final thoughts on Faulkner

Faulkner is a genius for making his characters human.

All of them – none of them were monsters, not even Jason. Faulkner showed how Jason has some remnant of allegiance to old ways in looking out for those under him, like his mother and Caddie, although he milked it for all it was worth. He was a coherent character.

But I’m fascinated by the final chapter. The gorgeous lush descriptions of Dilsey iron the image of an old weatherbeaten woman, somehow still strong and beautiful, standing against the beginning and the end that she saw, into the reader’s mind. “Two tears slid down her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad coruscations of immolation and abnegation and time,” Faulkner describes, highlighting her role as perhaps the one thing that withstands the test of time and the destruction of the Compson family.

I think the sparseness of Faulkner’s language is gorgeous and lyrical as the best of the Romantics; the sparseness fits the tone of the age – the Modern age – and boils down the essence of man into something actually realistic. Granted, Faulkner’s tales aren’t exactly hopeful—why didn’t he believe the truth of the sermon WHICH HE WROTE?!—but still somehow, when shorn of all the extraneous superfluity—the words which one cannot stand—then the bones are there—and the bones are sound.

What I mean is, boil a man down to his essence and you’ll see God; God is inescapable. God is inescapable in the love shown in Dilsey’s care for Benjy—inescapable in the love of Benjy for Caddie—even inescapable in the hopeless metaphysical meanderings of Quentin, poor, lost man. I have this theory that man defines himself either in agreement with or in opposition to God (and sometimes – a lot of times – both at once). Regardless, God is there. The Sound and the Fury exemplifies that.

Mary Sue Daoud, senior, Fall 2012

Eliot's Burnt Norton

Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” uses the imagery of gardens and childhood to show the loss of innocence. The road not taken was a possibility, and is now gone. Time remains fixed. You can hear the laughter, and see the beauty, but you are always reminded that temptation is there pulling you away. Time is reminding you of what was, what is, what might have been, and what may be. The children laugh because they are not yet affected by this. But the narrator sees time stretching on and on, and wishes for the innocence that cannot be regained. His is a lonely world, one of constant motion and stillness, one of paradoxes. The innocence and laughter are hidden to him. Perhaps one day he will find what he is looking for. But for now he sees only time, and the fallen state of man. He sees the pain Christ endured when being tempted, and Christ was the only one who did not sin. And he shows that this is the one who endures the most pain. He is the one who sees the most of the despair, pain, and brokenness of the world and its language. For Christ he sees all of time. This poem embodies the loss of innocence and the pain Christ endured while on earth. This poem probably has a lot more going on in it, and this entry may be completely wrong, but this is what I've been able to figure out about this poem. Eliot’s poetry always gives you something new each time you read it, but you never feel like you've fully understood it or delved through all of the layers of meaning.

Burnt Norton

Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot begins with the words: “Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable.” 

My mama always said to us children, “let’s redeem the time,” whenever she hoped for a task to be completed promptly. She hoped we would not dilly-dally about our chore, and yet she was saying more than simply, “hurry up.” She was saying something, maybe not consciously, about time itself. She believed it could be redeemed. The idea that time can be “redeemed” is an assumption that time is a thing, an object that can be held, quantified, contained.

The first section of Burnt Norton contains an empty garden with roses that “had the look of flowers that are looked at.” It  contains an empty alley, an empty pool. And then the bird says, “go, go, go” because “human kind/ cannot bear very much reality./ Time past and time future/ What might have been and what has been./ Point to one end, which is always present.”

Time is not a commodity. When time becomes a thing then human kind cannot bear it. The roses are simply looked at. The pool is drained. Time, however, is life. It is always present because time is caught up in humanity, human life. Time is not something that can be clinically portioned into sections. If time is cut into pieces then it dies, and so does life. It becomes an item to be numbered and looked at. It is no longer a beautiful mystery, but rather a bare skeleton, drained.

Our society views time as something to be chopped into little pieces, to be destroyed. We portion our days into little segments for different activities. We move to the mechanical tick, tick, tick of our clocks which tell us to “go, go, go.” Time has been locked into a little box and so it locks us into little boxes of our own. Our lives have become not our own, but rather run by the time cut into little ticks.

If we are to break free of these boxes, we must venture first to break free from a mechanistic view of time. Time is not a commodity. It is our life. If we view time as bits and pieces to be “redeemed” then our life also becomes broken into bits and pieces. A complete view of life can only come when time is once more whole, inexplicably made up of the past, future, and present.

A Rose for Emily

I found William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” to be an engaging, morbid tale that portrays a glimpse of change over time in the South. The town of Jefferson, the character of Emily, and the behavior of the townspeople all spoke to a changing era. Emily is described as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.” She lived in a time past—one where her taxes had been forgiven ad infinitum and one where her father held a dominate position of authority in her life. She is eccentric, an oddity that the community both pities and disapproves. Emily refuses to put a house number on her home when the postal system is implemented, and she refuses to pay taxes when the town approaches her with her bill. She writes letters with ancient paper and faded ink. Emily is sealed in a time that is slowly passing away in Jefferson.

Faulkner notes that most of the townspeople and authorities who watch Emily are “the next generation, with its more modern ideas.” These men believe that the previous generation’s pardon of Emily’s taxes are bogus, replace antebellum homes with garages, and construct pavement throughout the town. This is the modernity that Emily cannot accept.

Yet, the townspeople seem to be caught in the crossroads. While in many ways they eager for the changes the new generation brings, still cling to many traditional Southern ideas. (The most prevalent traditional notion in the story is the idea that Homer, being a Northern laborer, is below Emily’s social status.)

The final revelation of the story—that Emily had murdered Homer and locked his body in her house, cements the idea of resisting change. By killing Homer, Emily has preserved him the way he is, for her alone. Emily cannot lose Homer to time, and also has conformed to the town’s traditional demands (she is no longer seen in public with Homer). Perhaps more specifically, Faulkner’s story is about the human fear of change—Emily refuses to accept the fact that her father has died, refuses to lose Homer to time, and refuses to accept modern demands (paying taxes, putting up house numbers). Instead, she locks herself away from the world, growing fat and turning grey. 

The White Heron

I absolutely love Sarah Orne Jewett’s story “The White Heron;” the breathless cool beauty with which she painted her story is dynamic in a surprising way. In some ways, it reminded me of Hawthorne – but in most ways her voice is distinctive and hers.

“Has she been nine years growing and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake? The murmur of the pine’s green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away.”

I love the twining of life and beauty; no matter what we might say about Jewett’s faith, this is a very Christian idea. It seems like the dilemma set before Sylvia – accentuated to marvelous effect by Jewett’s regionalism – is love at the expense of life within the context of people, or life at the expense of love, within the context of the world. She chose the latter, and I don’t blame her. People are transitory, and love (although doubtless in the future little Sylvie will realize how necessary people, and by extension love for them, are.) for them fragile. The world, or nature at any rate, always remains more or less constant, and its enduring beauty was, to Sylvie at any rate, worth protecting over giving this new, pleasant, bloodied young man what he wanted. In some ways I envy this little girl her union with nature (not a naturalist. NOT.) if it was more of a means to enjoy and commune with God through His creation. Her choice was a completely valid one (even if it would be more meaningful if situated in a Christian context)—she kept her integrity with nature.

Imagination and Authority

Jack London’s To Build A Fire brings up to interesting thoughts concerning the nature of man. The first relating humanity to imagination and the second relating humanity to authority. The question is: can humanity survive without at least one or both of these?

London writes: “the trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.” The man is aware that the weather is cold, but he does not see the significance in this coldness. The weather signifies the frailty of man. He cannot survive in this weather on his own. The dog can survive, but he cannot.

The man is caught up in the particulars of himself and his surroundings, but does not allow himself to relate these particulars to abstracts. He does not even have time to think. He computes, but he does not comprehend or even contemplate. Reality has lost significance to him and it results in the loss of his very existence.

Besides ignoring his imaginative faculties, the man ignores authority. “The old timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself.” He thought. The man is so confident in himself and his faculties that he ignores the words of authority. He ignores the wisdom of age. This is his ultimate downfall, and he realizes it in the end. “‘you were right, old hoss; you were right,’ the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.”

Imagination would have helped the man realize his own insignificance. He was helpless to survive alone; he needed another man. Even if he had not used his imagination he should have listened to the advice of one who had come before him. The dog did not ignore the advice of the ages: “the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge.” Man does not have this natural inheritance, but he must inherit it somehow. He must be taught.

If man must be taught to use his imagination and to respect authority, then it seems that much of the education today is not truly educating. Children are taught that history is ever evolving; they are the future and the truth. They are taught principles undermining the very authority which teaches them. If instead they were taught to use their imaginations, they might realize their own frailty and dependency. They cannot not exist apart from their elders. They are founded in the past and cannot separate themselves from it.

Education must be tied to both imagination and authority. If it is not children will grow up to find themselves as helpless as the man who perished for want of a fire.  

Emily Dickinson: On Death and Eternity

Emily Dickinson:

                Much of Dickinson’s poetry deals with the theme of death. In many of her poems, death is seen as something that is simply part of nature. It is neither good nor evil, it simply is, and therefore should not be feared. In one poem, she discusses how as a little child she thought death was the door into immortality but as she grew older realized that death was only cold and led only to a sort of oblivion. In other poems, death may allow for some sort of person hood to remain, but this is not quite clear. Many of her poems about death have pantheistic connotations and undertones. Often what enables people to have some kind of person hood after death is when others remember the ideas they died for, or at least this is an idea one of her poems hints at. She never really treats death as something to be feared or dreaded. It simply is. This clashes with the idea found in the Bible that death is not normal, not how things are supposed to be. Christ has removed the sting of death by defeating it, so we need not fear death. But there is Heaven. It is not a strange nothingness we enter into, but rather it is either eternal life or damnation.  Dickinson says don’t fear death because it is part of nature. God sees death as evil, something to be defeated, and Christians need not fear it because Christ has defeated it.  While we can enjoy the beauty of her poetry, we need to make sure that we do not inadvertently pick up the pantheistic thinking found in her poems, or forget that death is not how things were meant to be. While it is part of the world we live in now, it is a result of the Fall, and therefore an evil that has been conquered by Christ. 

The Yellow Wallpaper

 

 

Here is some wisdom from Maurice Sendak, who describes the illustrator Randolph Caldecott:

“Caldecott is too careful and too elegant an artist to become melodramatic; he never forces an issue, he just touches it lightly. And you can’t say it’s a tragedy, but something hurts. Like a shadow quickly passing over.” 

I first read "The Yellow Wallpaper" at the insistence of a neighbor. She warned me about its interpretation, easily feminist, but admitted that she loved it anyway.

So I sat in her small house and read the story, and once I had finished found that I shared her opinion. The story works. It does what a story does - wraps us up in itself and holds our gaze. And indeed, if you want to hold a reader's gaze you can hardly choose a subject superior to insanity.

I appreciate the idea of "something hurting." At least partly for this reason I find myself more fond of American literature than the other literature we study. Perhaps I owe this to my exposure to American literature while growing up. Or maybe I owe it to the fact that I am more familiar with the cursed world I live in than the heavenly world I'll live in later.

Unlike Caldecott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman does verge on the melodramatic. But, again, given the subject, is anything too dramatic?

The ending of the story, deliciously gruesome, delivers what the reader wishes. Unlike Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth," the ending of which deeply satisfies, "The Yellow Wallpaper" thrills the reader with its wildness.

Perhaps it is because everyone aches that "The Yellow Wallpaper" has, as Dr. Hake says, "Come into its own right" while "The Wife of His Youth" has "gone the way of the dodo." In my opinion, not only do we need -as Christian readers are prone to insist - hopeful endings and redemptive elements, we also need someone willing to acknowledge the depth of our ache.

Chelsea Kolz, fall 2012, senior

Green Paisley instead of Yellow Wallpaper

When I was a child I used to curl up in my dad’s big green recliner. It was a large, thickly padded chair that could have hosted three of me at once – which made it perfect for napping in. I used to lie between its arms and trace my fingers along the paisley pattern that stretched itself over and around the chair and its welcome embrace. I would draw up and around the lines and imagine the angry face of a vicious king scowling over the rest of the chair with commanding looks. And there below him was the fearful expression of a princess peering back at me, as if to beg my aid. But she could not escape his wrath. I found her there, just as she was before, every day when I laid my head peacefully against the arm of the chair. I would watch her try to run away, but she was hopelessly bound to him by the unsympathetic yarns of paisley. They looped up and through her and knotted around the king. I would invent stories of her escape and exile, but that was always after I found that she had been caught again. I never saw her free. I didn’t want her free.

And I very much doubt that Gilman wanted her “princess” free either.

I can sympathize with Gilman’s depressing longing for freedom – something like comfort taken in the feeling of loneliness. If we are alone we cannot be hurt. At least it seems that that is what Gilman’s mother believed. But as much as we stretch and pull against the yarns that bind us to others, I think that we none truly want to be truly free. We are not quite able to convince ourselves that loneliness does not hurt.

But when we are lonely we don’t want to beg for comfort. We don’t want to turn to the people who have left us alone and call them back to ourselves. No. We want to run as fast as we can, get as far as we can – so that we can look behind in hopes that we have been followed.

What we really want is to be pulled back into the great big arms of a familiar recliner – where there is room for more than one.

I Like Whitman, Shoot Me in the Morning

 

At one of my first Patrick Henry meals, I sat down beside Dr. Walker. He asked me if I liked Walt Whitman.

I didn’t, particularly, and that relieved him.

But I must have drunk some post-modern water because I like Walt Whitman now. I even like his beard, particularly in its frostiest stage. I don’t think I drunk the post-modern water at college. I think I drunk it somewhere else.

Whitman says that when he heard the learn’d astronomer discourse about space, he went out by himself and looked at the stars. Similarly, when I heard Dr. Kucks ask me to discover by mathematical calculation and diagramming how much space I would need to maneuver a mattress up the staircase I said, “Just give me the mattress and let me try.”

I think I like “The Wound-Dresser” best. I like the question in the first stanza: “What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panies,/ Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?”

It’s a question about memory. Time boils memories down and leaves the important bits. Why have I sweated to scavenge every detail of my life when memory maintains those which shine brightest? I have seen it in my own writing. Those who stress the importance of journalistic novel-writing could not possibly trust their memories, for they are reporters of the minutest details of the external world as much as they are miners of their own thoughts.

But I don’t have to mention that Whitman’s trade is to mine his own thoughts. Perhaps this is a fault. Either way, he trusts his memory.

I easily take up the words in “The Wound Dresser” and apply them to my vocation as a healer in the cursed world. I would like to shout these words against evil:

“Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,

Straight and swift to the wounded I go.”

And,

“I onward go, I stop,

With hinged knees and steady hands to dress wounds.”

And,

“open hospital doors!”

May our knees by full of hinges, and may we be healers. Without, of course, us being transcendentalists.

Chelsea Kolz, Senior, American Lit, Fall 2012

 

Friday's dilemma

                               

In class last Friday, we broke up into groups and addressed the question of whether or not The Scarlet Letter is a Christian book or not, and now I’m really curious. No one seemed to be able to settle down on the issue one way or another, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it is a profoundly Christian book, gorgeous and complex (admittedly, a strong case can be made that it isn’t. Speaking personally, I think it is). As I was reading Hawthorne, I kept thinking about Flannery O’Connor, primarily because the two authors paint humanity in such dark, grim colors. Nevertheless, we can certainly recognize O’Connor’s Christianity (even if we question the value of her grotesque portrayals) and do not question that her stories are Christian. Perhaps part of it is just that O’Connor lived in a drastically different time than Hawthorne. Perhaps the two of them lived and wrote on a darker, more somber plane than most do, but I do think there is a profound sense of structure, for lack of a better term, which anchors Hawthorne (and O’Connor, for that matter) into some sort of real interaction with religion. Perhaps Hawthorne’s is not a saving faith, but he nevertheless doesn’t let his readers or his characters fade into the background, excusing their sin, though  he certainly seems to wish them peace, at least. Hawthorne’s best and most sympathetic characters are those who are hopelessly flawed, but still struggling toward the light (I make no excuses for Chillingworth. Hawthorne’s right: prying into a man’s soul is no light injury). 

Someone brought up Heart of Darkness in class as an example of a completely non-Christian book—the thing that keeps The Scarlet Letter from delving into that same nihilism is this idea that, even though Dimmesdale's and Hester's and Chillingworth’s stories are done, THE story goes on. Pearl has a life to live; Hester goes away into other parts of the world, outside the Puritan community. Perhaps, as Sarah said, it is unusual that such an event didn’t turn the Puritan community inside out, but I think that’s one of the story’s strengths. Mankind commits really ghastly sins that should make the world stop turning—creation should reject us as unclean—but it doesn’t, and that’s evidence of God right there. Does that make Hawthorne a Christian? No, it’s there because frankly, one can’t get away from some sort of interaction with God. I don't know if Hawthorne was a believer, but it's important, I think, to draw a distinction between the man and his book. Is it a Christian book? Yes, I do believe it is; it struggles with one of the biggest problems we as Christians have to face: the problem of sin and suffering and the hypocrisy that so muddies the waters of the soul. 

The Interesting Scarlet Letter

 We were asked to discuss the most interesting part of the Scarlet Letter. Well then, what makes a book interesting? I think it is the parts that hold the reader’s attention most thoroughly. What has held my mind most captive throughout the Scarlet Letter is the idea of sin. What is sin? What is its grip upon mankind? This the reader asks himself along with the characters, over and over again as the book evolves. I am not sure even Hawthorne is exactly sure what to make of sin. It is a curse upon the race of mankind, yet there are also beauties that only sin is able to produce. For instance, the beauty of Pearl cannot be separated from the sin of adultery committed between Hester Prynn and Arthur Dimmesdale. Her beauty is bewitching, though and her sweetness can be seen despite her strange passions. Is sin then a mix of good and evil?

 It seems as if Hawthorne were implying that sin can be a good thing. It causes Hester to be the kindest person in the Plymouth colony. It also produces an empathy within Dimmesdale which would not have been seen otherwise. At the same time the sin eats Dimmesdale, tearing him apart piece by piece. But is it the sin that tears him apart? Or is it the hiding of the sin that so destroys his very being? It must be hiding sin that is destructive because Hester is not destroyed by her sin. The wickedness, instead of demolishing Hester, rather smoothes and polishes her into a thing of rare beauty.

The Christian knows that sin is horrible. It is what is destroying and perverting the world continually. It is what first separated man from his creator. Still there is something beautiful in sin because without it we might have known less of the mercy and justice of our God. Because of our great transgression we see His beauty through his acts of redemption. Our wicked hearts are drawn closer to Christ’s holiness as we recognize our evil hearts. Just as Hester and Arthur are perfected in their sin because they recognize it, so are Christians sanctified through their recognition of sin.

 interesting extra thought from class: The Puritans (as portrayed in the Scarlet Letter) are sort of the opposite of this society in their scales and weighting of sin. They view adultery as the highest of possible sins but passing judgment on others as of little consequence. Today we view adultery as insignificant whereas judging others is considered high treason. All societies have viewed some sins as great and others as lesser. It seems also that the one they are most prone to commit is the one they say is the least, whereas the one they are least prone to commit is of greatest import. Thus society provides a sin as a scape goat, something that people can look at and believe that they are better than. The society then continues to go on its way sinning freely and without thought. At least they are not committing the “Great Sin.” This idea of societies weighting sin differently and yet always being guilty of hypocrisy is, I think, very thought provoking.

 Katie Finnell sophomore, 2012

“This is the cause why the Lord loves the creature, so far as it hath any of His image in it; He loves His elect because they are like Himself, He beholds them in His beloved son. So a mother loves her child, because she thoroughly conceives a resemblance of herself in it. Thus it is between the members of Christ. Each discerns, by the work of the spirit, his own image and resemblance in another, and therefore cannot but love him as he loves himself.”
    John Winthrop

The first part of this statement causes me to wonder. Does God really love his creature because they are like him? Can a creature be so bold as to say, “God loves me because he sees himself in me”? Could even a child say, “Mama loves me because I have blue eyes as she does”? I really do not think so. It is true that man has been formed after the image of his creator. He is like God in that he is a spirit; he can reason, think, love. Yet to make such a statement, seems rather bold. We know that God relates with us and loves us. He treats us as his very children. Yet, even though we are like him we have treated him worse than anything possibly could treat its creator. Still he loves us. Never does he tell us that he loves us because we are like him. Rather, he tells us we must try to be more like him because we fall so short.  If we fall so short, can we attempt to claim to know exactly why God loves us? How impudent. We can wonder at his love, and stand in awe of him for his love. But to expound as to why exactly he loves us, we should never attempt. This is a mystery to great for us. Instead of standing boldly proclaiming why he loves us, we should fall at his feet in adoration of his undeserved love, praising him for this beautiful mystery. Anything else is arrogant pride.

















Katie Finnell sophomore, 2012

Fatherhood in the Scarlet Letter

I’ve now read the Scarlet Letter at least three times, and it must truly be a classic because it’s one of those books that never seems to lose its emotive power and I always seem to notice something new about it. This time around, one of the new things that struck me was the societal implications of the novel. There’s a great deal that goes on in a mechanical sense that’s very tied to the spirituality of the book. For instance, I think the familial relationship between Pearl, Hester, and Dimmesdale is very intriguing. It’s an excellent glimpse into the single-parent phenomenon that’s become such an issue in our nation at this time. 

Like many single-parent households, Hester’s is fundamentally broken. We have Dimmesdale, who refuses to acknowledge his parenthood not from a desire for freedom but from a fear of the societal implications of binding himself to a fallen woman. At root, he’s essentially an irresponsible character who won’t take ownership of what he has engendered. Hester does her best without Dimmesdale, but Pearl nevertheless feels the effects of not having a father. Hawthorne makes much of the fact that Pearl is basically a pagan: She does not believe in God. In fact, she can’t even seem to understand what God is. Yet I would point out that Pearl’s paganism is directly tied to the absence of a father figure in her life. She can’t connect to the idea of a Heavenly father because she has no earthly father. This leads her to a sense of “unconnectedness” with her society and her very being. She becomes a sprite, uncertain of her parentage and who she is as a human. A certain perversion ensues from her lack of familial grounding, as Hester notes with increasing dismay. 

If we see Pearl as the driving force (or the litmus test, as Dr. Hake put it), then the somewhat disorderly plot begins to unravel in a more orderly skein. Just as Chillingworth attempts to discover who his wife’s adulterer is, Pearl seeks throughout the whole novel to find her father. She rejects the initial solution (starting over as a family unit somewhere else), because she feels that Dimmesdale still will not take complete ownership of his child. Only at the end, when he confesses his parentage in front of the whole community, does she run to him, kiss him, and become a true child (and eventually a woman). It is implied that Pearl’s spirituality is revived when her sense of parentage is restored. In short, Hawthorne draws a strong (and accurate) connection between fatherhood and spiritual wellbeing. Even today, boys without a father are more likely to adopt a gay lifestyle, just as girls without a father are more likely to seek a father-figure in sexual partners. Hawthorne’s portrayal of Pearl, Hester, and Dimmesdale, therefore, directly foreshadows issues that haunt American society today. 

Hawthorne’s Moral Authority

 

Hawthorne takes the pulsing A

And pins it onto Hester’s chest.

We look upon it constantly

Inside his seamless, rhythmic text.

Does life do this? Does one small thing

Bombard us with persistent theme?

It doesn’t. But we all agree

With Hawthorne’s selectivity.

The scarlet letter in its flame

The reader sears with Hester’s shame.

 

            I speak as an ENFP with an F bigger than France. Hawthorne provokes vicarious feeling, especially when it comes to Hester’s shame. That the didactic Hawthorne so effectively communicates feeling – and not just moral sense – doesn’t surprise me. Hawthorne does more telling than showing – but both his telling and his showing, produce feeling.

            The character of little Pearl some have criticized as implausible. I agree with them to a degree, then throw up my hands and admit that Hawthorne has so much genius he should be allowed to do as he chooses. Even if we cannot believe Pearl completely, we believe that she can capably illustrate whatever Hawthorne intends.

            As Susan Sontag says:

“To be a great writer:

know everything about adjectives and punctuation (rhythm)

have moral intelligence — which creates true authority in a writer.”

            I do wonder to what extent Hawthorne’s diction and rhythmic sense influence the reader’s opinion of his moral authority. As I read The Scarlet Letter I find myself grateful that I never read it in public high school. I would hate to watch my peers form an inaccurate impression of Christianity because of Hawthorne’s apparent moral authority.  In that setting I often felt the weight of defending Christianity (being, quite often, the only saint sitting in the room). I don’t know if I could have, at that time, defended the Puritans against Hawthorne’s apparent moral intelligence. Although Hawthorne’s moral intelligence is not apparent merely – for he rightly depicts Hester Prynne’s need for mercy. But he causes trouble in blaming Hester’s problems on society and not on her sin.

 

Chelsea Kolz, Fall 2012, Senior, The Scarlet Letter

I was quite surprised to come into class last week after reading Washington Irving and find that the class immediately put “Rip Van Winkle” on trial for failing to say anything.

It is like Billy Collins’s assessment of students reading poetry:

           

“I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

           waving at the author's name on the shore.

 

But all they want to do

 is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

 

They begin beating it with a hose

            to find out what it really means.”

 I didn’t know how to answer the suggestion that Irving presented no clear moral. While reading I forgot to demand one of it. I accepted the story like folk art, believing it must have truth because it rung true and sounded as though an honest human had made it. Irving’s writing – his apparently perfect diction, his flawless rhythm and careful construction – nourishes the ear, eye, and mind. It transports the reader.

And Rip’s sin – minding everyone’s business but his own – is lesson enough for me. I do occasionally come to the realization that I would get three times as much work done if I simply stopped talking. May I not soon forget Rip’s lesson in industry.

And if we seek morals, we must not forget the benefits we glean from the bad example of Van Winkle’s pestilential wife. Her exaggerated nature hardly smacks of disrespect to the whole gender. It rather echoes the Bible: “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.” Irving’s paraphrase, perhaps: “It is better to sleep for decades and have your rifle rust and your house abandoned and your dog turn evil than to live with Dame Van Winkle."

 

Chelsea Kolz

"Rip Van Winkle

Senior

Fall Semester 2012

 

 

 

 

Gospel upon a hill

Is it worthwhile to seek to redeem a culture? Winthrop, with his “city upon a hill” doctrine, apparently believes so. I wonder, however, if seeking to create a “Christian culture” is even desirable. As far as perfecting a culture goes – we know that that is unachievable. But should we, in good, christian perseverance and hope, dredge onward as far as we can go? Even if that be only the halfway point. Should we push through? Should we drag the culture as far as we can towards christianization as we can and then still pull, knowing that we will never arrive at the finish line?

I don't think so.

The world is not “Christian.” Allowing it to pretend to be isn't veracious and I doubt it is at all helpful. Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to western culture is that Nietzsche rained on our moral parade. No more pretending to have moral capital without moral foundations being allowed. No more operating off of “Christian” morals and pretending that Christianity has nothing to do with it. Take it or leave it.

I don't say this because I don't think it's good and helpful when people do the right thing even when they don't have any kind of rational reason for doing so. I think they should. As Dr. Hake says, pagans are often better than their worldview. I hope they continue to be. Yet, I also believe that the line between paganism and christianity is as stark as the line tearing the veil in two. And seeking to blur that line only blinds the world to the fact that it exists.

As an alternative, perhaps we should instead try to create a culture that loves beauty and good when it sees it, rather than a culture that pretends to be good when it isn't.

 A city with the Gospel upon a hill.

- Sarah Betts, Junior, Fall 2012

            

             I like Anne Bradstreet, I confess, because she has done that good deed that many American poets do: She has kept her margins wide and her words between them short. I love brevity in writing. I think this disease I have- short attention – is supposed to be a personal flaw rather than a mere symptom of living in a distracted generation. But anyway, I have it.

            Also Anne Bradstreet’s introductory material contains one dashing sentence that I marked in yellow: “After her marriage she continued writing.” My two favorite things, writing and marriage, meet in one 16-year-old American girl who has big margins and skinny words!

And her marriage, I mention, must have found stabilization in the devotion that Bradstreet confesses in the poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” 

I get out my spade and dig: I like the poem’s clean words. But it doesn’t stick as hard to me as other poems have done. One line, in particular, I find a little grating: “Compare with me, ye women, if you can.” To me this line feels like Rachel gloating over Leah.

I like Bradstreet’s statement that “Thy love is such I can no way repay.” The kind of love she appears to have focuses on her husband rather than herself. That a woman should celebrate a man refreshes me. In our generation, women (I think) have a unique opportunity to glorify God and shape culture simply by giving honor to men as God has designed them to. Wives have the privilege of changing the world by honoring their husbands.

As to the last two lines - which Bradstreet has given extra feet and whose antiquated rhyme makes our eyebrows knit and our tongues stumble – I think she should be allowed them by virtue of her far removal in history.

 

 

Chelsea Kolz

Senior

"To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet

Fall 2012

Reading Jonathan Edwards’s “Personal Narrative” and listening to his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” brought back many memories of lying in bed as a child, wrestling with God. I didn’t recognize the fervor of the experience until I saw it reflected in Edwards as in a mirror. It brought back that point in my life at which the Bible ceased appearing to me merely as black type on white paper and started to breathe. God’s Spirit brought about some similar soul-cries in the two of us, separated by centuries.

Edwards says, “It has often appeared sweet to me, to be united to Christ; to have him for my head, and to be a member of his body.” For some reason it seems that this love exhibits itself most strongly immediately post-conversion. That the fervor should diminish saddens me, and I pray against it.

            The introductory material mentioned that Edwards’s parishioners felt exaltation “when they experienced delight in God’s sovereignty.” Might this strike many members of our current culture as counter-intuitive? Should God’s sovereignty produce delight?

            I sometimes fondly call my home “Arminian county.” There, preaching often focuses on man’s efforts to attain God’s favor. At about the age of 12 I first started hearing preaching that focused on the bigness and the ability of God. Nothing was more exciting. Not only did my own salvation not depend on me, but I could identify in God a reality great enough to consume me. Glorifying him, I found, was a worthy end. The Bible, no longer a book of heroes who had “done the right thing” but rather a book about God’s greatness and grace, became delicious to me. I loved, as Edwards did, to be united to Christ, to have him for my head, and to be united to his body.

 

Chelsea Kolz

Jonathan Edwards

Senior

Fall Semester 2012

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