Literary Analysis

1. Space

Introduction - From Outer Space to Atoms - Rivers - A Crow’s Flight into the Forest - A Tiny House in a Tiny Village - A Church in the Night Sky - A Car on the Highway - A Master in the Forest

Introduction

The category of space is fundamental to artistic creation. One could argue that space is so crucial because it’s what we live in, and in order to represent our lives we must represent space. Realistic space can range from atoms to an arm’s reach, a room, a building, a neighbourhood, a lake, a mountain range, a continent, the world, and the stars.

Fantastic or mythic spaces can take many forms, from the quasi-scientific universes of Star Trek and Marvel to the fantastic realms of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Among the most famous of mythic spaces is Dante's Inferno and Paradise, here illustrated by Gustave Doré:

Heaven and Hell often have more to do with time in the future (2), the belief system of a character (3), or the theme of religion (5), unless the actual spatial description of Heaven and Hell is central, as it is in Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the poet descends into the Underworld and then ascends to Heaven.

Geography lies behind language and culture, so where writers come from is often crucial. Writers living in China will most likely write in Chinese, and their influences and expressions will largely come from the Chinese world around them. Most Chinese poets will be more familiar with the Chinese poet Li Bai than with the French poet Charles Baudelaire. They’ll be intimately familiar with the tonality of language, whereas French poets will be intimately familiar with the many forms of the subjunctive verb tense. The great complement to geography (1) is history (2), which determines the nature of culture and language at any given moment. If Baudelaire and Li Bai wrote in 21st Century France and China, their writings would be different. The interconnectedness of space and time can be seen in the French phrase le jour où or the day where, which Alain Bashumg uses with devastating effect in his lyric "Residents of the Republic": "One day I'll love you less / Until the day where I won't love you anymore (Un jour je t'aimerai moins / Jusqu'au jour où je ne t'aimerai plus).

In analyzing space, you might ask the following questions: Why does the writer decide on a particular setting? What kinds of situations or reflections does this setting allow? How is the setting described so that we feel or think in a certain way? Does the setting reflect or help to create a character, conflict, or theme?

When people say, “the text is set in Victorian England,” they may be referring to setting (1) or time-period (2), or both. In developing your arguments, keep your focus in mind. In this case, is it what Victorian England looks like in terms of such things as décor and architecture (1) or is it the qualities of the historical moment (2), such as the rise of technology and voting? 

From Outer Space to Atoms 

Space can range from the dimensions of the universe, to a country, to a person, to the tiny atoms that make up everything. In the following three excerpts from Blue Petrol /Bleu pétrole (2008), Alain Bashung uses the range of space to explore what it is to be a human being. In "Like Lego / Comme Un Lego," he imagines humans clinging to Earth, beyond which is the void of outer space:

Because if the earth is round / And they cling to it / Beyond is the void / Sitting before a half-eaten side of fries / Starry black and plates of amoebas (Car si la terre est ronde / Et qu'ils s'y agrippent / Au delà c'est le vide / Assis devant le restant d'une portion de frites / Noir sidéral et quelques plats d'amibes)   

Bashung’s spatial juxtapositions are extreme, as if he were trying to jolt his reader into re-thinking the meaning of their being alive in a specific space. After the down-to-earth image of sitting next to a plate scattered with fries, Bashung shifts back to the extremes of space: the night sky and amoebas. Why does he do this? 

The complete text of "Lego" is full of spatial references, which Bashung uses to question the nature of human existence from a detached, scientific, existentialist angle. In "Yesterday in Sousse / Hier à Sousse," Bashung takes a more human, geographic approach to human identity. 

Here in Sfax, here in Sfax / Yesterday in Sousse, yesterday in Sousse / Tomorrow Paris, tomorrow Paris / No watch tells the same time / [...] In the interior, in the interior, / Flows the Garonne, flows the Garonne (Ici à Sfax, ici à Sfax / Hier à Sousse, hier à Sousse / Demain Paris, demain Paris / Aucun cadran n'affiche la même heure / [...] À l'intérieur, à l'intérieur / Coule la Garonne, coule la Garonne)

Hopping from one location to the next, Bashung suggests that while we're global in nature (the Tunisian cities of Sfax and Sousse; Bashung himself had an Algerian father), we're also national (Paris, the French capital) as well as regional (the Garonne River in southwest France). The image of the Garonne doesn’t just suggest regionalism; it also suggests that we're part of nature. Bashung may be suggesting an archetypal river, with its flow of emotion and time, and with its connection to the water of life. This deepens the notion of in the interior, which takes on the meaning of deep inside us or at heart.  

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Rivers

In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1919), Langston Hughes explores the connection between geography and human identity by referring to large sweeps of space and time: 

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. 

How does Hughes link anatomy, geography, history, and spirituality? Why does Hughes start with the Euphrates and end with the Mississippi? How does he use geography to comment on the idenity of African-Americans? How universal is his poem?

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A Crow’s Flight into the Forest

In Act 3, scene 2 of Macbeth, Shakespeare suggests ominous evil by combining three spatial elements: a forest, diminishing light, and the flight of a dark bird:

[…] Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky* wood: *black & filled with crows
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

The context of the description is grim: Macbeth is telling his wife that he’s going to kill his best friend as well as his best friend’s son. The language is potent and symbolic (6): that “light thickens” gives palpable sense to what is otherwise not easily felt, while the loss of light suggests the rise of evil and the fall of goodness (the good things that “droop and dowse”). The bird who inhabits this thick air also symbolizes evil, both because of its black colour and because of its flight into the forest, a traditional location of danger, darkness, savagery, being lost, and going astray. The image (6) of a crow entering a forest is magnified by switching from one crow to many, by referring to the group of birds as agents (of the Devil or of evil spirits, one assumes), and by the explicit reference to the prey they will hunt down and kill. The expanded image is a realistic one psychologically (3): imagine the difference between walking along a dark wood when one dark bird swoops toward you; then imagine if ten birds swoop toward you.

This type of dark flight is used to great advantage by Tolkien in Lord of the Rings, when the Nazgul serving the Dark Lord Sauron mount gigantic dark birds who stalk the terrified traveller.s from above.

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A Tiny House in a Tiny Village

In the first paragraph of his short story “A Horse and Two Goats” (1970) R.K. Narayan uses a map and geography (1) to suggest the enormity of India. He creates this large framework, then zooms in on Southern India so that we can see that his protagonist comes from a village that is very small and off the beaten track. In this village his protagonist, Muni, has an even more minute location: a humble house on the very outskirts of the tiny village.

Narayan uses this setting (1) to introduce the notion that Muni is very low in the social and economic hierarchy (4). He later contrasts Muni’s humble station in life with his grandiose religious conception of cosmic space (1) and time (2). This contrast simultaneously comments on the cultural divide (4) between Muni’s Hindu cosmological point of view and the materialistic and practical point of view of the American he encounters. The contrast also deepens the short story’s dominant elements of empathetic comedy (6).

Muni’s spatial isolation and marginalization (1) sets up a strong contrast with the American tourist who drives by and stops to talk with him. The American speaks in English and Muni speaks in Tamil, a linguistic divide (4) which underscores the cultural divide (4). In the next excerpt, Muni has no intention of taking the horse statue anywhere, yet somehow the American tourist has got it into his head that Muni wants to do this. Likewise, the American has no idea what Muni is talking about when Muni sails off into stories about Hindu deities….

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A Church in the Night Sky

Yeah, you're lookin' at the church in the night sky / Wonderin' whether God's gonna say hi. ("Saint Pablo," 2016, Kanye West)

Here the poet's on the Earth looking into the sky, which has been the location (1) of gods and mythic figures since the beginning of civilization (starting, it seems, with the Mesopotamians and Egyptians). Since the sky is also seen as the location (1) of the Christian monotheistic God, and since a church is where people worship God, then the church in the night sky may simply be reinforcing the notion that God's up there. Yet the song is called “Saint Pablo,” the Spanish name for Saint Paul. In the New Testament (Acts 9) Paul is on his way to Damascus when “suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.” After this experience, Paul changes his direction in life: he goes from arguing against Christianity to being its greatest known author (he wrote much of the New Testament, notably the influential Epistle to the Romans). Perhaps by alluding (6) to Saint Paul in this way West is suggesting two things. First, evoking Paul might fit with his grandiose claims of being “the most influential” and “wakin’ the spirit of millions” with his “truth” in the first half of the song. Second, he may be suggesting that like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus he has lost his way. Perhaps he’s looking for a flash or sign from Heaven. This fits with the later parts of the song, where he humbles himself before the court, stands under oath, and cries at the bar.

Note: In writing about literature, always use the writer’s last name. Here, use “West” rather than the more familiar “Kanye.” Avoid nicknames altogether. 

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A Car on the Highway

In "Life in the Fast Lane" (1976), the Eagles make extensive use of ambiguous and metaphoric spaces (1) to explore the dangers of a reckless and hedonistic lifestyle:

There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face. / She pretended not to notice, she was caught up in the race.

The first line here most likely refers to lines of cocaine, and links these to the lines on a woman's face, yet there’s also an oblique reference to lines of sight. The second line picks up on the idea of sight lines, suggesting that while the woman may see her own reflection in the mirror, she doesn't mentally reflect on the physical and psychological damage her behaviour will cause. Her recklessness connects directly to the title of the song, which is repeated in the chorus: "Life in the Fast Lane" and in the metaphor (6) of driving recklessly:

They had one thing in common, they were good in bed. / She said, "Faster, faster, the light's are turning red."

Here the setting (1) is used to comment on a sexual encounter (4), yet also on where their relationship is going (4). Both figures are “caught up in the race," that is, both need to look out for warnings of danger, which are seen metaphorically (6) in terms of driving a car on a road, being so blasted (perhaps on the previously suggested cocaine) that they don’t see the stop sign, and having an accident (with a pun on the phrase turn for the worse):

Blowin' and burnin,' blinded by thirst / They didn't see the stop sign, took a turn for the worse

'Driving in the fast lane' is thus a spatial (1) analogy (6) which starts off as a metaphor (6) and ends up as an extended metaphor, otherwise known as a conceit (6).

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A Master in the Forest

In the following poem by the Buddhist Jia Dao (779–843), the spatial focus (1) shifts from close to distant, from specific to vague, and from human to natural:

Under a pine I asked the pupil

who said, “The Master’s gone to gather balm

somewhere in the mountains,

but the cloud’s so thick that I can’t say where."

The initial setting is specific and clear, yet by the end of the poem we realize that the situation in anything but easy to grasp. The pupil is alone, when presumably the master should be present to guide the pupil. The poet here uses a paradox (6): while the master isn't there to teach, his absence teaches the pupil to learn for himself. The master also gives a subtle hint about how the pupil might learn: by looking into nature. This theme of learning from nature (5) is implied in the physical direction (1) the master's already taken: into the mountains.

The location (1) of the poem (China) and the (2) time period (9th Century) encourage a traditional philosophical reading, rather than a contemporary existential or political one. Given that both Buddhism and Daoism urge letting go of the self and contemplating vast stretches of space and time, it's not surprising that the master doesn't feel the psychological need (3) to be present or to assert his name or importance in any concrete way. Nor does he feel the need to clarify or systematize his version of the truth. The situation which might be different if the master was following the Confucian model, which tends to be more explicit in its pedagogical aims, doctrines, and hierarchies.

Jia Dao sets up a spatial situation where the poet is set apart from the pupil, who then tells the poet where the teacher has gone. The simplicity of this triangular situation allows the reader to move on from the poet and the pupil to what the pupil says about the master, most of which has a strong spatial element. If one were to see the situation geometrically, the poet and the pupil would form the narrow base of an isosceles triangle, out from which two long lines stretch outward and upward to the location of the master. Yet since the master's location isn't known, the triangle has no apex. Just as there's no practical way to see the master and no mathematical way to see the triangle, so there's no philosophical way to understand the meaning of life. Exploration is everything.

Each spatial detail becomes important at this point. That the master has gone into nature “to gather balm" suggests that the master's aim is to heal or soothe. That he's "somewhere" in the mountains suggests that most people can't understand exactly where a master goes mentally or spiritually. That he’s in "the mountains" suggests that nature is a deep and lofty source of wisdom and spirituality. That the "cloud’s [...] thick" suggests that the mysteries penetrated by the master aren't easily penetrated by most people.

The theme (5) of the poem is difficult to pin down, yet it appears to be the difference between common perception and mystical perception. Or perhaps it's the manner in which mystics might pass on their understanding or experience. The style or structure is metaphoric and allusive (6): concrete aspects of the setting (1) take on vague philosophical meanings (5), and natural imagery (6) is more easily appreciated if we know something about the philosophies of Buddhism and Daoism, especially as these contrast with Confucianism.

In comparing Jia Dao’s poem to the excerpt from Macbeth, one can see that the forest may have sinister connotations in one context and positive connotations in another. While the thickness of the air or cloud suggests obscurity in both cases, this thickness suggests two completely different meanings: in Macbeth it suggests deep evil, while in “Under a Pine” it suggests deep wisdom. This is perhaps a case where Hamlet is right, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet 2.2). Another way of putting this is that both Shakespeare and Jia Dao are employing pathetic fallacy (6), wherein humans fallaciously project their own emotions (their pathos) onto an indifferent nature, in order to create a poetic or emotional effect.

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