Great Expectations Themes
Great Expectations Themes and Analysis
The main themes of the novel include gratitude, suffering, and social mobility. Pip appreciates the gentle Joe Gargery but treats him with indifference after leaving for London. The failure of Pip to keep in contact with Joe never causes Joe to complain. Joe's selfless nature is frequently contrasted with Mr. Pumblechook's constant criticism of Pip's ingratitude. Suffering is depicted by many characters, including Miss Havisham and Pip, who suffer equally. Miss Havisham was jilted on her wedding day and tricked out of part of her money, while Pip suffers by never gaining Estella's love.
Dickens uses Pip to bring attention to the increasing social stratification in Victorian London. Estella criticizes Pip for his working class background, and Pip in turn develops a contempt for his own family's lack of wealth. Pip constantly attempts to impress Estella by moving up the social ladder, though many of the benefits of this climb are dubious. The wealthy class is represented by the cruel Compeyson and Mr. Jaggers and the wasteful and indolent Miss Havisham. The working class is depicted in a constant state of oppression, despite the intelligence and honesty of many poor characters.
Other main issues in the text include parenthood (there are very few positive maternal figures in the story) and the influence that one generation's actions may have on subsequent generations. Dysfunctional family relationships in the novel result in resentment, particularly in the case of Estella's relationship with her cold-hearted guardian Miss Havisham. Revenge is another key theme. Late in the novel, the major adult characters who tried to seek revenge through others or have had serious problems in their youth regret their actions and try to make amends, suggesting that the events in a person's life may be consuming to the point of destruction, and that one's actions are irreversible and irrevocable.
Another prominent theme is imprisonment, a familiar theme in Dickens' later novels (and in particular, in Little Dorrit), focusing on the sections which take place in the Hulks and Newgate Prison. Guilt is also a theme that is touched upon. Pip feels guilty about a number of things, for instance the attack on Mrs. Joe, which he associates with the help he gave to the convict
Edward Morgan Forster
Edward Morgan Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
Forster was born at 6 Melcombe Place, Dorset Square, London NW1, in a building which no longer exists. His father was an architect and died when Forster was only a year old. Among Forster's ancestors were members of the Clapham Sect. As a boy he inherited £8,000 from his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton, daughter of the abolitionist Henry Thornton, which was enough to live on and enabled him to become a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent as a day boy. The theatre at the school is named after him.
At King's College, Cambridge, between 1897 and 1901, he became a member of the Apostles (formally named the Cambridge Conversazione Society), a discussion society. Many of its members went on to constitute what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a peripheral member in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a famous recreation of Forster's Cambridge at the beginning of The Longest Journey.
After leaving university he travelled on the continent with his mother. He visited Egypt, Germany and India with the classicist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson in 1914. When the First World War broke out, he became a conscientious objector.
Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s as the private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas. The Hill of Devi is his non-fictional account of this trip. After returning from India, he completed his last novel, A Passage to India (1924), for which he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a successful broadcaster on BBC Radio and a public figure associated with the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a Benson Medal in 1937.
From 1925 until her death in March 1945 the novelist lived with his mother Alice Clare (Lily) in West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer, finally leaving on or around 23 September 1946. His London base was 26, Brunswick Square from 1930 to 1939, after which he rented 9, Arlington Park Mansions in Chiswick until at least 1961.
Forster was elected an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge in January 1946, and lived for the most part in the college, doing relatively little. He declined a knighthood in 1949 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1953. In 1969 he was made a member of the Order of Merit. Forster died in Coventry on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91, at the home of the Buckinghams.
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
Forster was born at 6 Melcombe Place, Dorset Square, London NW1, in a building which no longer exists. His father was an architect and died when Forster was only a year old. Among Forster's ancestors were members of the Clapham Sect. As a boy he inherited £8,000 from his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton, daughter of the abolitionist Henry Thornton, which was enough to live on and enabled him to become a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent as a day boy. The theatre at the school is named after him.
At King's College, Cambridge, between 1897 and 1901, he became a member of the Apostles (formally named the Cambridge Conversazione Society), a discussion society. Many of its members went on to constitute what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a peripheral member in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a famous recreation of Forster's Cambridge at the beginning of The Longest Journey.
After leaving university he travelled on the continent with his mother. He visited Egypt, Germany and India with the classicist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson in 1914. When the First World War broke out, he became a conscientious objector.
Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s as the private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas. The Hill of Devi is his non-fictional account of this trip. After returning from India, he completed his last novel, A Passage to India (1924), for which he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a successful broadcaster on BBC Radio and a public figure associated with the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a Benson Medal in 1937.
From 1925 until her death in March 1945 the novelist lived with his mother Alice Clare (Lily) in West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer, finally leaving on or around 23 September 1946. His London base was 26, Brunswick Square from 1930 to 1939, after which he rented 9, Arlington Park Mansions in Chiswick until at least 1961.
Forster was elected an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge in January 1946, and lived for the most part in the college, doing relatively little. He declined a knighthood in 1949 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1953. In 1969 he was made a member of the Order of Merit. Forster died in Coventry on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91, at the home of the Buckinghams.
Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens first serialised in All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It is regarded as one of his greatest and most sophisticated novels, and is one of his most enduringly popular, having been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times.
Great Expectations is written in a semi-autobiographical style and is the story of the orphan Pip, writing his life from his early days of childhood until adulthood. The story can also be considered semi-autobiographical of Dickens, like much of his work, drawing on his experiences of life and people.
The action of the story takes place from Christmas Eve, 1812, when the protagonist is about seven years old, to the winter of 1840.
Each installment in All the Year Round contained two chapters and was written in a way that kept readers interested from week to week, while still satisfying their curiosity at the end of each one.
A Passage To India Major Themes
A Passage To India
Major Themes
A Passage to India has four central themes: the difficulty of friendship between an Englishman and an Indian, the racism and oppression of the British who rule India, the "muddle" of Indian civilization and psychology, and the unity of all life. (See the concept of Brahman in Hinduism.)
The novel's second chapter opens with a discussion between Mahmoud Ali and Hamidullah about whether an Indian can be friends with an Englishman. They conclude that such a friendship is virtually impossible, especially in India. This foreshadows the future split between Fielding and Aziz, whose cultural and national differences keep them apart, even though they like each other. For no member of an occupied race can really be friends with a member of the master race. Despite all rationale, the former will unavoidably resent the latter, and the latter will despise the former. As Aziz says, until India is free from the British, an Indian and an Englishman cannot be true friends.
One of the most overt themes of the novel is the racist attitude of the British in India toward the native population, and the oppression of Indians that frequently results. The cruelty of Major Callendar, who boasts of torturing an injured Indian youth by putting pepper on his shattered face, is the most egregious example. But there are many others, from Mr. McBryde's supercilious views on Indians' lust for white women, to Mrs. Turton's vitriolic rantings, to Mr. Turton's arrogance, Ronny Heaslop's ignorance, and Miss Derek's scorn for her Indian employers. All the British (except Fielding) assume that Aziz is guilty before his trial, simply because he is an Indian. Yet even Fielding, who respects Indians more than any other white man, eventually comes to accept that British rule over India is the best thing for that country. As a result of British rudeness and arrogance, the Indians in the novel come to hate their foreign masters.
In Part Two of A Passage to India, E.M. Forster frequently refers to India as a "muddle." This is not necessarily because he is racist, but because his logical Western mind cannot accept the extreme diversity of Indian religion, society, wildlife, and even architecture. Westerners, Forster explains, are always trying to categorize and label things, but India defies labelling. But the Indians quietly accept this diversity, not as a muddle but as a "mystery," like the Catholic Trinity or Sacraments, things ordained by God that must be accepted but cannot be explained in terms of reason.
Additionally, Indians rely more on emotion and intuition in their judgements of people and events, whereas the British are always trying to make their opinions scientific and logical, like McBryde with his pseudo-scientific theory about dark men lusting after white women. These differences in outlook and psychology, Forster implies, are the ultimate differences between the British and the Indians. For British minds, shackled by reason and race, cannot understand the Indian psyche.
The Marabar Caves produce a pernicious echo, "Boum," to whatever noise one makes. To Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested, this echo symbolizes the Dharmic belief in the fundamental oneness of all things. But this "realization" unhinges their Western minds, shackled by logic. Mrs. Moore abandons all interest in spirituality and in human relationships, and Adela Quested becomes panicky and feverish. But was their realization true, and were their reactions excessive? For most of the novel, Forster with his Western outlook suggests that the Dharmic doctrine of oneness or "Om," (Boum is a parody) devalues us and everything we hold dear.
But in Part Three, he seems to enter the Indian psyche and reveal to his readers that all things are one, perhaps, but they are not the same. Indians revel in this unity while retaining their differences. For are we not all members of the same species, made of atoms, containing the same organs, harbouring the same basic needs and impulses? Yet our behaviour and thoughts are highly individualized. Thus, Forster suggests that we accept our unity and our differences with equanimity, as Professor Narayan Godbole does. For oneness is not sameness.
Major Themes
A Passage to India has four central themes: the difficulty of friendship between an Englishman and an Indian, the racism and oppression of the British who rule India, the "muddle" of Indian civilization and psychology, and the unity of all life. (See the concept of Brahman in Hinduism.)
The novel's second chapter opens with a discussion between Mahmoud Ali and Hamidullah about whether an Indian can be friends with an Englishman. They conclude that such a friendship is virtually impossible, especially in India. This foreshadows the future split between Fielding and Aziz, whose cultural and national differences keep them apart, even though they like each other. For no member of an occupied race can really be friends with a member of the master race. Despite all rationale, the former will unavoidably resent the latter, and the latter will despise the former. As Aziz says, until India is free from the British, an Indian and an Englishman cannot be true friends.
One of the most overt themes of the novel is the racist attitude of the British in India toward the native population, and the oppression of Indians that frequently results. The cruelty of Major Callendar, who boasts of torturing an injured Indian youth by putting pepper on his shattered face, is the most egregious example. But there are many others, from Mr. McBryde's supercilious views on Indians' lust for white women, to Mrs. Turton's vitriolic rantings, to Mr. Turton's arrogance, Ronny Heaslop's ignorance, and Miss Derek's scorn for her Indian employers. All the British (except Fielding) assume that Aziz is guilty before his trial, simply because he is an Indian. Yet even Fielding, who respects Indians more than any other white man, eventually comes to accept that British rule over India is the best thing for that country. As a result of British rudeness and arrogance, the Indians in the novel come to hate their foreign masters.
In Part Two of A Passage to India, E.M. Forster frequently refers to India as a "muddle." This is not necessarily because he is racist, but because his logical Western mind cannot accept the extreme diversity of Indian religion, society, wildlife, and even architecture. Westerners, Forster explains, are always trying to categorize and label things, but India defies labelling. But the Indians quietly accept this diversity, not as a muddle but as a "mystery," like the Catholic Trinity or Sacraments, things ordained by God that must be accepted but cannot be explained in terms of reason.
Additionally, Indians rely more on emotion and intuition in their judgements of people and events, whereas the British are always trying to make their opinions scientific and logical, like McBryde with his pseudo-scientific theory about dark men lusting after white women. These differences in outlook and psychology, Forster implies, are the ultimate differences between the British and the Indians. For British minds, shackled by reason and race, cannot understand the Indian psyche.
The Marabar Caves produce a pernicious echo, "Boum," to whatever noise one makes. To Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested, this echo symbolizes the Dharmic belief in the fundamental oneness of all things. But this "realization" unhinges their Western minds, shackled by logic. Mrs. Moore abandons all interest in spirituality and in human relationships, and Adela Quested becomes panicky and feverish. But was their realization true, and were their reactions excessive? For most of the novel, Forster with his Western outlook suggests that the Dharmic doctrine of oneness or "Om," (Boum is a parody) devalues us and everything we hold dear.
But in Part Three, he seems to enter the Indian psyche and reveal to his readers that all things are one, perhaps, but they are not the same. Indians revel in this unity while retaining their differences. For are we not all members of the same species, made of atoms, containing the same organs, harbouring the same basic needs and impulses? Yet our behaviour and thoughts are highly individualized. Thus, Forster suggests that we accept our unity and our differences with equanimity, as Professor Narayan Godbole does. For oneness is not sameness.
Huxley's Literary Themes
Huxley's Literary themes
Crome Yellow (1921) attacks Victorian and Edwardian social principles which led to World War I and its terrible aftermath. Together with Huxley's second novel, Antic Hay (1923), the book expresses much of the mood of disenchantment of the early 1920s. It was intended to reflect, as Huxley stated in a letter to his father, "the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the present epoch."
Huxley's reputation for iconoclasm and emancipation grew. He was condemned for his explicit discussion of sex and free thought in his fiction. Antic Hay, for example, was burned in Cairo and in the years that followed many of Huxley's books were received with disapproval or banned at one time or another. The exclusion of Brave New World, Point Counter Point and Island from Time magazine's Best 100 novels list in 2006 created an uproar.
Huxley, however, said that a novel should be full of interesting opinions and arresting ideas, describing his aim as a novelist as being 'to arrive, technically, at a perfect fusion of the novel and the essay'; and with Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley wrote his first true 'novel of ideas', the type of thought-provoking fiction with which he is now associated.
One of his main ideas was pessimism about the cultural future of society, a pessimism which sprang largely from his visit to the United States between September 1925 and June 1926. He recounted his experiences in Jesting Pilate (1926): "The thing which is happening in America is a reevaluation of values, a radical alteration (for the worse) of established standards", and it was soon after this visit that he conceived the idea of writing a satire of what he had encountered.
Brave New World (1932) as well as Island (1962) form the cornerstone of Huxley's damning indictment of commercialism based upon goods generally manufactured from other countries. Indeed also, Brave New World (along with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Yevgeni Zamyatin's We) helped form the anti-utopian or dystopian tradition in literature and has become synonymous with a future world in which the human spirit is subject to conditioning and control. Island acts as an antonym to Brave New World; it is described as "one of the truly great philosophical novels".
He devoted his time at his small house at Llano in the Mojave Desert to a life of contemplation, mysticism, and experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. His suggestions in The Doors of Perception (1954) that mescaline and lysergic acid were 'drugs of unique distinction' which should be exploited for the 'supernaturally brilliant' visionary experience they offered provoked even more outrage than his passionate defense of the Bates method in The Art of Seeing (1942). However, the book went on to become a cult text in the psychedelic 1960s, and inspire the name of the rock band The Doors. Huxley also appears on the sleeve of The Beatles' landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Crome Yellow (1921) attacks Victorian and Edwardian social principles which led to World War I and its terrible aftermath. Together with Huxley's second novel, Antic Hay (1923), the book expresses much of the mood of disenchantment of the early 1920s. It was intended to reflect, as Huxley stated in a letter to his father, "the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the present epoch."
Huxley's reputation for iconoclasm and emancipation grew. He was condemned for his explicit discussion of sex and free thought in his fiction. Antic Hay, for example, was burned in Cairo and in the years that followed many of Huxley's books were received with disapproval or banned at one time or another. The exclusion of Brave New World, Point Counter Point and Island from Time magazine's Best 100 novels list in 2006 created an uproar.
Huxley, however, said that a novel should be full of interesting opinions and arresting ideas, describing his aim as a novelist as being 'to arrive, technically, at a perfect fusion of the novel and the essay'; and with Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley wrote his first true 'novel of ideas', the type of thought-provoking fiction with which he is now associated.
One of his main ideas was pessimism about the cultural future of society, a pessimism which sprang largely from his visit to the United States between September 1925 and June 1926. He recounted his experiences in Jesting Pilate (1926): "The thing which is happening in America is a reevaluation of values, a radical alteration (for the worse) of established standards", and it was soon after this visit that he conceived the idea of writing a satire of what he had encountered.
Brave New World (1932) as well as Island (1962) form the cornerstone of Huxley's damning indictment of commercialism based upon goods generally manufactured from other countries. Indeed also, Brave New World (along with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Yevgeni Zamyatin's We) helped form the anti-utopian or dystopian tradition in literature and has become synonymous with a future world in which the human spirit is subject to conditioning and control. Island acts as an antonym to Brave New World; it is described as "one of the truly great philosophical novels".
He devoted his time at his small house at Llano in the Mojave Desert to a life of contemplation, mysticism, and experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. His suggestions in The Doors of Perception (1954) that mescaline and lysergic acid were 'drugs of unique distinction' which should be exploited for the 'supernaturally brilliant' visionary experience they offered provoked even more outrage than his passionate defense of the Bates method in The Art of Seeing (1942). However, the book went on to become a cult text in the psychedelic 1960s, and inspire the name of the rock band The Doors. Huxley also appears on the sleeve of The Beatles' landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Bacon and Shakespeare
Bacon and Shakespeare
The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
The mainstream view is that William Shakespeare of Stratford, an actor in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), wrote the poems and plays that bear his name. The Baconians, however, hold that scholars are so focused on the details of Shakespeare's life that they neglect to investigate the many facts that they see as connecting Bacon to the Shakespearean work.
The main Baconian evidence is founded on the presentation of a motive for concealment, the circumstances surrounding the first known performance of The Comedy of Errors, the close proximity of Bacon to the William Strachey letter upon which many scholars think The Tempest was based, perceived allusions in the plays to Bacon's legal acquaintances, the many supposed parallels with the plays of Bacon's published work and entries in the Promus (his private wastebook), Bacon's interest in civil histories, and ostensible autobiographical allusions in the plays.
Because Bacon had first-hand knowledge of government cipher methods, most Baconians see it as feasible that he left his signature somewhere in the Shakespearean work.
Supporters of the standard view, often referred to as "Stratfordian" or "Mainstream", dispute all contentions in favour of Bacon, and criticize Bacon's poetry as not being comparable in quality with that of Shakespeare.
The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
The mainstream view is that William Shakespeare of Stratford, an actor in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), wrote the poems and plays that bear his name. The Baconians, however, hold that scholars are so focused on the details of Shakespeare's life that they neglect to investigate the many facts that they see as connecting Bacon to the Shakespearean work.
The main Baconian evidence is founded on the presentation of a motive for concealment, the circumstances surrounding the first known performance of The Comedy of Errors, the close proximity of Bacon to the William Strachey letter upon which many scholars think The Tempest was based, perceived allusions in the plays to Bacon's legal acquaintances, the many supposed parallels with the plays of Bacon's published work and entries in the Promus (his private wastebook), Bacon's interest in civil histories, and ostensible autobiographical allusions in the plays.
Because Bacon had first-hand knowledge of government cipher methods, most Baconians see it as feasible that he left his signature somewhere in the Shakespearean work.
Supporters of the standard view, often referred to as "Stratfordian" or "Mainstream", dispute all contentions in favour of Bacon, and criticize Bacon's poetry as not being comparable in quality with that of Shakespeare.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, advocate for social reform, and pacifist. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.
Russell was an influential philosopher and mathematician. He led the British "revolt against Idealism" in the early 1900s and is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his proteges Wittgenstein and Frege. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics and analytic philosophy.
He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament, criticised Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, advocate for social reform, and pacifist. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.
Russell was an influential philosopher and mathematician. He led the British "revolt against Idealism" in the early 1900s and is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his proteges Wittgenstein and Frege. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics and analytic philosophy.
He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament, criticised Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
Aldous Huxley
Literary Themes
Crome Yellow (1921) attacks Victorian and Edwardian social principles which led to World War I and its terrible aftermath. Together with Huxley's second novel, Antic Hay (1923), the book expresses much of the mood of disenchantment of the early 1920s. It was intended to reflect, as Huxley stated in a letter to his father, "the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the present epoch."
Huxley's reputation for iconoclasm and emancipation grew. He was condemned for his explicit discussion of sex and free thought in his fiction. Antic Hay, for example, was burned in Cairo and in the years that followed many of Huxley's books were received with disapproval or banned at one time or another. The exclusion of Brave New World, Point Counter Point and Island from Time magazine's Best 100 novels list in 2006 created an uproar.
Huxley, however, said that a novel should be full of interesting opinions and arresting ideas, describing his aim as a novelist as being 'to arrive, technically, at a perfect fusion of the novel and the essay'; and with Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley wrote his first true 'novel of ideas', the type of thought-provoking fiction with which he is now associated.
One of his main ideas was pessimism about the cultural future of society, a pessimism which sprang largely from his visit to the United States between September 1925 and June 1926. He recounted his experiences in Jesting Pilate (1926): "The thing which is happening in America is a reevaluation of values, a radical alteration (for the worse) of established standards", and it was soon after this visit that he conceived the idea of writing a satire of what he had encountered.
Brave New World (1932) as well as Island (1962) form the cornerstone of Huxley's damning indictment of commercialism based upon goods generally manufactured from other countries. Indeed also, Brave New World (along with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Yevgeni Zamyatin's We) helped form the anti-utopian or dystopian tradition in literature and has become synonymous with a future world in which the human spirit is subject to conditioning and control. Island acts as an antonym to Brave New World; it is described as "one of the truly great philosophical novels".
He devoted his time at his small house at Llano in the Mojave Desert to a life of contemplation, mysticism, and experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. His suggestions in The Doors of Perception (1954) that mescaline and lysergic acid were 'drugs of unique distinction' which should be exploited for the 'supernaturally brilliant' visionary experience they offered provoked even more outrage than his passionate defense of the Bates method in The Art of Seeing (1942). However, the book went on to become a cult text in the psychedelic 1960s, and inspire the name of the rock band The Doors. Huxley also appears on the sleeve of The Beatles' landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Crome Yellow (1921) attacks Victorian and Edwardian social principles which led to World War I and its terrible aftermath. Together with Huxley's second novel, Antic Hay (1923), the book expresses much of the mood of disenchantment of the early 1920s. It was intended to reflect, as Huxley stated in a letter to his father, "the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the present epoch."
Huxley's reputation for iconoclasm and emancipation grew. He was condemned for his explicit discussion of sex and free thought in his fiction. Antic Hay, for example, was burned in Cairo and in the years that followed many of Huxley's books were received with disapproval or banned at one time or another. The exclusion of Brave New World, Point Counter Point and Island from Time magazine's Best 100 novels list in 2006 created an uproar.
Huxley, however, said that a novel should be full of interesting opinions and arresting ideas, describing his aim as a novelist as being 'to arrive, technically, at a perfect fusion of the novel and the essay'; and with Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley wrote his first true 'novel of ideas', the type of thought-provoking fiction with which he is now associated.
One of his main ideas was pessimism about the cultural future of society, a pessimism which sprang largely from his visit to the United States between September 1925 and June 1926. He recounted his experiences in Jesting Pilate (1926): "The thing which is happening in America is a reevaluation of values, a radical alteration (for the worse) of established standards", and it was soon after this visit that he conceived the idea of writing a satire of what he had encountered.
Brave New World (1932) as well as Island (1962) form the cornerstone of Huxley's damning indictment of commercialism based upon goods generally manufactured from other countries. Indeed also, Brave New World (along with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Yevgeni Zamyatin's We) helped form the anti-utopian or dystopian tradition in literature and has become synonymous with a future world in which the human spirit is subject to conditioning and control. Island acts as an antonym to Brave New World; it is described as "one of the truly great philosophical novels".
He devoted his time at his small house at Llano in the Mojave Desert to a life of contemplation, mysticism, and experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. His suggestions in The Doors of Perception (1954) that mescaline and lysergic acid were 'drugs of unique distinction' which should be exploited for the 'supernaturally brilliant' visionary experience they offered provoked even more outrage than his passionate defense of the Bates method in The Art of Seeing (1942). However, the book went on to become a cult text in the psychedelic 1960s, and inspire the name of the rock band The Doors. Huxley also appears on the sleeve of The Beatles' landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It discusses how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British school-boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the common good earned it position 70 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.
Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel, and although it was not a great success at the time — selling fewer than three thousand copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print — it soon went on to become a bestseller, and by the early 1960s was required reading in many schools and colleges. It was adapted to film in 1963 by Peter Brook, and again in 1990 by Harry Hook (see "Film adaptations").
The title is said to be a reference to the Hebrew name Beelzebub ("god of the fly", "host of the fly" or literally "Lord of Flies"), a name sometimes used as a synonym for Satan.
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It discusses how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British school-boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the common good earned it position 70 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.
Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel, and although it was not a great success at the time — selling fewer than three thousand copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print — it soon went on to become a bestseller, and by the early 1960s was required reading in many schools and colleges. It was adapted to film in 1963 by Peter Brook, and again in 1990 by Harry Hook (see "Film adaptations").
The title is said to be a reference to the Hebrew name Beelzebub ("god of the fly", "host of the fly" or literally "Lord of Flies"), a name sometimes used as a synonym for Satan.
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones.
Aside from his literary achievements, he has a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate.
Born into an aristocratic family at Sharpham near Glastonbury in Somerset in 1707, Fielding was educated at Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder. His younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer. After a romantic episode with a young woman that ended in his getting into trouble with the law, he went to London where his literary career began. In 1728, he traveled to Leiden to study classics and law at the University. However, due to lack of money he was obliged to return to London and he began writing for the theatre, some of his work being savagely critical of the contemporary government under Sir Robert Walpole.
Fielding never stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters. His Tragedy of Tragedies of Tom Thumb (for which Hogarth designed the frontispiece) was, for example, quite successful as a printed play. He also contributed a number of works to journals of the day. He wrote for Tory periodicals, usually under the name of "Captain Hercules Vinegar".
In 1743, he published a novel in the Miscellanies volume III (which was the first volume of the Miscellanies). This was The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great.
However, Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice as a great humanitarian in the 1750s, coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health to such an extent that he went abroad to Portugal in 1754 in search of a cure. Gout, asthma and other afflictions meant that he had to use crutches.
He died in Lisbon two months later and his tomb at the English Church may be visited. Despite being now blind, John Fielding succeeded his older brother as Chief Magistrate and became known as the 'Blind Beak' of Bow Street for his ability to recognise criminals by their voice alone.
Tom Jones, a Foundling
Tom Jones, a Foundling
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on February 28 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel. The novel is divided into 18 smaller books.
Tom Jones is a foundling discovered on the property of a very kind, wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy, in Somerset in England's West Country. Tom grows into a vigorous and lusty, yet honest and kind-hearted, youth. He develops affection for his neighbour's daughter, Sophia Western.
On one hand, their love reflects the romantic comedy genre that was popular in 18th-century Britain. However, Tom's status as a bastard causes Sophia's father and Allworthy to oppose their love; this criticism of class friction in society acted as a biting social commentary. The inclusion of prostitution and sexual promiscuity in the plot was also original for its time, and also acted as the foundation for criticism of the book's "lowness."
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on February 28 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel. The novel is divided into 18 smaller books.
Tom Jones is a foundling discovered on the property of a very kind, wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy, in Somerset in England's West Country. Tom grows into a vigorous and lusty, yet honest and kind-hearted, youth. He develops affection for his neighbour's daughter, Sophia Western.
On one hand, their love reflects the romantic comedy genre that was popular in 18th-century Britain. However, Tom's status as a bastard causes Sophia's father and Allworthy to oppose their love; this criticism of class friction in society acted as a biting social commentary. The inclusion of prostitution and sexual promiscuity in the plot was also original for its time, and also acted as the foundation for criticism of the book's "lowness."
Edward Morgan Forster
Edward Morgan Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
Forster was born at 6 Melcombe Place, Dorset Square, London NW1, in a building which no longer exists. His father was an architect and died when Forster was only a year old. Among Forster's ancestors were members of the Clapham Sect. As a boy he inherited £8,000 from his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton, daughter of the abolitionist Henry Thornton, which was enough to live on and enabled him to become a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent as a day boy. The theatre at the school is named after him.
At King's College, Cambridge, between 1897 and 1901, he became a member of the Apostles (formally named the Cambridge Conversazione Society), a discussion society. Many of its members went on to constitute what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a peripheral member in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a famous recreation of Forster's Cambridge at the beginning of The Longest Journey.
After leaving university he travelled on the continent with his mother. He visited Egypt, Germany and India with the classicist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson in 1914. When the First World War broke out, he became a conscientious objector.
Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s as the private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas. The Hill of Devi is his non-fictional account of this trip. After returning from India, he completed his last novel, A Passage to India (1924), for which he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a successful broadcaster on BBC Radio and a public figure associated with the British Humanist Association. He was awarded a Benson Medal in 1937.
From 1925 until her death in March 1945 the novelist lived with his mother Alice Clare (Lily) in West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer, finally leaving on or around 23 September 1946. His London base was 26, Brunswick Square from 1930 to 1939, after which he rented 9, Arlington Park Mansions in Chiswick until at least 1961.
Forster was elected an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge in January 1946, and lived for the most part in the college, doing relatively little. He declined a knighthood in 1949 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1953. In 1969 he was made a member of the Order of Merit. Forster died in Coventry on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91, at the home of the Buckinghams.
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