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         In Dan Simmons’s Ilium, humans on Earth are post-literate, sustained by technology that they neither understand nor question. The “old-style” humans live on Earth, confident that their world has always been the way they know it and believing in the post-humans as godlike, omnipotent controllers of the humans’ fate. They also believe that after the fifth Twenty, humans are taken up in the final fax to live in the rings forever with the posts, reminiscent of belief in a heavenly afterlife. The “old-styles” do not test anything they are told, but blindly believe in the will of the posts. These myths are romantic ideals that can be compared to religious beliefs. Savi and Odysseus, two characters in the novel who do not naively believe these myths, both act as Christlike figures to bring the “old-styles” to enlightenment. These two figures each play a role in bringing the truth to the four eloi, as Savi calls Daeman, Harman, Ada and Hannah, and preparing the rest of the humans for a world devoid of their lifelong romantic beliefs. The two Christlike figures ironically achieve their goal of enlightenment by dethroning the humans’ faith and preparing them for a life of secular humanism in which humans will have faith only in themselves.    

     The humans on Earth in Ilium live in a state of romantic idealism with a faith resembling religious belief; they have “a sense of grandeur and wonder at the cosmos and its works” without questioning anything about their universe (Mendlesohn 264). It has never occurred to them to question their beliefs until they meet Harman and, then even more so, Savi. Upon first meeting Savi, Hannah argues, “There are a million of us. There have always been a million of us,” but when Savi asks her how she knows this, Hannah replies unsteadily, “Why . . . I mean, everyone knows . . .” (269). The humans hold several beliefs that seem to be common knowledge but have never been proven; the objects of their faith seem to have always been. Farah Mendlesohn states that “the association of religion with intellectual degradation remains intact” in American society today (266); this connection is seen in Ilium as the post-literate society of humans, having undergone an “intellectual degradation,” live by faith in the unseen or the seen that they do not know how to explain.

          Although religion itself is never labeled in the novel, the humans are religious in a way, believing in unseen myths that the world has purportedly always known. Similar to religious belief in an everlasting deity, the humans’ faith in the voynix and the post-humans is inexplicable yet adamant. When Harman questions Daeman about the voynix, Daeman replies, “The voynix have always been here. They are permanent, fixed, eternal – moving, sometimes out of sight, but always present” (38). This description of the voynix closely parallels one definition of a “god”: “the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit” (M-W). The humans’ naïve trust in the voynix to protect them is revealed yet betrayed when the voynix fail to protect Daeman and he is eaten by an allosaurus. After this mishap, Harman begins asking questions about the voynix: “Where do they come from?” and “[A]re they . . . here for their own purposes?” (107). Ada and Hannah laugh at these “absurd question[s]” (107). Savi uncovers the unsubstantiated “old-style” belief in the posts as almighty and good when she begins telling the truth that what she knows about the posts. The “old-styles” are reluctant to accept the truth in what Savi tells them but cannot answer why they believe what they do; Daeman simply asks, “Why would the posts lie to us?” (169). Realizing the folly of his people’s beliefs, Harman leads three other eloi on an exploration journey that can be seen as a religious quest. Harman is the only one with specific intentions on this quest: to find a spaceship, travel between faxnodes, and explore the unknown. He wants to find the truth that lies outside of the world to which he has been restricted. Wondering what lies beyond the Earth is similar to pondering the much-asked, transcendental question: “What is the purpose of life?” Many turn to religious belief for answers. Harman, and eventually the other three, believes that the answers human life are not found on an earthly level but in an otherworldly place, namely in the “rings.” 

          Harman becomes dissatisfied living in the deluded world which believes the voynix have always been and nothing must be questioned, thus he rejects the romantic view of religion and embraces an intellectualist’s view. Robert A. Segal defines religion as viewed by two groups, intellectuals and myth-ritualists; embarking on their journey, the eloi begin to practice the intellectualist version of religion: “an explanation . . . wholly reflective” (174). The eloi’s journey is focused on gaining an explanation; Ada believes that Harman likely wants “to fly up to the rings and talk to the post-humans in person,” an idea that we learn is not too far-fetched from his actual goal (106). All four begin the questioning process for the first time, from Hannah and Ada asking Harman to all four asking Savi and Odysseus, depicting their thirst for explanation for all the mysteries about which they have not previously wondered. The second part of the definition, “wholly reflective,” is seen in the humans’ journey of processing all the knowledge they acquire. Reflection plays an emphatic role as well in Daeman’s personal growth from coward and “ladies’ man” to brave and a real friend (39). Religious symbolism penetrates the eloi’s journey and enhances the fact that they are on a journey of spiritual enlightenment. The archetypal cross appears in the Basin where the voynix dare not go; “there were black metal crosses rising above the level of the wheat . . . and, impaled on each cross, was what looked to be a pale, writhing, naked human body” (457). In the Basin where Savi, Daeman, and Harman go to escape the voynix, the crosses seem to be a source of protection for the three travelers, fulfilling their role as the traditional Christian symbol of salvation. If the image of a cross being protection were not enough, Simmons has placed an image of the dying or dead Christ upon each cross. The salvation this death symbolizes in Christianity has been experienced by the four travelers in escaping the voynix.

          Perhaps the earliest religious sign we see is before the eloi embark on the mission; Harman reveals that he seeks the “Wandering Jew.” This is two-fold since the Jews in general are considered God’s chosen people and because Christ himself was a Jew. Seeking Savi is representative of seeking Christ, the ultimate goal of a religious journey. Fulfilling the role of a Jew leading the eloi to enlightenment, Savi brings Daeman and Harman to Jerusalem, the Holy Land. The eloi require explanation about this because, until now, none of them know what Jerusalem or Jews are. In this, Savi is able to somewhat enlighten the eloi about religion, the whole concept of religion seemingly being part of the knowledge that has been lost on Earth.

         Not only is Savi a Christlike figure because she leads the four eloi to the truth, but several other aspects of her life parallel the life of Christ. Significantly, she is called “Wandering”; this characteristic is reminiscent of Christ as Luke 9:58 says, “The son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” Christ constantly has to keep moving and is rejected by most people, just as Savi has been rejected by the rest of the world. She is not taken up in the final fax, and now she cannot fax at all because she would be recognized and killed by “the voynix and the other watchers who wish [her] ill” (254). Knowing she is wished dead or injured by many is similar to the sentiments of Christ, as the Pharisees constantly plot to kill Him. Despite this knowledge and her inability to fax, Savi flies Daeman and Harman in a sonie to Jerusalem in order to ride the chairs to the rings. In this, she is able to introduce them to the traditional Holy Land, one main religious image in the novel, eventually instilling a sense of urgency in Daeman to “go get those nine thousand people out of that goddamned blue light” (719).

         Perhaps Daeman needs something as drastic as Savi’s death to realize this new purpose for his life; through her sacrificial death, Savi both attempts to save Daeman and Harman’s lives and allows Daeman to fulfill the mission that she has not been able to accomplish. When she, Harman, and Daeman are facing Caliban, she shoots Caliban, and the creature “[bites] through her neck with one powerful snap of his jaws” (588). Savi’s life, as long as the eloi have known her, consists of teaching the humans, motivating them to question things, and ultimately, sacrificing herself in an attempt to save Daeman and Harman. This sacrifice to bring salvation is similar to that of Christ, who cannot die until his three-year ministry is complete; the moment before he dies, Christ says, “It is finished,” because He knew the final part of his mission was to die (John 19:30). Savi’s mission of teaching the humans is complete, and she allows herself to be eaten so Daeman and Harman can live. Although Savi dies, the mission of enlightening the “old-style” humans does not end; Odysseus is also a Christlike figure and has begun preparing the rest of the humans on Earth for the days to come. The confusion that Daeman and Harman feel after Savi’s death is only a small portion compared to bewilderment that the rest of the humans will experience when the servitors break, the voynix disappear, and they can no longer be renewed in the firmary. While Daeman and Harman are fighting their battles in the firmary area, Odysseus is speaking to crowds at Ardis Hall who do not realize at the time that he is preparing them for the days ahead of them.

          Savi tells the “old-styles” that Odysseus needs to be housed somewhere he will be around a large number of people, but she does not explain why at the time; we find out that his mission is to speak to and teach as many people as he can. Christ’s mission was to tell everyone he could about the His heavenly Father and to give them the chance to be saved from their sins, yet his ministry only lasted about three years. Similarly, Odysseus speaks to people in order to prepare them for the days to come so they may survive, yet he knows when Ada asks that he will stay “[n]ot much longer” (598). Odysseus has no other apparent mission on Earth, at least in the humans’ world and time, so it can be assumed that his “ministry” is to prepare people and give them the chance to be saved when the war comes. Since his mission is not clear until he arrives at Ardis Hall, Odysseus is not revealed as a Christ figure until crowds begin gathering to hear him. Despite not being allowed to fax to hear him speak, people walk over a mile to get to Ardis; this reveals how captivating he must be and how much the people think they need to be taught what he has to say. Christ was always followed by a crowd of both desperate and curious people, and He taught and healed those people a large portion of His time during his ministry. Not only do people come to listen to Odysseus, but they ask questions and value his answers, even calling him “teacher” (596). This exact image is seen in the Bible as Christ’s followers call him “rabbi,” a Jewish title for a religious teacher.

         Another messianic characteristic of Odysseus is that some of the followers who stay with him faithfully are called disciples, and he sets expectations for them in his teachings. When the sky starts falling, “[m]ost of the guests had fled . . . but seventy disciples had stayed” (698). Christ trains twelve men over the course of his ministry and those men rarely leave his side; they learn from him and change their lives in accordance with his commands and example. Odysseus requires that his followers wrestle every day, and he sets up obstacle courses for the crowds to complete. The disciples do not know, however, that they are being prepared for something. Odysseus explains to the crowds that they should do everything with excellence, a concept with which they are not familiar, and explains the concepts of arete and agon (594-95). Having the disciples train physically and learn how to understand and better interact with the world around them is Odysseus’s way of preparing them to survive without servitors, voynix and firmaries.

         Long before Odysseus’s teachings begin, as we learn in the last chapter of Ilium, Savi and Odysseus, in a prophetic role, introduce turin cloths to Earth to serve as a tool for preparing people for the impending war. Centuries later, people are fascinated by these cloths and use them purely for enjoyment and escape. Since war is an unknown concept to the humans of this time, Savi and Odysseus, since they alone know what will happen, seek to educate the humans through the cloths and succeed in this covert mission. Similarly, Christ is privy to more information than the average human of his day. He knows the future, and he is able to tell people secret things about their lives by divine knowledge given from God. In the New Testament book of John, Christ tells a Samaritan woman, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband” (John 4: 17-18). The woman is amazed at his knowledge, much like the eloi are when Odysseus reveals the original purpose of the turin cloths. In providing the cloths to the world with Savi, Odysseus serves as a prophet to Earth, further securing his messianic role.

         Odysseus, like Savi, sacrifices his life for his friends, the ultimate Christlike act. Before he leaves Ardis, Odysseus tells Hannah about his plans “to do some reconnaissance,” she asks how far his home is and he says, “If you only knew” (717). Odysseus is from a land unknown to the humans, much like Christ, who has come from a Heavenly home that the humans on Earth at the time could not comprehend. Once Odysseus leaves Ardis, Harman admits that Odysseus “is going to attack the voynix,” a likely fatal move, given his earlier would-have-been attack from the voynix (718). Odysseus is going to try to “stop them from doing whatever they’re planning to do”; this act is unselfish and motivated by concern for his friends’ lives (718). Upon death, Christ is believed, in Christianity, to have gone to Hell and fought Satan for the keys of death and now “[has] the keys of Death and Hades,” in effect, freeing those who believe in Him from this “Death” (Revelation 1:18). Odysseus’s looming fight against the voynix parallels Christ’s battle against “Death,” and, if he succeeds, Odysseus’s friends and the rest of the world will be saved from whatever destruction the voynix may have been planning.

         Daeman and Harman also commit an act for the good of mankind by destroying the firmary, and this act proves to be the first step in the humans’ shift from their religious beliefs to secular humanism. One critic explains secular humanism as “the denial of these beliefs: deity of God, existence of the soul, life after death, biblical account of creation, and absolute standards of right and wrong” (283). Many of these beliefs, or the eloi’s parallel beliefs, are dethroned in the process of the humans’ journey to enlightenment by Savi and Odysseus. Once Harman and Daeman have reached what should have been “the rings,” they discover, among many other surprising, disappointing findings, that the firmary is actually dangerous and must be destroyed. Discovering that most of their previous beliefs are false, no one has actually ascended to the rings to live forever, and the posts are not where they were thought to be, leaves them with an obligation to now live in complete “denial” and rejection of all that they have grown up believing. The humans are not left with a choice of what to believe; they have stumbled upon the truth they originally set out to find. Their belief in ascending to the rings, correlating to an afterlife, has been shattered, and their belief in a deity, revealed in reliance on the voynix and the posts, has disappeared.

         As their beliefs are no longer valid, the humans must start a new chapter in their lives, one of secular humanism, believing “humanity must be its own supreme being since there is none higher” (Tourney 284). When Savi dies, the reality that there is “none higher” hits Daeman and Harman, and they must become their own “supreme being.” They can no longer live in a world where myths keep them comfortable. This reliance on self is first seen when Daeman makes a firm decision for the first time and tells Harman, speaking of the firmary, “We have to destroy this whole damned place” (627). Without Savi acting as a Christlike figure for them to follow, Daeman and Harman must rely on themselves, as they begin to follow their own instincts, survive however they can, and, in turn, free the entire human race.

         Destroying the firmary not only saves the human race from the doom they may have faced if Caliban happened to be too hungry one day, but it forces all humans to become self-reliant, something to which they are unaccustomed. After Daeman and Harman return to Ardis, Ada exemplifies the process of developing self-reliance when she tells Harman, as he points out a weed in the flower bed, “Servitors used to weed the garden . . . I try, but I’m so busy with the meals and laundry and everything” (718). Ada has been somewhat prepared for this new way of life to come upon the humans, but the rest of the world has not. People are likely thrown into disarray when the servitors break and voynix disappear. Humans now have to cultivate self-reliance without the protection of anyone or anything else.

         Not only do the humans have to take control of the tasks the servitors had done for them, but each has to “be its own supreme being,” in accordance with secular humanism. One “[being] its own supreme being” means one must make decisions and rely on one’s abilities, as Daeman has done, as well as take control of one’s own existence. Although unknown to the people at Ardis, the firmary no longer exists; this realization will be most sobering to the humans. Everyone on Earth, for as long as any of them can remember, is faxed to the firmary every twenty years for renewal and is given a new body if the old one is destroyed somehow. Without the firmary, people have to take responsibility for their actions because now; Daeman’s realization when he is fighting Caliban will now be applied to all: “whatever happens next is forever” (677). The “supreme being” of the firmary no longer exists to ensure one hundred years of life. In this, humans are no longer able to place their faith in anything they cannot see; they must now have faith in only themselves, taking control of their own fates.

         This newfound secular humanism directly opposes the religious beliefs the humans hold in the beginning, as religion demands faith of its followers whereas humanism denies all belief in the unseen; this reversal from religion to humanism is brought about by the two prominent Christ figures. The religious quest of the eloi brings them into this humanism, as they personally discover that everything they believe is a lie. Furthermore, Savi and Odysseus enable this spiritual journey in the first place. Harman has no idea how to go about finding a spaceship unless he can find the “Wandering Jew,” and Hannah, Ada and Daeman likely would never have questioned anything about their lives had it not been for Harman leading them to Savi, whose role is to encourage the religious journey on which the four embark. Odysseus’s role is to prepare the world to be able to live in the secular humanism that will be required in the end. All of these changes would have caused such chaos that few would have survived if not for the subtle guidance from turin cloths and Odysseus teaching and preparing the humans at Ardis. Through teaching fighting skills and giving lessons on how to live life to the fullest, Odysseus allows many humans a better understanding of how life can be lived with no second chances. Humanity does not know how to “be its own supreme being” until Savi leads the four eloi to enlightenment and Odysseus prepares the rest of the humans to survive living in truth. Savi and Odysseus can be seen as secular saviors, as they greatly resemble Christ and His mission, yet, in the end, lead the humans on Earth away from their faith and cause them to find a new life in secular humanism, believing only in themselves.

Works Cited

Mendlesohn, Farah. “Religion and Science Fiction.” Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 2009. Merriam Webster, Incorporated. 12 November 2009.

Simmons, Dan. Ilium. New York: HarperTorch, 2003.

Segal, Robert. A. “The Myth-Ritualist Theory of Religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 19.2 (1980): 173-185. Print.

Tourney, Christopher P. “Evolution and Secular Humanism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61.2 (1993): 275-301. Print.

Upon flying into the city of Philadelphia for the first time—or even the third or fourth time, as in my case—it’s almost impossible for those of us of a certain generation not to subliminally hear the “Rocky” theme-song, “Gonna Fly Now,” echoing in the back of our minds, or to imagine ourselves bounding up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, pumping our gnarled fists at the world.  Philly is the city of underdogs—scrappy Joe Schmos who haven’t quite given up on greatness even though the odds are stacked against them and the “brotherly love” they’ve been promised turns out to be more like dysfunctional sibling rivalry.  That was certainly the case for a young Benjamin Franklin, when he fled his own tyrannical brother’s print-shop in Boston only to drag himself, tired and friendless, onto a dock in Philadelphia with nothing but a loaf of bread, a couple of pennies and penchant for using his wits (though not always wisely).  He would go on to become not only the leading citizen of his adopted city—the father of its famed university, its public schools and libraries, its fire department and civic improvement projects, and his own highly successful printing-shop and newspaper—but also one of the Founding Fathers of a new nation dedicated, in large part, to the promise of liberty and that hard-working, “self-made man” mythos that Franklin himself embodied.

            It may have been that same hopefulness in the face of past failures and frustrations that brought Edgar Allan Poe to the city in 1838, his young wife and long-suffering mother-in-law in tow, fresh from the financial panic of the previous year, which they’d spent miserably in New York. Philadelphia is only one of many cities that lay claim to Poe’s legacy—a fact brought home by the recent “Great Poe Debate” staged in honor of Poe’s anniversary to determine who, at last, should claim the title of the “true home” of America’s master of the macabre.  Other claimants might include: Boston, where Poe was born, but never fully accepted into either the social or intellectual circles of the time (a slight that he never forgot or forgave in his lifelong persecution of the “Frogpondians”); Richmond, Virginia, where he grew up and developed his own identification with southern aristocratic values and lifestyle, but from which he also had to flee his foster-father’s tyrannical authority and his own social embarrassments; Baltimore, the city of his own youthful exile and also his tragic death, but also the place where he met his beloved “Sissy,” Virginia Clemm, who would soon become his notorious “child-bride” and greatest poetic inspiration; even New York claims at least a couple of years of the poet’s life as a struggling, yet promising young author and editor, but also sadly the place of Virginia’s final suffering days.

But it was in Philadelphia, where Poe resided for almost seven years, that he achieved many of his greatest successes as a writer and literary celebrity.  There he would publish some of his most famous stories, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Gold-Bug,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, and others. More importantly he would establish himself as America’s leading literary critic and magazinist through his editorship of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine.  In Philadelphia, Poe lived, for a time, the life of the respected literati and intellectual that he’d always believed to be his destiny.  Alas, unlike Rocky or Ben Franklin, Poe’s happiness was short-lived and not nearly as lucrative as either of those legendary Philadelphians. 

Still, it seemed appropriate that this was the city chosen to host this year’s Third International Edgar Allan Poe Conference: The Bicentennial—a recognition and celebration of Poe’s 200^th birthday.  I had been looking forward to this event for well over a year, when the final plans were announced and my own small contribution—a 20 minute paper on Poe’s first published poem, “Tamerlane”—was dutifully submitted for consideration.  From previous experience, I knew that a Poe conference was always a memorable event. My very first conference paper, while still a graduate student at Northwestern University, was delivered at an earlier Poe conference in Baltimore.  That weekend featured not only a series of  papers from some of the world’s leading Poe scholars, but also music and performances of Poe’s works, a book-room full of Poe books and memorabilia, tours of the city that included Poe’s home, his workplaces, and the bar and hospital where he spent his final hours. It also featured a Poe impersonator who not only offered dramatic readings of the poems, but also attended panels (in character) and asked questions from the perspective of the author himself!  One of my favorite moments on the bus tour was when we arrived near the corner where Poe was found sick and ranting on the last day of his life.  There by the curb, in full 19^th century attire, sat Poe himself, waving forlornly at the passing caravan of Poe scholars and enthusiasts who cheered as if they had seen Rocky fresh from his victory over Apollo creed.  It was a moment that several attendees at this year’s conference still remembered fondly. Needless to say, Poe scholars are an odd bunch—but I can’t help but feel a certain pride at the thought that no such shenanigans were taking place over at the Milton conference in Ohio. This year’s events were likely to be more formal and reverent, given the auspicious occasion, but I had hopes that at least a few instances of spontaneous perverseness and hilarity would burst forth.  Poe, I think, would be understanding.

As much as I looked forward to the conference itself, I was equally excited about the people and the place. Conferences provide a rare opportunity to reconnect with graduate school buddies, professional colleagues, and new acquaintances drawn together by a mutual appreciation of literature and culture.  It doesn’t hurt that the bigger conferences often take place in major cities or historical locations that we rarely get a chance to visit.  For those of us living and working in far-flung, often isolated places, conferences may be our only opportunity to see a new town, visit a great library or museum, or talk to people in our field face-to-face over a cup of coffee or a beer. I hate the word “networking” because it calls to mind corporate office-parties and tasteless impromptu schmoozing with people we hope may advance our careers, whether or not they personally care for our company.  Instead, I find these conferences to be, at their best, an opportunity for meeting fellow travelers—like-minded thinkers, scholars, writers, and teachers who share a common passion and curiosity.  At the very least, it’s an opportunity to hear and learn from other smart people about subjects you all enjoy. 

On top of all that, it’s a chance to spend time with old friends—perhaps the best part of the whole weekend.  In this case, I was staying with one of my closest graduate school pals, Marcy, who is also an English professor living in Philadelphia.  It had been almost three years since we last saw each other, and we had a lot of catching up to do, not just about our careers, but about our lives and relationships, old friends we’d seen or heard from, things we’d done, frustrations and triumphs that we’d both experienced—all the usual confidences of friends.  It’s hard to overestimate the value of those grad-school relationships later in one’s life and career.  Like all old friendships, they have an intrinsic value to our emotional and social lives.  But unlike many other friends, we also share a common path in life, professionally and intellectually. We read the same books, watch the same films, teach similar kinds of courses, and, as in this case, attend many of the same professional events. This not only gives us a lot to talk about, but also offers us a chance to really share and understand the things that matter most to us.  Our professional interests provide a kind of shorthand for discussing larger issues and questions in our lives, and our long friendship allows for the kind of trust and sympathy that is often hard to find in purely professional colleagues.  One of the unsung merits of being actively involved in the “scholarly life” of your discipline is the opportunity to cultivate these kinds of life-long relationships.

In any case, Marcy’s also just a cool chick. She and her partner, Hunt (also a friend from our graduate program, but currently beginning his own tenure-track job in Boston, and so, not in town for the weekend), rent a trendy little condo apartment in Philadelphia’s North Liberty neighborhood, not far from the conference site and the Poe National Historic Site that would be one of the center-pieces of the week’s activities.  The building is a converted meat-packing warehouse—a great irony for the vegetarian Marcy, and a source of lots of horror-film jokes and references for the rest of us.  Within walking distance is a great not-quite-fully-gentrified neighborhood full of kitschy coffee-shops, cozy bars, ethnic restaurants, and artsy-craftsy gift-shops that always make me seethe with envy.  It was the perfect base-of-operations for a weekend of exploring and hanging out with other Poe connoisseurs. 

Besides Marcy, I was also looking forward to seeing a few more recent friends and colleagues:  There was Amy from Indiana, currently teaching at a university near Baltimore, whom I’d met at an earlier conference panel at the MLA a few years ago. She and I had been Facebook friends since then, and had exchanged lots of information and ideas on Poe and other subjects of mutual interest.  This would really be our first chance to hang out and talk in person, so we were both looking forward to it.  The same was true of Paul, a friend of one of my Tech colleagues, who also happens to be the Secretary of the Poe Studies Association. He and I had exchanged pleasantries and e-mails regarding Poe events for quite a while, but now we’d have a chance to talk in person and telling stories about our mutual friends while creating a few new stories to share when we got back. Finally, there were some folks that I didn’t expect to meet, but was pleased to do so after the fact—friends of friends who inevitably turn up at these events, demonstrating just how small and intimate the world of academia really is.  This again, is part of the great benefit of being a part of the larger scholarly world outside of our own university or region. It also provides for a convenient excuse to get away from the conference and explore some of the city’s other offerings.

On the first night before the conference, Marcy and I decided to just take it easy over drinks and food at a local pub near her house.  Still a little jet-lagged and anxious about my presentation, I figured that an early evening with a little conversation and a little last-minute tweaking of my paper would be ideal.  Of course, we found that our three years of intermittent conversation had left a lot of holes to fill in, so we ended up talking most of the night!  In retrospect, I’m glad we did, since the rest of the weekend would be a blur of conference panels, lunches, activities, and hurried socializing in between.  Four days may seem like plenty of time for catching up, but in my experience, most of these trips whiz by quicker than any of us would wish.

We were up bright and early the next day for the first conference activities—Marcy had an 8:30 a.m. panel to chair, and I was off to see my friend Amy deliver her presentation at the same time.  So quick showers and coffee, followed by a five-minute cab-ride, got us to the Hyatt while the morning mist was still hanging over the Delaware River (the hotel was right on the river-front, giving us a gorgeous view of the water and the New Jersey coastline on the other side).  Those early-morning panels are always a little slow-going—many only have a handful of attendees, often acquaintances of the presenters, there to offer some moral support and some polite questions afterwards.  This time there was a good bit of enthusiasm right off the bat, maybe because folks were excited to be there for such a once-in-a-lifetime celebration.  In any case, the first panel, entitled “Powerful Women,” seemed to go well. Amy’s paper on “mother-goddess” images in Poe was flanked by papers on Poe’s use of the “outlaw” theme and incest narratives that emphasized the role of women as both awe-inspiring and terrifying figures in Poe.  All three papers seemed to offer interesting parallels to the one that I would deliver the next day, focusing on Poe’s ambivalent relationship to paternal authority. I threw out a question that both arguments seemed to beg: “What happens to the male ego when it can’t find either paternal identification or maternal sympathy and comfort?”  Their answers ranged from “androgyny” to “ambiguity” to “madness”.  Not terribly comforting answers, but definitely interesting!

The rest of the day offered similar opportunities to hear and raise important questions about Poe’s work and it’s cultural implications.  Marcy’s afternoon panel looked at various forms of “doubling” in or of Poe’s works—in her case, a Louis Malle film adaptation of Poe’s story “William Wilson” that offered both the possibility of physical resemblance between doubles and various forms of visual dissociation. Interestingly, one of her fellow panelists, herself a twin, offered a new theory of “doubling” which suggested that physical “twinning” and psychic “doubling” were distinct phenomena in Poe’s writing, raising new possibilities for reading some of these classic gothic tales.  Later in the day, our new friend Paul presented a paper on the anti-gallows (anti-death penalty) movement during the 1830s, and showed how some of Poe’s stories about condemned murders actually reflected a deep rift in the attitudes of the American public about the justice or effectiveness of executing criminals. 

Perhaps my favorite panel of the weekend was a special session on “Poe & Comics” that included two presenters with a long history in the comics industry. One of them, Dr. M. Thomas Inge, a cultural historian and professor of literature, traced Poe’s deep influence on the comic-book form, mainly through his development of various popular short-fiction genres: the detective story, science fiction, and of course gothic tales.  The other presenter, Christopher Couch, was an art historian and former editor for DC comics who had done extensive interviews with some of the original artists and writers of the Batman franchise. Each of them, in their own unprompted words, revealed a deep debt to Poe’s writing, which became a model not only for the types of stories and characters found in Batman comics, but also in the mood, style, and even artistic vision of those artists who brought these stories to life.  As a long-time comic book enthusiast and one-time collector, I found this panel so inspiring that I ran straight to book-room to purchase some of the comics and critical books mentioned during the discussion (I have these if anyone wants a peek)!

Eventually, of course, the time came for me to deliver my own presentation.  Like many presenters that I know, I had stayed up many a late night in the days and weeks leading up to the conference trying to get my paper ready to go.  Although it was only supposed to run about 20 minutes (8-10 pages typed, for the average reader), trying to condense a lengthy article-sized argument into that amount of spaced proved daunting, if not impossible.  I wanted to do too many things: present my central argument about Poe’s inspiration for “Tamerlane” in his early letters to his foster-father, John Allan; demonstrate my awareness of the critical tradition surrounding the poem; offer a solid close-reading of selected parts of a very long poem; and tie in a larger argument about Poe’s use of the “scapegoat” myth near the end of the work!  I’ll have to let other readers decide how successful I was at any of these things. I anticipated all kinds of questions, and I was terrified that I might find the one scholar of Islamic demonology at the entire conference sitting there waiting to pounce on me at the last second with some devastating refutation of my argument!  Happily for me, that didn’t happen.  Instead, I found that, despite my anxieties, mine was the only paper that actually stayed within the time-limit.  Those on either side of me went so far over their time that we had scarcely five or ten minutes to take questions about the papers at all.  My friend Amy tossed me a softball question about Byron’s influence on “Tamerlane,” which I had no trouble answering (whew!). The rest of the questions went to our other two presenters.  I have to admit, though, that I was a little disappointed after all my preparation to not have to defend myself more rigorously!  Luckily, I got some more feedback afterwards, both from my fellow panelists and my friends in the audience.  All in all, it turned out to be an enjoyable experience.

More importantly, the effort and work that went into streamlining my argument for this presentation actually ended up filling in a lot of holes in my larger article-length project.  That alone made the whole exercise well worth the investment of time and money. Returning from the trip, I felt ready to finish up the last stages of my article with a lot more confidence than I had going in.  I’m guessing this is true for many of the presenters at this and other conferences.  Some are drawing on earlier books or articles just to have something to present, but by and large, the papers I heard seemed to be the seeds of future projects that were growing and evolving right before our eyes.  One of the exciting intellectual aspects of a conference like this is the interesting cross-pollination of ideas and approaches that makes all our work better.  From this conference alone I came away with lots of new ideas for future projects, or at the very least, things to look forward to from my fellow Poe-scholars that I can’t wait to read.

In between all these panels and informal discussions, the trading of e-mails and citations, and the plundering of the book-room, we also took opportunities during our lunch-breaks and evenings to go out and explore a little of the great city.  Having visited a couple of times before this, I had already seen many of the major attractions—Independence Hall and Libertyville, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had their births, the workshop where Ben Franklin hauled his wheelbarrow of paper through the streets to demonstrate his industry and frugality, and of course the Poe National Historic Site itself—Poe’s humble rented house where he wrote some of his great tales and critical articles.  So this time I just let Marcy be my guide through some of the more modern attractions of the city—the bars, restaurants, coffee-shops, and little out-of-the-way curiosities that litter every great city.  Amy, Paul, and some of our other new friends followed like ducklings as Marcy escorted us to National Mechanics, a dark and crowded restaurant/bar that featured fantastic crab-cakes and filet mignon skewers along with a large selection of beers and liquors for the connoisseur drinkers among us.  She also took us to a little Irish café, The Plough and the Stars, on Saturday morning for a very unique Irish brunch (I had no idea the Irish even had brunch!), which included a delicious “plough omelette” with Irish sausage, pears, apples, and blue cheese (sounds strange, I know, but it was amazing). 

These lunches and brunches and dinner/drink gatherings provided more than just delicious sustenance—they were also where some of the best conversations were to be had.  We didn’t just talk about Poe, of course—for the most part it was about our larger work, our schools and colleagues, our students, and the various projects we were involved in. We talked about academia as a vocation—the rewards and frustrations, the politics, the future of the profession, all the experiences we’d had that we might have thought unique or surprising, but which turned out to be a common theme among our compatriots.  These conversations, even when they turn to mutual complaints and venting, often provide us with a common sense of identity and purpose. We find that, though we all have hurdles and trials in our careers, we still share a common love of learning, teaching, and being part of an intellectual community that values these things.  Conferences like this one can remind us why we chose this difficult profession to begin with, and what we all still hope to accomplish in the future.

The final night of the conference featured a banquet at the hotel, complete with music and door-prizes, the requisite thank-yous and speeches, and a special address by Dwight Thomas, one of the leading scholars of Poe’s work, who edited the monumental Poe Log, a collection of Poe-related documents and citations that had shaped an entire generation of Poe scholarship. I was most excited about the door-prizes.  Among them would be two sets of the brand-new edition of Poe’s collected letters, the first in over half a century, and one that, as we learned that evening, had won the Poe Society award for the best volume of Poe scholarship in the last year and a half.  I had been coveting this set of books since it was first announced, partly because I was writing on the letters, and partly because it had proven so difficult to get my hands on.  So I gave fair warning to my table that anyone who won it would have to fight me for it after the banquet.  It will come as a surprise to no one that, not only did I not win the book, but someone at my own table did! 

I was prepared to carry through on my very Poe-like threat to first become irrationally intoxicated and then challenge the book-owner (in this case a woman in her fifties wearing a very nice evening dress and horn-rimmed glasses) to a duel.  Fortunately or unfortunately for both of us, however, Mr. Thomas’s address intervened. After reading the accounts of Poe’s disastrous Boston Lyceum address—at which he harangued the audience of Boston Brahmins and intelligentsia with a wandering metaphysical speculation and then proceeded to recite, not the new work that he had promised, but an unrevised version of his early quasi-mystical poem “Al Araaf,” to a chorus of boos and hisses—I had often wondered precisely what that experience had been like. This night’s address gave me a pretty good idea.  After joking that he was not generally known for his brevity or conciseness, Mr. Thomas went on to prove his point in spectacular fashion.  Beginning with Poe’s famous feud with the Reverend Rufus Griswold, the man who later wrote a slanderous, but influential obituary and biography of Poe, he proceeded to describe, in minute historical detail, their long and complicated relationship, its impact on Poe’s reputation and the reception of his works, Poe’s re-discovery by Baudelaire and the French Symbolists, and the enduring legacy of Poe’s time in Philadelphia in the larger debates about American “literary independence.”  After nearly an hour and a half of this eloquent, if painfully slow-moving lecture, the hotel staff began closing up the banquet hall, while the strains of a band in the adjacent ball-room started up for another event. It reminded me of nothing so much as the closing moments of one of those four-hour Academy Award ceremonies when the host rushes onto the stage to say a quick goodnight while the credits roll.  Only here, there was no host and no credits to roll, and so Mr. Thomas was allowed to continue his filibuster to the bitter end (bitter because all the food and wine had long been consumed and cleared away, and even the door-prizes had lost their novelty to winners and losers alike).  When it finally came to a close, the audible sigh of relief and the sudden rush for the doors was almost comical in its effect.  Amy, Marcy, Paul, and the rest of our crowd looked as if they’d all been struck by the ghost of Ligeia and left as pale and quivering as one of Poe’s abject narrators.  Somehow, it seemed a strangely appropriate ending to the evening.

Notwithstanding this bizarre closing-ceremony—one we would all laugh about the next day, and which may, over time take on the same mythic proportions as the previous conference’s Poe impersonator—we all seem to have had a great time at the conference. Four days of intense listening, thinking, talking, and socializing had left us all somewhat drained and weary—and yet saying goodbye to one another proved bittersweet. We had relished the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a common cause—celebrating the life and work of one of our greatest inspirations—but also to cultivate these long-distance friendships and intellectual exchanges. Now we would have to return to our respective lives and offices, to classes and grading, meetings and service, and try to hold on to the little flashes of excitement and inspiration that we’d all felt at various moments throughout the weekend.  This turns out to be the true challenge of being an academic:  not the work itself or the enthusiasm about learning and sharing, but finding those moments of quiet reflection and sustained attention that allow us to take advantage of all that we’ve acquired at this and other events that help reaffirm what we truly love about our chosen vocation. Conference Paper: 

Very little scholarship in science fiction is dedicated to recent novels, especially concerning the roles of the female characters and even less is dedicated to analyzing Jewish female characters.  Ilium is a unique novel that challenges traditional science fiction that depicts Jewish people as being separate or unimportant to the plot of the novel, or as Susan Kray refers to them as “deracinated walk-ons, ethnic in name only and present merely for the sake of nominal diversity” (87), by having a principal character who is both female and Jewish.  The character of Savi is an atypical Jewish woman who goes beyond the boundaries established by traditional science fiction and takes on leadership roles like that of Abraham, Moses or Christ, and rises to power and influence despite her marginalized status in society, directly countering Kray’s argument that “Jews in Future Time do not forge viable spiritual/ religious/ cultural forms” (87).  Dan Simmons is unafraid to step out against the male-dominated boys club of science fiction and present a female character that all readers can appreciate.  Ilium is an example of messianic literature with a female archetypal messianic figure who turns against traditional, stereotypical gender roles, juxtaposing the novel against traditional Christianity and Judaism, creating new religious icons for a futuristic world.     

     My feminist reading of the text will, as Veronica Hollinger writes, “resist the ideological self-representations of the masculinist cultural text that traditionally offers itself as the universal expression of a homogenous ‘human nature’” (125).    My reading is most likely not one that all of my colleagues in the science fiction realm will agree with; however, only by critiquing the narrative of the novel and digging deeper to uncover the importance of the role of the female protagonist in the novel can one hope to make a meaningful change and impact for women readers of science fiction.  Reviewing the scholarly criticism is difficult in this case because so little has been analyzed.  Scholarship on religion and Judaism in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion exists concerning the character of Rachel, “who ‘grows’ backward to infancy” (Kray 87), but Ilium is simply too new, and perhaps regarded by some as too commercial for any significant analysis. For my analysis of science fiction and Judaism, I rely on the work of Dr. Susan Kray, a professor at Indiana State University, who has written extensively on religion.  However, I will go one step further than Dr. Kray, who discounts the notion that Jewish women are heroines or hold leadership roles in science fiction novels, and prove that Ilium is centered on a female Jewish protagonist and creates new religious icons using a futuristic mixture of both Christianity and Judaism.

       Because Kray provides almost no direct argumentation on female Jews in science fiction, and in particular in Ilium, I will combine her research with that of Veronica Hollinger, the co-editor of Science Fiction Studies, who provides an excellent analysis of how women have been portrayed since the Enlightenment and compares that to the portrayal of women in science fiction.  Hollinger contends that women have been marginalized and ignored in favor of a “white, male and middle-class” society (125) and I argue that science fiction presents a unique opportunity for challenging the traditional marginalization of women in literature through its “narrative experiments and… in the ongoing dialectical relationship between abstraction and concretization” (Hollinger 129).  By deconstructing Ilium through the lens of gender and religion, we can analyze “our current state as females and the ways in which technology is changing the traditional gender roles imposed by society” (Hollinger 134).  Religion and gender must be analyzed together because women in traditional Judaism are viewed as “the conduits for Jewish religious community” (Kray 87).  Traditionally, women are given a portion of power in their religion, and analyzing the importance of gender in Ilium without analyzing religion at the same time would limit the perspective and tone of the character of Savi, the female Jewish protagonist in Ilium, who serves as the archetype of the Wandering Jew and of the Messiah.

       Ilium is a religious novel and contains many characters and scenes that mimic those found in traditional Jewish and Christian stories but with a futuristic and humanistic interpretation to fit the setting of the novel three thousand years in the future.  The religious icons in Ilium are not exclusively male, like the major religious icons in Judeo-Christian myth, and not all the roles or instances are pleasant or ideal.  Simmons often puts religion in a negative sphere and some of his characters even seem anti-Semitic.  The plot of Ilium is based on religious events, including the destruction of the Second Temple, the building of the Third Temple, and the destruction of all Jews, except one. These events are significant because they involve the Jewish people as a whole, and provide an opportunity for Savi, the last remaining Jew, to have an essential role in the novel.  She becomes historically important, and will be the last remaining link between the Jewish people of the past and those remaining in the neutrino beam.  Similar to the last remaining Jew in the thirty-eighth century found in Susan Kray’s analysis of the short story A Canticle for Leibowitz (88) , Savi is “the last, the one, the only” (qtd in Kray 88), and it is responsibility to not only spread the history of the Jewish people after they were essentially eliminated in the Final Fax, but also to find a solution to free them. In Ilium, religion is found and created through Savi, the only Jew that managed not to be reduced to the blue neutrino beam at the Final Fax.  Savi is unique in that her Jewish faith historically represents “reason, and… scientific rationalism” (Mendlesohn 267).  Because her faith is one of reason, she is not depicted as “dangerous, diverting humans (and aliens) from the path of reason and true enlightenment” (Mendlesohn 269).  Dan Simmons goes beyond the religious analysis of Mendlesohn and creates a new scenario to analyze.  Although Savi is Jewish, she portrays a messianic figure in the novel.  Not only is she a messianic figure, who leads her disciples, Daemon and Harmon, she is female, thus intersecting religion and gender. 

       Although many science fiction critics such as Susan Kray argue that religion is not viewed as a positive force in science fiction (88), the portrayal of religion, especially Judaism, is a positive force in Ilium.  Ilium does not use “religion to signify vicious, destructive ignorance and reaction, represented by raving preachers or insular, inbred communities rife with stupidity and mean-spiritedness” as Kray insists is evident in the majority of science fiction that attempts to incorporate religion (88).  Instead, Savi is a leader figure, similar to Moses, in that she attempts to lead her people, Daemon and Harmon, to the Promised Land, the firmary.  Like Moses, Savi dies before seeing her people freed and in the Promised Land.  Savi is killed by Caliban and never gets to free her people from the neutrino beam.  All hope is not lost in the novel; since Savi has led Daemon and Harmon on the quest and has shown them the impact of the voynix on Jerusalem, she has changed their perceptions of religion and has introduced them to Judaism (Simmons 340).  Daemon and Harmon continue the quest to free the Jewish people from the neutrino beam, like Joshua leading the Jewish people to the Promised Land, or the disciples leading the Christian church after the crucifixion of Christ.

       Savi is a ground-breaking character in the world of science fiction, a world dominated by white, Protestant males (Kray 88).  She is known as “the Wandering Jew,” a common theme in literature, especially in Christian literature (Kray 90), yet, the character of Savi is unique because she is female, directly opposite from the traditional stories of the Wandering Jew which are about males.  Savi is comparable to the traditional Wandering Jew stories because, although she is female, she is “wandering through eternity without Jewish companionship or any relationship to a Jewish community or heritage” (Kray 90), albeit not entirely.  Although Savi as the Wandering Jew continues the image of the “Christian view of ‘the Jews’ as one people, always and everywhere the same” (Kray 92), she is not a symbol that is “doomed to homeless wandering among other nations as punishment for not being Christian” (Kray 92) because Christianity is a void concept in Ilium.  

       The idea of Christianity no longer exists in the world portrayed in Ilium, neither on Mars or on earth.  Ilium contains elements of Christianity, but there is no mention of Christ or that any of the post-humans are Christian, even Harmon, who is able to read, has never heard of Christianity (Simmons 313).  The novel is set so far in the future that only Judaism survives because it is based in history as being rational (Mendelsohn 267).  Ilium is not rooted in Christianity, as Kray insists all science fiction novels are, and Savi, the Wandering Jew, is not forced to spend her time traveling the earth until Jesus returns (Kray 92) but rather has spent her time waiting for Daemon and Harmon to find her so that she can lead them on the quest. Savi does maintain a connection to her heritage and customs by remembering and telling the events that happened during the Final Fax to Daemon and Harmon.  Through relating the events of the Final Fax to Daemon and Harmon, she tells Jewish stories to Daemon and Harmon, proving that the novel is written with Jewish undertones, and that Savi is a positive figure like the Jewish characters in science fiction novels written by Jews.  While it is unknown if Dan Simmons is Jewish, he certainly writes both Ilium with Jewish undertones that cannot be denied. Savi represents the type of Wandering Jew that is found in novels written by Jewish authors, what Kray describes as “a figure who makes a positive claim, however restrained or ironic, to a future for Jews and Judaism” (Kray 93).  

       Not only does Savi represent “a figure who makes a positive claim” (Kray 93), she also becomes a new religious icon, a combination of the archetypes of the Wandering Jew and the Messiah, for the Jewish people who were trapped during the Final Fax that promised them that they would be transported to the firmary until the world was repaired; however, that never happened and their bodies were broken down into atoms and trapped within the form of a blue beam emanating from the third temple in Jerusalem (Simmons 315, 565).  Through Savi, the Jewish people stuck in the neutrino beam have the possibility for being restructured and surviving again.  Ilium maintains “the Jewish collective fantasy of women as the torchbearers and sources of wisdom and meditation” and does not attempt to replace the character of Savi with “the individual American male Jew’s fantasy of one male as the last Jewish hold-out in a Gentile universe” (Kray 90).  Savi recognizes the anti-Semitism in that other humans were successfully transported during the Final Fax, but not the Jews, and she tries to educate Harmon and Daemon about the concept while they are in Jerusalem, thus attempting to serve as a positive educator for the Jewish people in the novel, providing them hope.  While Ilium is guilty of portraying Jews as “isolated remnants adrift in time” (Kray 87), Simmons does not leave them without hope through the character of Savi, unlike the novels that Kray analyzes, those in which “the future… has little use for Jews and almost none for Jewish women” (88).  Through the telling of the story of the destruction of the Second Temple and the Third Temple, which houses the neutrino beam (Simmons 314-315), Savi plays an essential role of educating Daemon and Harmon so that they might continue the quest after she is killed.

       Simmons has done his homework in writing about the Ninth of Av, and accurately represents a futuristic view on the pain felt by Jews such as Savi regarding the destruction of the Second Temple. The incorporation of the Ninth of Av in the novel unifies the Jewish characters across vast distances of time and space, which represents “a tension between repeated threats of expulsions, expropriations, massacre, and genocide on one hand and a sense of destiny on the other” (Kray 90).  According to The Orthodox Union, a website concerning Jewish history, Tisha B’Av, or the Ninth of Av, is important to the Jewish people.  Both the First and Second Temples were destroyed on the Ninth of Av and World War I began on the Ninth of Av (OU.org). In Ilium, the Third Temple was built by the voynix on the Ninth of Av, the day of the Final Fax (315).  The construction of the Third Temple in one day is not an unrealistic ideal, because the Second Temple was destroyed in one day on the Ninth of Av, when “Roman soldiers threw torches at the Temple, starting an enormous conflagration” (Telushkin 138).  

      Historically, on Tisha B’Av “the sin of the spies caused Hashem to decree that the Children of Israel who left Egypt would not be permitted to enter the land of Israel” (OU.org) and foreshadows the Jews not making it through the Final Fax, which can be seen as a way to enter the modern Promised Land.  Savi recognizes that the Jews were left behind by the post-humans on purpose (Simmons 341), further emphasizing my claim that the Final Fax was just a ploy to get rid of all the Jews, an example of anti-Semitism among the post-humans.  The post-humans never “tidied up the planet” as they claimed because dinosaurs still roam the earth and eat Daemon (Simmons 340); yet ironically, they did “tidy up the planet” because they eliminated the existence of all of the Jews except one, Savi.  The post-humans, taking over the role of God, but are different than the characters typically taking on the role of God, as described by Susan Kray.  The post-humans have no religion, unlike the Jews that Susan Kray argues take over the role of creator God in science fiction (91).  The world has been destroyed through science, and the post-humans will attempt to fix the world through the same science that helped to destroy it. However, the post-humans failed to capture Savi in their neutrino beam and she takes on a leadership role, like Moses leading his people to the Promised Land.  By incorporating stories of Judaism’s past with futuristic stories in the novel, thousands of years of history comes full circle, all the Jews trapped in the neutrino beam “are direct participants in that formative moment of history” (Kray 91), the building of the Third Temple, and creator God no longer exists.

     Savi takes Daemon and Harmon on a journey to Jerusalem to see the Third Temple and the “nine thousand one hundred and thirteen” Jews left behind after the Final Fax (Simmons 340). By doing so, she attempts to teach Daemon and Harmon to be skeptical of the information that they are constantly fed and to reach out on their own to form their own opinions about their existence. While the three are in Jerusalem, they are bombarded by cries of “Itbah al-Yahud” which readers find out means “kill the Jew” (343).  This reminds me of the Bible story before Christ’s crucifixion, the crowds shout out of kill the Jew.  Savi takes on a sacrificial role like Christ and she makes a promise with Ariel to “save the soul of the Earth” (385) and she fulfills that promise when she, Daemon, and Harmon are attacked by Caliban.  She essentially sacrifices herself in order to find out more information about Caliban, to distract him and ask “what happened to the post-humans here?” (Simmons 460).  To save the lives of Daemon and Harmon, who carry out the mission of killing Caliban and attempt to save the Jews in the neutrino beam like disciples, Savi postpones shooting Caliban until it is too late, allowing him to give Daemon and Harmon information about Setebos and Prospero before Caliban bites through her neck “with one powerful snap of his jaws” (Simmons 462).  In the novel, Savi represents a messianic figure, an archetype of good, while juxtaposed against the Caliban, an archetype of evil.  Simmons creates a new religious icon in the character of Caliban, his evilness is recreated through his spawn, the calibani, nestled among metallic crosses, a traditional Christian symbol of hope and rebirth, waiting to recharge and rebirth themselves in evil in order to unleash more terror.  

      Farah Mendlesohn, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, argues that in the realm of religion, science fiction “tends to focus … on practice rather than faith … which explains why sf writers have chosen frequently to write about the crucifixion” (265) and that religion is associated with “intellectual degradation” (266).    Ilium contains images of the Crucifixion, but the images are opposite in meaning from the traditional views of the Crucifixion as life-saving and awe-inspiring.  In Ilium, the crucifixion is used by Caliban to grow and recharge his knights of evil, the calibani.  Caliban takes on the role of the devil or a dark angel who serves a more powerful master.  In his speeches to Savi, Daemon, and Harmon, before Savi tries to kill him, Caliban states that Setebos is the mastermind behind eating the posts, and sending the moravecs to Mars.  The calibani, created by Prospero and Ariel, recharge themselves from within large metal crosses, a twist on the traditional Christian cross.  These evil beings work for Caliban and he can be viewed as their God, like demons serving the devil and using a Christian icon to gain energy (Simmons 379).  The caliban are recharging in the dry Mediterranean basin, an area traditionally thought of as the cradle of civilization.  Savi and Caliban are two opposing archetypes, both blending Christianity and Judaism in their portrayal. Simmons blends themes of the Wandering Jew with that of the Messiah to create Savi, a character living on an iceberg until she is found by Daemon and Harmon.  He takes the image of the crucifix, juxtaposing death and resurrection, to create an image of evil through the character of Caliban, whose children are re-birthed on the cross, just as in Christianity, Christ, the son of God, represents rebirth through the death on the cross.

      Ilium is a novel which could be viewed as an outsider when compared to other recent science fiction novels because it does not ignore Jewish characters and places its Jewish character in the role of the female protagonist who fights against evil.  This character, Savi, juxtaposes two religions that are based on patriarchy, Christianity and Judaism, and steps beyond the traditional roles the two religions impose on women in order to create a futuristic mixture of both religions.  Savi is both a Messiah and a Wandering Jew; she saves the Jewish people by telling their history to Daemon and Harmon, who act as disciples in the novel.  By telling the history of the Jewish people to Daemon and Harmon, Savi acts like a rabbi introducing the religion to young Jews, and by sacrificing herself to Caliban, the archetype of evil in the novel, so that Daemon and Harmon might continue the mission of saving the Jews stuck in the neutrino beam, she becomes a messianic figure.  Simmons has written an important message in Ilium through Savi, a character that finds collaboration in Judaism and Christianity, a message that intersects religion and gender in order to create a new religion and message of hope in a futuristic setting in which human connection and compassion is often non-existent. 

Works Cited

Gary, George Slusser, and David Leiby, eds.  Worlds Enough and Time: Explorations of Time in Science Fiction and Fantasy.  Westport:  Greenwood P, 2002.                                                                                                     Hollinger, Veronica.  “Feminist Theory and Science Fiction.” In James 125-136. 

James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn.  The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 

Kray, Susan.  “Jews in Time: Alternate Histories and Futures in Space…. And Who Was that Bearded, Yarmulkeh’d Old Man?”   In Westfahl 87-103. 

Mendlesohn, Farah.  “Religion and Science Fiction.”  In James 264-275. 

Simmons, Dan.  Ilium.  New York: Harper Collins, 2003. 

Telushkin, Joseph.  Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History.  New York: William Morrow, 1991. 

“Tisha B’Av.”  The Orthodox Union. November 3, 9. http://www.ou.org/yerushalayim/tishabav/tishabav.html.Westfahl 

Wordsworth begins “Tintern Abbey” with the tranquil scene of nature as he is revisiting this place after “Five years have passed; five summers, with the length/Of five long winters” (1-2). This place, a place that represents “interchange between man and nature,” once brought him comfort before he was forced to remain in England away from his lover and newborn child (Langbaum 265). This part of nature had such an impact on Wordsworth that he reflects on his memories in this place while he is away and unable to return over the course of five years. He expresses his vivid remembrance of the Wye by saying, “Though absent long, / These forms of beauty have not been to me, / As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye” (24-6). Even though he is unable to visit

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. (89-94)

This evolution of thought brings about a new philosophical and/or spiritual dimension to Wordsworth’s view of nature. As he once believed nature was merely present for his pleasure and leisure, not to be taken seriously but as an escape for “restoration,” now he feels nature is an inspiration and a connection to God from which he can learn new things and grow spiritually (31). In “’These Beauteous Forms’: ‘Tintern Abbey’ and the Post-Enlightenment Religious Crisis,” Henry Weinfield argues that “Tintern” is composed while Wordsworth is experiencing a personal religious crisis influenced by his aging as he states, “’Tintern Abbey is a poem that confronts a crisis that is at once personal or private—insofar as it involves a recognition of mortality and of the progressive loss of vitality as a result of the aging process” (257). While Weinfield portrays this poem as a reaction to personal “crisis,” John Peters, on the other hand, views this poem as “regenerative rather than degenerative” (77). Peters’ ideas reinforce the idea that nature in “Tintern” is a positive influence for Wordsworth in his journey through life. As Wordsworth is reflecting on his younger days when nature was his “all in all,” he is also reminded of the toll age has taken on his life, both physically and spiritually. In Robert Langbaum’s “The Evolution of Soul in Wordsworth’s Poetry,” he felt that this time in Wordsworth’s life was a time of “Christian revelation” (272). He comments on this recognition process as he states, “Because he discovers continuity in the disparate pictures through a principle of growth, he becomes aware of the pattern of his life—he binds his apparently disparate days together. He may be said to evolve his soul in becoming aware that his soul evolves;” thus in “Tintern” Wordsworth does not intend or wish to leave his youthful passions behind, but bind them together with new spiritual vision he has acquired (270). While he realizes this loss of vitality, “Tintern” presents the idea that nature serves as a form of rejuvenation for Wordsworth. Though itself nature remains unchanged, Wordsworth develops a new perspective about nature and its purpose. He is not necessarily abandoning his devotion for nature, but finding a new way to appreciate it. Thomas Raysor takes a closer look at Wordsworth’s perception of immortality and this metamorphic process in his article “The Themes of Immortality and Natural Piety in Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode” by stating, “The gain in mature human tenderness is not a substitute which takes the place of the love of nature, whether inferior or superior; it is a means to continue the love of nature in a different form” (872). In “Tintern” Wordsworth has not yet lost his admiration for nature, but it is here that the reader begins to see his loss of youth and innocence which will ultimately lead to a detachment from nature.

Wordsworth’s later work “Ode” also begins with a reflection on the enjoyment and pleasure he once achieved by spending time and growing in nature, but soon the mood of sorrow and loss appear. While reflecting on this innocent and joyous time in his life which consumed his childhood, he states,

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparell’d in celestial light. (1-4)

This gives the reader the impression that he used to have a spiritual connection that was channeled by nature which he has lost or has disintegrated in some way since his younger days. Thomas Raysor points out this change in his statement, “And every one who reads Wordsworth will probably agree that his conception of immortality was one thing in childhood, another in poetic maturity” (861). In “Ode” Wordsworth sees the error in placing too much value on nature as he did in his childhood and realizes, “But yet I know, where’er I go,/That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth” (17-18). It appears as if a veil has been lifted from his eyes in order that he may see the reality of life without Christ, which ultimately leads to death, both physical and spiritual. Nature no longer stands as his “all in all” as it did in “Tintern,” and therefore the glory he once saw in the world and worldly things fades away and is replaced with a spiritual relationship with God. Raysor goes on to say, “These unthinking, somewhat irresponsible joys in sensation and emotion in youth are not at all equal in glory to the ‘celestial light’ which Wordsworth remembers in the Ode, but they share the same fate and disappear in manhood” (Raysor 872). It is as if Wordsworth has come to the realization that “the visionary gleam, the glory and the dream of childhood, which once rested upon nature but does so no more, is an intimation of the child’s nearness to God, who is our home, whose glory makes possible the celestial light in which every common sight is clothed” (Raysor 863). While he once found stability and consistency in nature, he now sees the “idea of spiritual progress” as a better, more prosperous route, rather than that of “permanence in the midst of change” remaining dependent on nature (Raysor 868). Here in “Ode” nature has become the stationary element in his life which holds him back from this “spiritual progress” (868). Along with this loss of his spiritual connection through nature, he has also lost a part of his innocence, for he says “The things which I have seen I now can see no more” (9). With this new perspective, he seems to be grieving over the loss of the “visionary splendor of the senses which he has once possessed” (Raysor 869). Raysor speaks of this severance process from innocence, stating, “But this splendor is the light which we bring with us from our life with God and slowly fades as we become more and more remote from childhood” (869). Wordsworth seems to yearn for the innocence he once had when he could enjoy nature as he says, “Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,” but realizes he must move forward with his new philosophical views by finding “strength in what remains,” (180-1, 183) further illustrating his “decline of sensibility in maturity” (Raysor 870). Furthermore, Percy Shelley, in his poem “To Wordsworth,” addresses the “Poet of Nature”:

thou has wept to know

That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. (1-4)

Wordsworth does in fact seem sorrowful for leaving these childish but joyful remnants behind as they symbolize a time of “glory,” innocence, and freedom in nature.

This new perspective creates a different portrayal of Wordsworth’s life and views than those of “Tintern Abbey” in which he first needs only the experience of nature, but in the end finds “abundant recompense” through a relationship with God (89). Wordsworth, since the composition of “Tintern,” has matured through life’s experiences, and, as Barry Cerf describes, “It seems certain that at about the mid-point of his life he came to realize more or less clearly that he had been worshiping false gods, that external nature was not a guide to high summits” and “religion [was] not [a] mere obsolete symbol of an unawakened past” (625). This alludes to the fact that Wordsworth was exhibiting a form of pantheism by placing too much emphasis on nature and less on God in “Tintern”; however, in “Ode” he is aware of this mistake and realizes the distraction nature has become. In “Ode” with the loss of immaturity and innocence comes also a loss of spirituality. Though nature seems to take on a negative form which aids in this loss, it still remains to serve a purpose: to distract from spirituality. Wordsworth alludes to the figure of a “nurse” stating,

And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came. (79-84)

In this poem nature, who is personified as a “homely Nurse,” wishes to distract a person from one’s spiritual connection with God in hopes one will eventually lose sight of the heavenly place from which they came and be completely satisfied in nature. But in its attempts to distract one from Heaven, it actually serves as a constant reminder of one’s mortality in that nature is not the eternal home-place but rather a place from which one will perish. Anya Taylor infers from Wordsworth’s image of the “homely nurse” that “the soul never becomes completely acclimated to the earthly world into which it has temporarily fallen” (635). There is a constant yearning for something more eternal than nature has to offer, thus, earth poses as the “nurse” or “foster –mother,” “trying in vain to solace the child who yearns for his true mother Eternity” (Taylor 635). Taylor goes on to explain the relationship between a spiritual being and nature’s incapability to provide for one’s need of the eternal life, stating, “The child, surrounded by Earth’s inadequate playthings, feels orphaned and abandoned; he struggles to adapt himself to earthly roles in which he will be increasingly ensnared in the drag of quotidian” (635). Instead of finding comfort and strength in nature, now he must focus on God and rely on faith rather than settling for dependence on nature to fulfill his spiritual needs. He wishes he could take back the innocent, pleasure-giving nature and “splendour in the grass” that he once cherished so much, but instead he must deal with the reality of knowledge and experience and the burden they bring (182). For Wordsworth, nature will never compare to eternity through spirituality; “No consolations, however poignant, however philosophic, keep the human being from his yearning for the almost but never quite forgotten elsewhere, the worlds unrealized toward which he gropes” (Taylor 436). Despite nature’s, or the “homely nurse’s,” best efforts, it will never replace the “elsewhere” that a spiritual being knows to exist in the form of Heaven.

While the “homely Nurse” who appears in “Ode” creates limitations to one’s spiritual growth and hinders a once spiritual being from a divine connection with their maker, there is a different illustration of the “nurse” in “Tintern Abbey” (81). Here the “nurse” is viewed in a more positive manner:

well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being. (108-12)

This statement shows a deep dependence on nature to serve as a spiritual guide that aids the growth of the relationship between man, in this case Wordsworth, and God. These opposing views of nature create a contrary in one’s mind, which Charles Smith mentions as a “kind of dualism” (1181). Smith goes on to say, “Wordsworth had a very strong habit of thinking in terms of paired opposites or contraries. Everywhere, in nature, in individual man and in society, he saw a constant interplay of opposing forces” (1181). This poem presents a certain “harmony” in the relationship between man and God, whereas in “Ode,” nature imposed a form of “discord” for Wordsworth’s spiritual connection (1181). In “Tintern Abbey” nature becomes the bridge between man and immortality, and ultimately serves as the “guardian” or gatekeeper of one’s spirituality (111). The image of the “anchor” that this nurse represents symbolizes the “harmony” of which Smith speaks, as it creates “fixed, permanent relationships” (1181). This image of the nurse could be better explained through the analogy of a mother and her child’s relationship where nature takes on the form of a mother caring for her infant, who in this case happens to be Wordsworth. One responsibility a mother will most likely take on when she is given a child is to educate him or her so that they may be successful in life. When a child is born into this world, its mother, in a sense, becomes that child’s “all-in-all”, just as nature becomes to Wordsworth (76). “The infant,” states Robert Langbaum, “is from the start an active agent of perception who ‘drinks in’ feelings,” and these feelings, for Wordsworth, came from nature, or his “nurse” (266). Until he discovered the aspect of spirituality and the necessity of God at some point in his life, Wordsworth was dependent on nature to fill his needs. And it did so abundantly, even

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into my purer mind

With tranquil restoration. (28-31)

Nature then was so appealing for him that he acquired an “appetite” for its “colours” and “forms,” and in return he was provided with

A feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, or any interest

Unborrowed from the eye. (80-84)

In a sense nature was a form of religion and spirituality for Wordsworth at this time in his life, for nature was all he needed. And even though there was more emphasis on nature rather than on God, he still appeared to be a spiritual person who felt free and alive when in the presence of nature, such similar feelings are experienced when one obtains a saving relationship with God. In “Tintern” nature seems to educate Wordsworth in a positive way, so positive that he returns to it after “five long winters” in hopes that it will rejuvenate him in order that he may resemble the light-hearted boy he used to be. Though Wordsworth has obtained a more mature and spiritual outlook on life, he is still able to draw comfort and inspiration from the fruits of nature.

Through both “Tintern Abbey” and “Immortality Ode,” Wordsworth presents two different developments and portrayals of nature and its spiritual connection with man. While in “Tintern Abbey” he experienced a spiritual connection with nature, his “Immortality Ode” paints a very different picture of nature as a distraction from spirituality. Much of Wordsworth’s insight was derived from nature, though in some instances it was not portrayed so positively. By showing his own development and growth as a spiritual being, he creates two opposing realities: one, that nature is necessary and desirable for a spiritual connection and two, that nature will never fully take the place of eternity. Charles Smith states, “In poetry these contraries are translated into corresponding images,” which in these two poems took the form of the “nurse” (1182). While nature is personified as the nurse in each of the poems, they are illustrated in very different manners. While the nurse in “Tintern” serves as a necessary foundation on which spirituality is built, the nurse in “Ode” is portrayed quite negatively as it only distracts a person from eternity with one’s celestial Father.

Works Cited

Barbour, Brian. “‘Between Two Worlds’: The Structure of the Argument in ‘Tintern Abbey’.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 48 (1993): 147-68. Print.

Cerf, Barry. “Wordsworth’s Gospel of Nature.” PMLA 37 (1922): 615-38. Print.

Langbaum, Robert. “The Evolution of Soul in Wordsworth’s Poetry.” PMLA 82 (1967): 265-72. Print.

Peters, John. “Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey.” Explicator 61 (203): 77-78. Print.

Raysor, Thomas. “The Themes of Immortality and Natural Piety in Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode.” PMLA 69 (1954): 861-75. Print.

Shelley, Percy B. “To Wordsworth.” British Literature: 1780-1830. By Anne K. Mellor and Rechard E. Matlak. Boston: Heinle, 1995. 1-1442. Print.

Smith, Charles. “The Contrarieties: Wordsworth’s Dualistic Imagery.” PMLA 69 (1954): 1181-199. Print.

Taylor, Anya. “Religious Readings of the Immortality Ode.” Studies in English Literature (Rice) 26 (1986): 633-54. Print.

Weinfield, Henry. “”These Beauteous Forms”: “Tintern Abbey” and the Post-Enlightenment Religious Crisis.” Religion and the Arts 6 (2002): 257-90. Print.

Wordsworth, William. “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour July 13, 1798.” British Literature: 1780-1830. By Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak. Boston: Heinle, 1995. 1-1442. Print.

Wordsworth, William. “Ode.” British Literature: 1780-1830. By Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak. Boston: Heinle, 1995. 1-1442. Print.

—. “Preface from The Excursion, being a portion of The Recluse, A Poem.” British Literature: 1780 1830. By Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak. Boston: Heinle, 1995. 1-1442. Print.

—. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” British Literature: 1780-1830. By Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak. Boston: Heinle, 1995. Print.

The relationship between repressed desire and the creation of institution is explored throughout the works of Michel Foucault. In his book The History of Sexuality, Foucault argues that once a strict system of laws or rules is enacted within an institution, this system draws out the desires and “peculiarities over which it kept watch”

William Blake explores the same notion as applied to the priests and doctrine of the Christian Church. He reveals institutionalized religion’s attempt to control man’s natural energies as dependent on the existence of man’s repressed desires in both “The Garden of Love“and “The Human Abstract.” Instead of the “Garden of Love” appearing as a fruitful place of joy and reproduction, the garden serves as dark and barren graveyard for sinful desires that seemingly work against the laws of the church. Both the chapel in the center of the garden and the priests that the speaker encounters seem to advertise a growing sense of prohibition that has enveloped the garden. The Church gates “were shut” with “Thou shalt not writ over the door” as the priests continued “walking their rounds” of the garden turned graveyard (5-6, 11). Continuing with his play on the garden image, Blake uses “The Human Abstract” to illuminate the type of garden that the priest craft has grown inside the human mind to replace the original, visible garden of life and passionate energy. Just as the priests serve as the only life in the barren and dying garden of love and desire, in “The Human Abstract,” the priests’ lives also seem dependent on the death of man’s natural energies and the growth of his corrupted desires. By planting and tending their own tree in man’s brain, the priests have taken “advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract…mental deities from their objects” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 290). Here, instead of allowing desire as an equal to reason, the Church is making man’s natural desires sinful in order to make their subjects feel guilty for the desires they are experiencing and eventually force them into religion. As an institution, they are teaching man to value reason over desire, putting the two into an unhealthy system of negation, where no balance between the two forces can occur. By doing so, the priests are imposing their rational and reasonable ideologies on to man and trying to demonize his natural desires. Not only has the Church corrupted the concept of desire by prohibiting it outright, but as a result, its survival has become dependent on the manifestation and indeed cultivation of the desires they profess to oppose.

Blake begins his antagonistic approach to the Edenic garden image in “The Garden of Love.” The speaker is automatically repressed by the Church’s prohibition because upon his arrival to the garden, the Chapel gates are shut and “Thou shalt not” is written over the doorframe (5-6). The Chapel, what should be a place of openness and renewal, has shut itself off from the world. When the speaker travels out to the garden, a place usually associated with growth and rebirth, it is “filled with graves” instead of fruitful plants (9). All of the reproduction and celebration of life has been killed. The impending image of death is again echoed by the priests clothed in

“black gowns” (11). Rather than a chapel and a garden of love and fruitfulness, the speaker sees images of death and a funeral procession. Perhaps the funeral imagery is implied for the desires the priests have tried to kill, but by the priests representing the only life present in what was once a garden of love, Blake is introducing the parasitical role of the priest class as well. Not only are the priests being nourished by what they are killing, but this process is essential for their survival. Like parasitic plants and vines, the priests attempt to “bind” the speaker’s “joys and desire” with their “briars” of religious reason (12). Instead of desire coexisting with reason as spiritual righteousness and fervor, desire has become suffocated by a religious negation. This subjugation of desire to reason is a violation of what Blake calls contraries. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake shows that two opposing concepts should be in a system of “contraries” for full understanding and progression to result (288). If one contrary becomes valued over or controls another, both concepts become part of an unhealthy negation. When reason begins to contain energy or desire, it begins to kill the body because “energy is the only life” during human existence (Marriage 288). The Church, in its attempt to contain desires, only pushes the desires out in other directions and re-channels them. The Church thinks that jailing people for their supposed sinful desires will result in ultimate good for the imprisoned when, in fact, “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion” (Marriage 289). By creating strict institutions that limit and condemn man’s natural desires, both systems of law and organized religion have empowered criminals and whores by trying to stifle existing desires and, as a result, re-channeling them.

Blake attempts to show this redirection in the “charter’d” streets of “London” (1). By using the term “charter,” the poet seemingly recognizes the visible re-channeling through each individual street, perhaps hinting at other chartering internally. In Michael Ferber’s discussion of “London” with its surrounding context, he establishes the possibility of a dual meaning behind Blake’s specific word choice. Ferber argues that “London [the city] had a charter, granting it certain privileges or liberties” (312). Not only does this apply to the state itself, but more importantly, to London’s people. Literally, the people are “‘hired’ or ‘leased’” (Ferber 312) to certain jobs within the city and on London’s very streets, but figuratively, the institutions of the church and the state have leased liberty and freedom of desire. They have chartered and channeled man’s desire in attempt to control these energies. Instead, the people’s bodies, emotions, and minds are “mapped, bound, [and] confined, by being turned into,” or treated like, “a street…rather than…taking [their] natural course” (Ferber 313). An example of these

forced tensions exists in “London” as the Church supports the physical lease of the adolescent chimney sweepers’ bodies. They ironically claim to be “appall[ed]” and horrified at the young “Chimney-sweepers cry” (9-10). While it seems at first that the Church is deeply shocked and concerned by the anguish of these child laborers, the Church is actually using them to “appall” or whiten and clean their own dirty chimneys. The color of the clean church becomes the ironic opposite of its morality. As the stains of impurity are removed from the church walls, the church as a moral institution is stained by their own lack of integrity and religiosity as they promote social injustice by hiring mistreated children to work for them rather than protecting the children from this social atrocity. In the same way the church supports the injustice of child labor, it also seems essential in creating the “youthful Harlots” that curse the “Infants” and the “Marriage hearse”(18-20). When sexual pleasure is banned by religious ideology, the sexual desires of man are not extinguished. Instead, the Church has forced him to channel and charter this repressed energy into a way it can be dealt with. By convincing their followers that natural desires are sinful, the Church is establishing “mind forg’d manacles” concerning the dichotomy of religious right and wrong in human thought. Sexual desire is seen as sinful and animalistic by the Church, and men are condemned for having such lusts outside of recognized marital bonds. According to Ferber, it was impossible to “create virginal and virtuous brides ready to assume the roles expected of them…and not simultaneously create a large society of whores to provide what had to be left out” (330). Those that could not achieve this sexual satisfaction through marriage looked to young harlots to satisfy this desire. In a way, the Church’s institutionalization of marriage and decision of what marriage can and cannot be has partially caused the problem. Thus, the Church’s sexual prohibition created the prostitute’s profession. By trying to stifle natural desires, the Church has not extinguished them, but forced man to repress them. As a result of the Church’s ultimate goal to control the religious limitations of man’s desires, they have become dependent on these repressed energies for the church to survive as an institution.

Although this clerical dependency was originally unintentional, the continual effort to force certain virtues on members of the congregation led to both the reversal of these Godly virtues and the growth of an internal corruption of Christian doctrine. Blake’s “The Divine Image” seemingly promotes optimism and encouragement as the “virtues of delight” that the Church teaches are analyzed (3). These qualities, “Mercy Pity Peace and Love,” work together to create the divine human form that is God (4). In his detailed analysis of “The Divine Image” in relation to “The Human Abstract,” Robert Gleckner explores what Blake is implying when he writes “all must love the human form” (“The Divine Image” 17). Gleckner points out that “in the world of innocence,” this form must be praised as a whole. Each individual virtue the Church teaches must work with the

others to create the complete “human form divine” (15). Though this notion of the divine human image is what the Church is trying to promote, it is impossible in the “world of experience” because “the imaginative unity is shattered, for the Blakean fall [of man]…is a fall into division, fragmentation” (Gleckner 374). The ultimate divine virtues the priests are teaching would, in a world of innocence and purity, successfully work together to make the divine human image complete. However, in a fallen world, this is impossible because each of these virtues becomes separated from the whole for it must also be accompanied by its sinful counterpart, vice. Gleckner argues that in a fallen world, “virtue cannot exist except as a rationally conceived opposite to vice” (374). For Blake, the priest class claims innocence in teaching virtue, but in the reality of the fallen world, they are only comparing qualities they deem acceptable next to the desires they are working to condemn. Despite their claims of innocence and virtue, the priests themselves are not devoid of the desires they condemn as vice. Blake even argues that while “the Priests of the Raven of dawn…with hoarse note curse the sons of joy,” they, in “pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not” (Marriage 294). At best, they are hypocrites; as religious leaders, they condemn their followers for wrong-doing, but hide their own similar sinful thoughts behind the guise of religious virtue and righteousness. Forcing these supposedly Christian virtues that the priests pretend to embody into action, the priests have unintentionally developed a need for vice in order for the virtue they preach to exist. Posing as the opposite to “The Divine Image,” “The Human Abstract” explores how this concept is perverted by the priests. The first eight lines of the poem work to show how there would be no need for the virtues the priests are teaching if they had not labeled man’s natural desires as vice. Pity is unveiled when Gleckner claims that within “The Human Abstract” it is “manufactured by man in his blind egomania by creating an object for that pity; and mercy is spawned by a condition calculated to elicit its moral force” (376). These virtues that the priests preach to boast of goodness and Godliness have become dependent on the vices they refute.

Creating a clerical system that feeds from the hidden desires of its subjects, Blake establishes a parasiticclass within the Church, which he illustrates vividly in “The Garden of Love” as well as “The Human Abstract.” Not only does Blake continue the garden imagery, but the priests that were watching and encouraging the death of the garden of love, now emerge in the specific parasitic roles of the caterpillar, fly, and raven. Whereas in the garden the priests represented a plant-like parasite, winding around and suffocating man’s “joys and desires,” in “The Human Abstract” they take on more intentional and animalistic roles as they feed on man’s desires. All three creatures representing the priest-class encourage a corrupted notion of virtue and a mystified sense of religion to bear the “fruit of Deceit” in the minds of their followers from which the parasites feed (17). The Church is deceiving man into thinking that only the repressive ideologies of the Church are true, and that all natural desires are bad. Here, the Biblical image of the tree in the Garden of Eden has almost been reversed. Man was subject to his pure and natural desires before he was fed the “fruit of Deceit” by the Church or priesthood, creating a parallel between laws of religious institutions and Satan. As parasitic caterpillars and flies, the priests feed on the mystery that they have created in the man’s brain. Just as the man accepts the corrupted tree to grow in his mind, men of the church allow priests to tell them what to think as well. Man’s “natural instincts and processes” have been perverted by the Church’s teaching of “the god of this world and his iron-clad ‘Thou shalt nots’” that guarded the chapel in “The Garden of Love” (Gleckner 379). These internal projections of religious, and often social, institutions onto man are the same deceptive “mind-forg’d manacles” Blake warns against in “London” (8). The Church has imposed their ideologies into man’s mind, and in the same way they suppressed his overt natural desires in “The Garden of Love,” they try to suppress his desire to question by filling his mind with their fruit of religious dogma.

Although these stifling mechanisms of the church and state are to blame for deceiving man, the largest blame, Gleckner would argue, should be placed on man himself. The real problem lies in “man’s own thinking processes, his refusal to acknowledge the growth in his own skull, [and] his all too willing assumption that it lay only in the skulls of others” (379). Blake is fighting against such blind acceptance of religious authority at the end of “The Divine Image” when he equates multiple religions: “all must love the human form,/ In heathen, turk, or jew” (17-18). He directly attacks repressive ideologies of the Church when he shows that God can and is dwelling in them all and not just the supposed Christians (19-20). Echoing this directly, is Blake’s passage from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell claiming that “All deities reside in the human breast” (290). He shows that religion is an internal projection that man has to develop and discover himself. In a way, Blake uses the Angel to represent institutionalized religion in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and to show how man can be talked into accepting corrupted reason over truth. At one point, the Angel imposes a certain vision of Hell onto man, and it is only after man has been separated from the Angel that he can see Hell clearly and impose his opinion back onto the Angel (291-2). By gaining this clarity both visually and mentally, the man is able to distinguish not only his personal perception of the surrounding situation, but also to recognize the distorted truth he was initially presented by the Angel. Eynel Wardi explores this message of self-capability, or empowerment, in Blake as he discusses and analyzes the text of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He argues this text alone “celebrates the imaginative possibility of provisionally…overcoming limits and limitations of sense-perception as well as of tyrannical conceptions that narrow, divide, and rigidify the fallen mind” (253). While Blake is not rejecting religion, he uses the Angel to call attention to man’s blind acceptance of religious ideologies of repression. He is showing that man must step back from them to observe a situation for himself instead of accepting the Church’s refusal of desire. The true Hell is only seen when the man relies on his own self-perception.

In Stuart Peterfreund’s discussion of Blake, he argues that many of the characters in Blake’s poetic works all face the same inability to develop their own thoughts concerning the world around them. Just as the man could not clearly see Hell until he was away from the Angel’s overpowering presence, many other Blakean characters face the similar “failure to attain the realization that the kingdom of heaven lies within” (Peterfreund 107). This process of internal analysis for external situations can only take place in the mind. In the same way, Blake argues the tree in “The Human Abstract” was formed by the repressive “mind forg’d manacles” of the priest-class, but also, like the man in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, it is ultimately man’s responsibility to search out religious truths for himself. Failing to do so makes man subject to the power of the institutions that surround him. If the man in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell refused to acknowledge that this advocate for his religion was giving him a tainted view of reality, he could have been subject to the same tree of “Mystery” and “fruit of Deceit” from “The Human Abstract” that the priest-class grows in another follower’s brain. In the same way the Angel imposed his view of Hell onto the human spectator and the priests imposed their policy of virtue on man’s brain, Blake would argue that all institutionalized religions impose their system of virtues and condemn natural desires in order to have something to correct. If they make the desires sinful or unlawful, the church has given itself more authority to change the natural condition that exists in man, but also, in the process, has developed a dependency on the condition’s existence altogether. Institutions, both of church and state, seemingly have been erected on man’s desires. While they intend to punish unfavorable actions, Foucault argues that violations of the institution’s laws, or “delinquency is for the most part produced in and by an incarceration which, ultimately, prison perpetuates in its turn” (“The Carceral” 1642). When the church prohibits man’s natural desires and the state prohibits his actions, they are only promoting his disobedience: “The delinquent is an institutional product” (“The Carceral” 1642). The hypocrisy of this unnecessary repression shows that “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with/ bricks of Religions” because institution is built upon the very desires it condemns.

Works Cited

Blake, William. “The Divine Image.” British Literature: 1780-1830. Ed. Anne K. Mellor

            and Richard E. Matlak. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996. 280. Print.

—. “The Garden of Love.” British Literature: 1780-1830. Ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard

            E. Matlak. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996. 302. Print.

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Throughout his career, William Shakespeare wrote many literary masterpieces: tragedies, comedies, histories, and romances. When comparing Shakespeare’s plays, it is ironic to discover that his tragedy Hamlet has much in common with his romantic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare wrote, “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact” (Dream 5.1.7-8). In these two lines, Shakespeare himself ties the two plays together. Using Hamlet, the lunatic, and Titania and Bottom, the lovers, the poet, Shakespeare himself, he has created plays of such imagination that they have become part of the fabric of history. Each play features the supernatural and confusion, each contains lovers, and both were given life by a poet. Hamlet is a supernatural tragedy in which the young prince’s confusion and uncertainty caused by the ghost of his father are disguised by his feigned madness and use of humor, while A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a supernatural comedy in which the humans’ confusion and uncertainty caused by the fairies are disguised by magical madness and humor.

The use of the supernatural in Hamlet and Dream would be quite familiar to Shakespeare’s audiences. As the Elizabethan audience would expect, the ghost in Hamlet appears during the night and fades with the break of dawn. According to James F. Lacey, “[a] common opinion regarding ghosts was that they were evil spirits impersonating the deceased” (834). Lacy continues by saying that in Hamlet, unlike Macbeth, the ghost appears to Hamlet instead of his murderer, Claudius. Since this Ghost has no way to get revenge itself, it must use the living Hamlet to gain its revenge. The Ghost is not just the instigator of Hamlet’s revenge, but it also serves another purpose in the play. As Lacey points out in his article, “the ghost provides the audience with a great deal of information necessary for understanding the play, a brilliant way of handling exposition” (Lacey 834).

In Dream, just as Shakespeare’s audiences would expect, the fairies are mischievously intruding into the lives of the humans. According to David P. Young in Something of Great Constancy: The Art of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “[f]airies were sometimes said to be fallen angels and inhabitants of hell, so that a certain confusion about their moral status probably existed among the audience” (28). However, according to M. W. Latham, “Shakespeare altered the folk concept of fairies [in Dream], converting them into benevolent, ethereal, dream-like creatures” (219). This change is evident from the fact that the fairies begin the play intruding into the lives of the humans, but in the end the fairies fix their mistakes and the lives of the humans are ultimately better.

Both Hamlet and Dream are plays filled with confusion caused by the supernatural. After Hamlet encounters the ghost in Act I, scene iv, he is confused and does not know whether the ghost is good or evil. The appearance of his father’s ghost sends Hamlet into a quandary of indecision. Is it really Hamlet’s father, or is it a thing of evil? After all, as Marcellus notes in Act I, the apparition fades with “the crowing of the cock” (Hamlet 1.1.157). Hamlet is bound by tradition to avenge his father’s death, but he wonders if his father was really murdered. Hamlet is trapped in the prison of his mind, and according to Martin Scofield “[i]n seeking to unlock it he must define his relation to the past, his duty towards it, and his need for freedom from it” (33). Shakespeare’s

Characters for Students states that Hamlet shows “erratic behavior as he contemplates acting against Claudius” after seeing his father’s ghost (92). Hamlet’s internal confusion comes out as “erratic behavior” (92).

The erratic behavior of Hamlet, caused by his difficulty in perceiving the truth, leads to a kind of comedy, which Scofield calls “the comedy of the distorting mirror” (120). In much of the play, the comedy is demonstrated in the puns which Hamlet uses against the other characters. Often this comedy of Hamlet is used against the foolish Polonius. In Act III Hamlet questions Polonius’ perceptions of a cloud. First, the cloud is a camel, then a weasel, and finally a whale (Hamlet 3.2.335-340). Poor Polonius agrees, never realizing that once again he is the butt of Hamlet’s jibe.

Similarly, the humans in Dream become confused because the fairies begin interfering with their lives. In Act III the fairies cause Lysander and Demetrius both to fall in love with Helena. The fairies actions cause much confusion between Helena and Hermia and much conflict between Lysander and Demetrius. As David P. Young writes in his book, “[t]he four lovers . . . are puppets while they are in the woods, the helpless victims of supernatural enchantments” (68). The behavior of all four lovers is erratic and out of the ordinary. Polonius and the four lovers are all helpless victims of confusion caused by an outside force. Hamlet’s comic wit is something against which Polonius is defenseless; similarly, when Puck and Oberon interfere in the lovers’ lives, they are helpless to resist.

The four lovers’ erratic behavior, caused by the fairies’ enchantments, parallels Scofeild’s description of “the comedy of the distorting mirror” found in Hamlet. However, unlike the confusion caused by Hamlet, the comic confusion and conflict among the four lovers is caused by supernatural interference. Puck admits to Oberon that he has caused this erratic behavior when he says, “Captain of our fairy band, / Helena is here at hand, / And the youth, mistook by me, / Pleading for a lover’s fee. / Shall we their fond pageant see? / Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (Dream 3.2.110-115). Therefore, the resulting comedy is caused by Puck’s mistake.

Although there is comedy in both plays, the comedy in Hamlet and Dream appear in different forms. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet is first confused and outraged by the hasty remarriage of his mother—not just a hasty remarriage but marriage to Claudius, the brother of her recently deceased husband. This outrage and confusion of Hamlet’s is often revealed in his comedic use of puns. Early in Act I, Hamlet demonstrates his clever wit as he creates a pun. He says, “Oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!” (Hamlet 1.2.113-114). According to the University of Kentucky’s Marvin D. Hinten in his article “Shakespeare’s Hamlet” from The Explicator, “‘a dew’ fits perfectly with the liquefying images of melting, thawing, and resolving. But Shakespeare may have well intended his audience to be reminded of the French adieu, or goodbye” (145). Since Hamlet is contemplating suicide, Hinton believes he is saying goodbye to the world (145). The “a dew” pun is a possibly an attempt by Shakespeare to foreshadow how Hamlet’s wit and talent in the creation of puns will play a role later in the play. It is interesting to note Hamlet’s use of this pun and others occurs before he has encountered the ghost of his father but after the hasty marriage. He knows that something is “rotten in the state of Denmark” just not precisely what (Hamlet 1.4.90).After his meeting with the ghost, Hamlet’s puns become increasingly disturbing as he tries to convince others of his madness.

In Hamlet the comedy is mainly found in Hamlet’s puns, which in most ways are subtle to the reader; however, in Dream the comedy is evident throughout the play. Of course, the difference is obvious when you consider that Hamlet is a tragedy and Dream is a comedy. In a tragedy, the audience would not expect broad humor, while subtle humor is not always effective in a comedy.

For Hamlet and the many characters in Dream, they are trapped in a dreamlike situation; they seem to have little control over the actions in their lives. In an 1848 essay, Edward Strachey calls Hamlet a skeptical, a person who “finds its more and more difficult to act, as his knowledge becomes more and more comprehensive and circular” (102). Hamlet, like the other skepticals of Strachey, becomes more satirical in his observations of those who surround him. Although Hamlet is intellectually superior to the other characters, they “are always reminding him that he is dreaming while they are acting” (Strachey 102). Because of Hamlet’s hesitancy in acting, he plays the fool or the madman.

Samuel Johnson wrote, Hamlet “plays the madman most when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty” (295). Ophelia, who loves Hamlet, is tormented by his increasingly crude double entendres (Hamlet 3.2.97-105). Later in the same scene, Ophelia’s comment to Hamlet, “You are keen, my lord, you are keen” brings an even cruder response “It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge” (Hamlet 3.3.223-224). Ophelia may not be as intelligent as Hamlet, but she recognizes the pun and responds, “Still better, and worse” (Hamlet 3.2.225). By acting the madman, Hamlet does indeed drive Ophelia away; however, it also drives her to madness and death.

In Dream, Shakespeare takes confusion to a new level. In a study of Shakespeare, Georg Brandes writes, “The lovers seek and avoid each other by turns . . . and the poet’s delicate irony makes the confusion reach its height and find its symbolic expression when the Queen of the Fairies, in the intoxication of a love-dream, recognizes her ideal in a journeyman weaver with an ass’s head” (549). Shakespeare himself wrote the best description of the confusion found in both Hamlet and Dream in a speech by Theseus:

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name. (Dream 5.1.7-17)

Hamlet who is haunted by his demons serves as the lunatic; Tatiana who falls in love with a weaver wearing an ass’s head represents the lover; and Shakespeare who gives both plays shape is the poet.

Interestingly enough, in both plays a court jester is instrumental is moving the action along. Beginning Act V of Hamlet, Shakespeare includes one of his comic interludes that hints of the tragedy yet to come. Two clowns digging a grave discuss who builds the stronger house, and the first clown declares it is the gravedigger because “the houses he makes lasts till doomsday” (Hamlet 5.1.51). While the gravedigger sings, Hamlet, who is unaware the grave is for Ophelia, and Horatio stop to discuss his lack of feeling since he sings while he digs the grave. Then Hamlet and the clown exchange puns. While at the grave site, Hamlet discovers the skull of Yorick and discusses his childhood memories of the king’s jester who brought pleasure to both Hamlet and the court. According to Hamlet, Yorick was “a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy” (Hamlet 5.1.158). This discussion of Yorick causes Hamlet to contemplate death, leading to his realization that Ophelia is dead and beginning the catastrophe that leads to Hamlet’s death.

However, in Dream, the court jester plays a much larger role. Puck is seen as the official jester to Oberon. It is Puck who “jests to Oberon and make him smile” (Dream 2.1.44). Like Yorick, Puck entertains his lord, bringing him pleasure. In a commentary by Oscar James Campbell, Puck “is a tiny insubstantial elf, like the other fairies” (543). However, Puck shares a striking resemblance to Hamlet himself. According to Campbell, Puck “is bent on mischief, delighted to confuse and bewilder hapless mortals” (543). Hamlet’s mission in much of his play is to confuse and confound those who surround him. Of course, the main difference between Puck and Hamlet is one is immortal while the other is all too mortal.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet tie together the plays Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Each play features the supernatural, Hamlet with its ghost and Dream with its fairies, which causes characters to doubt their sanity and feel a sense of madness. This doubt causes confusion and conflict in each play. Each play features lovers who use comedy to confuse or confound the other. Titania is attracted to the ass-headed Bottom by magic, the enchanted young lovers are confused about who loves whom, and Hamlet uses his biting comedy to push away Ophelia, as well as anyone else who is close to him. Only a master poet could tie the two plays together. Of course, when the poet is William Shakespeare, this is easily done.

Works Cited

Brandes, Georg. “Midsummer Night’s Dream, A: Selected Criticism.” The Reader’s

            Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. Ed. Oscar James Campbell and Edward G. Quinn. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966. 549. Print.

Campbell, Oscar James. “Midsummer Night’s Dream, A: Comment.” The Reader’s

Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. Ed. Oscar James Campbell and Edward G.

Quinn. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966. 543. Print.

“Hamlet (Prince of Denmark).” Shakespeare’s Characters for Students. Ed. Catherine

C. Dominic. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1997. 92-93. Print.

Hinten, John D. “Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Explicator. 51.3 (Spring 1993). 145-146. Print.

Johnson, Samuel. “Hamlet: Selected Criticism.” The Reader’s Encyclopedia of

Shakespeare. Ed. Oscar James Campbell and Edward G. Quinn. New York:

Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966. 295. Print.

Lacey, James F. “Supernatural, The.” The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. Ed.

            Oscar James Campbell and Edward G. Quinn. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,

1966. 833-835. Print.

Latham, M.W. “Fairies.” The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. Ed. Oscar James

Campbell and Edward G. Quinn. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966. 219. Print.

Scofield, Martin. The Ghosts of Hamlet. New York: Cambridge UP, 1980. Print.

Shakespeare, William, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Bedford Introduction to

Literature. Ed. Michael Myer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1532

-1587. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael

Myer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1589-1686. Print.

Strachey, Edward. From Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 1848. Rpt. In Shakespearean

Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Mark W. Scott. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1984. 102-103. Print.

Young, David P. Something of Great Constancy: The Art of A Midsummer Night’s

            Dream. New Haven: Yale UP, 1966. Print.

In William A. Henry III’s “In Defense of Elitism” and Benjamin R. Barber’s “America Skips School,” both authors agree that most students attend institutions of higher education in an attempt to improve their opportunity to earn a more substantial income in the future and that this is contributing to the decay of the higher education system. Both authors also agree that vocational education should be separated from academic education, so that students whose only reasons for an education is to make more money can attend vocational school so they can get out into the work force and begin their careers. There are other similarities between the two as well; however, Henry and Barber differ in their ideas to improve our higher academic education of the

In Henry’s “In Defense of Elitism” the American students are reduced to numbers, ratios and percentages as he proposes “the number of high school graduates who go on to college from nearly 60% to a still generous 33%” (323). Henry’s argument alludes to the American education system as having a high price tag while questioning “whether the investment pays a worthwhile rate of return” (320). He continues his rhetoric with “the American style of mass higher education probably ought to be judged a mistake” (320). He also questions why our country is spending money only “deferring the day when the idle or ungifted take individual responsibility and face up to their fate” (323). Henry’s proposal supports separatism in a nation whose Constitution’s Preamble begins “We the People.” This is America, not Great Britain or Japan. “For all the socialism of British . . . public policy and for all the paternalism of the Japanese, those nations restrict the university training to a much smaller percentage of their young, typically 10% to 15%” (319). These educational systems are the ones Henry favors as he insists that only the most elite of students need be offered higher academic educations. Both authors agree that our educational curriculums have suffered; however, Barber proposes a better way to redeem the future of today’s generation, one which does not include the closing or the cutting of funds for half of our colleges or universities. Barber agrees that attending college to make more money is a poor excuse for an academic education; however, he contends that college may be the only way to form them in to a democratic public from the “young spenders” (339) our generation has created. Barber points out that “recent critics . . . have condemned the young as . . . , lazy, selfish, . . . , materialistic, . . . , greedy, and, of course, illiterate” (335). We have blamed “the schools, the teachers and the children” (335) for the “illiteracy of the young” (337), but Barber contends that we need to take a look at our own generation and what we have taught them. We teach our children by example and the result is “They are society smart . . . what they read so acutely are the social signals emanating from the world in which they will have to make a living” (336). Their teachers are “television” (336), Nintendo, and the internet; besides the fact that, these children are smart and imaginative and they have learned their materialistic lessons well. Since we, as the older generation, have taught them these lessons by demonstration they have learned “that it is much more important to heed what society teaches implicitly by its deeds and reward structures than what school teaches explicitly in its lesson plans and civic sermons” (336). We preach to them of honor and courage, but we do not practice it. We take them to church, but we do not practice “ethics” (338) or the morals we want them to have. Barber emphatically states, “We recommend history, but rarely consult it ourselves” (338). What we show them is that “We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism . . . and we commercialize the classroom—and then bark at the young about the gentile arts of the spirit” (338). The older generations always complain about the younger ones having it better than they did, but in this world we have left them, it would seem a false assumption.

With all of these worldly things we have taught them, we have taught them nothing of liberty or democracy. Barber shows that the lessons of politics are taught to our younger generation “by mindless imagemongering and inflammatory polemics that ignore history altogether” (339). This young generation is unaware that no one is born free, but that “We acquire freedom over time” (340). In a classroom of predominately freshmen college students only one can recite the beginning of the “Gettysburg Address” or knows the story of how Abraham Lincoln wrote it. This says very little for our younger generation’s knowledge of our nation’s history. In Barber’s “America Skips School”, his tone is one of unity as he uses pronouns of “we” and “our.” He quotes Thomas Jefferson from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a colleague “Cherish therefore the spirit of our people and keep alive their attention. Do not be severe upon their errors, reclaim them by enlightening them” (340). Barber believes that the one way to reclaim our younger generation is a college education as he quotes Jefferson once again, “Once educated . . . a people is safe from even the subtlest tyrannies” (340). Our founding fathers based our public school system on the “conviction that education could turn a people into a safe refuge” (340) of civility and liberty. One of the facts of our Democratic nation that our young people have not been taught is that liberties are earned, not given, and civility is learned quality. Barber explains that “public schools” (340) is an ideal that a public education is “procreative of the very idea of a public” (340). If we do not educate each of our children to be a “conscientious, community-minded citizen” (341); we will not preserve democracy. Men have fought for it, died for it and we, as the older generation of our nation, have failed to teach it.

An academic education may be the only opportunity we have to redeem ourselves from the vulgar lessons that we have taught these children so well. If we were to embrace Henry’s proposal of “elitism” (319), then we would rob our children of the opportunity to learn what freedom and liberty are. Henry conveys the thought that these young people are just the way they are; however, Barber’s idea is that they are redeemable and they can still be molded into better liberty-minded citizens. The latter is much more agreeable since “Civility is a work of imagination” (341). One of the more alarming realizations is that we as a people are losing our rights one by one, and if we do not begin at some point to educate our next generation as Barber suggest, we will fail prey to the “tyranny of opinion” (341), as our founding fathers feared. We have the obligation to teach our young people to be more active in our government by educating them that included as one of their responsibilities is that they are required to question their government. They can begin by voting wisely as a product of being “informed citizens” (340). Barber says it best as he states “the American dream of a free and equal society governed by judicious citizens has been this dream of an aristocracy of everyone” (341).

America will need an educated population if future generations are to preserve the democracy on which this country was founded. If this younger generation is to survive the world we have created for them and fulfill the hope of making our society better, they will need the best education the public can afford them. College campuses are societies within themselves and they allow young people to get outside of their normal environment to experience meeting people of other races and cultures, as they learn to live with the differences in peace and acceptance. It would be detrimental to a young person’s growth and maturity if they were to be robbed of the social education as well as the academic education of college if Henry’s “elitism” (319) method of education was to become a reality. Dormitories are communities within the college campus society where students learn to live together, help each other and make new friends among their peers. A college education takes “persistence effort and tenacious responsibility” (340) to attain the ultimate goal of a diploma or degree; furthermore, it may be the only opportunity that students have to learn these lessons. Each generation is to learn from the mistakes of the generation before them, but the younger generation cannot realize that mistake unless we offer them an education that fosters critical thinking, so they can learn to think for themselves. Barber validates his point about the connection between an academic education and building a public as he quotes Jefferson stating that education is “’indeed ‘the only safe depository’ for the ultimate powers of society” (340). Our younger generation of money hungry students must have the opportunity to learn about democracy, liberty and civility with a college education; otherwise we of the older generation will be doomed in our old age as the younger generation will be running our country as the “selfish” (335) and “self-seeking” (335) individuals we have created.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin R. “Excerpt from ‘America Skips School.’” The Anteater Reader. Ed.

            Ray Zimmerman and Carla Copenhaven. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2005. 335-

            341. Print.

Henry, William A., III. “In Defense of Elitism.” The Anteater Reader. 6th ed. Boston:

Pearson, 2005. 319-323. Print.

She started out slowly but within half of a mile she had picked up her speed. God, she loved the way running made her feel; she loved the stretch in her muscles, the pull in her chest. Pushing herself faster she tried to gain some control over her whirling thoughts; she tried to let the feeling of running take over, but her fury was too powerful. “What will it take to prove myself?”she thought heatedly. “Haven’t I done all of the months of therapy?” “I put the weight back on.” Tears of frustrations stung her eyes, but her feet and breath maintained a steady rhythm. The thunder rumbled in her chest as she raced past the horses out to pasture that usually gave her a small amount of comfort, their russet bodies nothing more than a blur against the gray sky.

The memories she worked so hard to repress bubbled to the surface. For the first time in a long while she let her mind travel back to the days of battling her disorder. The wounds inflicted on her then by him and even herself still bled and festered as if it were only yesterday that she received them. She had been stupid to let some ridiculous boy tell her that she was fat and not good enough, she decided. Her mind reeled as she remembered all of the cruel words he said. The hurt and anger she felt back then rushed back to her, burning through her veins like acid and demolishing everything they touched. The tears began to roll down her face as she let go of the remnants of her self-control.

Mixing with the tears she felt the first drops of rain falling from the blackened sky. She was getting tired, but she pushed herself faster and harder. More than anything she wanted it to all be gone, the pain, the memories, her entire past, all gone. The rain was her only comfort, soothing her heated body and her frenzied emotion. It seemed to her that her mind was slowly coming apart at the seams, like some rag doll being torn apart by a crying child.

Slowly exhaustion began to take its toll; her breath was coming out in short, gasping rasps. The last of her physical energy was gone; she slowed down to a walk, her legs shaking slightly from the sudden decrease in speed. The last of her anger was spent with the final drops of rain that thumped her head, leaving only the pain.

The tears still fell, but she finally felt like she could see things more clearly now. “Your mother is scared for you. She watches you so closely because she doesn’t want to see you hurt again; she doesn’t want to lose you,” a small voice in her head said. A sob broke free as she realized the truth of those words. “I know,” she mumbled.

Her head ached and her chest was burning, but she kept putting one foot in front of the other. She knew her mother was right in being suspicious. Anorexia is never completely cured; even after two years Jamie knew she was walking a tightrope, and with one wrong step she would fall off either side. She hated herself for that; she wanted to be cured, but her disorder would forever be in her life, lurking in the shadows and waiting for the moment it could seize her again. “I can’t do this. I can’t fight this forever,” she said wearily.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she rubbed her temples gingerly, easing the pain in her head. She took a deep breath, let it out, and opened her eyes. Off to her left, perched on a hill, was an old abandoned barn, the sight of which made her stop and stare. The barn had always been a source of poetry for Jamie, though her family thought it needed to be bulldozed to the ground. Now, silhouetted against the lightening sky, it was more beautiful than ever to her.

She stepped off the road, the wet grass showering her legs with liquid prisms, and wandered up to the old building. She breathed in deep the smell of the damp, decaying wood mixing with the rich smell of the earth after rain; it was almost intoxicating. The sun was coming out now, casting its radiance on the world. The wood seemed to come alive as the light brought out the reds, browns, grays, and yellows in the ancient lumber. She smiled as the richness of the colors warmed her gloomy spirit. Running her hands over the aged wood, she felt the last of her despair leaving.

With one look at the barn anyone could tell that it had suffered greatly over the previous years; no doubt it had weathered storms comparable to hurricanes, but through all of that it was still standing. Maybe that is what drew Jamie to it that day; perhaps it was a divine intervention, for she couldn’t help but feel hopeful about her own prospects as she turned to walk away, the image of the sturdy structure burned into her mind. She knew she could weather the storms in her life, but to do that, she had to acknowledge her past.

Walking back to the road, she felt a sort of peace that hadn’t been felt in quite a while. She let the memories of her past flow through her mind, and she looked at them without fear of being hurt anymore. As her feet hit the asphalt, she stared down the road towards home. It was going to be a long trip back; parts of it were going to be uphill, but she knew she could make it. Smiling to herself, she put one foot in front of the other, and began her journey.

Dear Train Conductor,

I am a student of English at the local university and, as such, have the pleasure of attending a specific class in a particular room whose view provides me with the arboreal majesty (greens bursting forth, growing rich and full until that lusciousness of their palette consumes the reckless foliage and explodes autumnal, orange-ocher-crimson-vermilion-maroon-death, bare against the encroaching and persistent Puritanical sky and naked, icy branches) of the ever metamorphosing seasons while across the street is a fence being masticated in the vineal mouth of a symbiont of sempiternal bellicose sweet honey-suckle and gaudy trumpet vine, behind which is a recessed clearing where your grandiose train tracks challenge immortal Nature with incorrigible Progress, an ancient battle which will wage and roar for many days to come, so long as persevering men like you are on the lines of the conflict;

However, Sir, one issue must be raised with the manner in which you conduct, namely the damn repeated shrilling of your blasted whistle! if you are warning objects to clear your way that you are charging ahead, a single sounding would satisfy protocol, but your multiple blasts are ridiculous, because no creature larger than a raccoon-not a serious threat to your mighty train-can get through the fences and no cars can evade the crossing-rail; due to lack of a corporeal rationale, I suspect other psychological reasons for these vociferations; when you pass at night, your whistle is silent out of respect to the sleeping world, but in the day, you are obstreperous, and company manual responses concerning safety are illogical, so I posit a different reason for your locomotive’s call: a sign of existence, a barbaric yawp,

yes, I can comprehend that you would be desirous to sound your infinitesimal victories in a conflict that you can never win but whose results you may only postpone, but the most valorous of heroes carry their bravery silently, humbly within themselves content with defending their cultures, while the pusillanimous bellow of their meager exploits so that all the world hears like the bragging, belligerent drunkard in the dark street in front of the local workers bar, but be weary, Conductor, because the world soon grows jaded by braggadocio and detests its source, which is not to suggest that you are hated, far from it, yet if my pen is heeded, you will be loved more for the noble actions in which you are ever engaged,

How many hours a week do you guide the train along its endless expanse; what do you do when you are relieved; how do you spend the time which you get off; is it as satisfying as charging the engine, that metallic, gargantuan serpent which carries in its belly the blood and bile of the country, whose bite indiscriminately kills all, and who insinuates the trail marked by the never touching ferrous ribbons; do you have a family; an ex-wife or two with alimony checks going to each of them and several child who you never see, whose birthdays you’ve forgotten, who loathe you, who may not be yours, who you support with payments, money not spent on the upkeep of the children but on the greed of the leeching mothers, a term used loosely, and these contemplations must fill your mind as you sit in the control room of your train, your beast, your burden, your world, the only thing which you have complete control over, when everything else has been stripped from you and you are left in a cockpit, marginally aware of time with the locomotive’s horn in one hand and a cigarette which desperately needs ashing in the other, you honk, I, as a victim of a similar condition, understand you, you under-appreciated, bitter, miserable, ashamed, lost bastard, but find consolation in that this all is for naught because the rain will always fall and the plants will always grow and you will age, and another person will take your route when you collect your pension, and the whippersnapper who replaces you will become you, so that you will live forever through her as past conductors have persisted in you, and this letter can be resent in 20 years with only nominal changes, be made obsolete by a computer program which will become glitchy and unreliable (unlike the men and women who have run the line with their lives for generations, perfect for fear of breaking the chain of competency, an anxiety of never having known failure so that the fear of it weighs constantly on the steady hand at the helm) and when that happens, when the trains stop running, the corrosion will eat the iron, leaving only a pair of perfectly parallel red stripes, which wind around like a ball of rusty yarn, and will be batted about by the cat of the wind, mixing the rails finally, not only with the other but with Nature, and leaving nothing but the vines, trees, grasses, succulents, moss, ferns, lichens, fungi, rodents, birds, reptiles, but not humanity, not in the wild, from whence we have been incredibly removed for so long, not among the primordial due to our own choices,

all of it’ll fall upon our heads, and it’ll start again, and Mr. Conductor, people like you will be needed to clear it again so that people like me can have the opportunity to enjoy your efforts while mocking your sorrows, the over-educated hypocrites lashing the pitifully strained shoulders of those who carry us all simultaneously forward and apart, so that the cycle will continue, and the roars and silence will cancel out everything except for the echo of the past which is never dead, or even past;

in case I have not made myself absolutely clear, please stop tooting your horn so obnoxiously, because you’re just pissing people off without accomplishing anything.

Sincerely,

Affected Student

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