1

The fall of the Usher house

Summary

An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless day.” This

house—the estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious. The

narrator observes that the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from

the decaying trees and murky ponds around it. He notes that although the house is decaying in

places—individual stones are disintegrating, for example—the structure itself is fairly solid. There

is only a small crack from the roof to the ground in the front of the building. He has come to the

house because his friend Roderick sent him a letter earnestly requesting his company. Roderick

wrote that he was feeling physically and emotionally ill, so the narrator is rushing to his

assistance. The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never

flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation to generation,

thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. The Usher family has

become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the inhabitants with their home.

The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way

through the long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is paler

and less energetic than he once was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and

fear and that his senses are heightened. The narrator also notes that Roderick seems afraid of

his own house. Roderick’s sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sickness—perhaps

catalepsy, the loss of control of one’s limbs—that the doctors cannot reverse. The narrator

spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. He listens to Roderick play the guitar and make

up words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he cannot lift Roderick’s spirit. Soon,

Roderick posits his theory that the house itself is unhealthy, just as the narrator supposes at the

beginning of the story.

Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below the house.

He wants to keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her body for

scientific examination, since her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps Roderick put

the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. The

narrator also realizes suddenly that Roderick and Madeline were twins. Over the next few days,

Roderick becomes even more uneasy. One night, the narrator cannot sleep either. Roderick

knocks on his door, apparently hysterical. He leads the narrator to the window, from which they

see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. The narrator tells Roderick that the gas is a

natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon.

The narrator decides to read to Roderick in order to pass the night away. He reads “Mad Trist” by

Sir Launcelot Canning, a medieval romance. As he reads, he hears noises that correspond to the

2

descriptions in the story. At first, he ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his imagination.

Soon, however, they become more distinct and he can no longer ignore them. He also notices

that Roderick has slumped over in his chair and is muttering to himself. The narrator approaches

Roderick and listens to what he is saying. Roderick reveals that he has been hearing these

sounds for days, and believes that they have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to

escape. He yells that she is standing behind the door. The wind blows open the door and

confirms Roderick’s fears: Madeline stands in white robes bloodied from her struggle. She attacks

Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As he

escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and crumbles to the ground.

Analysis

“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a

haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its easily

identifiable Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot

say for sure where in the world or exactly when the story takes place. Instead of standard

narrative markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement

weather and a barren landscape. We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and

neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood friend,

the narrator apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick has a

twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the

narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response. While Poe provides

the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot that

is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The story begins without complete

explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets

the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.

Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by

the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses

completely. Characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it

assumes a monstrous character of its own—the Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its

inhabitants. Poe, creates confusion between the living things and inanimate objects by doubling

the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of the Usher family, which he refers to as

the house of Usher. Poe employs the word “house” metaphorically, but he also describes a real

house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn also that this

confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The family has no enduring

branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of the house.

The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has

effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family.

3

The claustrophobia of the mansion affects the relations among characters. For example, the

narrator realizes late in the game that Roderick and Madeline are twins, and this realization

occurs as the two men prepare to entomb Madeline. The cramped and confined setting of the

burial tomb metaphorically spreads to the features of the characters. Because the twins are so

similar, they cannot develop as free individuals. Madeline is buried before she has actually died

because her similarity to Roderick is like a coffin that holds her identity. Madeline also suffers

from problems typical for women in -nineteenth--century literature. She invests all of her identity

in her body, whereas Roderick possesses the powers of intellect. In spite of this disadvantage,

Madeline possesses the power in the story, almost superhuman at times, as when she breaks out

of her tomb. She thus counteracts Roderick’s weak, nervous, and immobile disposition. Some

scholars have argued that Madeline does not even exist, reducing her to a shared figment

Roderick’s and the narrator’s imaginations. But Madeline proves central to the symmetrical and

claustrophobic logic of the tale. Madeline stifles Roderick by preventing him from seeing himself

as essentially different from her. She completes this attack when she kills him at the end of the

story.

Doubling spreads throughout the story. The tale highlights the Gothic feature of the

doppelganger, or character double, and portrays doubling in inanimate structures and literary

forms. The narrator, for example, first witnesses the mansion as a reflection in the tarn, or shallow

pool, that abuts the front of the house. The mirror image in the tarn doubles the house, but upside

down—an inversely symmetrical relationship that also characterizes the relationship between

Roderick and Madeline.

The story features numerous allusions to other works of literature, including the poems “The

Haunted Palace” and “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning. Poe composed them himself and

then fictitiously attributed them to other sources. Both poems parallel and thus predict the plot line

of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” “Mad Trist,” which is about the forceful entrance of Ethelred

into the dwelling of a hermit, mirrors the simultaneous escape of Madeline from her tomb. “Mad

Trist” spookily crosses literary borders, as though Roderick’s obsession with these poems ushers

their narratives into his own domain and brings them to life.

The crossing of borders pertains vitally to the Gothic horror of the tale. We know from Poe’s

experience in the magazine industry that he was obsessed with codes and word games, and this

story amplifies his obsessive interest in naming. “Usher” refers not only to the mansion and the

family, but also to the act of crossing a -threshold that brings the narrator into the perverse world

of Roderick and Madeline. Roderick’s letter ushers the narrator into a world he does not know,

and the presence of this outsider might be the factor that destroys the house. The narrator is the

lone exception to the Ushers’ fear of outsiders, a fear that accentuates the claustrophobic nature

of the tale. By undermining this fear of the outside, the narrator unwittingly brings down the whole

4

structure. A similar, though strangely playful crossing of a boundary transpires both in “Mad Trist”

and during the climactic burial escape, when Madeline breaks out from death to meet her mad

brother in a “tryst,” or meeting, of death. Poe thus buries, in the fictitious gravity of a medieval

romance, the puns that garnered him popularity in America’s magazines.

“The Fall of the House of Usher”

Roderick Usher - The owner of the mansion and last male in the Usher line. Roderick functions

as a doppelganger, or character double, for his twin sister, Madeline. He represents the mind to

her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of her physical illness.

Madeline Usher - Roderick’s twin sister and victim of catalepsy, a mysterious incapacitating

illness. Because the narrator is surprised to discover that Madeline is a twin, she signals the

narrator’s outsider relationship to the house of Usher.

Unnamed narrator - Roderick’s best boyhood friend. Contacted by Roderick during his

emotional distress, the narrator knows little about the house of Usher and is the first outsider to

visit the mansion in many years.

Roderick Usher

As one of the two surviving members of the Usher family in “The Fall of the House of Usher,”

Roderick is one of Poe’s character doubles, or doppelgangers. Roderick is intellectual and

bookish, and his twin sister, Madeline, is ill and bedridden. Roderick’s inability to distinguish

fantasy from reality resembles his sister’s physical weakness. Poe uses these characters to

explore the philosophical mystery of the relationship between mind and body. With these twins,

Poe imagines what would happen if the connection between mind and body were severed and

assigned to separate people. The twin imagery and the incestuous history of the Usher line

establish that Roderick is actually inseparable from his sister. Although mind and body are

separated, they remain dependent on each other for survival. This interdependence causes a

chain reaction when one of the elements suffers a breakdown. Madeline’s physical death

coincides with the collapse of both Roderick’s sanity and the Ushers’ mansion.

5

The Pit and the Pendulum

Summary

An unnamed narrator opens the story by revealing that he has been sentenced to death during

the time of the Inquisition—an institution of the Catholic government in fifteenth- and sixteenth-

century Spain that persecuted all Protestants and heretical Catholics. Upon receiving his death

sentence, the narrator swoons, losing consciousness. When he wakes, he faces complete

darkness. He is confused because he knows that the usual fate of Inquisition victims is a public

auto-da-fé, or “act of faith”—an execution normally taking the form of a hanging. He is afraid that

he has been locked in a tomb, but he gets up and walks a few paces. This mobility then leads him

to surmise that he is not in a tomb, but perhaps in one of the dungeons at Toledo, an infamous

Inquisition prison. He decides to explore. Ripping off a piece of the hem from his robe, he places

it against the wall so that he can count the number of steps required to walk the perimeter of the

cell. However, he soon stumbles and collapses to the ground, where he falls asleep.

Upon waking, the narrator finds offerings of water and bread, which he eagerly consumes. He

then resumes his exploration of the prison, determining it to be roughly one hundred paces

around. He decides to walk across the room. As he crosses, though, the hem that he ripped

earlier tangles around his feet and trips him. Hitting the floor, he realizes that, although most of

his body has fallen on solid ground, his face dangles over an abyss. To his dismay, he concludes

that in the center of the prison there exists a circular pit. To estimate its depth, the narrator breaks

a stone off the wall of the pit and throws it in, timing its descent. The pit, he believes, is quite

deep, with water at the bottom. Reflecting upon his proximity to the pit, the narrator explains its

function as a punishment of surprise, infamously popular with the Inquisitors. The narrator falls

asleep again and wakes up to more water and bread. After drinking, he immediately falls asleep

again and imagines that the water must have been drugged. When he wakes up the next time, he

finds the prison dimly lit. He remarks that he has overestimated its size, most likely having

duplicated his steps during his explorations.

The narrator discovers that he is now bound to a wooden board by a long strap wrapped around

his body. His captors offer him some flavorful meat in a dish, but no more water. When he looks

up, he notices that the figure of Time has been painted on the ceiling. Time, however, has been

made into a machine, specifically a pendulum, which appears to be swinging back and forth. The

narrator looks away from the ceiling, though, when he notices rats coming out of the pit and

swarming around his food. When he returns his focus to the ceiling, he discovers that the

pendulum is constructed like a scythe and is making a razor-sharp crescent in its descent toward

him. Its progress, however, is maddeningly slow and in a trajectory directly over his heart. Even

though he recognizes how dire the situation is, the narrator remains hopeful. When the pendulum

gets very close to him, he has a flash of insight. He rubs the food from his plate all over the strap

6

that is restraining his mobility. Drawn by the food, the rats climb on top of the narrator and chew

through the strap. As the pendulum nears his heart, the narrator breaks through the strap and

escapes from the pendulum’s swing. When he gets up, the pendulum retracts to the ceiling, and

he concludes that people must be watching his every move.

The walls of the prison then heat up and begin moving in toward the pit. The narrator realizes that

the enclosing walls will force him into the pit, an escape that will also mean his death. When there

remains not even an inch foothold for the narrator, the walls suddenly retract and cool down. In

his fear, however, the narrator has begun to faint into the pit. To his great surprise, though, a

mysterious person latches onto him and prevents his fall. The French general Lasalle and his

army have successfully taken over the prison in their effort to terminate the Inquisition.

Analysis

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is distinct among Poe’s first-person narrations. Unlike the

hypersensitive characters from other stories, such as Roderick in “The Fall of the House of

Usher” or the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” this narrator claims to lose the capacity of

sensation during the swoon that opens the story. He thus highlights his own unreliability in ways

that other narrators resist or deny. Upon describing his possible loss of sensation, though, the

narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” proceeds to convey the sensory details that he previously

claims are beyond him. The narrative pattern resembles that of other stories, such as “The Tell-

Tale Heart,” to the extent that the narrator says and does the opposite of what he originally

announces. This story diverges from the pattern, however, in that this narrator’s descriptions are

more objectively valid—that is, less concerned with proving the narrator’s own sanity than with

relaying and accounting for the elements of his incarceration. The story is also unusual among

Poe’s tales because it is hopeful. Hope is manifest in the story not only in the rescue that resolves

the tale, but also in the tale’s narrative strategy. The narrator maintains the capacity to recount

faithfully and rationally his surroundings while also describing his own emotional turmoil. Unlike in

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” for example, the burden of emotional distress does not hinder storytelling.

“The Pit and the Pendulum” also stands out as one of Poe’s most historically specific tales. Poe

counteracts the placelessness of a story like “The Fall of the House of Usher” with the historical

context of the Inquisition and its religious politics. This historical frame fills in for a personal

history of the narrator. We do not know the specific circumstances of his arrest, nor are we given

any arguments for his innocence or explanation for the barbarous cruelty of the Inquisitors. Poe’s

description of the pendulum blade’s descent toward the narrator’s heart is extremely graphic, but

Poe uses the portrayal of explicit violence to create a suspenseful story rather than to condemn

the Inquisition. The tale suggests a political agenda only implicitly. Poe does not critique the

ideological basis of the tale’s historical context. The narrative examines the physical and

7

emotional fluctuations of the pure present, leaving historical and moral judgments to us. “The Pit

and the Pendulum” is a traditional Poe story that breaks from Poe’s conventions: violent yet

ultimately hopeful, graphic yet politically allusive.

In the 1840 preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, a collection of his short stories,

Poe describes his authorial goal of “unity of design.” In “The Philosophy of Composition,” which

was written three years after “The Pit and the Pendulum,” he proclaims that the ideal short story

must be short enough to be read at a single sitting. Moreover, he argues that all elements of a

work of fiction should be crafted toward a single, intense effect. These critical theories merge in

“The Pit and the Pendulum”; this short tale ruminates, at every moment, on the horror of its

punishments without actually requiring that they be performed. Stripped of extraneous detail, the

story focuses on what horror truly is: not the physical pain of death, but the terrible realization that

a victim has no choice but to die. Whether the narrator chooses to jump into the pit or get sliced in

half by the pendulum, he faces an identical outcome—death.

The horror of this lack of choice is the effect for which everything in the story strives. The story,

however, holds out hope by demonstrating that true resolve when what someone chooses to do

seems most impossible. When threatened by the pendulum, the narrator does not succumb to the

swooning of his senses. He recruits his rational capacities and uses the hungry rats for his own

benefit. In this way, the narrator resembles a character like C. Auguste Dupin in “The Murders in

the Rue Morgue,” who can separate himself from the emotional overload of a situation and put

himself in a position to draw rational conclusions.

“The Pit and the Pendulum”

Unnamed narrator - A victim of the Inquisition. The narrator maintains sanity that many of Poe’s

other narrators lack. He functions with Dupin-like practicality despite the invisible enemy

threatening him with torture.

General Lasalle - A leader of the French army. General Lasalle is a real and positive presence

of authority in contrast to the shadowy and invisible leaders of the Inquisition.

8

The Oval Portrait

The Oval Portrait

Pedro the valet brings the injured narrator to an abandoned chateau because he does not

want the narrator to have to sleep outside. They force an entry and prepare for a night in

one of the building's smallest apartments, which lies in a minor tower. The apartment

has rich but decaying decorations, including tapestries, trophies, and paintings.

The narrator is semi-delirious from his wounds and takes an intense interest in the

paintings, so he has Pedro close the shutters, light a candelabrum, and open the bed

curtains so that the narrator can look at the paintings while reading a book he has found

on the pillow, which provides information about the paintings. Rather than going to sleep

along with his valet, the narrator reads and observes until around midnight, when he

decides to shift the candelabrum to throw more light on the book.

The main effect of the narrator's movement of the candles is that the light now reveals a

portrait that had been hidden in the dark near one of the bedposts. The painting is of a

girl on the cusp of becoming a woman, and the narrator feels a sudden impulse to close

his eyes, which he does in order to calm down and view the painting more clearly. When

he opens his eyes again, he sees that his senses had momentarily deceived him and

startled him into wakefulness.

The portrait displays a vignette of the girl's head and shoulders in the style of Thomas

Sully, an American portraitist. The details below the bust darken into the shadow of the

background, and the oval frame is covered with gold filigree in the Moorish style. The

painting is beautiful, as is the subject, but the narrator had momentarily mistaken it for a

living person, although it is obviously a painting. He continues to observe the portrait to

determine how the painting had caused the effect before respectfully returning the

candelabrum to its previous position so that he cannot see the painting.

The narrator opens his book to read about the oval portrait. It describes the subject as a

naturally cheerful "maiden of rarest beauty" who marries the painter for love. The

painter, the book relates, is passionate but studious, and as much in love with his

painting as he is with his wife. Consequently, although the wife is naturally happy and

loving of all things, she despises his art and the tools of painting because she has to

compete with his art for the painter's time and affection.

The wife's dislike of her husband's art eventually comes into conflict with his love for the

painting when he asks her to sit as a model for a portrait. She dislikes the idea, but being

a modest and obedient wife, she agrees to sit in the dark tower where the only light

comes from above so that he can paint. The painter is passionate about the painting, but

because of his moodiness and dreaminess, he does not notice that she is wasting away in

the dark. Nevertheless, she does not complain and continues to smile for his portrait

because she knows that her husband is obsessed with his project.

The portrait is so life-like that everyone who sees it marvels and concludes that it is the

combination of his skill and his love for his wife. However, as the portrait nears

completion, the painter shuts himself and his wife into the tower away from visitors so

that he can place all his concentration on his work, not realizing that his wife grows paler

as the portrait grows more life-like. When he finishes the painting, he stares at it and

realizes that "this is indeed Life itself!" before turning to his wife and realizing that she

died during his last few strokes of the brush.

Analysis

9

As one of the shortest of Poe's stories, "The Oval Portrait" consists of a brief one-

paragraph story framed within a larger vignette whose main purpose is to establish the

romantic Gothic mood in which the story occurs. The setting and basis of the plot are

shrouded in mystery; the narrator does not explain how or where he is wounded, and

with his servant, he enters an abandoned, decaying chateau that offers no more answers

than the narrator. The dark gloom of a deserted house is a classic background for a

Gothic story, and the tapestries and strange architecture of the building give the

narrator's choice of apartment a feeling of removal from the contemporary world.

Nothing of consequence occurs during the night, but the details provide a romantic

feeling of loss that serves as an introduction to the story of the oval portrait.

The oval portrait indicates the tension between the impermanence of life and the

intransience of art. The portrait's subject is full of life when she marries the painter, but

the as the guide book says, "The tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from

the cheeks of her who sat beside him." With his artistic powers, he has created a double

of his wife, but as in "William Wilson," both cannot simultaneously subsist for long

without one defeating the other. The history of the painting suggests that although the

metamorphosis from life to eternal art may create a masterful work of beauty that

simulates life, the narrator is only deceived by his "dreamy stupor" and by the sudden

reveal of the painting from the dark. A second, more intense look at the painting reveals

the illusion, and similarly, the painter of the story ends by giving up his wife for a mere

image.

The destruction of loved ones is a common theme in many of Poe's short stories, but

unlike in Poe's other stories, the painter does not cause his wife's death because of hate

or any negative emotions. Instead, his passion for his art simply overwhelms him to the

point where he can no longer see his wife except though the lens of his painting. Thus,

the story associates art and creativity with decay, not only within the story of the

painting but in the juxtaposition of "spirited modern paintings" with "rich, yet tattered

and antique" decorations within the narrator's room. In the stories of C. Auguste Dupin,

Poe praises the power of creativity tempered by the ability to maintain emotional

removal, but the passion of the painter in "The Oval Portrait" is unrestricted and hence

ultimately harmful in his search to immortalize his wife's image.

The association of beautiful women with death is prevalent in Poe's works, and is

especially prominent in "The Oval Portrait." The painter's wife is a beautiful woman even

before she agrees to model for her husband's portrait, but as she begins to fade away

under the influence of the tower, she becomes pale and wan and as a result could easily

fit the Romantic and Gothic ideal of the ethereal woman. Finally, as she dies, the process

of transfer between life and art completes, and her portrait captures her "immortal

beauty" before it can fade away in old age and memory. Art and aesthetics are

intrinsically connected, and the relationship between art and death places the painter's

wife next to other Poe characters such as Ligeia from the eponymous story, who also

become beautiful as they approach death.

Although "The Oval Portrait" centers on the painting of a woman, the painter's wife is

essentially a passive figure within the story. Docile and loving, she is akin to the canvas

of the portrait in that both are manipulated by the male painter, whose passion and drive

make him the active figure in the history of the painting. Furthermore, the wife is never

the active, observing character. She is only observed, both by her husband, who in the

throes of his art sees her only as a model, and by the narrator, who peers at her image

in order to while away the night (we know that the narrator is male because his servant

is described as a valet, a term commonly used for the male servant of a man). The wife's

fate acts as a criticism of the male domination of art, but her compliance and

submissiveness prevent her from serving as more than a silent warning.

Major themes

Monomania and The death of a beautiful woman

10

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter opens with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The

nameless narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the

customhouse’s attic, he discovered a number of documents, among them a manuscript that was

bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript,

the work of a past surveyor, detailed events that occurred some two hundred years before the

narrator’s time. When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a fictional account of

the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the final product.

The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman,

Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the

scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being

punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to

America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While

waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child.

She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public

shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town

scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.

The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling

himself Roger Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity

to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports

herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the

community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to

take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent

minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be

wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological

distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so

that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there

may be a connection between the minister’s torments and Hester’s secret, and he begins to test

Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth

discovers a mark on the man’s breast (the details of which are kept from the reader), which

convinces him that his suspicions are correct.

Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the

meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the

scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother are

returning home from a visit to a deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town

11

scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands.

Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor

marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. Hester can see that the minister’s condition is worsening,

and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to

Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.

Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that

Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The

former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a

ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her

scarlet letter and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without

the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday and

Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that

Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale,

leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He

impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing

a scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.

Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no

one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the

scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional

letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own.

When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which

bears a scarlet “A.”

Hester Prynne

Although The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, the book is not so much a consideration of

her innate character as it is an examination of the forces that shape her and the transformations

those forces effect. We know very little about Hester prior to her affair with Dimmesdale and her

resultant public shaming. We read that she married Chillingworth although she did not love him,

but we never fully understand why. The early chapters of the book suggest that, prior to her

marriage, Hester was a strong-willed and impetuous young woman—she remembers her parents

as loving guides who frequently had to restrain her incautious behavior. The fact that she has an

affair also suggests that she once had a passionate nature.

But it is what happens after Hester’s affair that makes her into the woman with whom the reader

is familiar. Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative.

She speculates on human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions. Hester’s

tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker. Although the narrator pretends to

12

disapprove of Hester’s independent philosophizing, his tone indicates that he secretly admires

her independence and her ideas.

Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a result of her experiences.

Hester moderates her tendency to be rash, for she knows that such behavior could cause her to

lose her daughter, Pearl. Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for the poor

and brings them food and clothing. By the novel’s end, Hester has become a protofeminist

mother figure to the women of the community. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long

gone. Women recognize that her punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers’ sexism, and

they come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer.

Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily

extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an

important figure.

Roger Chillingworth

As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human warmth. His twisted,

stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his distorted soul. From what the reader is told of his early

years with Hester, he was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet

expected her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend time with her.

Chillingworth’s decision to assume the identity of a “leech,” or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage

in equitable relationships with those around him, he feeds on the vitality of others as a way of

energizing his own projects. Chillingworth’s death is a result of the nature of his character. After

Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Similarly, Dimmesdale’s revelation that he

is Pearl’s father removes Hester from the old man’s clutches. Having lost the objects of his

revenge, the leech has no choice but to die.

Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is associated with secular and sometimes illicit

forms of knowledge, as his chemical experiments and medical practices occasionally verge on

witchcraft and murder. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the deliberate

destruction of others rather than a redress of wrongs. His desire to hurt others stands in contrast

to Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, which had love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have

come from the young lovers’ deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth

reaps deliberate harm.

Arthur Dimmesdale

Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an individual whose identity owes more to external

circumstances than to his innate nature. The reader is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of

some renown at Oxford University. His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the

kind of man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and women. However,

13

Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The fact that Hester takes all of the blame for

their shared sin goads his conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness

open up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Consequently, he becomes an

eloquent and emotionally powerful speaker and a compassionate leader, and his congregation is

able to receive meaningful spiritual guidance from him.

Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdale’s protestations of sinfulness. Given his

background and his penchant for rhetorical speech, Dimmesdale’s congregation generally

interprets his sermons allegorically rather than as expressions of any personal guilt. This drives

Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to still more

deterioration in his physical and spiritual condition. The town’s idolization of him reaches new

heights after his Election Day sermon, which is his last. In his death, Dimmesdale becomes even

more of an icon than he was in life. Many believe his confession was a symbolic act, while others

believe Dimmesdale’s fate was an example of divine judgment.

Pearl

Hester’s daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is quite young during most of the

events of this novel—when Dimmesdale dies she is only seven years old—and her real

importance lies in her ability to provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them pointed

questions and draws their attention, and the reader’s, to the denied or overlooked truths of the

adult world. In general, children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more

honest than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive of them all.

Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mother’s scarlet letter and of the society that produced it.

From an early age, she fixates on the emblem. Pearl’s innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments

about the letter raise crucial questions about its meaning. Similarly, she inquires about the

relationships between those around her—most important, the relationship between Hester and

Dimmesdale—and offers perceptive critiques of them. Pearl provides the text’s harshest, and

most penetrating, judgment of Dimmesdale’s failure to admit to his adultery. Once her father’s

identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at Dimmesdale’s death

she becomes fully “human,” leaving behind her otherworldliness and her preternatural vision.

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition

14

Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of

Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of

knowledge of good and evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of

their humanness, that which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once

expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate—two “labors” that

seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story

of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results

in knowledge—specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet

letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” leading her to

“speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England. As for

Dimmesdale, the “burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood

of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons

derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on

a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other

hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus,

they view sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. Their

answer to Hester’s sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and

Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth,

sympathy, and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be

incompatible with a state of purity.

The Nature of Evil

The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man,” the embodiment of

evil. Over the course of the novel, the “Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth,

and Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child. The characters

also try to root out the causes of evil: did Chillingworth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her

to the “evil” she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed responsible

for Chillingworth’s transformation into a malevolent being? This confusion over the nature and

causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true

evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points out in the

novel’s concluding chapter, both emotions depend upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-

knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not found in Hester

and Dimmesdale’s lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its

most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of

Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she

thinks Dimmesdale is the “Black Man,” because her father, too, has perverted his love.

Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of

love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.

15

Identity and Society

After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of

humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically

imprisoned, and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet

letter and resume a normal life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingworth tells

her that the town fathers are considering letting her remove the letter. Hester’s behavior is

premised on her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow others to determine it

for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of society’s

power over her: she would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from

which she desires to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of her

own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never

happened would mean denying a part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her

sin into her life.

Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the community’s minister,

he is more symbol than human being. Except for Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully

ignore his obvious anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never fully

recognizes the truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality and strength are gained by

quiet self-assertion and by a reconfiguration, not a rejection, of one’s assigned identity.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform

the text’s major themes.

Civilization Versus the Wilderness

In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent opposing behavioral

systems. The town represents civilization, a rule-bound space where everything one does is on

display and where transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a space

of natural rather than human authority. In the forest, society’s rules do not apply, and alternate

identities can be assumed. While this allows for misbehavior— Mistress Hibbins’s midnight rides,

for example—it also permits greater honesty and an escape from the repression of Boston. When

Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a few moments, they become happy young lovers

once again. Hester’s cottage, which, significantly, is located on the outskirts of town and at the

edge of the forest, embodies both orders. It is her place of exile, which ties it to the authoritarian

town, but because it lies apart from the settlement, it is a place where she can create for herself a

life of relative peace.

Night Versus Day

16

By emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the novel organizes the plot’s

events into two categories: those which are socially acceptable, and those which must take place

covertly. Daylight exposes an individual’s activities and makes him or her vulnerable to

punishment. Night, on the other hand, conceals and enables activities that would not be possible

or tolerated during the day—for instance, Dimmesdale’s encounter with Hester and Pearl on the

scaffold. These notions of visibility versus concealment are linked to two of the book’s larger

themes—the themes of inner versus socially assigned identity and of outer appearances versus

internal states. Night is the time when inner natures can manifest themselves. During the day,

interiority is once again hidden from public view, and secrets remain secrets.

Evocative Names

The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted allegorically. Chillingworth is cold

and inhuman and thus brings a “chill” to Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s lives. “Prynne” rhymes with

“sin,” while “Dimmesdale” suggests “dimness”—weakness, indeterminacy, lack of insight, and

lack of will, all of which characterize the young minister. The name “Pearl” evokes a biblical

allegorical device—the “pearl of great price” that is salvation. This system of naming lends a

profundity to the story, linking it to other allegorical works of literature such as The Pilgrim’s

Progress and to portions of the Bible. It also aligns the novel with popular forms of narrative such

as fairy tales.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or

concepts.

The Scarlet Letter

The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of

identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester

as an adulterer, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.” Finally, it becomes indeterminate:

the Native Americans who come to watch the Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person

of importance and status. Like Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hester’s affair

with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the letter seems insignificant, and thus

helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of the community’s system of judgment and

punishment. The child has been sent from God, or at least from nature, but the letter is merely a

human contrivance. Additionally, the instability of the letter’s apparent meaning calls into question

society’s ability to use symbols for ideological reinforcement. More often than not, a symbol

becomes a focal point for critical analysis and debate.

The Meteor

17

As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter 12, a meteor traces out

an “A” in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame

just as Hester does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which

thinks that it stands for “Angel” and marks Governor Winthrop’s entry into heaven. But “Angel” is

an awkward reading of the symbol. The Puritans commonly looked to symbols to confirm divine

sentiments. In this narrative, however, symbols are taken to mean what the beholder wants them

to mean. The incident with the meteor obviously highlights and exemplifies two different uses of

symbols: Puritan and literary.

Pearl

Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol. Pearl

is a sort of living version of her mother’s scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual

sin and the indicator of a transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of Hester’s “sin,” Pearl is more

than a mere punishment to her mother: she is also a blessing. She represents not only “sin” but

also the vital spirit and passion that engendered that sin. Thus, Pearl’s existence gives her

mother reason to live, bolstering her spirits when she is tempted to give up. It is only after

Dimmesdale is revealed to be Pearl’s father that Pearl can become fully “human.” Until then, she

functions in a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an unsolved mystery.

18

Wakefield

Wakefield

Summary

At the beginning of the story, Hawthorne/the narrator refers to a story he read once in a

newspaper or magazine about a man who leaves his wife for 20 years but lives, all this

time, only a block away from her. The man observed his wife often, and only returned

after his affairs had been settled and memory of him had passed. He simply returned

home, resumed life, and served as a faithful husband for the rest of their lives.

One October evening, a man named Wakefield tells his wife that he is going on a

journey, and will be back for supper on Friday. Instead of going on a journey, however,

he ventures only to an apartment one street away. In the morning, he considers his next

step, realizing that his purpose is not well defined. He is curious about what is happening

at home in his absence, and wonders what will come of the matters in which he was once

the central figure.

He walks by his old house, but feels strangely disconnected from it, as if he had been

away for a long time, and it had changed in his absence. He begins to live a separate life,

purchases a disguise and grows determined to stay away from his home until his wife is

“frightened half to death”. On multiple occasions he passes by his house, watching her

grow paler and paler. One day, a doctor visits the home; from afar, Wakefield wonders if

his wife will die. But, she recovers, and once again Wakefield believes that she will no

longer long for him. Ten years pass.

One day, Wakefield and his wife, now both in old age, pass one another on the streets of

London. Their hands touch and they look into each other’s eyes, but the crowd carries

them away. His wife continues walking into church, although she pauses to look back at

the street. Wakefield, on the other hand, runs back to his apartment, and cries out that

he is mad. Life has passed him by.

Finally, twenty years after his departure, Wakefield is taking his customary walk toward

his old house when he sees a comfortable fire in the second floor and the figure of his

wife. The warmth of the house seemed starkly contrasted to the rainy, windy road on

which he walked. Wakefield walks into his house and resumes his old way of life.

Hawthorne/the narrator leaves the reunited couple at the threshold, and suggests that:

"Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted

to a system" and "by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful

risk of losing his place forever".

Analysis

Hawthorne takes a true story, summed up in the beginning paragraphs, and attempts to

analyze the subject through the fictional character Wakefield. He tries to uncover the

thoughts residing in the head of a man who ran away from home for twenty years.

Although Wakefield’s actions are indeed out of the ordinary and few men may actually

practice such strange actions, the fear of replacement and idea of running away from

home is a common childhood fantasy. Indeed, Wakefield’s actions make him seem like a

child, running away from home just to see how much his wife will miss him. He “finds

himself curious to know the progress of matters at home - how his exemplary wife will

endure her widowhood…how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which he

was a central object will be affected by his removal”. A sense of childish narcissism and

selfishness tint these words; Wakefield sees himself at the center of many lives, and

desires to see how his disappearance will affect those around him. His selfishness borders

on cruelty as he actually wishes to disturb his wife; even after witnessing her fall ill, he

still refuses to return home.

19

Some authors have characterized his wish as a “deep wish we all have occasionally: to be

invisible, to observe the events of the world without the contamination of one’s

presence”. In Hawthorne’s time, wandering the streets of London “unnoticed and

unknown” was a very real possibility. Isolation is therefore both a desire in the hearts of

all men and a reality that some, if taken to these drastic measures, can achieve.

But, removing oneself from society comes at a cost – Wakefield loses his individuality,

melting into the streets of London. And, a man who turns away from social

responsibilities may find that he is, indeed, replaceable. As Hawthorne writes, “stepping

aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever”.

At the end of the story, it seems as if Wakefield reenters his home and carries on with

life. Readers, however, can only speculate as to what becomes of Wakefield – whether he

is happily received by his wife, or lives forever in solitude – after his lengthy absence.

20

Moby Dick

Ishmael, the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several

voyages as a sailor but none as a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he

stays in a whalers’ inn. Since the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed with a harpooner from

the South Pacific named Queequeg. At first repulsed by Queequeg’s strange habits and shocking

appearance (Queequeg is covered with tattoos), Ishmael eventually comes to appreciate the

man’s generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together.

They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure

berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales.

Peleg and Bildad, the Pequod’s Quaker owners, drive a hard bargain in terms of salary. They

also mention the ship’s mysterious captain, Ahab, who is still recovering from losing his leg in an

encounter with a sperm whale on his last voyage.

The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up of men from many

different countries and races. Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Ahab makes his first

appearance on deck, balancing gingerly on his false leg, which is made from a sperm whale’s

jaw. He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who

took his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of evil. Ahab nails a gold doubloon

to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the whale. As

thePequod sails toward the southern tip of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted.

During the hunt, a group of men, none of whom anyone on the ship’s crew has seen before on

the voyage, emerges from the hold. The men’s leader is an exotic-looking man named Fedallah.

These men constitute Ahab’s private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and

Peleg. Ahab hopes that their skills and Fedallah’s prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for

Moby Dick.

The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught

and processed for their oil. From time to time, the ship encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab

always demands information about Moby Dick from their captains. One of the ships,

the Jeroboam, carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens

Moby Dick. His predictions seem to carry some weight, as those aboard his ship who have

hunted the whale have met disaster. While trying to drain the oil from the head of a captured

sperm whale, Tashtego, one of the Pequod’s harpooners, falls into the whale’s voluminous head,

which then rips free of the ship and begins to sink. Queequeg saves Tashtego by diving into the

ocean and cutting into the slowly sinking head.

During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequod’s black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left

behind in the middle of the ocean. He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a

21

crazy but prophetic jester for the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, a

whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick.

The two captains discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter,

cannot understand Ahab’s lust for vengeance. Not long after, Queequeg falls ill and has the ship’s

carpenter make him a coffin in anticipation of his death. He recovers, however, and the coffin

eventually becomes thePequod’s replacement life buoy.

Ahab orders a harpoon forged in the expectation that he will soon encounter Moby Dick. He

baptizes the harpoon with the blood of the Pequod’s three harpooners. The Pequod kills several

more whales. Issuing a prophecy about Ahab’s death, Fedallah declares that Ahab will first see

two hearses, the second of which will be made only from American wood, and that he will be

killed by hemp rope. Ahab interprets these words to mean that he will not die at sea, where there

are no hearses and no hangings. A typhoon hits the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire.

Ahab takes this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and success, but Starbuck, the

ship’s first mate, takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest. After

the storm ends, one of the sailors falls from the ship’s masthead and drowns—a grim

foreshadowing of what lies ahead.

Ahab’s fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the mad Pip is

now his constant companion. The Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find

the great whale. The ship encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel and the Delight, both of

which have recently had fatal encounters with the whale. Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The

harpoon boats are launched, and Moby Dick attacks Ahab’s harpoon boat, destroying it. The next

day, Moby Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered once more. The whale is harpooned,

but Moby Dick again attacks Ahab’s boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged

overboard to his death. Starbuck must maneuver thePequod between Ahab and the angry whale.

On the third day, the boats are once again sent after Moby Dick, who once again attacks them.

The men can see Fedallah’s corpse lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. Moby Dick rams

the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then caught in a harpoon line and hurled out of his harpoon boat

to his death. All of the remaining whaleboats and men are caught in the vortex created by the

sinking Pequod and pulled under to their deaths. Ishmael, who was thrown from a boat at the

beginning of the chase, was far enough away to escape the whirlpool, and he alone survives. He

floats atop Queequeg’s coffin, which popped back up from the wreck, until he is picked up by

the Rachel, which is still searching for the crewmen lost in her earlier encounter with Moby Dick.

Ishmael

22

Despite his centrality to the story, Ishmael doesn’t reveal much about himself to the reader. We

know that he has gone to sea out of some deep spiritual malaise and that shipping aboard a

whaler is his version of committing suicide—he believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost

to the world. It is apparent from Ishmael’s frequent digressions on a wide range of subjects—from

art, geology, and anatomy to legal codes and literature—that he is intelligent and well educated,

yet he claims that a whaling ship has been “[his] Yale College and [his] Harvard.” He seems to be

a self-taught Renaissance man, good at everything but committed to nothing. Given the mythic,

romantic aspects of Moby-Dick, it is perhaps fitting that its narrator should be an enigma: not

everything in a story so dependent on fate and the seemingly supernatural needs to make perfect

sense.

Additionally, Ishmael represents the fundamental contradiction between the story of Moby-

Dick and its setting. Melville has created a profound and philosophically complicated tale and set

it in a world of largely uneducated working-class men; Ishmael, thus, seems less a real character

than an instrument of the author. No one else aboard the Pequod possesses the proper

combination of intellect and experience to tell this story. Indeed, at times even Ishmael fails

Melville’s purposes, and he disappears from the story for long stretches, replaced by dramatic

dialogues and soliloquies from Ahab and other characters.

Ahab

Ahab, the Pequod’s obsessed captain, represents both an ancient and a quintessentially modern

type of hero. Like the heroes of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal

flaw, one he shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. His tremendous

overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like a god, he can

enact his will and remain immune to the forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the

embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale monomaniacally because he

believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to the critic M. H. Abrams, such a

tragic hero “moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than

he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in

our own lesser and fallible selves.”

Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not

necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in his case both psychological and physical,

inflicted by life in a harsh world. He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic

opposition that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him toward what he

considers a destined end.

Moby Dick

23

In a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the reader has no access to the White Whale’s

thoughts, feelings, or intentions. Instead, Moby Dick is an impersonal force, one that many critics

have interpreted as an allegorical representation of God, an inscrutable and all-powerful being

that humankind can neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free will and cannot be

defeated, only accommodated or avoided. Ishmael tries a plethora of approaches to describe

whales in general, but none proves adequate. Indeed, as Ishmael points out, the majority of a

whale is hidden from view at all times. In this way, a whale mirrors its environment. Like the

whale, only the surface of the ocean is available for human observation and interpretation, while

its depths conceal unknown and unknowable truths. Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get

his hands on a “whole” whale, he is unable to determine which part—the skeleton, the head, the

skin—offers the best understanding of the whole living, breathing creature; he cannot localize the

essence of the whale. This conundrum can be read as a metaphor for the human relationship

with the Christian God (or any other god, for that matter): God is unknowable and cannot be

pinned down.

Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask

The Pequod’s three mates are used primarily to provide philosophical contrasts with Ahab.

Starbuck, the first mate, is a religious man. Sober and conservative, he relies on his Christian

faith to determine his actions and interpretations of events. Stubb, the second mate, is jolly and

cool in moments of crisis. He has worked in the dangerous occupation of whaling for so long that

the possibility of death has ceased to concern him. A fatalist, he believes that things happen as

they are meant to and that there is little that he can do about it. Flask simply enjoys the thrill of

the hunt and takes pride in killing whales. He doesn’t stop to consider consequences at all and is

“utterly lost . . . to all sense of reverence” for the whale. All three of these perspectives are used

to accentuate Ahab’s monomania. Ahab reads his experiences as the result of a conspiracy

against him by some larger force. Unlike Flask, he thinks and interprets. Unlike Stubb, he

believes that he can alter his world. Unlike Starbuck, he places himself rather than some external

set of principles at the center of the cosmic order that he discerns.

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Limits of Knowledge

As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary

excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that, throughout history, the whale has taken on an

incredible multiplicity of meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every

24

discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of

these systems of knowledge, however, including art, taxonomy, and phrenology, fails to give an

adequate account. The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive

need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation

(men cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always

limited and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical

significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man,

and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal.

The Deceptiveness of Fate

In addition to highlighting many portentous or foreshadowing events, Ishmael’s narrative contains

many references to fate, creating the impression that thePequod’s doom is inevitable. Many of

the sailors believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A number

of things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that

they see the work of fate and that fate either doesn’t exist or is one of the many forces about

which human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly exploits the

sailors’ belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby Dick is their

common destiny. Moreover, the prophesies of Fedallah and others seem to be undercut in

Chapter 99, when various individuals interpret the doubloon in different ways, demonstrating that

humans project what they want to see when they try to interpret signs and portents.

The Exploitative Nature of Whaling

At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist,

hierarchically structured world. The ship’s crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all

races who seem to get along harmoniously. Ishmael is initially uneasy upon meeting Queequeg,

but he quickly realizes that it is better to have a “sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” for a

shipmate. Additionally, the conditions of work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of

egalitarianism, since men are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of

whaling parallels the other exploitative activities—buffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair trade with

indigenous peoples—that characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of

the Pequod’s mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and

nonwhites perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. Flask actually stands on

Daggoo, his African harpooner, in order to beat the other mates to a prize whale. Ahab is

depicted as walking over the black youth Pip, who listens to Ahab’s pacing from below deck, and

is thus reminded that his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale.

Motifs

25

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform

the text’s major themes.

Whiteness

Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening: albinos,

creatures that live in extreme and inhospitable environments, waves breaking against rocks.

These examples reverse the traditional association of whiteness with purity. Whiteness conveys

both a lack of meaning and an unreadable excess of meaning that confounds individuals. Moby

Dick is the pinnacle of whiteness, and Melville’s characters cannot objectively understand the

White Whale. Ahab, for instance, believes that Moby Dick represents evil, while Ishmael fails in

his attempts to determine scientifically the whale’s fundamental nature.

Surfaces and Depths

Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its entirety, noting that only

the surfaces of objects and environments are available to the human observer. On a live whale,

for example, only the outer layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to determine

what constitutes the whale’s skin, or which part—skeleton, blubber, head—offers the best

understanding of the entire animal. Moreover, as the whale swims, it hides much of its body

underwater, away from the human gaze, and no one knows where it goes or what it does. The

sea itself is the greatest frustration in this regard: its depths are mysterious and inaccessible to

Ishmael. This motif represents the larger problem of the limitations of human knowledge.

Humankind is not all-seeing; we can only observe, and thus only acquire knowledge about, that

fraction of entities—both individuals and environments—to which we have access: surfaces.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or

concepts.

The Pequod

Named after a Native American tribe in Massachusetts that did not long survive the arrival of

white men and thus memorializing an extinction, the Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a

gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of

violent death. It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes

one.

Moby Dick

26

Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. To thePequod’s crew,

the legendary White Whale is a concept onto which they can displace their anxieties about their

dangerous and often very frightening jobs. Because they have no delusions about Moby Dick

acting malevolently toward men or literally embodying evil, tales about the whale allow them to

confront their fear, manage it, and continue to function. Ahab, on the other hand, believes that

Moby Dick is a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world, and he feels that it is his destiny

to eradicate this symbolic evil.

Moby Dick also bears out interpretations not tied down to specific characters. In its inscrutable

silence and mysterious habits, for example, the White Whale can be read as an allegorical

representation of an unknowable God. As a profitable commodity, it fits into the scheme of white

economic expansion and exploitation in the nineteenth century. As a part of the natural world, it

represents the destruction of the environment by such hubristic expansion.

Queequeg’s Coffin

Queequeg’s coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has it built when he is

seriously ill, but when he recovers, it becomes a chest to hold his belongings and an emblem of

his will to live. He perpetuates the knowledge tattooed on his body by carving it onto the coffin’s

lid. The coffin further comes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the Pequod’s life

buoy. When thePequod sinks, the coffin becomes Ishmael’s buoy, saving not only his life but the

life of the narrative that he will pass on.

27

Bartleby, the Scrivener

Summary

The narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener" is the Lawyer, who runs a law practice on Wall Street in

New York. The Lawyer begins by noting that he is an "elderly man," and that his profession has

brought him "into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat

singular set of men the law-copyists, or scriveners." While the Lawyer knows many interesting

stories of such scriveners, he bypasses them all in favor of telling the story of Bartleby, whom he

finds to be the most interesting of all the scriveners. Bartleby is, according to the Lawyer, "one of

those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and, in his case,

those were very small."

Before introducing Bartleby, the Lawyer describes the other scriveners working in his office at this

time. The first is Turkey, a man who is about the same age as the Lawyer (around sixty). Turkey

has been causing problems lately. He is an excellent scrivener in the morning, but as the day

wears on—particularly in the afternoon—he becomes more prone to making mistakes, dropping

ink plots on the copies he writes. He also becomes more flushed, with an ill temper, in the

afternoon. The Lawyer tries to help both himself and Turkey by asking Turkey only to work in the

mornings, but Turkey argues with him, so the Lawyer simply gives him less important documents

in the afternoon.

The second worker is Nippers, who is much younger and more ambitious than Turkey. At twenty-

five years old, he is a comical opposite to Turkey, because he has trouble working in the morning.

Until lunchtime, he suffers from stomach trouble, and constantly adjusts the height of the legs on

his desk, trying to get them perfectly balanced. In the afternoons, he is calmer and works steadily.

The last employee—not a scrivener, but an errand-boy—is Ginger Nut. His nickname comes from

the fact that Turkey and Nippers often send him to pick up ginger nut cakes for them.

The Lawyer spends some time describing the habits of these men and then introduces Bartleby.

Bartleby comes to the office to answer an ad placed by the Lawyer, who at that time needed

more help. The Lawyer hires Bartleby and gives him a space in the office. At first, Bartleby seems

to be an excellent worker. He writes day and night, often by no more than candlelight. His output

is enormous, and he greatly pleases the Lawyer.

One day, the Lawyer has a small document he needs examined. He calls Bartleby in to do the

job, but Bartleby responds: "I would prefer not to." This answer amazes the Lawyer, who has a

"natural expectancy of instant compliance." He is so amazed by this response, and the calm way

28

Bartleby says it, that he cannot even bring himself to scold Bartleby. Instead, he calls in Nippers

to examine the document instead.

Analysis

"Bartleby the Scrivener" is one of Melville's most famous stories. It is also one of the most difficult

to interpret. For decades, critics have argued over numerous interpretations of the story.

The plot is deceptively simple. The Lawyer, a well-established man of sixty working on Wall

Street, hires a copyist—seemingly no different from any other copyist, though the Lawyer is well-

accustomed to quirky copyists. But Bartleby isdifferent. Bartleby's initial response of "I would

prefer not to," seems innocent at first, but soon it becomes a mantra, a slogan that is an essential

part of Bartleby's character. It is, as the Lawyer points out, a form of "passive resistance."

Bartleby's quiet, polite, but firm refusal to do even the most routine tasks asked of him has always

been the main source of puzzlement. Bartleby has been compared to philosophers ranging from

Cicero, whose bust rests a few inches above the Lawyer's head in his office, to Mahatma Gandhi.

His refusal of the Lawyer's requests has been read as a critique of the growing materialism of

American culture at this time. It is significant that the Lawyer's office is on Wall Street; in fact, the

subtitle of "Bartleby" is "A Story of Wall Street." Wall Street was at this time becoming the hub of

financial activity in the United States, and Melville (as well as other authors, including Edgar Allan

Poe) were quick to note the emerging importance of money and its management in American life.

Under this reading, Bartleby's stubborn refusal to do what is asked of him amounts to a kind of

heroic opposition to economic control.

But if this interpretation is correct—if Melville intended such a reading—it seems to be an

extremely subtle theme, since the Lawyer never really contemplates Bartleby's refusal to be a

working member of society. He is simply amazed by Bartleby's refusal to do anything, even eat, it

seems, or find a place to live. Throughout the story, Bartleby simply exists; he does do some

writing, but eventually he even gives that up in favor of staring at the wall. There are many more

interpretations of Bartleby and the story, which will be discussed in the next section. It is

important to note the other characters in the story, as well as Melville's style.

Aside from the Lawyer and Bartleby, the only other characters in the story are Turkey, Nippers

and Ginger Nut. Turkey and Nippers are the most important. Neither of their nicknames appears

to really fit their character. Turkey does not seem to resemble a turkey in any way, unless his

wrinkled skin, perhaps turned red when he has one of his characteristic fits, makes him look like

he has a turkey's neck. Nippers might be so named because he is ill-tempered and "nippy" in the

morning, but this too seems like a rather glib interpretation. Melville seems to have named the

characters in a way that makes them memorable, but in a way that also alienates them

29

somewhat; by refusing to give them real names, Melville emphasizes the fact that they can easily

be defined by their function, behavior or appearance—each is just another nameless worker.

Turkey and Nippers are also reminiscent of nursery rhyme or fairy tale characters, partially due to

their strange names, but also in the way their behavior complements one another. Turkey is a

good worker in the morning, while Nippers grumbles over a sour stomach and plays with his

desk. In the afternoon, Turkey is red-faced and angry, making blots on his copies, while Nippers

works quietly and diligently. As the Lawyer points out, they relieve each other like guards. They

are the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the Wall Street world.

Some critics have proposed that the Lawyer is a "collector" of sorts; that is, he collects

"characters" in the from of strange scriveners: "I have known very many of them and, if I pleased,

could relate [diverse] histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental

souls might weep." Bartleby, then, is the "prize" of the Lawyer's collection, the finest tale: the

Lawyer says, "I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of

Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of." Under this reading, the

Lawyer seems a little cold in his recollection—as if Bartleby were no more than an interesting

specimen of an insect. The role of the Lawyer is just one of the many hotly debated aspects of

the story. Of particular interest is the question of whether the Lawyer is ultimately a friend or foe

to Bartleby. His treatment of Bartleby can be read both as sympathetic, pitying, or cold,

depending on one's interpretation. Some readers simply resign themselves to the fact that

nothing in Melville is set in such black-and-white terms.

The Lawyer - The Lawyer is the unnamed narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener." He owns a law

firm on Wall Street, and he employs four men as scriveners, or copyists: Turkey, Nippers, Ginger

Nut, and Bartleby. The Lawyer is about sixty years old. He is level-headed, industrious, and has a

good mind for business. He is good at dealing with people, at least until he meets Bartleby.

Bartleby - Bartleby is a young man hired by the Lawyer to serve as a scrivener, or law- copyist.

He starts out as an excellent copyist, but when asked to examine his work for errors, he replies

that he "would prefer not to." Bartleby soon answers anything he is asked to do with "I would

prefer not to," and he slowly drives the Lawyer and his fellow scriveners crazy.

Read an in-depth analysis of Bartleby.

Turkey - Turkey is the eldest employee of the Lawyer in "Bartleby the Scrivener." He is a good

worker in the morning, but in the afternoon his face becomes flush and he gets a short temper.

He makes more mistakes in his work in the afternoon.

Nippers - Nippers is another scrivener, or law-copyist, employed by the Lawyer in "Bartleby the

Scrivener." Nipper is the opposite of his fellow scrivener Turkey; Nipper is young, and he works

30

best in the afternoon. In the morning, he is troubled by stomach problems and a constant need to

adjust the height of his desk.

Ginger Nut - Ginger Nut is the the Lawyer's errand boy in "Bartleby the Scrivener." His name

comes from the fact that Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby often send him to get ginger nut cakes.

Charity and Selfishness

"Bartleby the Scrivener" contains a very critical look at "charity," and the story may be a wry

commentary by Melville on the way materialism and consumerism were affecting it. The Lawyer

thinks of charitable actions in terms of cost and returns: "Poor fellow! thought I, he means no

mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence I can get along with him. If I turn him away he will fall

in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated here I can cheaply

purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby will cost me little or nothing, while I lay

up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience." Note the lawyer's

train of thought: he first pities Bartleby; then he recognizes the fact that Bartleby is useful to him;

then he notes that Bartleby would be ill-treated at another office, presumably making him less

useful to some other employer and, by extension, society; and finally, the Lawyer pats himself on

the back for keeping Bartleby on as a worker. He "purchases" self-approval, a "sweet morsel for

his conscience" which will cost him little. Through "charity," the Lawyer is actually just buying

himself a good conscience. In a broader sense, he also believes he is making the best use

possible of Bartleby. If he can at least get Bartleby to make copies, then at least he is doing

something.

Of course, eventually Bartleby refuses even to make copies. Still, the Lawyer decides that he will

let Bartleby live on in his offices, so that he doesn't starve; but as soon as Bartleby affects his

business, the Lawyer moves his offices and abandons Bartleby. The Lawyer does make the

kindly offer to let Bartleby live in his own home, but the Lawyer might do this just to relieve himself

of the annoyance of having to dealing with the tenants who complain about Bartleby. Of course,

were the Lawyer to take Bartleby into his home, he could purchase great amounts of good

conscience. But Bartleby refuses the Lawyer's charity, as he does whenever it is offered to him,

saying that he "would prefer not to." The Lawyer then decides to keep Bartleby on his staff as a

sort of "charity case."

Food

One of the most obvious motifs in "Bartleby the Scrivener" is the amount of food references. Two

of the Lawyer's scriveners have food-related names: Turkey and Ginger Nut. Ginger Nut is

nicknamed for the food cake he delivers to his co-workers, but Turkey's name is less obvious.

31

One of the peculiarities that the Lawyer notices about Bartleby is his lack of eating. He notes that

Bartleby sometimes eats the ginger nut cakes, but that's all. The Lawyer considers this in one of

the most amusing passages of the story: "My mind then ran on in reveries concerning the

probable effects upon the human constitution of living entirely on ginger-nuts what was ginger? A

hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon

Bartleby. Probably he preferred it should have none."

In a story where materialism plays a role, food makes a good metaphor for desire and avarice.

Bartleby, who prefers not to deal with these things, is ultimately killed by food, or rather, the lack

of it. Bartleby's death, while symbolically caused by his withdrawal into apathy, is physically

caused by his refusal to eat or rather, his preference not to eat—his preference not to engage in

the avarice and greed of his materialistic world.