Said on Culture & Imperialism

Said believes that literary fiction reflects the history and attitudes of imperialism. His studies in colonial and post-colonial literature prove that "cultural forms as the novel... were immensely important in the formation of imperial attitudes..." In his Introduction to Culture & Imperialism he says that culture is a source of identity which was used by the imperialists to further their aims and later the anti-imperialists used the same literary forms to fight imperialism. The first attempt resulted in a culture-biased literature which, Said believes, was "a part of the general European effort to rule distant lands." The later resulted in narrow nationalisms, which have caused much of the modern political discord.
Said defines culture as those practices that have "relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms". He includes in culture the arts of description, communication and representation that often exist in aesthetic forms and whose principal aim is pleasure. Among these cultural forms he takes the novel to be the most important and believes that "stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world". He sees European writings on these as "part of the general European effort to rule distant lands and peoples". Therefore "when it comes to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it...these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative". He is of the view that "the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment mobilized people in the colonial world to rise up and throw off imperial subjection". So he points out that the sway of European imperialism was never peaceful as was presented in the colonial fiction, "there was always some form of active resistance and in the overwhelming majority of cases the resistance finally won out".
In contrast with Arnold's belief that culture has a civilizing effect on "modem, aggressive, mercantile and brutalizing urban existence", Said believes that "In time, culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with the nation or state". This breeds the nation of culture as identity and tends to separate "us" from "them" and produces religious and nationalist fundamentalism. People come to believe in the superiority of their culture and expect others to "belong loyally even uncritically, to their nations and traditions while denigrating or fighting against others. Culture thus becomes a theatre, a battleground on which people claim superiority.
Related to this is Said's thesis that these notions of superiority closely follow the notions of subject of inferior races which prevailed among the imperialist officials in India or Algeria. He believes that while artists and writers seldom took issue with them, "these notions were widely accepted and they helped fuel the imperial acquisition of territories in Africa throughout the nineteenth century". Thus culture and politics become entangled with culture being the handmaiden of politics Carlyle, Dickens and Thackeray with their ideas about colonial expansion and inferior races therefore need to be seen in this light.
Referring to Dickens' "Great Expectations", Said points out that the reason Abel Magwitch is not acceptable to Pip is that he is "from Australia, a penal colony designed for the rehabilitation but not the repatriation of transported English criminals". The novel therefore should be seen not one about a big city but rather one set in the history of colonialism. The real context of the novel is the social apartheid, pursuit of profit, and the building of empire. Dickens had not written the novel with intentions to reveal this but the new generation of critics, `the children of decolonization' have seen in such texts of western literature "a standing interest in what was considered a lesser world, populated with lesser people of colour, portrayed as open to the intervention of so many Robinson Crusoes".
Said finds imperialist rhetoric of the 19th century echoing in the laws that US has landed to impose the New World Order as the saviour of the world peace. He finds in it the same self congratulation,... triumphalism,... proclamations of responsibility" as could be heard from the 19th century imperialists denounced by writers like Conrad. When Holroyd in Nostromo says, "Of course some day we shall step in... We shall run the world's business whether the world like it or not. The world can't help it — and neither can we, I guess" he presents the same illusion of benevolence the US is force upon the world today.
Yet even in Conrad, Said sees a complete blindness to "other histories, other cultures, other aspirations". He was unable to see that he wrote as a Westerner about Westerners for Westerners with little or no regard for the people of another culture as individuals. He therefore suffered from the same malady as is common to novelists and theoreticians of imperialism who deliver the non European world either for analysis and judgment or for satisfying the exotic tastes of the audiences

OF STUDIES

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornaments, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. For they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. That is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books: else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathe¬matics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend; Abeunt studia in mores; nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises: bowling is good for the stones and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the heat., and the like; so, if a man's wits be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call upon one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

SYMBOLISM IN MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA

Edwin Engel, in his brilliant analysis of the play, pointed to the dominant symbols and philosophy of Mourning Becomes Electra:
Symbolism is the practice of representing objects or ideas by symbols or of giving things a symbolic character and meaning. For example scales symbolize justice; a dove stands for peace; a lion stands for .strength and bravery. In all literary works, symbolism uses a concrete image to express an emotion or abstract idea. A symbol shows more than what is actually seen. Symbolism as ' a literary movement started in France in the nineteenth century.
O'Neill's use of symbolism is highly artistic. His use of symbolism is, artistically intended to extend the scope and meaning of the play. In "Mourning Becomes Electra", O'Neill uses Freudian psychological symbols.
He has used in his play a number of symbols - the mother image, the Blessed Isles (Desert Island), the Mannon portraits, etc. The very house of the Mannons stands as a symbol of hatred and callousness (cruelty, coldness). As Edwin Engel says, In Electra the Mother is a primordial (ancient) image, an archetypal (classic, conventional) experience shared by all the Mannons. Thus, Lavinia is identified with her mother, Christine, and both are the image of Marie Brantome.' Adam Brant falls in love with Christine because he associates her with his mother Marie. To him Lavinia looks like her mother. Only his mother (Marie Brantome) had hair like hers. O'Neill uses the Mother-image in details in the case of Orin. His love for his mother has sexual overtones (hint). He is his mother's crybaby. He used to wait as a child to get an extra goodnight kiss from his mother. When he comes back from the war he finds his mother beautiful, she is his 'only girl'. And Christine replies, 'You're a big man now, aren't you?' Lavinia and Orin are drawn to the parent who belongs to the opposite sex. With Orin, his mother means everything that is sweet, pure, lovely and comforting and peaceful.
He feels his mother around him in the Blessed Islands; the breaking of the waves was her voice. The sky had the colour of her eyes;" the whole island was Christine. So the mother symbol means much more than mother - peace, security, love, freedom from fear. After the suicide of Christine, Lavinia occupies the mother image for Orin and he loves her with all the guilt in him, the guilt they shared. Orin's subconscious motive, in taking Lavinia is to possess his mother completely and Lavinia would be able to share the burden of his guilt.
The Blessed Isles are a symbol of joy, purity and innocence of Orin, 'Lavinia and Christine and Adam. O'Neill is voicing (expressing) a yearning in the heart of the puritan man for an ideal paradise full of beauty and sinlessness. The islands are a place of beauty for Adam; a refuge and paradise for Orin and a lode (level) star for Christine and Lavinia. Thus the Blessed Islands have been invested with psychological dimensions of peace and new trouble-free life. The islands are thus an image of fresh new life. The islands motif (image) runs through the whole play tantalizing (tempting) and attracting Orin, Lavinia and Christine to a life of peace and nature and unalloyed happiness -their dream of an earthly paradise. As Lavinia says, 'I love those islands. They finished setting me free. There was something there, mysterious and beautiful- a good spirit - of love - coming out of the land and sea. It made me forget death. The islands stand for freedom from all puritan tabs (, bounds, check) freedom from pain and misery. O'Neill shows an average American's yearning to escape and return to paradise. But it remains a paradise lost a vision unachieved for grief is the lot of the Mannons and mourning becomes Electra.
The song of Shenandoah serves the purpose of a choral song. In the first part - Home Coining - Seth sings that melancholy song which has the brooding (gloomy, threatening) rhythm, of the sea. The song foreshadows (predict) unattainability and frustration for the characters. The song is there again after Christine's suicide; 'Oh, Shenandoah. I can't get near you,' casting a veil of finality (conclusiveness, determination) and mystery on Christine's death.
The symbol of the Mannon House shows us much more than a large house. It is a house built in hatred (of Marie Brantome's marriage with David). It is a house of death and the dead Mannons' portraits always intervene in the path of' happiness of their younger generation. It is a house, haunted by ghosts and sin and evil.
The use of symbolism adds a poetic quality to O'Neill's prose and universalizes the theme. It adds a new, dimension of emotion and depth of meaning to the dark events of the play. Thus as Travis Bogard puts it,
"Mourning Becomes Electra, perhaps O'Neill's most secular (worldly) play is also his least symbolic work to date. Such symbols as exist in the play, the house, for example, or the portraits, or the flowers, are all ' related to the human-beings at the central focus. Now, none of the conflict between character and symbol that beset (plagued, under pressure) many of the minor works and such major plays as Strange Interlude enters to plague this study of crime and retribution (revenge). There are no ambiguities; nothing is vague or suggested. The characters are drawn precisely, their story fully told, and they move toward a comprehensible (clear, understandable) and convincing destiny."