Paper no. 108 assignment

Paper no.108 American Literature

Topic: Symbolism in For whom the Bell tolls

Name:Pandya Mayuri

Roll no.14

Enroll no.4069206420210023

Email id: pandyamayuri0610@gmail.com

Batch:2021 to 2023

Submitted to: S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a 

newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer’s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman’s journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.

Hemingway – himself a great sportsman – liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters – tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.

Introduction of novel

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.

It was published just after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), whose general lines were well known at the time. It assumes the reader knows that the war was between the government of the Second Spanish Republic, which many foreigners went to Spain to help and which was supported by the Communist Soviet Union, and the Nationalist faction, which was supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In 1940, the year the book was published, the United States had not yet entered the Second World War, which had begun on September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.

The novel is regarded as one of Hemingway's best works, along with The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway uses symbols in For Whom the Bell Tolls to represent the essence of the relationships between major characters in the novel, the vulnerability they experience in hiding, and their physical environment.

Symbolism in For whom the Bell Tolls

Rabbit

In Spain rabbits are commonly used as meat, so they represent nourishment. Pilar cooks rabbit stews for the guerrillas, and they "eat like generals." Rabbits are also sweet little creatures, so in addition to calling Maria guapa, meaning "beautiful," Robert Jordan also calls her "little rabbit," a term of endearment. Both references appear frequently in the novel. However the term "rabbit" is also used to represent the vulnerability of the guerrillas in the mountains. The peasants are hunted down like rabbits, meaning that they are easy prey.

Pines

Pines are part of the landscape in the Spanish Pyrenees, and they serve as protection for the guerrillas, shielding them from gunfire and keeping them out of sight. The ground is covered with pine needles, and they can either cushion a person who is hiding or they can get into one's weaponry, bags, and clothing. The smell of the pines is everywhere in the mountains, and Robert Jordan also enjoys the beauty of the sunlight through the pines to keep him occupied as he waits for the perfect moment to shoot a sentry. As a symbol the pine needles provide a connection to nature and the land of Spain, with which Robert Jordan has a physical relationship that mirrors his relationship with Maria.

Sleeping Robe

The sleeping robe is one of Robert Jordan's prized possessions, and it is extremely warm. Jordan uses it to sleep outside the cave. When Maria comes to make love to him under the sleeping robe, it represents safety and the warmth of their love. At the end of each full day in the novel, they are again safe in each other's arms under the sleeping robe.

Planes

The guerrillas in the mountains are only armed with explosives and guns, but the Fascists are heavily armed thanks to help from other countries. The planes bombing El Sordo on the hill are an example of how unprepared the disorganized Republicans are in fighting such a powerful enemy. Planes are also able to see all of the people hiding below, so for the guerrillas, they represent the vulnerability of hiding in the woods and the hopelessness of being so vulnerable to attack.

Absinthe

Robert Jordan’s flask of absinthe (a green liqueur flavored with anise, a substance similar to licorice) embodies his deep appreciation for sensory pleasures—food, drink, smells, touch, sex, and so on. For Robert Jordan, absinthe “[takes] the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafés, of all the chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month . . . of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten.” Although Robert Jordan uses absinthe to buy trust and build relationships with the guerrilla fighters, he cannot help begrudging every drop. In the novel’s wartime setting, absinthe represents the attitude that one should take advantage of carnal or sensory pleasures while one has the chance.

 

 

First, death is a primary preoccupation of the novel. When Robert Jordan is assigned to blow up the bridge, he knows that he will not survive it. Pablo and El Sordo, leaders of the Republican guerrilla bands, see that inevitability also. Almost all of the main characters in the book contemplate their own deaths. Before the operation, Pilar reads Robert Jordan's palm, and after seeing it, refuses to comment on what she saw, foreshadowing his untimely demise. Throughout For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway characterizes suicide as an act of cowardice by associating it with characters who are vulnerable or lack strength of spirit. A number of characters contemplate suicide: Karkov always carries pills to use to kill himself if he is ever captured, and Maria carries around a razor blade for the same purpose. Robert Jordan’s father committed suicide, an act that Robert Jordan says he understands but nonetheless condemns. The traits of these characters who contemplate suicide connect the act of suicide to weakness. Robert Jordan’s father is characterized as weak, Maria is young and female, and Karkov is a man of ideas, not action. At the end of the novel, Robert Jordan contemplates suicide but rejects the idea, preferring to struggle to stay awake despite the pain. Robert Jordan’s reliance on inner strength in his rejection of suicide contrasts the othercharacters’ weakness, which demonstrates that the will to continue living requires psychological strength. Second, sacrifice in the face of death abound throughout the novel. Robert Jordan, Anselmo and others are ready to do "as all good men should" – that is, to make the ultimate sacrifice. The oft-repeated embracing gesture reinforces this sense of close companionship in the face of death. An incident involving the death of the character Joaquín's family serves as an example of this theme; having learned of this tragedy, Joaquín's comrades embrace and comfort him, saying they now are his family. Surrounding this love for one's comrades is the love for the Spanish soil. A love of place, of the senses, and of life itself is represented by the pine needle forest floor, both at the beginning and, poignantly, at the end of the novel, when Robert Jordan awaits his death feeling "his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest." Suicide always looms as an alternative to suffering. Many of the characters, including Robert Jordan, would prefer death over capture and are prepared to kill themselves, be killed, or kill to avoid it. As the book ends, Robert Jordan, wounded and unable to travel with his companions, awaits a final ambush that will end his life. He prepares himself against the cruel outcomes of suicide to avoid capture, or inevitable torture for the extraction of information and death at the hands of the enemy. Still, he hopes to avoid suicide partly because his father, whom he views as a coward, committed suicide. Robert Jordan understands suicide but doesn't approve of it, and thinks that "you have to be awfully occupied with yourself to do a thing like that." Robert Jordan resolves these tensions at the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, in his final moments as he faces death. He accepts himself as a man of action rather than thought, as a man who believes in practicality rather than abstract theories. He understands that the war requires him to do some things that he does not believe in. He also realizes that, though he cannot forget the unsavory deeds he has done in the past, he must avoid dwelling on them for the sake of getting things done in the present. Ultimately, Robert Jordan is able to make room in his mind for both his love for Maria and his military mission. By the end of the novel, just before he dies, his internal conflicts and tensions are resolved and he feels “integrated” into the world. . . . You felt that you were taking part in a crusade. . . . It would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as a religious experience and yet it was authentic. . . . It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. (1827 WORDS)

Work cite

telaumbanua, faehusi, editor. https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/276188-an-analysis-of-symbols-in-spanish-civil-d06690ed.pdf.

Hemingway, Ernest. “For Whom The Bell Tolls: Symbols.” SparkNotes, 

Hemingway, Ernest. “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls. Accessed 7 May 2022.https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/belltolls/symbols/. Accessed 7 May 2022.

White, William, and Philip Young. “Ernest Hemingway – Biographical - NobelPrize.org.” Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/hemingway/biographical/. Accessed 7 May 2022.

Paper no. 107 assignment

Paper no.107 Twentieth century Literature

from:World War 2 to the end of century

Topic: 1984 as a Dystopian Novel

Name:Pandya Mayuri

Roll no.14

Enroll no.4069206420210023

Email id: pandyamayuri0610@gmail.com

Batch:2021 to 2023

Submitted to: S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU.

Eric Arthur Blair

 (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.

Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture.

Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, before returning to Suffolk, England, where he began his writing career as George Orwell—a name inspired by a favorite location, the River Orwell. He lived from occasional pieces of journalism, and also worked as a teacher or bookseller whilst living in London. From the late 1920s to the early 1930s, his success as a writer grew and his first books were published. He was wounded fighting in the Spanish Civil War, leading to his first period of ill health on return to England. During the Second World War he worked as a journalist and for the BBC. The publication of Animal Farm led to fame during his life-time. During the final years of his life he worked on 1984, and moved between Jura in Scotland and London

Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime".[3][4] In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Introduction of Novel

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also stylised as 1984) is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society.Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the totalitarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.

The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, ruled by the Party, who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking.Big Brother, the dictatorial leader of Oceania, enjoys an intense cult of personality, manufactured by the party's excessive brainwashing techniques. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker at the Ministry of Truth and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He expresses his dissent by writing in a diary and later enters into a forbidden relationship with his colleague Julia and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", and "2 + 2 = 5". Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes Time included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005,and it was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list, reaching number 13 on the editors' list and number 6 on the readers' list. In 2003, it was listed at number eight on The Big Read survey by the BBC.

 

1984 as a Dystopian Novel

What is Dystopia

Dystopia is utopia's polarized mirror image. While utilizing many of the same concepts as utopia—for example, social stability created by authoritarian regimentation—dystopia reads these ideas pessimistically. Dystopia angrily challenges utopia's fundamental assumption of human perfectibility, arguing that humanity's inherent flaws negate the possibility of constructing perfect societies, except for those that are perfectly hellish. Dystopias are solely fictional, presenting grim, oppressive societies—with the moralistic goal of preventing the horrors they illustrate.

 A single literary work serves as the origin for both utopia and dystopia, the latter by critical examination of the social structures it presents as desirable and good. Thomas More's Utopia (1516) depicts a fictitious country named for Utopus, its first conqueror. Having reshaped a savage land into an ideal society through planning and reason, King Utopus's benevolent reign fulfills Plato's ideal of the philosopher-king expressed in The Republic (c. 400 b.c.e.). Derived from the Greek ou ("not" or "no") and topos (place), a utopia is "no place," a land that does not exist. In addition to its social structure, utopia's pronunciation irresistibly suggests "eutopia" (eu topos ), a "good place" free from civil conflict and social inequality—so a utopia is a good place that does not exist, but which is shown to be possible through social engineering.

By contrast, a dystopia (dis topos ) is a "bad place," deliberately written to frighten the reader; the fact that it, too, is fictitious offers scant comfort, because it is equally possible. More's fictive land has eliminated most class distinctions, but with a concomitant loss of individual freedom and artistic creativity. John Stuart Mill used the term "dystopia" as early as 1868 (Hansard Commons, 12 March) but critics struggled for much of the twentieth century with such unwieldy terminology as "anti-utopia," "utopian satire," "reverse utopias, negative utopias, inverted utopias, regressive utopias, cacoutopias … non-utopias, satiric utopias, and … nasty utopias" (Lewis, p. 27), to say nothing of "George Knox's 'sour utopias in the apocalyptic mode' and George Woodcock's 'negative quasi-Utopias'" (Aldridge, p. 5). Given this confusing proliferation of generic labels, J. Max Patrick may be forgiven for believing that he created the term dystopia in 1952 as the appropriate categorization for Joseph Hall's 1605 Mundus Alter et Idem (Negley and Patrick, p. 298). Patrick unquestionably picked the winner, and dystopia has eclipsed these other labels as the term of choice for a burgeoning literary genre. As dystopian fiction has become more widespread and popular since the end of World War II, critics have grown comfortable in classifying dystopias based on their own generic qualities, rather than explicitly by contrasting them against utopias. The term dystopia has also grown more familiar and is commonly used to refer to any dark or unpleasant future. Finally, by the end of the twentieth century, critics seemed to have abandoned  the effort to segregate dystopia from science fiction, the larger literary 

1984 Dystopian novel

George Orwell’s 1984 is a defining example of dystopian fiction in that it envisions a future where society is in decline, totalitarianism has created vast inequities, and innate weaknesses of human nature keep the characters in a state of conflict and unhappiness. Unlike utopian novels, which hold hope for the perfectibility of man and the possibility of a just society, dystopian novels like 1984 imply that the human race will only get worse if man’s lust for power and capacity for cruelty go uncorrected.

In 1984, characters live in fear of wars, government surveillance, and political oppression of free speech. The London of the novel is dirty and crumbling, with food shortages, exploding bombs, and miserable citizens. The government is an all-powerful force of oppression and control, and crushes the characters’ identities and dreams. This dystopian vision of the future, written thirty-five years before the year the novel is set, suggests that man’s inherent nature is corrupt and repressive. Orwell wrote the book in the aftermath of World War II and the rise of fascism in Germany and the Soviet Union, a Dystopian fiction usually works backward from the present to find an explanation for the fictional society’s decline, and thus to provide a commentary on the reader’s society or a warning of how the future could turn out. In 1984, as Winston works to acquire objects from the past, find spaces without telescreens or microphones in them, and recover memories of the time before the Party, Orwell provides the reader with glimpses of how Winston’s society came to be. We learn about a nuclear war, a revolution, mass famines, and a period of consolidation of power by the Party.

Dystopian novels explore the effects of oppression and totalitarianism on the individual psyche as well as how the individual functions in a repressive society. Winston’s trouble retrieving and trusting his memories illustrates the way the Party has corrupted his emotional life as well as his daily existence, asking the reader to question the nature of memory and individual consciousness. By suggesting that Winston is initially complacent because he can’t remember whether or not life was better and he was happier before the Revolution, the book examines the importance of memory in creating a sense of self.

The first title for this novel was The last man in Europe, but Orwell changed it because Frederic Warburg, publisher, suggested him to do so. It's unknown why he has chosen the title 1984, there is presumption that he might have been switched the numbers( he began writing it in 1948).

The story occurs in London, a province of the state Oceania. Beside Oceania, there are two more totalitarian states that controlled world, Eurasia and Eastasia.

Oceania is a totalitarian state ruled by a group The Party which leader and dictator is Big Brother (resembles Joseph Stalin). Posters of "Big Brother" with the slogan BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU can be found everywhere. Public thought is guided with slogans: War is Piece, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. Oceania's citizens are divided into three classes- The Inner Party, The Outer Party, and the Proles, they have no right either to a personal life or to personal thoughts, his memory is quite cancelled, the past is considered as something to forget. The Party monitored the citizens through Ministry of True. The Thought Police has set hidden microphones, telescines in all living quarters and in every public area how they can find and spy thought criminals. Children are also thought to spy their parents and report their suspected thoughts. In the Oceania, there are four ministries: Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Plenty, Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Love, in Newspeak : Minipax, Miniplenty, Minitrue and Miniluv. Newspeak is the minimalist artificial language invented by The Party.

The protagonist is Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, who lives in London and works in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to change historical information, destroy evidence, amend newspaper article and delete people identified as unperson by the Party, all that in order to portray the Party and Big Brother right and correct. He hates the government and he begins writing a diary in which he reveals his anti-government thoughts. The proles, the lowest class in the society who live without police surveillance fascinate him. He becomes friend with the the prole who owns a shop, Mr. Charrington, with whom he talk about the facts and life before the rule of Big Brother. She meets Julia, a worker in another department in the Ministry of Truth, who gives him a paper telling him that she loves him. They secretly begin a romantic relationship, renting the unmonitored room above Mr. Charrington's shop where they can meet and talk about their hopes of freedom.

One day, O' Brien, a member of the Inner Party, approaches Winston and in order to prove his contact with the Brotherhood - opponents of the Party dedicated to fighting Big Brother -gives him a copy of 'The book", a document written by the Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood. While Winston and Julia are reading the book in the rented room, the Thought Police arrive there and arrest them. Then, he realizes that Mr. Charrington is a Thought Police agent. They are taken to the Ministry of Love and separately interrogated there. O'Brien, who is actually a government agent, tortures and brainwashes him to accept and believe in Party doctrine. After his release, he becomes a valid member of society who loves only Big Brother.  (2244 WORDS)

Works Cited

Blair, Eric, et al. “George Orwell.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell. Accessed 7 May 2022.

Orwell, George. “Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) - Dystopian Novel Description.” Utopia and Dystopia, http://www.utopiaanddystopia.com/dystopian-literature/nineteen-eighty-four/. Accessed 7 May 2022.

Orwell, George. “1984: Literary Context Essay.” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/context/literary/1984-and-the-dystopian-novel/. Accessed 7 May 2022.

Sisk, David. “Dystopia.” Encyclopedia.com, 21 May 2018, https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia. Accessed 7 May 2022.