Mcteague and the mayor of casterbridge Essay Example For Students

Mcteague and the mayor of casterbridge Essay Moy 1Shelly MoyM. ReganENG261ACApril 28, 2003Thomas Hardy and Frank Norris are artists, painting portraits of men filled with character, that is distraught with regression. The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy is a powerful and searching fable. Frank Norris McTeague is a documentation of the animalistic pursuit of empty dreams. Both authors withhold the protagonists of their dreams, in a grotesque world, which provides no sign of escape. Each emphasizes themes of greed and devolution, while carefully detailing character portraits. Both Hardy and Norris broadcast a network of symbolism to enhance the meaning of their works. Hardy and Norris use of complex character portraits, simplistic settings and love subplots employ correlating themes of decay and provide similar and contrasting insights into their novels. The settings of both novels are based in small simple structured towns. Each take place during the post-Victorian era. Both authors base their novels within these small to wns and avoid the introduction of a new setting. The development of a single setting story allows for both Hardy and Norris to manifest a greater complexity in the protagonists plight. In McTeague, All the needed data are given at the start, and the main action-except the ending-glows out of the data; no face is withheld to allow the story to take an unexpected twist, and the facts are given mean what they purport to Moy 2mean (Frohock 10). The Mayor of Casterbridge also follows the setting structure of a small town filled with all the necessary elements for Henchards undulating character progression. It is unique that both authors focus solely upon one small town, both only escaping its confides once, either in the very beginning or in the end. Both Hardy and Norris spin a complex web of symbols, characters and love subplots within their settings. The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a drunken Michael Henchard selling his wife and child to a sailor. The next day he rises feeling re morse for his actions, he seeks them, yet they are gone. Henchard eventually winds up in the simple town of Casterbridge. Here he seeks to create a sense of justice for the tragic error which is the result of his moral weakness (Gibson 97). Eighteen years pass and Henchard has cycled to the top of his wheel of fortune, his is a successful businessman and the eventual mayor of Casterbridge. Henchard suffocates the growing guilt within him; he sold his wife and then lets down the grain merchants of his town. His feelings of guilt serve as a fuel that continues to propel him to his own demise. Time after time, one or another of Henchards basic needs presses him into action which lead within an ever-increasing sense of fatality to his eventual doom (Carpenter 105). However, Henchards constant efforts to bring value to his name and character set the ironic tone for the novels end. It is Henchards consistent resilience which, in the end, allows Hardy to elevate him to the level of a hero, in the end providing value to his name, Michael Henchard, a name that deserves to be remembered. Norris begins McTeague simply with McTeague. He is a simple man with simple intention and simple pleasures. He spends Sundays alone in his dental parlor, smoking Moy 3his cigar and drinking his steamed beer. McTeagues mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draft horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient (Norris 7). The beginning of McTeague almost seems like the end, when he opened his Dental Parlors, he felt that his life was a success, that he could hope for nothing better (Norris 7), here no conflict or foreshadowing exist, this is only Norris beginning statement to the devolution of McTeagues character and lifestyle. From here, Norris seduces McTeague to his eventual demise through intense acts of animalism. Upon meeting Trina, his best friend Marcuss love interest who comes to him because of a broken tooth, his psyche begins to change and animalistic feelings begin to well up inside McTeague. During turbulent days for McTeague and Trina, his character qualities begin to take a form all their own, and are governed by a strange savage primitiveness. His civility then dissolves, and a rather brute animalism ruptures within him. The laws of humanity no longer govern McTeague, and his abusive qualities foreshadow imminent doom. McTeague becomes obsessed with the greed that has overcome his wife, Trina and assaults her in order to get her to give him the money she has secretly been hording from him. Driven by greed and the animal instinct inside of him, he sets out to make her pay. In a final act of fury McTeague kills his wife and steals the money she had withheld from him. In the final chapter of the novel, McTeague is fleeing for Mexico through Death Valley. The last scene, McTeague is left to die in the brutal conditions of Death Valley, a force that his primitiveness and greed cannot escape. Norris chilling sense of realism alienates McTeagues animalistic nature as his final result of his devolution. Various love subplots exist in both novels, which play an essential role in the protagonists regressions. Lucetta Templman is a brilliant compliment to Henchards character. Like Henchard, she follows her elaborate emotions, formulating irrational decisions and reckless Moy 4interventions. Lucetta creates a facade depending strictly upon image. She lacks morality, as she is not concerned with her lack of virtue between Henchard and Farfere, but simply with peoples reactions to her decision. At the end, Lucetta emerges not as a heroic heroine, but as a woman driven by desire, exemplifying only childish and imprudent behavior, much like her complementing character, Henchard. The relationship between Lucetta and Henchard acts as a catalyst for Henchards character decay. This begins with his adaptation of bad luck, which is essentially the result of his self-destructiveness and his perverse and irrational need to punish himself once his downward course has began. Instead of thinking that a union between his cherished stepdaughter and the energetic thriving Donald was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the very possibility (Hardy 220). Henchards decay is illuminated as he uses all existing efforts to insure that they will be alienated from him. Greed suffocates his small soul as the love between Elizabeth-Jane and Farfere grow. Henchards complementing character, Lucetta, and the love of Elizabeth-Jane and Farfere exhaust him to his final moment of unluckiness. Same Sex Marriage EssayFrohock, W. M. Frank Norris. 1st edition. St. Paul: North Central Publishing Company. 1968. 5-39. Gibson, James. Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life. 3rd edition. New York: St. Martins Press. 1996. 1-138. Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. Merriam Schuster. 4th edition. San Diego: Harcourt. Brace Jovanovich Inc. 1972. Hochman, Barbra. The Art of Frank Norris, Storyteller. 3rd edition. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 1988. 1-77. Norris, Frank. McTeague. Peter Brief. 3rd edition. Sand Diego: Harcourt Brace Joanovich Inc. 1977.