Clover Autrey

 In her play A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry encapsulates the theme of retaining cultural pride and identity of African-Americans while they took risks to achieve the American dream equal to the opportunities that were afforded white Americans, due to economic advantages. Hansberry experienced the turbulent side of integration in the 1930s firsthand, being attacked by white neighbors and forced to move. I feel that the original written play of A Raisin in the Sun casts a harsh light on the cultural theme of retaining or even finding identity more effectively than the original film version through characterization, setting, and tone.  

The differing cultural identities of the struggle that was going on during the time the play was written are depicted through characterization with how each character represents an idea of the way larger groups in society were handling the struggle of the time. Walter Lee Younger as the protagonist character questions throughout the play which of those around him represents the path he wants to step onto for his life. Should he follow his ancestors where freedom and dignity are the only thing like his deceased father? Why can’t he be like George Murchison and get a lucky break with business and become the new conformist dream? Should he duck his head and stay the status quo like the Johnsons? Should he aspire to the dreams of the integrationists like his mother? Or the idealisms of those seeking an African-American identity as Beneatha does? Should he throw his ancestral dignity aside and become a taker like Wiley Harris? The defining moment of Walter’s journey is realized with these words and how they are written in the play. “And my father—(With sudden intensity.) My father almost beat a man to death once because this man called him a bad name or something” (Act 3, 1, 343-4). Even though Sidney Poitier revealed the depth of this inner struggle brilliantly in the film, for me, the written play shows this journey of Walter’s character more strongly. Just like characterization revealed Walter’s and societies’ wrestle with identity, the use of setting also portrays this struggle.   

The identity of being impoverished and wishing for a better life is revealed through setting. The setting of the performed work steps outside of the Youngers’ dingy apartment, showing the outside world that influences Walter Lee as he stands outside the white man’s business world as a chauffeur looking in, and again in the Kitty Kat bar. We also get a look at the new house, the hope of a better life. I personally thought that these scenes took away from the impact that Walter Lee was able to give in the written play when he tells of how it felt to be looking in at the white boys “sitting there turning deals worth millions of dollars” (Act 1, 2, 328). In Act 3 the moving boxes taking up most of the room also dramatize the setting of being on the cusp of entering that new world. The written setting of Act 3 begins with both Walter and Beneatha silently contemplating their plight in separate rooms, but with both seen from the audience. “We see on a line from her brother’s bedroom the sameness of their attitudes” (Act 3, 1, 9). Although the preformed play’s setting was similar to how I envisioned it with the two rooms, small kitchen, and shared bathroom with the neighbors, the gloom and the lighting in the film didn’t capture the atmosphere the written words painted. I do think that the plant, the symbol of the sad wilting life unable to grow to its potential in the apartment was used to greater effect in the film, especially with how the scene showed Beneatha in contemplation of what had befallen her, sitting at the kitchen table just inches from the sad little plant. The setting of the small worn apartment crowded with more people than it could handle in both the written and preformed works greatly enhanced the struggle for identity and wanting something better, as does the tone found throughout the play.

   The tone of A Raisin in the Sun has an underlying hopelessness with small glimmers of faith that things can be better. Act 3 begins with a hopeless demoralizing tone about how wrong was done to the Youngers so there is no hope of a better life. Beneatha says, “while I was sleeping…people went out and took the future right out of my hands! And nobody asked me, nobody consulted me—they just went out and changed my life!” (Act 3, 1, 68-70). Walter Lee mirrors her tone when he cries, “I didn’t make this world! It was give to me this way!” (Act 3,1, 256-7). That tone changes with that glimmer of faith when Asagai enters with his view of taking responsibility of your own dreams when he asks if it was Beneatha’s money, if she had earned it. The tone of the entire play takes a pivotal turn when Asagai says, “isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?” (Act 3, 1, 77-8). Most likely due to the social racial climate of the time the film was made, much of Asagai’s wisdom was deleted from the film, which makes the tone of the written play so much more poignant. I believe that Hansberry intentionally directed most of Asagai’s words to her culture that doing something, even if in the long run it may be for your personal good, even when everything is hard and against you, but to take responsibility for your own dreams is better than doing nothing.

Characterization, setting, and tone come together as the final scene ends on a new beginning, moving out of the dingy apartment into a house as the Youngers seek the American dream with dignity. Are they going to find that elusive peace in their new home? That’s not a sure thing, especially with the author, Lorraine Hansberry’s own life experiences of her family moving into a white neighborhood in the 1930s and being forced out. Hansberry knew her characters were not going to have that peaceful happily ever after, yet Walter Lee’s character arc was intact. He had made his choice in who he wanted to be, good or bad, just like Asagai was making his choice, good or bad. What’s more, in following the gifts his ancestor, his father, had given him in his struggles, Walter’s and his generations struggle would make it so his children’s dreams would be closer to them. Setting is used to reveal this choice as Lena looks at the apartment and leaves, only to go back for the plant.  I like how we do not get to see the new house in the written play, how the unknown of even what it looks like adds to the uncertain future, which also is found in the tone that permeated the play which lightens with that glimmer of hope for a better future, yet also retains the solemnity of the unknown and what their choice is getting them into. But in the end, they have made a choice and are stepping out onto their path. They are doing something.

Work Cited

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature: The Human Experience, edited by Richard Abcarian, et al., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 711-81

Image: "raisins in the sun in drought" by David McSpadden is licensed under CC BY 2.0

To Build a Fire is one of those stories that have stuck with me. Decades after the first reading, that image of just sitting down in the snow and letting yourself free to death haunted me. 

Jack London was a doer, a man equipped and willing to take on difficult jobs to provide for his mother and sisters, while he had dreams of being a writer. Young and strong, he had worked as an “oyster pirate, a sealer, and a hobo; had worked in a cannery, a jute mill and a laundry” (Haigh 1) where he was slogging in the steam when a ship brought word of a goldrush in the Klondike. London set out with thousands of others to add gold prospector to his resume.  He had little idea that his experiences in the northern brutal cold would inspire him to write his greatest works. In “To Build a Fire” Jack London pits man’s wisdom, or lack of, against the dangers of nature by fictionalizing experiences he had in the Yukon, through use of fable style writing, and an omniscient detached point of view.

Jack London relied on his own wisdom before he took his first step into the Klondike. He was a young man, twenty-one, with a string of difficult low-earning jobs behind him and looking to make a fortune. When he landed on the Dyea beachhead, three thousand men were already there. Tenderfoots, who had not realized that they were still five hundred miles from the Yukon and that the native porters were charging ridiculous amounts to carry all the supplies needed to survive for a year (McKay and McKay 1). Jack, however, was prepared. He had gotten hold of a miner’s account and studied the geography of the area. According to Brett and Kate McKay, Jack London “knew that the first leg of the journey was a 28-mile uphill hike to Lake Lindeman” (1) and that he would not be able to afford a porter’s high charges but would need to pack all his food and equipment himself.  Wisdom and preparation prevailed for Jack. He had already devised a method beforehand to get up the Chilcoot Pass to divide “his half-ton kit into around a dozen smaller loads, and would take each load a mile, cache it, and then return for another…Jack simply bore down in determination, put one foot in front of the other, and ignored the burn in his legs and back as he carried a half-ton of supplies to the summit, 100 pounds at a time” (McKay and McKay 1). Conversely, in his story “To Build a Fire” the main protagonist does not share in Jack’s wisdom to prepare for the harshness of the Yukon.

The story takes place in the same area that Jack London had traveled where the man turns off of the main trail “that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson” (London 47). Just as the majority of the three thousand men at Dyea beachhead were not prepared and had to turn back before ever starting their journey to the goldrush, the man in “To Build a Fire” did not prepare for his day long journey either, even when he had been given instructions by those who understood the dangers of the land. The man rejected the wisdom of others by first going out on the journey alone, a situation that London also experienced for himself. London had staked a claim in Henderson Creek, and then went to Dawson to register the claim. The hike back by himself turned out to be demanding through the snow just as “winter had thoroughly set in, and there was nothing left to do but ride it out” at his little camp on his claim. According to Brett and Kate McKay, it was this hike through what London called “White Silence” that “he would later draw on to write his best short story, “To Build a Fire” (47). The man in “To Build a Fire” did not prepare in other ways as well. He brought a limited amount of food, only a sandwich which he carried inside his coat so it would not freeze. He did not have the proper facial protection to cover his nose, and his final mistake was that in his rush to build his fire after he got wet, he did not heed the wisdom to build the fire out in the open, but instead built it beneath a snow-laden tree. That final unwise act sealed his fate when the snow fell and put out his fire. Because of London’s actual time in the Yukon and his personal experience with the dangerous aspect of the nature of the place, the setting of “To Build a Fire” is alive with hidden dangers and risks, from the white cold and quiet that a “sharp, explosive crackle” (London 47) of his own spit in the air startles the man, to the moisture of the dog’s breath crystallizing in its muzzle (London 48), to “the bulge of the earth intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow” (London 50).  London had experienced all of these aspects and put it in his writing with an economy of words that only someone who had been there could capture. Also during the winter London was in the Yukon, he learned a great deal from the miners he was with to draw on for his stories.

Snowstorms in the winter would last for weeks. The temperature would drop to sixty degrees below zero and everyone would remain inside. Because of his friendly nature, Jack London’s cabin became a place to trade stories and discuss the larger questions of the universe (McKay and McKay 1). According to King Hendricks, Head of the Department of English and Journalism of Utah State University, Jack London wrote that he had “learned to seize upon that which is interesting, to grasp the true romance of things and to understand the people I may be thrown amongst” (10). Hendricks further states that “’To Build a Fire’ is Jack London’s short story masterpiece. It is a masterpiece because of the depth of its irony, and its understanding of human nature, the graphic style of the writing, and the contrast between man’s intelligence and the intuition of the animal” (11). Recounting tales with other miners, old-timers, and the locals of the Klondike while snowbound was a wealth of rich characterization that London had to draw on. However, with the abundance of personalities surrounding him, “To Build a Fire” was written like a fable with a more narrow characterization to convey universal truths and morals.  

While wintering in the cabin at Dawson, London and his frequent visitors would spend “the time trading stories and debating life’s big questions” (McKay and McKay 1) One of these visitors was W. B. Hargrave, who said of London that “he had a mental craving for the truth. He applied one test to religion, to economics, to everything. ‘What is the truth?’ ‘What is just?’ It was with these questions that he confronted the baffling enigma of life” (McKay and McKay 1). With these types of questions in mind, London  wrote “To Build a Fire” in the style of a fable. Some argue that in his earlier works like “To Build a Fire” the fable aspect was done unconsciously, although it remains present. In his article “Jack London: The Problem of Form” Donald Pizer seeks to establish that London “is essentially a writer of fables and parables” (Pizer, Form 3). He explains that fables “seek to establish the validity of a particular moral truth by offering a brief story in which plot, character, and setting are allegorical agents of a paraphrasable moral” (Pizer, Form 3). Fables are universal stories shared for the purpose of explaining morals or lessons. In “To Build a Fire” the lesson conveyed is as simple as this: don’t go out in the harsh wilderness unprepared or nature will blindside you. Or be wise when dealing with nature. The strong and wise win the day. This is a universal theme to every man, so much so that London did not name the character. He is simply known as “the man” and his companion is known only as “the dog” as in most fables where the character is a moral type. Moral types represent ideas such as honesty, fear, or laziness. In this case the man represents ignorance while the dog is instinct, and nature itself represents danger (Pizer, Form 6).  Pizer states that the “success of the story, as in the successful fable, stems from our acceptance of its worldly wisdom while simultaneously admiring the formal devices used to communicate it—in this instance, the ironic disparity between our knowledge of danger and the newcomer’s ignorance of it, and the brevity and clarity of the story’s symbolic shape” (Pizer, Form 8). The moral of the story is stated directly within the story’s third paragraph as the man thinks about being cold and uncomfortable. London writes “it did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe” (London 47). As readers, we see the danger clearly as learners of this moral fable where the unwise newcomer does not see beyond his own unpreparedness. This moral lesson is conveyed to readers exactly as London intended. While writing in the style of a fable, London also places the narration in an uncaring all-knowing viewpoint.

The viewpoint of “To Build a Fire” echoes the cold detachment of the freezing landscape of the Yukon. Written in the third person omniscient point of view, the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of both the man and the dog, yet also places distance between the reader and characters. The narrator seems cold and almost monotone, like nature who doesn’t care if the man and dog lives or dies. Nature doesn’t care if the fire is built or not. It does nothing to help them, yet also does nothing to harm them either. It is a quiet observer or chronicler of the events, especially in the form of the fable. As nature, the narrator is not invested in the events, except to pass on the moral tale to those who will hear and learn the universal wisdom it is making a point of. In fact, in this story, it shows that the Yukon can be survived. The man did not survive due to his ignorance of how harsh the cold could be after he was warned not to go out alone. He did not follow the wisdom handed down to him. He represented foolishness, yet the dog who represents instinct (or knowledge passed down) did survive. However, at the end, the man does learn from his mistakes. His ignorance has been turned around to wisdom. As death overtakes him, his final thoughts turn to the old-timer who told him not to go out alone. The man says in the only dialog of the entire story, “’You were right, old hoss; you were right.’” (London 57). Unfortunately, the man gained his wisdom too late and this fable becomes one of being a cautionary tale. It is interesting to note that there was an earlier version of “To Build a Fire” that was published in Youth’s Companion six years prior to this version (Hendricks 16). In the original version the man, although still ignoring the wisdom of not going out alone, is named, Tom Vincent, and actually survives when he, with great luck, “came upon another high water lodgement. There were twigs and branches and leaves and grasses, all dry and waiting for fire” (Hendricks 14). It was the second version, written with the fable qualities that launched Jack London into one of the greatest Northern area writers of our time.     

By bringing his own experiences of his time during the goldrush in the Klondike into his story “To Build a Fire” Jack London relayed the universal theme that man’s lack of wisdom has no place in nature. He accomplished this through use of fables and casting the impartial attributes of nature as the narrator. In his article “Jack London’s ‘To Build a Fire’; How Not to Read Naturalist Fiction”, Donald Pizer points out that “the world, under certain conditions, can be an extremely dangerous place. If through ignorance, inexperience, false self-confidence, and the ignoring of what others have learned and told us (all weaknesses shared by the man) we challenge these conditions, we are apt to be destroyed by them” (223). I wonder if London had never rewritten the story where the man dies, if the earlier version would have ever become as beloved a story as the version that stands as a classic today. I think not. King Hendricks points out that “Jack London loved life and he lived it as fully and as completely as any man. He admired men who cling or have clung to life in times of adversity” (18). London made less than five dollars in his gold prospecting, but the insight, knowledge of the setting, and characterization he gained during that short time brought him fame and riches, and we readers are the wealthier for it.

Works Cited

Haig

HHai, Haight, Ken. “The Spell of the Yukon: Jack London and the Klondike God Rush.” The Literary Traveler, July 13, 2006. www.literarytraveler.com/articles/jack_london_klondike.

Hendr, King. “Jack London: Master Craftsman of the Shorty Story.” USU Faculty Honor Lectures. Paper 29. www.digitalcommons.usu.edu/honor_lectures/29

Lond,on Jack. “To Build a Fire.” Lost Face, edited by David Price, Mills & Boon, Limited, 1919, pp. 47-70. The Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/2429/2429-h/2429-h.htm#page47.

McKay, Brett and Kate McKay. “The Life of Jack London as a Case Study in the Power and Perils of Thumos--#7: Into the Klondike.” The Art of Manliness, March 31, 2013.  www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-life-of-jack-london-as-a-case-study-in-the-power-and-perils-of-thumos-7-into-the-klondike/

Pizer, , Donald. "Jack London: The Problem of Form." Studies in the Literary Imagination, pp. 107–115.

-- "Jack London's 'To Build A Fire': How Not to Read Naturalist Fiction." Philosophy and Literature, vol. 34, no. 1, Apr. 2010, pp. 218-227. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2010791039&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Image: "Jack London Territory." by Anita & Greg is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

For my Linguistics course, I compared two very different speeches. (links to speeches at bottom) Tim Minchin and Patrick Pearse are two speakers who have very little in common.  Minchin is a musical comedian who relishes in social satire while Pearse was an activist who was killed for his part in the Irish uprising. Tim Minchin’s speech is a graduation speech given at the University of West Australia in September 2013 titled UWA 2013 Graduation Ceremony. Minchin uses humor to share nine life lessons that he has learned. I found those life lessons to be truly inspirational, especially in their simplicity. 

Patrick Pearse gave a striking speech on August 1, 1915 at the graveside of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa who was a leader in the Fenian movement. It is known as “Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be At Peace.” Even though his speech was a graveside service to honor an individual, Pearse took the opportunity to rouse the hearts of the Irish, especially the younger generation, to free Ireland from British control. The speeches were given nearly one hundred years apart, however Minchin and Pearse both addressed the rising generation of their time as the audience they desired to inspire and rally. Both men chose the words they used to great effect, which is what I focused on. 

Graveside Service. Picture from Wikipedia.

    Tim Minchin begins his speech with a bold statement that life is meaningless. He uses forceful sentences that seem to crescendo and then are chopped off into short sentences that end almost like a punchline. For example, he says that “arts degrees are awesome and they help you find meaning where there is none. And let me assure you . . . there is none”.  He also makes use of the harder stopping sound you get with the phoneme /t/ of bat. These sentences are generally found at the end of paragraphs for emphasis, again like a punchline to his comedic sense of timing, for example: “Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and hit them with a cricket bat”. Where Tim Minchin used humor and common words to get his points across, Patrick Pearse used his words to strike hearts to the importance and seriousness of the Fenian movement. 

Like Minchin, Pearse used the /t/ stop sounds of but and let very powerfully when repeated in this long forceful sentence: “But, friends, let us not be sad, but let us have courage”. Pearse also strings several morphemes together in a powerful urging when he says, “I propose to you, then, that here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul, as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa”. Pearse begins at least two sentences with the adverbs fiercely and deliberately in a flowy, yet strong pattern. The final line of “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace” works better with the word unfree instead of saying it differently like “Ireland without freedom shall never be at peace.” Unfree makes it so much stronger.  

REGISTER LEVELS

Tim Minchin image from UWA

In Tim Minchin’s speech, he employs register effectively by simply speaking in the type of common language used by everyday “blokes” going to art school. He begins talking about doing a “corporate gig” where they “forked out twelve grand for an inspirational speaker who was this extreme sports guy who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off when he got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. It was weird,” Minchin said. to great laughter. Rather than start the speech with a commanding sophisticated type of presence, Minchin becomes relatable to the group of graduating students he is speaking to. However, that does not mean he doesn’t use sophisticated words. He is speaking to graduates after all, art students and science students alike, but he does it in such an easygoing, effortless manner that he truly is speaking to his own kind of people. In one phenomenal sentence, he interweaves slang on a lower register and in the next breath fixes to a different register that shows, although he is funny and common, he is no slough in the mental department either. The paragraph goes as follows: “We must think critically and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and hit them with a cricket bat. Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privileges. Most of society is kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance. We tend to generate false dichotomies and then try to argue one point using two entirely different sets of assumptions. Like two tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts”. Another paragraph uses the denotation of dreams. Minchin says, “I never really had one of these dreams and so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals . . . be aware the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery . . . you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye”. With the word dreams, the connotation of a person’s passion and pursuit, the chasing of a dream comes to mind, yet Minchin somehow takes those connotations and flips them on their head as he advises to not hold onto one dream so forcefully that another great thing is never seen. Minchin’s voice has so many great nuances that it is difficult to pick just a few examples of semantic perspective. For example: “Exercise. I’m sorry you pasty, pale, smoking philosophy grads arching your eyebrows into a Cartesian curve as you watch the human movement mob winding their way through the miniature traffic cones of their existence” and “I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there!”. The “So there!” at the end structurally does not need to be tacked on, yet it finished the entire thought with a purposeful exclamation.

Patrick Pearse image from Wikipedia

Patrick Pearse has a much more serious register in his eulogy. It is the type of register used for Christian religious ceremonies. In fact, the entire speech is layered with the freeing of Ireland being like death and resurrection of the country. Pearse says, “Let us not be sad, but let us have courage in our hearts . . . Let us understand that after all death comes resurrection and that from this grave and the graves surrounding us will rise the freedom of Ireland”. The very words death and resurrection are used throughout the speech as denotations that connect to other phrases and words Pearse uses such as “sacred dead” and “life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations”. He speaks of being “re-baptised [sic] in the Fenian faith” and “strength of soul”. “Let no man blaspheme the cause” and “the holiness and simplicity of patriotism” rally the Christians at the gravesite service to look toward their faith as not only part of their religion, but as a holy cause and “sacred to the dead” . I can barely imagine how their Irish hearts must have been thrumming as Pearse ramped up his speech, crying that “they cannot undo the miracles of God, who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today”. The speech seems to pull Ireland from the grave to a glorious resurrection, at least within the hearts of the Irish. Pearse became known as the voice of the rising, although he would not live to see Ireland free.

STYLISTIC ELEMENTS AND USE OF LANGUAGE

One of the styles both men utilized is repetition of certain words. Minchin used the word lucky and its variations no less than eight times within one paragraph. “Remember it’s all luck. You are lucky to be here. You are incalculably lucky to be born and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family . . . or if you were born into a horrible family that’s unlucky . . . but you are still lucky”. In the same way, Pearse repeats splendid seven times within his speech: “Splendid and holy causes are served by men who are themselves splendid and holy”. Within this same sentence, Pearse also stylistically repeats words that he has coupled together. The words splendid and holy both begin the above sentence and end it. He repeats groupings of words together in this sentence as well, “Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God”. The use of and instead of commas makes the phrase stronger and more pleasing to the ear as well. The words used this way and then repeated is more rhythmically enhanced than if he would have said, “Our foes are strong, wise, and wary; but strong, wise and wary as they are . . . ”  

COUNTRIES AND HISTORIES

Minchin and Pearse understood the history of their audiences and what language devices to utilize to inspire the younger generations of their countries. In 2013 Western Australia, politics inserted its way into Tim Minchin’s graduation speech. Five months previous, the liberal party won the seat majority in the legislative election, a majority the liberals hadn’t had for close to two decades. There had been hostility among the Australian parties concerning global warming. Minchin knew the audience he was speaking to when he uttered:

The idea that many Australians . . . believe that the science of anthropogenic global warming is controversial is a powerful indicator of the extent of our failure to communicate. The fact that 30 percent of the people just bristled is further evidence still. The fact that that bristling is more to do with politics than science is even more despairing. 

One hundred years earlier, 1913 Ireland was close to civil war between two factions, those who supported the Anglo-Irish union, and those who were in opposition to any involvement from Great Britain in Irish government. The country was further divided as WWI broke out and Patrick Pearse, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, “came to believe that the blood of martyrs would be required to liberate Ireland” (Britannica). It was with that premise and the hope of rallying the Irish who were weary of British rule to take action against their opposers that Pearse created his graveside service oration. Pearse’s intent for Rossa’s eulogy was less about the deceased man and more about shaping his memory and others in the Fenian movement into types of martyrs for the cause of liberation. He speaks about the valiant and splendid dead throughout the speech.

The speech did have the intended effect and did rally the younger generation of Irishmen as a few short years later in 1915, Pearse led a revolt called the Easter Rising. It failed and Pearse was court martialed and shot, fulfilling his desire that the cause had more blood, becoming one of the greatest martyrs of Ireland. With the knowledge of who they were speaking to and what their audience had been through as a nation, Minchin and Pearse were able to make what they said and how they said it touch the hearts of those listening. Understanding the cultural influences of their audiences also enabled them to establish credibility and a rapport by the strength of the words they drew upon.

INTENDED MESSAGE

The speeches of Minchin and Pearse were given to inspire the rising generation to take action. Both men understood the culture that their target audiences were dealing with. Minchin understood his audience of young graduating college students, ready to embark in great things. They were young; they were art students and philosophy students in a largely liberal country and university. They were celebrating their success at completing their degrees so they were joyful. And Minchin spoke with them in a celebratory tone where he wove in his commonsense lessons in a fun and inspiring way, his voice speeding up in long sentences as his joy for them heightened his speech like a waterfall dropping over the edge that can’t be slowed or stopped. He said, “Life will sometimes seem long and tough and God it’s tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad and then you’ll be old and then you’ll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence and that is fill it”. The laughter and joy practically springs from his speech.

For Pearse, he and the younger generation a decade behind him never knew a free Ireland. They had seen uprisings come and fail. Many were going or had returned from fighting in World War One, fighting for the freedom of other countries while they had no political say in their own. As Pearse spoke about the valiant fighters who came before them, he included the younger men in their company, passing on the torch to free Ireland, stating that he spoke “on behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised [sic] in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme [sic]”. He knew exactly what he was doing as he cried out, voicing for them all “we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate”. Anyone listening would feel that responsibility pumping through their hearts, pumping in sync with the crowd around them as they silently made their own pledge as Pearse said the words out loud.

These were two audiences meeting for different purposes nearly one hundred years apart. One audience met to celebrate their achievements upon graduating college, the other group met to mourn a life of one of their stalwart champions for their own country. The two speakers had the same purpose: to inspire the younger generation listening to them to be better people for their country and for others. Tim Minchin’s UWA 2013 Graduation Ceremony speech and Patrick Pearse’s Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be at Peace oration were enhanced through the language of their respective time periods, and the knowledge each speaker had of what was happening in their countries and culture. They utilized the power of words to relate to the younger generations of their time.  

Sources used: 

Donovan, David. “The Bitter Struggle Between Turnbull and Minchin.” Independent Australia, www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-bitter-struggle-between-turnbull-and-minchin,2991

Minchin, Tim. “UWA 2013 Graduation Ceremony.” News.Uwa, www.news.uwa.edu.au/201309176069/alumni/tim-minchin-stars-uwa-graduation-ceremony

“Patrick Pearse: Irish Poet and Statesman.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Accessed Feb. 9, 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Patrick-Henry-Pearse

Pearse, Patrick. “Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be At Peace.” The Century Ireland Project, RTE. Boston College, Aug. 1, 1915. www.rte.ie/centuryireland//images/uploads/further-reading/Ed59-GravesideOrationFinal.pdf

“Western Australian State Election 2013.” Parliament of Australia,

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/WAElection2013

Patrick Pearse images: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Pearse

Tim Minchin image: http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201309176069/alumni/tim-minchin-stars-uwa-graduation-ceremony

I first started talking about sibling rivalry found in King Lear here. Yep, that was me, blaming the entire tradegy of Shakespearce's play on the parent. 

Similar to King Lear, a contemporary story that plays with sibling rivalries spurred on by a parent’s favoritism is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, which brings the theme of sibling relationships to a new level. The older sister, Kate, has leukemia. With a horrible prognosis at how bad the disease will get and that there will be very few donor matches to save her life, her parents decide to have another child solely to be a compatible organ and blood donor for her sister. Anna’s character knows that she was only born to save her sister. She goes to court for medical emancipation when Kate needs one of Anna’s kidneys. Anna has always given whatever Kate needed, but this time she wants the freedom to make her own choices. She relays that “there are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give” (Picoult). 

The same sentiment rings true for the sibling rivalry in King Lear. There are the two older sisters, Goneril and Regan, who receive portions of the kingdom only because the favored daughter, Cordelia, who would most likely have received the entire inheritance was disinherited when she didn’t curry favor and verbally flatter her father. Goneril and Regan have grown up in a household where they knew they were not their father’s favorite. That couldn’t have helped their self-esteem. From the beginning, this poor parenting is set up when Lear declares to his daughters, “which of you shall we say doth love us most/that we our largest bounty may extend/where nature doth with merit challenge?” (1.1.50-52). He has completely set them up as rivals, which we can assume he has been doing their entire lives, which would account for their jealousies and rivalries with not only Cordelia, but then between themselves when they turn on each other for the affection of Edmund. Both My Sister’s Keeper and King Lear end with Anna and Cordelia coming to know that their parents do love them, yet tragically they both perish anyway, Anna in a twist of fate when she wins her rights to her own body, becomes brain-dead in an accident shortly afterward. Another contemporary story that plays with sibling relationships along the same vein as King Lear is East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

First Edition Cover ~ Fair Use

East of Eden plays on the rivalry represented in the Old Testament of Cain and Abel, with one son’s offerings being favored while the other son’s is rejected. Charles (Cal) and Aron are twins. Aron is good-natured and has always been favored by his father, where Cal feels that he has a darkness inside of himself and is resentful that he can never please his father. When he makes money to help their struggling family, he is again rejected because his father feels that is wasn’t honest to take advantage of the farmers. This line sums up Cal’s self-worth, “It's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel” (Steinbeck). Swap Cal’s feelings with the sentiments of Edmund who bemoans being born a bastard. “My father compounded with my mother/under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was under Ursa/Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut, I/should have been that I am” (1.2.121-124).  East of Eden also ends in tragedy when Cal shows Aron the truth about their mother being a prostitute. Aron runs off to war and is killed, which causes their father to have a stroke and die. The father’s end is very similar to the death of King Lear as Lear hovers over Cordelia’s corpse, crying, “And thou no breath at all? Oh, thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never” (5.3.315-316). Both Adam, Cal and Aron’s father, and Lear showed poor parenting skills as they, perhaps inadvertently, favored one child over the others, and in effect produced sibling rivalry that brought about terrible ends for all involved. Shakespeare was brilliant in tapping into the complexity of family relationships, creating famous rivalries between siblings that are relatable to almost everyone.  

Relationships are complicated, especially between siblings as they grow together and try to find their place within the family. Compound those relationships with parents who favor one child over the others and there is a dynamic theme to explore and bring to any audience to relate to. If a person isn’t having issues within their own families, they will see rivalry within others, whether it is with their friends, neighbors, work associates, or in the political arena as the people of the Elizabethan era were entrenched in with the succession from the Tudor line to the Stuarts. Shakespeare was able to capitalize on this because it is something that everyone with a family can relate to. While watching a play or movie, we relate to the characters. We feel the anger, loss, betrayal, hope, and love, even more deeply when it involves family members. The theme of siblings vying for attention of their parents, whether it deals with inheritance or pleasing them will endure throughout all generations. The entire play revolved around the test of love that Lear set up between his daughters in dividing his kingdom. Imagine if he had not posed that question and had split up his kingdom evenly between the three sisters. Goneril and Regan may have stayed true to their characters and squandered their inheritance, yet Lear would have been able to have a safe retirement and lived out his life in the partial kingdom with Cordelia, and the conflict between Edmund and Edgar would never have come to fruition without the interference of the two sisters supporting him. Yet there would not have been a plot worth enduring and the theme repeated throughout history.

Works Credited

Shakespeare, William. “King Lear.” No Fear Shakespeare: King Lear. Spark Publishing, 2003. Print.

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Books, 2002 edition. Print

Piccoult, Jodi. My Sister's Keeper. Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print 

When a parent favors one child over the others, jealousies evolve as children seek their place within the family unit. The theme of sibling rivalry is universal in any time period because family relationships and how we view our own identities within our families are complicated. I found this theme interesting because I come from a large family where a lot of how we dealt with each other stemmed from how our father treated us. For example, my mother didn’t make it to the hospital so my father ended up delivering my younger sister. My father and sister always had a special bond and the favoritism and considerations given her were undeniable. Rivalry between siblings is seen in William Shakespeare’s King Lear as the retiring king poses a test of love that pits his daughters against one another. In the secondary plot, Gloucester also favors one son over the other, which also drives the story into tragedy and death over the aspect of inheritance. 

By Gustav Pope (Austria 1831–1910 Londres) - Museo de Arte de Ponce, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34138387

And it all kind of mirrors what was happening during Shakespeare’s time. Queen Elizabeth died without an heir and rivalry between cousins over the English throne was echoed in the play. Meredith Skura states in Dragon Fathers and Unnatural Children: Warring Generations in King Lear and Its Sources that “insofar as Edgar inherits this role, he is like Shakespeare’s own new monarch, James I, prince of the newly united realm of Britain and first in a new dynastic line” (142). In King Lear, Shakespeare demonstrates through the context of the rivalry with Edmund, how Edgar rises above and casts off his old persona, as a political statement for the audience of his time and culture. William Shakespeare explores the theme of sibling rivalry brought on by parental favoritism through characterization, and use of the issues of his time and culture that makes his themes as relatable today as they were in the Elizabethan era.

Shakespeare had a talent for making characterization believable and true to what his current audience was dealing with in his society. Within a relationship between brothers and sisters, or sister to sister, brother with brother, the way siblings speak to one another, less formal, and with an intimate knowledge of growing up together, Shakespeare was able to take that kind of familiar relationship and bring it to his characters. Robert F.Willson, Jr., John R. Holmes, Joseph Rosenblum attribute this to “Shakespeare’s talent for creating the illusion of reality in mannerisms and styles of speech…Shakespeare’s keen ear for conversational rhythms and his ability to reproduce believable speech between figures of high and low social rank also contribute to the liveliness of action and characters”. Shakespeare wanted everyone in his audience, king and pauper alike, to recognize the universal themes that applied to them. Lines such as “I have been worth the whistle” (4.2.28) spoken by Goneril in King Lear or when she says to her husband, “No more. The text is foolish” (4.2.37) is the kind of thing family members say to each other when not in polite company. It’s these types of dialogue and characterization that everyone can relate to and hear in their own verbiage, albeit in our time it would sound more like “Shut up. You’re not making any sense”. 

King Lear clearly favored one daughter over the others. In Daughters of Chaos: An examination of the women in King Lear and Ran, Cathy Cupitt states that Lear’s daughters “have been living all their lives in a patriarchy, ruled over both politically and familiarly…there must be consequences to this kind of oppression, however benign”. Cupitt further conjectures that the girls most likely never had any access to political power so once they have it, they are “interested only in the exercising of their power no matter what mayhem is caused”. It is Lear himself, that sets his daughters up for failure, rivalry, and jealousies between them when he tests their love for him. He does so, anticipating that his favorite daughter, Cordelia, will flatter him, which will give him justification to give her the largest portion of the kingdom. The older daughters must have grown up knowing who was the favorite child. Goneril and Regan gave their father the flattery wanted, while Cordelia answers more reticently and is disinherited. The characterization of the sisters seems like simplistic ideals between evil and good. Goneril and Regan are evil, which is shown when they blind Gloucester, while Cordelia is the epitome of all that is good. It’s argued that “the split between the good and bad women is so extreme and simplistic it can be read as the use of archetypes rather than the development of characters” (Cupitt). Shakespeare also creates believable characters with the brothers as this same trend of rivalry between siblings continues with Edmund and Edgar caused by their father Gloucester.

The rivalry between Edmund and Edgar is just as tragic and just as impressive with remarkable degrees of characterization. Like Lear who caused the rivalry between his daughters, Gloucester is similarly guilty of favoring one son over the other.  From the first act of the play, Edmund’s resentment is shown clearly at not being a legitimate heir to his father’s lands. He gets the first soliloquy, complaining, “why ‘bastard’? Wherefore ‘base’?/When my dimensions are as well compact?” (1.2.6-7). Gloucester says he loves his sons equally, yet doesn’t recognize Edmund as an heir, clearly favoring his legitimate son, Edgar. “Explorations of Edmund’s character have focused on his exclusion from the social order” (Atherton). Because of this favoritism, Edmund puts a plan in place to gain legitimacy. “Edmund destroys his father and brother when they get in his way, turning one against the other, as he does with his lovers when he commits double adultery” (Skura 127). It is Edgar who pays the price and must flee. The Elizabethan audience would have felt sympathy for Edgar’s fallen pitiful state, anger when his father did not recognize him as a beggar, yet would also have cheered when the brothers met in combat, which proved Edgar’s innocence and Edmund is killed. “Edmund, like a playwright, is good at manipulating people—his father, his brother, his lovers. Edgar, a shake-scene himself is a brilliant improviser” (Skura 133). While Shakespeare was a master at characterization, he also took themes from the people of his day and what was important to them. The theme of rivalry to the common man as well as rivalries for the throne was a huge part of the Elizabethan culture.

Shakespeare may also have been borrowing from the reputations of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, with Mary’s short rule having the reputation of being bloody and Elizabeth being known for her goodness. Elizabeth was the queen after a short reign by her sister Mary. Due to the culture at the time, both the Tudor sisters had to overcome gender barriers about the role of women in politics. Even as queen, they were deemed unfit to rule and were urged to marry so that a man, more suitable to the task than a woman, could reign for them, very similar to Goneril and Regan, who were written as unfit for rule. According to Brenda Zetina “the Tudor queens were initially expected to be good wives and mothers who would let their men rule for them. However, both sisters took drastically different approaches to these expectations” (12). This same culture thinking is played out in King Lear where all three of Lear’s daughters are married as dutiful wives even though the two eldest of the women are given Lear’s kingdom. It is expected that they will be obedient wives with strong husbands to see to the running of the split kingdoms and because they didn’t adhere to that cultural expectation, Shakespeare cast them as the villains, who needed men to work their conspiracies for them. In fact, both women meet their end when their rivalry turns on each other over a man. By drawing on what was happening in society into his plays, Shakespeare may have influenced his culture and the way people think through his entertainment. This becomes especially apparent with the rivalry of Edmund and Edgar and what was happening with the inheritance of the throne.

One of the worst things a parent can do is make their child feel unloved or not as loveable as their sibling, yet it happens all the time, sometimes not as a conscious act. William Shakespeare’s theme of sibling rivalry brought on by parental favoritism is as relatable today as it was in the past, and when it is portrayed as well as Shakespeare wrote it with bringing in the issues of his culture and his ability to convey it through true-to-life characters, the theme will continue to be represented in new film and literature. 

Similar to King Lear, a contemporary story that plays with sibling rivalries spurred on by a parent’s favoritism is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I touch on those similaries here. 

Works Cited

Atherton, Carol. “Character Analysis: The Villains in King Lear—Edmund, Goneril and Regan.” Discovering Literature: Shakespeare & Renaissance. British Library, 2017. www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/character-analysis-the-villains-in-king-lear-edmund-goneril-and-regan.

Bevington, David. “As You Like It: Work By Shakespeare.” Encyclopedia Britannica,  https://www.britannica.com/topic/As-You-Like-It

Cupitt, Cathy. “Daughters of Chaos: An Examination of the Women in King Lear and Ran.” 4 Oct 2010. http://www.cathycupitt.com/daughters-of-chaos-an-examination-of-the-women-in-king-lear-and-ran/

Shakespeare, William. “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” The Gutenberg Project. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2242

            “As You Like It.” The Gutenberg Project. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1786/pg1786-images.html

“King Lear.” No Fear Shakespeare: King Lear. Spark Publishing, 2003. Print.

Skura M. “Dragon Fathers and Unnatural children: Warring Generations in King Lear and Its Sources.” Comparative Drama. 2008. Ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=32869800&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Books, 2002 edition. Print

“Lady Arabella Stuart” Tudor Place. www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/ArabellaStuart.htm

Willson, Robert F., Jr., et al. “William Shakespeare: The Dramatist.” Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2017. EBSCOhost, exproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=125599288&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Zetina, Brenda. Mary and Elizabeth Tudor: Embracing and Manipulating Gender Expectations. No. 2, 2015. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url-https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edssch&AN=edssch.qt0tk2n9p3&site=eds-live&scope=site.