Othello: Characteristics of the Shakespearean Tragedy

What is the peculiarity of Othello? What is the distinctive impression that it leaves?

A tragic figure, according to the classic definition, is a person of noble birth whose character is flawed by a weakness that causes his downfall. Othello's flaw is a passion he cannot control, he is slow to anger, but once he is angered, his passion overwhelms his good sense. He kills his wife as a result of his passion, and eventually himself. The waste of his life, full of promise and noble intentions, represents the tragedy of the play.

Othello is a tragedy of passion, for it is the most painfully exciting and most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation. 

Othello is not only the most masterly of the tragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction is unusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension. 

In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexual jealousy rising to the pitch of passion and driven by it to a crime which is also a hideous blunder. Jealousy and specially sexual jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor this is all. Such jealousy as Othello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also the most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painful than that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and loathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments, the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a bestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who was indeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great. And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scene where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more painful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of the tragedy. 

The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a third cause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all, the suffering of Desdemona. She is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She She can't retaliate even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute.

Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character, we observe that the action and catastrophe of Othello depend largely on intrigue. Iago's plot is Iago's character in action, and it is built on his knowledge of Othello's character where he could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains true that an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; for Othello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to endanger such jealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position in the drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; the only approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund in the secondary plot of King Lear. Now in any novel or play, even if the persons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, a skillfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. And where, as in Othello, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and antipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes the source of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhere else in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for so long a time as in the later Acts of Othello. 

One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that Othello is less unlike story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in in further ways. In the other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, so that its general significance is perceived through a thin veil which separates the persons from ourselves and our own world. But Othello is a drama of modern and contemporary life. The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama to ourselves is more immediate than it can be in Hamlet or Lear. It is less unlike story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. In great tragedies action is placed in distant period. 

The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to produce those feelings of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively narrow world, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in reading Othello. In Macbeth the fate which works itself out alike in the external conflict and in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and the imagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and by the appearance of supernatural agencies. In Othello, after the temptation has begun, it is incessant and terrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of Othello and Casino, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Othello would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief at the moment most favorable to him, Cassino blunders into the presence of Othello only to find him in swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to complete Othello's deception and incense his anger into fury. When all the accident happens, there is no escape from fate, and even with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sides with villainy. It is not surprising, therefore, that Othello should affect us as Hamlet and Macbeth never do, and as King Lear does only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvelous that, before the tragedy is over, Shakespeare should have succeeded in toning down this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene.  

The Wings of the Dove By Henry James : A Study of the Point of View

Point of view signifies the way a story gets told-the mode (or modes) established by an author by means of which the reader is presented with the characters, dialogue, actions, setting, and events, which constitute the narrative in a work of fiction.

It is manifested in the person who tells the story a person who may be either the author himself speaking in his own voice or a fictional voice created by the author.

The analysis of point of view attempts to identify the voice to determine the qualities and characteristics of the speaker behind it, and also to determine the relationship between speaker and the narrative or argument: Henry James's Preface to his various novels made point of view of the most prominent and persistent concerns in modern treatment of the art of prose fiction: -James, who regarded the novel as a work of art and was therefore greatly concerned with questions of technique, always deplored the formlessness of omniscient narrative. Also, he rejected the first-person narrative because of "the terrible fluidity of self-relative" it entails.

Thus, he originated a new concept of narrative point of view which he called "The Central Consciousness." It is the perceiving mind and eye of one of the characters involved in the novel - Kate, Dencher, and especially Milly. The story is thus one of gradual revelation and the reader becomes involved not in the events themselves, but in the characters' consciousness of them.

In "The Wings of the Dove," the omniscient point of view dominates the characters' subjectives point of view and remains consistent till the end. This is because the characters themselves rarely speak and James has to do all the talking through his own persons. This omniscient point of view proves to be reliable since whatever we are told is revealed through the characters' verbal and physical actions.

This novel is the story of the European experience of America. The American side is represented by the character (Milly Theale) who is exposed to the European society with its shallow, superficial, and materialistic people. Milly can't be other than a unitary manifestation-a focal point. Her qualities are revealed clearly in interview, with Kate Croy, Lord, Mark, and finally with Merton Dencher.

To the narrator, as well as to the characters, Milly is a "poor American girl." She looms on the consciousness of the other persons as an image of the moral beauty, strikes them as conscience, and teaches them a new possible, impossible mode of love in which conscience and moral beauty are joined. Aunt Maud worships the very air she breathes, and is genuinely stricken when she hears of the death of the poor "mon-eyed darling".

Kate Croy is genuinely enchanted with Milly. According to Kate, Milly is identified primarily with her fortune. To Dencher, she is the "little American girl" and he treats her with the tenderest deference.

Lord Mark regards Milly at the dinner party as an American object to be taken"irreclaimably for granted." Milly Theale's English friends touch upon the subject of what they call her good luck. Her "good luck" is simply her money, which they desire, and this is one of the characteristic features of the English of that class. At the beginning Milly knows nothing of these material pressures: her innocence springs from a fatal ignorance of the complex world of Lancaster Gate. But as the story advances, she acquires her knowledge in the most incidental flashes.

In fact, the characters' point of view towards Milly can determine the metaphorical space which is an aspect of the style. For example, the word "Dove", which is a central metaphor, is a symbol. It is introduced not through an omniscient point of view, but through a subjective point of view, that of Dencher. This is his initial subjective perception of Milly, what James is doing that he is giving the chance to language to functioning this particular manner. The character who introduces the dove is capable of evaluating his perception of the world, and he is also capable of transforming perception of Metaphor. Also Kate, in her chats with Milly, goes so far in "her own shades of familiarity" as to use the endearment "duck". Under such pet's names, Milly is petted, patronized, and manipulated. In this case, Kate and Dencher become identical in their perception of Milly and their transformation of her into a symbol. However, Milly views her English friends with a look of intelligence despite their shallow and superficial appearance. Milly says that Kate "lets herself go, in irony, in confidence, in extravagance" on those qualities of the American Mind. Milly follows it, and participates in it, with intelligence, an appreciation of all Kate's finest shades of veracity. It seems that Milly's point of view determines the language she employs. Her description of Kate is her perception of her.

In fact, it is intended to illuminate the complexities of Kate's own nature (her boldness and audacity) and to show that she is Milly Theale's American ignorance and innocence that in the first instance expose her to the destructive power of Lancaster Gate.

Milly is also aware of Dencher's indifference to her. By the time Dencher returns from America, she meets him and recognizes both how much she "likes" him and how much she regrets that he should share "the view" of her: "she could have dreamed of his not having the view, of his having something or other of his own." Then Milly becomes fully conscious of her own ultimate solitude amidst the buzz of admiration and adulation of the Lancaster Gate circle. It is this knowledge that adds the last intolerable weight to the burden of her self-consciousness. From this terror of Milly Theale's condition, all the characters withdraw. They are intelligent, but not intelligent enough to know what such a condition means.

In conclusion, by employing a number of points of view, James gives us the chance to see revelations about characters and their motivations without making any personal claim, but rather leaving the subject under discussion to the reader's intelligence without disconcerting appeals to his emotion which enables him to achieve a certain degree of objectivity and to assert the importance of point of view in determining style and language. He desired to be absent from his creation, yet deep down he knows that he is present on every page. "The Wings of the Dove" holds a symbol of Jamesian consciousness, a symbol as moving as it is inclusive. When the dove dies, she is gathered up into James's own consciousness. Milly's fate and her forgiveness, hidden from us as they are, are deeply moving, but they remain humanly subject to what James called "variations of interpretation".

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce: A Critical Analysis

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man deals with the universal theme of the conflict of generations. It also deals with the growth of an artist who has to renounce social, moral and religious conventions. Briefly speaking, this novel examines not only the collapse of the family as a social basic unit, but also the Irish nation as a backward country.

A Portrait belongs to the province of the autobiography because the novelist has changed incidents and distorted characters in order to serve his fictive needs.

Initiation into adulthood: 

Stephen Dedalus as he appears in Portrait is far from being a hero. Groping painfully toward some understanding of himself and his place in the world, he is sometimes laughable, sometimes pathetic. Yet, despite his human failings he has the courage to face the world alone. Joyce's concern is with the associative patterns arising in Stephen's mind from infancy into adolescence. He is concerned with these only as they show the dialectical process by which a world-shape evolves in the mind. The process is conducted in the absolute solitude inside the skull, for Stephen has no trust worthy help from the environment. The technique of stream of consciousness is the formal representation of that mental solitude. We follow in the circumstances of the boy's life the stages of breakdown and increasing confusion in his external environment, as his home goes to pieces. Very early the child's mind beans to respond to that confusion by seeking in itself some unifying from that will show him the logic of things. His mental images are associations suggested by the words he hears, he struggles to make the associations fit into a coherent pattern. To the very young child adults seem to know what everything means and how one thing is related to another.

Hugh Kenner has pointed out "In the first, the deeper conflict is that between his implicit trust in the authority of his elders, his Jesuit teachers, the older boys in the school, his father and his actual sense of insecurity. His elders, since they apparently know the meaning of things, must therefore incarnate perfect justice and moral consistency. But the child's real experience is of mad quarrels at home over Parnell and the priests, and at school the frivolous cruelty of the boys."

There is a shadowy guilty thing the boy has done for which he must apologize, else eagles will pull out his eyes? In this extremely short sequence at the beginning of the book, the child's sense of insecurity is established, and with insecurity, guilt and fear. Immediately there is a transition to the children's playground at Clongowes Wood, the child earliest experience of a community other than that of the home.

In the episode in which Stephen is beaten for heresy, the immediate community of his school fellows shows itself as false stupid and sadistic. On the visit to the Cork, Stephen early dim apprehension of sin and guilt is raised into horrible prominence by the word "Foetus" which he sees inscribed on the desk at Queens College and which symbols for him all his adolescent monstrosity. Meanwhile, his idealistic longings for beauty and purity have concentrated in a vaguely erotic fantasy of the dream girl Mercedes in her rose cottage.

As Stephen matures there is, mounted on the early association between the virgin and Eileen; an identification between his dream Mercedes and a whore. By extension, this association holds in it much of Stephen's struggle between other-worldliness and this worldliness, for it has identified in his imagination flesh and spirit, while his intellect, developing under education, rebels against the identification.

Chapter 4 shows him absorbed in a dream of a saintly career, but his previous emotional affirmation has been wasted away in the performance of formal acts of piety, and he is afflicted with insecurities, and rebellions. Release from conflict comes with a clear refusal of a vocation in the church, objectified by his decision to enter the university. And again it is on a walk that he realizes the measure of the new reality and the new destiny.

After his first successful self assertion, his protest against the injustice of father Dolan, he is described "alone", "happy and free". This series of associations shows that the religious life is ultimately as hostile to Stephens's needs as is the life of worldly self-indulgence exemplified by his brief career in the brothels and also by the equally self-indulgent career of his father. The kinds of life associated with the images of stagnation has one characteristic in common: they seem to Stephen to threaten his freedom of spirit.

Hugh Kenner says, "ultimately, as the insistent climax of the overture shows, its central theme is sin: the development of Stephen Dedalus from a bundle of sensations to a matured, self conscious, dedicated being. In Stephen's aesthetic formulation, the names he borrows from Aquinas are names for those aspects of reality-wholeness, harmoniousness that he has been seeking all his life, from earliest childhood.

The technical devices:

In a time of cultural crisis, when traditional values no longer seem to match with the actualities of experience, and when all reality is thrown into questions, the mind turns inward on itself to seek the shape of reality there. Joyce's Portrait is an investigation of the creative effects of language upon life, for the artist at the end to find his vocation in language. The auditory impression is predominant in the novel, sounds heard, words spoken - and the life directed attempt of the young mind is to understand their meaning in relation to each other and in relation to a governing design. Through words the world comes to Stephen, through the words he hears he gropes his way into other people's images of reality. Doubts and anxieties arise because the words and phrases are disassociated, their context frequently arbitrary.

The technique of the stream of consciousness is a formal aspect of the book which reflects the boy's extreme spiritual isolation. There is a logical suitability in the fact that this type of technique should arise at a time when society failed to give objective validation to inherited belief, and when all meanings, values, and sanctions have to be built up from scratch in the loneliness of the individual mind. Joyce's concern is with the associative patterns arising in Stephen's mind from infancy into adolescence. He is concerned with these only as they show the dialectical process by which a world-shape evolve in the mind. The process is conducted in the absolute solitude of the inside of the skull, for Stephen has no trust worthy help from the environment. This technique is the formal representation of that mental solitude.

Those moments in the dialectical process when certain phrases or sensations suddenly cohere and a meaning shines forth from the whole, Joyce called epiphanies. They are showing forth of the nature of reality as the boy is prepared to grasp it. Minor epiphanies mark all the stages of Stephen's understanding, as when the feel of Eileen's hands show him. What tower of ivory means, or as when the word "foetus", suddenly focuses for him his monstrous way of life. Major epiphanies mark the chief revelations of the nature of his environment and of his destiny in it. The story Davin tells Steve about stopping at night at the cottage of a peasant woman, and Stephen's image of the woman is for him an epiphany of the soul of Ireland, "a bat like soul waking to the consciousness of itself in darkness and in secrecy and loneliness".

The artist is a midwife of epiphanies. Joyce's doctrine of the epiphany assumes that reality does have wholeness and harmony, and that it will radiantly show forth its meaning to the prepared consciousness, for it is only in the body of reality that meaning can occur and only there that the artist can find it.

Twelfth Night: William Shakespeare's Comedy of Love

Twelfth Night, comedy by William Shakespeare, which was probably written around 1600. As an example of a play written during Shakespeare's second period, which included his English history plays and so-called joyous comedies, Twelfth Night presents a happy balance of plot, characterization, and diction. The main plot is derived from an Italian novella and deals with the hapless love of Viola, disguised as a page, for her master, who at once falls in love with her. When Viola's twin brother Sebastian appears, Olivia mistakes him for the page and marries him. The tangled situation is cleared up when brother and sister meet and recognize each other; the Duke rewards Viola's devotion by his offer of marriage, and all ends happily. 

This romantic story is set against a background of daily life in Olivia's household, crowded with realistic figures: Olivia's conceited steward, Malvolio; into believing that Olivia loves him, and his absurd behavior results in his temporary confinement as a madman. Feste, a singing fool, wanders back and forth between the households of Olivia and the Duke, observing the comical confusion with a cynical eye. Twelfth Night begins with music and ends with a song. 

Criticism on Twelfth Night: 

In Twelfth Night each individual is locked in his own private understanding and his ability to escape from himself and share experiences with others is limited. The sense of community is weaker than in Midsummer Night's Dream & As you Like It. We are aware of each character as an individual, out on his own, the lovers trying to make contact, but with limited success, and the comic figures either openly hostile or forming relationships based on temporary expediency. 

The solitude of the lovers results from their experience of unrequited love, an experience that leaves them frustrated and restless. Throughout Shakespeare, the sea suggests both destruction and new life; in Orsino's mind, however, the ideas are held not in balance but in confusion. 

Language:
The foibles of the characters are shown through the way they misuse words, and are trapped by words. Orsino turns everything into verbal fantasies, to feed his desire for sensation. For Orsino, all activities (including love) are swallowed up by the language that expresses them, and the result is a life of words alone, with no hope of action. Malvolio also creates a fantasy world, and bends language to this purpose. When convinced of Olivia's love, he takes even "fellow" as a term of endearment. Feste and Viola, who both depend on words-one as a professional wit, the other as a messenger of love-see the dangers of the medium on which they rely.

For all these characters, language is not a means of escaping from the private self, and making contact with others; it is rather a means of defining the self and confirming its privateness-one more barrier erected against the reality of the world outside. When Viola is sent to Olivia by Orsino to tell his love and adoration, she asks her "how does he love me?" the last question suggests, for all her joking about the conventional language of love, Olivia has become fascinated by Viola's eloquence and wants to hear more.

Comic figures:

The comic figures operates in quite a different way, and their scenes are dramatically simpler. There is no subtext, for there are no hidden depths of feeling: the self-indulgence, pretension and the mutual hostility are out in the open. In addition, while the lovers struggle with misunderstandings, they have not created and cannot solve themselves, the misunderstandings of the comic plot, centered on Malvolio, are deliberately manufactured by Maria and her cohorts. The barriers that separate people are actually fortified and the hostility bet. Malvolio and the rest of the household has a sharpness unusual among shakes comic figures.

Plot:
However, the final crucial difference between the two plots lies in the manner of their respective endings. The deception of the love plot are partly the result of chance, and chance can take a hand in resolving them. But the deceptions of the comic plot are manmade, the result of fixed, antagonistic, personalities. And there is no easy or satisfying solution for this plot. After our initial amusement, we become aware of the inherent cruelty of the jokes against Malvolio. When Malvolio is shut in a dark room, begging for light, we see the victim's sufferings a little too clearly, and our laughter acquires an edge of distaste. The jokers reaction when their victim is down is to hit him again.

Malvolio in his dark room is the play's most vivid image of the trapped, isolated self. Egotism and loveless solitude are a kind of damnation, and the imprisoned Malvolio is our clearest image of this. The two characters are mirror opposites. Malvolio, assured of Olivia's love, is the victim of a conventional comic deception in which his senses betray him; Sebastian, actually presented with Olivia's love, wonders if it is a fantastic illusion. Malvolio insists, vainly, that he is not mad. Sebastian thinks too, but with greater hesitation wondering whether to trust his senses or not.

The comic plot: is conventionally full of false images: Maria's letter, Feste's disguise, Sir Toby's description of Sir Andrew as a dangerous swordsman. Thus, when Malvolio adopts the external shows of love, in yellow stockings, cross-gartered and relentlessly smiling, the result is simply absurd.

The romantic plot: operates by a different set of rules. Throughout the romantic plot, a trust in appearances, though it may lead to temporary confusion, is justified in the long run. To Orsino, Cesario looks like a woman; he is a woman. To Olivia, he looks like a man; he is a man. This trust in images is made possible by the special handling of the figure of Cesario, in which the extension of personality implied in disguise is taken further, and exploited in a more daring way, than in any previous comedy of Shakespeare's.

Clifford Leech describes the ending as "and exposure of the triviality of human desire."

Philip Edwards concludes that the union of the lovers is treated sardonically, Shakespeare having become tired of such endings.

Sebastian, the agent of release for the lovers, has given the knight nothing but a sound beating. Sir Toby's false friendship for Sir Andrew has collapsed.

Malvolio, like Viola, has seen himself in the hands of a benevolent fate:

'Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be thanked.

To Feste's "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges," Malvolio replies I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you."

This kind of tension is basic to Shakespearian comedy: it is at bottom a tension between stylized and realistic art. The lovers, having engaged our feelings as human beings, are now fixed in a harmony we can believe in only by trusting the power of fantasy; the clowns, stylized in their own way at first, have lost some of the immunity of comedy and now present an image of defeat that is uncomfortably real.

The tension is resolved, unexpectedly, in Feste's last song. It seems at first to belong to the vision of the comic plot. Feste sings of our decay through time, from the folly of childhood to the knavery of manhood to a drunken collapse in old age. The lovers have disappeared, and there is a solitary figure on stage. His experience, as often in the comedies, is linked to ours through the medium of nature-this time the wind and the rain. Yet before we sink too easily into melancholy, the song concludes:'But that's all one, our play is done, And we'll strive to please you every day.'

In Twelfth Night the triumph of love is put at a distance as a strange and special miracle that cannot touch everyone, but the vision of decay that opposes it is also, in the last analysis, one more illusion, part of a play. The one thing that is permanent is the work of art itself.

T.S. Eliot: A Study of Celia's Character in "The Cocktail Party"

Celia can be easily seen as an exceptional progressing character that has learned the value of her spiritual reality. She has succeeded in surpassing the ordinary and reaching a higher state of sublimation and salvation.

At the beginning of the play Celia was seen as a woman happy to be involved in adulterous relationship with Edward. She engaged in social conversations and seemed dynamic enough to talk to everyone and to argue with Edward. Celia was appalled at Edward thinking that she had 'taken' Peter. She was also spontaneous and honest to remark on the unidentified guest being the devil. Her private affair gave her the personality she needed; she wanted love and attention and Edward wanted sexual fulfillment, so they existed for each other's interest. Thus, she is obviously a happy, lively socialite. This seems an account of the character of Celia in the early phase of her life.

The second and most critical phase in her life is concerned with Edward's abandonment of her, learning that Lavinia has left Edward she immediately assumes that he will marry her, she doesn't have moral hesitations and doesn't seem to care what society might think of her. However, as it turned out Edward can't return her affections, and she was forced into a state of solitude; she became aware of the abyss she has been thrown into. Then suddenly she sees light and realizes that in Edward she was seeking something that was substantial to her and she must go on looking. In act one, she was explaining to Edward what she was feeling towards him and how she looked at him differently then. She was telling him of the thing  she 'aspired to' that she thought was him. She said, "It must happen somewhere - but what and where is it?"

More revelations help sharpen Celia's recognition of her situation and the dilemma, which eventually wakes her to a condition where she has to make a choice. The conversation with Reilly discloses something of her background. We find out that her greatest affliction as she finds out to, is that of being alone and seeing no explanation as to why she shouldn't be. She views loneliness as an inexorable human condition. She is also seen to be concerned with 'a sense of sin' that she can't seem to define. Celia confesses to Reilly that she suffers from something 'stranger' than loneliness. She defines it as being abnormal to her and seems as if confused and searching for an answer. This conception of sin seems to be against her moral upbringing. Her understanding of sin revolves around the implication that sin is more than just doing wrong onto others. But her eventual decision to devote her life to God designates her notion of sin being detached from God. Celia feels driven by this sense of sin and the need to 'atone'. She has the-aspiration to be alleviated from this sense of loss after finding out that she hasn't achieved what she has been looking for in Edward.

Reilly points out that the cure is in her decision and so he proposes two ways towards her deliverance-this concludes Celia's development as a character. The first is to teach her to take on the human condition and this will allow her to live with her memory of the past and still maintain a daily routine. The other is a more courageous path and it involves an ongoing struggle with the self. It is a demanding quest for self-realization and for achieving peace within oneself. Celia chooses to take the role of savior, of discovering oneself and of serving humanity, which shows her determination to be in touch with her soul and her courage to give up physical indulgences. Celia is happy and sure that she herself took the decision, which gives significance to this choice. She says to Reilly before leaving, "But I  know it is I who made the decision."

Celia's spiritually rooted choice is the way of the saints; she is expressing repentance for sin and demanding her penance. She shows valor to accept her sinning present and optimism to want to 'atone'. She has transcended the mediocre and reached out of herself. She has chosen to yield her individual will to the collective will of humanity. Celia has risen above her situation and her past reality and has chosen a path of self-awareness and of union with God.

Celia, indeed, has distinguished herself from the rest of the play's characters by outstanding characteristics of knowing one's needs and working for a self-satisfying future. She achieved self-knowledge and had her future clear in front of her. She conquered her present situation and dilemma and chose how to lead her life. She progressed in a state of mediocrity to a state of sublimation. Celia has proven to be a developing character through out the play that T.S. Eliot had given the opportunity to exalt.

The Structure of Macbeth "William Shakespeare"

Before studying the structure of the play, we should mention one important point about the play. The Equivocation (theme of appearance and reality) which is central to Macbeth. Macbeth is a play about illusions where its situations are ambiguous. The murder of Duncan is the main theme of the play. Murdering Duncan is the right thing for Macbeth; however, this is the worst thing he did for himself and for his people. 

The Witches: They appear to be predicting success, yet the prophecies appear to be disastrous for Macbeth. Their prophecies are interpreted in someway, but in fact they mean something different.

Macbeth: He seems to be a loyal hero, yet he reveals to be a traitor.

Lady Macbeth: she is not at all what she seems. Even though she appears very strong and confident at the beginning of the play, she declines (after the banquet scene) and becomes a pathetic character. At the end, she is nothing more than a mortal woman. She becomes a weak person who is suffering, feeling guilty about the pains of her conscience. 

Malcolm: he seems to be a villain, but in fact he is a hero, and he was thinking in order to rebuild his country. He is ready to give himself to Scotland and to Macduff. Although he seems to be innocent and inexperienced man, he is the one who recognizes the equivocation of the witches prophecy. 

     "Everything the witches said was only an illusion." 

Therefore, we could say that the language, the verse, and the structure of the whole play is built on this equivocation. 

Language: (images)

Macbeth is the play that has a distinguished quality because the images evoke more action than any other play. In this play, thought and consequent movement become nearly one.

Soliloquy: every soliloquy that Macbeth speaks is active, but it implies evil. There are images that are very evocative (Macduff's family). 

Supernatural elements: in Hamlet and Julius Caesar, these elements seem to add in the action of the play, for we could easily dismiss the ghost in Hamlet because the appearance of the ghost added to Hamlet's melancholy, but it was not the cause. By nature, Hamlet is melancholic. The ghost just added his melancholy (his character didn't really change with the appearance of the ghost). We could dismiss the ghost from our experience of the play. The ghost of Hamlet's father can't escape our tendency to be skeptical, irritated, and amused (it doesn't have an effect). 

The witches: they are the "weird sisters". They are not described as ghosts, and the fact that they are "weird sisters" gives them a status that is more real (natural). Their appearance makes everything weird to be more natural (domestic). The power of the witches is expressed in different ways. We can't look at the witches in the same way as we look at the ghost because the ghost is a supernatural power. 

Verse/Prose: 

Verse:

In all shakespeare's plays, the most part is written in blank verse-iambic pentameter. Occasionally, Shakespeare uses in this play rhyming couplets (the witches speech). Macbeth uses rhyming couplets more often than any other character in the play.

Prose: 

We have 4 situations: 

1) Macbeth's letter to his wife - Act 1 scene 5 

2) The porter scene - Act 2 scene 3        

3) The dialogue between Macduff's lady and her son - Act 4 scene 2 

4) The sleep walking scene - Act 5 scene 1 

Prose denotes the low social position or situation that is abnormal (sleep walking scene). 

The play is full of tumult (no calm), wherever, the witches appear, we can hear a thunderstorm. When they are absent, we can hear shipwreck, blowing down churches, trees and castles. We have profusion of storms, sounds, and tumult.

The Structure: (How the play is built)

It is the shortest play among the shakespearean tragedies, for it consists of five acts. One of the most striking aspects is the rapidity at which the action happens. It is a play that is full of events and actions. Our attention is focused on Macbeth. It is his letter that Lady Macbeth speaks. He doesn't appear in the act, but it is his letter and his character (even if he is not present).

Act 4 scene 3: It is in the English court and we have a long discussion between Malcolm and Macduff about loyalty. In addition, throughout the conversation, we can't prevent ourselves from remembering Macbeth. We know that Macbeth doesn't have any of the qualities of the king. Anyway, Macbeth is referred to throughout the play. Although Lady Macbeth is important, she disappears and never been mentioned. 

Irony:

Unlike many of Shakespeare's plays, in this play we don't have any sub plots or secondary actions. The concentration is on Macbeth and his action. In this play, Shakespeare uses fewer characters especially to comment on the central action. We have a series of contrasts (parallels) through the 'we' of the dramatic ironies. 

Act 1 scene 4: We know from the previous scene that Macbeth has intentions (because of what we know, we can't prevent ourselves from applying this talk to Macbeth).

Act 5 scene 1: Irony lies in the contrast between what is obvious and the hidden meaning of the apparition of the bloody child, yet the most striking irony in the play is the answer which Banquo gives to Macbeth.

At any of Shakespeare's plays, we have a comic relief and it is used in order to relief the atmosphere (the porter's scene in act 5). The first act of the play is speedy and very intense. At the end of act 1, we have a new Macbeth. He is confident that he can kill the king. He becomes different (change). He is confident that he can pretend to be the host. In this play, we have two parts: the first half is greater than the second one. Lady Macbeth appears more in the first half than in the second one. It is a one man play. Acts 1and 5 are speedy, for the end comes very quickly. 

It is here that all of Macbeth's hopes are stripped away: his wife died - Birnamwood seemed to move - his forces desert him - he is cornered in the castle - he is left alone. 

Finally, Macbeth will die just as the beginning (in a courageous way). So, we have the repetition of the same act, but in different purpose. Macbeth is distinguished by its simplicity although it contains a lot of images. Two great figures are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: they are simple except being compared with Hamlet.

We have three important passages because they distract us from Macbeth:

1) In the first passage, where the porter appears, the tone changes in a way so as to give us relief. 

2) The second passage between Lady Macbeth and her son. 

3) The third passage when Macbeth receives the news of his wife's death. 

Shakespeare constructs the hero in a way that it gives a new dimension in the struggle between good and evil. Macbeth is a noble man and a soldier, but these qualities are a mere surface if we compare them to what he thinks in his mind.

The fact that Macbeth murdered the king is not just a political rebellion, but it is a violation of all the laws of hospitality, kingship and human decency. 

Chaos is defeated, order is reestablished. We find it fair to find Macbeth dead because as long as he lives there will be chaos. 

Tragic flaw:

In Shakespeare's tragedies there is always a tragic flaw of his main character. Macbeth's tragic flaw is his evil ambition. On the other hand, the tragic flaw of Hamlet is hesitation and lack of decision, whereas Othello's tragic flaw is jealousy. 

How Strindberg & Ibsen Tackle “The Rejection of God” Issue Throughout Their Careers

As Ibsen continues to reject God, Strindberg wavers between 'Affirmation and Negation', finally giving way to a 'Melancholy Fatalism' which one never finds in Ibsen.

Ibsen's revolt is total. He is dissatisfied with the 'Whole Creation', and not just certain contemporary aspects of it. His deepest quarrel is probably less with those pillars of church, state, and community who dominate his plays, than with the supreme authority figure, God himself. Behind his demand for a new beginning for 'Mankind', one can glimpse his half-hidden desire to 'fashion a new creation', more in keeping with the logic of his poetic imagination. With this 'New Creation' represented by the body of his art, the basic Ibsenist conflict is frequently messianic-its Hero a Rebel against God, and its issue not superficial changes in the social structure, but a complete alteration in the moral nature of man.

On the other hand, identification with Lucifer and rebelling against a mad, merciless, mechanical will are important aspects of the first phase of Strindberg's career. In his opposition to established authority, Strindberg's also identifies with related figures like Cain, Prometheus, Ishmael--all 'Rebels of God'. Strindberg's  admiration for Religious Rebels pass him well beyond the usual revolutionary postures to an embrace of Satanism, under the spell of which he practices, black arts/magic, worships the occult, and studies the transmigration of souls.

As the Confessor says in The Road to Damascus: "This man is a demon who must be kept confined. He belongs to the dangerous race of rebels; he'd misuse his gifts, if he could, to do evil". Strindberg's flair for self-dramatization leads him to exaggerate his demonic activities, for they were really harmful to nobody but himself. However, there is no doubt that he thought himself pledged Lucifer by way of a Mephistophelian pact. This seems like a much more radical form of rebellion than anything found in Ibsen. But as Strindberg implies in Inferno, "Ever since childhood, I have looked for God and found the Devil". His revolt against authority is reality the reverse of his desire for authority posture, Strindberg's revolt is always a little nervous and uncertain, rather like the act of a man in constant dread of retribution.

And while Ibsen's messianism remains constant, Strindberg is gradually tempered by his fears of divine revenge from an omnipotent power. Even when he considers himself a 'Free-thinking Atheist, these fears are never far from the surface. He became an unbeliever, as he declares in Inferno, when "the unknown powers let slip their hold on the world, and gave no more sign of life. But when these "unknown powers" do begin to appear to him in the "nineties", his messianism becomes less and less defiant, until he finally becomes convinced that the powers are personally guiding his destiny, and revealing themselves to him in every material object.

Strindberg has been suffering from a religious state called "Devestatio". God has been seeking him, and he has been too proud to let himself be found. Freed from his torment after his insight, he determines to live a life of 'Repentance'. He, therefore, gives up his occult and scientific studies, begins to wear a habit of monkish penitential cut, and even contemplates entering a monastery after the publication of 'Inferno'. Theologians might say that he has finally found his way to God after a long period of resisting him. No longer defying the Universe, or trying to become God, Strindberg is now yielding to the unknown and seeking to do its will, looking for correspondences rather than causes. He has replaced his former Naturalism and Atheism with a new concern for the supernal forces behind material things. The frequent subject of his satire now, in fact, is his old impious self, the rationalistic, blasphemous male with aspirations towards the superhuman. For, in this second phase of his career, many of Strindberg's plays are designed as 'Acts of Penance', in which he tries to expiate his sense of guilt, and scourge his desire for worldly vanities.

While the tones of his plays are more saintly and forgiving, Strindberg's thematic concerns have also remained essentially the same. Even his new religious humility is modified by traces of the old skeptical arrogance. If Strindberg is no longer fighting God, he is still questioning him, for he is still a rebel, raging against the lawful limitations of his humanity. He has tried to escape from life into a realm of pure spirit, but he cannot resist the pulls of the body which drags him back into the filth, muck, and flesh of the material world. With his work in our hands, it is perfectly clear that this rebel's eternal struggle with God is the key to his greatness.

Ibsen continues to believe in the importance of the will, and begins to measure his rebellious ideals against the social reality. He seeks a spiritual and moral revolution which will transform the soul of man. Strindberg, on the other hand, comes to believe in a strict determinism (The Higher Power), and loses faith in his rebellious ideals. He seeks deeper spiritual insights in order to resolve his own painful dilemmas.

Macbeth: The Development of Shakespeare's Characters

Shakespearean Tragedy:

Macbeth is the most dramatic and tremendous play among the Shakespearean tragedies. A Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, has a special tone or atmosphere of its own. The effect of this atmosphere is marked with unusual strength in Macbeth. The main theme of the play is ambition; however, there are other themes which are equivocation, appearance, reality and the murder of Duncan. 

Macbeth is a play about illusions where all the situations are ambiguous. In the play we have two main characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth is represented by the critics as "a coward who is cold-blooded, calculating, and pitiless who shrinks from crime because it is dangerous." However, Shakespeare presented him as ambitious man who was corrupted by his ambition to become king of Scotland. This ambition lead him to murder Duncan and order the slaying of anyone who threatens his kingship. On the other hand, Shakespeare presented Lady Macbeth as ambitious as her husband, she taunts Macbeth's courage to insure that he will murder Duncan and become king. Fear and remorse eventually cause her to go mad. Therefore, before we approach the consideration of the characters and the action we should distinguish some of the ingredients of this general effect: 

Images of darkness or blackness, broads over this tragedy. It is remarkable that almost all the scenes take place either at night or in some dark spot: The vision of the dagger - the murder of Duncan - the murder of Banquo - the sleep walking of Lady Macbeth. The blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and what he feels becomes the spirit of the play. In the whole drama the sun seems to shine only twice (where Duncan sees the swallows flitting round the castle of death, and when at the close avenging army gathers to rid the earth of its shame). 

Atmosphere it is not that of unknown relieved blackness. Macbeth leaves a decided impression of color;  it is the impression of a black night broken by flashes of light and color (the lights and colors of the thunderstorm-the dagger hanging before Macbeth's eyes and glittering alone in the midnight air-the flames beneath the boiling caldron from which the apparitions in the cavern rose) and above all the color is the color of blood. The most horrible lines in the whole tragedy are those of her shuddering cry:

"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had 

so much blood in him?"

Vividness, magnitude, violence of the imagery and their influence contributes to form its atmosphere (of pouring the sweet milk of concord into hell-of the mind full of scorpions).

Irony there is an ironical juxtaposition of persons and events:

The very first words uttered by Macbeth: "so foul and fair a day I have not seen"

The words of the witches in first scene: "fair is foul, and foul is fair."

When Macbeth emerging from his murderous reverie, turns to the nobles saying: "Let us toward the king" his words are innocent but to the reader have double meaning. So does the contrast between the obvious and the hidden meanings of the apparitions.

Now let us start with the a brief comparison of both characters. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are sublime, and both inspire the feeling of awe. They are never detached in imagination from the atmosphere which surrounds them and adds to their grandeur and terror. For, within them is all that we felt without-the darkness of night, lit with the flame of tempest and the hues of blood, spirits of remorse, and maddening visions of peace lost and judgement to come. These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition. They are born to rule, if not to reign. They are contemptuous to their inferiors, so we observe in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare of anyone outside their family. They have no separate ambitions, they support and love one another, they suffer together. On the other hand, they are also contrasted, and the action is built upon this contrast. Their attitude towards the projected murder of Duncan are quiet different, and it produces in them equally different effects.

On one hand, Macbeth was thought honest, or honorable; he was trusted, apparently, by everyone; Macduff loved him well. He was exceedingly ambitious, it has been so by temper and must have been strengthened by marriage. It becomes a passion. Therefore, his passion for power and his instinct of self-assertion are so vehement that no inward misery could persuade him to relinquish the fruits of crime, or to advance from remorse to repentance. What appalls him is always the image of his own guilty heart or bloody deed. His imagination bears witness against him, and shows us that what really holds him back is the hideous vileness of the deed. When the murder is done, his wife heard the owl scream and the crickets cry; however, what he heard was the voice that first cried

"Macbeth doth murder sleep"; 

"Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor"; 

"Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more." 

Therefore, whenever his imagination stirs, he acts badly, it possesses him, and is so much stronger than his reason, but when it is asleep he is firm, self-controlled and practical.

The development of Macbeth's character after the murder:

That heart-sickness which comes from Macbeth's perception of the futility of his crime, and which never leaves him for long, is not, his habitual state. It could not be so, for two reasons. The first reason, the consciousness of guilt is stronger in him than the consciousness of failure; and it keeps him in a perpetual agony of restlessness. His mind is "full of scorpions"- He cannot sleep- He "keeps alone", moody and savage. The second reason is ambition, the love of power, the instinct of self-assertion, are much too potent in Macbeth to permit him to resign, the "will to live" is mighty in him. He faces the world, and his own conscience, desperate, but never dreaming of acknowledging defeat. He challenges fate into the lists.

The result is frightful:

He speaks no more, as before Duncan's murder, of honor or pity. That sleepless torture, he tells himself, is nothing but the sense of insecurity and the fear of retaliation. The cause of his fear is Banquo. He has become his chief counsellor because the kingdom was promised to Banquo's children. Banquo, then, is waiting to attack him, to make a way for them. This is the fear that will not let him sleep, and it will die with Banquo. There is no hesitation now, and no remorse. So, some strange idea is in his mind that the thought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan, if the deed is done by other hands. The deed is done, but instead of peace descending on him, his deed confronts him in the apparition of Banquo's Ghost. However, it has less power, and he has more will. Now, Macduff is the one who spoils his sleep. He shall perish. He goes to seek the witches; he has no longer any awe of them. They till him he is right to fear Macduff; they tell him to fear nothing, for none of woman born can harm him. So, he determines not to spare Macduff. The witches have done their work, and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble him no more. The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his county.

A.C. Bradley does not agree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife's death proof of alienation or utter carelessness. "She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word," he thinks that Macbeth has no time now to feel. Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time to feel will come. In the very depths, a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it a touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart.

On the other hand, Lady Macbeth in the first half of the play not only appears more than in the second half but also exerts the ultimate deciding influence on the action. She is distinguished from her husband by her inflexibility of will. She knows her husband's weakness, and how he scruples "to catch the nearest way" to the object he desires, and she sets herself without a trace of doubt or conflict to counteract this weakness. To her there is no separation between will and deed, and as the deed falls in part to her, she is sure it will be done. She takes the superior position and assumes the direction of affairs, appears to assume it even more than she really can. She animates him by picturing the deed as heroic, 'this night', great business, while she ignores its cruelty and faithlessness. She bears down his faint resistance by presenting him with a prepare scheme which may remove from him the terror and danger of deliberation. She rouses him with a taunt no man can bear, and least of all a soldier, - the word "coward". Through the admiration she extorts from him, and through sheer force of will, that she impels him to the deed. Her eyes are fixed upon the crown and the means to it; she does not attend to the consequences. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains is invented on the spur of the moment, and simply to satisfy her husband. Her passionate courage sweeps him off his feet. His decision is taken in a moment of enthusiasm. In presence of overwhelming horror and danger, in the murder scene and the banquet scene, her self-control is perfect. She helps him, but never asks his help. She leans on nothing but herself. And from the beginning to the end her will never fails her. We are sure that she never betrayed her husband or herself by a word or even a look, save in sleep. However appalling she may be, she is sublime.

In the earlier scenes of the play she seems inhuman:

- We find no trace of pity for the kind old king.

- No consciousness of the treachery and baseness of the murder.

- No sense of the value of the lives of the wretched men on whom the guilt is to be laid.

- No shrinking even from the condemnation or hatred of the world.

If Lady Macbeth of these scenes were really utterly inhuman, or a "fiend-like queen", as Malcolm calls her, the Lady Macbeth of the sleep-walking scene would be an impossibility. The one woman could never become the other. When she tries to help him by representing their enterprise as heroic, she is deceiving herself as much as him. Also, in these earlier scenes the traces of feminine weakness and human feeling, which account for her later failure, are not absent. Her will was exerted to overpower not only her husband's resistance but some resistance in herself. The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force of will. It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectual side. To her the blood upon her husband's hands suggests only the taunt.

"My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white";

 and the blood to her is merely "this filthy witness".

The literalism of her mind appears fully in two contemptuous speeches where she dismisses his imaginings in the murder scene and in the banquet scene. Even in the awful scene where her imagination breaks loose in sleep, she uses no such images as Macbeth’s. It is the direct appeal of the facts to sense that has fastened on her memory. The ghostly realism:

 "Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? or

 "Here's the smell of the blood still" wholly unlike her husband."

Her most poetical words "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little hands" are unlike his words about great Neptune's ocean.

The development of Lady Macbeth's character after the murder:

The change in her state of mind is both inevitable, and the opposite of the development we traced in Macbeth. When the murder has been done, the discovery of its hideousness, first reflected in the faces of her guests, comes to Lady Macbeth with the shock of a sudden disclosure, and at once her nature begins to sink. The first intimation of the change is given when in the scene of the discovery she faints, and when we see her, Queen of Scotland, the glory of her dream has faded. She enters, disillusioned, and weary with want of sleep. She has thrown away everything and gained nothing. She has no initiative, the stem of her being seems to be cut through. Her husband, physically the stronger, maddened by pangs he had foreseen, but still flaming with life, comes into the foreground, and she retires. Her will remains, and she does her best to help him, but he rarely needs her help. Her chief anxiety appears to be that he should not betray his misery. He plans the murder of Banquo without her knowledge (not to spare her, but because he does not need her now), and even when she is told vaguely of his intention she appears but little interested. In the sudden emergency of the banquet scene, she makes a prodigious and magnificent effort; her strength, and with it her ascendency returns, and she saves her husband at least from an open disclosure. But after this, she takes no part whatever in the action. We only know from her shuddering words in the sleep-walking scene

"The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?" 

that she has even learned of her husband's worst crime, and in all the horrors of his tyranny over Scotland, she has, no part.

Disillusionment and despair prey upon her more and more. That she should seek any relief in speech, or should ask for sympathy, would seem to her mere weakness, and would be to Macbeth's defiant fury an irritation. Thinking of the change in Macbeth, we imagine the bond between them slackened, and Lady Macbeth left much alone. She sinks slowly downward. She cannot bear darkness and has light by her continually: 'tis her command. At last her nature, not her will gives way. The secrets of the past find vent in a disorder of sleep, the beginning perhaps of madness. What the doctor fears is clear. He reports to her husband no great physical mischief, but bids her attendant to remove from her all means by which she could harm herself, and to keep eyes on her constantly. Her death is announced by a cry from her women so sudden and direful that it would thrill her husband with honor if he were any longer capable of fear. Malcolm, in the last words of the play, tells us that it is believed in the hostile army that she died by her own hand. It is in accordance with her character that even in her weakest hour she should cut short by one determined stroke the agony of her life. The sinking of Lady Macbeth's nature, and the marked change in her demeanor to her husband, are most strikingly shown in the conclusion of the banquet scene; and from this point pathos is mingled with awe.

In conclusion, she despises what she thinks the weakness which stands in the way of her husband's ambition, but she does not despise him. Her ambition for her husband and herself proved fatal to him, far more so than the prophecies of the witches; yet even when she pushed him into murder, she believed she was helping him to do what he merely lacked the nerve to attempt. The sleep-walking scene, again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe. Regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she was too great to repent.