In The Problem of China, Russell demonstrated that Chinese civilization owns the strengths such as (1) pacific temper which seeks to settle disputes on grounds of justice rather than by force and (2) passivity and conservativeness based on the undoubtable confidence on traditional civilization. There are also several evils in Chinese civilization, which include (1) being callous and indifferent to the pain and suffering of others, (2) being coward and in a comparative lack of active courage, and (3) great avarice for money.
Russell also pointed out that Western civilization comes from three sources: (1) Greek culture, (2) Jewish religion and ethics, and (3) modern industrialism as the outcome of modern science. Russell believed that many evils exist in Western civilization, including (1) Restlessness and pugnacity, (2) feeling discontent about the whole lives, (3) being prevented from the enjoyment of beauty, and (4) being almost incapable of the contemplative virtues. According to Russell, science and technology is the only way in which Western civilization is superior to Chinese civilization.
From my perspective, although Russell truly has some valuable insights in the observation of Chinese, it is undeniable that his view of Chinese tradition and culture had some understandably inaccurate and unsatisfactory aspects and I want to emphasize Russell’s misunderstanding of Confucianism’s role in the formation of Chinese virtues.
While Russell highly praised traditional Chinese virtues, he ignores its deep origin from Chinese civilization. In Russell’s opinion, Confucianism is actually a code of civilized behavior rather than a typical traditional religion. He admired the most parts of Confucianism, but he disliked filial piety and the strength of the family generally and criticizes them as “the weakest point in Confucian ethics”. He showed his praise of almost all the behavior defined in the Confucian system, including self-control, moderation, courtesy, not being carried away by excessive emotions, and so on. Based on these findings, he believed that the attractive Chinese virtues, such as patience and tolerance, are the good results of the Confucian system.
However, I want to argue that Russell failed to reveal that those Chinese virtues are actually the characters of Confucianism rooted in filial piety, which is, commented by Russell himself, “departed seriously from common sense”. Since Confucianism is not a religion, Confucius created a strict code of ethics that teaches people how to behave properly under certain circumstances instead of forcing people to observe religious dogma strictly. Moreover, the goal of the code of ethics in Confucianism is to lead a harmonious and peaceful atmosphere across the society, rather than to pursue the holiness of personal morality or the happiness in the future world. As a result, Chinese people are not forced by Confucianism to cultivate Chinese virtues that mentioned above — they are guided by the social order defined by Confucian system, which naturally leads to the cultivation of so-called Chinese virtues. Filial piety and the strength of the family, among all the concepts in Confucianism, plays a significant role in constructing the basic order of traditional Chinese society. Consequently, filial piety has non-negligible effects on the formation of Chinese virtues, and Russell ignored such important facts due to his superficial understanding of Chinese civilization. It is a far-reaching misunderstanding, because it heavily affects Russell’s understanding of the nature of Chinese virtues, and relevant opinions or advices are also influenced as well.
Russell presented this view in Chapter XI where he is discussing about the comparison between Chinese and Western civilization.
From my perspective, no matter progress is achieved or not, it is always worth-while to seek progress, which is by no means harmful to mankind. As an individual, if we want to pursue happiness, it is important to keep active and continue to make progress throughout our lives. For a whole society, progress should occur in different aspects to promote the improvement of society, which is also meaningful and beneficial for all the members in the society. It is also Russell’s opinion elsewhere, in which he declared that although there is no final goal for human institutions, it is always better for institutions to encourage progress both individual and societal. So, here comes the question: why did Russell change his mind about “progress” in The Problem of China? To answer this question, I want to discuss about the reason why Russell has a special preference for one of Chinese virtues: passivity and conservativeness, and why he disliked so much about “progress”. I will also try to cast light on the question that what the “desirable goal” in Russell’s mind was.
Russell himself explained why passivity and conservativeness exist in Chinese civilization and pointed out that Chinese believed that what they own now is already excellent and more progress is just unnecessary. Such explanation seems untenable since science and technology in China at that time is in urgent need of progress, but it is reasonable to take this explanation as a criticism for Western industrialism. Although progress of Western countries in politics, science and technology is huge in a few decades, people’s feeling of happiness does not improve, or even decline to some extent. After the destruction of World War I, Russell, who was an internationally known pacifist, blamed such tragedy to the progress of industrialism in the West. In contrast to westerners, Chinese people, who are still far away from industrialism, are leading a peaceful and self-sufficient life, all of which seems to be better than the savage growth of industry and brutal wars. As a result, when Russell called the progress as “restless change”, he was actually warning us about the evil and destructive aspects of industrialism; and when Russell referred to “desirable goal”, he was talking about some improvements that is irrelevant to material or industry — it is about people’s feeling of happiness, freedom and equality of society and welfare for the whole mankind.
It seems pretty reasonable that although Confucianism is not a good guidance for social structure, it is beneficial for us to maintain some of moral concepts, which should be considered as a practice of leaving out the dross and preserving the essence. However, there is still one question that needs to answer: can science and technology from the West and native Chinese moral virtues exist at the same time peacefully? My answer to this question is, sadly, NO, and I will explain it later.
Russell was fully aware of what the Chinese situation is in 1921 and he thought that such situation is caused by the weakness of Chinese military. In order to solve the problems, importing science and technology from West is a must, but Russell suggested Chinese people to retain traditional Chinese moral virtues while learning science and technology. In fact, he realized that some parts of traditional Chinese civilization, which is outdated and harmful, should be eliminated, but he thought that this process should be limited and Chinese people should only learn modern knowledge instead of culture and values from the West.
It is such a fascinating idea that both modern technologies and traditional virtues can be preserved. However, development of industry in China not only needs advanced knowledge, talents and technologies, but also requires huge changes in Chinese morals. As is discussed in Question One, Chinese virtues, which was praised highly by Russell, are actually growing from filial piety and the strength of the family. Filial piety, which plays a significant role in constructing ancient Chinese society, emphasizes much about the family ethic and cares little about the public spirit. It worked well in the past since all the public space are family-governed by the emperor of China, and public spirit seemed to be useless consequently. But, when modern industry started developing across China, public spirit is in great need, and Chinese people are in urge to find a new spiritual dependence of a modern man to replace Confucianism and deeply reform Chinese society. As a result, traditional virtues can not be preserved as long as industry starts developing and modern society starts building.
Nonetheless, Russell is opposite to the above conclusion that, as he wrote in The Problem of China, there is nothing hostile to the spread of science and technology in China, although the progress of science has been slow for a long time. However, it is probably incorrect that Chinese civilization is good for the development of science and technology — if so, why would the progress of science be so slow during a long time period, which is much longer than western countries? We can actually make a short analysis about why Western civilization is more suitable for the development of modern science. Firstly, Plato’s philosophy of ideas provided a spirit of reason for the basis of modern science, which encourages people to use reason to solve realistic problems. Secondly, Galileo defined modern science as a result of the combination of empirical observation, mathematical reasoning and theoretical construction, which becomes the overall framework for modern science research and technology development. Craftsmen in ancient China, in contrast, had developed advanced and feasible technologies to solve practical problems, but failed to construct any theoretical framework which would possibly turn into the germ of modern science. A possible explanation to this phenomenon is that traditional Chinese civilization emphasizes much on practical value and cares little about theoretical value, under which circumstances ancient Chinese developed plentiful practical technologies but knew little about the theoretical basis of these technologies. As a result, traditional Chinese virtues are naturally inconsistent with modern science, and Russell’s advice is just not practical in Chinese society.
It is obvious that we have achieved huge progress in many aspects of social development. But, whether you admit it or not, we are losing more and more traditional Chinese virtues in the past few decades. If you agree with my above answers, you may find out that such loss is inevitable since there remains natural conflicts between modern society and traditional civilization. However, it does not mean that we can only adapt to Western civilization; it is quite important to build a new Chinese civilization as our new spiritual dependence. The most famous and influential example is New Confucianism, which advocates for certain Confucianist elements of society – such as social, ecological, and political harmony – to be applied in a contemporary context in synthesis with Western philosophies such as rationalism and humanism. This philosophy is recognized as a response to the increasing social injustice and inequality emerging in mainland Chinese society as a result of unchecked economic growth, and the concept of Harmonious Society, which is very popular recently in mainland China, also derives from new Confucianism. Such practice can be seen as a meaningful practice to build a new Chinese civilization as well as an answer to the title of this paper:
Shall Chinese virtues be preserved?
Yes, but please in a clever way.
]]> 美感不是一种认识,而是一种体验。这种体验具有直接性,因为它是和观赏者的生命、生活的各个方面相联系而不可分割的。这种体验还具有一种整体性,因为它不包含任何肢解的、需要解释的部分,而是在整个过程中都是一个统一的意义整体。正如伽达默尔在《真理与方法》里所写,“审美经验不仅是一种与其他体验相并联的体验,而且代表了一般体验的本质类型。”
王夫之也通过“现量”这一概念来阐释了“美感是一种体验”这个命题。在佛教因明学理论里,有“比量”和“现量”两个概念,其中“比量”是指通过思考获得的知识,而“现量”则是不需要思考、不能被语言描述的感觉1。王夫之在《相宗络索》里引进了因明学理论里的“现量”概念,并针对它做出了如下阐释:“‘现量’,‘现’者有‘现在’义,有‘现成’义,有‘显现真实’义。‘现在’,不缘过去作影;‘现成’,一触即觉,不假思量计较;‘显现真实’,乃彼之体性本自如此,显现无疑,不参虚妄。”(《相宗络索》)
本文旨在从美感的角度来对王夫之的“现量”学说进行分析,包括“现在”、“现成”和“显现真实”三个方面的内容。
王夫之解释“现在”为“不缘过去作影”。从美感的角度来看,这指出了美感具有的直接性。所谓“不缘过去作影”,就是指当下直接的感兴,而不是任何需要借助过去的知识或者经验来推理分析得到的东西。在王夫之的笔下,经常出现“身之所历,目之所及”、“心目之所及”这样的表述,而心和眼睛都是在直接经历里非常重要的要素,因此这些表述就是在强调当下直接的感兴。
事实上,王夫之提出的这一点受到了中国禅宗思想的影响。禅宗十分强调当下直接的体验。根据《坛经》记载,有人问六祖慧能如何达到西方净土世界,六组复曰:“西方刹那间,目前可见。”西方净土世界就在这一刹那,在眼前就可以看见,这包含了禅宗所看重的“顿悟”,即人不需要考虑未来与过去的种种,只需要摆脱时间的束缚,关注刹那间当下最直接的感受,进入到一个没有时间的状态;西方净土世界不需要如何去求,在摆脱时间的这一刹那就可以见到。更著名的一个有关“庭前柏树子”的公案(课件中提到),老师告诉学生“不将境示人”,在学生一再重复的提问下,老师也只是重复着回答“庭前柏树子。”这个公案实则包含两层涵义:一,佛法是不可闻、不可说、超逻辑的,通过问与辩是得不到的;二,佛法不存在于这个世界之外,不是一个有逻辑性的抽象的东西,而是在眼前的活生生而意蕴丰满的世界里,在当下的直接感兴里。因此,美感就是“现在”,它不是一种抽象的逻辑概念,而是当下的直接感兴所显现的一个世界。
但是当下的直接感兴又如何能够呈现整个意义丰满的世界呢?王夫之认为,当下的刹那并非是一个孤立的中断,而是与过去与将来都有着深刻联系的一个存在。胡塞尔在《现象学的观念》里也指出,“绝对不可能有一个孤立的‘现在’……任何‘现在’必然有一个‘预持’(前伸)……以及一个‘保持’(重伸)……它们的交织构成具体的时刻。”过去其实并没有过去,未来也一定会到来,这两者都在我们的念想中;这一念就出现在当下的刹那,而刹那把过去、现在、未来都统一在了一个完整的世界里。所以,一个审美的人生需要“把玩”现在,而不必为过去或者未来而放弃当下,因为当下的刹那包含了过去、现在和未来,这是一个非常丰富、充实、值得被把握住的世界。在这一刹那,时间超出了自身,事物间的非连续性都被打破了,因此世界成为了一个活生生的整体,人也能够超出自身而融于世界,而人生才能拥有更多的价值与意义,而不仅仅是过眼云烟。
所以,审美体验的“现在”特性,不仅仅是一个当下的瞬间与停滞,更是一个具有连续性和历史性的刹那,过去、现在与未来成为了一个生动的整体,也就是“瞬间即永恒”。
王夫之解释“现成”为“一触即觉,不假思量计较”。所谓“一触即觉”,就是通过直觉而非理性而生成一个意蕴丰盛的世界。这种直觉关注的是对世界的一种感性认识的存在,而这种直觉的目标就是通过对外部世界的感性关照获得对其内在神韵的了解。这样的关照是十分迅速的,因为审美直觉不需要抽象概念的参与,也不会以概念的形式呈现在观赏者面前。
这与讲求逻辑的科学直觉是存在区别的。在科学研究中,人们看到的是现象,但关注点往往是放在现象背后的原理与一般规律,其目的与追求也是如此。但是,当人们遇到一朵花时,人们不会在意它究竟是哪一种花,不会纠结于有关这朵花的逻辑分析,而是会充分地去欣赏它的美。在审美直觉里,人们的关注点、目的与追求都是对事物的感性认识,并且要求掌握这种感性认识的“全部丰富性与多样性”(卡西尔《人论》)。
要拥有这样的“丰富性与多样性”,单纯的观察与感知也是不够的,它需要观赏者拥有一定的想象能力。胡塞尔认为,既是一个简单的东西,也要靠想象才能成为一个“东西”。也就是说,想要通过审美直觉获得对于整个世界的感兴认知,想要让一个存在物得到“敞亮”、“澄明”(张世英《哲学导论》),想象力是必不可少的。这种想象力依托于人们的智慧、人生体验、社会情境而存在,让人们获得事物更为丰富的感性认识。
这一点与康德有关美的分析里的第二契机比较类似。康德认为,审美判断不是一个理性的、逻辑的判断,而是一个情感的判断;它想要获得的不是知识,而是一种感觉。审美判断是主观的,同时不涉及概念,因此重要的是当下的心境与内心状态而非逻辑分析。同时,康德也强调,要想实现这种心境与内心状态,观赏者必须具备两种认知能力,即想象力和知解力。想象力使得观赏者可以自由地将各个感性因素连接起来,而知解力可以让观赏者把多种形象显现统一起来;观赏者只有拥有了这两种能力(人类的“共同感觉力”),才能实现自由地审美。因此,“美是不涉及概念而普遍地使人愉快的”。可以看到,两位东西方思想家在对美感与审美进行分析时,虽然思维模式不同,但是思想也有几分相似,这大概就是人类智慧的共通之处。
王夫之解释“显现真实”为“彼之体性本自如此,显现无疑,不参虚妄”。这表明了审美活动与审美体验的真正意义所在。审美就是要在刹那间把一个本然的、真实的生活世界的样子呈现出来,实现“美”与“真”的统一。这种审美体验是一种瞬间的直觉,它创造出了一个充满意蕴的完整的意象世界,并且以此来照亮现实世界。因此,这种审美体验是一种和生命、人生紧密相连的经验,是一种“显现真实”的过程。通过这样的过程,人回到了和世界本然的一种相处关系,即找到了一个栖居的家园。
“现量”本是佛教术语,而王夫之在《瑜伽师地论》和陈那对“现量”的阐释的基础之上,进行整理调合,形成了自己对“现量”的解释2。根据本文对“现量”学说的分析理解,可以发现,“现量”学说与现代美学理论有着诸多相通之处,在美学领域拥有相当的理论高度,并且至今还保有丰富的魅力和价值。
As the father of modern short story, detective story, and psychoanalytic criticism, Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous American writers. He created many popular works, and The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the most famous short stories he has produced. This study aims to clarify the connotation of each character, discuss the correlation between different characters and give a new interpretation of the story from an anti-racist perspective. The results showed that the connotation of each character is very rich and the correlation between characters is complicated, both of which are significant if we try to interpret the story from certain angle. These results also supported that the story is a metaphor for the inevitable collapse of slavery in America in nineteenth century. Based on these findings, I hope to find out more meaningful details which may help me revise my points of view and try to use some new and effective theoretical frameworks to do deeper analysis on the novel.
Keywords: The Fall of the House of Usher; characters; connotation; correlation; anti-racist perspective
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous American writers and The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the most well-known short stories among Poe’s works. John H. Timmerman points out that “The Fall of the House of Usher is among those few stories that seem to elicit nearly as many critical interpretations as it has readers.” (Timmerman, 2003) Gothic style and strong tension throughout the plot provide the story great charm, which makes it one of the most representative horror fictions.
The novel mainly tells us a story about the house of Usher. The narrator came to the house of Usher upon the invitation of a childhood friend named Roderick Usher, the owner of the house of Usher. Usher family, where only remains Roderick and his twin sister Madeline, lived in this spooky ancient house. Both the brother and sister suffer from severe mental depression, which, sadly, didn’t relieve a little bit during the narrator’s company and convalescent time. As the depression continues to escalate, Roderick buried his sister alive in the cellar and lied to the narrator that Madeline had died. Several days later, on a stormy night, Madeline came out of the coffin and perished with her brother. In the end, the house of Usher finally collapsed and the narrator fled away.
As one of Poe’s most well-known short stories, The Fall of the House of Usher has been studied by many scholars. The study of original literary text is the most fundamental and important as well. Many critics have pointed out the narrative features of The Fall of the House of Usher: Poe pushes readers to focus on imagery and description by deemphasizing incidents in the novel. Evans points out that “the incidents Poe does employ seem practically lost in the descriptive passages” and “incident and arrangement of incident…are remarkably deemphasized, almost perfunctorily developed, in The Fall of the House of Usher” (Evans, 1977). Abel also notes that “the action of the story is comparatively slight” and “the energetic symbolism…accomplishes more” (Abel, 1949).
Poe loves poems and he employs one poem in The Fall of the House of Usher to describe Roderick’s art and to reveal one of the novel’s main ideas. While some theorists and historians of the short stories refuse to identify Poe as the first American writer to use lyric structure in the short story (Baldeshwiler, 1969), Anastasaki points out that “the peculiar poetical nature in Poe’s tales” is “a general characteristic permeating his works” (Anastasaki, 2013) and Evans also believe that “Poe demonstrably composed the body of the story of elements central to the lyric method” (Evans, 1977).
Apart from the text, many scholars are trying to find the metaphor hidden in the novel and to interpret the story from different angles. Voloshin points out that “Everything at the House of Usher expresses or reflects everything else” and he thinks that “the final solution to the puzzle of appearances is to destroy the appearances” (Voloshin, 1986). Timmerman thinks that “Poe…constructs his architecture of mirrors to prop the movement of the story” and Poe uses the merge and split between Roderick and Madeline to make the point that “Aesthetically and ideally they ought to be mirrors to each other, working in a complementary fashion to serve art” (Timmerman, 2003). Zhang and Cui employs Freud’s theory of personality structure to analyze “the rationality and irrationality of the three characters in the novel” and they point out that “Roderick represents irrationality” and “id”, “Madeline represents rationality” and “ego”, and “the Narrator is the fusion of rationality and irrationality” and “is the superego” (Zhang, & Cui, 2018).
Some scholars analyze the novel from the perspective of aesthetics. Nadal Blasco analyze the novel from the point of view of gothic aesthetics and discuss some features such as “suggestive but elusive symbols, deliberate vagueness, intentional or unintentional ludicrous effects, and recourse to ultimately illegible signifiers” (Nadal Blasco, 2009). Roche wants to “show how Poe’s aesthetics of contamination greatly participate in the tale’s ‘constructiveness’ in terms of its diegesis, lyric structure and representation of aesthetic effect” and he analyzes the features, uses and roles of the aesthetics of contamination in the novel (Roche, 2009).
However, some limitations exist in previous research. First of all, although many researches have discussed a lot about the characters in The Fall of the House of Usher and some scholars use psychological and sociological frameworks to analyze the relationship between the characters, few scholars totally focused on the original text to do the analysis. Also, little effort has been done on interpreting the story from an anti-racist perspective, which is also a very important topic.
The aim of this paper is to shed light on topics as follows:
(1) connotation of each character and ways in which Poe portrayed the characters,
(2) correlation between different characters, and
(3) new interpretation of The Fall of the House of Usher from an anti-racist perspective.
The original text has always been the most important part in the study of literature. After reading many papers and many theories employed to analyze the novel, I decide to return to the text itself, try to analyze the connotation of each character and clarify the relationships between different characters. Apart from analysis on characters, I also try to interpret The Fall of the House of Usher from an anti-racist perspective by connecting the story with American society at that time.
Throughout the novel, Poe creates three characters—Roderick, Madeline and the narrator—in the novel. These characters have their own personalities and, at the same time, affects each other to some content, which effectively pushes the promotion of the plot and the expression of the theme. Roderick Usher, the owner of the house of the Usher, is a relatively complicated character. He is a pale and sick man with “A cadaverousness of complexion” (Poe, 1839, p. 8), “the emaciated fingers” (Poe, 1839, p. 11) and “the peculiar gloom” (Poe, 1839, p. 10). Poe intentionally uses the appearance of the house of Usher to indicate both Roderick’s appearance and mind, which is indicated in the story: “an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion had…obtained over his spirit” (Poe, 1839, p. 10). On appearance, several similarities can be found between the house and Roderick himself: “the vacant eye-like windows” (Poe, 1839, p. 3) matches Roderick’s “large, liquid, and luminous” (Poe, 1839, p. 8) eyes; “Minute fungi…in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves” (Poe, 1839, p. 6) matches Roderick’s “hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity” (Poe, 1839, p. 8); “the bleak walls” (Poe, 1839, p. 3) matches Roderick’s “ghastly pallor of the skin” (Poe, 1839, p. 8); etc. Such matchup also extends into the description of Roderick’s inner world: “an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom” (Poe, 1839, p. 7) in the room indicates “an anomalous species of terror” (Poe, 1839, p. 10) that Roderick is suffering from; “a barely perceptible fissure…extending from the roof of the building…made its way down the wall…until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn” (Poe, 1839, p. 6) indicates Roderick’s mental breakdown in the end; etc. All the analysis above depends on the description of the house at the beginning and the description of Roderick when the narrator first met him, which shows how Poe successfully portrays Roderick and reveals his destiny at the beginning of the story. By exploring more about the unity of Roderick and the house of Usher, we can find more similarities between the house or the environment and Roderick himself.
Although Madeline, Roderick’s sister, only appears three times in the story, she is also a very important character. Analysis upon Madeline is inevitably connected with Roderick, for the relationship between the twins is a very important and nonnegligible part, which is also indicated in the story when Roderick has buried Madeline in the cellar: “sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them” (Poe, 1839, p. 18). Madeline is Roderick’s only relative in the world and her death “would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers” (Poe, 1839, p. 10), which indicates that the twins own a strong relationship with each other. But, the relationship between Madeline and Roderick is not only brother and sister relationship; they are actually two different sides of one single character. If we turn back to compare the differences between Madeline and Roderick, it’s safe to conclude that Madeline has been suffering from physical sickness for a long time while Roderick is experiencing mental depression and buried himself in art all day. As a result, Madeline can be seen as a symbol of physical or instinctive side of human beings, for she has always been fighting with physical diseases and never participate in her brother’s elegant art in the story. Roderick, on the contrary, is a symbol of intellectual or spiritual side of human beings. Roderick owns “an excited and highly distempered ideality” (Poe, 1839, p. 11) and is talented in various art. Based on analysis above, we may find it easier to understand the story. Roderick buried Madeline alive because he didn’t want to see that diseases finally conquered Madeline, or the physical part of himself, so he kept his sister in the cellar. However, physical and intellectual part can never be teared apart, so it’s doomed that Madeline resurged on a rainy night and perished with her brother.
The narrator also plays an important role in the story. Different from omniscient perspective, limited perspective can not only narrate the story but also enhance readers’ sense of immersion. However, in The Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator is not designed only to narrate the story. The narrator actually experiences a transition from rationality to irrationality. In order to reveal such transition, Poe focuses on describing the narrator’s inner thoughts. At the beginning, the narrator admitted that “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit” (Poe, 1839, p. 3); After they put the body of Madeline in the cellar, the narrator “felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions” (Poe, 1839, p. 18); when they were experiencing the scary rainy night, the narrator tried to explain the supernatural phenomenon to Roderick as “merely electrical phenomena not uncommon” with the narrator himself “shuddering” (Poe, 1839, p. 20), which indicates that the narrator is actually not confident in his own explanation and his rationality continued collapsing; when the narrator read “Mad Trist” for Roderick, although he repeatedly “concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me” (Poe, 1839, p. 21), the narrator was gradually losing his rationality in the face of horrible scenes; at last, the narrator “fled aghast” (Poe, 1839, p. 25), which stands for the final and total collapse of the narrator’s rationality. In fact, when readers are reading about the narrator’s “scientific” explanation towards several supernatural phenomenon, they won’t actually fall for such explanation; on the contrary, they will start worrying about the narrator’s mental state, which helps creates an atmosphere of terror and makes readers more convinced in the story.
We can conclude the analysis on characters above to find some angles to interpret the story. Firstly, there is a relationship between Roderick and the house of Usher, which successfully portrays both Roderick’s appearance and spiritual world. Such relationship also indicates that surrounding environment has significant influences on people inside. Secondly, Roderick and Madeline are actually two sides of one character, while Madeline stands for physical or instinctive side while Roderick stands for intellectual or spiritual side. In the story, Poe stressed the importance of putting these two sides together by describing the physical and mental pain that the twins were suffering. I think such plot indicates that idealized spiritual pursuit cannot exists alone; material and mundane should not be abandoned due to any noble reasons. Thirdly, the narrator shows how rationality transfers into irrationality, which may indicate that rationality is not as stable as we might assume.
Apart from all the analysis above, I think we can interpret the story from another angle if we try to connect the story with American society at that time. In the nineteenth century, many Americans believed that the success of America lies in their blood rather than institution, which is so-called racism. In such case, Americans were afraid of hybrids or tainted blood because they thought that these things may lead to the degradation of the country. In the world in which nationalist ideologies were consolidated, such opinions were designed to naturalize white colonialism and imperialism. As a result, although American bourgeoisie was born in a democracy country, they were doing just the same thing as European aristocracy was doing: European aristocracy tries to protect their family blood, while Americans try to protect their Saxon blood.
In The Fall of the House of Usher, family Usher is actually a symbol of American white supremacists and Roderick stands for slavery in the American south at that time. We can find many clues in the novel to support this idea. In the narrator’s introduction of family Usher (Poe, 1839, p. 5), status and class, which includes social standing (“the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch”) and wealth (“collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son” and “he patrimony with the name”), are evidently emphasized. We can conclude two points from the description: family Usher kept a single lineage for a long time and they were not willing to cooperate with other families to deal with “collateral issue” and make new money. It’s easy to see Roderick’s firm belief in the lineage and his unwillingness to build relationship with people who didn’t belong to family Usher. He even told us that such belief “was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers” (Poe, 1839, p. 15) and “The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him—what he was.” (Poe, 1839, p. 16) This is similar to some American racists’ opinions: the success of America lies in their blood which makes them who they are. As a result, we can conclude that family Usher and the house of usher stands for slavery in America at that time and Roderick is actually a symbol of American white supremacists. Consequently, when Roderick told the narrator that he was suffering from “a family evil” (Poe, 1839, p. 9), he was actually experiencing the widespread fear of contamination of Saxon ancestry at that time.
The narrator’s description of family Usher also includes a poem called “The Haunted Palace”. The poem reveals the rise and fall of a family. But if we dig into the poem, we can uncover many hidden meanings. The poem has six parts, and part 1-4 of the poem explicitly describes “a fair and stately palace” ——we will soon find out what the “palace” refers to. Part 5 describes a riot which was caused by “evil things in robes of sorrow” and which destroyed “the monarch’s high estate” (Poe, 1839, p. 14) It’s natural to connect “high estate” with pure blood and “evil things”, in the contrast, is connected with tainted blood. Part 6 describes the palace after the riot: only “vast forms” stayed in the palace and people “laugh—but smile no more” (Poe, 1839, p. 15). The meaning of “vast forms”, in my opinion, is similar to shadow, which may be a metaphor for negro slaves in America due to the same skin color. If those analysis on the poem is correct, we can say that the “fair and stately palace” in part 1 is southern slavocracy in America. Consequently, the poem is about the rise and fall of slavery in the south: part 1-4 describes the past glories of slavery, part 5 refers to the experience of violent slave rebellion and part 6 suggests the destruction of slavery in America.
In conclusion, The Fall of the House of Usher is also a metaphor for the fateful death of slavery system in the south of America and the final death of Roderick stands for the inevitable demise of slavery in America, which certainly represents Poe’s points of view.
All the analysis above suggests that (1) the connotation of each character is very rich because Poe employs many efficient and distinctive ways to shape the characters, (2) correlation between different characters is complicated but significant if we try to interpret the story from certain angle, and (3) the family Usher in the novel represents the slavery in America at nineteenth century and finally collapsed in the novel, which is the new interpretation of The Fall of the House of Usher.
I have to admit that I have my limits. First of all, although I have tried my best reading the novel, it’s obvious that there are still a lot of unmentioned details in the story that may support or challenge my opinions in this paper. Also, due to the lack of time, I didn’t use some accurate historical events or data to verify my analysis on the perspective of anti-racism, which may undermine the credibility of my argument.
In our future studies, I want to dig further into the original text to verify my opinions. Also, I want to find some new and effective theoretical frameworks to do deeper analysis on the story. I want to find out ways to try my best to achieve further understandings on The Fall of the House of Usher in my future studies.
Ernest Hemingway used to put forward a famous literary theory called “Iceberg Theory”, the core connotation of which is to hide the author’s feelings beneath the succinct descriptions and encourage readers to feel and imagine the true meaning of the text while reading. When reading Hills Like White Elephants, if we do not go deep into the text, we can easily conclude that the story is mainly about a talk between a young couple in a small train station in Spain, which seems to be meaningless since both the origin of the story and the identity of the characters are not introduced in the novel. However, if we carefully analyze the story, the true meaning of the story will finally emerge.
The most confusing part in the story is “an awfully simple operation”. The author doesn’t explain to us what the operation is, but we can find it out by analyzing the story itself. In the story, the man told Jig, his girlfriend, that the operation needs “to let the air in”, which I think is the synonym for anesthesia. That is to say, the operation is absolutely not a small one. The man also describes the operation as the one that “lots of people that have done”, which indicates that the operation is very common. After listening the man’s talk, Jig asked him that “And if I do you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”, which clearly indicates that the operation is actually the abortion surgery because, at least in this story, abortion is the only operation that the girlfriend can do to make her boyfriend happy and make things “like they were”. There is also a sentence that can support my point: the man told Jig that “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to” and it’s easy to find out that the operation is connected with the thing they did in the past, which can be understood as taking an abortion after having sex.
Since we have found out the meaning of the operation, it’s important to find out the attitude of the man and his girlfriend Jig towards the operation. The man really wants Jig to do the operation. Although he always repeats that “if you don’t want to you don’t have to”, the man constantly starts the conversation about the operation and emphasizes the simplicity and universality of the operation after that. He told Jig that, which I think is one of the most important sentences in the story, that “That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.” It points out that the man doesn’t want a baby and that he thinks that as long as Jig takes the abortion, he can enjoy the life like it was. Jig, on the contrary, doesn’t want to do the operation. The attitude of Jig is revealed through her talks: “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.” We can see that Jig was actually looking forward to the coming baby. However, because the man insists on Jig’s abortion, she can just “looked at the ground the table legs rested on” and “not say anything”. Jig did know the man’s hypocrisy as she complained that “And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy?”. The man tries to convince the girl that they have a bright future, but Jig just repeated that “No, we can’t.” In the end, Jig smiled and said that “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.” Readers can easily feel a strong sense of forced laughter in it.
Besides, we can see that the author also employs many metaphors in the story to describe the relationship between the couple and narrate the story. When the waitress brings the couple beer, the girl “was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.” and praised the hills as “white elephants”. Obviously, the white hills and the brown country create a stark contrast here and it seems like that the holy, white hills symbolize an ideal world while the ugly, dim country symbolize a dull, boring reality. The metaphor of the white elephant also reinforces the hills’ symbol of sanctity, which can be understood as the girl’s wish for ideality. After arguing with her boyfriend for some time, the girl said that “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.” Such statements dissolve the sense of the hills’ sacredness and emphasize the reality, which means that the girl was pulled back to the reality by the terrible things in front of her. After long-time argument between the couple, they both became quiet and “the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.” Such differences in the places that they looked at can be understood as their different thoughts and their future breaking up. When the story is about to the end, the man saw some “labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights”, which may not only reveal their past happy time but also suggests that their relationship may ends in the future.
Based on all the analysis above, I think we can answer the question “what do you think will happen next? are they going to break up?” At the beginning, the girl tried to chat with her boyfriend happily, but her boyfriend started to convinced her to take the abortion. After that, the man repeated things about the simplicity and universality of the operation and tried his best to convince the girl. Although he repeated that “if you don’t want to you don’t have to” falsely, the girl gradually found out that her boyfriend wanted the abortion firmly and the only reason for him to say so was not to harm their current relationship instead of really caring about her feelings. At this time, the girl had two choices: maintain the relationship with the man who probably didn’t love her and didn’t want to take responsibility, or break up with this guy. I think the author has already revealed her choice in the novel by comparing her different thoughts about the natural scenes. As is analyzed above, the girl thought the hills were holy and were like white elephants in the beginning, but in the end, she abandoned her original ideas and put her sight back to the brown country. That is to say, the girl finally abandoned all her illusions about the man and paid attention to something in reality, such as whether her boyfriend was willing to take the responsibility. Also, the girl had already lost her hope for their future, which can be seen in the following dialogue:
‘We can have everything.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can have the whole world.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can go everywhere.’
‘No, we can’t. It isn’t ours anymore.’
‘It’s ours.’
‘No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.’
In the end, the girl answered her boyfriend that “I feel fine”, but the true meaning of these words probably is “I’ve had enough and I do not want to maintain the illusion that we are still in love.” As a result, they will probably break up in the end.
There is also an interesting detail that may help us understand the story, which is the girls’ name Jig. Although the author doesn’t want to give us more information about the man and her girlfriend, he does give us the information that the man is an American. The author doesn’t tell us Jig’s nationality, but we can speculate that she is also an American with the following reasons: she has the same speech pattern as the man did; the man introduced the life in Europe to her, which indicates that she came to the Europe for the first time. As a result, we can say that Jig is probably also an American. But we cannot determine their ethnic identity yet, which means that we should find it out by analyzing the information above. The author points out the man’s nationality as an American directly, which directly indicates that the man is white. Such indication has its historical reasons. American Congress restricted naturalization to “white persons” only and such racial prerequisite remains in force until 1952. As a result, it’s safely to say that the man is white. If we continue such train of thought, we may think that Jig is white as well, but this may be wrong. The author actually indicates that Jig is actually an African American by mentioning her name in the novel. Jig is an American slang that means black person or African American, which is absolutely a racial slur. So, we can safely conclude that the man and his girlfriend are both American, but the man is white and Jig is black. We can then have a new understanding about the story based on such analysis. In the story, the white American was controlling and he tried his best to maintain his satisfaction of desire (not breaking up with Jig), exertion of control (persuading Jig to take the abortion) and preservation of freedom (not wanting a child). He didn’t show any concern for Jig and he continuously neglect everything that Jig talked about in order to secure his own identity. After tolerating the man for some time, Jig finally got angry and fought back by saying “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” and threatening him that she may “scream”. The author wants to use the relationship between the man and the girl to describe the oppression that African Americans were suffering from and their resistance to racism at that time, which may be a new theme of this novel that Hemingway wanted to convey.