Tragic Theme Research Articles

“The Ballad of War” by Oleksandr Bilash as a National Example of the Mono-Opera Genre

The Ballad of War mono-opera (1971) by the outstanding Ukrainian composer-songwriter Oleksandr Bilash, based on The Ballad of Genes poem by Ivan Drach, is studied in the article. It is emphasized that the work of O. Bilash – I. Drach is extremely relevant today, as it reveals the painful and tragic theme of war and its destructive impact on human destinies. It is defined that O. Bilash’s mono-opera has become a part of a general trend in the Ukrainian musical theatre of the 1960s–1970s associated with the tendency to chamberization and psychologization of opera. It has caused the exceptional popularity of the one-act monodrama genre among contemporary composers (V. Hubarenko, H. Zhukovskyi, Y. Ishchenko, etc.). It is described that I. Drach’s poetic text is used as the basis for the mono-opera with minor modifications (the changes have affected the title and only a few phrases). The structure of the poetic text has a significant impact on the composition of the mono-opera (the central episode is the protagonist’s story about the circumstances surrounding her birth, the extreme sections contain her beloved addresses). The connection between the opera’s system of leitmotifs and key phrases in the poetic text is detected. The leitmotifs are important in cementing the form of the mono-opera – it is in their repetition that the unifying role of the principle of through refrain is revealed. The Ballad of War contains two figurative and intonational spheres of war (scherzo, sharp dissonance, cluster consonances, chromatisation, grotesque syncopated rhythms, «cold» orchestral origin) and peace («warm» vocal origin, ariosity, melodic recitative, songfulness, vocalisations, luxurious Bilash’s melodies). O. Bilash has used various household genres actively: alullaby (an image of the incessantness of Life), a march («military» heroics), a cancan (personification of the image of aggression and spirituality), a Boston waltz (lyrical reflection and psychological solution). The composer uses the technique of stylizing church singing. The technique of sound imitation (movement of a steam locomotive, steam claps) is equally important. O. Bilash’s The Ballad of War mono-opera is a bright, original work and plays an important role in the development of the mono-opera genre both in the composer’s heritage and in Ukrainian music of the 1960s–1970s in general.

Death at Dreamworld: Ten pathways to disaster and failure to learn

AbstractDeaths in workplace incidents – of both workers and members of the public – normally spark a number of official responses, including coronial inquests. In many instances, however, these investigations have examined the incident in isolation from the wider context of hazards in that industry and are rarely informed by the extensive research literature on health and safety, and death and disaster, at work. In this examination of a tragic theme park disaster in 2016, we demonstrate that applying a wider lens and drawing on the ‘ten pathways model’ not only provides a more compelling explanation of how and why safety measures failed but may also inform more fatality and injury prevention measures. Drawing on James Reasonʼs concept of latent failures, the ten pathways model identifies latent failures that are repeatedly associated with death and disaster in workplaces across different industries. Using the Dreamworld coronial inquest findings and other related source material, this paper finds that at least nine and possibly all ten pattern failures were present in the Thunder River Rapids ride disaster at the Dreamworld theme park and contributed to the deaths of four visitors. In particular, it highlights the corroding effects of poor maintenance, inadequate management systems, and regulatory failure. The paper also raises questions about why theme parks as high-hazard workplaces marked by injuries, deaths, and ‘near misses’ were not subject to more rigorous oversight prior to the event and how regulatory failures might best be addressed.

An Analysis of the Connotation of Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway from the Perspective of Stylistic Features

Taking the novel Hills Like White Elephants written by Hemingway as the study object, the thesis analyzes the connotation of the novel from the perspective of stylistic features. The writer adopted simple narrative technique, concise language and abundant metaphors in this short story to not only convey the incompatible contradiction between the American man and the girl but also deepen the tragic theme of the lost generation represented by the two characters.

Eternal Home: A Comparative Study on Local Complex in On the Top and Far from the Madding Crowd

Chi Zijian’s On the Top and Hardy’s Far from the madding Crowd both have a strong flavor of rural life, and they both focus on fine humanity of rural life and depict the idyllic life declining trend and similar tragic ending. Meanwhile, it also expresses the author's love for the idyllic country life and the resistance to the material strength of the two cities. In rustic world, the relation between human and nature is inseparable. Villagers, nature and the rustic culture consist of the local complex together. The paper compared the similarities and dissimilarities of the complex of nature - loving, the tragic theme, the exploration of humanity and folk culture in both regional novels to analyze their essential distinctions. We further compare the material strength’s negative influences and destructiveness for the nature and human. In development, the city material power brings abundant material culture and also devastates seriously the spiritual ecology and nature environment. Meanwhile, it change them from integrity to fragment. It is the hope of the author to bring a new light to confront with the problem of the economic development and the negative impact so as to protect nature ecology and spiritual ecology.

Editors' Note.

Editors' Note James M. DuBois, Ana S. Iltis, and Heidi A. Walsh Shortly after the March 2020 COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, the Bioethics Research Center (BRC) at Washington University, directed by NIB co-editor James DuBois, submitted a grant proposal for a project "Innovative Medicine and Research on COVID-19: Addressing Potential Ethical, Oversight, and Regulatory Barriers." The project was supported by the NIH, National Institute on Aging (NIA) [3R01AG058254–03S1] and aimed to conduct an online survey with IRB professionals or researchers who review, propose, or conduct research on COVID-19. The goal was to better understand the ethical, oversight, and regulatory barriers of doing COVID-related research during the pandemic. The survey included a question that asked participants if they would be willing to share more about their experience in a narrative published in NIB. The symposium editors invited authors to share their experiences in this double issue of NIB, comprised of personal stories from 12 IRB professionals and 12 COVID-19 researchers. An additional 4 narratives from IRB professionals and 5 from researchers are included in the online supplement. The narratives offer lessons on how regulations and institutional policies and practices can be modified to accommodate the needs of researchers and society during pandemics. The narratives also serve as an historical account of research and research oversight during this unique and extraordinary time. Ana Iltis and Gianna McMillan served as the narrative symposium editors. The two, along with the editorial office, wrote a call for stories that was sent to researchers and IRB professionals along with an invitation to write and share their stories. Gianna McMillan, Jerry Menikoff, and Sumit Mohan contributed commentaries on the IRB professionals' narratives, while Ana Iltis, Bruce Gordon, and J. Wilson Jackson provided commentary on the researcher narratives. The commentary authors offer their perspectives on the narratives through the lens of their expertise in research ethics, health law and policy, medical research, and patient and research subject advocacy. "Asking the simple question 'What does love require of me?' when faced with a difficult decision might open up ways of thinking and acting that otherwise may not have come to mind." Sams et al. contributed the research article in this issue of NIB, "The Secret of Quality Is Love: A Qualitative Study Exploring Physician and Nurse Perspectives on What It Means to Love Their Patients." The authors hypothesized that "there is a language of love relevant to health care, which can inform its practice and shape future healthcare professionals." The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 29 physicians and 32 nurses to explore their perspectives on what it means to love their patients. Participants expressed specific hallmarks and virtues that they believe characterize loving physicians and nurses. Practical examples include providing excellent care, advocating for patients, ensuring patients are comfortable, and listening to patients. The majority of participants contended that loving their patients may be the secret to providing high-quality health care. This issue of NIB includes two case studies. The first, "The Ethics of Choosing a Surrogate Decision [End Page vii] Maker When Equal-Priority Surrogates Disagree" is from our case study partnership with the UCLA Health Ethics Center. The author, Matthew Shea, discusses how to proceed when surrogate decision makers of equal priority disagree—a relatively common dilemma on which there is no ethical consensus. In this case, an elderly female had suffered a stroke and was not capable of medical decision making. Her four adult children disagreed on whether to continue aggressive treatments or transition her to comfort care and allow her to die. Three of the children favored comfort care, while one argued for continued treatment. Shea proposes three methods for choosing a surrogate in cases of disagreement. The second case study in this issue "A Gay Epidemiologist and the DC Commission of Public Health AIDS Advisory Committee," by Steven Coughlin, Paul Mann and Bruce Jennings is based upon lead author, epidemiologist Steven Coughlin's experience on an AIDS Advisory Committee in DC in the 1990s. Coughlin served on the committee at a time when AIDS was also a common and tragic theme in his private life and social circle. In creating and distributing educational materials...

Creativity, Madness, and “the light that dances deep in Pontchartrain”: Glimpses of “The Passenger” from Cormac McCarthy's 1980 Correspondence

Abstract Letters Cormac McCarthy wrote in 1980 to Robert Coles, Deaderick Montague, and John Fergus Ryan reveal that he was working on “The Passenger” at least by that year, when he expected it to be published after Blood Meridian (1985). The project was partly inspired by an unpublished poem by Louis Diehl about New Orleans jazz clarinetist Leon Roppolo, who is said to have thrown his clarinet into Lake Pontchartrain in an act of artistic suicide. The novel was not to focus on Roppolo, but its origin in the poem McCarthy quotes suggests that the tragic theme of creative potential spoiled or unfulfilled was central to it, and that originally the domain of creativity may have been artistic rather than scientific. Biographical influences that may also inform McCarthy's early thinking about the novel include his familiarity with three men he met in Ibiza in the late 1960s, art forger Elmyr de Hory and writers Clifford Irving and Leslie Garrett, all of whom followed paths that undermined their artistic potential.

Pragmatic Analysis of the Dialogues in Arthur Miller’s Drama “The Crucible”

Ever since its publication in 1953, The Crucible has attracted much attention for its tragic theme and vivid characterization. Reviews on The Crucible have been numerous and various in approaches. The present study mainly adopts pragmatic theories as its analytic approaches and analyzes the dialogues in The Crucible. It intends to find out how characters achieve their communicative purposes when they produce their utterances. Moreover, it is expected that this study may help shed some light on the pragmatic approach to the interpretation of drama. In this study, 16 fragments of dialogues are taken as the data for analysis. This study applies the Speech Acts Theory, the turn-control strategies, the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle and the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis in data analysis. The turn-control strategies could help us learn how and why the character yields or claims a turn, and help us understand the communicative strategies of the participants. In a drama, dialogues between the characters are important ways of completing certain speech acts. The analysis of the dialogues may help us understand the real intentions of the characters. The present study carries implications for English teaching, the appreciation of drama and daily communication. Teaching turn-control strategies to students can help them communicate more successfully. The study of the theories and methods of Critical Discourse Analysis may improve students’ critical language awareness. The application of pragmatic theories to the appreciation of drama contributes to the revelation of the real intentions of characters, and helps us understand how the playwright displays the story, portrays the characters and expresses his /her intentions through various language skills. Keywords : Key words: Pragmatic Analysis; Speech Acts; Turn-control Strategies; Critical Discourse Analysis Arthur Miller, The Crucible . DOI : 10.7176/JLLL/61-06 Publication date :October 31 st 2019

The diverse symbolism of horse in Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy is a productive writer, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles is regarded as Hardy’s most artiscally monumental novel. Since its publication in 1891, it had appealed great public attention. The novel was abundant in symbolistis images, and the image of horse frequently appeared in the novel. the paper is going to analyze the diverse symbolism of horse, disclose its significant roles in deepening the tragic theme of the novel, and profoundly portray the personalities of Tess D’Urbervilles and her inner world.

FEATURES OF THE ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE CHERNOBYL TRAGEDY IN THE LYRI CS OF LINA KOS TENKO (аrticle two)

In the article features of artistic interpretation of Chernobyl tragedy in poetic and publicistic works of Lina Kostenko are considered.The Chernobyl theme in the works of Lina Kostenko constitutes the basis and center of the lyrical experience, forming a complete work. The Chernobyl tragedy entered the poetic consciousness of the poetess so deeply that even in the works on another theme memories of Chernobyl, allusion to it arise, a mosaic of thoughts and feelings of the poetess turned to modern reality is formed.Lina Kostenko continues the best traditions of Ukrainian literature which are associated with acute perception and ethical and philosophical artistic understanding of the most important socio-historical events, phenomena, processes for the country and people. At the same time, the poetess not only recreates her artistic perception of the world, but also transforms, reinterprets traditional genres, sometimes falling back to combinatorics of various genre and poetology systems. Not so much as desire for a unique repetition of themes, images, emotions, thoughts but also some kind of inner peculiar repeatability is inherent to Lina Kostenko’s creative consciousness. It is based on the integrity of the author’s lyrical subject with its special ethical and philosophical vision of reality, the view of life addressed to the contemporary reader.In the work of Lina Kostenko a distinctly pronounced tendency of the aesthetic solution of acute socio-historical, moral, philosophical problems actual for the modern life of the Ukrainian people emerges.The peculiarities of this view of life, the experience of the world are peculiarly refracted in the lyrical and tragic theme of the Chernobyl disaster.

The Cognitive Metaphorical Expressions of <i>King Lear</I>

From a linguistic cognitive perspective, Shakespeare highlights the theme of King Lear through metaphorical expressions. One of the main clues to the play was the reckless and irrational act that King Lear and Gloucester had to deal with some of their own problems. These behaviors cause their personal and family tragedies. The author analyzes the tragic favour of King Lear from three aspects: The cognitive metaphorical expressions of language, tragic theme and the eyes. The drama King Lear shows the metaphorical expression of language cognition in the modeling of characters, the theme expression and the plot construction. From a linguistic point of view, Shakespeare highlights the internal structure and theme of drama by setting reckless and irrational actions of characters, and metaphorically expresses the grave consequence of recklessness and irrationality by this way of setting.

William Faulkner, ‘The South,’ and the Creation of If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

In If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, Faulkner appears to have become inter ested in crafting a novel out of disparate materials. His love affair with a woman in Hollywood figured prominently in the making of the love story titled “Wild Palms.” Shaping this story based on his own suffering. Faulkner turned his pain into art. As a counterpoint to the doomed couple, a young tall convict with no name emerged in his imagination. “Old Man” concerns the tall hillbilly convict, adrift in a small boat with a preg nant woman on a flood-swollen river. Faulkner`s vexing attitude toward his financial success as a writer and the cultural representations of the national crisis of the Great Depression are entangled in these two juxta posed stories. Though he coupled a tale of man in society and one of man in nature, Faulkner does not urge us to read the book as two separate novellas instead of as one novel. The interweaving of the two parts con stantly reminds us that two different worlds contrapuntally parallel. Despite the heavy ironies derived from the reading of these contrasting stories, it is indubitable that “Old Man” serves primarily to parody the tragic theme of its companion piece. For some readers, If I Forget remains a flawed work, but I would rather contend that it is, in many ways, a fasci nating novel. Although it cannot be a perfect success in a new experiment of storytelling, If I Forget proves, at least, one of Faulkner`s innovative experiments as a unified work comprised of two discrete stories.

A Tentative Analysis of Difference of Revenge Between Chinese and Western Classical Literature: In the Case of Hamlet and The Orphan of Zhao

Revenge is a cultural phenomenon that almost prevails in the various nationality ethics. There are many tragic works with the theme of revenge in Chinese and Western literature. The tragedy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the drama of Ji Junxiang’s The Orphan of Zhao in the Yuan Dynasty are outstanding representatives of the classical Western and Chinese tragedies with common theme of revenge. Although Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Ji Junxiang’s The Orphan of Zhao have the same revenge theme, people are more aware of big differences about the theme, tragedy aesthetics and cultural backgrounds, which differentiate the periods of social development, cultural traditions, national aesthetic awareness, historical cultural backgrounds and other aspects. This paper will employ the Parallelism Methodology to compare these two tragedies from four aspects, including the tragic theme, tragic figure, tragic conflict, and tragic ending. The purposes of this paper are to help readers gain a deeper understanding of characteristics and significance of these two kinds of tragedies and to delve into the effect of cultural background of literary works to explore some common laws about development of all national literature.

“Ah kin pass wid anything”: Blackness as Figural Excess in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses

.Christina Thyssen “Ah kin pass wid anything”: Blackness as Figural Excess in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses W hat would it mean to read Faulkner, from the horizon of the twenty-first century, not as a tragic writer, mourning the loss ofhis beloved wilderness, the old South, or moral purity, but as a writer of the catastrophic, writing after the end of the world? What might Faulkner teach us about the conditions of thinking in the aft math of natural disasters, the disappearance of species, financial meltdowns? And what would it mean to say that it is precisely in the confrontation with the most tragic theme in his writing, the question of race, that this transformation takes place? In this essay, I argue that Go Down, Moses, the novel which, according to A Companion to William Faulkner, represents “the first book in which Faulkner undertakes a ‘direct’ and sustained exploration of racial conflict” (Ladd 135), seems to achieve a kind of translation of Faulkner s Southern landscape that dislocates the logic ofhistorical inheritance and tragic mourning that Faulkner himselfhad established as the hallmark ofhis writing. While critics have argued since the novel’s publication about how to judge Faulkner s representation of black characters in this novel, my focus is on the way that blackness in Go Down, Moses comes to exceed its historical, represen­ tational, and racial definitions and establishes itselfinstead as a mode ofsigni­ fication that functions as an intervention into and weapon against a represen­ tational tradition that the text portrays as inherently destructive. I center my readings around the two black characters Faulkner affords the most extensive attention in Go Down, Moses, Lucas Beauchamp and Rider, and their perfor­ mance of a particular form of blackness across the novels landscape. I argue that Faulkners intervention in Go Down, Moses is through his appropriation offigures of blackness, not as a reimagined site of identity or as an expression of his tragic racist imagination, but much more radically by way of blackness liberated from figures ofnature, the human, history, mourning—a kind ofprefigural blackness which refuses integration into historical narratives and mod­ els ofidentity.1 ’Thus, unlike more historicist approaches to Faulkner’s work, I am not interested in tracing the extent to which Faulkner willingly or not participates in the affirmation and perpetuation ofhistorical, social, and cultural identity models, but instead how Go Down, Moses directly confronts and seeks to dismantle the linguistic foundation of such cultural structures through a form of linguistic dispossession. What has been 89 90 Christina Thyssen Blackness as Figural Excess in Go Down, Moses It has often been noted in the extensive literature on Faulkner and race that his depictions of African American characters are marked by stereotypes and openly racist views of black identity. Faulkner’s portrayal of black characters has generated an impressive canon of critical work,* 2 which largely focuses on the question of whether Faulkner’s writing aligns with or challenges the am­ bivalence and “racist imagination” that he expressed in his personal life with regard to the “race question.”3 One of the things that has established Faulkner as a tragic writer is his eloquent representation and portrayal ofthe curse ofthe Old South and his inability to generate an artistic vision that would participate in an intervention into that history. Much Faulkner criticism chides Faulkner’s writing for, as one critic writes, “its failure to enter into complete communion with the black lives it purports to represent” (Kodat 1017) and points to the stereotypical and dehumanizing treatment Faulkner gives his black characters. Faulkner’s failure to imagine African American agency beyond stereotypical roles generated from within a white racist consciousness has resulted in a view of Faulkner as a tragic writer whose writing exposes the violence and limita­ tion of white Southern ideology but fails to effectively intervene into this ide­ ology because ofhis own adherence to racist and conventional views.4 Eric Sundquist, for example, notes that Faulkner’s “excavation” into the American imaginary “revealed history itself to be a slave ship, a dungeon still holding captives nearly a hundred years after the end of slavery” (27). For Sundquist, this revelation means that Faulkner’s work...

Desire beyond the Château d'If

Desire beyond the Château d'If

Biopolitics and Eleanor Dark’s *Prelude to Christopher*

‘In 1934 Miles Franklin described Eleanor Dark’s second novel, Prelude to Christopher, as ‘a terribly beautiful piece of work’ (128). One of Dark’s earliest critics, Franklin attributed the book’s strength to the author’s deft handling of a tragic theme and ‘the urge to speak the naked truth’ (125). Later critics emphasised the book’s experimental style, especially its skilled handling o the multiple viewpoints, flashbacks and interior monologues associated with high modernism. By contrast, recent critics have focused on the novel’s subject matter and Dark’s engagement with the biopolitical norms that manifested in eugenics. This essay pursues that focus. It aims to flesh out the ways in which Dark’s novel registers the potential impact of eugenics on liberal conceptions of freedom and to explore some of the ways in which it attempts to reclaim that freedom…' (From author’s introduction p. 76)

RIVERINE CROSSINGS: GENDER, IDENTITY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL MYTHIC NARRATIVE IN THE CRYING GAME

The Crying Game's central, tragic theme of warrior/lovers caught between their love for one another and loyalty to their respective factions has significant roots in early Celtic mythology. The elegaic theme of potential lovers forced into ill-fated combat that frames the film's events also, significantly, bears the weight of the film's most unambiguous political commentary, when Fergus speaks directly to the picture of Jody in Dil's apartment, telling him: ‘You should have stayed at home.’ This sad remonstration, which clearly lays responsibility for the chain of causality that has led to so much suffering not with Jody, but with the British state, is similar in quality to Cu Chulainn's lament as he contemplates his meeting with Ferdia. When we listen carefully for ways in which Celtic mythical themes underlie and nuance the film's events, different rhythms emerge, accenting different beats.

How Context Determines Fact: Historicism in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady

HOW CONTEXT DETERMINES FACT: HISTORICISM IN WILLA CATHER’S A LOST LADY Joseph R. Urgo* Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady is a deceptive work that can be mistakenly read as a lament for a more glorious past, a kind of ode to the pioneer era in western American history. However, the novel itself does not repre­ sent a longing for a singular, objective past. Rather, it explores the process by which selective events are historicized, the process by which an era, for example, may become either historically known or escape understanding through ahistorical methods of narration. In Cather’s novel, an understand­ ing of the past is achieved once events and narratives are contextualized. The problem lies in the fact that there are a number of potential contexts through which past events are communicated, not all of which are historical. History is represented in Cather’s narrative in stories about the past told by her characters and in the figure and fate of Marian Forrester. In all three categories of representation, historical understanding competes with mythic images, or tableaus, from the past that capture the imagina­ tions of characters and narrators and stand in the way of historical knowledge. Cather’s title suggests this strategy perfectly. A LostLady shows that much of what actually occurred in the pioneer era has been lost in the context of mythic accounts generated by pioneers and their admirers. Specifically, one admirer, Niel Herbert, fails to see Marian Forrester in her own historical and biographical context and insists upon seeing her as a “lost” ideal. Idealized (and idolized) images—ladies and histories—are generated at the expense of historical knowledge. It is not the past that is lamented in Cather’s novel, a past which is shown to be far from heroic or exceptional. Rather, A Lost Lady presents the problematics of historical representation. In particular, Cather’s novel portrays the way in which the past is dehistoricized and turned into, as she puts it, “pleasant memory.” A good deal of Cather criticism argues that Willa Cather saw the pres­ ent as a falling off from the past, a great decline from the heroic pioneer era when men and women settled, colonized, and personified historical foundation. A Lost Lady is read through this lens, and conclusions about the novel reinforce critical visions of Cather’s romantic, historical nostalgia. Susan J. Rosowski concludes that the regrettable inability to maintain “a pioneer spirit of the land” gives A LostLady its tragic theme and that “hope for the future lies with the ability ofmen and women to translate this spirit *Joseph R. Urgo is an Assistant Professor of English at Bryant College. Among his publica­ tions is a recent book, Faulkner’s Apocrypha: “A Fable,” Snopes, and the Spirit of Human Rebellion, issued by the University Press of Mississippi (1989). into life.”1 More recently, Rosowski has reinforced her view of the novel as tragedy, with Ivy Peters playing the role of villain, and the land itself acting as victim.2 Rosowski’s reading is echoed frequently. Ann Douglas sees Marian Forrester as “an emblem of a fading vision of a special order” in history.3 John J. Murphy, in an intertextual study, concurs, and he recognizes a pattern employed by Cather to “frame the story of a downfall of the heroine.”4 Criticism ofA Lost Lady centers largely on Cather’s view of the past, her historical consciousness.3 The novel, however, poses difficulties in get­ ting at Cather’s view of a particular historical era because it depicts the making of history, or the understanding of the past, as an ideological struggle among contending interests in the present. There is less concern in A Lost Lady with presenting a definitive portrait of the past than there is in depicting a present in which many minds compete for historical authority. Involved in this historicist struggle are complexities and align­ ments arising from social class, gender, age, and relative powers of imagina­ tion, articulation, and comprehension. One thing, though, is clear. In A Lost Lady the past is depicted as anything but definitive or static. The novel makes it reductively simplistic, and actually ahistorical, to state that...

"Something Healing": Fathers and Sons in Billy Budd

Research Article| December 01 1979 "Something Healing": Fathers and Sons in Billy Budd Peter L. Hays, Peter L. Hays Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Richard Dilworth Rust Richard Dilworth Rust Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1979) 34 (3): 326–336. https://doi.org/10.2307/2933331 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Peter L. Hays, Richard Dilworth Rust; "Something Healing": Fathers and Sons in Billy Budd. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1 December 1979; 34 (3): 326–336. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2933331 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1979 Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Garine, the Self and the Tragic Theme in "Les Conquerants"

Garine, the Self and the Tragic Theme in "Les Conquerants"

Garden in the Grasslands: Boomer Literature of the Central Great Plains by David M. Emmons

Reviews 261 respond to the values explicit in both the frontier experience and the frontier metaphor—“a moral order promising both human and social perfection” (p. 135). Simonson, then, is not really a student of regional or frontier literaure. He is interested primarily in the spiritual condition of American society in the Twentieth Century. He thinks the frontier experience contributed to that condition, and he thinks the metaphor of he closed frontier helps us under­ stand its tragic implications more fully. But the student who turns to his study with the expectation of finding an analysis of the tragic theme in frontier literature will be disappointed. While Simonson’s book indicates some pos­ sibilities for such an analysis, the student of tragedy will still need to know Don Walker's essay, “Freedom and Destiny in the Myth of the American West,” which appeared in the New Mexico Quarterly (Winter, 1963-64). Walker’s thesis, that “nowhere in all time and all space was man more free than he was on the Western frontier; but nowhere in all time and all space was he more lonely and more doomed to violent death,” sounds remarkably close to Simonson’s own. But Walker’s analysis of the tragic tension between freedom and destiny does not require the historical example of the closing of the frontier to give it meaning. The tragic potential of the frontier experience was in the experience itself. The actual frontier experience is rich in existen­ tial anthropology; there is ample evidence that man’s freedom (and his perfectability , to use the term Simonson prefers) were limited and finite. M e r r i l l L ew is, Western Washington State College Garden in the Grasslands: Boomer Literature of the Central Great Plains. By David M. Emmons. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971. 220 pages, $10.00.) If any readers of the Pentagon Papers supposed that the use of lies as instruments of public policy was a recent innovation, they would do well to read Garden in the Grasslands and learn how the truth about the agricultural limitations of the High Plains was deliberately suppressed and a myth of Edenic abundance substituted. Although private agencies, notably the rail­ roads, employed the techniques of misrepresentation most blatantly, depart­ ments of state government such as the Kansas State Board of Agriculture were not far behind. Making effective use of private papers, public documents, newspapers, and promotional “literature,” Professor Emmons illustrates the extremes to which the boomers were willing to go in their compulsive effort to make western Kansas, western Nebraska, and the adjacent parts of Colorado and Wyoming attractive to settlers. Although the deception employed to lure settlers to the Plains was less serious in its consequences than that revealed by the Pentagon Papers, the number of people victimized must have run into at least the tens of thousands. There is a certain irony in the attempt to suppress the news 262 Western American Literature that farmers were asking for drought relief in 1874, lest such reports slow down immigration— this in a region already overpopulatedl If it were not for this toll in human suffering, the promotional efforts cited by Professor Emmons would almost qualify his book for study as a con­ tribution to the tall-tale tradition of American humor. In the writings of one of the more infatuated believers in the rain-follows-the-plow myth, he finds that “Rain followed plows and trees, surely, but it also followed telegraph wires, railroad tracks, irrigation ditches, streams and rivers, colony town sites, roads, and fire prevention.” The author’s own gift for wry understatement brightens an occasional aside, such as “Plowing the soil, the immigrant dis­ covered, did not produce rain; indeed, all too often it did not produce any­ thing.” Garden in the Grasslands does not break much new ground. Apart from a few minor shifts of emphasis, it follows the outlines established by Henry Nash Smith a generation ago, when he showed how the Great American Desert was transformed into the Garden of the World by those whose economic in­ terests would be served by settlement of the Plains. It does, however, add sig­ nificantly to the...