(response essay -- poststructuralism)

Central to structuralist thought is the notion of a system with an underlying structure responsible for its workings. Theoretically, the structure keeps the system intact and running. As a system, an educational institution, for example, functions by a set of rules. The members of the institution must comply with specified rules; their actions are consequently limited by these rules. The rules that regulate a system turn out a set of possible phenomena. To contain potential phenomena, the underlying structure of a system conceptually creates an area, which resembles that limited by the parameter of a circle. Whatever constitutes the system’s underlying structure sits in the center of that circle, playing hub. Such a representation of a system presupposes the center (the underlying structure) to be fixed and stable. The center needs to be, in order to allow for and control activities in the area surrounding it. The key to structuralist thought is this presupposition. As long as the conjecture of a stable center is maintained, the structuralist is at ease.

When Derrida in “Structure, Sign and Play” questions the assumed stability of the center of the structuralist’s circle, he inevitably challenges the validity of the structuralist’s idea of a system. What really keeps the center in place – the substance the center contains or the system’s consensus? The field of physics is an instance of the structuralist’s model of a system. The center of the system is in this case fixed, since the center must necessarily derive from realistic, observable facts. Studies and hypotheses in the system are based on the theory of physics, which is formulated on account of natural occurrences. In the case of human sciences, the ‘center’ is more conceptual. One may assume poetics to be the underlying structure of the study (or system) of Literature, but poetics is a theoretical construct. Its subsistence is not as irrefutable as that of natural occurrences. For its continuation, poetics rely on the consent of those involved in the study of Literature. Should questions on its authority arise, the center is at risk of being dislodged – if not without difficulty. If the center’s authority relies on the system’s consensus, an instance of dissent can prove damaging. According to Derrida, the center of any system always ‘escapes structurality’. In any system of religious belief, the idea of God constitutes the center. The idea of God is a part of the system in that it regulates the system, yet to maintain its central position (its authority), it cannot be regulated by the system. The center of the system is at once inside and outside the system, like the authority in a capitalist system of society.

The recognition of the paradox provokes the ‘rupture’ that Derrida speaks of in the beginning of the essay. The paradox itself can be recognized only when the underlying structure of a system is challenged. If students of an educational institution never challenge the institution’s policies, they either believe that the rules serve a creditable purpose or they know that cases of disagreement result in distasteful consequences. Either way, it’s compliance. The instance of ‘decentering’ happens when dissent occurs within a system. An act of dissent should naturally follow the recognition of a system as a construct. To perform an act of dissent is to therefore de-construct a system. If the center of a system has been recognized as arbitrary, an instance of deconstruction is not likely to entail reconstruction of the center. In the absence of policies (embodied by the center of the system), dissent ceases to be dissent. An instance of decentering produces, therefore, a liberated arena where multiplicity of perspectives is possible.
As Foucault portrays it, the link between narrative (before poststructuralism) and capitalist ideology is the assumption of a central authority. To place an author’s intention at the center of his writing is to comply with the theory that a text contains an essential truth that only the author is privy to. This of course contrasts with the poststructuralist policy of ‘differance’: if there is such a thing as an essential truth within a text, it cannot possibly turn out interpretations other than those that allegedly support the author’s policies.

Analogous to the capitalist society, the text – viewed in this manner – becomes a closed, totalitarian system. The metaphorical death of the author approximates an act of dissent in a capitalist system, where an authoritarian power is recognized as a construct and challenged. Orwell’s pigs don’t have a place in the new system.
Meanwhile, the image of the negative and the figure of the castrato from “Sarrasine” in “The Death of the Author” assist in pointing up the quality of ‘differance’ that poststructuralism believes is latent in every text.

To clarify the analogy of the negative, it helps to return to semiotics. Writing, like an object (as opposed to a ‘sign’), is essentially neutral. The process of sign-making happens when neutral objects are associated with familiar systems of conventions: the object is supplied with connotations, therefore converted into a sign. A parallel process happens with writing: in the reading process, the reader rewrites the writing. The reader introduces her beliefs into the writing, so that what comes out of the process of reading is a text already imbued with intentions. Each interpretation of ‘neutral writing’ (interpretations convert writing into ‘text’) acquires its significance on account of its difference from other interpretations. The ‘negative’ has the latent potential to turn out various interpretations, but in itself, the negative is neutral.
The figure of the castrato from Balzac’s “Sarrasine” helps to illustrate disunity of the text. In the story, at the point where La Zambinella speaks (her) sentence: “It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling…”, there is no indication whatsoever that Zambinella is, in fact, not a woman. Following Sarrasine’s discovery of Zambinella’s identity, the sentence acquires rather cynical connotation. Crucially, the connotation is deferred up to the point where Zambinella’s identity is exposed. If spoken by a woman, the sentence is hardly unusual. The context in which the sentence is spoken decides its connotation. In the same way, connotational meanings of a text (subtexts) depend on the context in which the text is read. It is clear then, that the text cannot be a closed unit: the text is always read in the present (although in different temporal contexts), and it therefore has to always allow space for ‘deferred subtexts’.

In a structural textual analysis, the play of semiotics is significant because the idea of an underlying structure is really what makes semiotics possible in the first place. The conversion of an object into a sign involves an individual’s investment of her socio-cultural experience onto the object. The structuralist engages in the process of analysis and anticipates certain images in a text to be perceived as signs because she trusts in certain collective cultural conventions, which act as an underlying structure in a system where the text and the readers are brought together. When there is an assumption of an underlying structure, there is already a perimeter of possible readings. The text is a united whole that contains these readings.

The poststructuralist, on the other hand, distrusts the theory of an underlying structure. Conventions cannot be underlying structures because their mutability has been recognized. For the poststructuralist, the text is also an arena that contains multiple readings, but it is not a united whole because there are always possibilities of deferred subtexts. The poststructuralist textual analysis will, therefore, seek to show textual disunity.

Here is Kolatkar’s “Chaitanya”:

sweet as grapes
are the stones of jejuri
said chaitanya

he popped a stone
in his mouth
and spat out gods

The structuralist interpretation of the poem will read: “The stones in Jejuri possess connotation of holiness owing to conventions – as outlined, for example, in the Shilpasastras - and perception. Chaitanya, predictably conversant in the conventions, imply that, as the stones acquire the connotation of holiness, they can be given the qualities of a grape. Consequently, the grape seeds will quite effortlessly acquire godlike quality. The poem illustrates a little too clearly how conventions shape individual perception and how, conversely, collective perceptions grant conventions authority.

The question that the poem asks is: if it is impossible to believe that stones are grapes and grape seeds are gods, why is it possible to believe that stones are gods? One must cling stubbornly to one’s copy of the sastras and insist that while the later statement is inscribed in it, the former is not. But one must, finally concede to the fact that it is one’s willingness to believe (one’s faith, in other words) that validates statements in the sastras. For that reason, if the transformations that the poem proposes appear preposterous (how must a man spit out gods?), the poem has then succeeded in destabilizing the notion of absolute authority assigned to conventions.

The poststructuralist, on the other hand, will concentrate on the crucial paradox the poem carries – that in the process of undermining the authority of conventions, the poem must acknowledge that very authority. It is the old atheist’s argument – that in order to challenge the existence of God, one must necessarily concede to it. Beginning with this argument, it is impossible to point at any ‘essence’ in “Chaitanya”: it is neither the non-existence of conventional authority nor the existence of it. The poem must incorporate both notions in order to make sense. In the hunt for essence, one finds only a state of aporia, where conflicting notions lead to an impasse. In accentuating textual disunity, a deconstructionist reading of a text seeks to point out the nonexistence of textual essence.


Works Cited:

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988. 146-150.

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988. 89-103.

Kolatkar, Arun. “Chaitanya.” The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: OUP, 1992. 66.

(response essay -- semiotics)

Man’s experience of life is inextricable from man’s capacity to make meanings out of situations and things they encounter. Objects and events have a bearing upon a person’s life because they mean something to him. The production of meaning is essentially a process of sign-making: people typically interpret things by (unconsciously) relating them to familiar systems of conventions. Semiotics studies this process; it looks at the ways meaning is produced in the system of sign-making.

The Saussurean sign is the total that results from the relationship between the signifier and the signified. The model excludes reference to objects that exist in the real world. In the Saussurean model, the signifier is the form that sign exists in, while the signified is the concept in the mind that a signifier evokes. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as ‘signification’. The signifier and the signified of a sign are interdependent: a sign must have a signified and a signifier to function. A sign is then a combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier can stand for a variety of signifieds. An arrow painted on a road sign alongside a name of a place signifies the direction one should follow to reach the place, while the arrow next to the address bar in an Internet browser indicates that one should click on it to continue. In the same way, a number of signifiers can stand for a particular concept (signified). Black and white, for example, are both colours that can signify mourning.

Saussure's idea of meaning was distinctively differential: he emphasized the differences between signs. He did not define signs in terms of some 'essential' or intrinsic nature. If one signifier can stand for different concepts, similarly a particular concept can be signified by a variety of signifiers, it follows that the relationship between a signifier and a signified (a signification) is arbitrary. A chess piece, for example, does not have much value in a domino game. This is because the domino game works within a framework (a system) that differs from the framework of a game of chess. The chess piece is a signifier. In a chess game, it matters whether a chess piece is a Bishop, a King, or a Queen. In a domino game, a Bishop and a King will share an identical signified as signifiers: they do not matter. Moreover, when the idea of a system is brought in, in addition to being differential, meaning is also relational. The meaning or the value of a sign (the chess piece) depends on the system (the game) in which it is located. This may suggest that, in the manner that langue pre-exists parole, the signified precedes the signifier. The signified, however, does not make possible the production of signs. To return to the idea stated earlier in the essay: people interpret things by (unconsciously) relating them to familiar systems of conventions. Signs are produced when people assign meaning to passive objects; it is the systems of conventions that make possible the production of signs.

To interpret things by relating them to familiar systems of conventions is the classic way of thinking. Interpretation is then a process of signification. The previous paragraph has discussed the arbitrariness of signs. Divested of meaning, an object is passive and neutral; to assign meaning to and convert an object into a sign is, in a way, to allocate connotative meanings to the object. In literary texts, semiotics function largely in this connotational aspect. It is of real value that words – like objects in themselves (divested of meaning) – are neutral. The inherently neutral quality of words makes it possible to assign limitless number of connotations (signifieds) to them. This quality will also be significant when one enters into discussions on Deconstruction.

Any occasion of interpretation or meaning production involves the creation of signs. A film like Bend It Like Beckham, for example, trusts almost completely in its audience’s capacity for sign-making. The primary code is one of identity – cultural and gender. The audience must recognise the intended signs in the film in order to appreciate the conflicts in it, and to finally respond to their resolution. In the meantime, do recall the perfect tagline: “Who wants to cook Aloo Gobi when you can bend a ball like Beckham?”

The creation of any work of art involves, on the part of the creator, certain assumptions with regards to the audience’s regulative matrix (in this case, the regulative matrix is the set of socio-cultural conventions which will enable the audience to respond to the film). The audience is expected to recognize the assumptions that accompany a family of Indian immigrant living in Britain – of their place in the society, their need to adapt and to retain their cultural heritage at the same time. The audience must also, to a degree, be able to appreciate the complexity of the relationships between the children and their parents (of both families – the Bhamras and the Paxtons) that are affected by ideas of cultural identity and notions of propriety.
Within the codes of sports, masculine (gender) identity, and Britain’s mainstream culture, Beckham is an obvious sign. Then there is Jess Bhamra, who gradually acquires the function of a sign.

The film provides scenes of day-to-day activities in the Bhamra household; this helps to locate Jess within a specific system that is the family and, in a larger milieu, people who share a similar cultural identity with the family. To the framework outside this system, Jess becomes more or less a sign, which signifies the system. When the two signs (Jess and Beckham) are contrasted (the act of contrasting is a part of the syntagmatic structure of the film), each becomes heavily loaded with connotations. The audience understands that what one is the other is not (to emphasize the arbitrariness of signification, one should say, rather: what one is, the other cannot be). What Beckham is, Jess Bhamra cannot be – and vice versa. This opposition is of course what creates the main conflict in the movie. The intended meaning of the movie is constructed out of this opposition too. One knows, so far, that Jess and Beckham, as signs, are opposites: each carries a set of connotational values that are conflicting. When Jess gives up aloo gobi and takes up soccer, the conventions that are responsible for the construction of each sign is modified. In the process of modification, the film communicates its meaning: bend the rules, get what you want.

As far as literature is concerned, in the process of interpretation, the reader brings into the act of reading her knowledge of the world. In Linguistics Poetics, Culler speaks of texts as having been written in such a way that they are not immediately intelligible. Texts need to be transformed into more straightforward statements for comprehension. The transformation is in fact the process of interpretations. This is the process of naturalization, during which the reader makes known whatever is initially unknown in the text. Her socio-cultural knowledge should supply information that is needed for familiarity with the particularities of the poem. The process of naturalization is similar in manner to the convention of significance that Culler proposes. While it is conventional that all readers involve their socio-cultural knowledge in the act of reading, the nature of that knowledge varies between readers. Any interpretation of the text is therefore arbitrary. It is the reader who, assisted by her social or cultural conventions, invests meaning in objects, ideas or images in the poem, making signs out of them. It is the reader who reads the text as a sign. Considered in this manner, the readers are producers, rather than consumers, of meaning.
Consider this poem:

Listen to the song of the reed flute,
It sings of separation.
Torn from the leaf-layered, wind-voiced
Banks of the pond,
It is joined to sorrow and joy
By a slender sound.
Who, asked Rumi, can understand
The Reed’s longing to return?
Let its raw lips rest then;
Let all words be brief then.
And I, O Believers, cried Rumi
(Having lost the man he loved),
I who am not of the East
Nor of the West, un-Christian,
Not Muslim or Jew, neither
Born of Adam nor Eve,
What can I love but the world itself,
What can I kiss but flesh?
Let my raw lips rest then.
Let all words be brief.


Khair’s “Rumi and the Reed” locates Rumi and Sufism in the present day context. Examined in the context of Sufism, the contemporary assumption of categorical identity is absurd. Sufism, of which Rumi is a practitioner, believes that the essence of Being is unmanifested, yet is present in and indivisible from all things. It follows that all beings come from a single source. All beings, therefore, share one essential identity. The concept of categorical identity cannot figure in Sufism. On the contrary, in the contemporary context where identity is categorical, Rumi is inevitably rootless. Rumi belongs to all categories of identity since all categories, for a Sufi, is one. The contemporary context cannot admit this anomalous contingency: one must belong; one must be a part of a category. The poem is founded on the contrast between the concept of identity as derived from the belief of Sufism and the way identity is perceived in the contemporary world.

The reader interprets a poem through a set of signs. Rumi, the East/ the West, Christian / Muslim / Jew, and Adam / Eve are present as signs in the poem. Rumi is a sign that acquires meaning within the code of Sufism. Knowledge of Sufism enables the reader to invest meaning in Rumi and to thereby make out the connotation Rumi has to the basic belief of Sufism, that the essence of Being is present in and indivisible from all things. The rest of the signs acquire their meaning within the code of identity, as it is understood in the contemporary context. The reader needs to be able to grasp the connotation that the contrast between East and West suggests. The situation of the world in the present day suggests a sharp distinction between an Eastern and Western cultural identity. There are sets of values associated with each, and the reader must work under the assumption that Eastern and Western values are firmly not interchangeable.

The reader is required to understand the criticality that the concept of identity has acquired in the present world. There is suggested, for example, a sense of potential violence when one category of identity is contrasted with another – particularly religious identity. This is however a connotation that the concept of identity has adopted in the contemporary context. In order to interpret the poem completely, the reader needs to be able to comprehend the nuances of meaning – the connotative meanings – that each sign carries. This is possible only when the codes of Sufism, and of identity in the contemporary context, are a part of the reader’s regulative matrix.

In order to account for the production of meaning, there needs to be a paradigmatic analysis of the poem. The ‘reed flute’ is chosen out of the paradigm of musical instruments. Since a poem must cohere, the reader may conclude that the reed flute is chosen because it’s particular to the Persian culture, which is the origin of Sufism. Having identified the connotation of Sufism that Rumi carries, the reader understands that one of the several ideas the poem operates by is the doctrine of Sufism – that all beings share an essential identity. This recognition assists in converting the reed flute that sings of separation into a metaphor. The reed flute that sings of separation comes to emphasize the longing the human self must feel as a result of the self’s secession from its pool of essence. The choice of ‘reed’ (from the paradigm of other plants, for example) enables the author to suggest to the readers the sense of being plucked from a life-giving source (the pond), while at the same time permitting him to hint at the Persian connection.

The reader can therefore conclude that to introduce the categorization of identity is nothing less than the act of plucking reeds from their banks in the pond, causing the longing the return in the subjects being plucked (the reed and the human self).
The syntagmatic analysis of the poem must focus on the manner in which the signs are combined. At the point where Rumi says he is “not of the East nor of the West, un-Christian, not Muslim or Jew, neither born of Adam nor Eve”, what is implied is Rumi’s rootlessness. The categories exist. The reader, assisted by her cultural conventions, presumes that any human being must position himself within any of these categories. The positioning of East / West, Christian / Jew / Muslim, Adam /Eve, is such that it entails that one must either be a part of this or that. There are no interstices. But the reader’s knowledge (through the earlier act of signification) that the poem operates – among others – by the doctrine of Sufism, causes the signs which function within the code of identity to turn out an ironical effect. Sufism believes that all beings share an essential identity. The reader understands that instead of failing to belong, Rumi belongs everywhere. The syntagmatic structure brings out a sense of irony in the poem. In the apparent emphasis of his rootlessness, Rumi is extremely rooted. A semiotic analysis will also look at suppositions that an author, in creating a text, takes for granted. What accounts for this, if one returns to semiotics, is the assumption that authors and readers operate in certain similar codes.

“Rumi and the Reed” operates under the assumption that all readers share identical understanding of the concept of identity, and that they are familiar with the idea of Sufism. The reader arrives at her interpretation through the process of signification, and syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses of the poem.

(response essay -- structuralism and semiotics)

Structuralism points to the application of linguistic theory – the Saussurian concepts of langue and parole – to the study of a range of objects and activities outside language. Parole refers to individual speech acts, while langue is the system of speech that makes possible the production of parole. To study literature on the basis of structuralism, it seems necessary to begin with the assumption that literature is an institution. In an institution, langue acts in the same way a system of rules does: it makes possible a set of potential behaviours. In the Institution of Literature, literary conventions are the rules that make possible the production of literary texts and textual interpretations. Literary conventions act in the place of langue, while individual piece of writing occupies the place of parole. What follows is the hypothesis that readers and authors, being members of the same institution, operate in identical codes. This in turn accounts for the possibility of information transfer, which occurs in the processes of writing and reading. If langue, in regulating individual paroles, is the grammar of a language, in the Institution of Literature, literary conventions are the grammars of poetics, where poetics is the principle of literature.

In a textual analysis, the structuralist concerns herself with the process that leads to the production of meaning. The structuralist believes that the process of reading that leads to interpretation is controlled by certain regulations. If a particular reader’s interpretation is legible to others, it follows that the reading conventions that particular reader follows are familiar to other readers. These conventions, if identified, may be formulated as the ‘langue’ for reading in order to arrive at meaning. They may be put down as a system that regulates the process of interpretation, one that pre-exists individual interpretations. The problem, as Culler points out in “Literary Competence”, is the fact that most readers – while they follow particular conventions in the act of reading – are unconscious of doing so. In order to formulate conventions, one needs to be conscious of the manner in which they take place in the process of reading and interpretation, so that they can be detected and explicitly put down. What the structuralist seeks to do in a textual analysis is to trace the production of meaning in order to arrive at the conventions a reader follows in the process of interpretation.

As far as structuralism is concerned therefore, the aim of literary criticism is the idea of demystification. If the structuralist succeeds in formulating reading conventions to guide readers to the production of meaning, the assumption that there is an ideal reader is inevitable. But while the conventions operate on that assumption, the skill required to be one can be acquired, since the conventions are explicitly set down. Literature is therefore not mystifying and to be grasped only by a privileged handful, but is available to all. However, even with the formulation of conventions, there will not be one ‘correct’ interpretation of literary texts. Culler specifies three possible conventions: the conventions of significance, metaphorical coherence, and thematic unity. All readers must work by the convention of significance (that is, by bringing their socio-cultural knowledge into the process of interpretation, in order to get themselves acquainted with the text), but the nature of signification will vary, since the nature of the readers’ socio-cultural knowledge varies. There will instead be a set of plausible interpretations, which is made possible by the formulated conventions of reading.

In Bishop’s “The Fish”, the fish is a victor. So much so, in fact, that when the captor conceives its worth, she has to let it go. The fish is far too valuable to justify a death that, if received in the captor’s hands, is too commonplace. The act of letting go is the consequence of being overwhelmed.

The process of interpretation begins with the reader’s identification with the particularities of the poem. The action described – that of capturing a fish – is conventional. The physical description of the fish is conventional; it is an average fish that anybody would be familiar with. However, when the captor looks at five pieces of fish-lines hooked to the fish’s mouth and sees medals, the reader knows that the fish carries a connotative meaning. The reader’s cultural knowledge will tell her that medals carry the connotation of having won something, of triumph. The fish, provided with medals, has won something. It is logical to assume that, since the medals are five old hooks attached to its mouth, the fish has triumphed over these.

One may also arrive at this reading with the assistance of semiotics. To analyse the poem on the basis of semiotics, one needs to look at where, in text, meanings are invested. Which elements in the poem are converted into signs in order to assist interpretation of the entire poem? Medals are invested with meaning; they become a sign, a symbol of triumph. The five hooks consequently become a sign too, a symbol of triumph specifically for the fish. The readers’ familiarity with medals is the regulative matrix that determines the reading of the medals where the fish is concerned.

Further, a reader’s regulative matrix may be affected by other texts she is familiar with. Acquaintance with Santiago’s marlin or Hughes’ pike may determine the location where meaning is invested within Bishop’s “The Fish.” Hughes’ pike is monumental in its willingness and capacity to kill. The captor, who has the pikes kept behind glass, has witnessed their power, which is evident in their competence to kill. The captor has to concede that the pikes are “a hundred feet long in their world.” Santiago’s marlin is an unwilling victim. On the event of its death, it has earned the respect of its captor on such a scale that Santiago fights to defend the marlin’s carcass from being eaten by sharks. Such a sequel, if allowed to happen without a fight, will have marred the carcass’ value.

If these readings act as a regulative matrix in the interpretation of Bishop’s poem, it is Bishop’s fish that will be transformed into a sign. The connotative qualities of Hughes’ pike and Santiago’s marlin – that of being monumental, honorable and precious – will come to be associated with Bishop’s fish, turning the fish itself into a symbol that stands for these qualities. This is an instance of intertextuality, as is an example of the consequence of semiotics on textual analyses.

The syntagmatic structure of the poem too contributes to the production of meaning. The comparison between the five hooks and medals create a metaphor between them. The metaphor is created on the basis of the principle of combination. The particular combination of medals and hooks that are attached to the fish results in the connotation of triumph that is associated with the fish.

Now one needs to place the fish, the victor, alongside the captor. The captor, as the text suggests, has caught the fish rather easily. The fish, on the other hand, has survived and carries with it the marks of survival. The medals allow for connotations of triumph and power. The medals have transformed something ordinary into something extraordinary. In a similar manner, the oil around the rusted engine is transformed into rainbow. The act of letting go is the consequence of being overwhelmed.

Literary structuralism is inevitably linked to semiotics, particularly to the Saussurian concept of the sign. The Saussurian model makes use of the ideas of the signified and the signifier. A sign refers to whatever object or idea that has been invested with meaning, so that it stands for something else. The signifier is the sound image or written model of the represented object or idea. The signified is the concept or mental image that is evoked in the mind of the listener or the speaker when she comes across a particular signifier. Given the fact that a sign becomes one only if invested with meaning, the sign in necessarily arbitrary. The red light, divested of meaning, is only a red light. It is only because of social conventions that the red light, in the context of traffic, carries a value as a command for all vehicles to stop moving. Social conventions invest meaning on the red light, converting into a sign. It follows, then, that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, because other than social conventions, there is nothing inherent to account for the representation of a signified by a particular signifier. What also follows from the concept of arbitrariness is the differential quality of the sign: a sign is designated its particular signified only on the basis of its perceived difference from other signs.

In Linguistics Poetics, Culler speaks of texts as having been written in such a way that they are not immediately intelligible. Texts need to be transformed into more straightforward statements for comprehension. The transformation is in fact the process of interpretations. The Saussurian model of the sign may help with the process.

In the process of interpretation, the reader brings into the act of reading her knowledge of the world. This is the process of naturalization, during which the reader makes known whatever is initially unknown in the text. Her socio-cultural knowledge should supply information that is needed for familiarity with the particularities of the poem. The process of naturalization is similar in manner to the convention of significance that Culler proposes. While it is conventional that all readers involve their socio-cultural knowledge in the act of reading, the nature of that knowledge varies between readers. Any interpretation of the text is therefore arbitrary. It is the reader who, assisted by her social or cultural conventions, invests meaning in objects, ideas or images in the poem, making signs out of them. It is the reader who reads the text as a sign. Considered in this manner, the readers are producers, rather than consumers, of meaning.
Consider this poem:

sweet as grapes
are the stones of jejuri
said chaitanya

he popped a stone
in his mouth
and spat out gods

An interpretation of the poem may read like this: “In Jejuri, where stones, by virtue of faith or perception, can be made holy, they can also be converted into grapes. Chaitanya pops into his mouth a grape that is a stone that is a god. He spits out seeds of grape, which, inevitably, are gods. What emerges as holy in the poem are not the grapes or stones, or even gods, but the transformative power of perception, which also speaks significantly of the power of faith.”

Regulated by her cultural knowledge, the reader will first familiarize herself with the ideas of Jejuri, Chaitanya, and the stones. The stones, understood in the context of Jejuri, become invested with meaning. The reader’s cultural conventions are responsible for the investing of meaning; they construct the reader’s regulative matrix. For a reader, the regulative matrix acts like the Saussurian ‘langue’: it is a network of relations that allow an individual to produce meaning from observations. Having been supplied with meaning, the stones become a sign. It is a symbol that stands for something else – the concept of holiness, perhaps God. The naturalization process is done. Recuperation, by which the elements of the poem are integrated into one thematic unity, begins here. The poem demands that the stones are seen as grapes. At this stage, the reader is aware of the connotation of holiness the stones have acquired in the context of Jejuri. Whatever force is responsible for having transformed the stones into holy objects must now transform them into grapes. The force may be recognized as the force of faith or perception. The stones are now grapes, but also gods – from the earlier association the reader derives from the Jejuri setting. In this understanding, when Chaitanya spits out seeds of grapes, he must also spit out gods. The force that has catered to the earlier two transformations now caters to the third - from grape seeds to gods. This is how one arrives at the reading that what is holy in the poem is perception.

The arbitrary nature and differential quality of the sign in the Saussurian model is also true of the symbols in literary texts. One may, for example, consider the image of the river (which, having been invested with meaning by the context of the literary work of which it is a part, becomes a symbol) in The Mill in the Floss and Huckleberry Finn. The River Floss has a destructive quality; the Mississippi is liberating. Neither quality is inherent to rivers. To speak of the river as a sign is to speak about its connotative meaning, and this connotative meaning is relational. If cultural conventions account for the differential quality of the Saussurian model of the sign in the real world, literary contexts account for the differential quality of literary symbols. As signs, the meaning of literary symbols is relational.

Because of social conventions, signs normally become so fixed in meaning that their arbitrariness is overlooked. If readers are producers of meaning, in cases where the majority of readers share similar conventions, an image or figure in a text is given – by common consent – a specific connotation. The figure of Adam, for example, has come to denote the particular quality of innocence. The figure originates in the Bible, but one encounters another Adam in the works of Walt Whitman. In 19th century America, when Whitman was writing, (assumed) innocence is a desirable quality. It may have been a conscious attempt on the author’s part to recreate the figure of Adam. Whitman may have focussed heavily on the quality of innocence that, without having it spelt out, the figure in his work stirs up – in the readers’ mind – the figure of Adam. Nevertheless, the American Adam is created; the quality associated with the original Adam becomes the quality of the American Adam. Looking at the process from the readers’ perspective, it is the reader who, being familiar with the figure of the biblical Adam, reads the connotations of the biblical Adam into the works of Whitman, creating thereby the American Adam out of Whitman’s works. This is an example of intertextuality. The readers’ activity of sign-making in literary texts may lead to the creation of new texts, which, in turn, draw from associative meanings of previously produced signs.

The nature of the tragic conflict in Hamlet.

“…you would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ…”
(Hamlet; Act 3 scene 2)


There are many conflicts in Hamlet. To understand them requires careful examination of the plot and structure of the play and an appreciation of the complex relationship between man and his surroundings and the intricacy of man’s consciousness, particularly as embodied in Hamlet. A close study of text should turn out helpful insights to examine of the play’s conflict. Commentaries on the text will also help to bring attention to different aspects of the play.

When an occasion is referred to as tragic, there is an emphasis on the quality of suddenness, of unpredictability. A tragedy always involves irony; tragedies happen when occasions defy expectations. Man lives with an idea of order, although it is rather credulous to assume that order will stay intact. To pin down a definite idea of order is fiddly; it can only be said that one patterns one’s life by certain habits and assumptions to create a sense of order out of these. Presumably, tragedy happens when something occurs that does not fit into the framework of these habits and assumptions. Consider death as an example. Mortality is a known fact, so that death of old age saddens, but does not surprise. Death of a youth, on the other hand, is surprising because it is out of the regular run of things. In its erratic, unpredictable quality, death of a youth carries an aspect of a tragedy. It must have been an exceedingly human understanding that incited Aristotle to speak of tragedy as an occasion that inspires pity and fear. An occasion of tragedy is tragic because what causes it is beyond understanding. Accidents are tragic because they are not expected to occur and, in certain cases, they involve coincidences. It is coincidental (unpredictable) in, for example, a case of a stray bullet, that a person happens to be in a particular spot when the bullet is fired. It is impossible to account for why the bullet is shot when that particular person stands on the way of its course. The elements of the incomprehensible in tragedy inspire fear because, along with these, there is implied the presence of forces beyond human control, which, in certain cases, everyone must submit to. Tragedy is fearsome, really, because of the emphasis that some things cannot be avoided; it points to the vulnerability of human beings. To the audience of a tragic play, the feeling of pity must naturally follow the recognition of vulnerability. Pity comes along with certain selfish thankfulness for not being one involved in a tragedy.

It would seem that any tragic play is constructed in such a way to communicate the element of unpredictability that, as discussed, is particular to the notion of tragedy. It would seem that, in tragic plays (tragedies), elements of unpredictability (randomness) reinforce, even create, conflicts within the plays. If one could at all term the setback in the Othello-Desdemona’s relationship a conflict, it is one that results from mistrust on Othello’s part. The play has, from the beginning, called attention to Othello’s singularity: he is a Moor who occupies a high social position in the Venetian public because of his military aptitude and the services he has done for the State. Othello himself acknowledges personal characteristics that make him distinct within the social framework to which he belongs, as in this dialogue:

“…Rude am I in my speech,
And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace;
For since these arms of mine has seven years pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have us’d
Their dearest action in the tented field;
And little of this great world can I speak,
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;
And therefore little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself.” (1175)

He understands that whatever social respect he is owed to his physical and military competency. He acknowledges that the Venetian public considers him lacking in sophistication. These are aspects of understanding that compose Othello’s rather anxious sense of self. Othello’s anxiousness makes him a particularly easy prey for Iago, who happens to be clever enough to make out the former’s mental constitution. Iago needs only to make Othello witness to a scene where Iago tricks the latter into believing that Desdemona really is unfaithful. Othello never confronts Desdemona personally; he never gives her a chance to speak. What accounts for Othello’s resolute trust in Iago? Why must Emilia let Iago have Desdemona’s handkerchief instead of returning it to its owner? Why must the handkerchief fall in the first place? These are some crucial questions that may be asked of the play, and there are no definite answers. It only so happens that Othello trusts Iago. It only so happens that Emilia lets Iago have the handkerchief. It only so happens, finally, that Desdemona loses her handkerchief. These are the chance elements (they are unpredictable, because one cannot assign them reasons), which incite the conflict between Othello and Desdemona. The couple’s relationship is initially solid because of the conviction one has in the other. Iago’s influence on Othello is such that the latter question’s Desdemona sincerity. The matter of the handkerchief furthers Othello’s suspicion. The conflict in the play occurs because Othello does not disclose his knowledge to Desdemona: if he had let Desdemona know about Iago’s private warnings, if he had trusted Desdemona, the conclusion of the story would have been very different. The causes of the conflict are contingent: they cannot be prevented because the grounds for their occurrence are unknown. For its contingency, the conflict is tragic. Conflicts in a tragedy are tragic because they may have been easily avoided or resolved – if only one is competent enough, or has sufficient knowledge, to do so. Certainly a tragedy demands that the characters concerned are incompetent to resolve or avoid crucial conflicts. Hamlet is filled with conflicts, although the most palpable seems to lie within the self of the protagonist.

Hamlet is a crown prince, an heir to the throne of Denmark. The connotation of this identity is significant. According to Laertes:

“…(Hamlet’s) greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalu’d persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and the health of the whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscrib’d
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head.” (1132)

The lines are Laertes’ words to Ophelia as he warns her not to put too much faith on what she believes to be Hamlet’s affections. As a public figure, Hamlet is not at liberty to act as he wishes to. The analogy of the head and body is telling. It implies that Hamlet and the people of Denmark are attached in such a way that Hamlet’s every decision and action must bear a direct relevance to the populace. What is required of Hamlet is heavy: he carries responsibility for the people’s lives (as the analogy of the head suggests). As the crown Prince of Denmark, there are severe restrictions on Hamlet’s personal freedom. How, then, will he carry out his personal scheme of revenge? This scheme must necessarily be extricated from “the voice and yielding” of the people, since it involves the murder of a King (Claudius). Hamlet cannot, presumably, perform this particular act of revenge as the crown Prince: the role of the crown Prince demands that Hamlet put before him the needs of the people, such as the stability of the State. To murder a King, on the other hand, is to create disorder – however favoured Hamlet is by the people of Denmark. Hamlet must, therefore, create another identity - a role, which enables him to perform the murder. Hamlet has thought up a way out, and he tells Horatio, “I…hereafter shall…put an antic disposition on” (1135). Hamlet’s decision to put on ‘an antic disposition’ has resolved the first conflict, where Hamlet’s need for revenge is opposed by his public responsibility. Hamlet’s decision to put on ‘an antic disposition’ has resolved the first conflict, where Hamlet’s need for revenge is opposed by his public responsibility. Hamlet’s possible intention to assume such a constitution will be discussed further in a while.

Although disconcerted by Hamlet’s condition, Claudius is forced to keep Hamlet in Elsinore. Claudius, on the other hand, knows how favoured Hamlet is by the people of Denmark.

“How dangerous it is that this man (Hamlet) goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
He’s loved of the distracted multitude
Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes;
And where ‘tis so, the offender’s scourge is weigh’d,
But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are reliev’d
Or not at all.” (1155)

Here again is a conflict between personal interests and public appearance. Claudius cannot make out the cause of Hamlet’s madness. The enactment of the ‘Murder of Gonzago’ terrified him, while the plot of the play, imaginably, tells him that Hamlet’s madness is not desultory. Claudius knows (as his dialogue suggests) that to send Hamlet away is the best alternative to keep out of harm’s way. But he needs to be careful: as Hamlet is loved by the people of Denmark, to send him away will only tip the favour towards the young prince. Polonius’ murder, while it confirms Claudius’ fear of Hamlet as a vital threat, permits Claudius to send Hamlet away from Denmark. While Hamlet has to work his way out of a similar conflict (by assuming a mad exterior), chance solves it for Claudius.

Hamlet’s simulated madness grants him space to carry out his plan of murder. As normalcy is associated with a specific code of behaviours, it is clever to devise madness as a way to circumvent expectations that one should keep to the code of the normal. The occupants of the Court seem keen to entertain Hamlet’s whims, thinking, initially, that his ‘madness’, initiated by his father’s death, will pass. It is because of Hamlet’s assumed madness, for example, that Claudius concedes to watch the play Hamlet has arranged. Having assumed the mannerisms of madness, Hamlet is granted lenience that would be denied him if he were his normal self.

“…Was’t Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be taken away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if’t be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.” (1168)

Really, Hamlet is a player himself. His words to the player: “…in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness” (1146) is no accidental wisdom. Hamlet comprehends it because he himself plays a part, and he does it extremely well. However, while the player Hamlet understands how to “suit the action to the word, the word to the action” so that nobody but Hamlet’s confidantes can see beneath the veneer of madness, the real Hamlet fails. The real Hamlet fails precisely at the point where he must create balance between words and action. Hamlet promises revenge but finds it difficult to perform the deed. What stops him?

Consider the circumstances. Arriving in Elsinore, Hamlet finds his father dead and his uncle, now the King, married to his mother.

“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!
…How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
…‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely…” (1130)

Hamlet’s first soliloquy spells out how worldview, which leads to a desire for suicide. To the young prince, the image that resembles most the condition of the world is an ‘unweeded garden’ – containing coarse and unpleasant things – that grows only to produce more gardens of a similar nature (“grows to seed”). It is perhaps this point of view that accounts for Hamlet’s remark to Ophelia in Act 3 scene 1: “Get thee to a nunnery!” If the world is already appalling because of the nature of its populace, why preserve it through procreation?

The first soliloquy also underlines Hamlet’s tendency to weigh Claudius against the elder Hamlet.

“… So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr… “ (1130)

Claudius lacks the constitution that Hamlet respects in the deceased King. There is, to Hamlet, a fundamental difference in character that distinguishes the two brothers, marking Claudius out as unsophisticated. Since the first soliloquy occurs before the Ghost discloses the elder Hamlet’s murder, it may be understood that Hamlet’s dislike of his uncle is founded on Claudius’ assumed lack of character. It would seem that what disturbs Hamlet about Gertrude’s marriage is the fact that she has married someone far inferior in character to the elder Hamlet.

“…Frailty, thy name is woman!— A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears:—why she, even she— …a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules…” (1130-1131)

That Gertrude has remarried hastily renders the marriage more of an insult to the memory of the dead King. To Hamlet, the world is rank where a satyr (Claudius) easily replaces Hyperion (the elder Hamlet); it is a rank world where Hyperion’s wife agrees to marry a satyr almost without deliberation. This is the kind of world Hamlet refuses to be a part of: if to live is to be a part of an unweeded garden, he wishes that his ‘solid flesh’ should melt instead.
The first soliloquy suggests that other than his own belief system (“that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter”), nothing prevents Hamlet from committing suicide at this point. That is, until the Ghost puts in an appearance and tells Hamlet of his father’s murder. The Ghost extracts from Hamlet a promise for revenge. Hamlet’s promise to avenge his father’s murder, however, does not appear to occupy him enough to drive thoughts of suicide away. In the second soliloquy which occurs moments after Hamlet finalizes the arrangements for the crucial play that is to be staged before the King, there is a concentrated reflection on suicide.

“…who would bear the whips and corns of time,
…When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
…But that the dread of something after death, -
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, - puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all…” (1145)


Is it more dignified, Hamlet wonders, to live – however unpleasantly – than to kill oneself? Suicide, given that it will end the difficulties and troubles of life, does appear to promise relief. It is, on the other hand, daunting since what follows death is unknown. The ‘rub’ is all too clear for Hamlet: he longs for peace that death promises, but death demands him to contend with the unknown. The cowardice Hamlet talks about is the fear of the unknown. It is perhaps the unpredictable outcome of human actions that turns into fear and paralyzes human actions:

“Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” (1149)

There is a melancholic side to Hamlet that renders him flaccid and fragile. Hamlet’s sense of self that emerges out of the first soliloquy is that of being too uncorrupted in an ugly world. Hamlet does not appear to long for death because he lacks a sense of purpose, but because he does not consider the world a good enough place for him. Whatever the reason, suicide is finally not an option either: he admits that the prospect of an unknown place is much too terrifying. However hideous the world is, therefore – however unfitting Hamlet thinks it is for him – he must stay. This, one may conclude, is the first internal conflict. This conflict is further complicated by the information that the Ghost imparts. The complication of the Ghost’s identity will be discussed later; at the moment, it will help to keep the focus on the effect the Ghost’s information has on Hamlet.

It is well to remember that the ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy occurs after Hamlet is acquainted with his father’s murder. One cannot be sure, for this reason, whether he decides against suicide for the philosophical reasoning against death (“…the dread of something after death, - the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, - puzzles the will”) (1145) or because the promise of revenge that he has made demands that he fulfills it before he dies. The fear of the unknown, however, seems a more human excuse than a sense of duty does. In the meeting with his father’s Ghost, Hamlet has promised revenge. But Hamlet postpones carrying out his promise. The delay often disturbs Hamlet himself:

“…Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit…
… This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with ds
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion!” (1144)

Comparing himself to a player, Hamlet reckons he lacks gall. The Player can induce himself to feel and show emotions he has no motive for, so much so that he convinces his audience. Hamlet, on the other hand, although possessing a strong motive for sorrow and revenge (because his father has been murdered) cannot press on to do what he must. Hamlet speaks with revulsion as he admits that, instead of taking revenge, he curse himself for not being determined enough, for lacking mettle. Still, he justifies his delay in the end, stating that he does not have solid enough grounds to seek revenge. He claims he is not convinced as to the identity of the Ghost.

“… The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape…
…I’ll have grounds
More relative than this: - the play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” (1145)

He must have a more concrete proof, and this he will obtain from the staging of the ‘Murder of Gonzago’. At this point, even while the delay troubles Hamlet, he has means to pacify himself. But not on this occasion:

“…he that made us with such large discourse,
… gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus’d. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event, --
A thought which, quarter’d hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, -- I do not know
Why yet I live to say, This thing’s to do;
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
…Makes mouths at the invisible event;
…Even for an egg-shell.
…How stand I, then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep?” (1157)

The soliloquy occurs on a battlefield near the Polish border, as Hamlet witnesses the army of Fortinbras. The land the army attempts to secure is not large; the army fights more because the honor of their State is at stake. Hamlet again compares the army’s fortitude and sense of honor with his temperaments. The soldiers in the army put their lives at risk for the State’s honor – something that does not affect directly their personal lives. Hamlet once more acknowledges that he has a definite cause for revenge (more particularly this time, since the play has ascertained, for Hamlet’s, Claudius’ responsibility) and ends with a determination to finally act.

“– O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” (1157)

Yet this soliloquy outlines precisely what Hamlet’s problem is: he “(thinks) too precisely on the event.”

Hamlet postpones and the delay, on occasion, makes him feel guilty and worthless. Hamlet’s view of the world is clear in the first soliloquy: he considers the world a rank place and would much rather die than be a part of it. The only thing that prevents him from killing himself is his fear of the unknown. Perhaps to Hamlet what can redeem an existence in an ‘unweeded garden’ is an act of value. To avenge his father’s murder is one such. Yet he cannot do it and Hamlet is forced to return to the point where he considers existence ‘stale and unprofitable’. This is the point of stasis: because of inaction, Hamlet considers his existence reprehensible, but he cannot end it since he fears and endlessly philosophizes on the nature of the unknown (that is death), while the fear and the philosophizing bring him back to inaction.

In the play, Laertes and Fortinbras stand in contrast to Hamlet. The two are impulsive and forceful. Laertes, when he hears of his father’s death, returns to Denmark immediately to seek revenge. Fortinbras, in order to protect the honour of his country, risks his life and the lives of numerous soldiers to secure a minimal amount of land. Hamlet is far more equipped in terms of cause and political power than either Fortinbras or Laertes; what he lacks is resolution. To kill someone requires strength, resolution, and a measure of impulsiveness. Hamlet is quick, witty, and intelligent; he is not very physical or impulsive. (Hamlet is impulsive only when he murders Polonius; impulsiveness doesn’t seem a constant temperament with Hamlet). Yet impulsiveness is vital when one must kill; there cannot be deliberation in the moment of killing,. Othello, when he murders Desdemona, refuses to listen to Desdemona; he does not let his emotions interfere with his action. Hamlet is reminiscent of Prufrock: both think of the consequences of an action even before the action is committed. Hamlet is too contemplative to be a murderer. His words at the gravesite should clarify enough.

“That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder!
…Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's;
chapless, and knocked about the mazzard
with a sexton's spade. Here's fine revolution,
and we had the trick to see't. Did these bones
cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats
with 'em? mine ache to think on't.” (1163)

Hamlet tells Horatio: "To what base uses we may return, Horatio!" (1164). Hamlet’s words carry a weighty understanding and a deep grasp of the nature of human life. Because of his promise, and perhaps affection for his father, Hamlet feels that he has to do something as a payback gesture. Yet inferring from his lines, Hamlet cannot see the point of a murder. If every human being returns to dust, what is the point of murder? If everyone winds up in the same manner, what is the difference between being murdered and dying naturally? Hamlet comprehends too much too well. This, really, is the root of his conflict.

The plot of the play revolves around Hamlet’s reactions to the Ghost and to the world in general. Bloom expresses a similar opinion:

“Had Hamlet remained passive, after the Ghost’s visitation, then Polonius, Ophelia, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet himself would not have died violent deaths. Everything in the play depends upon Hamlet’s response to the Ghost, a response that is as highly dialectical as everything else about Hamlet.” (387)

It is up to him to decide whether the Ghost tells a credible enough account of murder, whether he will commit to an act of revenge, whether he will kill himself or choose to remain passive and let thing take care of themselves. His inability to decide shapes the plot to be what it is – that there should be many deaths and that Hamlet himself dies. Truly this is the tragedy of the play, and Hamlet’s indecision is the play’s tragic conflict: had Hamlet handled things differently – had he not reacted to the Ghost’s request, had he murdered Claudius when he had the chance to – the outcome would have been very different. But Hamlet’s way of handling things is decided by his worldview, as well as by the fact that there are elements in the play which blur reality, particularly for Hamlet. Leggat argues:

“In Hamlet the figure who triggers the action is “like” the late King Hamlet, and this
produces within the play that slight but crucial detachment from absolute belief that is
normally the condition of the audience. It is no wonder that an action started in this
manner has trouble fulfilling itself, and that the central character, who takes his own name
from this figure who cannot be named with certainty, is an actor who seems unable to act.” (61)

It may be helpful if, along with Leggat’s argument, one takes into account Bloom’s critical remark: “Why did Shakespeare compose the graveyard scene, since the evocation of Yorick scarcely advances the action of the play? The question has interest only if we apply it to a number of other scenes…” (400).

As is discussed earlier in this essay, in his dialogues at the gravesite Hamlet reflects on the nature of human life. Looking at the skeletons, Hamlet must concede to the fact that everybody dies and returns into dust. The view of the grave and the skeletons must give Hamlet – indeed, whoever sees it – a sense of finality about death. All human beings, after death, are reduced into skeletons and dust. Human beings cannot, if they lie as skeletons and dust in their graves, return to life after death. Yet hasn’t Hamlet seen his father ‘alive’ after his death? Hamlet has seen his father’s Ghost, has spoken to him and been commanded by him. Is it reasonable, then, that if in order to reconcile the opposing viewpoints, the prince gives in to the belief that there is something beyond human understanding, something that human beings are not meant to understand? Bradley, keeping focus on the last Act of the play, considers it likely enough:

“In what spirit does (Hamlet) return (having being sent to England by the King)?
Unquestionably, I think, we can observe a certain change, though it is not great. First, we
notice here and there what seems to be a consciousness of power, due probably to his
success in countermining Claudius and blowing the courtiers to the moon, and to his
vigorous action in the sea fight. Secondly, we nowhere find any direct expression of that
weariness of life and that longing for death which were so marked in the first soliloquy and
in the speech “To be or not to be.”
…Shakespeare means to show in the Hamlet of the Fifth Act a slight thinning of the dark
cloud of melancholy, and means us to feel it tragic that this change comes too late. In the
third place, there is…a sense in Hamlet that he is in the hands of Providence. “There’s a
divinity that shapes our ends,” he declares to Horatio in speaking of the fighting of the
fighting in his heart that would not let him sleep, and of his rashness in groping his way to
the courtiers to find their commission….And though he has a presentiment of evil about
the fencing match he refuses to yield to it: “we defy augury: there is special providence in
the fall of a sparrow…the readiness is all.” (121-122)

A sense of Providence does seem to reign in the last bit of the play, up till the point where Hamlet – appearing to have adopted the attitude of ‘come what may’ – is coerced into a duel and dies poisoned, fulfilling his father’s command only because he realizes he is pressed by time.

Leggat does acknowledge the internal conflict within Hamlet and grounds the source of the conflict in the uncertain identity of the Ghost. The Ghost necessarily stands outside Hamlet’s comprehension. Death, to Hamlet, is either final or not final. It cannot be both. The Ghost straddles the two possibilities, and Hamlet can only respond: “time is out of joint.” Hamlet hesitates because he finds no reality on which he can ground his actions. Blooms, too, recognizes Hamlet’s internal conflict:

“…(Hamlet) has no center: Othello has his “occupation” of honorable warfare, Lear has
the majesty of being every inch a king, Macbeth a proleptic imagination that lepas ahead of
his own ambition. Hamlet is too intelligent to be at one with any role…
….One aspect of Hamlet is free, and entertains itself with bitter wit and bitterly intended
play, but other aspects are bound, and we cannot find the balance.” (406)

One aspect of Hamlet – the mental aspect – is free because he has a vast knowledge and has a capacity to understand many things. His intellectual capacity grants him freedom to construct his own worldview and opinions about his surroundings. He does not have to concede to a particular point of view because he is capable of thinking for himself. The problem with Hamlet is of course that he cannot stop reasoning things out, and he cannot block out completely viewpoints that he does not wish to adhere to. The view of the skeleton at the gravesite obliges Hamlet to concede to the finality of death, but the appearance of his father’s Ghost persuades him to believe that death is not after all, final. The play never sees this conflict within Hamlet resolved at all. Not actively by the protagonist’s will, anyway. There is, on the other hand, the physical aspect of Hamlet. He must, like everyone else, either live or die. Hamlet chooses to live because he fears the unknown in death, but he indicates only too often that he is not exactly thrilled about living either. If Bloom speaks of Hamlet as transcending himself, it is in this sense. Physically, Hamlet exists. Hamlet’s thoughts of existence, however, goes beyond the physicality of existence, which is why, to Hamlet, all actions are difficult. Hamlet cannot see actions as ending with the physical, on earth. One cannot comprehend this deeply without being cautious. This caution consequentially results in inaction, which is central to the plot of the play.

The tragic conflict in Hamlet is internal; it exists within the protagonist’s self. It is difficult to point out precisely what the conflict is. If anything can be pinned down as the source of Hamlet’s conflict, it is the combination of his personality and knowledge and the unfortunate position he happens to find himself in.


Works Cited:

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York: Bantam, 1988. 1127-1170.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York: Bantam, 1988. 1171-1210.

Bloom, Harold. “Hamlet.” Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead, 1998. 383-431.

Bradley, A.C. “Lecture IV: Hamlet.” Shakespearean Tragedy. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981. 110-147.

Leggat, Alexander. “Hamlet: A figure like your father.” Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Violation and Identity. Cambridge: CUP, 2005. 55-83.

A Reading of Christina Rossetti’s Poems

If the terminology is any indication, devotional poetry is at risk of being recognized narrowly as poetry of worship. Must devotional poetry be necessarily devotional in its aspect? Understandably, the concept of religious (or spiritual) devotion varies to the degree that the concept of ‘God’ varies between religions and people. Spiritual feelings are, after all, private ones and privately experienced.

Change is the most common of human experience – often the most painful. It occurs in almost every aspect of life: death, relocation, separation, growing up. The need for something permanent where everything is bound to change resembles the comfort that home offers – when home is not strictly a location. It is the thought of home, of being able to return to something (person or place), that really enables one to put up with things. When there is no person or place though, where does one go to? What is termed ‘devotional poetry’ is perhaps written out of the need to answer this question.

Recognizing the lack of external sources, one may try to look for consolation and assurance from within oneself. But what if there is nothing to be found there either? If one can rely on oneself at all, what one finds within is most likely spiritual strength –or something resembles it. It must, however, be something in the nature of blind faith. It cannot be anything pertaining to reason, because everything that can be reasoned must be subject to change. Religion may help in this case, but like with things that require faith, religion often demands that one asks no question. Of course religions permit arguments where religious conventions are seen to interfere with ways of life, but every religion functions on the basis of certain assumptions. One cannot believe if one questions the basic assumptions. The society of Victorian England is a classic case study. This was a period that saw one of the basic assumptions of Christianity dislodged. The upshots are palpable enough.

It is possible that loneliness develops from this lack of foundation in which to place one’s faith. This is not to speak of loneliness as an easy case of being without companion, but the condition of lacking a fundamental thing. The analogies are many and (often) clichéd: a drifting boat, a lost child. What these likenesses communicate, however banal, is the sense of fear that accompanies feelings of loneliness. Now that the fear exists, how does one get rid of it? One way, probably, is to console oneself with the thought of mortality: everything will end, so that it really doesn’t matter how one lives one’s life – if one does it in fear or in joy. The thought is consoling because what happens after death is really beyond one’s grasp, no matter from what point of view one tries to argue it. But with the recognition of mortality, one must necessarily recognize that there is something more powerful than oneself, to the authority of which one is subject. The recognition of that authority is comforting because - whatever freedom that authority threatens to take away – it allows one to feel that one is not lost after all. The sense of relief is not unlike that one finds in daily routines. The knowledge that death must occur is, in this sense, a comfort. This seems to be the thought, which runs through several of Rossetti’s poems.

Since spiritual feelings that are often the basis of devotional poetry are essentially private, when looking at the poems, it is necessary to consider the circumstances in which they are written.
Rossetti’s biographical information suggests that religion has a limiting effect on her life. Her religious interests were the reason for her not marrying. If religion had at all been a source of comfort, it also caused her unhappiness. On the other hand, to let go of religion and resorted to marriage perhaps didn’t feel reassuring enough. Marriages, after all, like any other occurrence in life is not permanent – certainly less so than religion. In the presence of faith, religion carries the suggestion of permanence, but one may argue that it is precisely the presence of faith, which creates the impression of permanence. Those with faith will not acknowledge the argument (indeed, they cannot, because this will mean going against the very basis on which their belief is founded).

Yet if Rossetti considers death as recourse, then perhaps secretly, she did question her faith. Perhaps she did – like many do – question whether faith worth a chance of fleeting happiness. Perhaps she opted for faith and ideally the questioning must, at that point, have been stopped. If the questioning persisted, death may have seemed a comfortable option.
Unlike religious conventions which are abstract in nature, death is an observed fact and requires less faith to acknowledge. The speaker in “May” admits that although she cannot explain how death comes about (“I cannot tell you how it was, but this I know: it came to pass…”). All living things are fleeting, even in their non-existence:

As yet the poppies were not born Between the blades of tender corn; The last egg had not hatched as yet, Nor any bird foregone its mate.
… Like all sweet things it passed away… (Rossetti 235)

Meanwhile, the travel in “Up-Hill” is an analogy of life. The traveler travels through life seeking out a final “resting place” because the journey has left her “travel-sore and weak” (65). The poem offers the consolation that the journey will come to an end, that at the final point, there will be waiting a resting place and “beds for all who come”.
In “Dream-Land”, Rossetti writes: Rest, rest, a perfect rest Shed over brow and breast; … Rest, rest at the heart's core Till time shall cease: Sleep that no pain shall wake. (21)

The sleep that the speaker refers to is valued as if it’s a gift. To Rossetti, as “Passing Away” suggests too, death is “(her) love, sister, spouse” (67). Considering the circumstances, to live, for Rossetti, requires compromise between the needs of her flesh and spirit. She would have been glad to evade the necessity of struggling and of having to validate her life choice, while the process of validation is complicated because she found herself the only judge. If death is a religion, she might find comfort in what it offers.


Works Cited:

“Dream-Land.” Rossetti, Christina. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Jan Marsh. London: Everyman, 1994. 21.

“May.” Rossetti, Christina. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Jan Marsh. London: Everyman, 1994. 235.

“Passing Away.” Rossetti, Christina. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Jan Marsh. London: Everyman, 1994. 67

“Up-Hill.” Rossetti, Christina. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Jan Marsh. London: Everyman, 1994. 65

The Varieties of Religious Experience. James, William. London: Penguin, 1985. 112 –425.

“The Religious Poetry of Christina Rossetti.” McGann, Jerome J. Victorian Women Poets: Contemporary Critical Essays. Ed. Joseph Bristow. London: Macmillan, 1995. 167 – 188.

(response essay to Lyotard’s “Defining the Postmodern”)

Lyotard’s definition of postmodernity in “Defining the Postmodern” is the “process of analysing…and reflecting” on past situations. To analyse and reflect on past situations is to reconsider the past with the advantage of hindsight. Hindsight generates new perspectives. Lyotard’s definition of the postmodern condition points to the multiplicity of perspectives which characterizes it. An evaluation of the debates discussed in the essay will help to clarify the definition.

Lyotard draws on architectural theory to show the opposition between modernism and postmodernism. Both modernism and postmodernism recognize the condition of disorder, which results from the absence of a central authority. Modernism lays emphasis on the capacity of human beings to create essence or meaning (of existence) out of chaos. As an expression of this idea, modernist objects – including modernist architecture – are characterized by simplicity and minimalism in form. The shape of a modernist building caters to the function of the building. The function of a building is its essence; its shape must hinge on this essence. Ornamental pieces are noticeably absent from modernist buildings since these are not essential to their functioning. Minimalist buildings become idiosyncratic of modernism, as distinct from the architecture of earlier periods, for example the style of architecture associated with the Victorian period. Lyotard argues that the idea of chronology is itself a modern construct. Names are assigned to particular time periods in order to make them distinct from one another. In effect, the practice of architecture is also positioned in the diachronic framework. The ensuing assumption suggests that styles of architecture which are predominant in different time periods indicate “progress in the realization of human emancipation”. Founded on this assumption, Modernism, with its emphasis on freedom from conventions, is obliged to restrict its architecture to the minimalist style that has come to characterize the movement. Postmodernism, on the other hand, disregards the assumption. For the postmodernist, there is no “close linkage between the architectural project and socio-historical progress in the realization of human emancipation.” Postmodernism does not attempt to distinguish itself by specific ideologies. The tone of postmodernism is something close to bricolage - a miscellany of elements. The tone is one of diversity.

The second debate in the essay discusses the social condition that is the postmodern condition. Key to this discussion is the distinction between ‘development’ and ‘progress’. ‘Development’ refers to an increase or furtherance of ideas, knowledge and application of knowledge to life activities, while ‘progress’ is the extent to which mankind is benefited by development. In the following account, ‘development’ and ‘progress’ are to be understood as they have been defined. Lyotard argues that development in human life has not, in the past, resulted in an improvement in the quality of life. Perhaps for good reasons, human beings are never content with the way things are: society everywhere knows there are always ways to improve life conditions. Alteration in any aspect of life as an attempt at improvement, however, must necessarily lead to alterations in other aspects. The proposition of Darwinism in 19th century England is a case in point. The need of human societies to try to know more about and understand better aspects of life is natural: known and familiar things allows for feelings of security, whereas unknown things tend to threaten. Still, knowledge is unbiased. The bias occurs in the hands of human beings, in their application of knowledge. In this capacity, human beings are “too big” for the world. However, the accumulation of knowledge also facilitates learning. With a huge amount of knowledge, it seems wrong to just let things be. On the other hand, with the accumulation of information, there is a growing awareness of things still to be studied and figured out. Any social development is always accompanied with the realization that, while the society possesses the capacity for development and innovation through knowledge, there are aspects of existence that elude understanding. Even with the human creation of computers and machines, for example, the complexity of human brain is still inscrutable. Any society that is aware of the complexity of human life is necessarily aware of the fact that, because of the impossibility to comprehend completely the nature of existence, they are denied security – and inevitably happiness. In this sense, human beings are “too small” for the world. Human beings are “never at the right scale” for the world.

The human awareness of the complexity of existence, as discussed, is the corollary of the social accumulation of knowledge and preoccupation to come up with better means of existence. Often this complexity is only understood philosophically. Lyotard’s concern is that social development has split the modern society into two sections: one that is aware of the complexity of life, and another, which is still preoccupied with the basic need to survive. In contemporary terms, what Lyotard terms ‘complexity’ is nothing but the effects of globalisation. Globalisation broadens the scope of knowledge that is accessible to a given society. On the other hand, globalisation affects everyone – no matter whether one belongs to the section of society that comprehends complexity or to the other that still struggles to ensure survival. The split of society into two sections is the point where Modernism fails. Modernism trusts in the individual’s capacity to create order (therefore existential meaning) out of disorder, but it fails to anticipate that social development does not affect all members of a society in the same way. The Modernism project is, in this sense, totalizing. Postmodernism recognizes the flaw and failure of this totalizing impulse.

A good way to begin discussion on the third debate in the essay is to quote something Lyotard states in an earlier paragraph: “the quotation of elements of past architectures in the new one seems to me to be the same procedure as the use of remains coming from past life in the dream-work as described by Freud, in the “Interpretation of Dreams”. The avant-grade movement in art is assumed to be a tendency of Modernism. Lyotard argues against this assumption. To associate any particular tendency in art to a specific time period or society is to commit the same mistake that Lyotard has described in the previous paragraph as the “failure of the modern project.” Such an assumption claims that there is a single ideology that characterizes a particular society in time. To work with such an assumption is to automatically erase other possible perspectives that oppose the presumably dominant ideology. From this point of view, history is static. Lyotard suggests that the paintings of Manet or Duchamp are compared to the condition of anamnesis. Anamnesis, really, is a form of hindsight: it refers to the recollection or remembrance of the past. Considered with hindsight, past situations are likely to provide perspectives that may illuminate the present condition. History, in this sense, is dynamic. In “The Postmodern Condition”, Lyotard defines postmodern as “incredulity toward metanarratives”. Incredulity towards metanarrative (Grand Narratives) is rearticulating the postmodern recognition of multiplicity of perspectives. Metanarrative is understood as a comprehensive explanation of a historical phenomenon or experience. It is therefore understood that metanarrative carries a totalizing tendency. It gives off a sense of absoluteness; it leaves no space for disparate narratives. Incredulous towards metanarrative, the postmodern makes space for these narratives: any account of experience must encompass every available and possible narrative. Subaltern studies – which focusses on the re-examination of the South Asian historiography – is a case in point of the postmodern tendency against Grand Narratives. The re- examination calls attention to the fact that South Asian history was written exclusively from the colonialist perspective and the perspective of the small, privileged section of the South Asian society. This historiography has occupied the position of a Grand Narrative, while Subaltern Studies Collective takes on the project to collect narratives in order to produce an alternative historiography that is more encompassing.

One of the postmodern contentions is that history must remain open to interpretations. It must remain responsive to new readings. At this point one returns to the initial argument in this essay – that the postmodern condition accommodates multiplicity of perspectives.

The concept of nation implies the presence of a ruling sector. The ruling class is the class that wields power. In the necessity to hold on to its authority, the State works by a legal system, which decides what is legal and what is not. Once the authority is secured, the recording of the present will automatically adhere to the policies established by the State. While the practice of writing certainly assists the recording of history, it also means that the recording of history becomes an exclusive activity. Historical records that find a large audience are those that exist in the form of writing – merely because the form of the printed texts enables better distribution. The act of writing implies exclusion of the sections of society that cannot ‘write’ – either for the literal lack of education or because these sections do not conform to State policies. This is a segment of society that does not recognize their right neither to knowledge nor assertion; the part that must consent to having their life-experiences recorded from the perspective of the legal system. The legal system, on the other hand, can only categorize occurrences as legal and illegal cases. It cannot possibly look into the circumstances of individual cases; it cannot recognize their complexity.

Individual incidents produce complex narratives. These are, unfortunately, lost narratives: narratives that the legal system cannot record. Contemporary perspectives of history that are founded only on state-authorized records are incomplete accounts of history. Historical interpretations vary according to the questions asked of the historical data. The historian is an author: the perspective that interprets history makes a selection of the data. The Subaltern Studies Collective recognizes the selective perspective as the force of elitism in the writing of history. The legal system (which is under the control of the body of authority in a given society) is the perspective that decides the orientation of social narrative. In the case of Indian historiography, the Colonial power is the ‘elite’ that controls the construction of the historiography. Guha points out that an ‘elite’ perspective cannot do anything with phenomena such as the anti-Rowlatt upsurge and the Quit India movement other than to classify them as disturbances of the legal order. There needs to be alternative narrative(s) that can explain the event from a different perspective, and these are what the SSC seeks.

“Chandra’s Death” is a narrative in which Guha traces the process whereby an instance of child abortion in 19th century India, having been incorporated into the body of ‘legalized’ (elite) history, is labeled an act of crime. As it happens, the abortion was a necessary measure to protect the mother against severe social verdict. The perspective of the abortion as a necessary precaution emerges only after thorough study has been made of the social dynamics of Chandra’s community. Mainstream history cannot explain the complexity of Chandra’s situation.

This goes to show that there are narratives missing from mainstream history. These need to be recovered to create a more encompassing view of the past, which must help to estimate more accurate dynamics between the past and the present. The rediscovery of unrecorded narratives provides an alternative account of history. This can only be done, however, with the advantage of hindsight.

Draupadi in the Mahabharata vows not to tie up her hair until it has been bathed in Duryodhana’s blood. The narrator of her story is impersonal. One can only guess at her reasons for taking up such a vow. Dopdi in Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” does something similar. Dopdi is raped, and she refuses to put her clothes back on. It seems that the refusal, before being an act of defiance, is one of self-protection: if she puts her clothes back on, she will once again put herself in a vulnerable position.

Any given society functions by a set of rules – legal or normative. All its members recognize these rules, their significance, and the consequences of disobedience. The collective recognition of a set of codes of conduct is what enables the creation of society in the first place. The codes in Mahasweta Devi’s story associate a woman’s conduct and sexual chastity with dignity. They also look at dignity as an important factor for social acceptance. The men’s violence hurts Dopdi because they, like Dopdi, understand the social codes. They can humiliate and hurt because Dopdi understands that their conduct is meant to humiliate her. The men cannot comprehend her refusal to clothe herself, because this is a conduct that does not fit into their understanding of what they consider to be social codes (therefore final codes of conduct). Sena Nayak is afraid because he doesn’t know how to handle such behaviour. It is not easy to harm her now, because she has overlooked the system of rules that dictate the men’s conducts. In the conventional system her act signifies disobedience; outside it, hers is an act of self-protection.

What is missing from the Mahabharatha is this narrative of Draupadi that clarifies her vow as a measure of self-preservation, rather than disobedience or a need for apologies.