ACADECA LIT
Foundations of Literary Journeys and Narrative Realism
Dual Motifs of the Literary Journey: World literature is fundamentally built upon two intertwined narrative structures:
A person goes on a journey.
A stranger arrives in town.
Foundational Examples Across History:
Epic of Gilgamesh: Wandering in search of immortality.
Odysseus: Fighting and navigating his way home to Ithaca.
Adam and Eve: Departing hand-in-hand from the Garden of Eden.
Philosophical Purpose: Literary journeys serve as vehicles for investigating the human condition at large rather than merely providing a change of physical setting.
Erich Auerbach's Representation of Reality:
Published Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature in 1946 (written during World War II while exiled in Istanbul).
Mimesis originates from the Greek word for "imitation."
Compared two ancient foundational journey texts to demonstrate contrasting cultural modes of representing reality:
Homeric Narrative (Luminous): Exemplified by Homer's Odyssey. Fully illuminated, horizontal, explicit, and unambiguous. Past and present, external actions, and internal thoughts are directly stated. Odysseus speaks and acts with absolute clarity, leaving no hidden motives.
Biblical Narrative (Obscure): Exemplified by the Genesis account of Abraham and Isaac traveling to Mt. Moriah. Characterized by mystery, depth, and deliberate shadow. Internal thoughts, background details, and psychological motives remain unstated beneath the surface.
Archetypes and Transformations of the Quest Narrative
Definition of the Quest Archetype: A recurring story structure that features a hero, a central goal, and a demanding physical or psychological journey. The journey culminates in a meaningful transformation of the protagonist.
Historical Evolution of Quest Literature:
Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BCE): An ancient Mesopotamian search for eternal life and immortality.
The Odyssey (8th century BCE): A foundational Greek return quest focused on reclaiming a kingdom and household.
Beowulf (8th–11th century): An Old English heroic quest to protect people by slaying monsters and a dragon.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century): A chivalric romance where Gawain must fulfill a contractual promise regarding a "beheading game."
The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1846): Edmond Dantès embarks on an extended quest for vengeance against those who falsely imprisoned him.
Heart of Darkness (1899): Marlow journeys up the Congo River to locate the elusive ivory trader Kurtz; serves as a psychological descent into the human psyche.
The Lord of the Rings (1955): An ordinary hobbit hero, Frodo Baggins, undertakes a quest in which natural and regional geography directly mirrors moral choices and internal conflicts.
On the Road (1957): A Beat Generation road trip novel detailing travel across the 1950s United States, symbolizing countercultural freedom and search for belief.
The Reivers (1962): A comic quest narrative that prioritizes street smarts over traditional moral virtue or martial bravery.
The Remains of the Day (1989): An aging English butler takes a motoring trip through working-class rural Britain, driving a deeply personal, emotional, and psychological quest.
Three Primary Modes of Transformation:
Geographical Transformation: Involves dramatic physical shifts in setting and exposure to extreme or unfamiliar environments to generate narrative momentum.
Ethical Transformation: Subjecting the protagonist's core values, integrity, and moral principles to tests and revisions.
Existential Transformation: Reorganizing the character's core identity, sense of purpose, and understanding of their place within the universe.
The Bildungsroman: The traditional coming-of-age narrative model that routinely integrates geographical, ethical, and existential transformations into a singular arc.
Analysis of Selected Quests by Transformation Type:
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1796): Archetypal Bildungsroman in which a young man is thrust out into the world to mature.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885): Geographical and ethical journey down the Mississippi River featuring Huck and Jim, an escaped enslaved man.
"What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma?" by Joanna Russ (1983): Science fiction quest where a futuristic bureaucrat goes undercover in medieval Earth society.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989): Road trip through 1950s English countryside forcing an existential reassessment of duty and wasted opportunity.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005): Oskar Schell traverses New York City to locate every individual with the surname Black.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2014): Expedition into Area X, an abnormal environmental zone that destabilizes identity and reality.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016): Cora flees southern slavery via a literal subterranean train system, confronting the foundational ethical principles of the United States.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (2024): An undercover agent infiltrates a radical eco-activist collective and experiences personal psychological transformation.
Shogun (adapted from James Clavell, 2024): John Blackthorne moves from ethnocentric contempt for feudal Japanese culture to recognizing the fundamental shortcomings of his British heritage.
Aesthetics, Politics, and Power in Travel Writing
Role of Travel Writing: Historically served as the primary medium through which individuals encountered distant geographic regions and unfamiliar cultures.
Two Primary Strands:
Autobiographical Project: Using physical travel as an instrument for internal self-discovery and self-presentation (e.g., Henry David Thoreau's Walden).
External Record: Systematically documenting empirical details regarding a specific geography, fauna, flora, or foreign society (e.g., Ernest Shackleton's South).
Constitutive vs. Mimetic Function: Scholars Ophelia Hamera and Tim Bendixen state that travel writing is constitutive rather than purely mimetic; it actively constructs and invents its subject matter through representation rather than merely providing an objective mirror to reality.
Representation and Ideological Power:
Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978): Theoretical demonstration of how Western European scholars, travel writers, and artists constructed an exotic, inferior, distorted, and false image of Middle Eastern and Asian cultures to justify imperial power.
Contact Zones (Mary Louise Pratt): Spatial concept defining social environments where disparate cultures intersect and interact, typically within highly unequal framework relationships such as colonialism or slavery.
Critical Analysis Requirements: Readers must evaluate geographic accounts to discern whether texts foster genuine cross-cultural comprehension or disseminate harmful colonial tropes.
Kazuo Ishiguro: Biography, Works, and Literary Context
Biographical Milestones:
1954: Born November 8 in Nagasaki, Japan.
1960: Relocated with his family to Surrey, England.
Teenage Years: Primary creative passion was songwriting.
1979: Enrolled in the prestigious Master of Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of East Anglia.
1989: Published The Remains of the Day, winning the Man Booker Prize.
2017: Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Dual Heritage and Themes: Ishiguro's double upbringing in Japan and the United Kingdom profoundly shaped his thematic preoccupations with personal memory, emotional distance, self-deception, and identity.
Major Literary Works:
A Pale View of Hills (1982): Debut novel detailing a Japanese widow residing in England who reflects back upon post-WWII Nagasaki.
The Remains of the Day (1989): Acclaimed masterpiece focused on an aging English butler, Stevens, examining his lifelong devotion to duty, blinded loyalty, and suppressed love.
Never Let Me Go (2005): Dystopian narrative centering on human clones, examining morality, sacrifice, social class, and human connection.
Nobel Prize Citation (2017): Recognized for writing novels of exceptional emotional force that uncover "the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."
Detailed Study Guide: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
Setting and Structural Framework:
Set across two distinct timeframes: the present narrative of July 1956 and remembered historical events ranging from the 1920s through 1930s.
Examines the rigid division between "upstairs" (aristocratic political elite) and "downstairs" (domestic servants) within the English manor house, Darlington Hall.
Prologue: July 1956, Darlington Hall:
Stevens receives a letter from Miss Kenton (now Mrs. Benn) and plans a road trip through the West Country in a Ford V8 borrowed from his new American employer, Mr. Farraday.
Parallels: Echoes the social ecosystem and hierarchy seen in Downton Abbey.
Narrative Reliability: Stevens is a self-deceptive, unreliable narrator who omits personal pain, rationalizes moral failures, and rewrites history (comparable to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby).
Contrast in Character: Mr. Farraday represents modern American informality and banter, while Stevens embodies an outdated, rigid adherence to traditional English decorum.
Day One, Evening: Salisbury:
Stevens converses with a local stranger at an inn (pp. 25–26), revealing his obsession with professional reputation and deep embarrassment regarding Lord Darlington's disgraced reputation.
Three Father Anecdotes:
The Tiger Under the Table: A butler in India maintaining composure when encountering a wild tiger.
Dad and the Drunk Guests in a Car: Stevens' father serving arrogant, drunken guests who insulted him, maintaining complete professional restraint.
Valeting for General Acland: Stevens' father valeting the military commander responsible for his eldest son's death in the Boer War without displaying personal resentment.
Takeaway: Defines "dignity in keeping with one's role" as the supreme metric of a great butler, while exposing the sacrifice of personal emotion and humanity required to meet that standard.
Day Two, Morning: Salisbury:
Miss Kenton's Character Development:
Brings flowers to brighten Stevens' dimly lit pantry (p. 51).
Confronts Stevens over the dustpan argument (p. 55) and the correct labeling of the "Chinaman" ornament (p. 57).
Highlights Stevens' father's failing health and physical decline on the estate grounds.
Nature of Memory: Unreliable narration is demonstrated through selective recollection, sudden shifts in perspective, and structural gaps.
March 1923 Political Conference:
Intersects directly with the death of Stevens' father from a stroke downstairs.
Stevens continues serving drinks upstairs during international diplomatic talks rather than attending his dying father, viewing this absolute repression as his professional triumph.
Day Two, Afternoon: Mortimer’s Pond, Dorset:
Structural Irony:
Stevens attempts to expand the definition of a "great butler" to include a moral dimension—serving a noble gentleman who serves humanity.
A servant at a local Victorian house asks Stevens if he was employed by the late Lord Darlington.
Stevens lies and denies knowing Lord Darlington, mirroring his previous denial to Mrs. Wakefield.
The "Ladder" vs. "Hub" Models of Greatness:
Ladder View: Servants ascend through rank and discipline within estate hierarchies.
Hub View: Being positioned at the geographic and political center of historical events through service to prominent political figures.
Day Three, Morning: Taunton, Somerset:
Bantering Theme: Stevens treats informal conversation ("banter") as a technical skill he must master to satisfy his new employer, Mr. Farraday, hiding his complete lack of warmth.
Lord Darlington's Controversial Associations:
Lord Halifax: British Foreign Secretary (1938–1940) who led the policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany.
Joachim von Ribbentrop: German Ambassador to Britain and Foreign Minister, later executed following the Nuremberg Trials.
Sir Oswald Mosley: Leader of the British Union of Fascists, whose paramilitary Blackshirts were known for anti-Semitic violence.
Day Three, Evening: Moscombe, near Tavistock, Devon:
The Banality of Evil (Hannah Arendt): Evil occurs when ordinary individuals abandon moral reasoning to superiors, carrying out destructive policies through mechanical obedience. Stevens exemplifies this by carrying out Lord Darlington's anti-Semitic order to dismiss two Jewish housemaids (Sarah and Ruth).
Subtext with Miss Kenton: Miss Kenton threatens to resign over the dismissal of the Jewish maids; later attempts to breach Stevens' emotional guard (reading romance novels, bringing cocoa, discussing personal days off).
Harry Smith and the Villagers: Harry Smith asserts that true dignity belongs to every free citizen who exercises democratic responsibility, opposing Stevens' belief that dignity requires total submission to aristocrats.
Day Four, Afternoon: Little Compton, Cornwall:
Two Crisis Points ("Points of No Return", p. 43):
Crisis with Miss Kenton: Stevens interrupts Miss Kenton crying in her room after agreeing to marry Mr. Benn, yet fails to offer any personal comfort or affection.
Crisis with Lord Darlington: Lord Darlington realizes too late that he was manipulated by Nazi agents, suffering political ruin and psychological destruction.
Structural Echoes: Mirroring the Day Two narrative, Stevens prioritizes high-stakes political service (a secret meeting between Lord Halifax and the Prime Minister) over his emotional relationship with Miss Kenton.
Narrative Gap: Day Five is completely omitted from the text, delaying the eventual reunion between Stevens and Miss Kenton.
Day Six, Evening: Weymouth Pier:
Climax and Resolution: Miss Kenton clarifies that she will not return to Darlington Hall, choosing to remain with her husband and incoming grandchild.
Symbolism:
Setting: Pier lights turning on at dusk.
Time of Day/Age: The twilight of Stevens' life and career.
Title Meaning: Derived from a conversation with a retired lineman on Weymouth Pier who tells him, "The evening is the best part of the day." Stevens resolves to accept his remaining years, practice bantering, and look forward.
Quest Classification: Starts as a simple geographical journey, evolves through an ethical evaluation of Lord Darlington's fascism, and finishes as an existential reckoning with lost love, wasted potential, and personal regret.
Short Selections: Elizabeth Bishop
Biographical Details:
Born 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Father died when she was five months old; mother was permanently institutionalized in a mental asylum when Bishop was five.
Raised by grandparents in Nova Scotia; experienced an uprooted childhood that left her with "several geographies rather than a settled home."
Attended Vassar College; mentored by Modernist poet Marianne Moore.
Resided in New York, Key West (1930s–40s), and Brazil (1950s, living 15 years with architect Lota de Macedo Soares).
Honors: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award.
Taught at University of Washington, Harvard, NYU, and MIT. Died in 1979 in Boston from a cerebral aneurysm.
Famous works include "The Fish", "One Art", and "Sestina".
"Questions of Travel" Analysis:
Structure: Divided into two main sections marked by a structural volta ("the turn").
Core Theme: Explores ambivalence regarding the desire to travel versus remaining at home.
Engagement with Blaise Pascal: Directly responds to Pascal's assertion that human unhappiness stems from an inability to stay quietly in one's room.
Resolution: Defends travel through the aesthetic appreciation of beauty, despite its initial chaos.
Short Selections: Robert Frost
Biographical Details:
Born 1874 in San Francisco, California; moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts after his father's death.
Married high school co-valedictorian Elinor White in 1895.
Briefly attended Dartmouth and Harvard, working as a teacher, mill laborer, farmer, and journalist.
Farmed in Derry, New Hampshire (1900–1911), cultivating deep familiarity with rural New England life.
Moved to England in 1912 to pursue poetry; published his first two books, befriended Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas (the direct inspiration for "The Road Not Taken").
Returned to the U.S. in 1915; won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry during his lifetime.
Recited "The Gift Outright" at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration in 1961. Died in 1963.
Famous works include "Design", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", and "Out Out—".
"The Road Not Taken" Analysis:
Genre: A minimalist travel narrative.
Structure: Composed of four cinquains (5-line stanzas) with an ABAAB rhyme scheme written in flexible iambic meter.
Core Theme: Demonstrates how futures become inextricably bound to choices made over time.
Interpretive Paradox: The typical popular reading advocates non-conformity and taking the "unbeaten path," whereas the actual textual tone is deeply ironic and acknowledges that both paths were worn "really about the same."
Short Selections: George Orwell
Biographical Details:
Born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in Motihari, British India; parents worked in imperial administration.
Educated at St. Cyprian's prep school and Eton College (where Aldous Huxley served as his master).
Served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (1922–1927); resigned after adopting a firm anti-colonial stance.
Lived among working-class and impoverished populations in London and Paris.
Investigated British working-class housing and unemployment in 1936; fought in the Spanish Civil War with the POUM militia (suffering a neck gunshot wound).
Employed by the BBC and The Tribune during World War II; resigned from the BBC in 1943.
Adopted a son in 1944; lost his first wife during surgery in 1945; remarried in 1949.
Died of tuberculosis in London in 1950.
Famous works: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938), Animal Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
"As I Please" Essay Analysis:
Central Argument: Refutes the popular 20th-century idea that modern technology makes the world smaller, more open, and interdependent.
Evidence: Points to tightening immigration restrictions, nationalistic radio censorship, and militarized trade barriers.
Language Warning: Cautions against progressive rhetoric that masks real totalitarian control and reduced individual mobility.
Historical Contrast: Notes that pre-1914 victims of Czarist pogroms had physical places of refuge to escape to, whereas mid-20th-century victims of Nazi fascism were completely trapped by closed borders.
Short Selections: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Biographical Details:
Born 1772 in Devon, England; attended Jesus College, Cambridge without taking a degree.
Joined the 15th Light Dragoons under the pseudonym Silas Tomkyn Comberbache in 1793.
Formulated plans in 1794 with Robert Southey to create an egalitarian utopian commune ("Pantisocracy") in Pennsylvania; married Sara Fricker.
Partnered with William Wordsworth in Somerset in 1797; co-published Lyrical Ballads in 1798, launching British Romanticism.
Suffered from lifelong opium addiction, ill health, financial insolvency, and marital breakdown.
Legacy: Defined the Romantic theory of the imagination, invented the "conversation poem," and revolutionized Shakespearean literary criticism.
Died in 1834 from heart and pulmonary failure.
Famous works: Lyrical Ballads (1798), Biographia Literaria (1817), and "Kubla Khan" (1816).
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Analysis:
Genre & Form: Framed narrative ballad detailing a spiritual transformation via a surreal, horrific sea voyage.
Arc of the Mariner: Evolves from an ordinary sailor to a guilty actor, horrified survivor, and endlessly wandering outcast.
Central Moral: Genuine spiritual harmony requires a universal, all-inclusive love for all created living things ("man and bird and beast").
Short Selections: Audre Lorde
Biographical Details:
Born 1934 in New York City to Grenadian immigrant parents; legally blind throughout her childhood.
Utilized poetry as her primary medium for structuring internal thoughts and processing emotion.
Spent 1954 studying in Mexico, identifying her queer identity and commitment to writing.
Earned a BA from Hunter College (1959) and a Master's in Library Science from Columbia University (1961).
Married attorney Edwin Rollins (had two children); later partnered with Gloria Joseph on Saint Croix.
Taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Hunter College.
Writing focuses on Black radical feminism, lesbian identity, structural racism, anger, and illness.
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and liver cancer later; died November 17, 1992 in Saint Croix.
Major works: "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" (1984), The Cancer Journals (1980), and A Burst of Light (1988).
"The Fourth of July" Essay Analysis:
Narrative Core: Account of a 1947 family graduation trip to Washington, D.C.
Parental Protection: Lorde's parents attempted to shield their daughters from American racism by packing their own meals and avoiding southern railway dining cars (where Black passengers were banned).
Climactic Injustice: The family is violently evicted from a Washington, D.C. soda fountain because of their race.
Irony: A pilgrimage to the national monuments of American freedom and democracy exposes the brutal reality of constitutional hypocrisy and racial segregation.
Comprehension & Assessment Question Banks
Quest Narratives & Literature Quiz:
Q1: Literary quests can be grand epics or more ordinary feats.
Answer: True.
Q2: Heart of Darkness character Kurtz tracks an ivory trader who has traveled to the Congo.
Answer: False (Marlow tracks Kurtz).
Q3: Erich Auerbach wrote Mimesis during WWII while in Istanbul.
Answer: True.
Q4: The story of Abraham explicitly describes Abraham's thoughts as he travels with Isaac to Mt. Moriah.
Answer: False (it is an obscure narrative where internal motives are omitted).
Q5: The Lord of the Rings acknowledges a fundamental ambiguity in whether the natural world and the industrial world represent good or evil.
Answer: False.
Kazuo Ishiguro Biography Quiz:
Q1: In which Japanese city was Kazuo Ishiguro born in 1954?
Answer: Nagasaki.
Q2: To which English county did his family relocate in 1960?
Answer: Surrey.
Q3: What was Ishiguro's primary creative passion during his teenage years?
Answer: Songwriting.
Q4: In which university's prestigious creative writing MA program did he enroll in 1979?
Answer: University of East Anglia.
Q5: In what year was Ishiguro awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Answer: 2017.
Elizabeth Bishop Quiz:
Q1: What early losses marked Bishop's childhood?
Answer: Her father died in her infancy, and her mother was permanently institutionalized.
Q2: With whom did Bishop live during her years in Brazil?
Answer: Her lover Lota de Macedo Soares.
Q3: Where does the fat brown bird sing in "Questions of Travel"?
Answer: Above a broken gasoline pump, in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque.
Q4: The poem's first stanza judges the destination in language of?
Answer: Excess: too many, too rapidly, crowded.
Robert Frost Quiz:
Q1: By his death in 1963, Frost had won?
Answer: Four Pulitzer Prizes.
Q2: Which poem did Frost recite at Kennedy's inauguration?
Answer: "The Gift Outright".
Q3: In "The Road Not Taken", the speaker initially claims the second road?
Answer: Seemed fresh and new.
Q4: What lesson does the typical reading draw from the poem?
Answer: Avoid blind conformity and take the unpopular path.
George Orwell Quiz:
Q1: George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in?
Answer: British-occupied India.
Q2: Why did Orwell resign from the BBC in 1943?
Answer: A national paper had offered him an editorship.
Q3: Which two pre-1914 phrases did Orwell find endlessly repeated in "progressive" books?
Answer: "the abolition of distance" and "the disappearance of frontiers".
Q4: What contrast does Orwell draw between Europe's Jews and the victims of the Czarist pogroms?
Answer: The victims of pogroms had places to flee; Nazi victims did not.
Audre Lorde Quiz:
Q1: Which of Lorde's books is a breast cancer memoir?
Answer: The Cancer Journals / A Burst of Light.
Q2: In "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Lorde locates transformative power within?
Answer: The interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal.
Q3: Beyond expense, why did Lorde's mother actually avoid the dining car?
Answer: Black passengers were not allowed in dining cars headed south in 1947.
Q4: What irony structures Lorde's account of the D.C. trip?
Answer: A pilgrimage to the shrines of American greatness introduced her to American injustice.