality in his poem to convey his message of love in a fearful, yet passionate way for a woman who may not love him.

Works Cited

1. Neruda, P. (1994). If You Forget Me. In R. S. Sullivan (Ed.), The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (pp. 122-123). City Lights Books.
2. Puchner, M., Akbari, S., Denecke, G., Fuchs, B., Levine, C., Lewis, P., . . . Wilson-Okamura, D. (Eds.). (2018). The Norton Anthology of World Literature (4th ed., Vol. F). W. W. Norton & Company.
3. Merwin, W. S. (2004). Migration: New and Selected Poems. Copper Canyon Press.
4. Crow, B. (2009). Pablo Neruda: All Poets the Same or Similar to the Speaker of "If You Forget Me"? Notes and Queries, 56(4), 540-542. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjp158
5. Bly, R., & Hirshfield, J. (Eds.). (2013). The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Beacon Press.
6. Hahn, M. (2016). The Cambridge Introduction to Pablo Neruda. Cambridge University Press.
7. Poirot, L. (2012). Poesía y política en la producción de Pablo Neruda. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 89(6), 659-676. https://doi.org/10.3828/bhs.2012.43
8. Prado, I. (2005). Neruda y el amor: De veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada a Los versos del capitán. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
9. Marnham, P. (2004). The Man Who Was Neruda. The New York Review of Books, 51(18), 32-36.
10. Sabine, M. (2012). If You Forget Me. In The Cambridge Introduction to Poetry (2nd ed., pp. 152-153). Cambridge University Press.

Despite the fact that The Crying of Lot 49 is chock-full of the use of methods of communication, the only time when anything is actually communicated is when a few songs are sung by The Paranoids. Any letters mentioned in the novel are void of meaning; relationships tend to be self-indulgent and superficial; even radio broadcasts are phony. Moreover, of the few songs that are not sung by the Paranoids, none have any substantial meaning either. Overall, unless stated or utilized by a member of the band, no form of communication possesses the slightest trace of an actual desire to communicate.

The first time one sees meaning in communication is immediately before Oedipa and Metzger have sex - yet another form of exchange void of substance - when the Paranoids are singing outside their bedroom window. The song immediately has some sort of meaning because it tells a story: A man longs for the woman he loves, but knows he cannot go to her - "As I lie...and you lie alone tonight...how can I come to you" (Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999. 27). It may sound like a rather blas, overdone theme for a song; yet, compared to anything that has appeared in the novel before it, it is monumental in honesty and emotion. So far, the only other forms of communication have been shellacked with grandiose, Time Warner effects. For example, the entire book begins with Oedipa Maas being named executrix of an eccentric multi-millionaire's will. Then, she visits his lawyer who studies nothing else but Perry Mason television episodes, the father of the concocted, kitschy detective drama. Finally, she drives to San Narciso, a city paved with prefabricated, Vegas-esque buildings and billboards, to find the coexecutor, Metzger. Something this fantastic could only occur in a Hollywood B-movie! Therefore, is not this song the first "true" thing she encounters, the first expression of substance?

The next major song by The Paranoids does not occur till the end of the novel; yet, prior to that, a few other forms of empty communication show up. First, while slumming around a bar called The Scope, Oedipa encounters Mike Fallopian who receives a letter via the underground postal service. He tells the reader (and Oedipa) in advance that the note will be garbage by explaining how "each member has to send at least one letter a week through the Yoyodyne system" (39); if they don't, they're fined. Therefore, one cannot expect a mandatory letter, like the one Fallopian opens, to have any sort of value. In fact, all it says is, "Dear Mike, ... how are you? Just thought I'd drop you a note. How's your book coming? Guess that's all for now. See you at The Scope" (39). No one could possibly argue that the letter is of any consequence or that it presents any sort of meaning to its reader. Even the implication that the author of the letter wants to know how Mike's book is doing is purely empty, for one has no doubt that he, in reality, doesn't give a damn about it. Therefore, here is a perfect example of using a common form of communication to communicate nothing.

The next time there is a reasonably relative exchange of ideas between people is during Oedipa's visit to the Yoyodyne stockholders' meeting. While she's there, the corporate stockholders sing two songs in praise of their beloved Yoyodyne. Normally, one would think that such a jubilant expression of loyalty would be expressed through meaningful, heart-felt words. Even my thesis would imply that, as they are singing songs, there should be honesty and emotion present. However, these little ditties were written by the corporate world. They, like the required Yoyodyne mailing system, are mandatory expressions churned out robotically no matter how many Vaseline-slick smiles one has singing them. The lyrics themselves seem to aureate hollow and capitalistic California ideals "Pink pavilions bravely shining,/ Palm trees tall and true" (65) and "Yoyodyne... Contracts flee thee yet./ DOD has shafted thee,/ Out of spite, I'll bet" (66). Not only do the words lack worthwhile meaning, but they also show how jaded and corrupt the people singing them must be. Of course, if these people are like every first grader pledging allegiance to the flag, by now the words have become so heavily etched into their minds that they don't even think about them when they're reciting them, making even the act of singing insincere and rehearsed. Therefore, the only thing these two songs communicate is a lack of emotion.

Finally, after Oedipa has brushed with death thanks to Dr. Hilarious, she reunites with her husband, Mucho, in the back of his radio truck. One would presume that, as a couple, they would have the most honest forms of communication in the entire novel; yet, somehow, at this moment they manage to present one of the coldest and obscure relationships. She enters the truck greeted by a soundless smile from him, being told to "be herself" before having a microphone thrust in front of her. A couple of weeks, maybe closer to a month, without seeing her husband, and all Oedipa gets is a mic thrown in her face. Moreover, after receiving her comments on the rather mind-boggling events that just occurred in Dr. Hilarious's office, Mucho bastardizes her name into Edna Mosh, saying that he "was allowing for the distortion on these rigs, and then when they put it on tape" (114), so it will come out clear in the final broadcast. In essence, he asks her to be herself only to document her as someone entirely different before sending it off to be regarded as fact by the rest of the world. If that's not screwing with the veracity of communication, I don't know what is.

The last major form of honest interaction between people occurs when Oedipa returns to Echo Courts and sees The Paranoids again. At this point, one of the band members, Serge, sings a song about how his girlfriend left him for an older man, and how he is now patrolling the schoolyards for a new female companion "For me, my baby was a woman/ For him she's just another nymphet/ Why did they run around ... As long as she's gone away ... I've had to find somebody new ... I had a date last night with an eight-year-old" (120-121). Out of all the moments in the novel, this one seems to be the most painfully real and true. Here is Serge, obviously broken by the fact that someone whom he believed he loved has ditched him for a smooth-talking Humbert Humbert wannabe, singing his heart out in hope that his lyrics will consol him; for, in fact, there is no eight-year-old "groovy" replacement in his life. He is the only character, therefore, to really feel regret and loss, believe he experienced the emotion of love, and have the gusto to communicate it to the rest of the world. Overall, it is simply the one time, save possibly the first Paranoids song, where a form of communication actually communicates anything.

In essence, the entire novel displays how communication does not function. Perhaps the only reason Pynchon even gives The Paranoids a few moments of honest, expressible emotion is that he wants to show that the future generations have the hope of not being as jaded as the present one, allowing for the possibility for communication to reestablish itself truly in a society. Overall, though, regardless of Pynchon's reasons for having The Paranoids be the tool, The Crying of Lot 49 only has people expressing meaning to each other when the band is singing.

Table of contents

1. Causes of Inflation
2. Deficit Financing
Increase in Money SupplyIncrease in Developmental and Non Developmental Expenditures:Population ExplosionDevaluation of CurrencyPolitical Instability
3. Undesirable Activities

Causes of Inflation

Inflation is the state where overall worth level is growing time by time signifying imbalance between claim and providence of things at present prices. Reasons of inflation differ from country to country, so diverse sorts of inflation occur at diverse places relying upon the causes which produce inflation. Nevertheless there are some mutual causes of inflation which are defined in next segment.

• Deficit financing
• Increase in money supply
• Increase in developmental and non-developmental expenditures
• Population explosion
• Devaluation of currency
• Political instability
• Undesirable activities

Deficit Financing

It is a condition where government spending go beyond its income is said to be the deficit financing. The increased spending in the shortage budget is completed by deficit financing. Because of deficit financing the money providence in country rises but its production does not rise at the similar rate so rates tend to increase and result in inflation.

Increase in Money Supply

Increase in money supply is a major cause of inflation. Lower bank rates, decrease in reserve radio and deficit financing etc. are the major reasons for increase in money supply. The increase in money supply causes the amount of cash with banks and people to increase hence causing the commercial banks to give more loans to people at low interest rates. People will then ask for more goods and services due to the availability of cash. The increased demand of goods and services causes the prices to rise, thus causing inflation.

Increase in Developmental and Non Developmental Expenditures:

Inflation is also caused by developmental and non-developmental expenditures of the government. For instance, the non-developmental expenditures such as expenditures on defense, official tours of governments’ employees, rise in the salaries of government employees etc. lead economy to inflation. Usually, in most developmental projects, outputs usually start many years after the money investment. These kinds of developmental projects may also be the reason for inflation.

Population Explosion

Rapid increase in population also causes inflation. The demand for goods and services does not meet with the supply rate because of the increase in population. This imbalance between goods’ demand and supply results in prices hike, hence causing inflation.

Devaluation of Currency

Devaluation of currency means the official lowering of external value of the currency by monetary authorities. Prices of imported goods increase whenever local currency is devalued against the foreign currency. Different factors of production use imported goods which in turn increase the production cost. The increase in production cost increase prices and cause inflation. This type of inflation is known as push inflation.

Political Instability

The economic development of a country is dependent upon its political stability. Political stability increases investment and decreases hoarding and speculations. Entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest in a country where there is unpredictable political situation. Foreign investors also stop investing and then the businessmen and industrialists are unable to make good plans because of financial insecurity. This leads to shortage of services and goods, resulting in inflation.

Undesirable Activities

Smuggling, hoarding, black marketing and such other illegal activities slow down economic growth and decrease supply for domestic purpose. In case of frequent hording, magnificent profits are charged by creating fake scarcity of costly items. The income obtained from such sources is then spent on jewelry, luxury items, consumer goods and speculation, instead of spending it on productive activities. This increased expense increases the demand for services and goods, and cases inflation.

March 20th, 1852 was an important day for the United States of America. Harriet Beecher Stowe finally published her much debated story, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on this exact date. Recent stringent changes in fugitive slave laws had inspired the creation of this anti-slavery novel. The author described the story as a series of sketches depicting slave life on a plantation. Uncle Tom, Arthur Shelby, and Emily Shelby are the central characters of this story. Uncle Tom is a very religious black man who prays to God regularly to help keep his spirits high in his sufferings as a slave. Although there seems to be a large prevalence of religion as the main theme of the novel, there is an assembly of others that include race, gender, and oppression. This novel served as a cry for help to support abolitionism through the use of rhetorical devices and dramatic story-telling. After this novel was published, the beginning of the American Civil War followed nine years later. It has been a popular belief among historians that Stowe’s controversial novel was a final tipping point that brought our country into the American Civil War. During this time period, southerners held strong disgust for the novel and author. Uncle Tom’s Cabin not only serves as a piece of American history, but also a reminder that literature can have impacts on society far greater than imagined. This essay will discuss the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to provide historical background all while giving credit to a story whose characters and plot grasped readers’ minds and refused to let go.

Around the time that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was released, the United States of Americas was rapidly evolving. During the decade of the 1850s, the United States of America grew in both size and socioeconomic problems. Franklin Pierce became the fourteenth president of the United States, the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted, and the National Women’s Rights Convention was held in Massachusetts (Unsigned, History). Yet the 1860s would be defined by the American Civil War that took place from 1861 to 1865. Scholar Edward B. Rugemer discusses the five important causes that contributed to the war between 1850 and 1865. The first major problem in America began with the difference between northern and southern culture. Due to the cash crop, cotton, the south relied on plantations and this led to white male slave owners ruling the top of the social hierarchy (Rugemer 56). The north did not endorse slavery (thus no plantations), which allowed for the culture of the people in this area to flourish in a variety of industrial professions, leading to a diverse range of citizens. The second major problem was the complicated distribution of federal and state rights that arose from the Articles of the Confederation and the US Constitution (Rugemer 58). The third problem that sparked the Civil War was the Compromise of 1850. This document created an imbalance in the distribution of slave and free states in America (Rugemer 60-61). Abolitionism became the fourth reason for the Civil War (Rugemer 62). Rising tensions over slavery began a culture clash between northern and southern citizens. Finally, the election of president Abraham Lincoln contributed to the genesis of the American Civil War (Rugemer 64). Lincoln’s progressive antislavery views had many supporters, yet just as many opponents. This huge split in reception regarding Lincoln’s presidency resulted in the American people hating for their own brethren. During the span of these five major events, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was released. This story became wildly popular amongst the American people since the novel’s content directly correlated with what was happening in the real world at the time.

To understand how one story could cause as much controversy as Uncle Tom’s Cabin did, it is essential to understand how the book was released and what critics said about the novel. Harriet Beecher Stowe was an already successful author before Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s release, having published Mayflower as her first novel. Uncle Tom’s Cabin did not begin as a full length published novel. Susan Belasco explains that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the story in serial installments and published them in an antislavery newspaper called the National Era (Belasco 319). Eventually, as readers learned about the story, it was published in novel form a year later in March of 1852. Once the novel was for sale, it sold approximately three-hundred thousand copies in less than half a year. Many states in the South banned the novel. During this time period, the bestseller went on to be read by people outside of the United States as well and became the second-best selling published novel in history (second to The Bible). In the wake of its publication, numerous responses from various authors were written including anti-Uncle Tom’s Cabin novels. Examples of the anti-Tom novels included Aunt Phillis’s Cabin and Southern Life as It Is (Belasco 319). These versions of original text would change story lines, eliminate characters, and parody. The popularity of the novel would be beneficial in awakening the United States of America of its racist ways.

Following the release of the novel, critics were split on their reactions to the novel. Some critics of the novel praised Stowe’s incorporation of religious undertones in the story and her portrayal of Tom and Eva as endearing characters. National Era Magazine stated that, “So great and good a thing has Mrs. Stowe here accomplished for humanity, for freedom, for God, that we cannot refrain from applying to her sacred words” (Unsigned, Bailey). For many readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, attention was drawn to the novel when anti-Tom novels and novel responses referenced the story, making potential readers interested in reading what this controversial story contained. As time passed, there were eventually three versions of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. There was the serialization, the Norton edition, and the “Splendid Edition” (Belasco 322). The only things that differed in these stories were occasional one-word translations in certain passages that contained dialogue between characters. The instant fame and popularity of Stowe’s novel gave her financial success and reassurance that her story was effective in informing people about abolitionism. All of the attention brought to Uncle Tom’s Cabin acted as propaganda. Regardless of praise or criticism, the novel’s message of abolitionism was spread across the country and tensions began to run high.

The way that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is crafted has to do significantly with the way Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel. She was after all an author associated with the American Renaissance, which explains her style of effective dramatic writing. The culture’s new ideas and ways of thinking inspired many authors to translate this into their writing, something Harriet Beecher Stowe accomplished. In specific terminology, she was a popular sentimental writer. According to Dr. Ashley Reed, these sentimental stories involved family relationships, religious conversion, and moral development (Reed). All of these concepts are themes that are prevalent in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The novel is infused with a myriad of social problems, yet the ideas of relationships, religion, and race resonate in Stowe’s work. Scholar Curtis Evans dissects the novel to understand the author’s ways of bringing attention to her call to action. He expresses that the emotion of doubt acts as a character in the novel. Doubt plagues Tom’s Christianity and the peace between blacks and whites (Evans 498). Another way Stowe appealed to readers was through the use of extreme racial stereotypes to disturb readers. As an example of this, Stowe describes blacks as “unlike the hard and dominant Anglo-Saxon race” (Stowe xiii) to grab attention. In terms of religion, Tom and Eva are used as Christ-like figures in the story to appeal to Christian readers (Evans 498). Depicting mistreatment of innocent slaves brought readers to their feet and made them want to end slavery in their Anglo-Saxon environment. As the story progresses, there is a bond created between the readers and characters. This creation of an emotional attachment is vital to Stowe’s call to action. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s role as one of the leading faces of the abolitionist movement could possibly be due to the fact that her past experiences were relatable for many readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While her story of slavery brought a nation to its feet, the story of the inspiration behind the novel could also explain the novel’s success. Thomas Hagood explains that the child characters Eva and Topsy were influenced by the death of Stowe’s infant Samuel Charles Stowe. The pain and agony of losing a loved one was one key event that sparked the idea of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Because she had a connection with death, Stowe’s goal was to eradicate the harsh treatment of slaves and to “motivate Southern readers to ‘introduce into our system the law of kindness’” (Hagood). Another startling fact that made the idea of slavery too unbearable for readers was the fact that the novel was inspired by and contained many true stories (Reed). In film or text, when readers are told the story is inspired by true events, it creates logos for the reader to be persuaded by. In the case of abolitionism, the knowledge that slavery plagued innocent people meant that Americans needed to eradicate this practice. As people rallied behind a woman who had witnessed unsettling acts, the army of abolitionism continued to grow and sparked the beginnings of a civil war.

The emotional connection that readers felt towards the story’s characters are all due to the literary techniques Harriet Beecher Stowe employed in her novel. Even though Uncle Tom’s Cabin was officially banned in the Southern states of America, the novel was read across the country due to the sympathy Stowe built for the characters in the novel. These characters became icons in the pre-Civil War era. Harriet Beecher Stowe used rhetorical strategies, persuasion techniques, and writing style to get audiences to support the novel’s oppressed characters. Direct address and apostrophes are used in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which were two literary techniques that were popular in this time period (Reed). Motifs are also incorporated in the story through the images of dead children, fugitive slavery, and grieving mothers. These motifs caused readers to feel uncomfortable, but still drew them into the story. Stowe infused persuasion techniques into her novel. The incorporation of whites and blacks reading, praying and supporting each other establishes a pathos appeal to emotion for readers. Barbara Hochman notes that as blacks read The Bible in the story, it creates a sense of an ethos ethical appeal for audiences that realize that slaves are capable of holding spiritual beliefs and having literacy (Hochman 118-121). In reading such a racist novel, some readers would have been very offended, but the dramatic characterization in the novel helped to reveal the negativity and stigma of slavery in America. Stowe’s writing style of the novel was of the sentimentalism literary genre. Kevin Pelletier states that, “The quintessence of nineteenth-century sentimentalism, Uncle Tom’s Cabin predicates its anti-slavery politics on the belief that each reader can learn to sympathize with and ultimately come to love America’s slaves…love is central to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (Pelletier 266). This sentimentalism infused into the novel really plays on the idea of what people’s emotions can persuade them to do. By writing a sentimentalist novel, audiences can form a deep connection to the story and be persuaded to commit the novel’s call to action. The impact of the putting all of these elements into Uncle Tom’s Cabin make for characters that audiences think about for generations to come.

In a visual outlook on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, publishers made abolitionism the prime focus on the front covers of the novel. While the inside pages were filled with controversy and commotion, the outside covers of the novel were just as contentious. The images depicted on the differing editions of the novel made potential readers of the novel judge the book by its covers. Exploring the visual archaeology of Uncle Tom’s Cabin reveals that there was a plethora of concepts that publishers used to advertise the novel. Samuel and Tara Fee both discover that the first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin contained a cover with multiple slaves in front of a cabin. This represented the theme of home in the novel, which made readers associate their families with Tom’s, creating an emotional connection for potential buyers of the book (Fee 41). Another issue of the novel had a cover depicting Christ preaching to injured slaves. This image of Christ and his followers promoted one of the main arguments in the novel regarding the importance of religion (Fee 42-43). The third and final issue of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a very simplistic cover with no pictures. On the cover, the words “245,000 Copies Already Published in America” were printed directly under the title (Fee 45). This advertisement displayed that the novel had much success and encouraged potential readers to give in to buying, reading, and eventually endorsing a popular American story. The imagery of abolitionism was thus another driving force of the novel. The different imagery amongst the designs challenged traditional ideas of literary and textual interpretation. By doing so, it opened a door for new found freedom of expression.

As the popularity of literature increased, so did the popularity of the theatre during the era of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While the physical text of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel provided many citizens of America with an insight into the abolitionist movement, many people tend to neglect theatrical portrayals of the novel. During the antebellum period, theatre could offer entertainment and politics all wrapped up in one show. There were people who wanted to learn more about the story, but were not literate. Tom Robson notes that some women were more drawn to the idea of theatre than they were to reading. Live adaptations had the advantage of “capitalizing on mid-century women’s interest in moral reform dramas” (Robson). In this time period, there were groups of people who disliked reading and refused to pick up a large novel to read in its entirety. Theatre was the perfect solution for those less ambitious readers. Different stage acts based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin were more faithful to the text than others. These acts of theatre had aspects which, “advocated social change and resisted it” all at the same time (Robson). This means that the content in the plays was so controversial that it could be seen as helping or hurting Harriet Stowe’s call to action. Luckily for Stowe’s novel, the agenda for the story was still clear: advocate social justice to all slaves by showing the harsh social treatment. The live-action depiction of slavery and its hardships persuaded believers in slavery to realize the harshness of their actions.

While it has been argued that Stowe’s novel acts as a propaganda piece, readers of Stowe’s novel would have been able to form their own opinion on abolitionism and select their political views from there. In a historical sense, Uncle Tom’s Cabin depicted what had been going on in America for hundreds of years. The book was able to simulate a background of slavery, but in a dramatic context. Spread of word-of-mouth helped to bring attention to the story. In the social aspect of the novel, readers had the ability to digest the story and discuss it with friends if they chose to do so. Finally, the text itself was lengthy and provided challenges for some people who had weak or nonexistent reading skills. The novel acted as a way for people to learn about the English language and broaden their vocabulary usage all while broadening their methods of communication. Not only did the novel succeed in alarming the American people about the harshness of slavery, but also improving literacy in Antebellum citizens.

Analyzing the motivations and history behind the influential work that is Uncle Tom’s Cabin is not an easy task. This novel’s socio-political agenda received much praise, but still caused some critics to express their concern. Literature has the impact to do more than describe a story and teach people new vocabulary words. Literature has the chance to improve the education of a people and better society as a whole. The famous quote from Abraham Lincoln regarding Harriet Beecher Stowe that states, “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” resonates because it was the first time a woman had catalyzed public debate in the country regarding slavery (Unsigned, History). Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted to end the oppression caused by slavery in America. Her ultimate goal was to reveal the harshness people suffered and attain supporters. By doing this, all the techniques she contributed to her novel were put to noble use. While some actions speak louder than words, the words of Uncle Tom’s Cabin spoke loud and actions soon followed.

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Works Cited Belasco, Susan. "Uncle Tom's Cabin in our Time." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 29.2 (2012): 318-28. Web. Evans, C. "The Chief Glory of God [is] in Self-Denying, Suffering Love!": True Religion in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin." Journal of Religion 92.4 (2012): 498-514. Web. Fee, Samuel B., and Tara R. Fee. "Visual Archaeology: Cultural Change Reflected by the Covers of Uncle Tom's Cabin." Journal of Visual Literacy 31.2 (2012): 35. Web. Hagood, Thomas Chase. "'Oh, what a Slanderous Book': Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Antebellum South." Southern Quarterly 49.4 (2012): 71-93. Web. Hochman, Barbara. "Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution." Kritikon Litterarum 39.1-2 (2012): 117. Web. Pelletier, K. "Uncle Tom's Cabin and Apocalyptic Sentimentalism." LIT-LITERATURE INTERPRETATION THEORY 20.4 (2009): 266-87. Web. Reed, Ashley. "The American Renaissance 1820-1860." English 2534. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. Feb.-Mar. 2016. Lecture. Robson, Tom. "Uncle Tom's Cabin on the American Stage and Screen by John W. Frick (Review)." Theatre Journal 66.1 (2014): 172-3. Web. Rugemer, Edward B. “Explaining the Causes of the American Civil War, 1787-1861.” Reviews in American History 37.1 (2009): 56–68. Web. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918. Web. Unsigned. "Uncle Tom’s Cabin Is Published." History.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. Unsigned (Gamaliel Bailey). “Literary Notices.” The National Era 22 April 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture. Web. 26 Apr 2016.