example of new criticism essay

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The New Criticism of JC Ransom

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 16, 2016 • ( 1 )

The seminal manifestos of the New Criticism was proclaimed by John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), who published a series of essays entitled The New Criticism (1941) and an influential essay, “ Criticism, Inc. ,” published in The World’s Body (1938). This essay succinctly expresses a core of New Critical principles underlying the practice of most “New Critics,” whose views often differed in other respects. As Ransom acknowledges, his essay is motivated by the desire to make literary criticism “more scientific, or precise and systematic”; it must, says Ransom, become a “serious business.”1 He urges that the emphasis of criticism must move from historical scholarship to aesthetic appreciation and understanding. Ransom characterizes both the conservative New Humanism and left-wing criticism as focusing on morality rather than aesthetics. While he accepts the value of historical and biographical information, Ransom insists that these are not ends in themselves but instrumental to the real aim of criticism, which is “to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature.”

In short, Ransom’s position is that the critic must study literature, not about literature. Hence criticism should exclude: (1) personal impressions, because the critical activity should “cite the nature of the object rather than its effects upon the subject” (WB, 342); (2) synopsis and paraphrase, since the plot or story is an abstraction from the real content of the text; (3) historical studies, which might include literary backgrounds, biography, literary sources, and analogues; (4) linguistic studies, which include identifying allusions and meanings of words; (5) moral content, since this is not the whole content of the text; (6) “Any other special studies which deal with some abstract or prose content taken out of the work” (WB, 343–345). Ransom demands that criticism, whose proper province includes technical studies of poetry, metrics, tropes, and fictiveness, should “receive its own charter of rights and function independently” (WB, 346). Finally, in this essay and other works, Ransom insists on the ontological uniqueness of poetry, as distinct from prose and other uses of language, as in prose. “The critic should,” he urges, “regard the poem as nothing short of a desperate ontological or metaphysical manoeuvre,” which cannot be reduced to prose (WB, 347–349). All in all, he argues that literature and literary criticism should enjoy autonomy both ontologically and institutionally. His arguments have often been abbreviated into a characterization of New Criticism as focusing on “the text itself ” or “the words on the page.”

Notes 1. John Crowe Ransom, The World’s Body (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), p. 329. Hereafter cited as WB.

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New criticism is all about existing in the present moment, as it encourages a style of criticism that focuses only on what can be seen on the pages of the text. No more need to study the historical context, biographical data and philosophical contribution of a text to what it means. All that matters is the text itself! 

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New criticism is all about existing in the present moment, as it encourages a style of criticism that focuses only on what can be seen on the pages of the text. No more need to study the historical context, biographical data and philosophical contribution of a text to what it means. All that matters is the text itself!

But what exactly is new criticism? Let us look at the definition, theory and of new criticism, alongside an example and a few notable critics that contributed to this movement.

New criticism: definition

The definition of new criticism is as follows:

New Criticism: A style of criticism that emphasizes the close reading of texts as a self-contained piece of work capable of producing independent meaning, without the accompaniment of any philosophical, historical or biographical context surrounding the text.

New criticism believes in analysing the value of literary works based only on the text itself, without taking into account the following:

The author's background or intentions while writing the text

The reader's emotional or physical response to the text

The social, economic, political or historical context of the text

The moral or philosophical importance of the text

Once the context of the text has been removed, the meaning and value of the text should only rely on what is seen on the page. This means focusing the literary study on the text's aesthetic qualities, such as its

Language and tone

• Literary devices and techniques

Characterisation

Symbols and metaphors

Actual setting (not context)

New criticism focuses on how something is being said, not why , to determine what is being said.

New criticism: theory

New criticism arose as a literary theory in the 20th century as a response to traditional styles of literary criticism in America that placed more emphasis on the external factors surrounding a text, rather than the text itself. These old literary schools believed that the meaning of the text is reliant on its author's biography , its historical and cultural context and the philosophical or moral importance of the text.

However, New Critics believed that this approach was too distracting, subjective and emotional. They believed that art should be enjoyed simply for art's sake, rather than ascribing a greater socio-political, moral or didactic purpose to the text. Hence they came up with a far more systematic and objective way of studying literary texts.

Intentional Fallacy

New Critics believed that failure to view a text independently can lead to Intentional Fallacy.

Intentional Fallacy: The false notion that the author's intentions affect the interpretation of a text.

The reality is that while interpreting a text, the critic (or reader) has no idea what the author's true intentions were while producing the text. In some cases, the meaning of a text may not live up to the author's intentions, while in others it may be far more complex and meaningful than the author originally intended. Hence, the author's intentions should be of no relevance and should not have any bearing on the meaning of the text.

the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the . . . work of literary art. 1

Affective Fallacy

A similar notion called Affective Fallacy was also introduced by New Critics as something that should be avoided during literary analysis.

Affective Fallacy: The malpractice of taking into consideration the emotional and psychological reactions of the reader while interpreting a text.

Every reader may interpret a text differently, and there is no way a critic can have access to readers' response that is free of personal biases, unified and constant. Therefore, they should not confuse the meaning of a text with the reader's reaction.

New criticism: example

To better understand New criticism, let us apply this style of criticism to analyse a text. For this example, we will be analysing F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (1925).

The Great Gatsby is set during the Jazz Age (1920-1930) in America, the period following the end of the First World War. A sudden rise in the national economy led to an era characterised by extravagance, opulence and social mobility. However, under the glittering surface, this period was also characterised by the relaxation of social and moral values, materialism and the stratification of society into the rich and working classes. The Eighteenth Amendment (1919) banning the sale of alcohol resulted in massive bootlegging businesses. The Jazz Age eventually came to an end with the Great Depression in 1929.

When viewed in this context, Fitzgerald's novel can be viewed as a criticism of the American Dream in the 1920s. Gatsby's driving force in the novel , his love interest Daisy, represents wealth, sophistication and aristocracy - the very promise of the American Dream. Winning her heart, therefore, represents part of Gatsby's quest to climb the social ladder and chase the American Dream.

Throughout the novel, Gatsby continues to blindly pursue Daisy, resorting to illegal activities to meet her standards. Despite all his efforts, she ultimately chooses her husband and 'old money' social status. Therefore, the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy represents the hollowness of the American Dream that lures honest and ambitious men into craving materialism, easy money, immorality and empty happiness.

American Dream: An ideal that endorses the idea that the United States is a country where all people are afforded equal opportunities to pursue prosperity, freedom and happiness.

However, a new critic would view The Great Gatsby (1925) without paying heed to the social and cultural context of the Jazz Age. When The Great Gatsby is analyzed through a new criticism lens, Gatsby's rise to a self-made businessman, his relationship with Daisy, and his tragic downfall are seen as exactly as what it is; a man's blind pursuit of unrequited love and the sacrifices he is willing to make along the way. Similarly, Gatsby's fixation with recreating his past relationship with Daisy represents the common human condition of longing for unfulfilled dreams and wanting to freeze time to happier, simpler times.

In this analysis, the context of the Jazz Age and the American Dream are removed while deriving the novel's meaning, and the text is seen as a love story gone wrong. Therefore, by viewing the story from the eyes of a New Critic, The Great Gatsby reveals much more about the human condition than acting as socio-political commentary. A New Critic then derives a text's meaning without looking at its context.

New criticism critics

Here are two notable critics who helped form the basis of the new criticism movement in the early 20th century.

Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893-1979)

The work of English critic I. A. Richards greatly contributed to the foundations of new criticism.

In 1929, Richards published Practical Criticism, a book that took a scientific-empirical approach towards literary criticism. He conducted a study where he asked undergraduate students at Cambridge University to analyse 13 poems without giving them contextual details such as their author, date of publication, and historical and cultural background.

The resultant interpretations produced by the pupils demonstrated the depth of meaning that could be derived from literary analyses when looking at the text alone. This established a new methodology for interpreting literary texts, which later became known as new criticism.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

American poet T. S. Eliot greatly influenced the new criticism movement through his critical essays, particularly “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1917) and “ Hamlet and His Problems” (1919).

In his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Eliot suggested that the only context in which we should view art is the context of the artist's previous works. This is because when an artist creates new work, they are carrying the aesthetic traditions of their previous works.

This contributed to the new criticism movement by endorsing the idea that art should be viewed only in the context of other art, rather than its historical, biographical or philosophical contexts that have no certified influence on the meaning of the text.

Even though the foundations of new Criticism had already been laid in the early 20th century, the movement was first coined in John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941), which loosely outlines the principles of analysing literature by only looking at its text.

Importance of new criticism

New criticism certainly allows a far more systematic and objective way of studying literary texts. It ensures that the meaning of the text does not stray too far away from the text itself. The value of a text is in no way overly influenced by assumptions about the author's intentions, the reader's responses, or the historical and cultural context surrounding the work.

However, new criticism also serves a greater purpose. It introduced a style of literary criticism that is democratic in nature. This is because, according to New Critics, anyone with access to and interest in literature has equal power to criticise it. One does not require years of research and a variety of sources about the author's life, historical background, socio-political context etc. to criticise and appreciate literature. All that is needed is the text itself! Therefore, new criticism made literary criticism easier and more accessible.

New Criticism - Key takeaways

New criticism is a style of criticism that emphasizes the close reading of texts as a self-contained piece of work capable of producing independent meaning and excludes any philosophical, historical or biographical context surrounding the text.

• According to New criticism, the meaning and value of the text should only rely on what is seen on the page. This means focusing the literary study on the text's aesthetic qualities, such as its form, structure, language, characters etc.

Prominent New Critics include:

New criticism allows a far more systematic, objective and democratic way of studying literary texts

• William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, 'The Intentional Fallacy' (1946)

Frequently Asked Questions about New Criticism

--> what is new criticism, --> how to analyse a poem using new criticism.

To analyse a poem using new criticism, simply set aside the context of the poem and focus only on the following:

Structure 

Literary devices and techniques 

--> What was the main focus of the new criticism?

The text is the main focus of New Criticism. New Criticism focuses on  how something is being said, not why , to determine what is being said. 

--> What is the origin of New Criticism?

Even though the origins (or foundations) of New Criticism had already been laid in the early 20th century, the movement was first coined in John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941), which loosely outlines the principles of analysing literature by only looking at its text. 

--> What is an example of a new criticism critic?

Examples of prominent New Critics include:

What is new criticism?

New Criticism is a   style of criticism that emphasizes the close reading of texts as a self-contained piece of work capable of producing independent meaning and excludes any philosophical, historical or biographical context surrounding the text.

What does New Criticism NOT take into account while analysing a text?

New Criticism believes in analysing the value of literary works based only on the text itself, without taking into account the following: 

The   social, economic, political or historical context of the text

What does New Criticism take into account while analysing a text?

New Criticism takes into account only what is seen   on the page. This means focusing the literary study on the text's aesthetic qualities, such as its

Language and   tone

Literary devices and techniques 

Actual   setting   (not context)

What is the origin of New Criticism?

Even though the foundations of New Criticism had already been laid in the early 20th century, the movement was first coined in John Crowe Ransom’s  The New Criticism   (1941), which loosely outlines the principles of analysing literature by only looking at its text. 

How did I.V. Richards contribute to the foundations of New Criticism?

In 1929, Richards published   Practical Criticism,  a book that took a scientific-empirical approach towards literary criticism. He conducted a study where he asked undergraduate students at Cambridge University to analyse 13 poems without giving them contextual details such as their author, date of publication, and historical and cultural background. The resultant interpretations produced by the pupils demonstrated the depth of meaning that could be derived from literary analyses when looking at the text alone. This established a new methodology for interpreting literary texts, which later became known as New Criticism. 

Why do New Critics believe in Intentional Fallacy?

New Critics believe in Intentional Fallacy as  the critic (or reader) has no idea what the author's true intentions were while producing the text.  In some cases, the meaning of a text may not live up to the author's intentions, while in others it may be far more complex and meaningful than the author originally intended.   Hence, the author's intentions should be of no relevance and should not have any bearing on the meaning of the text. 

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New Criticism in the English and American Literature Essay

Introduction, reader response, political criticism, new historical approach.

The New Criticism was the dominating trend in the English and American literature, and mainly literary criticism in the 1920s. The key premise of this approach is to evaluate a poem or a novel if there is no historical context or meaning whatsoever. New Criticism often incorporates Formalism, and it is claimed to study the relations between any text’s ideas and the forms of the text. New Critics “ may find tension, irony, or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning “. Working with prototypes of sound, images, presented by the sounds, structure, point of view, and other techniques visible on close reading of the text, they seek to define the function and suitability of these to the self-contained work.

The poetry of the New Criticism period may be regarded as the poetry of powerful response to this critical approach. The fact is that, the reader response, which is the most essential component in literature, is regarded to be lacking in the New Criticism. It is featured by the fact, that the literature (mainly poetry) of that period was not aimed for the broad reader.

Nevertheless the New Criticism followers do not argue, that the meaning of the poem or novel is unimportant, they object the approaches that help to regard the poem as an effort for representing the “real world.” The New Critics justify the evasion of discussing a poem, its content through the principle of the “Heresy of Paraphrase”. Consequently, any effort to state the meaning of the poem appears to be heretical, as it is an affront to the honesty of the complex arrangement of sense within the literary creation.

Thus “Women” by Louise Bogan is created for the admiration of the independence, strength and power on the one hand, and weakness and tenderness on the other. This poem was written, when the women of the world started their feministic movements, and aimed to be equal with men. However, Louise Bogan saved his admiration, and devoted these romantic and strict lines to ladies.

The Weary blues is written in the context of the aggravating racial discrimination of the African American population, and extensive development of blues. Langston Hughes aims to address the admirers of jazz, and attract their attention by joining arts and politics in the only verse. It should be emphasized, that this poem is rather melodic, however at first sight seems to be without clear rhythm.

Originally, the poetry of the New Criticism period (1920s) was followed by a huge amount of complex and sophisticated theoretical principles, such as structuralism, deconstruction, and “cultural studies”. This literature was evaluated from the viewpoint of the neo-Marxist method for decoding and understanding literary and other cultural achievements, artifacts and literary creations. Cumulatively, their supreme result on literary research has been to depose the key premise of New Criticism ‑ the independence of art ‑ and in its place to arrange institutionally the social and political approaches of the New Left, turning the criticism into a weapon of assault against such external aims as American external policy, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy.

The Critical approach towards the politics in the New Criticism approach is regarded to be rather useful. Originally, the New Criticism persisted through the Cold War period, and inherent readings or close readings are regarded to be the essential tool of literary criticism. New Critical readings place essential emphasis on the particular over the general, however making strong accent of personal words, syntax, and the order of the words and sentences that provide the key meaning of immanent the text. They regard the imagery, metaphor, rhythm etc.

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes fully corresponds its name, as according to the definition of New Orlean blues players: “blues is the music, which appears when a kind man is depressed”. Originally, the reason to be depresses is rather serious, especially taking into account, that the protagonist is the African American. The structure and the rhythm of the poem is strict, and in spite of the fact, that metaphors are also not too deep, like in the previous example, the Weary Blues may be regarded as one of the best poems of the New Criticism epoch in literature.

The “ Women ” by Bogan is difficult to analyze from this point of view, however, the context of feminist movements, and the allover poverty during the restoration after the war is clearly defined in the features, that are attributed to women in this poem.

Taking into account the historical context, everything becomes clear: the world was experiencing the essential changes, and the changing of the character of the relations among countries was reflected in the poetry. That is why the political view point is rather essential in criticizing the poetry of that time. The end of the 1920s were featured by the beginning of the Great Depression, that had its consequences all over the world. Originally, this was reflected in the entire creation of that time, as it deeply impressed people, and the novelists and poets could not miss this fact. It should be mentioned, that the very fact of the historical context often makes the critics focus on the plot, and the personal motivations, reflected in the poetry.

Another fact, that should be mentioned – is the total euphoria, that captured people after the end of the World War 1 also reflected in the poetry, however the beginning of the New Criticism era took place during the decrease of the euphoria wave, consequently, it is not brightly represented in the poetry.

As for the historical approach, it should be emphasized, that both poems “ Women ” and “ The Weary Blues ” are written in the context of crises: financial, social and political, that is why they are written mainly in dramatic colors.

In conclusion, it is necessary to mention, that the very fact of the appearing of New Criticism approach in literature and poetry in particular, reveals the fact, that people are ready to create regardless of the world situation, and the circumstances, that totally influence people’s lives. The New Criticism followers did not take into account the personal motifs seriously, however, they aim to regard the political moment of the poetry, as the political estimation of the poems aimed to criticize not only the plot features, but also the technical features, such as rhythm, words, the order of the sentences and phrases. It should be mentioned, that the images, used for the description of the circumstances, may be estimate not only from the political point of view, but also from the angle of the further creation, and more innovative approaches.

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IvyPanda. (2021, October 15). New Criticism in the English and American Literature. https://ivypanda.com/essays/new-criticism-in-the-english-and-american-literature/

"New Criticism in the English and American Literature." IvyPanda , 15 Oct. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/new-criticism-in-the-english-and-american-literature/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'New Criticism in the English and American Literature'. 15 October.

IvyPanda . 2021. "New Criticism in the English and American Literature." October 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/new-criticism-in-the-english-and-american-literature/.

1. IvyPanda . "New Criticism in the English and American Literature." October 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/new-criticism-in-the-english-and-american-literature/.

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New Criticism in Literature; Characteristics & Examples

Table of Contents

New Criticism, in simple terms, is  a critical movement that propagates the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ .” In focusing on the text itself (“ close reading “), New Critics intentionally ignore the author, the reader, and the social context .

New Criticism is an approach to literature made popular in the 20th century that evolved out of formalist criticism. New Criticism coined by John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism in 1941 , came to be applied to theory and practice that was prominent in American literary criticism until late in the 1960s.

Characteristics

• The movement derived in significant part from elements in Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) by I.A. Richards and from the critical essays of T.S. Eliot.
• It opposed the prevailing interest of scholars, critics, and teachers of that era in the biographies of authors, the social context of literature , and literary history by insisting that the proper concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstances or effects or historical position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent entity.
• New Criticism is distinctly formalist in character.
• The method of New Criticism focuses on a close reading of rhythm, meter, theme, imagery, metaphor, etc.
• According to the intentional fallacy, it’s impossible to determine an author’s reasons for writing a text without directly asking him or her.
• Intentional Fallacy, a literary term, is coined by the American New Critics W. K. Wimsatt Jr and Monroe C. Beardsley to describe the general assumption that an author’s assumed or declared intention in writing a work is an appropriate basis for deciding upon the meaning or value of a work.
• Even if we did determine the author’s intentions, they don’t matter, because the text itself carries its own value. So, even if we’re reading a book by a renowned author like Shakespeare, we shouldn’t let the author’s reputation taint our evaluation of the text.
• The affective fallacy is a literary term that refers to the supposed error of evaluating or judging a work on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader.
• The new critics held that work should not have to be understood relative to the responses of its readers; its merit (and meaning) must be inherent.
• The New Critics favoured poetry over other literary forms  because for them poetry is the purest exemplification of the literary values which they upheld. Still, the techniques like close reading and structural analysis of the works are also applied to drama, novel, and other literary forms.
• The aesthetic qualities used by the New Critics were largely borrowed from the critical writings of ST Coleridge. Coleridge was the first to describe poetry as a unified, organic whole that reconciles its internal conflicts and reaches some final balance or harmony.
• Practical Criticism: a Study of Literary Judgement by IA Richard  (1929).
• The Well Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks   (1947).
• British Poetry Since 1960 by Michael Schmidt and Grevel Lindop (1972).
• Eight Contemporary Poets by Calvin Bendient (1974).
• Nine Contemporary Poets: A Critical Introduction by P.R. King (1979).
• The Force of Poetry  by Christopher Ricks (1987).

Here is another important article on New Criticism.

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Literary Matters

The Literary Magazine of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

“Take the Bathtub Out”: New Criticism in Robert Lowell’s Classroom

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By the time Robert Lowell began studying under John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon, he was already a graduate of Allen Tate’s yard in Tennessee. Ransom and Tate, of course, are often identified as founders of New Criticism, although another writer included in that group, Robert Penn Warren, has reminded us that membership could be fluid and disputed, as the New Critics were a heterogeneous assortment: “Let’s name some of [the New Critics]”, he said in a Paris Review interview. “Richards, Eliot, Tate, Blackmur, Winters, Brooks…. How in God’s name can you get that gang into the same bed? There is no bed big enough and no blanket would stay tucked.” 1 Likewise, it would be difficult to cram Robert Lowell permanently into any New Critical assemblage. The summer of 1937, after Lowell had driven himself eleven hundred miles south from Boston until his fender nudged the Tates’ mailbox in Tennessee, he didn’t even fit into Tate’s house: When the Tates politely told him there was no room for him to stay, that he’d have to pitch a tent on the lawn, Lowell bought a Sears, Roebuck tent and set it up under a lotus tree. There, occasionally distracted by wandering livestock, he began his study with the writers he later said helped shape him. 2 The fall of 1937, in his first term at Kenyon, Lowell did live under John Crowe Ransom’s roof, and after he graduated in 1940, Lowell went on to Louisiana State University, where he studied with Cleanth Brooks and read Dante aloud many afternoons with Robert Penn Warren. 3 The “excellent” Brooks and Warren, as Lowell referred to them, had just two years earlier published their New Critical textbook Understanding Poetry . 4

New Criticism is often characterized as a revolt against reigning scholarly trends that considered poems mostly as documents for philological analysis, drapery for moral philosophy, addenda to biographies, or objects for vague impressionistic praise. In Cambridge in the twenties, I. A. Richards had discovered that when his students were sat down in front of a poem, they had no idea what in particular to say about it, and in Baton Rouge in the thirties, Brooks and Warren made similar unsettling discoveries. Part of the purpose of Brooks and Warren’s textbook (which had as working titles along the way both Reading Poems and Experiencing Poetry ) was to get readers actually to look at the words , and to help give students a vocabulary for discussing lyrics. 5

From Tate, Ransom, Brooks, and Warren, as well as others identified with New Criticism, Lowell apparently learned habits of scrutiny, analysis, and composition that deeply affected his art. The complex, difficult poems he published in his early books, Land of Unlikeness and Lord Weary’s Castle, owed a great deal to Tate and to poets whose reputations some of the New Critics helped revive, the Metaphysicals. In 1974, in a tribute to Ransom, Lowell wrote: “The kind of poet I am was largely determined by the fact that I grew up in the heyday of the New Criticism. From the beginning I was preoccupied with technique [and] fascinated by the past.” 6 Did Lowell, in his own published criticism, closely resemble any of his New Critical mentors? No; in a 1961 interview, Lowell acknowledged that while he sometimes taught the New Critics at Boston University, his tendency in his own critical essays was toward something “much sloppier and more intuitive.” 7 And by this time, his poetry had also taken him some distance from Tate’s; Lowell’s work had altered from what he jokingly referred to as full of ambiguities buried seven layers down to poems that, in his own description, “owe[d] something to Elizabeth Bishop’s simple style.” 8

So in what way might the influence of these early mentors and critics have continued to affect Lowell? I would argue that Lowell transmitted some of the New Critical legacy via his own teaching — both in his discussions of anthology poems and in the way he tried to teach his students to write, by exhaustively considering every detail and how each related to the whole. Brooks and Warren said in Understanding Poetry that “one must teach by a constant and analytical use of concrete examples.” 9 This also describes exactly how, four decades later, Robert Lowell taught his literature students as well as those in his writing class.

The classes Lowell led at Harvard in the spring of 1977 were a seminar on nineteenth-century English and American poets, and a writing workshop that also surveyed twentieth-century poets. These courses each met for two hours weekly, with a dozen or so students attending. A freshman enrolled in both, I crowded some 250-odd pages with Lowell’s observations on poets ranging from Blake to Plath. Lowell would hunch in a Windsor chair at one end of the long wooden table we all clustered around, and riffling through an anthology, read poems aloud in his soft voice. Tilting his head, murmuring from the corner of his mouth, he’d stop, line after line, to query, praise, reappraise.

That we were in classes influenced by the New Criticism was clear from the first session of the 19th-century seminar, when he gave us the paper assignment. It was delivered with the wry proviso that we “talk about the poems — don’t have Hegel be it all. [Write] something that quotes, evaluates, describes.” “Know what a real critic is?” he joshed. “I’m not one. [You] get other critics, quote them, and say it’s nonsense — that’s always a good thing to do. ‘How could R.P. Blackmur have said “Crossing the Bar” failed?'” Cleanth Brooks in The Well Wrought Urn famously condemned “the heresy of paraphrase”; Lowell pled with us not to turn in any “paraphrases of The Prelude .” 10 In class, Lowell sometimes did say directly what he thought the poems were about, but in the most informal terms, and usually only after a close examination of the poem’s details. When he was more summative or apparently felt he was being reductive, he would make fun of himself. One day when he delivered a focused monologue of an analysis, rather than a meandering, querying one, of Wordsworth’s “A slumber did my spirit seal,” he warned us beforehand by announcing, “I’m going to dogmatize.” But inevitably he gave us the impression that he wanted us to explore poems as freshly and minutely as he did.

In The Well Wrought Urn, published in 1947, Brooks devoted a chapter to Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”; Lowell’s reading of this poem, in his Spring 1977 class, exemplified how he both followed Brooks and departed from him. 11 Brooks took it more or less stanza by stanza, Lowell more or less line by line, from the top:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time . . . 12

As Brooks so often did, Lowell immediately began to focus on denotation and connotation. “How do silence and quietness differ?” Lowell asked us. “ Is there any difference? How would quietness ravish an urn?” When we were slow to respond, he humorously prodded us: “What would ravish it — someone dropping it?” He went on: “‘Ravished’ means ‘destroyed,’ but it’s a much more sexual meaning and much stronger. There’s something wrong with art that it can’t be ravished — it’s out of time.”

Lowell expanded on this as he hovered over the fourth stanza, which describes the procession to the sacrifice:

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? ….. To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, ….. And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, ….. Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, ………. Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore ….. Will silent be; and not a soul to tell ………. Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

“You read the stanza with a good deal of sorrow — why?” he asked. “Why didn’t Keats just describe the people and leave out the part [about] not being able to return [to their town]? They’re caught forever in the toils of art; that whole civilization is gone.” Lowell returned to this point as he dwelt on the last two lines of the poem:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” — that is all ….. Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Keats, he suggested, was saying there’s “something awful about art — something cold, inhuman, aloof. Keats certainly sought immortality in art. But truth isn’t part of beauty— truth is the age wasting. Beauty is the only truth art has. Rather a desperate poem, rather [a] terrible message from art.”

And then Lowell did something Brooks might not have done: he related those last two lines to Keats’s biography. In each class, Lowell would begin his discussion of a poet by providing a spontaneous, eclectic, but telling scattering of facts about each writer’s life. (He had also told us that for our term papers, we could “bring in biography, brought down to the text.”) Keats, Lowell reminded us that day, was a “young man who pursued art and beauty as [a] religion.” But Keats was “not an ivory tower decadent in the least,” Lowell insisted — “[he] led [a] sensible plucky life. You’d like to be forever 17 and healthy if you’re 24 and dying. But [that] isn’t a real answer. The urn is art.” Of course Lowell meant here, “ only art.”

Lowell also spoke that day, as for example Brooks would not have, as a longtime practitioner of the art of poetry. Lowell took the liberty of imagining what Keats, as a fellow poet, might have been thinking about that phrase, “slow time.” Lowell had noted its evocative ambiguity: “I don’t know why [Keats wrote] ‘slow time’ — let [the meaning] waver between: ‘[the urn] took a long time to make’ [and] ‘it’s lasted a long time.'” And then Lowell added, “‘slow time’ — [it] sounds so good — how could [Keats] figure out what he’d meant after he’d said it; how could he resist?”

Meetings of the writing course always involved bringing things down to the text; we would spend much of each class looking at poems by 20th-century writers in the anthologies, then Lowell would comment on ours. Like Brooks and Warren, Lowell constantly taught by the analytical use of concrete examples, often by comparing and contrasting poems by different poets that shared some element in common. The first day, we went over “The Yachts” by William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane’s “Voyages II” and “Repose of Rivers.” Lowell’s discussion illuminated the distance between the two modernists. He began with Williams:

contend in a sea which the land partly encloses shielding them from the too-heavy blows of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly. 13

Speaking as a practitioner, Lowell remarked about “The Yachts” that “very few poems attempt this [kind of] narrative; [you] have to do it plainly, [like a] good sporting reporter’s account.” Then, as Brooks might have done, Lowell discussed the ambiguous symbolism of the yachts: “Beauty is terrible — skillful, expensive”; the horror lies in “anything well-made, beautiful, efficient trampling over something it doesn’t notice.” Next, Lowell read Crane’s “Voyages II” aloud, circling over this stanza:

–And yet this great wink of eternity, Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings, Samite sheeted and processioned where Her undinal vast belly moonward bends, Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love. . . . 14

Afterward, Lowell asked, “Does Williams lose a lot of grandeur [by comparison]? [Williams] can’t put in lines like ‘undinal belly’. But Crane couldn’t have described a yacht — Crane couldn’t stoop to such prosaic detail. If you want to write a love poem with hyperbolic grandeur on the brink of confusion, but [with a] terrific setting like opera, [‘Voyages II’] does it. This is particularly purple Crane.” Then we considered the opening lines of “Repose of Rivers”:

The willows carried a slow sound, A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead. I could never remember That seething, steady leveling of the marshes Till age had brought me to the sea.

Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alcoves Where cypresses shared the noon’s Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost. 15

“ Can you mow [a mead]?” Lowell asked, then added: “Williams would have said ‘meadow,’ not ‘mead.'” About the phrase “remembrance of steep alcoves,” he murmured, “You get used to Crane saying things like ‘alcoves’ for some more obvious word.”

When Lowell would juxtapose poems or poets like this, new qualities would suddenly surface for us in each; sometimes the more unexpected the conjunction, the more we learned. Lowell never gave us creative-writing exercises; instead, he would, for example, focus on diction in the anthology poems, then ask us about our word choices.

“What is the effect of Pound saying ‘chopped seas’ instead of ‘choppy seas’ in stanza three of ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’?” he would inquire. “What do you mean by ‘tesserae’?” he would ask a student about a noun in her poem. “Is ‘amber’ a verb? How’d it get in there?” Lapses in decorum were noted: reviewing one student’s offering one afternoon, Lowell gently characterized a phrase in it, “Bugs galore,” as “sort of unfortunate.” He pressed us about our grammatical choices too. “You use an awful lot of possessives.” “[The] syntax is needlessly haphazard.”

Lowell was concerned, as many New Critics were, that the parts of a poem contribute to a cohesive whole. In the writing class one day, Lowell remarked, “Allen Tate said [the] hardest test of technique [is to] write a quatrain. A sonnet’s bound to sound like a sonnet; a quatrain [can be] quite varied. [You have to] make what you do cohere, have [the] emphasis fall on [the] parts you want it to.” Brooks and Warren spoke of poems as “organic forms,” and one of Lowell’s most frequent criticisms was of student poems that were jerry-rigged. “This doesn’t seem organized properly — the connections aren’t right.” “Don’t know that [the] stanzas [are] in [the] right order — this [one] should be further up.” Many of his objections had to do with what we thought we’d meant. “[The] subject is muddied, that’s [the] main trouble.” “I don’t think you quite know what you’re trying to say.” “What on earth is this poem about?” His advice was sometimes quite succinct: “Take the bathtub out.” He once consoled us by saying, “Everyone has direct experience of writing a poem that’s not really pulled together. [You] put your mother-in-law’s humor in and memories of cats — they don’t belong in the same poem.” Toward the end of term, one student brought in a poem depicting her father as a werewolf. (There were several plaintive student poems about families that afternoon, and Lowell joked, “Aren’t children’s grievances against parents a worn-out subject? I should talk, of course.”) My memory of the werewolf narrative is that there was some confrontation between father and daughter at home, then the daughter ran out of the house and collided with a neighbor who also happened to be a werewolf. Lowell tactfully pointed out that the presence of the second werewolf made the plot too confusing.

He never came across as harsh, much less contemptuous, telling us as he did repeatedly, in one way or another, just how difficult it was to write anything good.”Cross out all the lines you can,” he advised a student one day. In the 19th-century poetry seminar, I saw him cross out chunks of masterpieces. He recommended, forexample, culling the lambs from Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” When we read Emily Dickinson’s “The Last Night That She Lived,” Lowell objected to the third stanza “clogging up everything. If one of us had written that [stanza], [we’d] want to rewrite. Seems impudent to criticize a great master — but she should’ve cut [it] out.” In another class, he admitted, “I probably seem very arrogant when I take a great poet like Hopkins and I don’t like two lines in his greatest sonnet. But that’s the way people write, and nobody ever makes a perfect poem.”

Though Lowell always emphasized how every choice as one wrote had to be weighed again and again, he was never an aesthetic martinet. He could in fact be irreverent about stringent prescriptions for coherence. Once he censured a student writer for actually “carrying a figure too far — [you’ve] kept the tulip [in] too long.” He had this to say about “Dover Beach,” after he noted that the sea imagery in the first three stanzas is not continued in the fourth: “[It’s] possible [the] last stanza [was] written for something else, tacked on by [a] stroke of genius. In [the] good old days of [the] New Critics, [Arnold would] be attacked for not carrying [the] sea imagery through, but by that time you’re tired of it, welcome the change.”

Like his New Critical mentors who celebrated Modernism, sometimes against considerable opposition, neither was Lowell at all rigid about figurative language that was sometimes obscure. “[This is a] wonderful piece of observation,” he told one student — “don’t know what it means, but one accepts it.” “Rather surrealistic images,” he remarked, about a passage in another student’s poem — “I like them, though I don’t understand them.” He did want our imagery to be accurate. One day in the writing class, he studied several poems by Elizabeth Bishop, praising her descriptions for their verisimilitude and affectionately mimicking her strictness: “‘But curbs don’t slope on 18th Street.'” He would query any image of ours that he felt was not true to life. “ Do haystacks look like cottonball clouds?” “Visually, that plant isn’t anything like a fist.” “I find it awfully odd that the china should be stuck together with jelly.” “Isn’t that a little farfetched?” was a question he asked more than once. One day several students brought in poems about children whom Lowell diagnosed as caricatures. He then picked up the anthology, turned to “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” and showed us how Ransom had done it, adding, with his customary grace, that “awfully few people” could “do this kind of poem.”

I didn’t know that our classes had started late that term because Lowell had been in the hospital with congestive heart failure, and I had no idea of the wearing turmoil in his personal life. When I think of all this, and his stoicism in meeting these classes, his brilliance and generosity, I’m reminded of Christopher Ricks’s moving description of the practice of close reading. At the end of his essay “Poetry and Loneliness,” Ricks writes: “. . . the ‘close reading’ of poems, a lonely activity which can yet be shared, may do something to ameliorate our propensity to evacuate the suffering, not only of others but of ourselves, into abstraction. There are the particulars of rapture, and likewise takingly, those of grief.” 16 What a privilege it was to share that activity, close reading, with Robert Lowell, watching him light on and enlighten us about all those particulars. 17

1 Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews [vol. 1], ed. and introd. Malcolm Cowley (New York: Viking Press, 1958), p. 200.

2 Most of these details, which appear actually to be drawn from two different trips to Tennessee in April and then in summer 1937, can be found in Lowell’s “Visiting the Tates,” in his Collected Prose , ed. and introd. Robert Giroux (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), pp. 58-60. Cf. Ian Hamilton’s account of these months in Robert Lowell: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1982), pp. 44-52.

3 For Lowell’s stay in Ransom’s house, see Hamilton, op. cit. , pp. 53-54.

4 Hamilton, op. cit. , pp. 75-76 quotes from a letter of Lowell’s to Robie Macauley about his classes at LSU (n. 6, p. 479), which includes his reference to Brooks and Warren as “excellent.”

5 I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), pp. 12-15 (for example); Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry , rev. ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1950), “Letter to the Teacher (1938),” p. xi: “the poem in itself . . . remains finally the object for study.”

6 Hamilton, Robert Lowell: A Biography , p. 57, citing the Kenyon Collegian of Dec. 15, 1974 (n. 17, p. 478). Lowell alluded to the formative influence of the New Critics several times in “A Conversation with Ian Hamilton,” Collected Prose , pp. 275, 278, 284.

7 “An Interview with Frederick Seidel,” Collected Prose , p. 237.

8 Source not identified.

9 Brooks and Warren, Understanding Poetry , pp. xvii-xviii.

10 Chapter 11 of Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947) is titled “The Heresy of Paraphrase.”

11 Brooks, op. cit. , chapter 8, “Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History without Footnotes.”

12 Citations of Keats’s poem are from pp. 385-87 of Poets of the English Language , vol. IV: Blake to Poe , ed. W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952), which was a textbook for Lowell’s course.

13 W. C. Williams, Selected Poems , introd. Randall Jarrell (New York: New Directions, 1949), p. 77.

14 The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane , ed. and introd. Brom Weber (New York: Anchor Books, 1966), p. 36.

15 Op. cit. , p. 16.

16 Christopher Ricks, “Poetry and Loneliness,” in Loneliness , ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), p. 193.

17 This paper was delivered at the meeting of the ALSCW in Athens, Georgia in April 2013.

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NPR Editor Who Accused Broadcaster of Liberal Bias Resigns

Uri Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years, said in an essay last week that the nonprofit had allowed progressive bias to taint its coverage.

By Benjamin Mullin

Uri Berliner, the NPR editor who accused the broadcaster of liberal bias in an online essay last week, prompting criticism from conservatives and recrimination from many of his co-workers, has resigned from the nonprofit.

Mr. Berliner said in a social media post on Wednesday that he was resigning because of criticism from the network’s chief executive, Katherine Maher.

“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new C.E.O. whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay,” Mr. Berliner wrote.

In his brief resignation letter, addressed to Ms. Maher, Mr. Berliner said he loved NPR, calling it a “great American institution” and adding that he respects “the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism.”

An NPR spokeswoman, Isabel Lara, said the nonprofit does not comment on personnel matters.

In an interview, Mr. Berliner said his decision to resign from NPR coalesced early this week after an email exchange with Ms. Maher. He said in the interview that he could infer from one of her emails that a memo she had sent to employees last week about workplace integrity was referring to him even though he had not been mentioned by name. In the email, which was sent to Mr. Berliner on Monday, Ms. Maher said her memo “stands for itself in reflecting my perspective on our organization.”

“Everything completely changed for me on Monday afternoon,” Mr. Berliner said.

Mr. Berliner’s essay stirred up a hornet’s nest of criticism of NPR and made Mr. Berliner something of a pariah within the network. Several employees told The New York Times that they no longer wished to work with him, and his essay was denounced by Edith Chapin, the network’s top editor.

Many journalists at NPR pushed back against the essay, including the “Morning Edition” host Steve Inskeep, who said on the newsletter platform Substack that Mr. Berliner failed to “engage anyone who had a different point of view.”

“This article needed a better editor,” Mr. Inskeep wrote. “I don’t know who, if anyone, edited Uri’s story, but they let him publish an article that discredited itself.”

Mr. Berliner’s essay found some defenders among the ranks of former NPR employees. Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, a former ombudsman, said on social media that Mr. Berliner was “not wrong.” Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Mr. Berliner’s essay “brave” on Facebook.

Critics of NPR, including conservative activists, used Mr. Berliner’s essay in The Free Press to impugn the network’s journalism and its leadership. One of them, Christopher Rufo, began resurfacing social media posts from Ms. Maher that were critical of President Donald J. Trump and embraced progressive causes. Mr. Rufo has a history of pressuring media organizations to cover critical stories of well-known figures, including the plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay, the former Harvard president.

NPR said in a statement earlier this week that Ms. Maher’s social media posts predated her term as chief executive, adding that she was not working in news at the time.

Before he resigned from NPR, Mr. Berliner was on a five-day suspension from the network for violating company policy against working for outside organizations without securing permission.

Mr. Berliner said he did not have any immediate plans after leaving NPR, adding that he was looking forward to getting more sleep and spending time with his family.

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact Ben securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or email at [email protected] . More about Benjamin Mullin

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38 Student Essay Example: Psychological Criticism

The grieving mind.

By Rachel Rees

Literature gives us an insight into the human mind through the characters and the messages that the author has written. Raymond Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” is one of those literature pieces that has many elements that help readers grasp and understand the emotions that people go through with dealing when lives are disrupted through injury and grief. The characters, husband and wife Howard and Ann, experience an assortment of emotions at varying times that correlate with Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief as well as perhaps other set emotions and moments outside of those five stages.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross investigated human grief and narrowed it down to five denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This is a set-up that we fall back on to help us understand the emotions we feel during an intense time in our lives. In “A Small, Good Thing” these stages don’t start when Ann and Howard’s son, Scotty, dies. Now the characters show these signs when Scotty has been admitted to the hospital and shows no signs in the tests why he doesn’t wake up. In Bolden’s review of Kubler- Ross’s  On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss  denial is defined as “symbolic in that they cannot believe that their friend or family member will not, for example, be calling to say hello or returning from work at a certain time.” We see this in the mother’s thoughts as she leaves the hospital to go home for a while. “She wished she were that woman and somebody, anybody, was driving her away from here to somewhere else, a place where she would find Scotty waiting for her when she stepped out of the car, ready to say Mom and let her gather him in her arms.” (Carver, 7) This wish is a moment where Ann wants to deny what is happening. The reader of course can easily sympathize with the sentiment, no one wants to imagine the pain these parents are going through with the unknown. I believe that, in a way the father shows his own Denial when he also takes a moment to stop by at home to shower off. There are moments where he seems to be denying what is happening by his son by focus on himself.

The two cycle through these emotions at different rates, and then have to face denial once more when their son dies and isn’t merely in a coma-like state. This comes out in the same moment, when they are leaving the hospital. For the mother it starts right off “She began shaking her head. “No, no,” she said. “I can’t leave him here, no.” She heard herself say that and thought how unfair it was that the only words that came out were the sort of words used on TV shows where people were stunned by violent or sudden deaths.” (Carver 12) On the same page its mere seconds later when it appears that the father starts on this same denial “An autopsy,” Howard said. Dr. Francis nodded. “I understand,” Howard said. Then he said, “Oh, Jesus. No, I don’t understand, doctor. I can’t, I can’t. I just can’t.” His lack of understanding is part of that denial. The logic is likely there but the comprehending that its happening to his son, is too much. These two respond with the dysphoria that most would in this position.

The next stage in the five-stages model is Anger. This can be narrowed down to “A person’s anger is directed at the person who died or at oneself for being unable to prevent his or her loved one’s death. The authors contend that once individuals are in this stage, they recognize their ability to get through this difficult time.” (Bolden) It is clear that these parents don’t blame their son. No, they place blame on the driver who didn’t even stop to take any sense of responsibility for harming Scotty. We first see this anger come out when the dad gets home and the phone rings. As a reader we can make the connection that it is the baker calling, as the cake was supposed to be picked up today. To the father it seems like a mean and crude joke and thus his reaction is anger (Carver, 3). The anger also comes out when the mother goes home and answers the phone, also forgetting about the baker and the order and seeing it as the same cruel joke that her husband warned her of. “Your Scotty, I got him ready for you,” the man’s voice said. “Did you forget him?” “You evil bastard!” she shouted into the receiver. “How can you do this, you evil son of a bitch?” / “It was him,” she said. “That bastard. I’d like to kill him,” she said. “I’d like to shoot him and watch him kick,” she said.” (Carver, 13) Here she takes the assumption that the caller is the driver who had hit their son. This can also be seen as a step outside of the model.

They aren’t really past denial and Ann and Howard can’t really see past their grief on how to carry on and live past this trauma. The parents reach anger once again, after their son’s death when once again the baker calls. Even as Ann recognizes it as the baker her anger doesn’t recede, nor does the father’s but hers is expressed more potently “There was a deep burning inside her, an anger that made her feel larger than herself, larger than either of these men.” (Carver, 14). Their anger is a driving force to their actions, it is what is keeping them going in the face of their sons’ death. They don’t want to hurt alone and thus intend to bring a type of hurt on another.  I feel like this is also a moment when the couple is trying to show the other that they aren’t weak, however this has a possible backfiring effect towards the grieving process as “Grieving parents who try to protect their partner by “staying strong” and not discussing the child’s death may actually prolong their grieving” (Myers & DeWall, 102). It is possible that by not communicating with one another the parents will be extending their grief even more. Especially as the story itself seems to circle through the stages more than just the once going from when Scotty was merely ill to his actual passing.

Bargaining isn’t really a stage that is easy to detect in this story. “Kubler-Ross and Kessler talk about the “what if” and “if only” mind-set wherein individuals who are grieving believe that they may have been able to control and thus prevent the loss of their family member or friend.” (Bolden) It could be seen that when Scotty is still alive the mother is considering that her being at his bedside, never leaving, is a sort of bargaining. That if she remains, he’ll wake up and everything will be alright. This same sentiment also feels like a sense of denial. Ann then comes to think the opposite,

She tried to think about it, but she was too tired. She closed her eyes and tried to think about it again. After a time, she said, “Maybe I will go home for a few minutes. Maybe if I’m not just sitting right here watching him every second, he’ll wake up and be all right. You know? Maybe he’ll wake up if I’m not here. I’ll go home and take a bath and put on clean clothes. I’ll feed Slug. Then I’ll come back.” (Carver, 8)

The father doesn’t seem to negotiate or bargain so much, and if the character is going through this Carver has left it out to the reader’s imagination. Perhaps it is because this moment is more important to see from the mother. For the reader to better understand and sympathize the mother’s reluctant feelings and what she forces herself to think of just so that she leaves.

Our fourth stage following the model is Depression. “In this stage, the authors discuss the normalcy of feeling depressed and affirm the idea that such feelings are necessary for the healing process to begin.” (Bolden) We can see that this depressed state also isn’t entirely easy to define when Scotty is merely in bed. Once more we get a better sense of this through the character’s just going through the motions. “They waited all day, but still the boy did not wake up. Occasionally, one of them would leave the room to go downstairs to the cafeteria to drink coffee and then, as if suddenly remembering and feeling guilty, get up from the table and hurry back to the room.” (Carver, 6) I believe that Carver expresses that ‘depression’ through the guilt of the parent being away from their child. That just in that moment to go to get a drink of coffee the feel as if it’ll be their fault should Scotty wake up and they not be at his bedside waiting.

The stage of depression becomes more distinct for the mother as the wait for Scotty to wake continued. “She felt she was in some obscure way responsible for what had happened to the child.” (Carver, 10) In this moment it feels like she feels that guilt despite the fact that she personally had no part in the car incident. Then things take on a shift towards after Scotty’s death, when the parents have left the hospital and are at home. It becomes clear in the father’s actions on page 13, “In a little while, Howard got up and began moving aimlessly around the room with the box, not putting anything into it, but collecting some things together on the floor at one end of the sofa.” He reaches this state before the mother.

When the mother finally seems to reach that depressed state it is when they have confronted the baker. After the anger that had driven them to the bakery. “Just as suddenly as it had welled in her, the anger dwindled, gave way to something else, a dizzy feeling of nausea. She leaned against the wooden table that was sprinkled with flour, put her hands over her face, and began to cry, her shoulders rocking back and forth. “It isn’t fair,” she said. “It isn’t, isn’t fair.” (Carver, 15) In this sense the father hadn’t followed the set stage as he had gone from his depression to his anger of the baker calling them, as if the baker was mocking them. It is also a show of how people move through grief at different rates and that Ann seems to process emotions further then the father.

The fifth stage in Kubler-Ross’s model is Acceptance. Bolden goes over how “At this stage, individuals are at a point where they recognize the current state of their lives, without their loved one, as the reality and can live with that understanding.” Now it is clear that neither Ann nor Howard reaches this state by the end of the story. But there are moments of a sort of pseudo-acceptance set. “Over his sobs, she could hear the coffee-maker hissing in the kitchen. “There, there,” she said tenderly. “Howard, he’s gone. He’s gone and now we’ll have to get used to that. To being alone.” (Carver Page 13) This is important how Ann acknowledges that her son is gone. It is a start towards acceptance. The true path towards acceptance is shown to the couple through the Baker. He acknowledges their grief and understands it even as if he never personally experienced this. “You probably need to eat something,” the baker said. “I hope you’ll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” he said.” (Carver 16) I think this really sets apart from the five-stage model, as instead of a counselor or the parents themselves we have a baker giving them those steps on how to keep on living even after a hard time such as losing a child.

Raymond Carver has written a story that has character’s going through a trying time. He has written a story that goes over grieving in a way that seems to follow Kubler-Ross’s five stage model and also doesn’t. People grieve and process at different rates, this is also shown with Ann and Howard. If the story continued on it would be more likely that the characters would cycle through the five-stage model as much as they would also fall outside of it. Still the story itself is a great study of what the human mind deals with when suffering through an unexpected loss.

Works Cited

Bolden, Lori A. “A Review of On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss.” Counseling & Values, vol. 51, no. 3, Apr. 2007, pp. 235–237. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/j.2161-007X.2007.tb00081.x.

Carver, Raymond. “A Small, Good Thing.” Ploughshares, vol. 8, no. 2/3, 1982, pp. 213–240. JSTOR,  www.jstor.org/stable/40348924. Accessed 5 May 2021 .

Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2020). Psychology in Everyday Life (Fifth ed.). Holland, Michigan: Worth.

Critical Worlds Copyright © 2024 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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