The Passing of Grandison

In Charles Chesnutt's story The Passing of Grandison, there speaker shows a lot of deliberate manipulation in describing the plot. It seems to kind of associate itself with whatever the current mood of the people in the scene is, almost as if it's not a complete third-person voice that's detached from the characters but instead it's a 2.5-person point of view. The particular aspect that was noticeable for me was the way that the narrator describes the loyalty of Grandison.

At one point, after Grandison and Colonel Owen's first exchange in the events of the story, there's a long elaboration on how the owner feels that makes their relationship look very friendly, respectful and beneficial to both sides. "This was true gratitude, and his feudal heart thrilled at such appreciative homage. What cold-blooded, heartless monsters they were who would break up this blissful relationship of kindly protection on the one hand, of wise subordination and loyal dependence on the other!" The speaker couldn't possibly be more subjective, and is almost unreasonably biased towards the colonel's opinion at the time.

Contrast this with a section from the end of The Passing of Grandison, after colonel has learned of the mass escape undoubtedly led by Grandison: "So much valuable property could not be lost without an effort to recover it, and the wholesale nature of the transaction carried consternation to the hearts of those whose ledgers were chiefly bound in black." Just as the owner no longer feels any sentimental attachment to the slaves now that they've left, the speaker now refers to them in a shamelessly negative and unattached manner. They're described at the end as 'property' in a 'wholesale' 'transaction' instead of slaves who show 'homage' as part of a 'blissful relationship' like the were before they escaped. The drastic change in the narrator's voice is confusing to me, because it ruins the integrity of the 3rd person descriptions. The whole point of having a 3rd person in literature is to show things from an objective view in a situation where each of the characters would have his own opinion, but when the 3rd person doesn't hesitate to put a spin on what's happening, the value is lost. It's easier to read as you follow along with the story, but a lot harder to get the big picture and to understand the author's opinion.

Mark Twain

From the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the speaker is illustrating a great deal about his character. Mark Twain doesn't waste any time, and shows Huck's rebellious side from the very first chapter. It's written like a child would tell it, with the very first mentions of Widow Douglas already bringing up whatever is on Huck's mind about her. Before he even explains the situation of living with her, he's already criticizing their way of life and going on about what he decided to do about it.

In the next page and a half, he tells several short stories and incidents that sum up everything the reader needs to know about her (which is not very much), but does it in a real, adolescent-sounding style of speech. Huck rambles on and on, and rarely does talk about something with saying his opinion on it by the end of the sentence. "Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there." The same thing happens again right after: "She got mad, then, but I didn't mean no harm." For Huck, that's all there is to it. Whatever other people do to and around him, his mind is always on his own opinion, and he never hesitates to say or announce whatever wild thought is in his head.

By making him both a dissident speaker and giving him such a realistic child thought process, Twain made Huck easy to connect to and rationalize with. Despite all the unusual situations he, Jim, and eventually Tom get in to, the ideas running through Huck's mind are easy to follow along with. Of course plenty of people disagreed with those ideas, but in the course of the book it's impossible to ignore them. Huck's thoughts are as much a part of the story as is the actual plot, so the two are rather inseparable. Twain couldn't have made an adult work in this role because the issues Huck faces were too serious and would be too straining to read about. By making him (in some ways) a naive little kid, and in some ways a confused, mature mind, it gives him a distinct role in the novel.

Homely anguish

In Emily Dickinson's short poem I like a look of Agony, there are very few clues to pick up on to use in analyzing the meaning of the poem. There are only fourty words, so she must have been particularly focused on each one's exact purpose if she wanted the reader to come to an understanding from it. There is one particular word that jumps out to me in this poem: 'homely,' in the last line. Most of the words are built around pain or suffering and are strongly violent, but for some reason Dickinson chose to call anguish 'homely.'

The speaker of the poem is expressing her feelings on dishonesty in this poem, though she doesn't say specifically what kind of dishonesty or whose dishonesty she dislikes. However, the word 'homely' casts a kind of light on this situation. The speaker's point is that death and extreme suffering cannot be faked. The seriousness of those situations where one is under intense pain is not something a person can manipulate or call upon to be convenient when the time comes. Ultimately, those moments are the moments that all humans can share and relate to. This is where 'homely' reveals its meaning. By mentioning "homely Anguish," Dickinson suddenly and surprisingly tones down the intensity of the whole poem. She builds up the "look of Agony" from the beginning, portraying it as the ultimate quality that cannot be controlled by the mind of an individual, and then, in the finale, calls it plain and ordinary.

Just as important to this poem as agony is honesty. Dickinson is associating anguish (which represents honesty in the speaker's eyes) with homeliness. This suggests that the reality of the world, or maybe the reality without the deception and trickery of dishonest people, is actually just simple, ordinary, and maybe even a little ugly. All of this pain stuff seems dramatic, but in reality it's only typical. When you strip down all the misperceptions, deceit, and underhanded dealings that are part of our daily lives, it boils down to just a bunch of people living and dying, and there's nothing flashy about it at all.

Whitman & the Civil War

In Beat! Beat! Drums!, from the very first time one reads it, there's obviously something complicated going on with the speaker. On the one hand, he's calling (perhaps cynically) for the drums and the bugles to continue beating and continuing to interrupt the daily activities and lives of the people in the country. The sounds are symbols of war, both the actual physical violence and the intensity and tension that it brings to the civilians. On the other hand, the speaker is criticizing the drums and bugles, calling them "shrill," "terrible," and even ordering them to drown out the cries of children to their mothers.

The question is about what Whitman's speaker represents, and what the drums and bugles represent. This particular collection of poems was published in 1865, so if Beat! Beat! Drums! wasn't written during the war it was at least written immediately afterwards. Neely says that Whitman viewed the war as a battle for unity, which could mean he favored the North and was opposed to the South. In this view, it would make the most sense for the drums and the bugles to represent the Southern armies and their push for separation. They go out and interrupt the lives and northerners who are trying to go on with their daily lives, and divide them into one side or another and force them to become involved when they don't want to. This interpretation would suggest that Whitman thinks only the South wants to fight, and the North just wants to continue as it is.

However, Neely's point could also mean that he simply wanted the war to end and be over with, and was opposed to the violence in general and not a particular side. This view is strongly supported by Beat! Beat! Drums!. One basic detail is that Whitman is talking about multiple drums and multiple bugles; he could just as easily have replaced every instance of "drums" or "bugles" with a "drum" or "bugle" and the rest of the poem would have been almost unaffected. Instead, he consciously chose to use plural. This suggests that, rather than one side being the aggressor (the South), drums are coming in from all sides to bring the country into conflict. Multiple elements are coming together to bring about the war, and neither of them is justified, at least in the speaker's mind.

Also noticeable is that Whitman only talks about the sounds of the instruments. Again, the speaker could have ordered the drummers to keep marching or to hold along the line of battle, which would have associated them a specific side or the other, but he did not. By leaving them as only sounds, they're more ambiguous, as if the North and the South aren't really that different from each other. Their sounds don't have any specific direction, but just spread their influence and their message to everyone. The beating of the drums interrupts all different kinds of life, including the rich, the poor, peaceful people, entertainers, businessmen, farmers, and they even attempt to drown out the sounds of the traffic.

There's no specific motive behind them, nor a specific purpose in front of them. They aren't fighting for slavery, against slavery, or because of economic struggles. Whitman sees them only as a voice whose message doesn't matter, because no matter how justified, the result is only going to be violence and war. His cynicism to the drums is saying that whether you're right and they're wrong, or you're wrong and they're right, it's neither of you that matters. It's the ordinary people, the ones that don't want to fight, that will be most affected. They'll be forced to choose a side, and their choice will divide them and their country in half. Neely is right, as Whitman doesn't want the war to be won by the "right" side, he just wants the war to be over so that all of these people from all their different walks of life can go back to being unified.