James Joyce (1882-1941)

1. Life

• A rebel among rebels.

• Contrast with Yeats and the other literary contemporaries who tried to rediscover the Irish Celtic identity.

• He had two children, Giorgio and Lucia, with his long-time partner, Nora Barnacle, whom he eventually married.

• He left Dublin at the age of twenty-two and he settled for some time in Paris, then in Rome, Trieste, where he made friends with Italo Svevo, and Zurich.

2. The most important features of Joyce’s works

• The setting of most of his works à Ireland, especially Dublin.

• He rebelled against the Catholic Church.

• All the facts à explored from different points of view simultaneously.

• Greater importance given to the inner world of the characters.

• Time à perceived as subjective.

• His task à to render life objectively.

Isolation and detachment of the artist from society

3. The evolution of Joyce’s style

1.

Realism

Disciplined prose Dubliners

Different points of view

Free-direct speech

2.

Third-person narration

Minimal dialogue

Language and prose used to portray the protagonist’s state of mind A portrait of the

Free-direct speech artist as a young man

3.

Interior monologue with two levels of narration Ulysses

Extreme interior monologue

4. Dublin

• The Dublin represented by Joyce is not fixed and static, it is «the revolutionary montage of “Dubliners” through a range of historical juxtapositions and varied styles».

• The 15 stories of the Dubliners, though set in the same city, are not united by their geography: each story has a singular location.

• The evocation of his town in A Portrait is deeply influenced by Joyce’s prolonged temporal and spatial distance; Dublin is filtered through Stephen’s mind.

In Ulysses, Dublin overwhelms the reader.

5. Dubliners

• Dubliners are described as afflicted people.

• All the stories are set in Dublin à “The city seemed to me the centre of paralysis”, Joyce stated.

• Published in 1914 on the newspaper The Irish Homestead by Joyce with the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus.

Dubliners: structure and style

• The stories present human situations

• They are arranged into 4 groups:

Childhood Adolescence Mature life Public life

Dubliners: narrative technique and themes

• Naturalistic, concise, detailed descriptions.

• Naturalism combined with symbolism à double meaning of details.

• Each story opens in medias res and is mostly told from the perspective of a character.

• Use of free-direct speech and free-direct thought à direct presentation of the character’s thoughts.

• Different linguistic registers à the language suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters.

• Use of epiphany à “the sudden spiritual manifestation” of an interior reality.

• Themes à paralysis and escape.

• Absence of a didactic and moral aim because of the impersonality of the artist.

Dubliners: epiphany

Joyce’s aim à to take the reader beyond the usual aspects of life through epiphany.

Understanding the epiphany in each story

is the key to the story itself

Dubliners: paralysis

• The main theme of Dubliners à paralysis

• The climax of the stories à the coming to awareness by the characters of their own paralysis.

• Alternative to paralysis = escape which always leads to failure.

Dubliners: The Dead

• The protagonists: Gabriel Conroy, an embodiment of Joyce himself, and Gretta, his wife.

• Epiphany à the song The Lass of Aughrim, reminds Gretta of a young man, Michael Furey, who died for her when he was seventeen years old. à Gabriel understands he is deader than Michael Furey in Gretta’s mind.

Symbols à the snow, Gabriel’s journey to the west

Dublin

• Ulysses is an incredibly detailed description of people and places in Dublin.

• The central character is a Jewish advertising copywriter called Leopold Bloom.

One Day

• Each chapter of Ulysses represents about an hour of the day.

• It begins around 8am when Leopold Bloom gets up.

• It ends around 2am the following morning

Final Chapter

• The end of the novel is a monologue by Leopold’s wife, Molly.

• She is thinking about meeting her husband as a girl and him proposing to her.

• It ends with her saying “Yes, I will, Yes.”

Very, very, very difficult

• Ulysses is often thought to be one of the most difficult novels to understand that has ever been written.

• People spend their whole lives studying all the subtle elements of the novel.

The Odyssey

• The Odyssey is an ancient Greek poem by Homer.

• It was written some time in the 8th century BC.

• Joyce based the structure of Ulysses upon the Odyssey.

• Ulysses is divided up into 18 parts which have been given names taken from the Odyssey.

• These names have been decided by scholars of Ulysses, not Joyce himself.

Literary Techniques

• Pastiche:

Pastiche is like PARODY, but it does not necessarily intend to mock the original.

In Ulysses Joyce copies existing styles to give them new meaning.

• Stream of Consciousness or interior monologue:

This is an attempt to write in the way that people really think.

It means that normal rules of grammar are ignored.

Molly

• The final chapter of Ulysses is the best example of stream of consciousness.

• It is divided into just 8 very long sentences, and describes the jumble of thoughts that Molly is having as she lies in bed.

Controversial

• Ulysses was incredibly controversial because of its style and its content.

• It has a lot of explicit references to sex, and it was banned in the UK until the 30s.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

(11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930)

- an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Lawrence spent his formative years in the coal mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. His working class background and the tensions between his parents provided the raw material for a number of his early works. He received a teaching certificate from University College, Nottingham in 1908. in the autumn of 1908 the newly qualified Lawrence left his childhood home for London. His career as a professional author now began in earnest, although he taught for a further year.

Shortly after the final proofs of his first published novel The White Peacock appeared in 1910, Lawrence's mother died. he young man was devastated and he was to describe the next few months as his "sick year." It is clear that Lawrence had an extremely close relationship with his mother and his grief following her death became a major turning point in his life, just as the death of Mrs. Morel forms a major turning point in his autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers.

In March 1912 Lawrence met Frieda Weekley ( nee von Richthofen ) , with whom he was to share the rest of his life. She was six years older than her new lover, married to Lawrence's former modern languages professor from University College, Nottingham, Ernest Weekley , and with three young children. She eloped with Lawrence to her parents' home in Metz, a garrison town then in Germany near the disputed border with France. Their stay here included Lawrence's first brush with militarism, when he was arrested and accused of being a British spy, before being released following an intervention from Frieda Weekley's father. From Germany they walked southwards across the Alps to Italy.

During his stay in Italy, Lawrence completed the final version of Sons and Lovers that, when published in 1913, was acknowledged to represent a vivid portrait of the realities of working class provincial life. While writing Women in Love in Cornwall during 1916–17, Lawrence developed a strong and possibly romantic relationship with a Cornish farmer named William Henry Hocking. Although it is not absolutely clear if their relationship was sexual, Lawrence's wife, Frieda Weekley , said she believed it was. Lawrence's fascination with themes of homosexuality could also be related to his own sexual orientation. This theme is also overtly manifested in Women in Love. Indeed, in a letter written during 1913, he writes, "I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not..." He is also quoted as saying, "I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16."

After the traumatic experience of the war years, Lawrence began what he termed his 'savage pilgrimage', a time of voluntary exile. He escaped from England at the earliest practical opportunity, to return only twice for brief visits, and with his wife spent the remainder of his life travelling. This wanderlust took him to Australia, Italy, Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka), the United States, Mexico and the South of France.

Lawrence is perhaps best known for his novels

- Sons and Lovers - The Rainbow - Women in Love - Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Within these Lawrence explores the possibilities for life and living within an industrial setting. In particular Lawrence is concerned with the nature of relationships that can be had within such settings. Though often classed as a realist, Lawrence's use of his characters can be better understood with reference to his philosophy. His depiction of sexual activity, though shocking at the time, has its roots in this highly personal way of thinking and being. It is worth noting that Lawrence was very interested in human touch behaviour and that his interest in physical intimacy has its roots in a desire to restore our emphasis on the body, and re-balance it with what he perceived to be western civilisation's slow process of over-emphasis on the mind.

Initially titled “Paul Morel,” Sons and Lovers, published in 1913, is D. H. Lawrence’s third novel. It was his first successful novel and arguably his most popular. Many of the details of the novel’s plot are based on Lawrence’s own life and, unlike his subsequent novels, this one is relatively straightforward in its descriptions and action. The story recounts the coming of age of Paul Morel, the second son of Gertrude Morel and her hard-drinking, workingclass husband, Walter Morel, who made his living as a miner. As Mrs. Morel tries to find meaning in her life and emotional fulfillment through her bond with Paul, Paul seeks to break free of his mother through developing relationships with other women.

Free WillLawrence addresses the issue of free will in his novel, asking to what extent his characters’ environment influences their characters’ choices. Lawrence makes this explicit in his descriptions. For example, when Paul begins to look in the newspapers for work, the narrator writes, “Already he was a prisoner of industrialism . . . He was being taken into bondage. His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now.” The modern industrial world, specifically as it manifests itself in the effect mining culture has on the Morel family, shapes the characters’...

Oedipus complex

Perhaps Sigmund Freud's most celebrated theory of sexuality, the Oedipus complex. Oedipus is prophesied to murder his father and marry his mother. Freud argued that these repressed desires are present in most young boys. Sons and Lovers famously uses the Oedipus complex as its base for exploring Paul's relationship with his mother. Paul is hopelessly devoted to his mother, and that love often borders on romantic desire. Lawrence writes many scenes between the two that go beyond the bounds of conventional mother-son love. Completing the Oedipal equation, Paul murderously hates his father and often fantasizes about his death.

But Lawrence adds a twist to the Oedipus complex: Mrs. Morel is saddled with it as well. She desires both William and Paul in near-romantic ways, and she despises all their girlfriends. She, too, engages in transference, projecting her dissatisfaction with her marriage onto her smothering love for her sons. At the end of the novel, Paul takes a major step in releasing himself from his Oedipus complex.

He intentionally overdoses his dying mother with morphia, an act that reduces her suffering but also subverts his Oedipal fate, since he does not kill his father, but his mother.

Bondage/Servitude

Lawrence discusses bondage, or servitude, in two major ways: social and romantic. Socially, Mrs. Morel feels bound by her status as a woman and by industrialism. She complains of feeling "'buried alive,'" a logical lament for someone married to a miner, and even the children feel they are in a "tight place of anxiety." Though she joins a women's group, she must remain a housewife for life, and thus is jealous of Miriam, who is able to utilize her intellect in more opportunities. Ironically, Paul feels free in his job at the factory, enjoying the work and the company of the working-class women, though one gets the sense that he would still rather be painting.

Contradictions and oppositions

Lawrence demonstrates how contradictions emerge so easily in human nature, esp. with love and hate. Paul vacillates between hatred and love for all the women in his life, including his mother. Often he loves and hates at the same time, esp. with Miriam. Mrs. Morel, too, has some reserve of love for her husband even when she hates him, although this love dissipates over time. L. also uses the opposition of the body and mind to expose the contradictory nature of desire; frequently, characters pair up with someone who is quite unlike them. Mrs. Morel initially likes the hearty, vigorous Morel because he is so far removed from her refined, intellectual nature. Paul's attraction to Miriam, his spiritual soul mate, is less intense than his desire for the sensual, physical Clara.

Nature and flowers

- Sons and Lovers has a great deal of description of the natural environment. Often, the weather and environment reflect the characters' emotions through the literary technique of pathetic fallacy. The description is frequently eroticized, both to indicate sexual energy and to slip pass the censors in Lawrence's repressive time.

- Lawrence's characters also experience moments of transcendence while alone in nature, much as the Romantics did. More frequently, characters bond deeply while in nature. Lawrence uses flowers throughout the novel to symbolize these deep connections. However, flowers are sometimes agents of division, as when Paul is repulsed by Miriam's fawning behavior towards the daffodil.

- EpisodesSons and Lovers is structured episodically. This means that the novel consists of a series of episodes tied together thematically and by subject matter. Structuring the novel in this manner allows Lawrence to let meaning accumulate by showing how certain actions and images repeat themselves and become patterns. This repetition of actions and images is part of the iterative mode. By using this mode, Lawrence can blend time periods, making it sometimes difficult to know whether an event happened once or many times.

Short stories

Lawrence's best-known short stories include

- The Captain's Doll - The Fox - The Ladybird - Odour of Chrysanthemums - The Princess

Among his most praised collections is The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, published in 1914.

Themes

The Isolation of the Human Soul

As Elizabeth tends to Walter’s body, Lawrence writes that she feels “the utter isolation of the human soul,” and this sense of isolation permeates the entire story. Early on, Elizabeth is isolated in her home as she waits helplessly for Walter, and she is further isolated when she seeks help in finding him and thus becomes the subject of gossip among the other wives.

Symbols

- Chrysanthemums

Throughout the story, chrysanthemums primarily suggest unpleasantness and death, and Elizabeth cannot look at or smell them without being plagued by unhappy associations. We first see chrysanthe. as Elizabeth’s son, John, strews them over the path toward the house. Elizabeth remembers bitterly the first time Walter came home drunk, sporting brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole. When Elizabeth is told that Walter is dead, she notices two vases of chrysanthemums and their “cold, deathly smell” in the parlor, where she plans to lay out Walter’s body. When the men eventually carry him in, one knocks over a vase of chrysanthemums

- The Nature of Love

The nature of love between mother and child and between husband and wife stand in sharp contrast to each other in “Odour of Chrysanthemums.” Although she is often short with them, Elizabeth clearly loves her children, John and Annie. The nature of love between Elizabeth and Walter is much darker than the love between Elizabeth and her two existing children. Little is left of their love, having been replaced by resentment, disgust, and anger, and not even physical intimacy can overcome the fact that they are “two isolated beings, far apart.”

Darkness

“Odour of C” takes place almost entirely under the cover of darkness, and natural light appears only at the beginning. John complains of the lack of light in the cottage as the children eat their dinner, and Elizabeth can barely see their faces. Darkness has a life-giving element as well as a dangerous or threatening one. When Elizabeth prepares to receive Walter’s dead body, the one paltry candle she brings does little to dispel the gloom. She can barely see Walter in a literal sense, but now, for the

first time, she gets a glimpse of who he is as a person. In life, she knew almost nothing about Walter, in the permanent darkness of death, startling truths come to light for Elizabeth. In this sense, darkness serves as a kind of renewal. Morning will come for Elizabeth, but her life will be very different..

Chrysanthemums, although primarily a symbol of death, occasionally have life-affirming associations as well. Annie, Elizabeth’s daughter, is enamored with the chrysanthemums that Elizabeth has placed in her apron and thinks they smell beautiful. When Elizabeth tells her daughter about the time Walter came home drunk, she prefaces the memory with other celebratory moments when chrysanthemums have punctuated her life: her marriage and the birth of Annie. The fact that Elizabeth keeps vases of chrysanthemums in her home suggests that Elizabeth continues to have mixed feelings about the flowers, both resenting and embracing the memories they evoke.

Lawrence twice compares humans to shadows: miners who walk past the house are “like shadows,” and Elizabeth returns to the house “like a shadow” after she puts a dustpan outside. We get the sense that these people are somehow disappearing, even as they go about their daily lives. The animal and natural imagery that Lawrence uses suggests that the characters are part of a larger, more unpredictable natural cycle of life and death. John is “like a frog” when he crawls out from underneath the sofa, and Elizabeth says angrily that when Walter comes home drunk he’ll be “like a log.” One of the miners who brings Walter home compares the cave-in to a “mouse-trap,” which suggests that Walter himself was a mouse as he worked in the dark, narrow mines.

Local dialect

Lawrence’s dialogue is full of local dialect, which adds to the authenticity and vitality of the story’s setting and supports the idea of isolation among the characters. Lawrence grew up among mining families in Nottinghamshire. These local details make the characters come alive. When Elizabeth goes to Mrs. Rigley to find out whether her husband had seen Walter that evening, Mrs. Rigley asks “’Asna ’e come whoam yit?”. The dialect used by the locals stands in sharp contrast to Elizabeth’s more standard speech patterns and emphasizes her isolation from the rest of the community. We get the sense that Elizabeth is truly an outsider

Foreshadowing

Numerous examples of foreshadowing crowd “Odour of Chrysanthemums,” providing a sense of inevitable tragedy. Lawrence gives us clues to Walter’s fate from the beginning of the story, when Elizabeth bitterly says to the children that he “can lie on the floor” when he comes home and that he’ll be “like a log.” Later, when she seeks the help of Mr. Rigley, he escorts her down the dark alleyway in front of his house, warning her to be careful of the deep ruts in the earth, afraid that someone could slip in the uneven surface of the ground. This idea of accidental physical harm is echoed in Walter’s death, caused by a cave-in at his mine.

Developments beyond the scope of the story are foreshadowed as well, particularly in the description of the children. Annie is divided in her affections, respectful of her mother’s ire yet loyal in her love for her father. How her affections will tilt is suggested in Annie’s hair, which is changing from blond, the color

of Walter’s hair, to brunette, the color of E’s. This detail subtly suggests the fact that Annie will be forced to transfer her affections exclusively to E. when Walter dies. When John emerges from the raspberry patch, he is wearing pants and a waistcoat made out of a larger set of men’s clothes that had been cut down to fit him. Essentially dressed up as a man, John predicts the potentially grim future that awaits him because he will be expected to be the “man of the house”. In these small details of the physical appearance, we get hints of their bleak future.

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950)

Eric Blair was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, in the then British colony of India, where his father, Richard, worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service. His mother, Ida, brought him to England at the age of one. He did not see his father again until 1907, when Richard visited England for three months before leaving again until 1912. Eric had an older sister named Marjorie and a younger sister named Avril. With his characteristic humour, he would later describe his family's background as "lower-upper-middle class."

At the age of five, Blair was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley. Two years later he was recommended to the headmaster of one of the most successful preparatory schools in England at the time: St Cyprian's School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. Young Eric attended St Cyprian's on a scholarship that allowed his parents to pay only half of the usual fees. After a term at Wellington, Eric moved to Eton, where he was a King's Scholar from 1917 to 1921. Later in life he wrote that he had been "relatively happy" at Eton, which allowed its students considerable independence, but he was disliked by some of his teachers, who resented what they perceived as disrespect for their authority.

After finishing his studies at Eton, having no prospect of gaining a university scholarship and his family's means being insufficient to pay his tuition, Eric joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He resigned and returned to England in 1928 having grown to hate imperialism (as shown by his first novel Burmese Days, published in 1934, and by such essays as 'A Hanging', and 'Shooting an Elephant'). He adopted his pen name in 1933, while writing for the New Adelphi. He chose a pen name that stressed his deep, lifelong affection for the English tradition and countryside: George is the patron saint of England (and George V was monarch at the time), while the River Orwell in Suffolk was one of his most beloved English sites.

Spanish Civil WarSoon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising. As a sympathiser of the Independent Labour Party (of which he became a member in 1938), he joined the militia of its sister party in Spain, the non-Stalinist far-left POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification). In Homage to Catalonia he described his admiration for the apparent absence of a class structure in the revolutionary areas of Spain he visited. He also depicted what he saw as the betrayal of that workers' revolution in Spain by the Spanish Communist Party, supported by the Soviet Union and its secret police, after its militia attacked the anarchists and the POUM in Barcelona in May 1937. Orwell was shot in the neck (near Huesca) on May 20, 1937, an experience he described in his short essay "Wounded by a Fascist Sniper", as well as in Homage to Catalonia. He and his wife Eileen left Spain after narrowly missing being arrested as "Trotskyites" when the communists moved to suppress the POUM in June 1937.

World war

Orwell began supporting himself by writing book reviews for the New English Weekly until 1940. During World War II he was a member of the Home Guard and in 1941 began work for the BBC Eastern Service, mostly working on programmes to gain Indian and East Asian support for Britain's war efforts. He was well aware that he was shaping propaganda, and wrote that he felt like "an orange that's been trodden on by a very dirty boot." Despite the good pay, he resigned in 1943 to become literary editor of Tribune, the left-wing weekly then edited by Aneurin Bevan and Jon Kimche. Orwell contributed a regular column entitled 'As I Please.'

Novels

1934 – Burmese Days

1935 – A Clergyman's Daughter

1936 – Keep the Aspidistra Flying

1939 – Coming Up for Air

1945 – Animal Farm

1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, especially after his experiences with the NKVD (secret police organization), and what he saw of the results of the influence of Communist policy during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as his novel "contre Stalin".

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party. Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control, accomplished with a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc), which is administered by a privileged Inner Party elite. Yet they too are subordinated to the totalitarian cult of personality of Big Brother, the deified Party leader who rules with a philosophy that decries individuality and reason as thoughtcrimes;

Thus the people of Oceania are subordinated to a supposed collective greater good. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record is congruent with the current party ideology. Because of the childhood trauma of the destruction of his family — the disappearances of his parents and sister — Winston Smith secretly hates the Party, and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.

Influence on language and writing

In his essay Politics and the English Language (1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of precise and clear language, arguing that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation because it shapes the way we think. In that essay, Orwell provides six rules for writers:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

Andrew N. Rubin argues, "Orwell claimed that we should be attentive to how the use of language has limited our capacity for critical thought just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use."

The adjective Orwellian connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance.

Orwell may have been the first to use the term cold war, in his essay, "You and the Atom Bomb"

Several words and phrases from Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered popular language. Newspeak is a simplified and obfuscator language designed to make independent thought impossible. Doublethink means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The Thought Police are those who suppress all dissenting opinion. Prolefeed is homogenized, manufactured superficial literature, film and music, used to control and indoctrinate the populace through docility. Big Brother is a supreme dictator who watches everyone.

William Golding

• British novelist

• Born on September 19, 1911, died 1993

• Studied Science and English at Oxford

• Fought in Royal Navy during WWII

• Participated in invasion of Normandy on D-Day

• At war’s end, returned to teaching and writing

• Earned the Nobel Prize in Literature

The World Golding Knew:

• WWII 1939- 1945

• The fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940

• Britain feared an invasion and evacuated children to other countries

• 1940- A German U-Boat torpedoed a British ship carrying children, killing the boys, thus suspending the oversees evacuation program

On Writing Lord of the Flies

“It was simply what seemed sensible for me to write after the war when everyone was thanking God they weren’t Nazis. I’d seen enough to realize that every single one of us could be Nazis.”

--William Golding

Inspiration

• Golding once allowed his class of boys total freedom in a debate, but had to intervene as mayhem soon broke out

• Experiences in war

• Critical response to Coral Island by R.M. Ballanytyne

• Philosophical questions about human nature

Philosophical Influence

• John Hobbes

– English Philosopher: 1588- 1679

– Man is by nature selfishly individualistic

– Man constantly at war with other men

– Fear of violent death is sole motivation to create civilizations

– Men need to be controlled by absolute sovereignty to avoid brutish behavior

Facts about the Novel

• Rejected 21 times before it was published

• It was his first novel- published in 1954

• Not successful until the early 1960’s

• On the American Library Association’s list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.

Story Synopsis

• Set in mid 1940’s when Europe was engulfed in war.

• A plane carrying British school boys is mistaken for a military craft and shot down.

• Only the boys survive the crash and try to form a society and govern themselves.

Golding’s Message

“The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.”

--William Golding

Themes

• Survival

• Power/leadership styles

• Civilization vs. Savagery

• Loss of Innocence

• Human nature

• Duality of man

• Nature Vs. Nurture

• Good Vs. Evil

Allusions

• Use of the names Ralph and Jack as the main characters from The Coral Island.

• Simon from the Bible “Simon called Peter”, Peter was the other boy’s name in The Coral Island

• Mention of Coral Island and Treasure Island

• Numerous biblical allusions throughout

Golding’s Literary Technique

• Heavy use of symbolism

• Irony

• Abundant imagery and sensory detail

• Figurative Language

Simile

Metaphor

Personification

Lord of the Flies in Pop Culture

• In Hook, Robin Williams compares Lost Boys to savages in LOTF

• The Simpsons episode “Das Bus” is a parody

• Inspiration for the anime series Infinite Ryvius

• Mel Gibson’s 2006 movie Apocalypto has a similar ending.

• T.V. shows Survivor and Lost are said to have been inspired from LOTF

• 2006 movie Unaccompanied Minors makes reference to LOTF

Popular Culture Cont.

• Stephen King uses the name “Castle Rock” (from the novel) as the name of a town in his books. He also makes reference to LOTF in the novels The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Cujo and Hearts in Atlantis

• Orson Scott Card makes reference in his novel, Ender’s Shadow.

• Degrassi: The Next Generation, Danny Phantom, The Daily Show all mention the novel

The End

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

- William Golding, Lord of the Flies, Chapter 12

NADINE GORDIMER (1923)

Nadine Gordimer, (born Nov. 20, 1923, Springs, Transvaal, S.Af.), South African novelist and short-story writer whose major theme was exile and alienation. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

Gordimer was born into a privileged white middle-class family and began reading at an early age. By the age of 9 she was writing, and she published her first story in a magazine when she was 15. Her wide reading informed her about the world on the other side of apartheid—the official South African policy of racial segregation—and that discovery in time developed into strong political opposition to apartheid. Never an outstanding scholar, she attended the University of Witwatersrand for one year. In addition to writing, she lectured and taught at various schools in the United States during the 1960s and ’70s.

Her writing is famous for its unsentimental style which places situations in a hard, clear light.

Her first important short story collection “The soft voice of the serpent” and her other early published works present scenes of everyday life in South Africa. Her novels “A world of strangers”, “Occasion for loving” and “The late Bourgeouis World” examine the problems and tensions that arose between blacks and whites under the system of apartheid in South Africa.

In “July’s People” she examines these same situations, this time in a futuristic novel about a civil war in which a white family is forced to depend on their black servant. Still, Gordimer’s anger against apartheid and her deep interest in post – apartheid South Africa does not make her writing flat. One of the main characteristics of her writing is that she presents situations from several points of view, at times from that of apartheid supporters.

July's People is set in South Africa during a fictional civil war. July is a black servant who works for the Smales, a white family. Because of the war, the Smales are forced to leave their home. They end up in July's native village. Nadine Gordimer presents interesting themes about the racial differences in South Africa. After leaving their homes, the Smales are no longer July's employers. Rather, they become dependent on him and his village for their survival. July also happens to be a leader in his own village. Although many uncomfortable situations occur, the Smales learn to have a greater appreciation for July as a human being, rather than the servant they thought he was.

The plot of Nadine Gordimer’s novel July’s People, revolves around the Smales, a liberal white family living in South Africa who in the wake of civil unrest in Johannesburg flee the city. Their servant July takes them under his wing and into his native village. Gordimer puts the Smales’ relationships, both within the family and with the people in the village under the microscope, highlighting the effect of race on individuals perceptions of each other and the security of their situation.

Maureen, the mother in the Smales family is the character that we felt in the group that really stood out as going on a personal journey in the novel. She watches her children adapt and make friends in the community so easily, whereas she is never accepted by the other women. She is constantly interpreting and re-interpreting thoughts and language in her interactions between July, her former

servant, and Bam her husband. While Bam struggles to make himself useful by building a well and asert his manhood by shooting wild pig, it is Maureen whose head we get into most and her vulnerability and frustration that we feel. Her sense of loss is highlighted when she realises that she does not want to read the paperback that she has brought with her.

The key theme of the novel hangs around perception and mis-understanding of people’s behaviour and their motives . Maureen as July’s former employer has always thought she and her husband were open-minded but as the book continues we see her liberalism put to the test. She always trusted July as a servant, confident that he was always honest with money and their belongings and initially feels grateful to him for rescuing them. However while at July’s house, she discovers objects that used to belong to the Smales. While these are of low value – for example a pair of scissors), an underlying suspicion begins to creep through and she begins to question July’s motives. Is Maureen right to worry about July’s reasons for bringing the family there or is she just being paranoid? Is she as liberal as she thinks or were her values just a facade? As a reader we are brought on the journey really experiencing the situation and relationships.

Patrick White

Patrick White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author, widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature—and was the only Australian citizen to have been awarded the Literature prize. The Vivisector, a novel about the life and times of a successful modernist painter, was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.

White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to an English-Australian father and an English mother. His family later moved to Sydney, Australia when he was six months old. At the age of ten White was sent to Tudor House School, a boarding school in Wales, in an attempt to abate his asthma. It took him some time to adjust to the presence of other children. At boarding school he started to write plays. Even at this early age White wrote about noticeably adult themes. White struggled to adjust to his new surroundings at Cheltenham College, in Gloucestershire. He later described it as "a four-year prison sentence". White withdrew socially and had a limited circle of acquaintances.

After the war White once again returned to Australia, buying an old house in Castle Hill, now a Sydney suburb but then semi-rural. Here he settled down with Lascaris, the Greek he had met during the war. They lived there for 18 years, selling flowers, vegetables, milk, and cream, as well as pedigreed puppies. During these years he started to make a reputation for himself as a writer, publishing The Aunt's Story and The Tree of Man in the US in 1955 and shortly after in the UK. The Tree of Man was released to rave reviews in the US, but, in what was to become a typical pattern, was panned in Australia. White had doubts about whether to continue writing after his books were largely dismissed in Australia (three of them having been called ‘un-Australian’ by critics), but, in the end, decided to persevere. His first breakthrough in Australia came with his next novel, Voss.

Plot summary

The novel centres on two characters: Voss, a German, and Laura Trevelyan, a young woman, orphaned and new to the colony of New South Wales. It opens as they meet for the first time in the house of Laura's uncle and the patron of Voss's expedition, Mr Bonner.

Johann Ulrich Voss sets out to cross the Australian continent in 1845. After collecting a party of settlers and two Aborigines, his party heads inland from the coast only to meet endless adversity. The explorers cross drought-plagued desert then waterlogged lands until they retreat to a cave where they lie for weeks waiting for the rain to stop. Voss and Laura retain a connection despite Voss's absence and the story intersperses developments in each of their lives.

Laura adopts an orphaned child and attends a ball during Voss's absence.

The travelling party splits in two and nearly all members eventually perish. The story ends some twenty years later at a garden party hosted by Laura's cousin Belle Radclyffe on the day of the unveiling of a statue of Voss. The party is also attended by Laura Trevelyan and the one remaining member of Voss's expeditionary party, Mr Judd.

The strength of the novel comes not from the physical description of the events in the story but from the explorers' passion, insight and doom. The novel draws heavily on the complex character of Voss.

Symbolism

The novel uses extensive religious symbolism. Voss is compared repeatedly to God, Christ and the Devil. Like Christ he goes into the desert, he is a leader of men and he tends to the sick. Voss and Laura have a meeting in a garden prior to his departure that could be compared to the Garden of Eden.

A metaphysical thread unites the novel. Voss and Laura are permitted to communicate through visions. White presents the desert as akin to the mind of man, a blank landscape in which pretensions to godliness are brought asunder. In Sydney, Laura's adoption of the orphaned child, Mercy, represents godliness through a pure form of sacrifice.

There is a continual reference to duality in the travelling party, with a group led by Voss and a group led by Judd eventually dividing after the death of the unifying agent, Mr Palfreyman. The intellect and pretensions to godliness of Mr Voss are compared unfavourably with the simplicity and earthliness of the pardoned convict Judd. Mr Judd, it is implied, has accepted the blankness of the desert of the mind, and in doing so, become more 'godlike'.

THEMES

The Breakdown of Social Norms

The inclusion of the convict, Judd, in Voss’s party, and his subsequent elevation to leader; the servant Rose Portion not only staying on in a middle-class family when pregnant, but also Laura adopting the baby; the catastrophic breakdown of Aboriginal social norms, especially in Jackie’s behavior;

In Ralph Angus, the compassion for the convict began to struggle with the conventions he had been taught to respect (p292)

The grazer apologizes to the convict for Voss’s rudeness;

The way that traditional morality is abandoned;

And the questioning about God and religion.

The Sense of Alienation

Laura’s from society and family;

Voss’s from society and his homeland and language – he even wants to be alone when the expedition is out in the middle of nowhere;

Jackie and (at least initially) Dugald from their own people; and

Judd choosing not to return to ‘civilisation’ for so long

The sense of spiritual loneliness

Laura prays but not to a kind and loving God; and

The personification of vast distances and a hostile landscape.

Stylistic features

The discontinuous narrative, jumping from Laura in Potts Point, Sydney, to Voss in the unknown inland, and back again.

Antiphraxis (ironic figures of speech, words meaning their opposite, like the pieces of paper reduced to being like a mob of cockatoos – meaningless chatter when Voss’s letter is profoundly serious (p220).

Parataxis –short sentences juxtaposed without any obvious connection, like the spaniel being preferable to children.

Children are little animals that begin to think by thinking of themselves. A spaniel is more satisfactory. (p221)

It’s included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and the summary of Voss suggests an enticing story.

What was distinctive about Voss is that the novel is an example of High Modernism – which according to Norton celebrates ‘personal and textual inwardness, complexity, and difficulties’ and this movement was out-of-date by the end of the 1920s. Alternatively, according to Wikipedia, High Modernism is characterised by the ‘Great Divide’ i.e. a clear distinction between capital-A Art and mass culture, and it places itself firmly on the side of Art and in opposition to popular or mass culture

This was the first time in literature that a writer has understood with such sensitivity the Aboriginal world view, kinship and the vulnerability of their way of life? Here is Dugald en route, meeting up with his people and trying to explain his burden:

These papers contain the thoughts of which the whites wished to be rid, explained the traveller, by inspiration: the sad thoughts, the bad, the thoughts that were too heavy, or in any way hurtful. These came out through the white man’s writing stick, down upon paper, and were sent away.

Away, away, the crowd began to menace and call…

With the solemnity of one who has interpreted a mystery, he tore them into little pieces…

The women were screaming, and escaping from the white man’s bad thoughts. Some of the men were laughing.

Only Dougal was sad and still, as the pieces of paper fluttered around him and settled on the grass, like a mob of cockatoos.

The Postcolonial Theory and Literature

Postcolonial Theory

• Focuses on the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries. The literature is composed of colonizing countries that deals with colonization or colonized peoples.

• The Postcolonial theory is a term that refers the theoretical and critical observations of former colonies of the Western powers and how they relate to, and interact with, the rest of the world.

• Greatly interested in the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized, postcolonial theory seeks to critically investigate what happens when two cultures clash and one of them ideologically fashions itself as superior and assumes dominance and control over the other.

• The field of postcolonial studies has itself been hotly contested ever since its rise in the 1970s.

The 3 Pillars of Postcolonial Theory

1. Edward W. Said

2. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

3. Homi K. Bhabha

Edward Said

• Probably the most important figure for the rise of postcolonial studies and theory.

• Born in 1935 in Jerusalem and dies 2003

• Palestinian-American scholar, critic, and writer

• Said, raised as an Anglican, attended a British school in Cairo then at Princeton and Harvard, he became an academic literary critic.

• From 1963 until his death he was a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York.

• He soon became the best-known American advocate for the Palestinian cause.

• His 1978 book Orientalism reevaluated an entire historical tradition of European-American thought, examining the relation of political power to the representation of the world, and generated an entire field of cultural and postcolonial studies as well as informing the thinking of scholars in every area of cultural, social and historical work.

• Other significant books include The Question of Palestine (1979), Covering Islam (1981), The World, the Text and the Critic (1983), Culture and Imperialism (1993), The Politics of Dispossession (1994), Representations of the Intellectual (1994), Peace and Its Discontents (1995), The End of the Peace Process (2000), Reflections on Exile (2000) and Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004).

Orientalism

• Illustrates Asian and Islamic Cultures during European imperialism and Europe’s goals of maintaining power and domination of non-Europeans

• He argued that Europe used the Orient and imperialism as a symbol of its strength and superiority.

• “Said suggested that Orientalists are treated as others—in this case, Muslims and Asians—and as objects defined not in terms of their own discourses, but solely in terms of standards and definitions imposed on them from outside. Among the influences underlying these definitions was, in Said's view, a long-standing Western concern with presenting Islam as opposed to Christianity.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born in 1942

• Is thought of as one of the three co-founders of postcolonial theory.

• Her main work on the postcolonial theory was her Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1999)

• Her work combines Marxism, feminism, and deconstruction.

• She introduced many to this type of postcolonial theory when she published three pieces in the 1980s: "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism," "Can the Subaltern Speak?," and "'Draupadi' by Mahasweta Devi."

• She also translated the novels of Mahasweta Devi, a fiction-writer in Bengali, which have been influential in establishing the parameters of the literature of postcolonialism; these include Imaginary Maps (1995), Old Women (1999), and Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2002).

• In Mahasweta Devi fictional novels, she presents the native in her otherness and singularity.

Homi K. Bhabha

• He wrote the Nation and Narration (1990)

• This considers how to conceptualize the nation under colonialism and, by default, in postcoloniality.

• Here he takes issue with the anthropologist Benedict Anderson's view of the relationship between imperialism and its resistance in Imagined Communities (1991).

Places of Postcolonialism

• Latin America

• Africa

• East and Southeast Asia

• South Asia

• Carrabin

• Polynesia

• United States

Salman Rushdie (1947)

Midnight’s children

Biography

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, to a middle-class Moslem family. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Cambridge-educated businessman. At the age of fourteen Rushdie was sent to Rugby School in England. In 1964 Rushdie's parents moved to Karachi, Pakistan, joining reluctantly the Muslim exodus – during these years there was a war between India and Pakistan, and the choosing of sides and divided loyalties burdened Rushdie heavily. Rushdie continued his studies at King's College, Cambridge, where he read history. After graduating in 1968 he worked for a time in television in Pakistan. He was an actor in a theatre group at the Oval House in Kennington and from 1971 to 1981 he worked intermittently as a freelance advertising copywriter.

As a novelist Rushdie made his debut with Grimus (1975), a fantastical science fiction, which draws on the 12th-century Sufi poem The Conference of Birds. The title of the novel is an anagram of the name Simurg, the immense, all-wise, fabled bird of pre-Islamic Persian mythology. Rushdie's next novel Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize and brought him international fame. Written in exuberant style, this comic allegory of Indian history revolves around the lives of the narrator Saleem Sinai and the 1000 children born after the Declaration of Independence. All of the children are given some magical property. Saleem has a very large nose, which grants him the ability to see "into the hearts and minds of men." His chief rival is Shiva, who has the power of war. Saleem, dying in a pickle factory near Bombay, tells his tragic story with special interest in its comical aspects..

The work aroused a great deal of controversy in India because of its unflattering portrait of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay, who was involved in a controversial sterilization campaign. Midnight's Children took its title from Nehru's speech delivered at the stroke of midnight, 14 August 1947, as India gained its independence from England.

Rushdie won in 1988 the Whitbread Award with his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989, after publishing The Satanic Verses. Naguib Mahfouz, the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, criticized Khomeini for "intellectual terrorism" but changed his view later and said that Rushdie did not have "the right to insult anything, especially a prophet or anything considered holy."

The Nobel writer V.S. Naipaul described Khomeini's fatwa as "an extreme form of literary criticism."Shortly before the publication of The Satanic Verses Rushdie had said in an interview, "It would be absurd to think that a book can cause riots." The novel was banned

in India by the ministry of finance – about a week after it had been published in Britain – and South Africa and burned on the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire. During this period of fatwa violent protest in India, Pakistan, and Egypt caused several deaths. In 1990 Rushdie published the essay In Good Faith to appease his critics and issued an apology in which he reaffirmed his respect for Islam. However, Iranian clerics did not repudiate their death threat.

Rushdie has been married four times, first in 1976 to Clarissa Luard and in 1988 to the American writer Marianne Wiggins. In September 1998 the Iranian government announced that the state is not going to put into effect the fatwa or encourage anybody to do so, but Ayatollah Hassan Sanei promised in 1999 a 2,8 million dollar reward for killing the author. However, when the threat was formally lifted, Rushdie ended his hiding. In the beginning of 2000, he left his third wife upon falling in love with the actress Padma Lakshmi and moved from London to New York. They married in 2004, but in June 2007, Rushdie agreed to divorce. After Rushdie was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007, demonstrations broke out across the Islamic world. A government minister in Pakistan declared that Rushdie's knighthood justifies suicide bombing. The Enchantress of Florence (2008), finished in the aftermath of divorce, was a historical romance about the mutual suspicion and mistrust between East and West, in this case Renaissance Florence and India's Mughal Empire.

In addition to giving interviews to the media, Rushdie has played himself in television films and was cast as Dr. Masani, a gynecologist, in Helen Hunt's comedy Then She Found Me (2007). For the US network Showtime Rushdie began in 2011 to write a teleplay, Next People, about contemporary American life. Rushdie's book of memories appeared in 2012. Following President Bashar Assad's brutal crackdown on the country's uprising, Rushdie and other writers, such as Umberto Eco, David Grossman, Amos Oz, Orhan Pamuk and Wole Soyinka, urged in June 2011 the United Nations to condemn the repression in Syria as a crime against humanity.

Rushdie’s work Midnight’s Children is associated with several categories of literary fiction, including magical realism, postcolonial fiction, and postmodern literature. Equally significant as the incorporation of mythical and fantastical elements into his fiction is Rushdie’s uniquely Indian perspective on the English language. Rushdie’s novels hum with an eclectic mix of prose styles, which echo the rhythm and slang of English as it is colloquially spoken in India. Familiar English words get combined in new and unusual ways, and long, unbroken sentences run on freely, sometimes spanning a page or more. Elements taken from traditional Indian mythology and religion thread themselves through the novel, as do the artistic conventions of modern Bollywood, the vigorous, populist cinema industry based in Bombay. In its sprawling range of cultural sources, as well as its attempt to include as much of India’s vast cultural identity and contemporary history as possible, Midnight’s Children is as complete a reflection of the life and character of the subcontinent as any single novel could possibly provide

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.

The book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with events leading up to India's Independence and Partition. Saleem was born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, and is, therefore, exactly as old as the independent Republic of India. He later discovers that all children born in India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that date are imbued with special powers.

Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles a Midnight Children's Conference, reflective of the issues India faced in its early statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact while also attempting to discover the meaning of their gifts. In particular, those children born closest to the stroke of midnight wield more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children with notable gifts and roles in Saleem's story.

Character List

Saleem Sinai - The narrator and protagonist of the novel.

Aadam Aziz - Saleem’s grandfather. Aadam is the patriarch of the family, a doctor and skeptic

Ahmed Sinai - Saleem’s father. A shrewd businessman who is nonetheless destined for failure, Ahmed spends much of his marriage fighting his wife and his alcohol addiction.

Mumtaz (Amina Sinai) - Saleem’s mother, and the daughter of Aadam Aziz. Born Mumtaz, she changes her name to Amina after her marriage to Ahmed.

Mary Pereira - Saleem’s ayah and surrogate mother.

Shiva - Saleem’s archrival. Shiva was born at exactly the same moment as Saleem. While Saleem is raised in a loving, wealthy household, Shiva is raised in abject poverty by a single father.

Parvati-the-witch - A real witch, despite her fantastic powers, she is unable to make Saleem fall in love with her

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

-The Single and the Many

Born at the dawn of Indian independence and destined, upon his death, to break into as many pieces as there are citizens of India, Saleem Sinai manages to represent the entirety of India within his individual self.

-The Unreliability of Memory and Narrative

Factual errors and dubious claims are essential aspects of Saleem’s fantastic narrative. He willfully acknowledges that he misplaced Gandhi’s death, an obviously seminal moment in India’s history, as well as willfully misremembers the date of an election.

- Destruction vs. Creation

The battle between Saleem and Shiva reflects the ancient, mythological battle between the creative and destructive forces in the world. The enmity and tension between the two begin at the moment of their simultaneous births.

Motifs

-Snakes

Beginning with the snake venom that saves Saleem’s young life, snakes play an ambiguous and complicated role in the novel. Saleem often refers to his favorite childhood board game, Snakes and Ladders. In the game’s simple formula of good and evil

-Leaking

Throughout the novel, the past finds ways to mysteriously insinuate itself into the present, just as Saleem’s personal compulsions and concerns find themselves inexplicably replicated in national, political events

-Fragmentation

Saleem claims that, much like his narrative, he is physically falling apart. His body is riddled with cracks, and, as a result, the past is spilling out of him.

Symbols

-The Silver Spittoon

The silver spittoon given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen is responsible for Saleem’s loss of memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value.

-The Perforated Sheet

The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls in love with her in pieces.

-Knees and Nose

The seer, Ramram, predicts the birth of “knees and nose,” which represent Shiva and Saleem, respectively. In addition to symbolizing each boy’s special power, knees and nose also play another role.

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul

Biography

Naipaul is an Indo-Trinidadian-British writer,who is considered to be a master of modern English prose.

Born in 17 August 1932 in Trinidad and Tobago, to parents of Indian descent. He was raised in relative poverty, and his upbringing familiarised him with every sort of deprivation, material and cultural. And it helps to explain the affliction that one of his characters calls “colonial rage,” as well as Naipaul’s less-noticed sympathy for the oppressed and blighted of the earth.

He got a scholarship at 18 in University College, Oxford, and he has lived in England ever since. After graduating, in the early 1950s he found himself, alone in London, racially marginalized, with no job or prospects, unable to get his first attempts at fiction published, desperately homesick, but unwilling to admit failure and return to Trinidad. Nothing sustained him except the determination, often close to despair, to become a writer. He began to travel for long periods in India and Africa. It was at a time of decolonisation, when so many people the whole world over had to reassess their identity. Naipaul saw for himself the resulting turmoil of emotions, that collision of self-serving myth and guilt which make up today's bewildered world and prevents people from coming to terms with who they really are, and to know how to treat one another. On these travels he was exploring nothing less than the meaning of culture and history.

Victimhood might have been his central theme, granted his background. Not at all. That same determination to be a writer also liberated him from self-pity. Each one of us, his books declare, can choose to be a free individual. It is a matter of will and choice, and above all intellect.

A prophet of our world-historical moment, in his more than 25 works of fiction and non-fiction, such as travel writing and essays, Naipaul has examined the clash between belief and unbelief, the unravelling of the British Empire, and the migrations of peoples. Mr. Naipaul's works are set in many places and explore many themes, but he is best known for his knowing depictions of Trinidad, where he was born and reared; for his explorations of modern-day India, his ancestral land; and for his bleak, unsparing portraits of postcolonial countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

His fiction is often highly autobiographical, returning again and again to the themes of alienation, the burdens of the past, and the confusions of the present. Naipaul has written about slavery, revolution, guerrillas, corrupt politicians, the poor and the oppressed, interpreting the rages so deeply rooted in our societies.

His notable works include: A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival, In a Free State.

Like the great masters of the past, V.S. Naipaul tells stories which show us ourselves and the reality we live in. Many critics have lavished praise on Mr. Naipaul's elegant prose style and his ability to

address big issues through telling detail. His use of language is as precise as it is beautiful - simple, strong words, with which to express the humanity of all of us.

Naipaul has been awarded numerous literary prizes including the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a modern philosopher. In a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony.

However, Naipaul is a very controversial person. In his interviews as in his life, Naipaul is famously difficult, contradictory, a provocateur, an ideological lightning rod. Known for his surliness toward journalists and his bad-tempered statements about topics from the welfare state (he is against it) to the works of contemporary novelists (he is against them, too), Mr. Naipaul found himself the subject of a bitter attack. Naipaul's cold, unsparing look at the corruption and disarray of the postcolonial world, his disdain for Marxist liberation movements and his view that Islamic society leads to tyranny are implicitly political positions, and have made him the object of much political criticism.

After he had become an internationally famous writer with the whole world as his subject, Naipaul liked to claim that he was a man without commitments ,free to observe and tell the truth as other, more sentimental souls were not.

Additionally, Naipaul has mentioned some negative aspects of Islam in his works, such as nihilism among fundamentalists. Mr. Naipaul has written about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, basing his views on travels in non-Arabic places like Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. He has condemned Islam's "calamitous effect" and compared it to Western colonialism.

Furthermore, Mr. Naipaul is capable of racism. Naipaul has drawn fire over the years for unflattering portrayals of people whose skin is darker than his own.

Moreover, Naipaul attracted media controversy expressing his view that women's writing was inferior to men's, and that there was no female writer whom he would consider his equal.

Naipaul’s bottomless narcissism, together with the uncompromising intensity of his vision, holds the key to Naipaul’s literary power. He has the capacity in his writing to pro¬ject himself into a great variety of people and situations, allowing him to imbue his work with the sympathy and humanity. Many writers born abroad have settled in England and enriched its literature, but there has never been one like Naipaul. His personal story is moving; his achievement is extraordinary. There is a great moral to his life's work that the human comedy will come out all right because, when all is said and done, intellect is more powerful than fickleness and wickedness.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

1882-1941

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882, the youngest daughter of the large and talented Stephen family. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a distinguished critic, biographer, and philosopher. He was one of the most influential figures in the literary world of late Victorian England. Her mother, Julia Stephen, was a daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackery. She bore Leslie Stephen four children: Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrain. Though Woolf was denied the formal education allowed to males, she was able to take advantage of her father’s abundant library. She used to meet great writers such as Thomas Hardy and William Thackery.

The tranquillity of Woolf’s family life was shattered by series of mental breakdowns attributable to many sad events. The first one was the death of her mother in 1895. Two years later, Stella Duckworth, her stepsister, died. After the death of her mother and step-sister, Woolf was subjected to her father’s endless demands for sympathy and attention from his daughters. Woolf

suffered another mental breakdown combined with scarlet fever and attempted to commit suicide. When she recovered, she and her siblings moved to Bloomsbury.

Virginia Woolf was a member of a group known as Bloomsbury Group that included her brother, Thoby, and a brilliant young group of Cambridge graduates. This circle constantly expanded to include new friends such as T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen, Vita Sackville-West and her husband Sir Harold Nicholson. In this

intellectual stimulating environment, Virginia Woolf pursued her literary interests. Virginia Woolf got married to Leonard Woolf. He recognized his wife’s extra-ordinary talents from the beginning, and provided her with the encouragement she needed to fulfill her literary promise.

Virginia Woolf suffered from gloom and depression. Her work was interrupted by periods of physical and mental illness. She couldn’t tolerate the absurdity of life. She was under the influence of the psychological stress caused by war. She feared that her madness would return and she would not be able to continue writing. Woolf committed suicide by drowning herself in a river in March 1941.

Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Mrs Dalloway details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-World War I England. The novel's story is of Clarissa's preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of WW I suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations of his dear friend Evans who died in the war.

Existential issues

Existentialism is a term referring to a set of ideas applied to the individual who is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions such as despair, absurdity and alienation.

Clarissa Dalloway is both blessed and cursed with epiphanies and the sense of alienation and anxiety is ever-present:”She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxicabs , of being out, out, far out to the sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day”

Homosexuality

Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted to Sally at Bourton — 34 years later, she still considers the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life. She feels about women "as men feel", but she does not recognize these feelings as signs of homosexuality as some critics do.

Similarly, Septimus is haunted by the image of his dear friend Evans. Evans, his commanding officer, is described as being "undemonstrative in the company of women". The narrator describes Septimus and Evans behaving together like "two dogs playing on a hearth-rug" who, inseparable, "had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other

Feminism

Woolf portrays the impact of the patriarchal society of England on women’s lives. She portrays the loneliness and frustration of women that have been shaped by moral, ideological and conventional factors. Woolf called for excluding all masculine values of hierarchy, competition and dominance. She called for the society of women as alternative to the authoritarian structures, and insisted on the importance of women’s friendship against these structures. Virginia and Vita Sackville West experienced astonishing revelations with each other and in this book it is present in Clarissa’s love for Sally Seton

To the Lighthouse (1927)

To the Lighthouse follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships.

It is concerned with the Victorian arrangement of patriarchal society, and it questions the distinction between men and women’s social roles. Throughout the novel, we find that there are two distinctive worlds: the world of men, the masculine, and the world of women, the feminine. The masculine is marked by egotism, rigidity, and insistence on intellect over feeling. By contrast, the feminine is marked by imagination, intuition and compromise.

Orlando (1928)

A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, it is generally considered one of Woolf's most accessible novels. Orlando tells the story of a young man named Orlando, born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who decides not to grow old. He is briefly a lover to the elderly queen, but after her death has a brief, intense love affair with Sasha, a princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy. He is named ambassador to Constantinople. After

falling into a trance during a siege of that city in the seventeenth century, Orlando revives, transformed physically into a woman.

Fleeing to England, Orlando engages in a legal battle to regain the property she had held as a man. In the 18th century she becomes acquainted with such prominent literary figures as Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope. She marries in 19th century and struggles to reconcile her desire to write with Victorian notions of feminine duty. The novel concludes in 1928 as Orlando publishes the poem she has been revising for more than 3 centuries, is reunited with her husband, and achieves a unifying vision of life.

Several themes in Orlando reflect concerns that pervade Woolf's works, including marriage and the equality of the sexes, the difference between chronological time and a person's age as determined by wisdom and experience, and the enigma of individual personality. The novel was inspired in part by Woolf's desire to "revolutionize" biographical writing—a genre in which her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, had achieved considerable success during the Victorian era..

Drawing a portrait of Vita Sackville-West through a combination of fact and imagination, Orlando parodies Victorian biography, particularly in its mockery of documentary evidence. The androgynous character of Orlando—particularly the fact that Orlando's essential character is not altered though he changes from male to female—is seen to demonstrate Woolf's belief that each individual has both male and female characteristics and that intellectually men and women are indistinguishable

A Room of One's Own (1929)

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf based on a series of lectures she delivered at Cambridge Univer.

Themes

Women's Access to Education

Woolf notes that women have been kept from writing because of their relative poverty, and financial freedom will bring women the freedom to write

Judith Shakespeare

In one section, Woolf invented a fictional character, Judith, "Shakespeare's sister," to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the doors that were closed to women.

Building a History of Women's Writing

Woolf constructs a critical and historical account of women writers thus far. Woolf examines the careers of several female authors, including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, and George Eliot.

The Four Marys

The narrator of the work is at one point identified as "Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, or Mary Carmichael", alluding to the sixteenth century ballad Mary Hamilton.[13][14] In referencing the tale of a woman about to be hanged for existing outside of marriage and rejecting motherhood, the narrator identifies women writers such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially dangerous space.

Lesbianism

In another section, describing the work of a fictional woman writer, Mary Carmichael, Woolf deliberately invokes lesbianism: "Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – 'Chloe liked Olivia...' Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

In Orlando, Orlando is allowed to exist over four hundred years, returning to visit her/ his beloved oak tree in the many stages of her/his life. In Mrs. Dalloway(1925), Clarissa is visited with many figures and memories from her past; in To the Lighthouse (1927), the Ramsay summer house is visited by the same people at two different time periods.

1. How does Virginia Woolf conceive of time? What are some of the major themes she associates with time?

2. How does "home" play an important role in her novels?