“Mourning Becomes Electra”–Modern Counterpart of Greek Tragedy:

Mourning Becomes Electra” is a continuation of the Greek tradition with Freudian unconscious and Puritan heritage of 19^th century in New England setting. It is rare to find both “Electra” and “Oedipus” complexes in a single work of art. But here we have both as parallel themes. Set in a modern milieu, the plot, the characterization, and the story-line are all reflective of the ancient traditions. In the words of Lawrence A. Johnsen,

“Mourning becomes Electra is a tale of ancient hatreds, illegitimacy, revenge, family secrets and murder.”

Eugene O’ Neill intentionally changed names and sequence of events to serve his purpose. The substitution shown with the main characters resemble the dramatis personae of Aeschylus’ Oresteia: Ezra Mannon – Agamemnon; Christine – Clytemnestra; Lavinia – Electra; Orin – Orestes; Captain Adam Brant – Aegisthus; Captain Peter Niles – Pylades. Instead of the Trojan War, we have the American Civil War in the background. Like Clytemnestra who found a lover in the form of Aegisthus, Christine has cuckolded Ezra Mannon. But Christine is far more venomous than Clytemnestra. Whereas the latter had some grievance because her spouse had sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia to get favourable wind for his fleet; Christine had no such anger to be redressed. Having fed up with one Patriarch, she wanted to experience the ecstasy of love. Up to this point the story follows Greek play. What happens next is Eugene O’Neill’s own interpretation. In this case the daughter Lavinia too is in love with the mother’s paramour and hence an opponent. Then, there is a strong psychoanalytical stance in the play since Livinia is obsessively preoccupied with “Electra” complex. She is consumed by love for father and is expressively involved in revenge for his death. Lavinia tells Ezra explictly:“You are the only man I shall ever love. I am going to stay with you.”

Alongside with Lavinia’s Electra complex, there is another incestuous complex namely mother-son Oedipal complex, both in Orin and Brant. Based on Freudian unconscious, the involvements of Mannons are quite predictable: Adam loves his mother and Christine; Orin loves her mother and Lavinia; Lavinia loves her father, Adam and Orin; Ezra loves both daughter and wife; Christine loves both her son and Adam. Reciprocally, Lavinia hates her mother and Marry Brantome, the rivals of her love; Orin hates his father and Adam Brant, and Adam hates Ezra, Orin and his own father David Mannon, the rivals of his mother’s love. Adam tells Lavinia:

“You are like your mother in some ways. Your face is dead image of hers. And look at your hair. You will not meet another in a month of Sundays. I only know one other woman who had it. You will think it strange when I tell you. It was my mother.”

Christine too is pre-occupied with Lavinia’s Electra complex. She reminds Lavinia: “You have always tried to become wife of your father and mother of Orin. You have always schemed to steal my place.”

Thus both Orin’s Oedipus complex and Lavinia’s Electra complex remain at the core of the story. Orin’s mother complex is developed at some length. He is his mother’s love and his baby. Orin’s love for his mother is always reverential. His greeting on their first encounter in the play has curious juxtaposition: “Mother! God it is good to see you.” Christine deals with him in seductive terms, emphasising physicality in their relationship: “You are a big man now, are not you? I cannot believe it. It seems only yesterday when I used to find you in night-shirt.”

According to Freudian hypothesis each Mannon is drawn by unconscious impulse towards the parent of opposite sex. In Orin and Lavinia this impulse has grown into fixation. The most obvious instance of Freudian complex is Orin’s fixation at her mother. While away at war, Orin dreamt of his mother as an Island of Peace. Supplementary to this dream was the illusion each man he killed at the front resembled his father. The desire to posses his mother and kill his father give him classical Oedipal symptoms. This incites him to kill Adam and the brunt of his hatred falls on his father’s figure. Christine’s presence always has softening effect on him. When he witnesses Christine’s disintegration as a result of Adam’s murder, he pleads her: “Mother do not moan like that! How could you grieve for your servant’s bastard.”

After Christine’s suicide, Orin’s life is shattered. Lavinia takes him to the Islands of East. After a year the reader finds them taking the roles of their father and mother as Orin tells Lavinia: “Are not you see I am in father’s place and you are mother?”

Orin’s complex is made explicit when he makes incestuous proposal to Lavinia: “I love you now with all the guilt in me–the guilt we share. Perhaps I love you much Vinnie…How else can I be sure you will not leave me? You would feel as guilty as I am!”

By keeping Lavinia, Orin’s desire to possess his mother will be accomplished. When Lavinia shouts at him that he should commit suicide, he hears his mother’s voice: “Yes that would be justice–you are mother now. She is speaking through you…Death is an Island of Peace–mother will be waiting for me there.” Orin’s suicide is return to his mother–death is to peace; it is passage into oblivion.

After Orin’s death, Lavinia’s puritan heritage reclaims itself. Although she tries to break away from the tradition and escape with Peter but her dream crumbles down as she calls Peter ‘Adam’ in a Freudian slip. Afterwards she accepts her fate with Puritan spirit of resignation and locks herself in Mannon house to live with the ghosts of dead in expiation for all their crimes. The Mannon catches Lavinia in the end–being born was starting to die. The Mannon house is sepulchre and her life is living death henceforth.

The play “Mourning Becomes Electra” has much in common with the grand style of ancient Greek tragedy. It is the suffering of human beings that results in an ennobling effect. The characters have complex psychological hang-ups which contribute towards their doom. On the Greek pattern we have a trilogy with three parts: The Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. Whereas in the Greek cases, the psychological aspect is disguised and barely identifiable, in O’Neill it constitutes the essence of drama.

Synaesthesia in Keats’ Poetry:

Synaesthetic imagery or sensuousness is the paramount quality in Keats’ poetry. Keats’ synaesthetic powers are unrivalled: nothing in the world is abstract to him, abstractions weary him. Keats admits, “My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.” And that aesthetic dream-life which is separated so sharply from the reality is more desireable.

Keats has crowned every line of his poetry with beautiful colouring of synaesthetic imagery. Richard H. Fogle calls his synaesthesia as the product of his “unrivalled ability to absorb, sympathise, and humanise natural objects”. Synaesthesia in Keats, according to him, is a “natural concomitant of other qualities of his poetry”.

Sensuousness is that quality of poetry that appeals to our five senses of taste, touch, smell, vision and hearing. Keats’ sensuousness was unbounded: the song of a bird, the changing pattern of wind, the rustling of an animal, the smile on the child’s face—nothing escaped from her watchful eyes. G.K Chesterton rightly remarks:

“The record of taste, touch and smell crown every line of his poetry.”

The following lines from ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ appeal directly to our five senses.

“Of all her wreathed pearls her hair she frees

 Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one

 Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees

 Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees

 Half-hidden like a mermaid in sea-weed.”

In the sonnet, ‘Bright Star’, Keats spreads fantastic colours of synaesthetic imagery.

“Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast

  To feel for ever its soft fall and swell

  Awake forever in a state of sweet unrest

  Still, still to hear tender taken breath

  And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”

The quality of sensuousness is so deeply infused in Keats’ poetry that Louis McNiece calls him ‘a sensuous mystic’. Keats is mystic of senses and not of thoughts as he sought to apprehend the ultimate truth of the universe through his aesthetic sensations and not through intellectual or philosophical ideas.

Regarding Keats’ sensuousness Mathew Arnold very aptly remarks:

“No one can question the eminency in Keats’ poetry of the quality of sensuousness. Keats as a poet is eminently and enchantingly sensuous.”

Keats’ sensuousness is seen at his very best in his odes. Keats is primarily and pre-eminently is a poet of sensations and not of intellect. In ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, for example, Keats produces a series of sensuous pictures by his powerful imagination.

“Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard

 Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes play on

  Not to the sensual ear but more endeared

  Pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone.”

In ‘Ode to Autumn’, Keats produces a feast of colourful images.

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

 Close bosom-friend of maturing sun

 Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run

To bend with apples moss’d cottage-trees.”

Perhaps the best illustration of Keats’ synaesthetic imagery is in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Here Keats’ imaginative powers are seen at the very best.

“O for a draught of vintage! That hath been

  Cooled a long in deep delved earth

  Tasting of flora and country green

Dance, Provencal song and sunburnt mirth.”

Owing to dense foliage of beach trees the poet cannot see the flowers but still can differentiate them from their fragrance:

“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs

But in embalmed darkness guess each sweet.”

In Keats’ late poetry we see that it underwent a change. There is increasing concern of human problems and longing for death. Nevertheless sensuousness is still wearing its fairy pattern though colouring is different: it is touched with “still sad music of humanity”:

“Then in a wailful choir small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows born aloft

  Or sinking as light wind lives or dies.”

In the final stanza of ‘Ode to Autumn’, Keats enthusiastically presents universal and all-embracing sensuous images which enthrall and enchant us:

“Hedge-cricket sings and now with treble soft

  The red-breast whistle from a garden croft

 And gathering swallows twittering in the skies.”

The above lines are so beautiful in rhythm and composition that Compton Rickett finds a ‘symphony of sounds’ in these lines.

Summing up, we can say that poetry comes to Keats as a ‘joy wrought in sensations’ and he accordingly advised Shelley to ‘load every rift with ore’. Be it ode or sonnet or narrative poetry, Keats is richly sensuous. Keats’ sensuousness is not only delicate and delicious but also aesthetic and delightful. 

Heart of Darkness—Racism:

In Heart of Darkness the writer follows one white man's nightmarish journey into the heart of Africa. Aboard a British ship called the Nellie, three men listen to a man named Marlow recount his journey into Africa up the Congo River in a steam boat as an agent for a Belgian ivory trading Company.

Marlow says that he witnesses brutality and hate between the white ivory hunters and the native African people. Marlow becomes entangled in a power struggle within the Company, and finally learns the truth about the mysterious Kurtz, a mad agent who has become both a god and a prisoner of the "native Africans." After "rescuing" Kurtz from the native African people, Marlow watches in horror as Kurtz succumbs to madness, disease, and finally death.

The story of Marlow corresponds so neatly with Conrad’s own biography that it is easy to assume that Marlow registers Conrad’ own perspective, including his prejudices and perhaps racism. Marlow’s poignant description of native Africans sounds like racist. Heart of Darkness is criticized for its alleged partiality: style entirely overrules substance, providing a justification for immorality and evil. Conrad does not resort to the original image of Africa. Rather, the images he uses belong to the stereotypical images produced by “Western imagination”.

It is important to notice that Marlow casts Africans as a primitive version of himself rather than as potential equals, indeed sub-humans. They become for Marlow a mere backdrop, a human screen against which he can play out his philosophical and existential struggles. Their existence and their exoticism enable his self-contemplation. This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism.

Chinua Achebe, the most esteemed Post Colonial critic in his famous 1975 lecture, “An Image of Africa—Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” points to this underlying racism. Achebe's lecture quickly establishes the belief that Conrad deliberately sets Africa up as "the other world" so that he might examine Europe. According to Achebe, Africa is presented to the reader as "the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality".

Achebe sees Conrad's portrayal of Africans as the most disparaging of African humanity:

“We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly as we struggled round a bend there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage.”

According to Achebe, Conrad's long and famously hypnotically sentences are mere "trickery", designed to induce a hypnotic stupor in the reader:

“The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us — who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled…We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories.”

The description of African people in Heart of Darkness is unpalatable, at least to a conscious African reader: “The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were — No they were not inhuman. Well, you know that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman...They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly.”

“Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness”, says Achebe, “and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: "What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours .... Ugly."

"Fine fellows — cannibals — in their place", Conrad’s narrator tells us pointedly.

Then there is a "wild and gorgeous apparition of an (African) woman" pitied against the serene civilized mood of the Kurtz’s Intended. This Amazon is drawn in considerable detail, albeit of a mysterious nature.

 “She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent ....She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.”

The "worst insult" is the pitying of the thoughtful life-like white men against the grunting men of Africa. It is clearly not part of Conrad's purpose to confer language on the "rudimentary souls" of Africa. In place of speech they made "a violent babble of uncouth sounds."

Conrad’s narrator Marlow is able to toss out such ‘bleeding-heart’ sentiments as these:

“They were dying slowly — it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.”

The kind of liberalism espoused here by Marlow is simply shocking to Post Colonial reader.

When Marlow's African helmsman falls down with a spear in his heart he gives his white master one final disquieting look.

“And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory — like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.”

The black man lays a claim on the white man which is well-nigh intolerable. It is the laying of this claim which frightens and at the same time fascinates Conrad.

Achebe emphatically declares: “The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a bloody racist.”

Achebe is outraged at reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind: “Africa [Conrad sees] as a setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril”. “Whatever Conrad's problems were”, Achebe sums up, “you might say he is now safely dead. Quite true. Unfortunately his heart of darkness plagues us still.”

Those who disagree with Achebe put across a series of arguments that revert back to the ideological environment under which the novel was conceived and written. They point out that Conrad set his story in the Belgian Congo of the 1890s when the Africans in the Congo region were being forced to extract ivory and rubber for the Empire at gunpoint. They think that Conrad attacks imperialism because he identifies it with clear plunder and not the pretensions of civilizing the savage and spreading Christianity.

However, even then, Conrad's attack of imperialism has its contradictions. Conrad questions the morality of colonialism and exploitation but he does not question the colonial mission itself.

One of Kurtz's last utterances: "Exterminate the brutes!" demonstrates the keynote of Conrad’s underlying theme. Despite the frenzy, Kurtz knows the clear cut racial divisions and his “white-men's duties” in Africa.

In addition, "Darkness" in Heart of Darkness tends to be metaphorical. In Heart of Darkness evil is portrayed as African and it is also because some white men in the Heart of Darkness behave like Africans!

Reading Heart of Darkness, it is certain that, though, it shows the extremities of imperialism, but it definitely confirms the western concept of Africa as the land of non-human savages. If the novel caused sympathy towards the African, it was that sympathy one has for an animal in agony, not fellow human beings.

Summing up, Joseph Conrad, then, was a thorough-going racist, who in the words   Bernard C. Mayer, his own biographer, “notoriously inaccurate in the rendering of his own history.”

Reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart from the Postcolonial Perspective:

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a seminal work of Post Colonial studies, has acquired the status of a classic. Among the various factors which lead to its publication, the most noteworthy was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that sparked Achebe’s indignation at mis-representations of Africans in fiction. Things Fall Apart was written, says Achebe, “to reassert African identity and as part of the growth of Nigerian nationalism”.

In a way Things Fall Apart is a counter discourse against Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Achebe espoused the idea that Conrad drew the humiliating images of the Africans as “some other beings”. Edward Said in his groundbreaking Orientalism (1978) argues that “The [fabricated] Orient was a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences”

For imperialists like Conrad, this vast African continent was the haunt of savages; a country riddled with superstitions and fanaticism, destined for contempt-- indeed a country of cannibals. Achebe shatters the notion so popular among the Europeans that imperialists actually civilized Africa. Achebe emphatically declares:

“African peoples did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; … their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty… they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity.”

 This conviction pervades all of his works and they purely reflect African dignity and value. Thus Achebe is, no doubt, an authentic writer whose writings reflect richly his own contextual realities.

It is now popular to argue that the post-colonial literatures are primarily concerned with writing back to the center, by active engagement “in a process of questioning and travestying” colonial stereotypes. This novel illustrates the “cultural traditions” of the indigenous Igbo. It demonstrates cultural, psychological and political impacts of colonialism on the Igbo. And for making these two points of demonstration successful, Achebe resorts to the English language as the medium of expression.

In Things Fall Apart Achebe attempts to assert his own historical narratives by adhering to the oral tradition. Achebe admits that Things Fall Apart “was an act of atonement with my past, a ritual return and homage of a prodigal son”

Achebe presents to us an all-encompassing and meticulous depiction of the pre-colonial Igbo society in Things Fall Apart. Achebe unearths the glorious past of Nigeria through the authentic picturing of the pre- colonial Igbo culture in Things Fall Apart. He champions the fact that “there was nothing to be ashamed of” in the pre-colonial past of the Igbo.

Achebe has recovered the perspective, which is exclusively a native perspective. The characters reflect on their own socio- cultural values that are crumbled down after the arrival of the Europeans in Igbo-land. They put forward their resourceful values that consist of both accuracy and flaws, before the readers who judge how cruelly that values have been crushed by colonialism.

Things Fall Apart “recreates an oral culture and a consciousness imbued with an agrarian way of life”. To define itself post-colonial writing seizes the language of the center, the colonizer west. In the course of writing counter-narrative to Euro-centric misrepresentation of Africa, he successfully harnesses the colonizer’s language to make it ‘bear the burden’ of his native experience.

Achebe wants to achieve cultural revitalization through English. He is capable of capturing the rhythm of the Igbo language. Achebe uses Igbo proverbs, folktales and vocabulary in the novel. Igbo proverbs are entirely native in character and use and they contain native wisdom and philosophy. Folktales are important parts of the Nigerian oral tradition which is deeply rooted in the daily lives of the Igbo. And then, Achebe uses many Igbo words in the novel to support his message to be conveyed.

Achebe is entirely successful in presenting the picture of the pre-colonial Igbo society in a transparent and direct way. It helps him be authentic and unprejudiced in doing so. Lastly, the novel immensely shows the key issue in a post-colonial text, i.e., the impacts of colonialism,

European colonialism totally destroyed the culture and traditions of the Igbo People. Before the coming of colonialism, African societies were culturally diverse. Colonialism trampled the diversity under feet. In Things Fall Apart we see that before the advent of the colonial power the people of Umuofia lived in communal agreement in an organic society of economic, cultural, political, familial and religious stability. But colonial rule turns the social stability into instability and disintegration. The title of the novel itself signifies this claim- things are no longer in order; colonialism has made them disordered.

Colonialism makes the Igbo ‘drained of’ their ‘essence’. Okonkwo symbolizes the essence of Umuofia; the suicide of Okonkwo, which is also a colonial effect, signifies the suicide of Umuofia’s essence. Colonialism makes ‘extraordinary possibilities’ of the indigenous people ‘wiped out’. Okonkwo symbolizes that ‘mighty voices’ which is ‘stilled forever’ by the colonial power.

The colonial masters bring with them different ideologies and philosophies about human relations such as individualism and Marxism. In the African philosophy of relationship a person is fundamentally defined as ‘being-with’ or ‘belonging to’. But Western philosophy puts emphasis on the condition of a human person as ‘a being for itself’. The colonial ideology of individualism has caused shattering impacts on the communal Igbo and on their mutual relationship.

To conclude, Achebe’s novel shatters the stereotypical European portraits about the native Africans. By unfolding the devastating effects of colonialism on the life of the Igbo people in Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe has successfully made a comprehensible demarcation between the pre-colonial and the colonial Igbo-land. By setting these two periods opposite to each other Achebe demonstrates the value and authenticity of the Igbo traditions in a more unambiguous manner. His strategy of differentiation between the pre-colonial and the colonial well suits his purpose of writing back by rewriting the history of the lost traditions and culture of the Igbo.

The Tragic Effect of Oedipus Rex:

Oedipus Rex is a very significant play for the description of emotional impact of tragedy. In the words of Aristotle, “the main purpose of tragedy is to evoke the feelings of pity and fear among audience.”

There is no doubt that the story of the fall of Oedipus Rex is full of pity and terror. The fate of Oedipus Rex who always wished for the welfare of the people inspires us with awe. We also wonder at mystery of human life in which one may suffer even with the best of intentions. We also get a feeling that fate is inexorable and no one can escape its decrees. The same idea is depicted by Sophocles in his Oedipus Rex through the characters of Jocaste and Oedipus, both of them try to evade the predictions of oracles. For a time, it seems to them that they have succeeded but in time they are sadly disillusioned. As Aristotle mentions:

“Oedipus is great not in the virtue of his worldly position for his worldly position is an illusion which will vanish like a dream but in the virtue of inner strength.”

We also wonder at the fact that even kindness and compassion sometimes create a very cruel effect. The same kindness is shown by the Theban shepherd to the infant who was given to him to destroy. As Theban shepherd states:

“I pitied the baby, my king!

And I thought that this man would take him far away.

To his own country.

He saved him but for what a fate.

For it you are what this man says you are

No man living is more wretched that Oedipus”.

The play arouses a deep sense of pity for Oedipus and it also inspires a feeling of terror at his sufferings which seems to the reader to be largely underserved.

There are many things in the play that create a deep sense of strong pity. The Priest of Zeus gives us a vivid description of the sufferings of poor Thebans.

           

“You too have seen out city’s afflictions caught

In a tide of death from which there is no escaping:

Death is fruitful flowering of our soil.”

Chorus too describes the miserable condition of poor Thebans. He appeals to gods to take pity on them.

“O gods, Descend like three streams leap against

The fires of grief, the fires of darkness

Be swift to bring us rest”

The sufferings of Jocaste and Oedipus also create terror in our hearts. Oedipus has been searching for the truth about the identity of Laius’ murderer as well as his own true identity but knowledge brings nothing but dismay and sufferings. Oedipus then makes sorrowful proclamation which creates terror in our hearts.

 “Alas! All is out! All known, no more concealment!

O light may I never look on you again!

Revealed as I am sinful in my begetting

Sinful in marriage, sinful in shedding of blood.”

The tragedy of Oedipus Rex resembles that of King Lear for his misfortune, like Lear, seems largely undeserved. He has faults like rashness of temper and pride. He makes error of judgments but Sophocles does not present him as a guilty man. The slaying of his father was done in ambiguous circumstances and in ignorance of Laius’ identity. Nor does he know that Jocaste was his mother when he married her. The play presents mystery of undeserved suffering which is one of the chief attractions of the play Oedipus Rex.

We may sum up the above discussion in the words of Aristotle, who declares Oedipus Rex as one of the three best tragedies of his time,

“The plot of Oedipus Rex satisfies all the requirements of an ideal tragic plot in a very nice way.” 

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.”

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.