Everything That Rises Must Converge

(Flannery O'Connor)

Biography of writer

Flannery O’Connor, in full Mary Flannery O’Connor, American novelist and short story
writer whose works, usually set in the rural American South and often treating of alienation,
concern the relationship between the individual and God.

BORN

March 25, 1925 Savannah, Georgia

DIED

August 3, 1964 (aged 39) Milledgeville, Georgia

NOTABLE WORKS

• “Everything That Rises Must Converge”

• “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

• “Wise Blood”

• “The Violent Bear It Away” •

“The Presence of Grace, and Other Book Reviews”

• “The Habit of Being”

MOVEMENT / STYLE

• Southern Gothic Writing style • Southern Gothic style • Subgenre of gothic fiction • Subgenre
of gothic horror – combines fiction, horror and romanticism • Reflects her own Roman Catholic
faith • Examines morality and ethics • Issue of race in background • Trademark technique –
Foreshadowing •

AWARDS AND HONORS

• National Book Award (1972)

Historical Context

• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)

• Montgomery Bus Boycott 1956

• Desegregating Little Rock Central High School 1957

• Freedom Rides 1961

Setting

• Integrated Southern United States

• Recent years after the integration

SUMMARY

1. Julian escorts his mother to a weekly weight- loss class to reduce her high blood pressure
• Julian’s mother refuses to take bus alone since integration • He wants to teach her a
lesson about racism • They board the bus and she points out with relief that there are only
white people on bus
2. .  In the next stop a well-dressed African American man boards • Julian asks him for a
light to teach his mother a lesson • Julian daydreams about other ways to teach her a
lesson • Bringing a black lawyer or professor to home for dinner • Taking his mother to
black doctor when she requires treatment • Bringing a black woman home and forcing his
mother to accept her
3. A black woman boards with her young son • Little boy clambers onto the seat next to
Julian’s mother • Black woman squeezes into the seat next to Julian • Julian realizes that
the black woman wears the same hat as his mother • Both parties get down at the same
stop
4.   Julian’s mother offers a penny to Carver • Carver’s mother knocks her down • Julian
berates his mother and pulls her • She looks disoriented, sways for a moment and
stumbles • Dies with one eye fixed on Julian’s face.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
1- Carver’s Mother
 A black woman who boards the bus Julian and Julian’s Mother are riding. She wears a
gaudy hat identical to Julian’s Mother’s and has a similarly antagonistic relationship with
her son, commonalities striking enough to lead Julian to conclude that Carver’s Mother is
Julian’s Mother’s “black double.” Like Julian’s Mother, Carver’s Mother is also
immensely proud, so much so that when she perceives Julian’s Mother’s gift of a penny
to Carver as condescending, she strikes Julian’s Mother with her purse.
2- Carver
A rambunctious little boy who rides the bus with his mother. Carver is forced to sit with
next to Julian’s Mother while Julian sits next to Carver’s Mother. Carver is playful and
interacts with Julian’s Mother, even against Carver’s Mother’s warnings. Despite the fact
that he is black, Julian’s Mother finds him, like all children, so cute that she wants to give
him a penny.
3- JULIAN
A recent college graduate who has returned home to live with his mother while trying to
launch a career as a writer. He is an idealistic, self-professed intellectual whose liberal
values are at odds with his mother’s bigotry and the racist culture of his hometown.
Julian’s moral compass is admirable, especially compared to the bald-faced racism
surrounding him, but his interactions with black people suggest that he, too, has a
fundamental discomfort with them. Julian’s struggle to balance his gratitude for his
mother with his visceral resentment for her prejudiced ways and his desire to teach her a
lesson animates the unfolding of the story.
4- JULIAN’S MOTHER
A descendant of formerly slave-owning family that fell on hard times, she raised her son
Julian by herself. Julian’s Mother laments integration and the cultural change sweeping
the South as the death of a regal tradition, both in her family and in her region. Her
deeply bigoted attitudes annoy Julian to no end and cause him to fight with her often. The
narrator describes her as childlike, almost feeble-minded. Julian’s Mother values manners
and appearances and loves cute children of all races so much that she has a habit of
gifting those coins. But her gentility cannot hide her repugnant attitudes towards black
people. Ultimately, her inability to internalize the surging cause of equality leads her to
be struck by Carver’s Mother and suffer a stroke.
5- The Well-Dressed Black MAN
A fashionable black passenger on the bus with whom Julian sits to make a point to
Julian’s Mother. The Well-Dressed Black Man represents to Julian his naïve ideal of the
sort of bourgeois black person with whom he could interact
Themes
• Social Conflict as a Generational Conflict (Racism)
• She believes in slavery
• Julian supports racial equality
• Lineage as Wellbeing
• Family heritage gives them an absolute social standing
• Appearance as a Faulty Measure of Reality
• Julian’s mother rely heavily on her dressing style.
1- RACISM
The story portrays a moment in which people of different races are encountering
each other in new ways, even as racism and prejudice continue to impact every
character’s perception. More specifically, the story shows how characters of
different races share fundamental similarities, but often cannot see those
similarities because of racism’s focus on difference. This makes it even more
difficult to actually build connections
2- Reality vs. Perception
The story contrasts the reality of the world with the characters’ perception of that
reality. This contrast makes clear how biases, by warping a person’s
understanding of reality, create fraught social conditions like those in the mid-
twentieth century American South. The story’s fundamental contrast between
reality and perception comes in its very narration. The story is told by a “close”
third person narrator that only has access to Julian’s internal world, and whose
tone of narration mirrors Julian’s own way of thinking and speaking.
3- Social Order and Disorder
A story about the breaking of traditional social hierarchies and the tensions that
such changes create. The aristocratic honor culture of the old, white South—built
first on slavery, then on segregation—is giving way to a more pluralistic,
 integrated society, but this transition isn’t harmonious. In the old Southern
culture, as embodied by Julian’s Mother, there’s an emphasis on knowing “who
you are,” which is to say understanding your place in the social order. There’s a
traditional belief that someone’s place in the social order is a natural, innate
quality they’re born with and never lose.
4- Generation Gap
While the physical confrontation between Carver’s Mother and Julian’s Mother is
explosive, it is not the central conflict of Everything That Rises Must Converge.
Instead, the conflict between Julian and Julian’s Mother animates the action of the
story, giving readers a lens through which to understand the complexity of
generational differences between white Southerners.
ANALYSIS…

5- Throughout “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” the story contrasts the
reality of the world with the characters' perception of that reality. This contrast
makes clear how biases, by warping a person's understanding of reality, create
fraught social conditions like those in the mid-twentieth century American South.
6- Symbols
➢ The Hat Visually demonstrates that both women are now essentially the same,
Highlights the absurdity of segregation and racial inequality
➢ The Penny Represents patronizing attitude towards African Americans.
Symbolic persistence of blacks’ dependence on whites.
➢ Motifs Social Conduct Critics on Main characters, neither character is truly
immoral towards blacks
➢ Julian is too judgmental about his mother, Wrong approach of teaching a
lesson
➢ Mrs. Chastely is Hardworking and caring, has to go through a transition from
a world of slavery to a life with freedom and equality for everyone.
 THE DEAD
JAMES JOYCE

James Joyce
Irish novelist

Description
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and
literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of
the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. 

Born: February 2, 1882, Rathgar, Ireland

Died: January 13, 1941, Zürich, Switzerland

Spouse: Nora Barnacle (m. 1931–1941)

Short stories: The Dead, Eveline, Araby, The Sisters

SUMMARY

Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta attend the annual dance party hosted by his two aunts, Julia
and Kate Morkan, and their niece, Mary Jane. During the party, Gabriel experiences some
uncomfortable confrontations. He asks Lily about her love life. In return, she gives him a bitter
and curt retort
He then receives the incessant teasing of Miss Ivors. Then, Gabriel notices his wife completely
engulfed in a song toward the end of the party and later comes to understand she was thinking
back on a past lover who had died for her. He then reflects sullenly on his life.
Characters
 Lily - The housemaid to the Morkan sisters

 Molly Ivors - A nationalist who teases Gabriel while dancing

 Julia and Kate Morkan - Gabriel’s aunts who throw the party
 Freddy Malin- town drunk
 Michael Furey – Gretta's past love who died for her when they were younger
Gretta Conroy – Gabriel’s wife.
For most of the book, Gretta plays a minor role. Until however we reach the close of the story
when Gabriel sees his wife become mournful when she hears a song at the party. She confesses
to Gabriel that she had been thinking of a past love, Michael Furey. Her pure intentions and
loyalty to this boy frighten Gabriel and lead him to thoughts about life and death.
Gabriel Conroy - The protagonist.
He is a teacher at a university and is also a writer for newspaper. He struggles with simple social
situations and questions he is not prepared for in advance. He feels superior to the other guests
due to his extensive knowledge of literature
Gabriel
Gabriel takes on many of the traits that appear in characters from the other stories. He has a very
short temper, awareness of social structure/separation, social awkwardness, and imperfect love.
He is a very complex character who has many sides. To his aunts, he is a good man with a joyful
persona. They await his arrival and are not satisfied with the party until he enters. To other
women however, such as Miss Ivors and Lily, he cannot communicate as smoothly and his
comments are sometimes misconstrued and taken offensively. His own wife makes him feel
tenderness inside him, but the main feeling is superiority. These traits make him unsympathetic
and show how he struggles to keep up with the changing world around him. Gabriel is the life of
the party as he cuts the goose, dances with the young ladies, and gives his speech. However, he
feels uncomfortable in situations when he is unaware of how a person may react or respond
because he does not know how to react to someone else’s feelings. He demonstrates the tense
connection of social isolation and personal confrontation. abriel is one of the only characters
throughout many of Joyce's stories who vocalizes his displeasure with Ireland and feels no
remorse after his statement. He says to Miss Ivors while they dance that he is sick of Ireland.
This shows the symbolism of Gabriel's name which he shares with the angel who informed Mary
that she would be the mother of Christ in biblical history. Gabriel delivers the message of
displeasure not only to Miss Ivors, but to himself and the readers of “The Dead” as well. He is
the unusual character in Dubliners who can interpret his own revelation without supressing or
rejecting it, and who can place himself in a greater perspective. In the last scene of the story,
when he reflects on the meaning of his life, Gabriel has a vision not only of his own tedious life
but of his role as a human.
Interactions with Women

 When he first arrives at the party, he tries to make small talk with Lily by asking a
question about her love life. She answers him very bitterly and abrupt. Instead of trying
to apologize or explain the meaning behind his words, he pays her a nice tip and leaves.
This shows that Gabriel would rather pay a big tip to avoid conflict rather than give a
simple explanation.

 Gabriel dances with Miss Ivors who gives him a hard time about being a writer for a
newspaper that has sympathy for England. She calls him a West Briton. He then admits
he is sick of Ireland. He does not feel he has betrayed his nation and is extremely
offended and shaken up by her comments. He even alters his speech to include how this
generation has a lack of hospitality

Theme
-
Intersection bewteen life and Death:
Memories of the dead haunt the living and influence every action made by Gabriel. The dead is
very present in the lives of the living. The presence of the dead shines light on the characters
mistakes and downfalls. This highlights Joyce’s fascination with life cycles and the overlapping
of the dead and the living. It depicts his concern about the “living dead.” Michael Furey is a
martyr who died for Gretta’s sake. When Gretta hears the song, she begins to cry, thinking of
how Michael used to sing. He has the ability to affect others even after his death, suggesting he is
more alive than the other characters who still have life. Gabriel moves through his life without
true love for his wife. The collection, The Dubliners, is supposed to show Joyce’s description of
Dublin as a mundane setting, leaving its inhabitants in a state between life and death, causing a
person to be alive, but not understanding how to truly live.

Jealousy and Male Pride

Nostalgia and the Past vs. the Present

Death

Symbolism
Snow:

In the beginning of the story, the snow symbolizes a cold and hostile force of nature that is
humanly indifferent, and encloses the warm conviviality of the Miss Morkan's party. Towards
the end of the story, the snow reverses its meaning. It develops into warmth and of expanded
consciousness. It stands for an escape from his ego into a larger world of humanity, including
"all the living and the dead."

THE JUDGEMET

Franz Kavka
Born
3 July 1883
Prague, Austria-Hunger
He was a Jewish. He studied at Law College. First he works as an official but later on as a
lawyer. He was engaged twice but never married.

Died
3 June 1924 (aged 40)
Kiering near Vienna, Austria
On lung tuberculosis
In the night of September 22nd, 1912 Kafka wrote “The Judgment" in 8 hours without any break
which he called “opening of body and mind"

CHARACTERS

1- Georg Bandsman: Protagonist

2- Main character: young merchant
3. The Judgment Plot Summary • Mother of house is dead- father is depressed •
Father’s Son is Georg • Leads the business and provides for the family • Good friend •
Tries ensure his friend doesn’t become jealous of his success • Father Serves as a god
figure • Acts as omnipotent force • Father = God Figure • Condemns Georg to death •
Georg = Christ figure • Georg accepts fate and sacrifices himself

4. Themes of The Judgment •

Themes
• The Role Reversal

• Role of Son vs. Role of father

• Religion – Christ figure vs. Father-God figure

• Father-son relationship where have we seen these before?

5. Corollaries to Kafka’s Life •

Georg = Kafka

• Sacrificed his life for his father

• Sees himself as the Christ

• Confused about religion

• Jewish man living in a predominately Christian nation

• Unsure of what the truth is

• Has great understanding

• Constant debate between Christianity and Judaism

6. Inferences of Freud

 Freud References • Reaction Formation • “An abused child may run to the abusing parent”

• Georg has been greatly mistreated by his father BUT he continues to seek reconciliation
with father
 • Regression

• Tragedy strikes, father becomes childlike (regress = go back)

• Introjection

• Greg fills the rolls of his father and tries to over-compensate

THEMES

The Judgment” explores several recurring themes in Kafka's work: death, art, isolation, futility,
personal failure, and the difficulty of father-son relationships

Isolation and alienation are major themes in The Metamorphosis. Gregor's

physical transformation makes him a creature, stripping him of his humanity in the eyes of his
family. Gregor's inability to communicate further isolates him. Gregor's family often defines him
by his ability to work.

Subsequently, question is, who is Georg Bendemann? 

Georg Bendemann, a young merchant, writes a letter to a childhood friend in St. Petersburg,
announcing his engagement to a wealthy woman, Frieda Branden Feld. -- Georg then goes to
report to his old, decrepit father about the composition of this letter.

In this way, what are the themes found in the metamorphosis?

Themes in The Metamorphosis include a sudden, unexpected transformation, family duty,

responsibility, and alienation, etc. Franz Kafka has shown a surrealistic transformation in an
individual and its impacts on the relationships.

What does the metamorphosis mean?

The Metamorphosis is a story about a man, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up as a gigantic,

incredibly disgusting bug. Gregor's transformation into a puke-inducing parasite is often viewed
as an expression of Kafka's feelings of isolation and inferiority.
 Civil peace

Chinua Achebe

1. Civil Peace by Chinua Achebe Amin - Raimi

2. Nigeria’s civil war
Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 –

Lived in Nigeria during the civil war;
Survived the bombings - Won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 –
Served as David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana
Studies at Brown University.
Setting
Post-civil war era (West Africa) “Civil Peace is set in eastern Nigeria, after the civil war
there. Many people have lost their jobs and/or homes. Lives have been lost. People are
trying to rebuild as best they can. Jonathan Iwegbu is one such man who brings his
family back to their hometown, to find their house is sit all standing.”

Summary
Jonathan works hard in the aftermath of the war, using his bicycle to start a taxi service
and opening a bar for soldiers. His family mirrors his example, cooking food and picking
fruit for sale. Since the coal mine where Jonathan worked before the war has not
reopened, this resilience is crucial towards securing even their minor comfort. - One day,
after turning over rebel currency, Jonathan is given an award of 20 pounds. He takes care
not to be robbed, remembering a theft he observed several days earlier, in which a man
broke down in public over the indignity
That night, a group of thieves knocks on his door demanding money. Frightened, the
family calls for the neighbors and police, but the heavy silence when they finish reminds
them that nobody looks out for anyone but himself. The thieves then mock them, crying
out even louder to indicate how helpless the family is. - The thief leader demands 100
pounds, promising not to hurt Jonathan or his family if he cooperates. Eventually,
 Jonathan realizes their lack of options, and gives the thieves the 20 pounds of reward
money so they will leave the family unharmed. Some thieves insist they should search the
house for more, but the thief leader believes this is all Jonathan has, and accepts it.
Characters
Jonathan Iwegbu
●The protagonist and the main character in Civil Peace
● He is a hard worker and an optimist.
● He values his family and does everything he can to help them
● He is also industrious
○We can see this from the way he started his own business instead of waiting for the
situation to change.
The Thief
● extremely confident as he announces himself as a thief and mocks the family cries for
help.
● Overall, the thieves are a poignant symbol of the danger and uncertainty of Nigeria at
this time.
●The leader's language suggests he is less educated than Jonathan, and his glib, arrogant
tone reveals his awareness of how little a family has to rely on outside themselves.
Theme
Positive mindset (Optimism)
The major theme that can be seen throughout the story. - The story portrays implicitly
the power of positive thinking through Jonathan’s success. - Even though he has lost
many times in the war, his positive mindset has allowed him to shape and successfully
manage the difficult post-war landscape.
 MY SON THE FANATIC
(HANIF QURESHI)
(THE CULTURE OF POST COLONIALISM)

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Hanif Quraishi was born and brought up in Kent. He read philosophy at King's College, London.
In 1981 he won the George Devine Award for his plays Outskirts and Borderline, and in 1982 he
was appointed Writer-in-Residence at the Royal Court Theatre. MAJOR WORK He started his
work as a pornography writer. In 1984 he wrote My Beautiful Launderette, which received an
Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. His second screenplay Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987)
was followed by London Kills Me (1991) which he also directed. The Buddha of Suburbia won
the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel in 1990 and was made into a four-part drama series by
the BBC in 1993. His version of Brecht's Mother Courage has been produced by the Royal
Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. His second novel, The Black Album,
was published in 1995. With Jon Savage he edited The Faber Book of Pop (1995). His first
collection of short stories, Love in a Blue Time, was published in 1997.

His story My Son the Fanatic, from that collection, was adapted for film and released in
1998. Intimacy, his third novel, was published in 1998, and a film of the same title2001.
Gabriel's Gift, his fourth novel, was published in 2001. In 2010 his Collected Stories were
published.

WRITING ANALYSIS

He was a realistic writer and writes with the references of flashback of circumstances and wrote
this story under the theme of postmodernism. He has mostly written the Bibliographies. He was a
realistic writer-inner dialogue mixed with flashbacks, explaining and contemplating the thoughts
of the protagonist.
Historical background
-Pakistanis served the British Indian Army in World War I and II
-Today: Pakistanis (4.4% of the UK population) are generally seen as a poorly integrated Muslim
minority
Setting of Story

 Set in Pakistani community in England

 Sometime after second world war
 Urban setting (northern city)
 Social environment (cabbies office)
 Ali's room

Brief summary
- About a father-son relationship
- Protagonist: Parvez
- Parvez son: Ali
- Parvez friend: Bettina

CHARACTER ANALYSIS

1- Parvez
PARVEZ is the main character of the story, as the narrator focuses on him and his
perspective on the events. Parvez grew up in Lahore, the capital city of the Pakistani
province of Punjab, which shows us that he is a first-generation immigrant in England. He is
a taxi driver, working with other taxi drivers who are Punjabi as well. Parvez’s workplace is
also a small community, where he socializes with other men like him. Furthermore, because
his son is supposed to be preparing for his college exams, and he has worked as a taxi driver
for 20 years Parvez is probably a man in his 40s. He does not communicate well with his
wife and turns to outsiders when trouble arises. He has fully assimilated into Western culture
and rejects religion due to humiliating incidents in his past. He has very clear expectations of
the path that his son should be taking and wants him to be fully westernized as well. He is a
strict father and expects his son to act in a way that represents Parvez well. He used to have a
 very strong relationship with his son, but the story begins with that relationship changing due
to his son's errant behavior.

2- ALI
ALI is the son of the main character, Parvez. Although he appears throughout the
story, the narration is more focused on Parvez than on Ali. Ali’s characterization
is constructed through dialogue and Parvez’s perspective on him and his behavior.
Ali is a young man who has recently found structure and passion in life in the
adoption of radical Islam. He has become devout in his beliefs and staunch
opposition to his father's Western adoption. He is critical and disrespectful of
those he sees as his enemies, which includes the very people he lives with and
grew up with.
3- Bettina Bettina
She is another secondary character. However, she is important because she influences Parvez
in various ways throughout the story. Bettina is a regular customer of Parvez's cab service
and works as a prostitute. She is kind, listens to Parvez, and gives him advice.
THEMES OF THE STORY

Main themes
Islamic fundamentalism/
Identity crises
Religion
Culture clash
Respect
Integration

1- The struggle of fathers and their relationships with their sons has covered every possible
social situation, but the basic construct stays fairly unchanged. It begins with the father
and his expectations of his son and how his son will turn out in life.
2- The interconnectivity in this story is based largely on family dynamics and the
interrelationships among the core family members. While the story focuses solely on
Parvez and Ali, the mother figure plays a massive but invisible role.

❖ FRAGMENTATION
Both the characters are the apostles of fragmented worlds and contrary ideas. According
to self- perception Parvez is the perfect father who is doing ceaseless efforts for
providing all the luxuries of life to his family. On contrary Ali has no concerns with all
this. An anti-Western ideology has embedded in his mind. Both men have similarly
mismatched notions of Britain and ‘Brutishness’: for Parvez, Britain is both the dream of
the perfect life and the constant need to satisfy that dream.

❖ Pseudo Culture:
Portrayal of pseudo culture is another distinguishing theme of postmodernism. In “My
Son the Fanatic” the pseudo culture has been portrayed by the writer. Here are some
previews of this theme: Ali then reminded Parvez that he had ordered his own wife to
cook pork sausages, saying to her, 'You're not in the village now, and this is England.
We have to fit in. According to Ali the English society was a pseudo culture and he was
eccentric to this society while according to Parvez being a religious fundamentalist is a
pseudo reality.

❖ Paranoia
Paranoia refers to the distrust in a system or even distrust in the self. Postmodern texts
often reflect paranoia by depicting an antagonism towards immobility and stasis. In
English society Ali feel distrust the system, this distrust has been shown in the following
lines; “Parvez burped; he thought he was going to choke. ‘Implicated!' he said. ‘But we
live here!' 'The Western materialists hate us,' Ali said. 'Papa, how can you love
something which hates you?” It is clearly mentioned in above lines that Ali was biased
against Western Culture and he expressed his sagacity of insecurity to his father. The
West was a sink of hypocrites, adulterers, homosexuals, drug takers and prostitutes”.
There was distrust in Ali’s self-personality as he inclines himself towards Islamic life.
He was not satisfied with his existing life style.

❖ Liberalism and modernism

 These are also the themes of the story which are represented by turning of Parvez to the
culture of England?

❖ EXTREMISM
The concept of extremism is woven throughout the story. Extremism is the vocal or
active opposition to another group's central values. To the extent that a person or group's
actions, thoughts, or beliefs are considered extreme depends solely on whose point of
view they are being viewed from. This is shown by the conversation between the Ali and
Parvez, his father.

The man who loved islands

(D. H. Lawrence)
1- Author biography
Lawrence was an English writer and poet. He was born David Herbert Lawrence on
September 11, 1885, in the small mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England.
His father, who was barely literate, was a miner and his mother, who by contrast was a
lover of literature, worked in a lace factory due to her family's financial difficulties.
Lawrence had a close relationship with his mother. When she died of cancer, Lawrence's
grief became a major turning point in his life. 2- A novelist, playwright, poet and artist.
3- His Themes were love, sex, and cultural decay novels and poetry explore, social ills
created by industrial revolution and the role of sexuality between the man and woman a
relentless struggle for possession and dominance.
SUMMARY

1.  Once defeated on the first island – the jungle he had carefully tamed and turned into a
garden reverts to its former state, subject to the old uncontrollable natural laws and to the
indigenous human customs – the protagonist makes a second attempt on a smaller island.
Here Lawrence’s focus shifts from the realm of political and social activities to the
relationship between the sexes and to the protagonist’s interaction with a girl from whom
he gets a child. The experience on this second island finds its symbolic epiphany in the
flower they observe together, the saxifrage. This flower can grow among stones,
 defeating them. It can even – as suggested by the etymology of its name – break them. It
symbolizes the love which Flora is offering to the protagonist, but which will be unable
to break the hard crust of his selfishness and egotism. He does not however respond to
her love. On the contrary, he is frightened by it. He experiences their relationship and,
above all else, the baby which is
2. The fruit of their love, as an unforgivable weakness, a degrading capitulation to base
instincts which has turned him from the God he thought himself to be, on the first island,
into an Adam. Appalled by this idea, he decides to abandon this second island and to
move to a third one, which proves to be not only smaller than the previous two, but also
colder and more barren. In other words, he has become increasingly dissatisfied with the
man in himself, with his basic, natural instincts, which cannot measure up to the demands
of the Nietzschean Übermensch constantly lurking in him. Now he has severed all
connections with mankind and therefore he thinks he will now eventually be able to
achieve perfection, embodied by the sterile, aseptic mental life which subconsciously he
has always been longing for. At the end of the story, once he has become a cursed king in
exile, a Lear without a Fool beside him, he is lashed by a snow storm, submerged by the
never-ending night of polar winter, obsessed by the noise of the thunder, in a place where
life has disappeared and he himself dies. The body he has rejected takes revenge on him
by refusing to obey his absurd order rs, eventually leading him to a condition of delirious
lack of consciousness, a condition involving an utter defeat of the mind, which has now
lost all its privileges and is no longer an object of idolatry. On this island even language
is rejected (Michelucci 1998): the Master is disturbed, annoyed and exasperated by the
sound of his own voice, which will eventually burst out into an agonizing cry expressing
the horror of his desperate and hopeless loneliness, his loss of contact even with the place
where he moves and acts. Before dying, his mind turns to a completely different place, at
the opposite pole of the desert of snow and ice which has become his prison: “it is
summer […] and the time of leaves.” (WRA173). Whereas the protagonist’s lonely death
on this frozen land evokes Cocytus in Dante’s Inferno, where Satan, punished for his
pride, is stuck for eternity (Lawrence had read Dante’s Comedy in these years), the
protagonist’s last thought conveys the impression of an irrepressible nostalgia for Nature
and for the world. 22In this process that is ultimately leading him to isolation and death,
 language plays a crucial role as it gradually sheds its function as an exchange of
experiences with other human beings (Perosa 2000, Doherty 1992). Already on the first
two islands, language is used only to sanction a master/servant relationship. This emerges
clearly when the Master expounds his project to the bailiff; the latter expresses his
approval without really listening to the Master’s words and his answer is nothing but a
mechanic formula: “Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir! You’re right, Master” (WRA 157). Even written
language is actually dead on the first island: what the Master writes is not a response to
the life of the island, but a sterile classification of the flowers mentioned by Latin and
Greek authors: dead flowers, dead men, dealt with, supposedly, in a dead language, here
conceived, in a Bergson Ian way, as an instrument designed to impose an intellectual
order on the living chaos of life, thus killing life itself. On the second island, the verbal
flattery he was the object of on the first island is replaced by the silent service of people
reduced to obedient tools. With Flora there is hardly any real communication: there are
only some infrequent, short sentences, because she has become accustomed to responding
in the most economical and matter-of-fact way to his questions and remarks: language is
minimal, reduced to less than basic communication, and the only sound they can hear is
the mechanical and lifeless noise of the typewriter (again something he has imported
from the world he wanted to leave behind, La Cecile 1988).
3. On the third island, once he has rejected everything that is alive around him, even
language becomes repulsive to him. He does not give up the idea of constructing a world
that is the image of the ideal one harbored in his own mind, a perfect world which by
now coincides with himself, thus constituting a sort of identification between man and
place, an anthropomorphic island, echoing examples in the literary tradition such as The
Purple Island, or the Isle of Man (1633) by Phineas Fletcher or The Isle of Man(1620) by
Richard Bernard. However after getting rid of the sound of sheep and the cat, he is
surprised and irritated by the sound of his own voice, and if he cannot stand written
words it is probably because of their link with the human world: “The print, the printed
letters, so like the depravity of speech, looked obscene: He tore the brass label from his
paraffin stove” (WRA 170). Yet his mind is still awake and active, and continues to use
language to analyze events around and within himself, to study his own feelings and
reactions (with the mind observing and registering the body under a sort of schizophrenic
 and voyeuristic wreckage of his se nses). He still indulges the illusion of possessing the
power to master reality, until, at the end, control collapses and he dies as a victim of the
revenge of the Nature which he had tried to submit and tame

4- THEMES AND CRITICS

➢ Natural objects exist for the utilization of man the objects are not the human
themselves On the first Iceland he gets frightened by the ghost, actually it was his
internal loneliness. On the second island his perfect world when the island’s people,
events and spirit prove his control beyond his control.

➢ No one can go against the nature

➢ being unsocial is not the solution to one’s problems.

➢ This is a satire on the modern man that he can’t control his desires.

➢ This represent the irony of the modern man that he never satisfied and been
unthankful to lord for his giving’s.

➢ Excessiveness of everything is bad the modern man sacrificed his everything to

fulfill his desire of isolation.

➢ Story shows the hollow ship of the modern man.

➢ It concludes that desires should be in limit do not allow these to rule over you
otherwise you will become the victim of your own desires and the nature.
ANALYSIS
Central character of D.H. Lawrence’s The Man Who Loved Islands ran away from the
social corruption of the mainland to establish an ideal world of his own on an island, but
he did not manage to achieve this aim and his move from one island to another is one
proof of his failure. His failure in setting up his minute dreamlike world on the first
island was more or less due to the selfsame reason why he escaped from the mainland.
After a period of real happiness among a small community, social relations turned
unpredictably very bad, which compelled him to move to the second island. There, his
dream did not come true either, because of man (i.e., the widow’s daughter) and the
human nature in him as a man. In other terms, the protagonist could not resist the
“automatism of sex”, which – he felt – ruined his body and corrupted his soul, and more
remarkably the fact that the members of the community. He had chosen as company to
live with on the island were unable to get rid of what is in connection with the duality of
good and evil, and incapable of enduring the conditions of isolation there. For this
reason, lest he should spoil the purity of that island, he moved with no human company
to the third one. There, he underwent a severe conflict with nature that ended with his
defeat.