Term Paper on "Fall to Spring's Sprouting: The Motif"

Term Paper 13 pages (3355 words) Sources: 13 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Fall to Spring's Sprouting: The Motif of Man as Leaves in Literature and the Emergence of Autonomy as Divine

Literature, like the minds that produce it, does not exist in a vacuum. There is an ongoing and never-ending set of influences that continually impact upon the perspectives, proficiencies, and personalities that lead to the creation of literary works, made up of the innumerable realities of any given writer's life: political tensions, economic hardships, cultural attitudes, technological innovations -- the list goes on. Charles Dickens would not have authored the same novels had he grown up and lived in nineteenth century India instead of England, just as Shakespeare would not have penned the same plays (or perhaps any plays at all) if he were a modern Haitian. Similarly, today's readers do not really perceive the works of Dickens and Shakespeare the way the original readers/audiences of these masters did, as the historical and cultural divide that now exists between readers and the worlds of these authors is too great to allow for such direct and open translation and interpretation. The routine child labor and debtor's prisons of Dickens' England are things of the past, as are (by and large) Shakespearean attitudes towards women, and while we can attempt to view things in their proper historical context we cannot successfully adopt a mindset that belongs to another era. Literature is shaped by its environment at its creation and its interpretation, making it impossible for any work to stand on its own.

No work should stand on its own, however, and in fact it is within some of the common threads of the human condition and situation that influence all literature that some of the more interesting interpretative analyses of literature and the cultures/era that specific works represent can be made. That is, tracing the way in which works of literature form different periods and cultures represent or relate to various universal issues can do a great deal to inform the works of literature examined as well as the understanding of certain aspects of the cultures and societies that produced these works. The works of Dickens and Shakespeare are meaningful in and of themselves, but they are even more meaningful examined alongside each other. There are many ways to go about this type of side-by-side analysis and comparison, and many different lines of cultural and societal commentary that can be followed through such analyses, from socioeconomic evaluations of class representation and the like to more abstract investigations of how individuals defined themselves and their world at a given place and time. It is this last line of inquiry that is of special interest here, and that will be traced though what is perhaps a rather unexpected and seemingly minimal motif.

Not all influences on the trajectory of Western literature rear their heads in ways as glaringly obvious as the gender issues of Elizabethan England of the industrialization of Victorian times. Some influences, such as mankind's understanding of its position in the cosmos and each individual's relation to whatever divine powers might exist, can be quite explicitly rendered at some times while in other works they can be observed only in small yet profound details of the text. The slightest of symbols can be far more revelatory in this regard than might be thought -- more so than the author intended, perhaps, in many cases -- providing not only concrete understandings within the context of the work itself but also providing insights into the underlying perspectives and beliefs of the author and/or that author's culture, time, and place. The leaf or leaves as a symbol for men or mankind is one such revelatory clue, primarily if not solely because it is relatively common throughout many periods of Western literature. Leaves make a natural symbol for man and mankind for several reasons, from physical appearance and anatomy to their growth and proliferation to their fragility and the clarity and rapidity with which their life cycle is represented and observed. It is perhaps for this reason that authors from practically all periods of Western literature have used leaves as symbols in remarkably similar ways, and it is because of these similar uses that the existent differences in the usage can be examined to illuminate cultural changes as they are reflected in literature from different times. Through an examination of the leaves-as-Man motif in Homer's The Iliad, Virgil's The Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Walt Whitman's collection of poem's Leaves of Grass, it can be seen that the symbolism of leaves and their association with mankind has become both more individualized and autonomous, not creating a separation of mankind from the Divine but rather reimagining and repositioning the relationship that exists between them.

The Iliad

The first of the two major epics attributed to Homer, The Iliad is the story of a war -- a war instigated and perpetuated by men's pride and spurred on by some help from the gods. Much of this work could be said to be devoted to developing or presenting an understanding of mankind's relationship to the divine and individual relationships and responsibilities that exist between men, as well, often in very clear and direct terms. The instances of warfare, violence, death, and especially heroism that the action of The Iliad contains provide many opportunities for ruminations and reflections on the grander elements of the human condition and the cultural view of man's situation in relation to the divine, yet even in certain passages that appear at first glance merely descriptive certain comments of this nature can be observed. In describing the assembled masses of soldiers, the author chooses the symbol of leaves to represent their innumerable nature: "Thick as autumnal leaves, or driving sand, / The moving squadrons blacken all the strand" (II.458-468). As simple as this description is, there are many different implications that arise form the choice of this particular symbol.

First and foremost is the apparent anonymity of the individual soldiers themselves, who are indeed unimportant to The Iliad and the world that they occupy. There are individual heroes celebrated -- and shamed -- in the epic, and thus it cannot be stated from this brief couplet passage alone that all men were seen merely as small parts of a whole, but the manner in which the soldiers are described here makes it clear that they are not important in and of themselves, but as the mass that they create in combination. Heroism for these levels or grains of sand is to be found in their numbers and their relations to each other, not in their individuality of autonomy. Autonomy, in fact, is entirely absent in the image of thick leaves created by this passage; just as individuality is eradicated, so is any sense of growth, movement, or freedom. The leaves in this image, like the grains of sand, are dumb and immobile things, not imbued with any internal purpose or drive but simply artifacts of natural processes at their terminus. Grains of sand are all that is left of rocks after untold periods of being broken down, and the leaves here are specifically described as "autumnal," calling to mind images of vivid color, perhaps, but also of dry, brittle, and essentially dead matter. In all of this, mankind's place in the overall universal scheme is clearly painted as one of natural happenstance and fate, not admitting and individual motives, desires, or designs.

The description of the leaves as autumnal lends a definite fatalistic cast to the image and the understanding of mankind that it presents, as well. These men are at the end point of their lives, having served their primary purposes and come to their end. They cover the ground, where they will be swept away to make room for the sprouting of new trees and new generations of leaves. This is reinforced by a later image, where the narrative is paused and the narrator reflects, "The generation of men is like that of leaves. The wind scatters one year's leaves on the ground, but the forest burgeons and puts out others, as the season of spring comes round" (VI.146-150). Seen in this light, the lack of autonomy and individuality is somewhat softened by the sense of interconnectedness and the needed succession of each new wave of mankind: new generations of men could not arise if the old did not fall to the ground and become the dust and dirt of the world, and thus the autumnal leaves of the image are completing their part in this cycle of generation and regeneration. There is a sort of heroism here, though this might be a modern reading not initially intended in The Iliad, and more so there is a clear representation of man's place in the cosmos according to the culture that produced this work. This image of the leaf shows a belief in fate, in collective destiny, and in continuing and inescapable cycles of death and birth, all of which diminish… READ MORE

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