A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - William Shakespeare 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Shakespeare

PLOT SUMMARY 

Theseus, duke of Athens, after conquering the warrior Amazons in battle, is in turn conquered by the charms of their queen, Hippolyta, and they are now planning to marry. To speed the time until their wedding night, he orders amusements to be staged. In a spirit of loyalty, Bottom the weaver and other tradesmen decide to prepare a play for the duke and his bride.

The preparations are interrupted by Egeus, an Athenian, who brings his daughter, Hermia, and her two suitors before Theseus, entreating him to command Hermia to wed Demetrius. Hermia pleads to be allowed to marry the other suitor, the one she loves-Lysander. The duke orders her to obey her father under penalty of death or confinement in a convent. Hermia and Lysander bewail the harsh decree and secretly agree to meet in a wood nearby and flee to another country. They tell their plans to Helena, a jilted sweetheart of Demetrius, and she, to win back his love, goes straightway to inform him of the plan.

Meanwhile, in the forest, the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania are at odds. In spite, Oberon bids Puck procure a love-juice to pour upon Titania's eyelids when she is asleep, in order that she may love the first thing her waking eyes behold. Just then, Oberon sees Demetrius, who has sought out the trysting-place of Lysander and Hermia only to meet Helena, much to his distaste. The lady's distress at her lover's coldness softens the heart of Oberon, who bids Puck touch Demetrius's eyes also with the love-juice, for Helena's sake.

Meanwhile, Lysander and Hermia arrive, and Puck in error anoints Lysander's instead of Demetrius's eyes, so that Lysander, happening to awake just as the neglected Helena wanders by, falls in love with her-and abandons Hermia.

The same enchanted spot in the forest happens to be the place selected by Bottom and company for the final rehearsal of their play. The roguish Puck passes that way while they are rehearsing, and mischievously and magically crowns Bottom with an ass's head, whereupon the other players disperse terror-stricken. Then he brings Bottom to Titania; and, when she awakens, she gazes first upon the human-turned-to-an-ass and falls in love.

Meantime, the four lovers are greatly bewildered. Oberon finds that Puck has anointed the eyes of Lysander instead of those of Demetrius, so Oberon anoints Demetrius's eyes with another potion which breaks the spell. When Demetrius awakes, he sees his neglected Helena being wooed by Lysander. His own love for her returns, and he is ready to fight Lysander. Helena deems them both to he mocking her, and Hermia is dazed by the turn of affairs. The fairies interpose and prevent conflict by causing the four to wander about in the dark until they are tired and fall asleep. Puck repairs the blunder by anointing Lysander's eyes, in order to dispel the illusion caused by the love-juice. Thus, when they awake, all will be in order: Lysander will love Hermia, and Demetrius will love Helena.

Titania woos Bottom until Oberon, whose anger has abated, removes the spell from her eyes. Bottom is restored to his natural form, and he rejoins his comrades in Athens. Theseus, on an early morning hunting trip in the forest, discovers the four lovers. Explanations, follow; the duke relents and bestows Helena upon Demetrius and Hermia upon Lysander.

A wedding-feast for three couples instead of one only is spread in Duke Theseus's place. Bottom's players come to this feast to present the “comic” tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is performed in wondrous and hilarious fashion. After the company retires for the night, the fairies dance through the corridors on a mission of blessing and goodwill for the three wedded pairs

ACT BY ACT SUMMARY 

Act I

As Duke Theseus prepares for his marriage to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, he is interrupted by a courtier, Egeus. Egeus asks for the Duke to intervene in a dispute. His daughter, Hermia, will not agree to marry Demetrius (whom Egeus has chosen for her) because she loves a gentleman named Lysander. The Duke asks Hermia to be obedient to her father. He offers her one of two options: she must either die or accept a celibate life as a nun in Diana's templ

Naturally upset with the offer, Lysander and Hermia plan to elope and share their secret with Helena, Hermia's friend. Helena is desperately in love with Demetrius, who seems to have abandoned her in favour of Hermia. At night, Lysander and Hermia escape from Athens; but they soon lose their way in the woods. After Helena tells him of their intention to defy the law, Demetrius decides to follow the lovers into the woods. In turn, Helena follows Demetrius in the hope that he will give up on Hermia and choose her instead.  

Meanwhile, a group of working men are preparing a play of the tragic love-story of Pyramus and Thisbe to present before the Duke Theseus on his wedding day. Nick Bottom, the weaver, is to play the lover Pyramus, while Flute, the bellows-mender, begrudgingly agrees to play Thisbe. 

Act II

Nearby, Oberon - King of the Fairies—has recently quarrelled with his queen, Titania. She acquired a magical child from one of her waiting women, and now refuses to hand him over to Oberon to use as a page. Oberon begins to plot a way to get revenge on Titania for her disobedience. He sends his fairy servant, Puck, to fetch a purple flower with juice that makes people fall in love with the next creature they see.  

Afterwards, Oberon overhears Helena and Demetrius arguing in the forest. Oberon hears Demetrius mistreat Helena and tells Puck to anoint 'the Athenian', so Demetrius will fall in love with the first person that he sees. Puck mistakes the Athenian and puts the flower juice on the eyes of the sleeping Lysander. When he is woken by Helena, he immediately falls in love with her and rejects Hermia. When Demetrius rests, Oberon puts magic juice on his eyes, which makes him fall in love with Helena as well. 

Act III 

The workers' rehearsals in the wood are overheard by Puck, who plays a trick on them by giving Bottom an ass's head. After frightening the others away, Bottom is lured towards the sleeping Titania whom Oberon has anointed with Puck's magic flower juice. On waking, the fairy queen falls in love with the ass and entertains him with her fairies.  

Meanwhile, Demetrius and Lysander, still under the spell of the flower juice, pursue Helena. Hermia is jealous and confused about the lack of attention paid to her. Oberon and Puck watch the chaos, and Oberon commands Puck to put it right again. The lovers' arguments have tired them all out as they have chased one another through the woods. Puck eventually distracts the two men from their pursuit of Helena by impersonating their voices, and they get lost in the woods. The four lovers fall asleep, exhausted. Puck places restorative juice on Lysander's eyes.

Act IV

After an afternoon of being pampered by Titania's fairies, Bottom falls asleep beside her. Oberon restores Titania's sight and wakes her (thank goodness). After expressing her dismay at the sight of Bottom, she reconciles with Oberon, and she ends up giving him the little Indian prince for his page. Bottom's ass head is removed, and he returns to the city to rejoin his friends as they prepare to perform their play. The lovers are woken by Theseus and Hippolyta's hunting party. Lysander sees Hermia and falls in love with her once again. 

Act V

Happily reunited (Lysander with Hermia and Demetrius with Helena), they agree to share the Duke's wedding day. The play of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' is presented before the wedding guests. As the three couples retire to bed, Puck and the fairies return to bless the palace and its people.

THEMES

Love

The dominant theme in A Midsummer Night's Dream is love, a subject to which Shakespeare returns constantly in his comedies. Shakespeare explores how people tend to fall in love with those who appear beautiful to them. People we think we love at one time in our lives can later seem not only unattractive but even repellent. For a time, this attraction to beauty might appear to be love at its most intense, but one of the ideas of the play is that real love is much more than mere physical attraction.

At one level, the story of the four young Athenians asserts that although "The course of true love never did run smooth," true love triumphs in the end, bringing happiness and harmony. At another level, however, the audience is forced to consider what an apparently irrational and whimsical thing love is, at least when experienced between youngsters.

Marriage

A Midsummer Night's Dream asserts marriage as the true fulfillment of romantic love. All the damaged relationships have been sorted out at the end of Act IV, and Act V serves to celebrate the whole idea of marriage in a spirit of festive happiness.

The triple wedding at the end of Act IV marks the formal resolution of the romantic problems that have beset the two young couples from the beginning, when Egeus attempted to force his daughter to marry the man he had chosen to be her husband.

The mature and stable love of Theseus and Hippolyta is contrasted with the relationship of Oberon and Titania, whose squabbling has such a negative impact on the world around them. Only when the marriage of the fairy King and Queen is put right can there be peace in their kingdom and the world beyond it.

Appearance and Reality

Another of the play's main themes is one to which Shakespeare returns to again and again in his work: the difference between appearance and reality. The idea that things are not necessarily what they seem to be is at the heart of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in the very title itself.

A dream is not real, even though it seems so at the time we experience it. Shakespeare consciously creates the plays' dreamlike quality in a number of ways. Characters frequently fall asleep and wake having dreamed ("Methought a serpent ate my heart away"); having had magic worked upon them so that they are in a dreamlike state; or thinking that they have dreamed ("I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was"). Much of the play takes place at night, and there are references to moonlight, which changes the appearance of what it illuminates.

The difference between appearances and reality is also explored through the play-within-a-play, to particularly comic effect. The "rude mechanicals" completely fail to understand the magic of the theatre, which depends upon the audience being allowed to believe (for a time, at least) that what is being acted out in front of them is real.

When Snug the Joiner tells the stage audience that he is not really a lion and that they must not be afraid of him, we (and they) laugh at this stupidity, but we also laugh at ourselves — for we know that he is not just a joiner pretending to be a lion, but an actor pretending to be a joiner pretending to be a lion. Shakespeare seems to be saying, "We all know that this play isn't real, but you're still sitting there and believing it." That is a kind of magic too.

Order and Disorder

A Midsummer Night's Dream also deals with the theme of order and disorder. The order of Egeus' family is threatened because his daughter wishes to marry against his will; the social order to the state demands that a father's will should be enforced. When the city dwellers find themselves in the wood, away from their ordered and hierarchical society, order breaks down and relationships are fragmented. But this is comedy, and relationships are more happily rebuilt in the free atmosphere of the wood before the characters return to society.

Natural order — the order of Nature — is also broken and restored in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The row between the Fairy King and Queen results in the order of the seasons being disrupted:

The spring, the summer,

The chiding autumn, angry winter change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world

By their increase knows not which is which.

Only after Oberon and Titania's reconciliation can all this be put right. Without the restoration of natural order, the happiness of the play's ending could not be complete

Magic

The fairies’ magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses magic both to embody the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by the love potion) and to create a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic causes chaos, as when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander’s eyelids, magic ultimately resolves the play’s tensions by restoring love to balance among the quartet of Athenian youths. Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own ends, as when he reshapes Bottom’s head into that of an ass and recreates the voices of Lysander and Demetrius, stands in contrast to the laboriousness and gracelessness of the craftsmen’s attempt to stage their play.

Dreams

As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolyta’s first words in the play evidence the prevalence of dreams (“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the time”), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.7–8). The theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved: “I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what / dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream,” Bottom says, unable to fathom the magical happenings that have affected him as anything but the result of slumber.

Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate this environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the magical forest. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves, saying that, if they have been offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream. This sense of illusion and gauzy fragility is crucial to the atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as it helps render the play a fantastical experience rather than a heavy drama.

Jealousy

The theme of jealousy operates in both the human and fairy realms in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jealousy plays out most obviously among the quartet of Athenian lovers, who find themselves in an increasingly tangled knot of misaligned desire. Helena begins the play feeling jealous of Hermia, who has managed to snag not one but two suitors. Helena loves Demetrius, who in turn feels jealous of his rival for Hermia’s affections, Lysander. When misplaced fairy mischief leads Lysander into an amorous pursuit of Helena, the event drives Hermia into her own jealous rage. Jealousy also extends into the fairy realm, where it has caused a rift between the fairy king and queen. As we learn in Act II, King Oberon and Queen Titania both have eyes for their counterparts in the human realm, Theseus and Hippolyta. Titania accuses Oberon of stealing away with “the bouncing Amazon” (II.i.). Oberon accuses Titania of hypocrisy, since she also loves another: “How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, / Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, / Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?” (II.i.). This jealous rift incites Oberon to command Puck to fetch the magic flower that eventually causes so much chaos and confusion for the Athenian lovers

Mischief

In Midsummer, mischief is primarily associated with the forest and the fairies who reside there. Accordingly, the fairies of traditional British folklore are master mischief makers. The trickster fairy Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) is the play’s chief creator of mischief. Puck’s reputation as a troublemaker precedes him, as suggested in the first scene of Act II, where an unnamed fairy recognizes Puck and rhapsodizes about all the tricks Puck has played on unsuspecting humans. Although in the play Puck only retrieves and uses the magical flower at Oberon’s request, his mistakes in implementing Oberon’s plan have the most chaotic effects. Puck also makes mischief of his own accord, as when he transforms Bottom’s head into that of ass. Puck is also the only character who explicitly talks about his love of mischief. When in Act III he declares that “those things do best please me / That befall prepost’rously” (III.ii.), he effectively announces a personal philosophy of mischief and an appreciation for turning things on their head.

CHARACTERIZATION 

Oberon

Titania

BACKGROUND TO THE AUTHOR 

Ralph Waldo Ellison was born March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison, a construction foreman who died when Ellison was only three years old, and the former Ida Milsap, a church stewardess, who used to bring him books she borrowed from the houses she cleaned. Ellison attended Frederick Douglass School in Oklahoma City, receiving lessons in symphonic composition. He began playing the trumpet at age eight and, at age eighteen, attended Tuskegee Institute in Montgomery, Alabama, studying music from 1933 to 1936. During that time, he worked at a variety of jobs including janitor, shoeshine boy, jazz musician, and freelance photographer. He also became a game hunter to keep himself alive, a skill he says he learned from reading Hemingway.

A renowned novelist, short story writer, and critic, Ellison taught at several colleges and universities and lectured extensively at such prestigious institutions as Yale University, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Military Academy.

In 1970, Ellison became Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at New York University, where he served until 1980. He also received the prestigious Chevalier de L'Ordre des Artes et Lettres, one of the highest honors France can bestow on a foreign writer. In 1982, he was named professor emeritus at NYU, teaching for several years while continuing to write.

Ellison died of cancer on April 16, 1994, at his home in New York City.

BACKGROUND TO THE NOVEL

Invisible Man was published in 1952, during the literary period of modernism and postwar American fiction. The author of the novel, Ralph Ellison, was deeply influenced by the works of T.S. Eliot and Richard Wright. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Four Quartets had great influence on Ellison’s style. Ellison was also influenced by his friend, Richard Wright’s works Black Boy and Native Son, which are both talking about the hardships and discrimination faced by African-Americans in the United States. In 1930s and 1040s, Ellison was involved in Communist politics, and this probably gave him the bases to portray the Brotherhood similar to the Communist Party. The writing of Invisible Man begun in 1945 and finished in 1952. This was the time right after America’s victory in World War II, and it created a period of serious discrimination against blacks, especially in the South. 

Often described as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, Invisible Man is the tale of a black man's search for identity and visibility in white America. Convinced that his existence depends on gaining the support, recognition, and approval of whites — whom he has been taught to view as powerful, superior beings who control his destiny — the narrator spends nearly 20 years trying to establish his humanity in a society that refuses to see him as a human being. Ultimately, he realizes that he must create his own identity, which rests not on the acceptance of whites, but on his own acceptance of the past. 

PLOT SUMMARY OF INVISIBLE MAN

Invisible Man is the story of a young, college-educated black man struggling to survive and succeed in a racially divided society that refuses to see him as a human being. Told in the form of a first-person narrative, Invisible Man traces the nameless narrator's physical and psychological journey from blind ignorance to enlightened awareness — or, according to the author, "from Purpose to Passion to Perception" — through a series of flashbacks in the forms of dreams and memories. Set in the U.S. during the pre-Civil Rights era when segregation laws barred black Americans from enjoying the same basic human rights as their white counterparts, the novel opens in the South (Greenwood, South Carolina), although the majority of the action takes place in the North (Harlem, New York).

In the Prologue, the narrator — speaking to us from his underground hideout in the basement (coal cellar) of a whites-only apartment building — reminisces about his life as an invisible man. Now in his 40s, he recalls a time when he was a naïve young man, eager to become a renowned educator and orator. The narrator begins his story by recalling his high school graduation speech, which attracted the attention of the white school superintendent who invites him to give the same speech at a local hotel to the town's leading white citizens. But when he arrives at the hotel, the narrator is forced to participate in a brutal blindfolded boxing match (the "battle royal") with nine of his classmates, an event, which, he discovers, is part of the evening's entertainment for the "smoker" (a kind of stag party). The entertainment also includes a sensuous dance by a naked blonde woman, and the boys are forced to watch. The boxing match is followed by a humiliating event: The boys must scramble for what appear to be gold coins on an electrified rug (but, which turn out to be only worthless brass tokens). Then the narrator — now bruised and bleeding — is finally allowed to give his speech in front of the drunken white men who largely ignore him until he accidentally uses the phrase "social equality" instead of "social responsibility" to describe the role of blacks in America. At the end of his speech — despite his degrading and humiliating ordeal — the narrator proudly accepts his prize: a calfskin briefcase containing a scholarship to the state college for Negroes.

That night, the narrator's dead grandfather — a former slave — appears in a dream, ordering him to open the briefcase and look inside. Instead of the scholarship, the briefcase contains a note that reads, "Keep This Nigger Boy Running." The dream sets the stage. For the next 20 years of his life, the narrator stumbles blindly through life, never stopping to question why he is always kept running by people — both black and white — who profess to guide and direct him, but who ultimately exploit him and betray his trust.

Focusing on the events of one fateful day, the narrator then recalls his college days. Assigned to chauffeur Mr. Norton, a prominent white visiting trustee, around the campus, the narrator follows Mr. Norton's orders and takes him to visit two sites in the nearby black neighborhood — the cabin of Jim Trueblood, a local sharecropper, and the Golden Day, a disreputable bar/half-way house for shell-shocked World War I veterans. The narrator, however, is expelled from his beloved college for taking Mr. Norton to these places and sent to New York, armed with seven letters from his dean (Dr. Bledsoe). The letters, he believed, are letters of recommendation, but are in reality letters confirming his expulsion.

Arriving in New York City, the narrator is amazed by what he perceives to be unlimited freedom for blacks. He is especially intrigued by a black West Indian man (later identified as Ras the Exhorter) whom he first encounters addressing a group of men and women on the streets of Harlem, urging them to work together to unite their black community. But the narrator's excitement soon turns to disillusionment as he discovers that the North presents the same barriers to black achievement as the South.

Realizing that he cannot return to college, the narrator accepts a job at a paint factory famous for its optic white paint, unaware that he is one of several blacks hired to replace white workers out on strike. Nearly killed in a factory explosion, the narrator subsequently undergoes a grueling ordeal at the paint factory hospital, where he finds himself the object of a strange experiment by the hospital's white doctors.

Following his release from the hospital, the narrator finds refuge in the home of Mary Rambo, a kind and generous black woman, who feeds him and nurses him back to health. Although grateful to Mary, whom he acknowledges as his only friend, the narrator — anxious to earn a living and do something with his life — eventually leaves Mary to join the Brotherhood, a political organization that professes to be dedicated to achieving equality for all people. Under the guidance of the Brotherhood and its leader, Brother Jack, the narrator becomes an accomplished speaker and leader of the Harlem District. He also has an abortive liaison with Sybil, a sexually frustrated white woman who sees him as the embodiment of the stereotypical black man endowed with extraordinary sexual prowess.

But after the tragic death of his friend Tod Clifton, a charismatic young black "Brother" who is shot by a white policeman, the narrator becomes disillusioned with the disparity between what the organization preaches and what its leaders practice. As a result, he decides to leave the Brotherhood, headquartered in an affluent section of Manhattan, and returns to Harlem where he is confronted by Ras the Exhorter (now Ras the Destroyer) who accuses him of betraying the black community. To escape the wrath of Ras and his men, the narrator disguises himself by donning a hat and dark glasses. In disguise, he is repeatedly mistaken for someone named Rinehart, a con man who uses his invisibility to his own advantage.

The narrator discovers that the Harlem community has erupted in violence. Eager to demonstrate that he is no longer part of the Brotherhood, the narrator allows himself to be drawn into the violence and chaos of the Harlem riot and participates in the burning of a Harlem tenement. Later, as he flees the scene of the burning building and tries to find his way back to Mary's, two white men with baseball bats pursue him. To escape his assailants, he leaps into a manhole, which lands him in his underground hideout.

For the next several days the sick and delusional narrator suffers horrific nightmares in which he is captured and castrated by a group of men led by Brother Jack. Finally able to let go of his painful past — symbolized by the various items in his briefcase — the narrator discovers that writing down his experiences enables him to release his hatred and rediscover his love of life.

THEMES

1. Identity and Invisibility

Invisible Man is the story of a young man searching for his identity, unsure about where to turn to define himself. As the narrator states at the novel’s beginning, “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned somebody tried to tell me what it was.” It is undoubtedly clear that the narrator’s blackness comprises a large part of his identity, although this isn’t something he has necessarily chosen. For others in the novel, it is simply convenient to define the narrator through his blackness.

Ellison’s narrator explains that the outcome of this is a phenomenon he calls “invisibility”—the idea that he is simply “not seen” by his oppressors. Ellison implies that if racists reallysaw their victims, they would not act the way they do. The narrator recognizes his invisibility slowly—in moments like the hospital machine, when he realizes he is being asked to respond to the question of who he is in terms of his blackness. Ultimately, the narrator is forced to retreat to his hole, siphoning off the light from the white-owned power company, itself a symbol of an underground resistance that may go unacknowledged for a long time.

However, invisibility doesn’t come from racism alone. Just as poisonous for the narrator are other generalized ways of thinking about identity—ideas that envision him as a cog in a machine instead of a unique individual. This is true for the narrator both at the unnamed black university and at Liberty Paints. However, it is the Brotherhood, a thinly veiled take on the Communist Party, that proves to be most disillusioning for the narrator. The Brotherhood provides a systematic way of thinking about the world that claims to be the solution to racism and inequality.

When the narrator first meets Brother Jack, Jack says, “You mustn’t waste your emotions on individuals, they don’t count.” At first, the narrator embraces this ideology of the Brotherhood and structures his identity around it. However, he comes to discover that the Brotherhood is perfectly willing to sacrifice him for its own potentially flawed ends. Thus the novel can be read not only as a story about a black man’s struggle against racism, but a black man’s struggle to grow up and learn to be himself, against the backdrop of intense social pressures, racism among others.

2. Race and Racism

In Invisible Man, race is a constant subject of inquiry. As a young black man in the middle of 20th century America, the narrator most often confronts the idea of race through experiencing the racism of others – from the degradation he experiences in the battle royal to his realization of his token role in the Brotherhood. However, the novel also explores the question of whether race might be an authentic marker of individual identity, outside the context of racism and other narratives imposed by others. The narrator quickly realizes that his blackness is highly significant, but cannot easily decipher what it should mean to him.

At the novel’s beginning, a younger narrator’s take on race is relatively simple. In his graduation speech, he is happy to repeat Booker T. Washington’s words, explaining that blacks should cheerfully cooperate with the whites that are in power. As the narrator travels through the world of the novel, he meets an array of characters shaped by the complex history of race, and his views grow more complex. The most important of these figures are black, though also included are overtly or unintentionally racist whites, like the pompous Mr. Norton. Characters like Dr. Bledsoe and Lucius Brockway are characters that control their small domains within the white system but are either cynical or unaware of their compromised positions.

Many of the experiences of the novel revolve around the narrator’s acceptance of one notion of race, only to discover that there exceptions and difficulties in the ideas he encounters. For example, Ras the Exhorteroffers the inflammatory message of rejecting whites wholesale. This has a seductive appeal for the narrator, despite being irrational and dangerous. Near the novel’s end, the narrator attempts to enact his grandfather’s strategy of “yessing them to death,” but his plan backfires during his fling with Sybil, the wife of a powerful Brotherhood member.

Ellison offers no solution to the complicated legacies of race. Although the narrator withdraws into his hole at the novel’s end, he still boldly states, “I couldn’t be still even in hibernation. Because, damn it, there’s the mind…It wouldn’t let me rest.” Ellison hints that the only way to find an authentic relationship with race is to puzzle it out for oneself, and only an active, individual mind can locate his own relationship with history.

3. Power and Self-Interest

Throughout the novel, the narrator encounters powerful institutions and individuals, all of which are bent on maintaining influence over events. At the novel’s beginning the narrator is exposed to the white power elite of his town, who act one way in the public eye but have no shame about their racist and sexist actions within a private club. The very moment they sense a threat from the narrator (when he mentions the word “equality”), they prepare to destroy him. These men arm themselves with the story that they are upstanding businessmen and community leaders, but this narrative is in contradiction with their naked desire to maintain power.

The Brotherhood is one of the best examples of another group that uses a powerful narrative that seems to perfectly explain the world. By suggesting that all events are part of a science of history that can be perfectly understood, they seek to impose their subjective vision on others who buy into their philosophy. However, this ideology is flawed: although the Brotherhood is originally interested in combating oppression, it is clear that characters like Brother Jack come to relish their power above any other altruistic motive.

The black community is no freer from the self-interested drive to consolidate and maintain power at all costs – only they are limited by white oppression. Dr. Bledsoe is an example of a figure the narrator looks up to, only to find out that he is more interested in holding onto the enclave of power he has carved out than in the ideals of humility and cooperation he espouses in public. Later, the figure of Rinehart comes to represent a similar impulse within the black community: a cynical attempt to profit in the short term by exploiting the ignorance of others.

He is a pimp, gambler, racketeer, lover and preacher all in one, but only because he can rely on the weakness and desperation of other members of the black community. At the novel’s end, the narrator remarks, “I’ve never been more loved or appreciated than when…I’ve tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear.” By retreating into the underground, the narrator hopes to distance himself these stories that destroy individual integrity while shoring up power structures.

4. Ambition and Disillusionment

Invisible Man can in many ways be thought of as a coming of age novel, in which an ambitious young man attempts to rise up through a broken system that ultimately rejects him. The novel is structured into a series of hopes and dashed expectations, beginning with the promise of the unnamed university, where the narrator assumes he will model himself after the Founder. Later, in the working world and in the world of the Brotherhood, the narrator similarly invests hope in the goodwill of others, only to find his expectations and ambitious thwarted.

His experience mirrors the whole generation of young black individuals who expected that they could rise up in an increasingly equal society. The ex-doctor from the mental hospital is a reflection of these dashed ambitions. After receiving recognition in France, the ex-doctor learns that he will never be truly respected due to his race. Denied his dignity, the surgeon gives up hope of recognition and ultimately ends up as another nameless member of the asylum. His advice for the narrator is to “Play the game, but don’t believe in it.”

In the Brotherhood, the narrator finally feels as though he is beginning to achieve recognition. However, he quickly begins to discover that the actions of the Brotherhood are designed to keep him in place. Ultimately, the Brotherhood’s betrayal culminates in the race riot at the end of the novel. The narrator realizes that he has been kept out of affairs in order to help incite the riot without his interference. The narrator’s retreat into the hole represents the final stage of the narrator’s disillusionment, though on an ambiguous note.

Completely dissatisfied with all existing institutions and accepted ways of behaving in the world, the narrator says he is in “hibernation,” waiting for the time to come when he can begin to achieve his aims. By secluding himself in his hole, the narrator precludes himself from either ambition or disappointment. However, the narrator acknowledges that this is only a temporary state, one that allows him to narrate his story from a distance, but that he will soon emerge from his hiding.

CHARACTERIZATION

1. The narrator

The nameless protagonist of the novel. The narrator is the “invisible man” of the title. A black man in 1930s America, the narrator considers himself invisible because people never see his true self beneath the roles that stereotype and racial prejudice compel him to play. Though the narrator is intelligent, deeply introspective, and highly gifted with language, the experiences that he relates demonstrate that he was naïve in his youth. As the novel progresses, the narrator’s illusions are gradually destroyed through his experiences as a student at college, as a worker at the Liberty Paints plant, and as a member of a political organization known as the Brotherhood. Shedding his blindness, he struggles to arrive at a conception of his identity that honors his complexity as an individual without sacrificing social responsibility.

2. Brother Jack

Ellison uses Brother Jack, the leader of the Brotherhood, to point out the failure of abstract ideologies to address the real plight of African Americans and other victims of oppression. At first, Jack seems kind, compassionate, intelligent, and helpful, a real boon to the struggling narrator, to whom he gives money, a job, and—seemingly—a way to help his people fight against prejudice. But as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the narrator is just as invisible to Jack as he is to everyone else. Jack sees him not as a person but as a tool for the advancement of the Brotherhood’s goals. It eventually becomes clear to the narrator that Jack shares the same racial prejudices as the rest of white American society, and, when the Brotherhood’s focus changes, Jack abandons the black community without regret.

The narrator’s discovery that Jack has a glass eye occurs as Jack enters into a fierce tirade on the aims of the Brotherhood. His literal blindness thus symbolizes how his unwavering commitment to the Brotherhood’s ideology has blinded him, metaphorically, to the plight of blacks. He tells the narrator, “We do not shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them!” Throughout the book, Jack explains the Brotherhood’s goals in terms of an abstract ideology. He tells the narrator in Chapter 14 that the group works “for a better world for all people” and that the organization is striving to remedy the effects of too many people being “dispossessed of their heritage.” He and the other brothers attempt to make the narrator’s own speeches more scientific, injecting them with abstractions and jargon in order to distance them from the hard realities that the narrator seeks to expose.

To many black intellectuals in the 1930s, including Ellison, the Communist Party in particular seemed to offer the kind of salvation that Jack appears to embody—only to betray and discard the African-American cause as the party’s focus shifted in the early 1940s. Ellison’s treatment of the Brotherhood is largely a critique of the poor treatment that he believed the black community had received from communism, and Jack, with his red hair, seems to symbolize this betrayal.

3. Tod Clifton

A black member of the Brotherhood and a resident of Harlem. Tod Clifton is passionate, handsome, articulate, and intelligent. He eventually parts ways with the Brotherhood, though it remains unclear whether a falling-out has taken place, or whether he has simply become disillusioned with the group. He begins selling Sambo dolls on the street, seemingly both perpetrating and mocking the offensive stereotype of the lazy and servile slave that the dolls represent.

4. Ras the Exhorter

One of the most memorable characters in the novel, Ras the Exhorter (later called Ras the Destroyer) is a powerful figure who seems to embody Ellison’s fears for the future of the civil rights battle in America. Ras’s name, which literally means “Prince” in one of the languages of Ethiopia, sounds simultaneously like “race” and “Ra,” the Egyptian sun god. These allusions capture the essence of the character: as a passionate black nationalist, Ras is obsessed with the idea of race; as a magnificently charismatic leader, he has a kind of godlike power in the novel, even if he doesn’t show a deity’s wisdom. Ras’s guiding philosophy, radical at the time the novel was published, states that blacks should cast off oppression and prejudice by destroying the ability of white men to control them. This philosophy leads inevitably to violence, and, as a result, both Ellison and the narrator fear and oppose such notions. Yet, although Ellison objects to the ideology that Ras embodies, he never portrays him as a clear-cut villain. Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses Ras exert a magnetic pull on crowds of black Americans in Harlem. He offers hope and courage to many. By the late 1960s, many black leaders, including Malcolm X, were advocating ideas very similar to those of Ras.

Ras, who is depicted as a West Indian, has reminded many critics of Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born black nationalist who was influential in the early 1920s. Like Ras, Garvey was a charismatic racial separatist with a love of flamboyant costumes who advocated black pride and argued against integration with whites. (Garvey even endorsed the Ku Klux Klan for working to keep whites and blacks separate.) However, Ellison consistently denied patterning Ras specifically on Garvey. If any link does exist, it is probably only that Garvey inspired the idea of Ras, not that Ellison attempted to recreate Garvey in Ras.

5. Rinehart

A surreal figure who never appears in the book except by reputation. Rinehart possesses a seemingly infinite number of identities, among them pimp, bookie, and preacher who speaks on the subject of “invisibility.” When the narrator wears dark glasses in Harlem one day, many people mistake him for Rinehart. The narrator realizes that Rinehart’s shape-shifting capacity represents a life of extreme freedom, complexity, and possibility. He also recognizes that this capacity fosters a cynical and manipulative inauthenticity. Rinehart thus figures crucially in the book’s larger examination of the problem of identity and self-conception.

6. Dr. Bledsoe

The president at the narrator’s college. Dr. Bledsoe proves selfish, ambitious, and treacherous. He is a black man who puts on a mask of servility to the white community. Driven by his desire to maintain his status and power, he declares that he would see every black man in the country lynched before he would give up his position of authority.

7. Mr. Norton

One of the wealthy white trustees at the narrator’s college. Mr. Norton is a narcissistic man who treats the narrator as a tally on his scorecard—that is, as proof that he is liberal-minded and philanthropic. Norton’s wistful remarks about his daughter add an eerie quality of longing to his fascination with the story of Jim Trueblood’s incest.

8. Reverend Homer Barbee

A preacher from Chicago who visits the narrator’s college. Reverend Barbee’s fervent praise of the Founder’s “vision” strikes an inadvertently ironic note, because he himself is blind. With Barbee’s first name, Ellison makes reference to the Greek poet Homer, another blind orator who praised great heroes in his epic poems. Ellison uses Barbee to satirize the college’s desire to transform the Founder into a similarly mythic hero.

9. Jim Trueblood

An uneducated black man who impregnated his own daughter and who lives on the outskirts of the narrator’s college campus. The students and faculty of the college view Jim Trueblood as a disgrace to the black community. To Trueblood’s surprise, however, whites have shown an increased interest in him since the story of his incest spread.

10. The veteran

An institutionalized black man who makes bitterly insightful remarks about race relations. Claiming to be a graduate of the narrator’s college, the veteran tries to expose the pitfalls of the school’s ideology. His bold candor angers both the narrator and Mr. Norton—the veteran exposes their blindness and hypocrisy and points out the sinister nature of their relationship. Although society has deemed him “shell-shocked” and insane, the veteran proves to be the only character who speaks the truth in the first part of the novel.

11. Emerson

The son of one of the wealthy white trustees (whom the text also calls Emerson) of the narrator’s college. The younger Emerson reads the supposed recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe and reveals Bledsoe’s treachery to the narrator. He expresses sympathy for the narrator and helps him get a job, but he remains too preoccupied with his own problems to help the narrator in any meaningful way.

12. Mary

A serene and motherly black woman with whom the narrator stays after learning that the Men’s House has banned him. Mary treats him kindly and even lets him stay for free. She nurtures his black identity and urges him to become active in the fight for racial equality.

13. Sybil

A white woman whom the narrator attempts to use to find out information about the Brotherhood. Sybil instead uses the narrator to act out her fantasy of being raped by a “savage” black man

 BAT

DAVID HERBERT

At evening, sitting on this terrace, 

When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara 

Departs, and the world is taken by surprise ... 

When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing 

Brown hills surrounding ... 

When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio 

A green light enters against stream, flush from the west, 

Against the current of obscure Arno ... 

Look up, and you see things flying 

Between the day and the night; 

Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together. 

A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches 

Where light pushes through; 

A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air. 

A dip to the water. 

And you think: 

'The swallows are flying so late!' 

Swallows? 

Dark air-life looping 

Yet missing the pure loop ... 

A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight 

And serrated wings against the sky, 

Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light, 

And falling back. 

Never swallows! 

Bats! 

The swallows are gone. 

At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats 

By the Ponte Vecchio ... 

Changing guard. 

Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one's scalp 

As the bats swoop overhead! 

Flying madly. 

Pipistrello! 

Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe. 

Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive; 

Wings like bits of umbrella. 

Bats! 

Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep; 

And disgustingly upside down. 

Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags 

And grinning in their sleep. 

Bats! 

Not for me! 

    ABOUT THE POET

David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England in 1885. He was a novelist, 

Short-story writer, Poet and essayist.  His first published works were poems in 1909. His poetry on evocations of the natural world have influence on many poets. Lawrence died in 1930.

SUBJECT MATTER

“Bat” is a Lyric poem. The poem reveals the poet's deep aversion towards bat,  a nocturnal creature ( a bird that sees only in the night but blind during the day). Bat is called ‘Pipistrello' in Italy meaning little piper. Bat is jot the only mammal or bird that flies in the night. Swallows also fly in the night. A swallow is a small long-winged songbird noted for swift graceful flight and the regularity of its migrations. In his careful observation of the bat, the poet-speaker also observes swallows under the bridge arches. Even though the poet knows very well that swallows also fly late in the night, his awful attention does not direct to swallows but to bat as a result of his hatred and disdain towards bat. Although the poet finds bat disgusting and repulsive, bat is highly valued in China. In China, bat is a symbol of joy and good luck. It is a highly valued edible meat in China.

LINE ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

The poem begins by giving the readers a clue on the setting of the poem. The time is evening. The physical setting is Italy. Some ancient cities like Pisa,  Florence,  Mountains of Carrara,  Ponte Vecchio and River Arno all portray the setting as Italy. 

The poet, looking towards the Ponte Vecchio,  an old bridge built in arches over the Arno River in Florence,  experiences tranquil atmosphere. The poet admires the entire beauty of natures which are radiating from mountains of Carrara down to Ponte Vecchio and to the Rover Arno. Suddenly, he sees swallows as he looks up. Those creatures are swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows .

Swallows are small birds with pointed wings and forked tail. The birds hover up and down the bridge. They move in any direction they see light under the bridge. The sight seems pleasing to the poet as they do not hover in the gross darkness unlike bat.

There is a huge contrast between swallows and bats. While swallow is endearing, bat is irritating. In these lines the poet expresses open hatred towards bats. Swallows fly at sunset but bats take deep pleasure in thick darkness. The poet bitterly expresses disdain against bats.

The poet continues with his contempt against bats. The poet says the swallows gave way for the bats by the Ponte Vecchio. The poet uses ‘changing guard’ a military term to describe how this birds change operation. In his further disdainful dispositions for bats, the poet reveals how the bat ‘swoop overhead madly‘. To swoop means to carry out a sudden raid. 

The poet describes bats using more harsh and unpleasant words. Bats are called Pipistrello in Italy. As tiny as bats are, they are expressing unreasonable desire for revenge. All about bat is disgusting to the poet. Bats ooze their disgusting voices from an infinitesimal pipe.

The poet describes hats with so many vilifying imageries. They hang themselves up like an old rag,  to sleep’ and disgustingly upside down. 

While bat us highly disgusting to the poet, it is warmly revered and widely accepted in China. Chinese people consume bat with great relish. Apart from serving as edible meat in China, it is a symbol of good luck and happiness. 

Notwithstanding that bat is highly welcomed in China,  the poet still maintain his resolute stance on detesting bat.

THEMES 

Beauty of Nature: The poet expresses the brimful beauty of nature. These include the sun that comes beyond Pisa, the Mountains of Carrara, the flower of Florence and the landscape of Pints Vecchio. All these geographical beauties constitute sources of joy, gaiety and fulfilment in the poet. The poet becomes highly elated as he sits on the terrace to watch and admire these beauties of nature. 

Realties of Human Consciousness: The way the poet sees bat reflects the realities of human consciousness. The bat evokes a sense of sadness and bitterness in the poet. The mere sight and thought of the bat spoils the poet’s happy mood. The bat represents the pain that humans encounter in the world.   At end, the poet exclaims, ‘Not for me’. This shows his level of     consciousness. A sudden shift in the light of the swallows that are gone and replaced with the pain and fear at the grinning of the bats.

Varieties of Human Choices: Bat is a source of bitterness and concern to the poet. While the poet Finds bat disgusting,  some other people- like the Chinese- hold bat at the highest esteem and consume it with relish. To the poet, bat is ‘wildly vindictive’ ‘Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe’ ‘disgusting old rags’ but on the contrary, bat is a symbol of happiness in China. This shows that shows vary among individuals and cultures. 

POETIC DEVICES FROM THE POEM

1. Language: The poem is written in simple prose-like form. It employs ellipsis to show that the poem is a personal emotional opinion of the poet. Language: Lawrence used violent words or expression to express his hatred for bats. Words like ‘’flying madly,’’ ‘’voices indefinite, ’’wildly vindictive,’’ ‘’old rags,’’ ‘’disgusting,’’ ‘’Black Piper.’’ The use of ‘’black’’ here connotes ‘’devil’’ or ‘’evil.’’ ‘’Disgusting’’ means something bad, unfair, inappropriate that you feel annoyed and angry.

2. Tone: The poet makes use of harsh and disdainful tone that reveals his strong hatred for bat.

4. Enjambment: Each line has its meaning flow into another. 

5. Allusion: It is making reference to something which is already known by a reader or listener. ‘’Ponte Vecchio’’ is a medieval stoned-a segmental arch bridge over the Arno River, in Florence, Italy. Another way is ‘’Mountain Carrara’’—Carrara marble is a type of white or blue-grey marble of high quality, popular for use in sculpture and building decoration.

6. Simile: This is when two things that share same features but are from different nature are compared. The poet compared the ugly appearance of bats with an umbrella. ‘’Wings like bits of umbrella.’’ Others are ‘’creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag’’, ‘’like a glove, a black glove thrown up at night.’’ The descriptions of bats indicated the poet’s hatred for the creature.

7. Personification: It is when inanimate objects are given human attributes. ‘’When the tired flower of Florence.’’ Line 5. Flowers can never be tired like human beings. Bats behave like an insane person in being ‘’flying madly’’ line 33. Swallows behave like tailors when they are ‘’sewing the shadows together’’ line 11.

8. Alliteration: The repetition of same sounds was employed in this poem. ‘’When the tired flower of Florence (f,f) line 4. ‘’ A twitch a twitter’’ line 21 (t, t) . ‘’little lumps that fly (L, L)

9. Rhetorical Questions: Questions that demand no answers. ‘’Swallows?, ‘’Never Swallows! Bats!’’ ‘’Bats. Not for me!’’ All these were used to emphasize the poet’s hatred for bats.

10. Repetition: It is when an expression or a word is used more than one tome. Words like ‘’upside down’’, ‘’old rags’’ and ‘’disgusting’’ shows the poet’s strong hatred for bats. Other repeated words are ‘’glove’’, ‘’swallows’’ and ‘’Bats’’.

11. Antithesis: It is the use of two contrasting words, phrases or sentences. Bats are the symbol of happiness and good fortune in China but the poet sees bats as disgusting and ill-omen creatures.

12. Metaphor: It is the direct comparison of two things that share same qualities but different nature. The poet compared bats: ‘’And serrated wings against the sky’’ line 22, ‘’Black Piper’’ line 35. ‘’Little lumps that fly in air’’ line 36. These comparisons are based on his hatred towards bats.

13. Imagery: The creation of mental picture in reader’s mind. We could see the image of the way bats fly, sleep upside down, their wings like a wretched umbrella.

 DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

ABOUT THE POET

A poem Dylan Thomas dedicated to his father, David John Thomas,  a militant man who had been strong in his youth, but who weakened with age and by his eighties had become blind. Dylan Thomas finished this poem, a villanelle, in 1951 and sent it off to an editor friend of a magazine, together with a note which read: “The only person I cant show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn’t know he's dying.

He also remarked to his friend,  American Robert J. Gibson, that the spark for the poem was his father's approaching blindness. Thomas's father was to pass away a year later and the poet himself succumbed to illness and died in 1953. The poem urges older man not to give up and yield to the final “night” of death. It is one of the most famous Villanelles in the English language. The rigid for; two end rhymes,  a pattern of repeating lines and five three-lines stanzas with a four-line stanza at the end suggests the poet's attempts to control his passionate emotions. It was first published in 1951,  two years before the poet's own death at age 39.

SUBJECT MATTER

The poem is a son's plea to a dying father. His purpose is to show his father that all men face the same end, but they fight for life, nonetheless. The poet portrays the state of the old men when they have got old and are approaching death. He joins them to resist death as strongly as they can. In fact,  they should only leave this world kicking and screaming,  furious that they have to die at all. At the end of the poem, the reader is given a hint that the poet-speaker has a personal stake in this issue: his own father dying.

LINE ANALYSIS OF THE POEM 

     Wise men are the first group that Thomas describes. The first line in the stanza, “Though wise men at their end know dark is right,” suggests that they know that death is a natural part of life and they are wise enough to know they should accept it. However, the next line reasons that they fight against it because they feel they have not gained nearly enough repute or notoriety. “Because their words had forked no lighting” This is Thomas’ way of saying that they want to hold on to life to be able to leave their mark, thereby sustaining their memory in history as great scholars or philosophers.

     Thomas moves forward and describes the next group as good men. They reflect on their lives as the end approaches. “Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright,”  This line can be broken down into two parts. First’ good men are few now, as it says “the last wave by,” perhaps this is emphasis on the fact that Thomas believes his father to be a good man and that the world can still use him. Second, the line “crying how bright,” refers to men telling their stories in a limelight. They self-proclaim their works as good, but as Thomas goes on into the next line “their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,” it describes men knowing that their deeds will not be remembered regardless of their seemingly significant achievements. Green bay refers to an eternal sea, which marks their place in history. After reflecting on the past, they decide that they want to live if for nothing more than to leave their names written down in history.

     Wild men, however as the next group is revealed, have learned too late that they are mortal. They spent their lives in action and only realize as time has caught up with them that this is the end. “Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,” exaggerates their experiences and how they have wasted away their days chasing what they could not catch. Even more so “caught and sang the sun,” refers to how these wild men lived. They were daredevils who faced peril with blissful ignorance. They wasted away their lives on adventures and excitements. The next line, “And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,” refers to the realism of their own mortality. They grieve because they have caused much grief living their lives in folly. Even though the end is approaching, they will not give in because they want more time to hold on to the adventure of their youth and perhaps right a few wrongs that they have done.

    Grave men, are the last group of men Thomas describes. “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,” in this line his use of grave men has almost a double meaning, referring to men who are saddened as well as being physically near death. They feel the strains of a long life, and they know they are physically decaying. Their eyes are failing along with the rest of their body, however there is still a passion burning within their eyes for an existence, even if it is a frail state. “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,”  is an expression that represent man’s struggle for survival. He is possibly offering that even in this frail state that his father could be happy living longer.

     Finally, in the last stanza the intent is presented, Thomas is showing that all men no matter their experiences or situations fight for more time. He urges his father to do the same. “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,” (17) describes his pain and passion that are causing him to beg his father not to die. Thomas is watching his father fade and is begging for his father no to give in. It appears that his father has either peacefully surrendered himself, or rather that he has resigned himself to his fate.

THEMES IN THE POEM

Anger: The poet advises its listener to rage against dying. By giving us the models of wise men, good men, wild men and grave men,  the poet is of the view that me who are vigorously pursuing something but meet frustrations and disappointments in their lives, would resort to anger in their lives. Although it could be said that these are admirable types of men, and that if they all reach the same conclusion having travelled there on different roads then it must be the correct one, they still do not achieve any comfort or satisfaction from raging; that is, not going gentle. The poem is expressed as advice to choose rage but these men do not find their rage by choice. Anger is therefore considered to be better than sadness in the poem.

Mortality and Transience: The poem laments the certainty or inevitability of death, encouraging the aged to rebel against their fate. The poem suggests that we should leave this world the way we came in – kicking and screaming., holding on to life for all we're worth. The thought of transience causes the speaker a lot of anxiety. It worries him that there are things people might have been able to do in the world if only they had been here longer but unfortunately, life is brief. It bothers him that the sun travels so quickly across the sky, making human beings quickly draw close to their graves. But even though transience is disturbing, it also creates opportunities for reflections.

Identity: The poem is an address to the poet's father. This helps the reader easily understand the poet's undertones. The angry attitude the poet asks the father is not necessarily suggested for all people,  but instead an emotional reaction to the imminent death of a figure. Thomas uses the formalized villanelle style to pass a message, not just about death but about standing by or identifying with a loved one when they face death. The poem reveals a strong emotional affinity and identity.

Morality: Though death is inevitable, the poet tells the listener to do something substantial, something grandiose before death snuffs out life. Throughout the poem, life is associated with passion, zeal and adventure. It is also associated with the pursuit of one’s potential and self-actualisation. Thomas’s urges the “wise men” and the good men” to resist death because they haven’t achieved anything significant to be remembered by. His “wild men” had lived passionately but had been ignorant of their own mortality all this while. 

Old age: Despite the inexorable nature of death, if a man lives his life with unwavering passion and zeal, and doesn’t submit to the frailties of old age, he can escape the regrets and tragedies that accompany death. In order to die with dignity, man must not let the limitations of old age hamper his intensity of life. 

POETIC DEVICES

Alliteration: The following underlined words are the examples of alliteration that feature in the poem.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

..blinding sight/ Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay

When two or more words which begin with the same sound, are placed adjacent or close to each other in a text, it is called as alliteration.  Alliteration focuses readers’ attention on a particular section of text. Alliterative sounds create rhythm and mood and can have particular connotations.

Metaphor: In the entire poem, “night”, “dying of the light” and “close of day” has been used as metaphors for death. This could be because, while we are energetic and bursting with life at the beginning of the day, as the night closes in on us, we slowly lose the zeal to accomplish and wish to fade in and rest. Similarly, as man moves over from the period of youth to old age, he loses his vigour and ardour for life.

“Forked no lightning” literally refers to splitting a thunderbolt. This has been used as a metaphor for describing extraordinary tasks or accomplishments of men. The impact that the ideas of men has on the rest of the world has been referred to here.

Personification: “Frail deeds might have danced” is a phrase where deeds of men are given the human ability to dance, hence personified. The deeds have been given the attribute of a human being to bring in a more realistic or live image.

Simile: ‘Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay’ is an example of fine simile in the poem, ‘Do Not Go Gentle In to the Good Night’. Similes make descriptions vivid by comparing their subjects with known events or things. Effective similes help readers visualize what is being described. Hence, here blind eyes, which actually cannot see, are given the ability to blaze and shine by comparing them to meteors, which are incandescent bodies of mater from outer space.

Oxymoron: In the 5th stanza, “blinding sight” is an oxymoron. Also, in the final stanza, “Curse, bless me now..” can be termed as an oxymoron. Oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes images that appear to be contradictory. By combining two words or terms together that are inherently contradictory, the use of an effective oxymoron can create a phrase with lasting resonance and a more immediately evocative sensibility.

Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds to create an internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, Assonance is a rhyme, the identity of which depends on vowel sounds.

First stanza: Age, rave, day

Fifth stanza: Blaze, gay, rage

Repetition: there is a repetition of a certain sentence for the sake of emphasis “Do Not Go Gentle In to That Good Night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” have been repeated four times throughout the poem to emphasize on the message of not accepting death submissively and fighting against it with fiery passion.

Parallelism: The poet draws a parallel between four kinds of men; wise men, good men, wild men and grave men. The objective of this is to say that though humans can be of different varied kinds, but at the end of the day, they all can and must fight against death and accomplish something indelible in their life

Imagery: The imagery that occurs throughout the poem is closing of day and the onset of night. The repeated usage of this image works to symbolise death, or the end. The “good night” is death, with a deliberate pun on saying good night and the idea that death is the right or “good” thing at the end of life. Death is characterised as “close of day”. The mention of words forking no lightning produces an image of a bizarre or extraordinary phenomenon occurring because of the deeds of these men. “Frail deeds might have danced in a green bay” projects a picture of life and vitality as green in the sea is symbolic of sea weed, plants and algae, hence, life. The mention of meteors in the 5th stanza produces an image of something that passes very quickly, yet leaves a blazing trail behind and a lasting effect in the atmosphere.

  “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is a villanelle. Villanelles have nineteen lines divided into five three-line stanzas and a sixth stanza with four lines. In English, villanelles tend to be written in the common metrical pattern called iambic pentameter, which means ten syllables per line, with every other syllable stressed, starting with the second syllable. The rhyme scheme is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA, so there are only two rhymes that end all the lines. In addition, the first line and third line, the refrains, are repeated four times each – the first line appears at the end of stanzas 2 and 4 and as the second-to-last line in stanza 6. The poem’s third line appears again at the end of stanzas 3, 5, and 6.

 BLACK WOMAN
("femme noire")

Leopold Sedar Senghor 

Clothed with your colour which is life,

with your form which is beauty!

In your shadow I have grown up; the

gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.

And now, high up on the sun-baked

pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,

I come upon you, my Promised Land,

And your beauty strikes me to the heart

like the flash of an eagle.

Naked woman, dark woman

Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures

of black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth

Savannah stretching to clear horizons,

savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind's

eager caresses

Carved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering

under the Conqueror's fingers

Your solemn contralto voice is the

spiritual song of the Beloved.

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on the

athlete's flanks, on the flanks of the Princes of Mali

Gazelle limbed in Paradise, pearls are stars on the

night of your skin

Delights of the mind, the glinting of red

gold against your watered skin

Under the shadow of your hair, my care

is lightened by the neighbouring suns of your eyes.

Naked woman, black woman,

I sing your beauty that passes, the form

that I fix in the Eternal,

Before jealous fate turn you to ashes to

feed the roots of life

ABOUT THE POET

Leopold Senghor is the greatest of the Francophone African poets . He was born in Senegal, in 1906, and schooled both in Dakar and in Paris, France. He was the first West African to graduate from the Sorbonne (a part of the University of Paris, founded in 1253 that contains the faculties of science and literature) and teach in a French university. He is acclaimed as the father of Negritude (from Negro), a philosophy that affirms the black identity and touts the black man’s values as something to celebrate and be proud of. His poetry shows it in abundance.

Leopold Senghor was a catholic who planned to become a priest, but later became a statesman. He fought with the French in the Second World War and became a prisoner of war in then Nazi Germany. He became the Deputy for Senegal in the French Constituent Assembly, President of the Council of the Republic and Counselling Minister at the office of the President of the French Community. In 1960, he became the President of the Federal Republic of Mali and later in the same year, the President of an Independent Republic of Senegal. He was president of Senegal  until 1980.

BACKGROUND TO THE POEM

The poem “Black Woman” was written by Leopold Senghor and published in “Chants d’Ombre” in 1945. It was initially written in French as “Femme Noir” and then translated to English. Senghor was a Senegalese poet who was instrumental in starting the emotional, intellectual and political and literary movement called “negritude” along with other writers of African origin- like Aime Cesaire- in Paris. This movement was born as a result of Senghor going to Part. The negritude movement is essentially focused on making the value of the African people manifest. Negritude philosophy believed that despite the diversity and plurality of the African culture, and the African Diasporas, African people all over the world still had shared experiences of racial brutality and oppression. Hence, the negritude writers essentially tried to convey through their works, the pride they felt in being African and the pride they felt in African culture itself.

In the poem “Black Woman”, Senghor reinforces the ideas of negritude. He personifies Africa- the nation- as an African woman. He praises her and compliments her, comparing her to a goddess. Throughout the poem, Senghor equates the African woman to everything beautiful and graceful. For instance, in the last stanza, he compares her skin to the well oiled, beautiful skin of an athlete, or the Princes of Mali. He goes on to say that the African woman is as elegant and graceful as a gazelle. Senghor ends his poem on a philosophical note by saying that he will keep alive the African woman’s beauty eternally in his poetry.

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE POEM 

“Black woman is an ode or eulogy to a black woman,  sister or daughter and mist importantly Africa and the poet’s motherland,  Senegal which could be love and be loved just like a woman,  mother or a lover.  The meaning of this poem revolves around Senghor’s contemplation, description and glorification of the black woman.  In the poem “Black Woman”,  Senghor reinforces the idea of negritude. The poet treats the traditional themes of love, death, solitude,  suffering, the beauty of nature,  the beauty of woman and longing for his homeland. In this poem,  Senghor reaffirms his committed love for Africa,  his homeland,  his mother country by personifying Africa as every woman he loves.  He praises the African culture by finding beauty in the colour of the African skin, which had been the main cause for brutality and discrimination during the British rule in Africa. In this poem, he showers praises on the “black woman” thus implying the greatness of the African culture and the African people. He takes immense pride in being African- and this itself is the main idea behind the negritude. 

LINE ANALYSIS OF THE POEM [STRUCTURE]

In the first stanza, the poet emphasizes the thematic statement that the colour of the natural black woman itself is life and her form is beauty. Senghor has grown up under her shadow and his spirit has been nourished by her. Now that he has grown up and matured, he returns to her as if he were coming upon the promised land. He sees her through a mountain pass at noon in the midst of summer, and her beautiful form goes to his heart directly.

In the second stanza, she is seen as a lover, a woman whose flesh is like that of a ripened fruit. The poet compares her to the infinite savanna that shudders beneath the caresses of the east wind. She is like a tight, well-sculpted drum that resounds under the fingers of a valiant  conqueror; a woman whose resonant  contralto voice becomes the spiritual anthem of the loved one.

In the third stanza, she becomes almost a goddess, with her skin as smooth as the oiled skin of an athlete or a prince. She is like an elegant gazelle adorned with heavenly ornaments.

In the final stanza, Senghor concludes philosophically that he is perpetuating her transient beauty permanently in his poetry. His language thus reveals the black woman as an embodiment of sensuality and as a place for comfort and warmth for men.   He is  aware that nothing is bound to endure forever and so soon, the ‘black woman’ may have to make way and give up all her qualities in order for there to be a new beginning as expressed in, “…Before jealous fate turn you to ashes to

feed the roots of life”

THEMES IN THE POEM

1. The beauty of the African woman

In this poem, Senghor celebrates the essence of womanhood, especially black womanhood. When he writes of Africa in his poetry,  it is frequently in terns of a woman.  The black woman of this poem is more than an individual person; she is also the progenitor of his race and as a result,  a symbol of Africa itself and an embodiment of African heritage. He uses her very colour as part of his praise and seems to abstract her characteristics into an idea of a black woman in order to praise her. The poet portrays black woman as an embodiment of sensuality and as a place to find comfort and warmth. 

2. The beauty of Africa

The poem explores the riches and splendour of African beauty. He passionately likes and cherishes his indigenous African background.  Africa's tropical settings,  the beauty and structural configurations of its land and people greatly fascinated his mental and physical well-being and soul.  He celebrates the beauty of the African topographical settings. The pleasant atmosphere of the African continent is brought vividly before the eyes of the reader 

3. Nostalgia 

This poem was written when Senghor was away from his homeland.  Nostalgia is reflected in the poem as the speaker longs to return to an Africa that was almost unspoiled by  the ways of the western world and that was for him a sort if paradise where all seemed to be in harmony and at peace. In this Africa of his childhood,  the was a sense of life spent in common with family,  his village, clan,  his tribe and even his ancestors.  Leopold Senghor remembers details of his early childhood with great fondness and striking clarity and then wishes to go back to his root. 

POETIC DEVICES

1) Diction: the poet uses choice of words to symbolize the beauty of the black woman. He deliberately uses words like nakedness, black and darkness which are seen as negative attributes to praise the natural beauty of the black woman. The poet is also challenging the African woman to appreciate her natural beauty. And to bleach the dark skin in the name of sophisticated culture of the western world.

mood: the mode of the poem is that of Adoration. The poet adores the awesome beauty of the black woman. He describes everything about the African woman as naturally beautiful. Senghor sees Africa as the black woman he loves to celebrate. He seeks to adore that state of natural beauty before it is taken away by death.

2) Tone: the poet’s tone of the appreciation of natural beauty of the black woman pervades the poem. He praises the African woman not only for her natural smooth dark skin, but also for the way and manner she brings up her children.

3) Ode: the poem is a hymn of praise to the black woman, an African mother, daughter or sister and indeed mother Africa which deserves to be treated like a woman, the poet praise the natural beauty of the African woman, and stresses the need to accord her the rightful place in the society.

4) Metaphor: the figure of speech prominently used in the poem is that of metaphor. The black woman is compared to the promised land, ripe fruit, Savannah, oil and gazelle in lines 4,7,12, and 13.

5) Simile: the literary device is used by the poet in line 5 “your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an eagle, ” the comparism brings to mind the beauty and nobility of an eagle.

6) Repetition: line 1 “naked woman, black woman” and. Line 6 “naked woman, dark woman ” are repeated in lines 11 and 16 respectively to emphasize the natural beauty of the African woman.

7) Symbolism: Senghor uses symbolic words like: the promised land, ripe fruit, Savannah, oil and gazelle to symbolize the natural beauty of the black woman as a person, as well as a symbol of African woman and mother Africa.

8) Apostrophe: it is a literary device that poet employs to address the black woman, the object of praise as though she were physically present with him.

9) Personification: the black woman is figuratively used to personified the African continent and Senghor’s country, Senegal. The poet uses beauty of colour of the African woman skin to personified the rich African culture before western influence and colonization.

10) Imagery: the poet natural imagery to link the Beauty of the black woman to nature, and by the same token to his homeland of Senegal. Natural images like: wind, sun, noon, night, and stars are presented as attributes of the darkness of the African woman’s skin.

11) Alliteration: the poet uses alliteration to buttress the beauty of the black woman in lines 1,2,3,6,7,9 etc.

12) Simile: The following expression portrays a simile: “Your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an eagle

13) Apostrophe: The poet addresses the object of praise ( black woman)  as though she were present.

14) Symbols: several symbolic words are used to evoke emotions,  beauty and perfection.  All the sensual words used in the poem are very symbolic.  They show the fact that the beauty of womanhood is not only situated in her physical attractiveness, but it accommodates other virtuous attributes like loyalty,  faithfulness, obedience to marital and cultural codes. 

15) Form and Structure : The poem is written in four stanzas.  It is written in a free verse,  without regard for metrics pattern or rhyme scheme. Its sentences are long and wordy. While the first stanza presents black woman as  mother,  the last stanza showcases her love and portrays her as the nourisher.