Week 4, Sept 26: Narrator speaking! Reading Philosophi-cally. Ambiguity.
Readings:
1. Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat.” The Norton Anthol-ogy of Short Fiction (7th edition).
2. Stephen Crane, select poems (from
Poetryfounda-tion.org. ): “A Man Said to the Universe,” “I saw a man pur-suing the horizon,” “Behold, the grave of a wicked man,” “In the Desert.”
Segue from last week: Can’t just read one story or one poem and feel like you really know that author, or even that one text very well.. Got to read other poems and texts from the same person.
Do this with Crane and his prose-poems….. [in-class]
What do these poems tell us about his beliefs about life, religion, freedom, human nature, and so on? These are little thought-pieces and even seem quite modern. Crane is usually thought to “belong” to the 19th century (he died just before the 20th). But his
strong use of irony and sarcasm, and his dark and complex (if not pessimistic?) view of the universe (as revealed in the texts) make him seem like a very contemporary, very modern writer. He’s anti-sentimental compared to a classic 19th writer like, say,
His point is that our individual existence does not matter as
much as we think, and that the universe is “flatly indifferent” to us [a line from the story here].
The question of human and individual FREEDOM. Do we have a say in our own lives? Do we control our fates? Is there fate or destiny or an order to the world?
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/anthropocentric
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narcissism
Back to the story:
Today is a big shift from the world of modern poetry, which often lacks strong or clear narratives in favour of vivid or powerful images.
MODERN/MODERNITY: recap form last week:
There is always a narrator or implied author or speaker in poems or other texts (see Frost) —but as with WCW and WS, it is not always easy to follow them because they often refuse to speak directly.
This is a fairly ‘traditional’ story or novella: it has a dramatic plot with a definite conclusion, in that there is a climax to the action: they reach the shore. And someone deis. Very clear there—
death!
And the setting and characters are familiar enough— it is a real sea, and real people/characters.
The plot in this story: Pretty simple. Shipwreck off of the shore. Not middle of the ocean but also far from shore. 4 men try to row ashore. Tiny boat (dinghy). Captain (injured). Cook
(steering the boat, bailing). Oiler (job = oiling machinery of the boat). Correspondent (journalist). They are exhausted and have been rowing nonstop. Did not sleep for previous two days (prior to story). They have to keep rowing and bailing or will sink. But the shore, when finally spotted and approached, is too rough— the waves/currents. Too weak to swim far or for long. SO they have to head out in hopes of finding a more gentle, kinder shore to land and swim for. They don’t so have to make last ditch
effort. Some of them die. This DEATH is the main event. Or the non-death of the others i.e. SURVIVAL. That’s the major
action/plot point. So we have to dwell on that. Is the death or the survival meaningful in some way?
But the story ends with this: Some of the strangers (“the men”) on the shore say they have learned and can now be the “great” sea’s interpreters.
This is a cross-text/reference ot know as well:
A Roman mosaic depicting a maritime scene with Odysseus (Latin: Ulysses) and the Sirens, from Carthage, 2nd century AD, now in the Bardo Museum, Tunisia
Odysseus' name means "trouble" in Greek, referring to both the giving and re-ceiving of trouble—as is often the case in his wanderings. An early example of this is the boar hunt that gave Odysseus the scar by which Eurycleia recognizes him; Odysseus is injured by the boar and responds by killing it. Odysseus' heroic trait is his mētis, or "cunning intelligence". He is often described as the "Peer of Zeus in Counsel". This intelligence is most often manifested by his use of dis-guise and deceptive speech. His disdis-guises take forms both physical (altering his appearance) and verbal, such as telling the CyclopsPolyphemus that his name is Οὖτις, "Nobody", then escaping after blinding Polyphemus. When asked by other Cyclopes why he is screaming, Polyphemus replies that "Nobody" is hurt-ing him, so the others assume that "If alone as you are [Polyphemus] none uses violence on you, why, there is no avoiding the sickness sent by great Zeus; so you had better pray to your father, the lord Poseidon".[8] The most evident flaw
With Crane and the tradition of literary/artistic realism, there is no such problem. The narrator speaks to us directly, in third person, and from a seemingly all-knowing or god-like
viewpoint. This style means that we simply must pay close attention to what the narrator says and how he or she describers everyone and everything.
I. Omniscient Narrator; Third Person Narrator. Reading the Narrator Closely.
Omni = all-seeing, therefore all-knowing. 195.
Starts with the Greeks or the Greek Gods in their
literature. All knowing all seeing. Greek or classical lit was famous for its EPICS and tragedies and tales/verse about heroism, adventure, battles, and the like: great big stories with protagonists and enemies and villains and so on. The narrator was 3rd person and outside the story and
also all knowing and ‘reliable.’ Works of Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, and so on. Also: King Arthur and those types of books http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.1.i.html
o Crane is doing a mock-heroic or mock-epic in this story. Satire. Irony. [look these up…..]
http://literary-devices.com/content/satire But this is meant to also be funny—that’s the mock part.
o Crane’s/Open Boat’s narrator: do you trust him? Is he reliable? Does he really tell you what he means? Does he leave anything open to interpretation? Is the ending here ambiguous?
the themes, the meaning or point. This is where the
action is. The pleasure or fun of the text and its insights.
Omni Narrator = the voice of authority, and also the author or ‘implied author’. A voice and view you have to take seriously.
But it is not always easy either, to understand what the Omni Narrator (or any type) is saying or trying to do. It can be ambiguous or deliberately unclear, suggestive, etc.
[ There is always a narrator to every story or film or poem you read (a person or voice who speaks;
Sometimes it’s a character in the story/narrative (as in Raymond Carver’s stuff for next class), sometimes it is autobio or first person.
Other times it is “third person” or an outsider to the story-world (can also be an implied author) —kind of a god-like figure or distant observer from above. In this last case we have a 3rd
person and omniscient narrator- i.e. a narrator who is
WHENEVER A NARRATOR COMMENTS UPON THE
CHARACTERS, OR UPON THE PLOT/EVENTS, WE MUST SEIZE UPON THOSE STATEMENTS.
The comments are more important than plot and often a clue to what the meaning of a novel/text is.
Traditionally these are the moments when an author really has something to say or do to us. It is NOT just mere conveying of information in these cases.
Commentary: a crucial function of narrative fiction. Examples: p 193 and solidarity/“subtle brotherhood”. Or 201: no bricks and no temples.
Crane’s OPEN BOAT is a textbook example of this-- if we don’t follow the narrator closely it seems like the story is a somewhat stilted, uninspired tragedy about 4 guys on a boat. One dies, three live. The people in the boat -- and on the shore -- think they learned something about it all, namely just how nasty and malevolent nature or the sea is (?). Something about fate the hostility of the universe.
TAKE-AWAY point: seize on those direct passages from the narrator, his commentary. Ask yourself what he means or what his point is. And whether or not he is reliable. Is he really omniscient and objective or something else?
II. THEME: ANTHROPOCENTRISM (synonymous with narcissism or self-centeredness here)
1. real (ordinary or ‘normal’ or laobaixing/老百姓) people and places, real events, nothing too out of the ordinary. Against abstractions and idealizations. Historical and socially
oriented.
2. Part of the realist tradition is usually a philosophical view about life: that we need to cast aside illusions; that we are largely conditioned by and limited to our social-economic environment (“determined by them.”) Crane is saying that realistically speaking, the universe is indifferent to us.
Ideals like heaven/God or some divine order to the universe/ nature are merely ideals and not real. We should instead face facts.
We do not have free will (freedom/autonomy) in any substantial sense. The paths before you are about the same— one is not more free than another and regardless you are going to deceive yourself. If you are deceiving yourself then you are not really free are you? You live in lies…… (Frost connection). Crane is in this mode—nothing heroic or
extraordinary about his people or events—his Civil War novel was about feeling afraid and running away and not being courageous or heroic and patriotic in some bogus sense.) Mock-heroic language versus real-heroic language. “If I am going to be drowned….” ‘….the sacred cheese of life.” Crane is mocking the idea of heroism because it implies that heroes win, or that there is some greater glory or meaning to it. This also leads us to:
1. IRONY—learn to use this correctly if you can. Irony means: ‘saying one thing but meaning the opposite or something incongruous”. Language that literally says one thing but actually means another—often the opposite of what is
‘sacred cheese of life” repeated twice—is this ironic? How about the very first lines of the second paragraph?
http://literary-devices.com/content/irony
2. Personification of nature. Or our stubborn, perhaps narcissistic insistence on seeing the universe not as
different but as centered on us and our fates. We think we are at the center of the universe still – even if it is out to get us it is still about us. If we think it is unjust or tragic, then it is still about us. We can’t even describe nature without personifying it and making it seem human, i.e. about us. The people on shore think they can interpret the sea; but they can’t. The sea is flatly indifferent to them.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/anthropocentric
Bad humans:
Narcissism. Anthropocentrism. Or simply:
self-centeredness. BEING FULL OF YOURSELF. BUT IN A PHILOSOPHICAL SENSE, NOT JUST OBVIOUS VANITY.
2nd para-- you see how menacing and
‘barbarous’ the sea and their environment is. Personifying the sea. The fancy word for this is “anthropocentrism” – you view reality and nature in human terms. But reality and nature are not human. Humans are just part of that, like bacteria are and cockroaches are. Nothing more and nothing less. To think otherwise is to be narcissistic—to have too much interest in yourself or even admiration. We’ll see this later with Rousseau. NOTE : the
sea/nature/’reality’/the universe (whatever term you prefer—these mean the same here) is NOT against us or malevolent like a cruel god, just as it is NOT for us or protective of us, fair, just, and so on. . “There are no bricks and no temples”. We are simply not that important.
Good humans:
Solidarity and labor and ‘brotherhood.’ Beginning of Part III and throughout. This is all we/they have in the face of individual man’s insignificance in the universe. Alone in the sea. The
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We have to deal with the conclusion of the story (and the plot):
Is there any message here? What is the point being made about who lives and who dies? Is this a tragedy? Is it described that way? And what about those shore-people who think they can be interpreters? Is that ironic? Or have they learned something?
Justice or fairness in nature/universe: is there any? Billie dies. No design or order to the universe. But not a battle either—that would imply heroism.
Freedom? : none of that either, despite how hard they worked. Random. Arbitrary.
