Gulliver’s Travels: A Social and Political Allegory

Allegory means a story based on two levels, “apparent level and deeper”. Swift’s polemical tour de force ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ is a multi-genre text working on many levels. It is at once a folk-myth, a delightful children's story, a wonderful travelogue, a neurotic fantasy, and an unequivocal moral tale. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to fictional exotic lands—may have a different theme but all are the attempts to deflate excessive human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.

The form and structure of the whole work enhances Swift's purpose. By using outlandish humans such as midgets and giants, Swift allows us to examine the fallacies of mankind without being overly frightened. As Tuveson points out, "In Gulliver's Travels there is a constant shuttling back and forth between real and unreal, normal and absurd.”

From the start the Lilliputians arouse our interest and win our liking. The pigmies of Lilliput ingeniously capture the giant whom chance has cast on their shore. Gulliver becomes an object of curiosity. He is instantly given the name “Man-Mountain”. The manner in which several ladders are applied by the Lilliputians to feed Gulliver and the way Gulliver cripples the fleet of Blefuscu by his hand is incredible and exciting. Similarly the customs of Lilliputians, their dancing on the tight rope, conflict between Big Endians and Little Endians, and between high heel and low heel are also a great source of amusement to us. Moreover, “they bury dead with their head directly downward because they hold an opinion that in eleven thousand moons, they are all to rise again” which catches our attention.

Next, Gulliver reaches the island of Brobdingnag whose inhabitants are giants with a proportionately gigantic landscape. Here, Gulliver is exhibited as a curious midget, and has a number of local dramas such as fighting giant rats. He is frightened by a puppy, rendered ludicrous by the tricks of a mischievous monkey and embarrassed by the lascivious antics of the Maids of Honour. Gulliver’s adventures in Brobdingnag keep the interest of a young reader alive.

The voyage to Laputa, Lagado and other islands is also full of interesting and mysterious incidents. In Laputa, the Flying Island, every eatable thing e.g. the mutton, the beef, or the pudding, is given geometrical shape or the shape of musical instrument. The manner in which flappers are employed to draw the attention of their master and the way tailor takes his measure by employing a quadrant, rule and compasses is also very funny. The experiments which are in progress at the academy of projector in Lagado are preposterous and fantastic.

In the fourth voyage, Gulliver’s adventure touches the apex when we see him in the land of Houyhnhnms, the philosophical horses. The horses can talk to one another and can even teach their language to a human being. They so skilled and ingenious that they can execute such improbable tasks as threading needles or carrying trays, and so complacent in their belief that they are the “Perfection of Nature”.

So on the apparent level, all the four voyages contain the situations and incidents full of delightful adventures in a very funny and interesting manner and one can hardly reckon that these funny episodes of adventure can bear in deep sense a very lethal and poignant satire on the follies and absurdities of mankind. 

The first voyage in particular contains Swift's the most memorable shots at the political figures of his time. Flimnap’s dancing on the tight rope symbolizes Sir Robert Walpole’s dexterity in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. The phrase “one of the king’s cushions” refers to one of king George I’s mistresses who helped to restore Walpole after his fall in 1717. High Admiral Skyresh Bolgolam which turns out to be Gulliver’s ‘mortal enemy’ represents Earl of Nottingham while Reldresal may stand for Lord Townshend or Lord Carteret who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Walpole.

Gulliver’s extinguishing of the fire in the queen’s palace is an allegorical reference to Queen Anne’s annoyance with Swift on writing “A Tale of a Tub”. The queen misinterpreted the book and got annoyed. The conflict between the Big-Endians and the Small-Endians in which “eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end” is the satirical allusion to the bitter schism and theological disputes between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Similarly Swift pokes fun at ‘Whigs’ and ‘Tories’ the two political parties in England by distinguishing from their low heels and high heels. 

In the second voyage of Gulliver, there is a general satire on humanity and human physiognomy. Much of this voyage is made up of lampooning British political history. After Gulliver tries to extol the virtues of his country-men, the king deduces that the history of Gulliver’s country “was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments” etc. When Gulliver tries to improve his condition by offering him the secret of gun-powder, the king is horrified and dismissively concludes that “the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”.

In the description Laputa, “Floating or Flying island”, there is satirical allusion to the English constitution and British colonial policy. The revolt of Lindalino becomes an allegory of Irish revolt against England and England’s violent foreign and internal politics. Swift also takes shots on certain ‘high-minded’ intellectuals who literally have their heads in the clouds. Among the sights Gulliver visits in his third voyage to Laputa, is the grand academy of Lagado, full of ‘projectors’ whose job is to come up with new ideas and inventions. The scientists are here busy trying “to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers, to convert human excrement into its original food, to build houses from the roof downwards to the foundation, to obtain silk from cobwebs”. This description is the firm pointer to Swift’s cynical view of contemporary science and Royal Society of England.

In his fourth and the last voyage to the country of Houyhnhnmms, Gulliver faces yet another inversion and there is a sharp-pointed satire on human moral shortcomings. Human beings here are represented as Yahoos—filthy, mischievous, gluttonous, ugly monsters that covet for some ‘shining stones’.

By contrast, the Houhnhnms are noble and benevolent animals governed by Nature and Reason and their “grand maxim, is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it.” . So it is a lethal attack on the human race to be represented inferior to horses mentally and morally. Gulliver tells his master-Houyhnhnm of all the evils and vices that were prevailing in European countries. Gulliver also tells about the numerous deadly weapons and the wars in western countries which were fought sometimes due to the “ambitions of princes” and sometimes due to “corruption of the ministers.”

Thus we can conclude that “Gulliver’s Travels” is a great work of allegory. The whole book is written in a fanciful manner, but beneath the fiction and under the surface there lies a serious purpose “to vex the world rather than divert it”.

Gulliver’s Travels as a Mock Utopia:

The tendency to hanker after a utopia is a perfectly human desire. Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s Travels explores the idea of utopia—an imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far as the description in Plato’s Republic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English by Thomas More’s Utopia.

The literal meaning of Utopia is no place, nowhere. Thomas More gave this term to his ideal commonwealth.  Swift incorporates the key concepts of Plato’s and More’s utopias into his own narrative, though his attitude toward utopia is much more skeptical. One can see the different lands of Gulliver’s travels as the parody of utopian literature. Hence Gulliver's Travels can be regarded as a mock Utopia.

One of the main aspects about these famous historical utopias is the tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of Plato’s Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their biological parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness.

Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliputian are torn between conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing. Nonetheless, they are prone to making ‘official’ edicts concerning the lives of the citizens and have well-established systems of granting their law-abiding citizens: “Whoever there can bring sufficient proof that he hath strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, hath a claim to certain privileges.”

Brogdingnag forms more practical moral utopia than Lilliput. The Bobdingnagians are the epitome of moral giants and their size shows that their morality is also gigantic. Brobdignagians, however, are not without their flaws. Unlike Gulliver who always considered Lilliputians to be the miniature men, Brobdingnagians cannot consider him a miniature Brobdingnagian. Even the Brobdingnagian king treats him like a little tiny fellow unaware of the grandiose ideas of the diminutive creature. The maids of honour treat Gulliver as a plaything, undress themselves in front of him, and titillate themselves with his naked body.   

 Swift’s clinical dissection of the utopian ideal is at best in the description of the Houyhnhnms. Swift tells us that the Houyhnhnms use ‘nature’ and ‘reason’ as their distinctive features.  It is supported by Gulliver’s assertion that Houyhnhnm society’s “grand maxim, is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it.”  They are in stark contrast with the loathsome Yahoos, brutes in human shape.

Indeed the Houyhnhnms possess many laudable qualities. Gulliver finds an ideal society organized entirely along rational lines. This emphasis on rationality leads them to arrange all aspects of social life according to logical patterns. They even brainwash Gulliver, erasing his human nature insofar as they can and replacing it with a pure and abstract rationality like their own. But Gulliver, owing to his ‘unteachable’ Yahooish nature, endeavours not to become a more rational human being, but to become a Houyhnhnm itself. Thus it is clear that he has not learned the teachings of the Houyhnhnms, for he does not behave rationally at all. “Man, of course, can never be a Houyhnhnm, nor was meant to be, but the rational society of Houyhnhnmland nevertheless offers a goal of moral perfection toward which he should strive” says Beauchamp.

The utopian Houyhnhnms can be lauded as the manifestatation of ‘man’s rational nature, untainted by man’s bestial traits’ while Yahoos represent ‘man’s apish, stupid, unredeemed animal nature.’  

Significantly, Hobbes suggested that human nature is to be warlike in our pursuit of desires, and so life will be, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Locke would later write a counter argument, that the nature of humankind is inclined more toward cooperation, as opposed to Hobbes that saw humankind in a never-ending state of war.

Wedel suggests middle path, “… Swift is clearly neither Hobbes nor Locke. Gulliver is neither Yahoo nor Houyhnhnm. He cannot attain to the rational felicity of the Houyhnhnms. Neither has he sunk to the level of the Yahoos.”

Swift ingeniously suggests that the Houyhnhnms do not stand for perfected human nature but  they manifest pre-fallen state of innocent human nature.  The Houyhnhnms cannot be admired or emulated because they are just doing what they inherently do.  The same reason is not inherent in Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are ice-cold reason while the Yahoos are fiery sensuality. Swift places Gulliver somewhere in between Houyhnhnm and Yahoo poles. To Swift, human nature is both sensual and rational. If the reason is extracted man becomes a lump of hideous instincts. Similarly if passion is extinct what remains is a tame animal.

Houyhnhnms society is entirely instrumental serving only to maintain itself without any other consideration.  Their rationality is focused on the preservation of their static ‘perfection’ and this instinct of self-preservation overrules their every other impulse and consideration. Houyhnhnms cannot see the world from any other perspective and all their ‘perfection’ is directed to this end.

Also, the dichotomy of Houyhnhnms’ morality highlights the self validating nature of their judgments. The Houyhnhnms preserve Yahoos because the benefits of exterminating them do not clearly outweigh costs of keeping them alive. This version of reason is coldly functional, almost Machiavellian, in the way the end is seen to justify the means. The extermination of their yahoo foils mean undermining their self-proclaimed status as the “Perfection of Nature.”  They even expel Gulliver their sole ardent supporter from the Yahoo race. This is the state of their utopia, into which Gulliver stumbles, an eternal, unchanging society built on some values that are intrinsic to the nature of creatures that populate it.

Swift thus mocks the very concept of utopia and makes it clear that nowhere an ideal state exists because evil exists in every society in one form or the other. The world of Utopia is doomed to remain a dream in this world because, "whether man is three inches or three miles high, he remains a man—a presumptuous zero.”

Hamlet: A Hero or a Coward:

The question of whether or not Hamlet is a hero, is as perplexing as Hamlet himself. Hamlet, though possesses some incredibly heroic qualities; he is the chiefest bloom of the realm and the princely paragon of the state, yet the difficulty of this question is apparent when an audience considers that Hamlet can be seen as both hero and coward often in the same scene. The same character that lacks courage to carry out the revenge, also strives hard to be sure of his father’s murderer’s guilt and ensures that the revenge itself should be appropriate. His actions and often inactions do not allow a single interpretation of his character, often leaving the audience unsure of which Hamlet they are watching.

It would seem that Hamlet’s most cowardly behavior is in his treatment of Ophelia. He loves her yet is willing to manipulate her, as Gertrude, Claudius and her own father Polonius do. When he is free from the pressures of the royal family, and before the death of his father, Hamlet is able to tell Ophelia:

“Doubt thou the stars are fire/Doubt that the sun doth move /Doubt truth to be a liar/But never doubt I love.”

Hamlet is here a straightforward romantic hero and the audience is enthralled by his direct, unashamedly romantic words.

By the start of act three, his desire to avenge his father’s murder has made him suspicious some correctly. When he discovers that Ophelia has been collecting information for Polonius and Gertrude, he lashes out at calling her two-faced: “God has given you one face and you make yourselves another”. Hamlet’s heroism in being willing to destroy his love for Ophelia in pursuit of the truth could be said to be noble; but the audience struggles to align the brutality of his words to innocent Ophelia: “If thou dost marry I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry/Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny/Get thee to a nunnery.”

Hamlet is famed for his procrastination: his inability to act and this could indicate cowardice on his part, a reluctance to do what is right. Certainly this appears to be true when he himself witnesses Claudius’ confession of his guilt:

“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven/It hath primal eldest curse upon it/A brother’s murder.”

With this confirmation Hamlet would seem free to enact the revenge as enjoined by his father’s ghost, yet he fails to act. The audience’s hopes for resolution are dashed to the ground.

Hamlet justifies his position by claiming that to kill Claudius after he has confessed his sins would release his soul to heaven; Hamlet does not do so, that he may suffer more at a later date. This single scene shows the difficulty of this question: on one hand Hamlet is cowardly by failing to carry out what he has resolved to do, yet on the other hand he can be seen in a more heroic way, in that he wishes his father’s revenge should be complete and perfect. The audience is ironically frustrated by his inertia and his Jekyll and Hyde heroism. 

The most important speech in the play “To be or not to be” soliloquy is a meditation on whether Hamlet should commit suicide or not and on the virtues of life of thought and action. His desire to be released “from this mortal coil” is brought about by his refusal to accept the events as they have turned out — with his father dead and his mother married to his uncle. He proposes that to commit suicide is decisive action that may release him from his over-thinking that cripples him throughout the play. Conversely, the audience by now well versed in Hamlet’s weakness can see the idea as a cowardly attempt by the protagonist to run away from “the head-ache and thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to”.

Hamlet is acutely aware of his own weaknesses, and feels frustration at his inability to act. He passes judgment on himself saying that “thus conscious does make cowards of us all”, and the cost of contemplation is that we “lose the name of action”. Again his wisdom and ability to express universal truths, make him a more sympathetic character. It remains debatable, as to whether the audience could consider him heroic at this point.

It is interesting to note that two instances of Hamlet’s elusive action come about when he is not thinking; he is angry. We see this in the murder of Polonius, “How now! a rat? Dead for a ducat” and then at the climax of the play when he finally enacts his revenge, “…thou incestuous murderous damned Dane/Drink off this potion.” In these scenes the audience is enthralled by the justice carries out. Yet by acting without thinking, we are posed a difficult question: is justice to be served in a fit of anger or after appropriate contemplation? In this sense Hamlet is clearly not heroic as he is not in control of his actions. Ironically this is what makes him appear heroic to the audience: he has finally managed to shake off his inertia and do something. The right or wrong of his actions is almost a secondary consideration.

By the end of the play the audience cannot help but feel that Hamlet is a hero: he has killed his father’s murderer and also has sacrificed his life for the sake of truth. His faculty to deliver philosophical judgments like “What a piece of is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties . . . the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals — and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?” and “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”, make him a universal figure. It is only befitting that the noble hero falls to the beautiful heavenly benediction of Horatio: “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Hamlet’s Madness:

The problem of madness is perhaps the most maddening problem in Hamlet. Some critics are of the view that Hamlet is sane throughout but feigns insanity. Others hold the opinion that Hamlet’s madness is less than madness and more than feigned.

 Before the play begins Hamlet is clearly a sensitive and idealistic young man. He is a scholar, a philosopher, and a poet too, who conceives the finest thoughts and exhibits great intellectual quality. We get a vivid picture of Hamlet as he was in the words of Ophelia:
“The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword/Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state/The glass of fashion, and the mould of form/Th’ observed of all observes”
This shows that Hamlet was once a master of his own self and had full command over his mind and sense. But as the play proceeds we can find the traces of madness in him. After his mother’s hasty marriage and the Ghost’s revelation, Hamlet’s “noble and most sovereign reason” is all “out of tune and harsh”.

Some critics are of the opinion that under the pressure of these two circumstances – his mother’s hasty marriage ,and the Ghost’s revelation – Hamlet lost his reason. We tend to agree with “Deighton” when he says:

“In every single instance in which Hamlet’s madness is manifested, he has good reason for assuming that madness: while, on the other hand , whenever there was no need to hoodwink anyone, his thought, language and action, bear no resemblance to unsoundness of intellect”

He talks rationally and shows great intellectual power in his conversations with Horatio. He receives the players with kind courtesy and his refinement of behaviour towards them shows that he is not mad.

In the first act we are told by Hamlet himself that he is going to feign madness to carry out his entrusted task of avenging his father’s murder.  “I perchance hereafter shall think meet/To put an antic disposition on.”

In his talk with Polonius, where he calls him a “ fishmonger” and insults him further with the satirical remark, “O Jephtha, Judge of Israel” , Polonius observes: “Though this be madness/Yet there is method in it.

When Polonius wants to pluck out some information from him, Hamlet distracts him by his witty remark, “Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a camel?”

However, as he is a fool by nature he is easily deceived by Hamlet’s feigned madness and comments: “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!”

Then there is Claudius, the shrewd man, who suspects the authenticity of Hamlet’s madness. When Polonius reveals the ‘very ecstasy of love’ as the cause of his madness, Claudius after observing Hamlet closely comments: “Love? His affections do not that way tend/Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little/Was not like madness.”
So Claudius strongly suspects, as we all do, that Hamlet’s madness is feigned and not real. Nevertheless he remarks: “Madness in great one’s must not unwatched go.”

Gertrude, the Queen mother of Hamlet though not believes in Polonius’ version of Hamlet’s madness, she too suspects that Hamlet is insane. After the ghost’s second appearance in the closet scene she is truly amazed at Hamlet’s actions. She exclaims with wonder: “How is it with you/That you bend your eye on vacancy/And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?”

Hamlet upon her amazement reveals truth to her: “I essentially am not in madness/But mad in craft.”

The next to suspect the real nature of his madness is his own school fellows Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. Guildenstern finds crafty madness in him and Hamlet himself reveals the truth to them:

“I am but mad north-north west/When the wind is southerly/I know a hawk from a handsaw”
He tells Guildenstern that he cannot make him a “wholesome answer”, as his “wits are diseased”, and it is of no use if he expected to “ pluck out the heart of his mystery/ And sound him from the lowest note to the top of his compass.” When Rosencrantz is unable to comprehend his witty remarks, Hamlet simply states:

“A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.”

Hamlet enacts the ‘Mousetrap’ play to confirm Claudius’ guilt. This does not sound like a mad man’s action. Only a man of wisdom could plan everything systematically and arrive at the expected conclusion. Harley Granville Barker points out:
“When he is alone, we have the truth of him , but it is his madness which is on public exhibition”

When Hamlet confronts Ophelia in Act-III, his rational thoughts slip away and he curses and bashes her: “If thou dost marry I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry/Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny/Get thee to a nunnery.”

He lashes out at her calling her two-faced: God has given you one face and you make yourselves another”. The poor Ophelia is no judge of Hamlet’s crafty madness and regretfully comments: “O, What a noble mind is here overthrown.” He curses herself who has “sucked the honey of his music vows.”

One can trace the glimpses of the true insanity in Hamlet’s actions. For example his actions of rushing headlong towards a beckoning ghost, rashly running his rapier through Polonius without seeing him, speaking to Yorick’s skull, and leaping into Ophelia’s grave to grapple with Laertes hardly fit the description of one within the control of his senses.

We can sum up above discussion in the words of Bradley:

"Hamlet is not mad, he is fully responsible for his actions. But he suffers from melancholia a pathological state which may develop into lunacy. His melancholy accounts for his nervous excitability, his longing for death, his irresolution and delay.”

Hamlet's Soliloquies:

A Soliloquy is a discourse uttered by a speaker that is alone on the stage and oblivious to the listeners present. The dramatist employs it with of divulging the character’s innermost thoughts and plan of action in advance to the audience. In fact the practice of soliloquies became so popular with the Elizabethan writers that they banished chorus from their tragedies. 

Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet earns an impregnable name and fame by employing this field. Hamlet’s soliloquies unfold the internal dilemma and mental obsession of the chief speaker. They lend an insight into Hamlet’s contemplative nature and the problem of procrastination. Most of all, they mark the movement from his inability to overcome his scholarly nature to his final resolution to become an avenger. The audience comfortably gets sundry approach to the psyche and mindset of Hamlet.

Hamlet’s first soliloquy gives the first true insight into Hamlet’s inner turmoil. By beginning the soliloquy with, “O, that this too too flesh solid flesh would melt/Thaw and resolve into a dew”, Hamlet wishes that his physical self might cease to exit, expressing the gravity of his innermost grief. Hamlet’s words, “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world!” indicate his intense disgust with the world. He refers this world as “an unweeded garden”, in which “rank and gross” things grow in abundance. Hamlet’s grief over his father sudden death is intensified by his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle whom he considers inferior and venomous naturally. He denounces her disloyalty in the words, “frailty thy name is woman”, and juxtaposes Claudius’ inferiority to his father’s greatness in the image of “Hyperion to a satyr”. Furthermore his allusion to Niobe and the contrast between her mother’s “galled eyes” and her “dexterity to incestuous sheets”, serve only to accentuate his tormented emotions. He scornfully protests: “O God! A beast that wants discourse of reason/Would have mourned longer.” Nevertheless he conceals his great misery from the king and the queen: “But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

Hamlet’s next soliloquy “What a rogue and peasant slave am I!” is delivered after the arrival of players and reveals the root of true conflict: his inability to act. By juxtaposing a player who “could force his soul to his own conceit”, to weep for Hecuba without any apparent reason, against him, who has “the motive and cue for passion” but cannot do anything for his godlike father “upon whose property and most dear life/A damned defeat was made.” Hamlet regards himself “a dull and muddy-mettled rascal” who has done nothing to avenge his father’s murder. He vents his anguish on his uncle by referring to him as “a bloody, bawdy villain!/Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!”. Finally, We find Hamlet resolving to devise a mouse-trap play for Claudius in which he will closely watch his reaction and “catch the conscience of the king”.

Unlike Hamlet’s first two major soliloquies, Hamlet’s next and the most celebrated “To be or not to be” soliloquy is governed by intellect and not frenzied emotion. Hamlet sparks an internal philosophical debate on the advantages and disadvantages of his existence. Here Hamlet is shown to be on the horns of dilemma “Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer /The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/Or take arms against a sea of troubles.” He jumps to tentamount that death is no doubt a sleep but there are thousand dreadful visions that disturb and shock such sleep. Hamlet’s dilemma is that he cannot sure what death has in store; it may be a sleep but in “perchance to dream” he is speculating that it an experience perhaps worse than life. The death is called “undiscovered country” from where “no traveller returns”. Hamlet declines to the idea of suicide by saying “thus conscience doth make cowards of us/And thus native hue of resolution /Is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”    

Hamlet’s next soliloquy is delivered after the players’ scene when he goes the queen’s closet and on the way finds the king at prayer. It is golden opportunity for Hamlet to carryout the revenge but his scholarly nature intervenes and he starting contemplating:

“Now might I do it pat now he is praying/And now I’ll do it and so he goes to heaven/I so am I revenged!”

Wisdom stands mighty resistance between him and his revenge. He consoles himself for another opportunity in which he must be in rage, intoxicated, gambling or busy in his incestuous pleasures of bed or about some other act that has “no relish of salvation in it”, and then to trip him so that “his soul may be as damned and black/As hell, whereto it goes”.

Hamlet’s last soliloquy is prompted by the passage of Fortinbras’ army through Denmark. It is another protest against the dullness of his passion and slow methodical march of his contemplative nature. Hamlet scolds himself by saying, “How all occasions do inform against me/And spur my dull revenge”. He ponders “whether it be bestial oblivion or, some craven scruple/Of thinking too precisely on the event”, that has thwarted his purpose. Remembering a power motive as “a father killed, a mother stained”, Hamlet now forms an ultimate resolve:“O, from this time forth/My thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth”     

Besides Hamlet, Ophelia and Claudius also burst into soliloquies. Ophelia’s soliloquy is very significant as the audience is acquainted with the stately position of lord Hamlet:

Oh, what a noble mind is here overthrown/The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword/The expectancy and the rose of the fair state/The glass of fashion and the mould of form/The observed of all observers.”

In a nut-shell, reverting back to Hamlet, the prince of Denmark without these soliloquies would be an elusive shadow, a character without personality. 

Supernaturalism in Hamlet:

Ghost or supernatural plays an important role in Shakespearean tragedies. Shakespeare has introduced ghosts and witches which have supernatural knowledge. According to Moulton; 

“Supernatural agency has a place in the world of Shakespeare”.
In Hamlet, the supernatural appears in the form of the ghost. The first act is the little play in itself, and the ghost is the hero of it; 550 out of the 850 lines are concerned with it. Dover Wilson says:

“ The ghost is the linchpin of Hamlet, remove it, and the whole play falls to pieces.”

 The ghost in Hamlet has at least a three-fold dramatic significance; It contributes to the general tragic utterances of the play; it motives the entire action of the play; it shows up the character and drives home a certain moral effect.

First, in the play, Shakespeare has introduced the supernatural element in order to create an atmosphere of mystery, horror and suspense. It diffuses an atmosphere of awe through which the tragedy becomes more impressive. We come across the ghost that chills our blood with horror. It is not made to speak rather “stalks away majestically”. Horatio does not believe in the ghost but its appearance “harrows him with fear and wonder”. The introduction of the late king’s ghost in the first scene creates an awe-inspiring atmosphere which is the forewarning that unnatural deeds are either to take place, or to be disclosed. Hamlet himself exclaims with wonder:
“My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well/I doubt some foul play”,

Secondly, the ghost motives the entire action of the play. The ghost makes the shocking revelation of its murder to Hamlet:

“The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/Now wears his crown.”
The ghost unfolds the secret that Hamlet’s uncle Claudius has killed the king to usurp his throne and seduce his queen. It further imposes upon Hamlet the entrusted task of avenging his father’s murder:

 “Let not the royal bed of Denmark be/A couch for luxury and damned incest”.
The awful revelation of the ghost forms the soul of the tragedy and springs the action. What the ghost reveals totally staggers Hamlet.

Verity points out:

“Without the ghost’s initial revelation of truth to Hamlet, there would be no occasion for revenge; in other words no tragedy of Hamlet.”

Thirdly, the presence of ghost in “Hamlet” has a moral significance also. The play shows that we cannot conceal the truth for a long time. It must appear and “Murder speaks with most miraculous organ”. The ghost, we feel, is a representative of that hidden and ultimate power rules in the universe, it is a messenger of the divine justice. Hamlet says:
“Foul deeds will rise/Though all earth overwhelm them, to men’s eye”.
Hamlet’s mind is assailed with doubt whether or not this apparition is a demon sent from hell, or if it is truly his father’s spirit which has come from purgatory, to divulge the horrors of his murder, in the hope of revenge:    

“The spirit that I have seen/ May be the devil and the devil hath power/To assume a pleasing shape.”

To verify the truth of the ghost’s statement, Hamlet first feigns madness, and then gets enacted mousetrap to “catch the conscience of the king”. But after Hamlet has tricked the king into a show of remorse, he would “take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound”.

About the nature of the ghost, there exist a controversy; some critics are of the view that the ghost is a subjective phenomenon – a hallucination springing from imagination. Other believe that it is an objective phenomenon.

In the Queen’s closet scene, the ghost is invisible to  the queen who interprets Hamlet’s action as the fantasy of his mind. But Hamlet not only sees the ghost but also interacts with it.  

The second appearance of the ghost in the play is very significant. Dr. Greg puts forward the hallucination theory in this regard . He suggests that the ghost in Hamlet is nothing but a freakish fancy of Hamlet’s imagination. The ghost indeed is the manifestation of externalized spectre of the psychic disturbance of Hamlet.

It must be kept in mind that Shakespeare’s characters Hamlet, Macbeth and Brutus are gifted with imagination and highly susceptible to the phenomenon of supernatural. Banquo’s ghost in the royal banquet may be the hallucination of Macbeth and Caesar’s ghost might be Brutus’ imagination. But here in Hamlet the presence of the ghost is felt not only by Hamlet but also by Horatio and night watchmen. Hence the ghost must be objective phenomenon. Then why not the ghost has been notified by the queen? It is interpreted that the queen is  unable spiritual visions of the ghost as she stands far from the path of honour.

To reconcile this subjective, objective controversy; one has to restore to Dower Wilson who delves deeper into the problem and concludes:

“The ghost scenes in Hamlet cannot rightly be understood without some study of Elizabethan spiritualism which was very difficult thing from modern the spiritualism.” Elizabethan audience believed in  ghosts, witches, portents, omens and their harmful effects. The introduction of the ghosts and witches was a revolutionary innovation in Elizabethan drama.

To sum up, the presentation of the ghost in Hamlet is an artistic triumph. Without it there would have been no tragic suspense or curiosity, no suitable atmosphere and consequently no interest.

Symbolism in A Farewell to Arms

Symbols are considered to be an artistic device. The writers do not convey their thoughts in cheaper words but they use symbols to foreshadow and make their language rich and impressive. A Farewell to Arms depends heavily on Hemingway’s symbolic technique to convey the subjective condition of his characters.

Hemingway’s use of symbols and metaphors is always sublime and subtle. But this does not mean that his symbolism is tinged with obscurity or ambiguity. Rather his idiomatic expressions and under-statements are quite clear and far from being incomprehensible. The writer uses simplicity and naturalness to decorate his narrative and to draw the attention of his reader.

The very title of the novel is itself symbolical. The title bears two-fold symbolic meanings. The hero in the novel bids farewell not only to the war but also to the arms of the woman he loves. He bids farewell to war because he is disgusted with it. But he also bids farewell to the arms of his beloved woman because she has become a victim of her cruel fate. 

Throughout the novel Ernest Hemingway uses water and rivers as metaphors. Rivers are used as symbols of rebirth and escape and rain as tragedy and disaster.

Rivers in A Farewell to Arms represent rebirth. They symbolize a departure from a previous life and an entrance to a new one. Henry already fed up with the war, no longer believes in “war heroism”.  While walking with his fellow soldiers, after the retreat, he is arrested and fears that he will be executed. "He jumps in the river with a splash", allowing it to float him along. Thus he is able to save his life. As a result of this plunge, his “anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation”. When Henry emerged from the river, it was as if he was reborn. 

In the novel, rain serves as a potent symbol of tragedy. Already beginning in the first chapter, the reader learns that "the permanent rain brought the cholera" and that seven thousand men have died of it. The rain degrades the Fredrick’s happiness in the hotel as he awakens to the sound of rain and learns that he will be arrested. Rain also falls during the troop's retreat which is symbolizing a failure. And during their time of escape from Italy to Switzerland it is very windy and rainy. That symbolizes how their escape would definitely be difficult.

The rain in the novel is a constant foreshadowing of the tragedy that soon befalls the lovers.  Hemingway reflects the supreme dominance of death in the novel, and how it looms over all the protagonists’ thoughts. Catherine tells Henry:

"I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it".

This may be interpreted as the rain is an omen of death. It is in the rain that Fredrick loses both his child and his wife, and the book ends with the image of Fredrick, trudging back to his hotel, alone in the rain.

Besides water and rain symbols, the other symbols do play their role in the novel. Mountains symbolize love, dignity, health, happiness, and the good life. On the other hand, the low- lying plains serve as a symbol of indignity, suffering, disease, death and destruction. Snow is natural symbol of beauty and affection. Settled in Switzerland in a small villa in snow covered mountains, Catherine herself becomes the symbol of home, happiness, security, and comfort. Besides, autumn stands as a symbol of destruction and winter a symbol of death. Also cholera refers to both physical and spiritual disease.

In addition to these weather images, Catherine’s hair serves as one of the symbols of isolation and seclusion. During their sweet nights in Milan, Catherine lets down her hair and lets it cascade around Frederic’s head. This lovely description of hair that reminds Henry of being enclosed inside a tent or behind a waterfall stands as a symbol of the couple’s isolation from the world and serves as a sort of security blanket for Henry as he thinks himself sheltered from Italian authorities.

In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Frederick's narration of the burning of ants in a log that he places on a fire is symbolic of the plight of the soldiers in the war. As the ants are attracted towards the fire, they come near and fall into it, and thus become a victim of its heat. Likewise the soldiers, in their infatuation with the war, plunge and throw themselves blindly into the war, and are deprived of their lives. Hemingway uses this symbolic passage of the ants' death to highlight the futility of war.

This burning of ants takes on a symbolic significance. Hemingway uses this analogy to propound his atheistic beliefs. As the ants are falling into the fire, Frederick "remember[s] thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire ", but Henry will not save the dying ants. In a metaphorical sense, Hemingway questions if there is a God that has control over all those characters in the novel who are surrounded by death.

To conclude, from the first chapter to the last word, the novel is flooded with rain and other images of water. The rain almost always heralds destruction and death; it impinges upon whatever momentary happiness the characters have and turns it into muddy misery.

Fredrick Henry: Hemingway’s Code Hero

 Lt. Fredric Henry, the protagonist in A Farewell to Arms, exemplifies Hemingway's code hero in several ways. Like a typical Hemingway’s hero he is a wounded man not only physically but also psychologically. He is a man who engages in life, rather than observing it as a bystander. He maintains self-control in the face of overwhelming adversity, and he does not demonstrate self-pity. Like  Hemingway’s other code heroes, Lt. Henry is existentially removed from the world. He possesses personal integrity, often feels isolated and remains stoic for most of the time. He is a rationalist and pragmatist who brings everything to the test of experience. Most of all, Lt. Henry functions as a Hemingway code hero because he faces life with courage, and he endures life with dignity.

The character of Lt. Henry is a prime example of a Hemingway hero. He shows a general loss of faith in conventional morality. Henry respects the priest, but he says flat out that he does not believe in God.   In the start of the novel, Henry immerses himself into the sensual pleasures that surround  him.

In the beginning, his views on life and the war are extremely naive, innocent, and idealistic. "Only seven thousand have died" of war and cholera, he comments early on.  This illustrates his innocent perception of the war because he doesn't acknowledge how many people have actually died. Like a typical Hemingway’s hero, he enjoys much of drinking and love-making in the beginning but undergoes tremendous development during the course of the novel.

“American Tenete” Fredrick Henry is stoic under duress or pain; he is unflappable under fire, he does his work. He is “man’s man” in that his thoughts revolve on women and drink. He is an American who enlists in the Italian army during World War I, a dangerous role he assumes by choice. As an officer who commands an ambulance unit, he serves on the front lines, exposing himself to the greatest danger. Henry endures a lot of pain, but always understates his condition. Even When he is severely wounded in the battle, he does not let his suffering show.

"I...leaned over and put my hand on my knee.  My knee wasn't there."

  He does not freak out and complain, he just realizes it is what it is.

Indigenous to nearly all of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, the “Hemingway man” lives by one simple rule: “Man the player is born; life the game will kill him”. Frederic’s development is enhanced by his relationship with the English nurse, Catherine Barkley. Originally, Catherine is nothing more than an object of sensual desire, but as the novel progresses, Catherine becomes symbolic of Frederic’s final resolution. Having discovered the value of his relationship with Catherine, Frederic returns to the front, only to find the army in complete and utter chaos. Frederic is welcomed by his old friends but is greatly disturbed by their low morale.

As the novel continues, Lt. Henry eventually deserts the army, but this is not as an act of cowardice. Caught up in the chaos and carnage of a military retreat, he leaves the army to save his own life. Frederic no longer feels obligated to serve a country to which he does not belong. His allegiance is shattered when he witnesses Italian officials shooting their own men. He will not sacrifice his life to a senseless death. He no longer feels a part of the war; he feels isolated from it. He declares an individual separate peace and acts decisively to make his way back to Catherine.

Despite the cruelty of the world, Henry is able to find some moments of solace. Reunited with Catherine, and far away from the decimated Italian countryside Lt. Henry enjoys a period of peace and happiness with her as they await the birth of their baby. When she dies in childbirth and the baby dies, also, Lt. Henry is truly alone. Catherine’s untimely death has driven Frederic into a senseless cesspool of babbling thoughts. 

“Get away hell! It would have been the same if we had been married fifty times. And what if she should die? She won’t die. People don’t die in childbirth nowadays. … It’s just nature giving her hell”.

These words show Frederic’s scattered train of thought. He attempts to shield himself from death with these cliches. Frederic even begins to pray to God in one last futile attempt but in vain. Nolan remarks:

“What Hemingway portrays, in fact, is a good, albeit a disappointed and disillusioned man trying to fulfill his various obligations.” 
 After Catherine’s “murder” by the Biological Trap, Henry’s disillusionment is revealed in his last tragic note:

“But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the lights it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue.”

 He walks away, in the rain. He is isolated in his grief, but he will endure this greatest of all his losses.

 To conclude, by the end of the novel Henry’s metamorphosis is complete and he is fitting into the definition of Hemingway’s code hero because he has progressed so much from the beginning to the end.