 |
American Literature: Romanticism final exam assignment Sample Final Exams 2013 Essay Question 1 |
 |
Jeanette Smith
The Drama of Desire and Loss
in American Romanticism
In Modern Rhetorical Criticism,
critic Kenneth Burke said “our need for drama is universal and as basic as the
needs for food, sex, and shelter” (Hart and Daughton 260). In American Romantic
texts, the basic human necessity for drama can be satisfied by the frequent
appearance of the Romantic idea of “desire and loss.”
As a driving force in the “romance” narrative, readers can easily identify with
the idea of desire and loss. In today’s consumer-driven society, the concept may
be closer to the frustration of not getting our desires instantly gratified,
while the Romantic concept means agonizing over what we long for but cannot
attain. Burke claims that “a
galvanizing drama can be repeated endlessly…because people’s deepest fears and
anxieties never change” (Hart and Daughton 261).
The concept of desire and loss appears often in Romantic texts because it
is a universal human experience. It is also a perfect way to add drama to a
text.
The drama of desire and loss can be found in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia.” The
narrator agonizes over the loss of his beloved wife, Ligeia, and desires for her
return. He laments, “I therefore
struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit.” This desire supplies
the dramatic narrative needed to drive the story forward. The reader understands
that someone cannot come back from the dead. But in “Ligeia,” it dramatically
happens. The narrator recalls Ligeia’s own desire as her death draws closer: “I
at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a
desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away.”
When Ligeia
returns from the dead at the end of the story, the readers understands that the
resurrected Ligeia is not the same woman that appears at the story’s start, and
that the narrator’s desires are never really fulfilled.
Another example of desire and loss as drama can be seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
“Young Goodman Brown.” Goodman Brown’s “desire” at the beginning of the story is
not specifically declared, but the reader can assume that it is something of a
sinful nature. He promises himself that, “after
this one night I'll cling to her [his wife’s] skirts and follow her to heaven.”
His desire for one “wild night out” without his wife drives the dramatic
narrative of the story. The loss that Goodman Brown experiences after his night
out in the woods is the loss of his innocence and naivety. In the final
paragraph of the story, he is given this description: “A
stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he
become from the night of that fearful dream.” Because his motives were impure,
his desires are never fulfilled. This story is representative of Romanticism’s
Moral Gothic as it offers a moral lesson to reader.
In contrast to the
aforementioned texts, the drama of desire and loss in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin has us cheering for
the success of its protagonists. In Chapter 7, we see Eliza’s desires
materialize in her dramatic escape to freedom as “her
feet to her scarce seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the
water's edge. Right on behind they
[her pursuers]
came; and, nerved
with strength such as God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and
flying leap, she vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the
raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap.”
Stowe’s reader
can’t help but be caught up in the drama of Eliza’s escape, particularly one
which has the sentimental element of a young mother protecting her child: “How
many miles could you make in those few brief hours, with the darling at your
bosom,—the little sleepy head on your shoulder,—the small, soft arms trustingly
holding on to your neck?”
This powerful
passage offers something all humans can relate to - the desire for freedom plus
and an added dramatic punch - the desire to protect our children. The drama, as
Burke says, “galvanizes” readers.
Eliza’s loss in this chapter would be the loss of “the
only home she had ever known, and cutting loose from the protection of a friend
whom she loved and revered.”
Understanding the difficult life of an escaped slave, the reader understand that
this dramatic escape will not be a total fulfillment of Eliza’s dreams.
Burke stated that
“Life is drama: People’s actions are themselves symbolic statements” (Hart and
Daughton 261). When desire and loss show up over and over in Romantic texts
makes a statement to all us. It supplies what we, as readers, need – to see our
own desires and losses played out dramatically within the pages of the text and
it, strangely, is fulfilling.
Work Cited
Hart, Roderick and Suzanne Daughton.
Modern Rhetorical Criticism. Boston: Pearson, 2005. Print
|
|
|
|
