Please Note: The following four essays have not been formatted to MLA or APA standards. They are provided here as samples of decent literary analysis. At the request of the students who wrote them, names have been changed.
Reflections in The Scarlet Letter
by Sue DeNimm
Nathaniel Hawthorne uses reflections in The Scarlet Letter—both in literal reflections, such as Hester Prynne looking at herself in polished armor; and in reflections of light, such as the color of the scarlet letter reflecting off the jail walls—to reveal what psychologically plagues the characters. Through their interpretations of the various reflections, we get a sense of fear and doom about their past sins, about secrets being revealed, and of foreshadowing of future events—good and bad—based on those anxieties.
Hawthorne first mentions reflections in “The Custom House.” In attempting to mold his findings of the actual scarlet letter and manuscripts into a story, he says his “imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which [he] did [his] best to people it” (33). In those moments of meditation, he watches the dying glow of his fire and the moonbeams reflecting off his furniture, casting a shadow and repetition of the room “with one remove further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative” (35). This sets the tone for Hawthorne’s use of reflection. First, there is the feeling of revelation, that reflections have the power to uncover secrets; and second, the feeling that because reflections are a removal from the actual, the person who views them doesn’t see the reality, but the imitation of reality. They are left to their interpretations of those imitations, thus showing us what is really on their mind. Simply put, reflections reveal the thoughts of the beholder.
Five reflections are used to show something sinister in Pearl’s nature—comparing her specifically to an elf. These reflections create an eerie, almost demonic, demonstration of her elfishness. The first is when Hester Prynne looks at her own reflection in the eyes of the infant Pearl and sees a “freakish, elfish cast” (89). Then she sees another face in the reflection: “fiend-like, full of smiling malice…as if an evil spirit possessed the child,” an illusion that tortures her many times afterwards (89). We feel, along with Hester, that something isn’t right with the child; that darker forces are at play. As much as we might want to love Pearl, we—like Hester—sense something off kilter about her. The visions are inconclusive, and we are left to wonder at the meaning of the ghastly reflections: is there something inherently evil in Pearl? Are we seeing things only as Hester sees them? Or are these fiend-like images merely an allusion to Chillingworth, creating an anxiety of his unseen presence, and foreshadowing the role he will play later in the book?
At the Governor’s home, while Hester and Pearl look at their reflection in a polished suit of armor, Pearl points at the helmet and smiles at her mother, “with [that] elfish intelligence…That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl’s shape” (97). Hester has seen that elfish look in Pearl before, but here, in the armor’s reflection, she sees it with greater intensity, revealing her unspoken fears of something evil in the child. The reflection almost offers her a clearer reality, viewing her child from removed eyes, as if Pearl’s soul—rather than her physical being—is reflected in the metal. She sees it again when she stands with Pearl and Dimmesdale on the scaffold under the cover of night and a meteor lights up the sky. Pearl, pointing to Roger Chillingworth standing nearby, had “witchcraft in [her] eyes… [wearing] that naughty smile which made its expression so elfish” (142).
But Hester isn’t the only one who perceives Pearl’s elfish look through these reflections. Pearl sees it herself, as she views her reflection in a wading pool below her house; she has an “elf-smile in her eyes” (154). But it hardly seems to faze her, as she “flirt[s] fancifully with her own image,” and finding “that either she or the image was unreal…turned elsewhere for a better pastime” (162).
Dimmesdale sees it too, when he meets Hester in the woods. Pearl—upon their beckoning—stands fixed on the opposite edge of the stream. They observe her reflection, “a perfect picture of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty…but more refined and spiritualized than the reality” (190). Dimmesdale asks, “Is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream?” (191).
Dimmesdale sees a darker revelation of himself through reflections. Early in the book, as Hawthorne details Dimmesdale’s internal suffering, Dimmesdale sometimes “view[s] his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light he could throw on it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself” (133). In these visions, he sees “a herd of diabolic shapes…a group of shining angels…dead friends of his youth…his white-bearded father…his mother…and Hester Prynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman’s own breast” (133-134). We not only see a glimpse of Dimmesdale’s weighted conscience, but a revelation to the climax of the book, when Dimmesdale opens his shirt, with his dying words, and the crowd is rumored to have seen a scarlet letter on his own breast.
We also see Dimmesdale’s grief and fear of discovery during the meteor moment, when he sees the meteor’s red light reflecting off the clouds, making the letter “A.” It was common, Hawthorne explains, for the Puritans to view meteors as “revelation from a supernatural force” in terms of the people as a whole (142). But Dimmesdale sees it as a personal revelation, which could only be “the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature” (143). Others saw the reflection in the clouds, and the next day the sexton tells Dimmesdale the “A” stood for “Angel,” since the good Governor Winthrop had just passed away. But Dimmesdale, in his “guilty imagination” is struck with horror and sees it as an “awful hieroglyphic” directed toward him (142). This is expounded upon later, in referring to Hester Prynne: “She had been offered to the world, these seven years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide—all written in the symbol—all plainly manifest—had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame!” (189). Perhaps Dimmesdale’s greatest fear in seeing the giant “A” in the sky, is that there would be one skilled enough to interpret it, and his loathsome secret would be revealed to all—a particularly poignant concern as he is standing on the very scaffold where Hester was made to bare her shame, and since there is one standing just beyond his comprehension able to interpret it all: Roger Chillingworth.
As with the meteor, Hawthorne uses red light reflecting from one object to another when Hester Prynne, after standing for hours on the scaffold, is led back into the prison: “It was whispered, by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passageway of the interior” (65). “Lurid,” in this instance, seems to transcend simply meaning a reddish glow, but to suggest something more bleak and ominous. For at this moment, the letter has only begun to take on meaning for Hester, and she is far from reading more into it than what the ministers of the town intended.
In a similar reflection of red light, Hester is beckoned to the scaffold by Dimmesdale and sees him with “red eastern light upon his brow…half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where [she] had stood!” (139). Hawthorne’s use of red light draws attention to Dimmesdale’s hidden conflict, reminding us of the scarlet letter which he secretly wishes he could wear, but which he also fears will be discovered written on his own heart.
These reflections share the trait of hinting at a secret on the verge of discovery. For Dimmesdale, the reflection of red light taunts him with the revelation of his sin; for Pearl, her reflections reveal something elfish and unholy, but just beyond the grasp of reality. For Hester the reflections aren’t just suggestions of doom, but suggestions of hope as well: she sees the light from the meteor as if it were “the light to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another” (142).
When Hester and Pearl venture into the forest, they stop to observe the stream. “They could catch the reflected light from its water…fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity it would whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool” (171). Later, in the same scene, Hawthorne adds that the stream “kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened—or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen—within the verge of the dismal forest” (172). And, in fact, something did happen. In meeting with Dimmesdale, they decide to flee from the town to a place where no one knows them or their secrets, and for the first time Hester removes the scarlet letter and throws it, so that it “alighted on the hither verge of the stream…glittering like a lost jewel…so close upon the margin of the stream, that the gold embroidery was reflected in it” (185,193).
The fear of nature is present in assuming that something as benign as a stream could reveal their secrets, that in reflecting their images—and the image of the scarlet letter—that the water’s smooth surface could betray them. And perhaps there is reason for that fear, since even in their seclusion the Mistress Hibbins knows of their meeting, and successfully interprets the meaning of it.
How many reflections did Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale look at, sensing the absurdity of what they saw, but convinced of the truth of their interpretation? The letter “A” emblazoned in the sky testifying to their sin, though others thought it meant something else; a horrifying and demonic look reflected by an innocent child, interpreted by parents still carrying the weight of sin and forced to make sense of the link between them: a child in all her wiles—her actions open to the negative interpretation of guilty minds; the gurgling stream, reflecting trees and boulders and the gray sky—as well as Pearl and the scarlet letter—sure to reveal their awful truth. The reflections they see are only as powerful as their interpretations, and their interpretations are only based on their experiences. Would a red glow or a smooth pool of water or the distorted reflection of a child in a helmet reveal such doom to somebody who didn’t carry their grief?
It is because of the characters’ interpretations of these reflections that we are able to get a glimpse into their psychology, not because of the reality of the images, but because of their perceptions. These reflections reveal the secrets that plague their thoughts. Like Hawthorne’s imagination stirred by the reflections of moonbeams and embers on his floor, the characters in The Scarlet Letter are subject to the reflections that stir their own imaginations.
(Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850. Ed. Ronald D. Spector. New York: Bantam, 1980.)
“The Leap:” Passages of Life
by Norm D. Plume
“The Leap,” by James Dickey, mixes symbolism and irony to demonstrate the complexity of life and death. We are in the mind of the speaker, in a playful dreamlike tone, as he recalls the school dance where he watched the young Jane McNaughton take a “light/ Grave leap” in front of the other kids (16, 17). The mood is abruptly changed as he is pulled from his memory to the present and tells us the same Jane McNaughton had leapt to her death from the window of a downtown hotel. The ironic connection between the young, free Jane and the recently-deceased Jane is made through the symbol of the two leaps. Other symbols of the paper chain and the newspaper are used to show the only physical connections the speaker had with Jane. These, combined with the tone and voice of the poem, bring us to ponder with the speaker the disturbing contrast between the leap that defined the beginning of Jane’s womanhood and the leap that ended it all.
There is no clear distinction made in the poem as to whether the speaker is a man or woman. The connection the speaker feels with Jane doesn’t merit clarification of gender the way a romantic relationship might. The memorable things of Jane that stand out in the speaker’s mind are her first leap that bore her into “new womanhood” and her second leap that ended in death (24, 29). The author is dealing with basic human emotions and reactions that transcend gender. Both a man and a woman could feel admiration for Jane’s confidence, beauty, and grace as well as shock at the news of her death.
What we do know about the speaker is that she (for the sake of ease, I will use the pronoun he to refer to the speaker) is an adult at the time of the poem because Jane, who was also his age, was a mother of four when she died (line 28). He also says his memories of Jane occurred thirty years ago (line 53). We see that the speaker’s relationship with Jane was limited because he had to turn to his scrapbook to find out more about who she was; he had only “one instant” of her in his mind (2, 4). That instant is set in the dance class with Jane where the first leap occurred (14, 15). The speaker didn’t like the class: it was “the dancing class we all hated” (line 16). He was a “slow-footed yokel” (referring also to the races on the playground) who preferred to sit in the corner and make ring-chain decorations (44, 45).
Jane is the speaker’s antithesis. She wasn’t a slow-footed yokel who preferred to hide in the corner. At least that’s not how the speaker saw her. Though he doesn’t remember it, the scrapbook said that she was the fastest runner in seventh grade (line 3). He says, “that part of her is gone,” but he can remember several other girls his age whom he raced on the playground (6-12). The memory he does have of Jane is at the dance where he describes her as “thin and muscular” and comments on her wearing her dress the way it should be worn by a young lady (14, 22). She was confident and not afraid of embarrassment, “eager to prove whatever it proves when you leap in a new dress…among the boys” (23, 24). When he makes references to Jane he uses descriptions like “new womanhood,” light…feet,” wide-mouthed,” and “eager” (15, 22, 24, 38). To himself and the others he uses description such as “slow-footed yokels,” “feet…nailed to the ground,” and “prancing foolishly as bears” (44, 50, 52).
The poem is centered on the two distinct leaps that Jane makes. Jane’s first “light/ Grave leap” showed her beauty, her confidence, her grace, her maturity, and her passage into “new womanhood” (16, 17, 24). This leap is a stark contrast to the second leap from the hotel room—her passage into death (line 28).
While the two leaps are similar in that they are significant passages for Jane, they also represent opposing and extreme reactions to life. The first shows jovial arrogance; it was light, free, proud, and full of life. She leapt into womanhood, leaving the boys behind as she did on the “passionless playground” (line 27). As the young Jane was maturing she was no longer bound by the restraints of her peers and seemed to take her own free course. The leap was as if to say that she recognized that she had passed the boys up physically and emotionally and wasn’t dependent on them.
The second leap shows a reaction of desperation. It was heavy, confusing, and devastating. She leapt into death, leaving behind the boy who “did not depend on speed of foot” and who “caught and betrayed her” (27, 41). We are not given all the details of Jane’s circumstance. Why was she at a hotel and not at home? Who was the boy that caught and betrayed her? More important than the answers to these questions is the reality that Jane’s reaction to her current situation was suicide. Like her first leap that freed her from the other couples “struggling on the floor,” the second leap freed her from the struggles of her life that threatened to nail her feet to the ground as well (48, 52).
The speaker views these two leaps from a distance. His “feet are nailed to the ground” by a lifetime of inhibitions while he watches Jane doing things that he can only think about (52, 53). In both circumstances he experiences these reactions by proxy. The first leap he admires, wishing he could be more like Jane. The second leap terrifies him, and he wonders how somebody could end their life so tragically.
A link between Jane’s leap and the speaker’s grounded feet is made through the paper chain and the newspaper. As Jane leaps she grabs the “brown chain of brittle paper” and touches “the end of something [he] began” (21, 47). Jane is permanently fixed “hanging” in his mind from that paper chain (line 20). As he sat in the corner cutting pieces of paper out, a physical connection was made by her touching something he was still making. The paper is described as “brittle,” suggesting that this particular memory is delicate and can be easily broken (line 22). This connection was detached and indirect, yet it was profound and stayed in the speaker’s mind (line 13).
Jane’s second connection with the speaker is once again detached and indirect as the speaker holds the picture of her in the newspaper “lying cradled/ In that papery steel” (32, 33). As she lies on the dented steel roof of the taxi, she appears to him peaceful and at rest, as if “in the grass” with her arms “folded across her breast” (33, 34). The word “steel” is used to describe the newspaper, creating a more vivid and concrete image which is not easily forgotten. While “brittle” suggest a delicacy, “steel” implies something cold and permanent. The speaker struggles to retain his first brittle image of Jane but is forced to cope with this new steel-like visual. He is left to ponder the complexity of human life and that which is “most obsessively wrong with the world” (36, 37). In the first leap Jane touched the end of the paper chain which the speaker began. Now the roles are reversed: the speaker is touching the end of something that Jane began.
In each moment, his feet are “nailed to the ground” and he is left to “examine [his] hands” (52-54). The speaker recognizes that he will never experience these kinds of leaps in his life except through his association with Jane. He examines his hands because they are his solitary connection with her. Those hands made indirect contact with Jane through the paper chain and the newspaper and are all that he has to understanding the confusing contrast between her passage into womanhood and her passage into death.
“Jane, stay where you are in my first mind,” begs the speaker (line 42). While he may never make sense of Jane’s suicide he still accepts that it happened. He now carries two images of her in his mind: the free and confident young woman from dance class, and the deceased mother of four on top of a crushed taxi. The latter image is vivid in his mind. He wants Jane to stay the way he remembers her from his childhood, hanging from the paper chain he made, which is echoed in his final plea, “Hold on/ To that ring I made for you, Jane” (line 50).
(Dickey, James. “The Leap.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Jerome Beaty, et al. New York: Norton, 2002. 731-732.)
Captain Vere: Hero, or Zero?
by Sue DeNimm
Robert Martin, in his response to Billy Budd, Sailor, suggests that Captain Vere is not a hero (361). While I agree with his assertions—that Vere is a tyrant by his use of total political authority, and that he betrays the very code he claims to believe in—my reasons for not viewing Captain Vere as a hero come from questioning what his ideals were, and by what means he used to achieve them.
I’m not sure what is exactly meant by the word hero. Is it literally a character who saves the day? Is a hero someone we cheer for as they hold to an ideal worthy of sacrifice? Or, perhaps, are we simply speaking of a literary vehicle, a hero serving as a tool to get us from point-A to point-B, holding no more moral value than other literary functions such as plot, metaphor, or alliteration? I prefer to think of a hero as the former, a character who embodies an ideal, however vague or irrelevant, that requires a sacrifice or struggle to achieve. A hero, therefore, can be the kid who gets beat up because he would rather endure pain than see a bully eat his lunch; or the old woman who loses her welfare check for slapping a clerk at the welfare office who belittles her. In each of these cases, the person suffers because they hold true to a higher ideal—that a man shouldn’t enjoy the spoils of another through force, or that self respect is more important than money.
But the tricky business is judging what ideal is worthy of sacrifice. In order for me to determine if Vere is a hero, I have to decide what ideals he is adhering to—whether or not his actions result in the achievement of those ideals, or if his actions are so bold they undermine those ideals completely.
Captain Vere holds to two ideas. First, that in order to prevent another mutiny, he has to show complete order and control on his ship, never mind the hypocrisy of never investigating Claggart’s claims of mutinous activity (363); and second, that his duty to a noble code be more important than adhering to the unwritten code of brotherhood. I sympathize with Vere in worrying in light of the recent Nore mutiny. I would agree with any reasonable action to deal with it—reasonable being another tricky word—such as imprisoning Billy Budd while the claims are investigated, following the established code of trial, and ultimately even the death penalty should a proper trial find him guilty. But this is where Vere errs. He steps beyond reasonable measures, sets up a drumhead court, and becomes accuser, witness, judge, and defense counsel (362). Billy Budd didn’t stand a chance, especially since Vere had already decided, from the moment Claggart is struck dead, in uttering, “Fated boy,” and then shortly after, “Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!” (145,146).
Vere’s attempts to adhere to the more noble code, looking beyond humanity and brotherhood to the strict demands of the naval law, hardly inspire thoughts of heroism. I can’t look at the mechanical execution of the law as being any grander or nobler than a child choking down oatmeal simply because his mother told him so. If following all orders and laws, despite the negative effects it has—such as demoralizing the crew, killing an otherwise innocent man, and ignoring established procedures in the name of justice—be the definition of a hero, then why would we consider Frederick Douglass, of all people, to be a hero? Did he not break the laws of the land by disobeying his masters and fleeing from slavery? How can such a person who blatantly defies written code be construed a hero unless there is something nobler than the noble code itself. For that, thinking Vere a hero for executing an innocent man in the name of justice—naval justice, I find him no more a hero than the Nazi soldiers who faithfully executed their orders from Hitler.
Vere can’t be a hero because his actions aren’t about justice or mercy or humanity. They are harsh and inspired by fear, desperation, and self preservation. In the end, despite his justifications and reasoning, he chose to execute Billy Budd for selfish ideals; to retain his good name as a naval officer, to prevent a mutiny, and to demonstrate his authority. A hero would have stepped away from the inculpable protection of law, seen beyond the micro chasm of circumstance, and looked to the more universal ideals that have compelled man to act with reason from the beginning of time, despite the ephemeral laws in place.
The Self-Centered Walt Whitman
by Norm D. Plume
The strength of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself comes from his self-centeredness. In my first reading, I was actually taken back by it—he appeared presumptuous and egotistical, and my reaction was to question who he thought he was to assume so much about what is life, death, and poetry. But the more I read, the more comfort I felt in his confidence, whether or not I believed his assertions, I felt that he believed them—and that made me want to dig deeper; to find out what he really believed and why.
The title itself suggests that Whitman is taking a self-centered approach in his expression. I don’t refer to self-centered as a negative quality, such as someone blatantly dismissing reality for vane glory, but rather as Walt Whitman—a poet—tackling his beliefs from the vantage point of himself and his place in the universe. The question arose several times as I read Song of Myself: was Whitman trying to reduce universal principles into expressions of himself—to show that he is the everyman’s man; or was he trying to apply the observations of himself universally—that his self perception is the maxim of humankind? There were three general trends I saw in Whitman’s self-centeredness. First, in his apparent knowledge of universal truths that he claims aren’t readily recognized by the common person; second, in his views about his body and about his relationship with mankind; and third, in his feelings about life and death—his fears (or lack of) regarding them.
The poem starts: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,/ And what I assume you shall assume” (2232). This, along with the title, sets the tone—that this isn’t a timid poem filled with “I thinks,” and “I believes.” He makes bold statements and observations without wavering or questioning. It felt standoffish at first, like he assumed he was the great sage of time who alone could reveal the truths that we were too blind to see. “Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?/ Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems” (2233). He adds to that tone at various other places, such as in section 17 when he says, “These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not/ original with me” (2243).
When I reached section 6 (which I call the “What is Grass?” section), my perceptions about Whitman’s self-centeredness changed, as he digresses from his assertiveness. When the child asks him what grass is, he responds: “How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than/ he” (2235). In attempting to answer the question, in pensative reasoning, he says “I guess” four times, and then “it may be” another three times. This turned out to be, for me, the most beautiful of all the sections, as his thoughts about grass lead to a discussion of life and death. By section 6, we are familiar with the tone and Whitman’s boldness—so when he admits he doesn’t have a concrete answer, but is willing to reason through it, the reader is drawn into that reasoning, trusting that he will find the appropriate answer. This digression from boldness to seeming humility adds a degree of warmth and tenderness to the section that are essential to dealing with the topic of life and death.
But then he slips smoothly back into his presumptuous tone in section 7, saying people don’t know how immortal they are, but he knows—and that he sees the true value of people: he is “around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away” (2236-37).
Whitman offers a few statements, which I call “bail-outs,” to excuse himself from being too self-centered. In section 2, he says: “You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,/ You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self” (2233). Here, it’s like he’s holding up his hands innocently, saying, “Look, here’s what I’ve found, try it on and see for yourself if it’s true, but don’t take my word for it.” He also tries to tone down his ego at times. In section 24 he says he is “no stander above men and women or apart from them./ No more modest than immodest” (2248). I find this interesting, since later—in the same section—he says that he is divine inside and out, that whatever he touches becomes divine, that he worships his body, that he dotes on himself, and that even the aroma of his armpits is finer than prayer! (2249). The most wonderful expression of his self-centeredness is in section 48, when he talks about the body, the soul, and God. He says: “Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself” (2272).
The only excuse Whitman makes for himself, which I thought was brilliant (and a bit flippant), came near the end of Song of Myself, in section 51: “Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself./(I am large, I contain multitudes)” (2274).
The bold, self-centered, unapologetic tone of the poem strengthens Whitman’s statements. It instills confidence and made me interested in what he had to say. It literally is a song of himself, and what’s wrong with singing a little praise? Whitman was trying to take an approach that would make us ask ourselves, “What question is there worth answering that doesn’t start with myself?”
Work Cited
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York, London: Norton, 2003. 2232-2274.