THE CARPENTER'S SON - A E HOUSMAN

The Carpenter's Son - A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman usually known as A E Housman was an English classical scholar and poet, best known for his ‘A Shropshire Lad’ poems. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and later at Cambridge. His publications of ‘Juvenal’, ‘Manilius’ and ‘Lucan’ are still considered authoritative.

‘The Carpenter’s Son’, Housman uses imagery to reflect upon Jesus Christ’s last few hours as he dies uopon a cross. Careful examination of this poem, one can feel of Housman’s satirical toward this event. However, before delving into the symbolic nature of this poem, some background information is a great aid in deciphering its meaning and theme

On March 26, 1859, Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestorshire, England. He was born into an ancient family of farmers and preachers. His family was very religious, and this was mostly because his paternal great-grandfather was an evangelical preacher. Housman continued to live a pious life until the death of his mother. Apparently, Housman prayed for weeks, asking the god to spare his mother from a sickness. However, when she died on his twelfth birthday, he slowly began to reject his church ad the religion affiliated with it.

B. J. Leggett suggests that Housman’s rejection of the church and the other troubles he had endured during his life played a major role in the creation of his poem, The Carpenter’s Son. It is due in part to these reasons, Housman’s writings relate to the “unhappy and painful experiences serve as a defensive function”. By creating a satire of a specific painful concept – that the death of Jesus Christ provides mercy and salvation for all – Housman is able “to deal in imagination with this situation which might cause pain, and thus strengthen his ability to cope with it.”

The careful perusal of the poem, one can see that Housman is writing about Christ’s crucifixion.  The title refers to the son of a carpenter, and Biblical records show that Saint Joseph, Jesus Christ’s human father, was indeed a Carpenter. In his poem, Housman describes Christ as a common man being hung, and to do this he assumes the persona of the Lord and speaks in first person.

In the past, men guilty of crimes were hung for their transgressions. Within the first stanza, Housman introduces the central theme of his poem. He tells his readers,

“Fare you well, for ill fare I;

Live, lads, and I will die.”

This is repeated later in the final stanza. This is a direct allusion to Jesus Christ’s sacrifice of himself to provide everlasting life for all who followed him. The Bible teaches that He died on a cross to save all from sin. In this first stanza, the hangman shoving Jesus on a cross comes to mind. Jesus tells His followers, who are his best friends, hat his end will bring eternal life to them all. However, Housman satirizes this scene by giving his readers the impression that Jesus is regretting what has brought him to this end. By regarding the Lord as a mere carpenter’s son, and not as the Son of Man, Housman suggests that all of Christ’s work was in vain, Again, this relates back to his frustration with the Church itself.

In the second stanza, Housman creates an image of Christ lamenting his misfortune. Christ considers what would have happened had He become an apprentice to his father. He wishes that He had “stuck to plane and adze,” the wood and tool used in the trade of a carpenter. He says that He would not have been lost, had He simply followed his father’s example. However, He now knows that he will be crucified for His rejection of a passive stance in life. Here, one may draw a parallel between Housman and Christ. Both men regret their faith and contemplate other paths that they may have chosen, in Housman’s case, the path which led toward atheism.

In the third stanza, Christ laments that if he had become a woodworker Himself,

                                          ‘Then I “might have built perhaps

                                           Gallows-trees for other chaps,

Never dangled on my own,  

Had I but left ill alone.”

Again, satire shows through as Christ questions his actions. Housman has the Lord wishing that He had abandoned his cause to escape the pain through which He had to go.

In the fourth stanza, Christ continues speaking to his followers. He tells them about how his hanging brings many spectators. Again, Housman makes it obvious that Christ was not well liked among his neighbours in his time. He claims,

And the people passing by

Stop to shake their fists and curse.

These lines bring to mind the treatment Jesus received on his way to Calvary and as he was nailed to his cross. According to the Bible, spectators would spit at Jesus, slap him, and throw refuse across his path on his way to his death. He was treated even more terribly in his dying than he had been treated during his lifetime. Here, Housman takes this into account: “So ’tis come from ill to worse.” In saying this, the poem shows its satiric edge once again as Christ doubts his actions.

In the fifth stanza, Housman illustrates the scene after Jesus Christ has been nailed to his cross. The Bible explains, “When they came to the place called the skull, they crucified Him and the criminals there, one on His right, the other on His left” (Luke 24:33) While all three will die in the same way, their crimes are very different. At this point, Housman compares their plight, as he says,

   Two poor fellows hang for the theft.

     Though the midmost hangs for love.

Later on, Housamn continues with his satirical tone. In the voice of Jesus, he tells his friends to live a normal life, implying that they should not tamper with the norms of society. The Christian faith teaches that its followers should do just the opposite, that they should do what is good and just. Jesus tells his to walk away from him, without looking at him, to….

                                                         Walk henceforth in other ways;

See my neck and save your own:

Comrades all, leave all alone.

This is yet another reflection of his denunciation of religion.

In the final stanza of “The Carpenter’s Son” Housamn continues his instruction towards Christ’s followers. He tells them to avoid his fate, and “Make some day a decent end” instead of ending up as He does. In conclusion, He says goodbye once again, and asks them to live their lives as they have before as he dies.

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FAIRIES SIEGE - RUDYARD KIPLING

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Fairies Siege - Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling is a Novelist, short story writer and a poet born in 1865 in Bombay. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story writing. His children’s books are known to be enduring classics in children’s literature. In 1907, he was awarded the most covetous Nobel Prize for his literary contributions.

The poem ‘Fairies’ Siege’ is about a faithful warrior who surrenders his master’s castle ‘The Herald of God’.

Summary of the subject matter:

The poet says himself that he was given the charge of the place (castle) to keep and he wanted to keep it without any alterations. Protecting the place is a different game to him because he was playing with strife all the time. He assures that he is not ready to fight with the swords which cannot be seen and spears which cannot be viewed. But he wanted to be a faithful warrior to his master who has given the charge of the place and he desires to hand over him the keys of the place on his knees with great submission. The surrendering of the castle to his master is a dream of a dreamer whose dreams have come true.

 He says that once the terms of the master are accepted that he never be flinched from the guns because it is a different show he is doing. He is not ready to fight with ‘Herald of God’ but advises to open the gate and let him enter the place (castle) in state. Again the poet refrains ‘It’s the Dreamer whose dreams come true!’

 He says he would not give way for an emperor but hold his road for a king.   He would not bow down to the Triple Crown (Pope, the religious head). He says he is not ready to fight with the Powers of Air. As a sentry he passes through allowing Draw Bridge fall to enter the lord of all.  As a protector, it is his dream of a dreamer whose dreams have come true.

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THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS - ROBERT HAYDEN

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS - ROBERT HAYDEN

ROBERT HAYDEN is one of the most honoured Afro-American poets. His poems have been praised for their exquisite handling of traditional verse-forms and a range of themes drawn from Afro-American history, myth, folklore and heroic adventures.

Hayden’s ‘Those Winter Sundays’ is a short moving lyric about the belated recognition by a son of his father’s acts of love and kindness. The poem is both recollection and recognition. It is an act of paying homage to his father by recollecting his father’s ‘love’s austere and lonely offices’

The nostalgia of the poem ‘Those Winter Sundays’ is set  to transport the poet to bygone days of his childhood to recollect all his childhood memories. His father had made no exception even on acute winter Sundays to go to work instead of attending the traditional Sabbath. In spite of his aching cracked hands due to severe cold of the winter he used to go to work all the days of the week from morning till evening to keep his family warm and comfortable.

As a child the poet could not recognize his father’s selfless sacrifice and dedication who relentlessly working for the welfare of his family with complete devotion. He was sacrificing himself to his family how the fresh wood in the fire is splintering and breaking into smaller pieces to keep the rooms warm. The poet was indifferent to his father though his father trying to do everything for him including polishing his good shoes.

Now as an adult the poet is grieving for the loss of his father that he could not understand his father properly when he was alive. He did not know of his father’s love’s austere and lonely offices. He could only pay homage to his father who had kept his family warm and comfortable with all his efforts of hard work.

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LORD OF THE FLIES - William Golding

THE END OF INNOCENCE

“Man produces evil as a bee produces honey” – this was the theme of William Golding’s work. Golding, who died on June 19,1993, at the age of 81, made a special place for himself in Modern English Literature. Belonging to no school of writing, with no obvious models, he was a writer who went his own way and charted the world of his own imagination.

Critics argued bitterly, when Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983, over whether he deserved it. History will probably not record him as a great writer. But he will be remembered for one novel, Lord of the Flies, one of the first and most significant books to describe the end of the Atomic Age.

Lord of the Flies is the story of a group of English boys whose plane crashes on an uninhabited island after a nuclear war. In a situation which would be the envy of any child – the ocean to swim in, sandy beaches, plenty of fruit to eat and best of all, the absence of any grown-ups:  the boys run into savages and imitate the crimes of the grown-up worlds they have left, not stopping at murder.

In these days of the Green Movement, what the boys do on their island is easily recognized as what we have done to the planet Earth. But Golding’s story is also a cruel distortion of a book, which had been a favourite of schoolboys for generations. In R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, which was published in 1858 (and which perhaps some of you have read, thought it is not as popular now as it used to be) three British boys, shipwrecked on a Coral Island, build an orderly and civilized life there. In a sense, this asserted the supremacy of the British race, and all the values of the Age of Empire.

But in 1953, when Golding published Lord of the flies the British Empire had come to an end, and mankind had capable of destroying itself and all life. Lord of the Flies thus reflects a reality, which harsh as it is, is closer to what history tells.

The Nobel Prize citation in 1983 said that Golding had ‘portrayed the darkest side of human nature and the depths of human misery’.

Interestingly, Alfred Nobel in his Will, establishing the Nobel Prizes, had directed that they be awarded ‘to those who… Shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind’. Referring specifically to the prize for literature, he asked the works with an ‘idealistic tendency’ be selected. Perhaps the choice of Golding, and few other writers in recent times, reflects the possibility that great literature is also about dark and cruel things; as long as it accurately reflects what is in the minds of men and women, it has the virtue of truth. 

By the way, one of the most famous blooms in English Literature occurs in Lord of the Flies. The boys on the island need to light fire – both to cook and as a signal to any ships that might pass by. One of the boys, a plump and harmless child nicknamed Piggy, wears spectacles. These are used to light the fire. Can you figure what if wrong with that?

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MONEY - PHILIP LARKIN

MONEY - PHILIP LARKIN

PHILIP LARKIN was the best-loved poet of his generation in England, and the winner of many academic and literary awards. His collected Poems appeared posthumously in 1988.

Larkin’s MONEY treats a familiar subject in a charmingly candid and personal way. He urges us to question the wisdom of frugal spending in youth. It is hard, says the poet, to resist the temptation of money, harder to control our desire for creature-comforts.

I yield to the temptation of money. Metaphorically, the poet imagines that he listens to a siren’s song in the tinkle of coins, and the rustle of paper money. The rising inflation always devalues money. And therefore reduces one’s capacity for buying goods and services. If you are going to buy all unnecessary things one-day you cannot buy the necessary things. 

“By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

Clearly money has something to do with life”

House and car are some ‘goods and services’ others have in excess when the thrifty person does not even fulfill his basic physical needs or enjoy social prestige and respect.

‘You can’t put off being young until you retire,’

There are certain things you can afford to put off (delay) until you retire. But your body and mind does not hear you in youth. Further, it makes no sense to have a lot of money when it hardly tempts you as in youth.

When the poet listens to ‘money singing’, he is reminded of scenes rich in visual details: the provincial town, the slums, the canal, the churches. Each has its place in answering to man’s desire; each exists to prompt man’s desire.

These scenic details prompt both desire and guilt, the first followed by the second. This quit sad like having money. Money in hand, one finds one’s longing inevitable as much as guilt that goes with it.

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