--Discuss the depiction of the city in "Wakefield." What are the qualities of city life? How does the individual fit into the scheme of city life?
--The narrator of this story presents the character of Wakefield as an object of fascination, but also openly mocks him. What is it about Wakefield that the narrator finds so unpleasant or humorous?
--The narrator tells the whole plot of the story at the very beginning, then retells it and offers a moral. Why construct it this way and what kind of moral is offered?
The city in “Wakefield” could perhaps be defined as a “great mass” (922) in which the individuals serve as “atoms of morality” (924). They are building blocks who together comprise the city, but are also clearly dehumanized by it. The comparison of city-dwellers to atoms seems important in two ways. Firstly, atoms by their nature are supposed to be indivisible or uncuttable. If the individual is an atom in the city, he can be seen as the microscopic base unit, all too often ignored. In addition, atoms are often identical. These building blocks are almost always like units, which implies that from the macroscopic perspective (when one looks at the city as a whole) it is impossible to discern the difference between one man and another.
ReplyDeleteThe main character of Wakefield seems especially vulnerable to the city’s power to dehumanize its inhabitants. In “Wakefield,” the city seems to represent the public sphere, and the home the private. In stepping away from the private sphere which gave him identity, the anonymity that Wakefield desired seems to become absolute. In the twenty years of his absence, no one recognizes him (despite his being only on the next street over), and even his wife cannot identify him, when she finally meets him out on the streets. Without the protection of the private sphere, the city almost immediately seems to devour Wakefield’s individuality, so much so that it is only because the narrator forces the reader to hurry after Wakefield in the street that he does not “lose his individuality” (922) for us as well, “and melt into the great mass of London life” (922). Even Wakefield loses “the perception of the singularity in his conduct” (924), as though he has lost even his own knowledge of himself.
In the end, the moral that Hawthorne seems to look for at the story’s end seems to be, if anything, a warning against the corrosive power of the city against the individual. We are introduced to Wakefield as an individual, whose characteristics, while sometimes bland, are his own. It is worth noting that it is only his wife, the most private of his human connections, who sees any outstanding qualities in her husband, even if they are as dubious as a “disposition to craft” (921). But once Wakefield steps away from the private sphere which defined him, he becomes victim to the “multitudinous tramp” (922), placed into an anonymity so severe that Hawthorne compares it to life as a spirit, without even the comfort of “being admitted to the dead” (925). Despite the city’s high population density, Hawthorne seems to argue that the “atoms” who walk the street are primarily alone. But it is only when they toss aside the slight protection of the private sphere and are left only with the public that their outcast status can be seen.
--Nick Cobblah
Question 1:
ReplyDeleteIn “Wakefield,” Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts the city as a sort of mass in which the individual is likely to be absorbed. In the city, one’s individual qualities and characteristics seem to disappear and the city takes on characteristics of its own which are not dependent on the individual. The city is not fully aware of the “one.” Much less, it has little or no regard for the individual. This is the problem that Hawthorne seems to be illustrating through Wakefield. Hawthorne tells us that Wakefield wonders “how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances, in which he was a central object, will be affected by his removal.” We eventually find that, although there is a time of grieving, his wife is able to continue on without him. This is perhaps the essence of city life. The city, and thus society operates somewhat devoid of the individual. Although it is ultimately dependent on individuals, it has little or no regard for them as a constituent to its greater self. The protagonist’s narcissistic inclinations create a world in which his presence is essential. Wakefield has the misconception that he is so essential to his wife that she is likely to fail to exist without him. He even questions, “Will she die.” The thought that his wife may, or could die as a result of his absence is exiting for him because it is a thought that feeds his delusion of self-importance. Wakefield’s problem is that he believes he is a vital component in the small society of his life, when in reality, he is slowly disappearing from their memories. His fixation on how others would function without him is done so “with all the affection of which his heart is capable.” However, this ardent self-contemplation occurs, “while he is slowly fading out of hers.” While he sits and constantly thinks on how the world is, or is not functioning in his absence, his wife is slowly forgetting him. For Hawthorn it is thus a misconception to think of one’s self as an essential component in a city that could not function in its void. Wakefield’s journey takes him to the understanding that the world does not need him, and that he is merely a single entity in a great throng. His epiphany is simply the realization of his own insignificance.
The frame quality of Wakefield was perhaps done so the reader would not be distracted by the horrible actions of the character. Even in the frame, Hawthorne defends Wakefield's choice to leave his wife without explanation for twenty years, saying he should not "be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical," also that the practice of leaving your wife was "not very uncommon." By trying to tell the reader to ignore the character's deplorable behavior, Hawthorne wants the focus to be on the point he is trying to make in the text.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is a valiant effort, I do not feel it worked. I have read the passage three times and still don't understand the underlying message, besides the story of a husband inexplicably leaving his wife. I am very distracted by the character's behavior and cannot get around it to figure out what Hawthorne might be saying about this practice. Obviously he believes it to be natural or common, therefore I assume he approves and think it a good thing. He even paints the wife as smiling fondly when remembering Wakefield as opposed to being upset at his "death." It also seems that, when he returns, there is no repercussion for him (unless they had that talk later and Hawthorne chose not to show it because it would change his moral). Yet I cannot get far enough to actually come to a conclusion about the message Hawthorne was trying to make.
-Heather Hobbs
In a story that is quite obviously focused on a particular character - the character of Wakefield - it is easy to miss the descriptions of his environment, and the importance of these descriptions. We are so concerned with the absurdity of Wakefield's situation that we forget to pay notice to the London that surrounds him. However, the fact that a man could leave his home one day, reestablish himself in a room in the next street over, actually physically bump into his wife in the street one day ten years later, and STILL not be recognized says a LOT about the nature of this city in which he lives.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best examples of this hidden city-description comes as we are following Wakefield immediately after he leaves his home on that fateful first day of self-induced exile. The narrator says, "We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him there" (922). This description paints London not only as a very busy and bustling place, but also as having a consuming power - one is liable to lose something of himself in the city, some of the individuality that makes him unique. As a hub of processing and manufacturing, the city has a way of standardizing even its inhabitants. As the narrator laments, Wakefield is insignificant here, even in his own environment, simply because it is not an environment conducive to the imprint of the individual.
Again, the encounter Wakefield shares with his wife in the street near their home ten years into his absence demonstrates the alienation people experience in the city. They brush up against other people in the street without feeling anything or finding any way to connect - even when they have had an intimate relationship. The city cultivates the "chasm in human affections" that can so often occur naturally between people, the same chasm that gapes between Wakefield and his wife in his absence. In an impersonal place, these conditions are worsened.
A final summary of the urban condition, from the narrator's description of Wakefield's existence those twenty years:
"He had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dissever himself from the world -- to vanish -- to give up his place and privileges with living men, without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but the crowd swept by and saw him not..." (925)
This presents the irony of life in the city - it is entirely possible, surrounded so closely by all the other people that live in the city with you, to live and be outside the world, alone. You can stand in a crowd and be entirely invisible. That phenomenon is part of what I think Hawthorne is attempting to examine with this otherwise absurd story.
In the first telling of the story, in the first paragraph, the narrator is light on details, commenting only on the action, not details that reveal anything about the characters. This is how one would tell the story out loud, pointing out how absurd it is, but not dwelling on the individual, Wakefield.
ReplyDeleteThe longer version of the story, which makes up the rest of the piece, is full of assumed details, qualities the narrator has given Wakefield. The narrator seems to have dwelt on the story for so long that Wakefield is real to him. The narrator doesn't know Wakefield personally, but he seems to know exactly what type of person he is. On page 921, Wakefield is given a full set of characteristics, admittedly made up and called by this name. The narrator describes the man in almost positive terms, limiting greatness by declaring that Wakefield didn't use any of his assets; he was mentally inactive. The narrator has even gone so far as to define how friends of Wakefield would have perceived him: unmemorable mostly.
Every detail that the narrator offers us says something about how he felt about Wakefield. He tells us that Wakefield told his wife that he would be gone a few days, and that he repeatedly put off coming back. He is continuing his inactive mentality by not making a firm plan for himself. He just wanders around for 20 years hiding from his wife.
The same story could have been told with completely different details for a completely new meaning. Hawthorne chooses to make Wakefield a man who doesn't think for himself who gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the city. In the last paragraph, he states that "Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. " Wakefield was so adjusted to his way of life, his "system," that he didn't realize how essential it was to surviving. According to the narrator, Wakefield only wanted to leave for a short period of time, but as soon as he left, he found it impossible to get back in to his system for 20 years. If people were more active in their own minds, and aware of what is going on around them, then it wouldn't be as easy for someone to get pulled away from themselves.
Though the narrator clearly states that the setting is London in the opening paragraph, I think it is interesting that this city could be any city; we get no defining features of London. Like the main character, who seems to be a mass of ordinary characteristics assigned the name Wakefield, Hawthorne has stripped the city of its identity as well. The city serves the sole purpose of making the character of Wakefield more ambiguous and less of an individual. The only sense of the city we get is its ability to swallow and hide individuals, even if they are only a street over from “home.” I like how Hawthorne plays with both sides of this; he imagines Wakefield’s delight at playing a game of hide-and-seek (without the seek), but also he imagines the loneliness that comes with anonymity.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a sense of rapid dissolve and urgency within the city, especially in the line where the narrator invites the reader to interact in the story: “We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him there” (922). And later we get the same sense of hurried movement and indifference: “He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but the crowd swept by and saw him not” (925).
Instead of having Hawthorne paint a vivid picture of London for us, as readers we construct the city based on the character of Wakefield, who seems ideally suited to a mundane existence within the city. In this way, we can see the city reflected more as a theme through the character of Wakefield. In him we recognize the “city man”—he who is burnt out, in need of significance, and so very ordinary. It is an overwhelming feeling of loneliness that we see in Wakefield; a kind of morbid picture of mankind, instead of the sunny country life that we have seen romanticized thus far.
The depiction of the city in “Wakefield” is essential to the story. The city is so big that a man can easily run away from his entire life by disappearing into the city. The beginning of the section of the narrative describing Wakefield “self-banishment” is a moment in which the narrator includes the reader in “We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him there.” He also gives a telling characterization of the city life. The narrator himself is worried of losing Wakefield in the buzz and bustle of the city, and it gives the reader a sense of anxiousness, as if the entire narration might get lost in the city. That Wakefield can hide for twenty years from his entire life by simply living in the street next to his “home” illustrates how simple it would be to disappear due to the vastness and over-stimulation of city life. At the beginning of the narrative, Hawthorne refers to Wakefield as a “freak” and by the end, is questioning Wakefield’s sanity. “The singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to himself, that, considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind.” The situation that Hawthorne refers to could very well be Wakefield’s “self-banishment”, but another possibility is that Hawthorne is saying the city life caused his original peculiar vanity, and thus the entire freak show in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThe city throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield," is described as an overwhelming, bustling place where one can easily disappear into the crowds. In telling the story, the narrator says, "we must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be a vain searching for him there." The narrator describes London as such an immense, crowded place, that a person has no identity there. Each person is just another face in the crowd, masked by anonymity. However, Wakefield becomes paranoid that his wife has spotted him "among a thousand such atoms of mortality." The idea of being as small as an atom, which is basically useless unless in a great mass, continues this feeling of anonymity. It continues when the narrator describes Wakefield walking through the bustling crowds unnoticed as "the crowd swept by and saw him not." Again, he is just another face in the crowd. No one even looks twice at him.
ReplyDeleteThis depiction of the city gives Wakefield the perfect setting for disappearing. He is able to blend in with the over-crowded city and go unnoticed. Even though he is only one street over, he is able to blend in to the crowd. He goes completely unnoticed and is able to become "another man."
While we get no description of the buildings or streets in the city, and very little specific detail in general, this focus on the largeness of the city and the insignificance of any one individual, we are able to visualize the bustling streets of London and feel the loneliness and insignificance the Wakefield experienced.
-Emily David
What disturbs the narrator most about Wakefield are, in my opinion, two things. On the one hand, Wakefield is an intellectual but he does not use his potential. He rather occupies his mind in lazy muses and seems to be rather dull because "imagination was no part of Wakefield's gifts.” This then is also the reason why Wakefield cannot imagine what would happen if he left his family (like the narrator does) but he has to actively experience it.
ReplyDeleteThe second thing that disturbs the narrator is that Wakefield merely is a man of habit and he does not try to change but when he leaves his family. This life is his new habit and just as hard to break out of as it "evolves itself in a natural train."
Maybe worst of all, Wakefield does not realize his condition but seems to think of himself quite opposite. He takes himself too seriously and it almost seems that to him the world is centered around him and everybody is paying attention to what he does and where he goes when in reality he never achieves anything noteworthy. (Also the reader finds himself in the position of an observer of Wakefield’s life.) Despite his intellectual potential, Wakefield lives in self-banishment where he is now spell-bound. By the same token, he also doesn't realize the moral change that has happened to him during the first night but ignores it for 20 years.
So I think, that what disturbs Hawthorne most is the misperception of oneself. Wakefield, in my opinion, does not manage to recognize his position in society (both in the larger context of the city and in the smaller family)
-Astrid Wagner
Hawthorne describes city life as a place where Wakefield may easily "lose his individuality and melt into the great mass of London life" (Hawthorne 2). Individuality not only means the defining and idiosyncratic characteristics of a person, but also means the opposite of aloneness. When a single person is compared to the multitudes of a large city, such as London, that person's distinctiveness is muffled ten fold. The characteristic hobby, interest, physical feature, or style of dress that makes a person special to their friends, but especially to their family, is no longer novel, surprising, or memorable when it appears in a city with hundreds, if not thousands of other people with the same characteristics. Many people are drawn to lives in the city because of this fact, they may effortlessly blend in to the people they are surrounded with, and will no longer be singled out for anything, good or bad.
ReplyDeleteWhen Wakefield buys a wig and new clothes to disguise him, Hawthorne says, “It is accomplished, Wakefield is another man” (3). In a city, changing your identity is equivalent to changing your physical appearance. This emphasizes the superficiality and shallowness of city life. In a city, where there are so many new and different people all around, one’s physical appearance is the first, and often times the last, thing to be judged. If you do not recognize or like a person’s appearance than it is the easiest thing in the world to walk away from them without any consequence. Individuality’s loss of specialness, in the city, accounts for a person’s ability to be completely alone in a place that is bursting full of people.
Like anything else, the downplaying of the importance of an individual person is both good and bad. People may tend to act less selfishly when they are aware of their small place in a large city (though Wakefield is definitely not one of these people). People may also feel as though they will not, nor cannot, make a difference, thus allowing their actions to be driven by apathy. People live the city life for different reasons. Therefore an individual can live an excessively social life in the city, or an almost non-existent life of recluse. While city life may differ from life in the country or anywhere else, it must be remembered that the free will of humans will always play a part in the life of an individual, in addition to the influence environment has.
In Wakefield, I too see the loss of individuality that Haley mentioned in her post, but I see it a bit differently. The narrator is afraid of losing his subject within the great masses of London and so he and we the reader follow Wakefield on his journey, like a camera follows an actor. It is fitting that we give him the spotlight because Wakefield himself, in arrogance, hopes that his absence will create great change. In fact, the narrator writes, “A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair” (923). The narrator and we indulge Wakefield’s experiment because he is “our business” (922). But I would argue that as Wakefield begins to see his world differently, a “transformation” takes place within the man and within the reader.
ReplyDeleteSoon, the city becomes the stage for transformation as Wakefield assumes his character. He changes his hair, his clothes, his walk and becomes “another man” (924). The narrator reflects this change when he writes, “Now for a scene!” (925). The word choice here is not accidental. On this same page, he describes Wakefield as “unwilling to display his full front to the world,” as if what Wakefield has to present is manipulated and separate from the real man. However, it is because Wakefield assumes this role that his true character changes by the end of the story.
Wakefield’s transformation takes him into obscurity, and he “give[s] up the privileges with living men, without being admitted among the dead…He was in the bustle of the city as of old; but the crowd swept by and saw him not” (925). He no longer considers himself the center of his or any universe and as proof, his re-entry into the house is not premeditated. The narrator acknowledges that this had to be so, and I believe this is because by not planning out his homecoming, Wakefield shows himself to have relinquished his “quiet selfishness” and have accepted his relative insignificance. The narrator and we the reader also accept this, as we “do not follow our friend across the threshold” (921, 926). Conclusively, because the narrator is our camera into the life of Wakefield, his decision to focus on and then move away from Wakefield encourages us to similarly transform from having superiority over other characters in our own stories to losing our influence on them. The transformation that comes of the journey is the reason Hawthorne chooses to retell the initial anecdote.
And ultimately, I see a connection between the City and the Country because of this theme. Giving up individual identity to understand the bigger, more unified picture (either with Nature or humanity) makes these two drastically different settings more similar than they first seem.
Hawthorne gives a short summary of Wakefield's story at the beginning of the piece as to not distract the reader with questions of what will come next during the course of the tale. We know the arc of the plot going in, so now we are able to examine the repercussions of the previously stated actions as the story progresses. The moral of the story is that the way to truly partake in the act of living is to immerse yourself where the action is. Hawthorne portrays the city in a negative light, it is a place where people lose their identities, becoming in a sense part of the scenery, where husbands and wives don't notice themselves bumping into one another. However, Wakefield's venture to the house across the street is a metaphorical retreat to nature, and because of this I think Hawthorne paints country living in a similarly negative light. Wakefield only means to remain hidden a week, but now in the solitude of his house (it's never mentioned how he paid for this place) he becomes increasingly depressed and withdrawn, making it impossible to return for quite some time. I think Hawthorne is rejecting the idea of extremes, living in a major city where you are more of a number then a face sucks, but so does isolating yourself from humanity. You can never really escape either extreme, becoming a spectator to the events around you, instead you have to live somewhere within the spectrum presented and that is the point of the story. Another reason for the format of the story is that it has no real arc, a man leaves his family for 20 years and then he comes back, there is no real conflict there. If Hawthorne doesn't turn the story into a form of thought exercise, this is just a horrible story where nothing happens.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Miller
I thought the structure if this story was really fascinating, and I was intrigued by the summary of the story given at the beginning. It reminded me a great deal of the opening monologue of Romeo & Juliet in which the details of the plot are divulged before the play really begins.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't fully understand what is really gained by structuring the story this way- it does seem true to the voice of the narrator. This narrator is speaking in second person and is very engaged with the reader (even giving us leave in the 2nd paragraph after -921- to try and discern meaning from the facts in the outline on our own). It seems the narrator in this story is more interested in a discussion with his reader than just relaying the facts of the story, and he lets us know upfront that there is a moral coming at the end. I think relaying the basic facts of the story at the beginning sets up the readers mind to actively question the deeper meaning of the events in the story, which makes the process of reading it more engaging than if we were simply relayed all the plot points in a more conventional manner.
We learn from Hawthorne that the city of London is a busy place, the streets crowded with many people, or “throngs” as he says. As Wakefield sets out, Hawthorne’s narrator feels he, “Must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him there.” The loss of individuality recurs as a theme in Hawthorne’s tale, as Wakefield has the potential to fall into the crowd. The crowd becomes its own entity, or character, within the story. So, if Wakefield blends with the crowd there would be no story to tell because there is no individual narrative between Wakefield and his wife, only that of the bustling city of London.
ReplyDeleteFor Hawthorne to use Wakefield as the central focus of a story set in a populous city creates an opportunity for the reader to watch an individual struggle to find his individuality and importance in the world. Wakefield displays qualities of self-importance, selfishness, and even individualism as a character of the big city. This is prevalent during his escape from home, as he travels through the crowd. We see as he breaks away from the crowd, “He can scarcely trust his good fortune, in having got thither unperceived -- recollecting that, at one time, he was delayed by the throng, in the very focus of a lighted lantern.” The slight moment the light was on him, he feels like someone was watching him, saw him, and knew what he was doing. But, in truth, he may have been seen, but by whom? and how would they know of his plans? He shows signs of paranoia, feeling the presence of being watched without realizing that no one cares to watch him. He exacerbates this by feeling, “There were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him; and, anon, he heard a voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called his name.” Hawthorne creates an internal conflict for Wakefield, a sense of paranoia where he does not only feel he has been watched, but followed as well. Hawthorne’s narrator sums it up beautifully, discounting any possibility of Wakefield being followed or watched; “Doubtless, a dozen busybodies had been watching him, and told his wife the whole affair. Poor Wakefield! Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world!” Essentially, no one cares what he does. What he does in the world only has significance for himself.
A message that can be taken away is that the big city means more people, more eyes watching, more people to know, and more of a chance to be of importance, etc. But, it does not mean that people care. If anything, people in the city care about themselves, and are in a constant search for some sort of individualism to set them apart from the crowd. Wakefield does this, and even though there are so many people in the city, no one notices him or pays attention to him. He is an individual in a city of individuals, and it seems the only one watching him is himself (and the omniscient narrator, of course). This also allows for the questions ‘who am I?’ and ‘what am I doing here?’ to be asked as citizens of the populous world. What separates us not only from those in the city, but as an individual human?
I think the construction of Wakefield was very interesting in that it prepares the reader for what is to come in the narrative. I believe that the narrator chose to write this way because by displaying what happens in the story makes the shock of Wakefield leaving his family less of a disturbance. This is important because the way in which this story is told is less of a narrative and more of discussion or observation. Even in the beginning the narrator says, “Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking of it”, he also encourages his audience to take him up on his offer to reflect about Wakefield’s life adding that “there will be a pervading spirit and a moral” at the end. From this we can conclude that not only will the narrator give us an actual plot over the events that occurred in Wakefield’s life, but will also question what possessed Wakefield to actually leave his wife for ten years. As for the moral of the story, I can only come up with that the city is such a large mass made up of thousands of individuals and trying to distinguish yourself, like Wakefield, could result in losing yourself for a while. Even though I am not exactly sure of my answer to the moral of the story, the narrator states in the beginning that there is a moral, but there is a chance of failing to find it.
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ReplyDeleteIn Hawthorne’s “Wakfield” I suspect that the city is a great cluster of beings that form it. From the story line, it does not seem like the city is filled with much. This city seems to have a reverse effect on the people than it should. A city should motivate people to become close with their loved ones and prosper economically. Wakefield seems to be frightened by what the city is, so he runs from it. I do not think it was his wife who sparked his desire to journey elsewhere; it was the city. Wakefield obviously felt like he needed to get away and at the moment he left, he may have thought he needed separation from his wife for a moment. However, after weeks, months, if he felt that he still could not go back, yet he thought about it and envisioned himself being united with his wife again and could not do it. I think the city intimidated him, which explains why he changed his appearance and demeanor. I do not think Wakefield really fits into the city life because he is so afraid of it. Maybe he figured if he changed who he was, then adapting to the city life would finally happen for him. If he were adapted to city life, he would have never wanted to take a supposed journey in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThe narrator is certainly fascinated with Wakefield and his decisions, yet he also mocks Wakefield. I think the narrator mocks him because there is not much else to do in this situation. Wakefield did such a bizarre thing—he left his family for 20 years, all the while living just a street over. I think the narrator is mocking him because no one does that. No one plans out their life to be a secret. Wakefield could have easily gone back home, but instead he disguises himself because he is so obsessed with being away. How couldn’t the narrator think this is humorous? Wakefield is so obscure and strange that it is comical. Wakefield wants to go back, and he even calls himself mad, yet he cannot bring himself to walk into his home. Wakefield gets so close that it seems like he is almost stalking his wife, and I think the narrator thinks that aspect of the situation is the most humorous. Wakefield is spying on his wife who is “widowed” by himself. Why would someone do that? That is very bizarre and the narrator knows it.
At the end of the story, Hawthrone seems to provide us with some type of moral. If any more is there, I have to agree with Nick Cobblah that he is warning us of the corruptive and manipulative power of the city. He is telling us to beware of what affects a city can have on you, which in turn will turn into affects on your family. The city could wind up destroying the people you love. As Wakefield passes through time, he realizes that he is actually a trivial part of his wife, the city, and thus the world. Wakefield’s story is about realizing that the city and life is bigger than just you… you are one piece to the grand puzzle of city life.
question 1:
ReplyDeleteIn 'Wakefield", Hawthorne describes a loneliness that is surrounded by connection and people. The London streets and trains connect the city together, while the apartment buildings in the streets keep the people close together. In the connected city that is, crowded with people, Wakefield feels lost and 'crowd swept'. I think Hawthorne uses the city to contrast the loneliness Wakefield feels, and explain the fact that it doesn't matter how much a person is surrounded by things they can still feel alone. Although the city seems connected physically, Hawthorne lightly touches on the classes of different people within the city. He mentions the 'maid and the dirty little footboy' calling for their 'lord, and master'. A jew is also mentioned in 'Wakefield", certain ethnicities and classes seperate the people, the city is trying to bring together. There's a crowd of people, but none of them notice or pay attention to one another. I really like the way Hawthorne uses the physical sense of the city to juxtapose the idea that an individual can easily get lost and be alone in a place that is extremly crowded with people and buildings.
-Jatelle
The city in "Wakefield" is described as very busy and crowded. Hawthorne depicts it as a "great mass" of people, however, none containing a sense of individuality. "We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life" (922). An individual person never stands out in the "throngs" of London, they blend in to the background, losing their sense of originality. Wakefield continuously loses his sense of individuality and the story progresses eventually leading him in to a state of self proclaimed madness. After a few weeks of hiding out, Wakefield is convinced that he will be caught on the streets or in front of the home he once shared with his wife. This idea leads him to change his appearance with a wig and different clothes to camouflage himself. What Wakefield doesn't realize is that he is "among a thousand such atoms of mortality" (924). Not one person stands out in the heaps of people on a city street. Even in the end when after twenty years of separateness, Wakefield passes his wife and still she does not recognize him, Wakefield is yet again paranoid even though he sees that "No mortal eye but mine has traced thee" (922).
ReplyDeleteHawthorne fails to describe the city of London specifically, instead he tends to focus more on the individual character of Wakefield and uses this character to describe the surface of city life. Wakefield is used to help the readers understand that although the city is full of individuals and their specific personalities, it is inevitable to become lost in the crowd.
Why do I feel like telling the whole the plot of the story at the beginning is an ancient plot device, like the job of a Greek chorus? I know that Shakespeare often told the audience what was going to happen before it did, but let's go with the idea of a Greek chorus, whose job it also was to explain the morality of the play--to frame the meaning of the play, as it were. In this case, the narrator takes the place of the Greek chorus, and while we expect the story's consequences to be explained to us in a way that allows us to once again place value in a moral order, what he does may be much more interesting--and by that, I mean telling of who Hawthorne was as a writer/person.
ReplyDeleteI talked to my friend (who knows a lot more about Hawthorne than I do) about this story yesterday, and the thing he told be to keep in mind while I was reading his stories was that Hawthorne is interested in exploring evil in order to make sense of and explain a moral world. If the tradition of narrating the whole plot at the beginning DOES come from the Greek chorus, that makes his decision to write "Wakefield" this way a lot more compelling, especially because Hawthorne does not offer an easy moral for his audience at the end. Perhaps this is because he does not know the reason yet himself, but I think that the answers are hidden among the rest of the story.
Hawthorne takes a lot of time to explore what he thinks may be Wakefield's motives, taking careful consideration to also include the effects of his decision on Wakefield, and the effects this decision has on his wife. To me, this is not a story about a bad man who does a terrible thing and gets away with it, but about the way in which he is punished for his actions by the universe and he subconscious, especially when we consider the way that Mrs. Wakefield adapts to the loss of her husband.
The depiction of London at its best in the story is exceedingly busy, and at its worst “selfish” (925). Given the plot, Hawthorne could have never explicitly referred to the city and these same notions would have permeated the story. Direct references to the bustling nature of London city life which allow for Wakefield’s include “great mass of London life” (922), “the throng of a London street” (925), and the aforementioned “busy and selfish London” (926). By the end of the story I was not sure if this piece was more about Wakefield the man, or the effect of city life on the individual. It seems at certain points in the story that the city is a willing participant in Wakefield’s subterfuge, and at other times that London merely created an atmosphere where even the laziest of men could perpetrate an original plan. This gives the impression the city only brings people together spatially while separating them spiritually.
ReplyDeleteIt also appears that Wakefield doesn’t ever truly see how and where he fits into his environment. He is constantly questioning his anonymity and chastising his seemingly sloppy mistakes, “Can it be that nobody caught sight of him?” (923), and the unmistakable “Wakefield, Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world!” (922). This clearly shows just how meaningless and remote an individual is in Londontown.
#3- The structure Hawthorne uses is pretty captivating. In just a few sentences he introduces a normal man that leaves his life for 20 years and then returns as if no time has gone by. He then delves into the story.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was reading, I was curious of why Wakefield would do this. Hawthorne presents him as a vain and sort of odd man, but I couldn't find anything in particular that would lead him to isolation from his wife and home. I think the point of Hawthorne doing this was to intrigue the reader in the same direction that I was pulled in: to try and figure out motivations.
The part that stuck with me the most was after 20 years of absence "he became a loving spouse til death." That was presented early on, so my curiosity was peaked until the end. What kind of lesson did he learn one street over, living in disguise and even passing his wife on her way to church? What made him want to return? I think the answer to these questions I had relate to the moral message. I could be way off, but the meaning I took from it was that sometimes you can't appreciate what you have until you're distanced from it. That sometimes it takes an outsider to see and understand someones life more than the person living it. I think by taking on an alias along with 20 years away from his life, I think he accomplishes this outsider's perspective. He can look at his life and finally appreciate it.
As much as Hawthorne points out the city’s throngs of people, masses moving and shifting without ever noticing the protagonist, he also depicts Wakefield’s isolation throughout the narrative. There is the suggestion that city-life has made Wakefield obsolete as an individual and not only because of the large numbers of people making it difficult to stand out. It seems that Hawthorne implies that Wakefield is lonely among the masses, his wife, and in the twenty years that he chooses to live alone.
ReplyDeleteWithin his own marriage the relationship between Wakefield and his wife is one of routine, which seems to be the real culprit in the narrative. The couple kisses goodbye “in the matter-of-course way of a ten years' matrimony.” Little more is known about their marriage other than the hint that Wakefield’s wife was the only person who may have missed him, yet she continues to carry on with her routine only becoming paler and doubt the rumors of his death. When Wakefield first sleeps in his new apartment though, Hawthorne gives him his only line of dialogue, “’No,'’-- thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him, -- ‘I will not sleep alone another night.’'' This single line of dialogue is significant in implying that up until his time of solitude, Wakefield felt as though he slept alone. It is also important that Hawthorne singles this part of the story out through dialogue because it is Wakefield voicing his purpose, which happens to be that he wishes to no longer be alone and remedies this problem by moving one street down still among London’s masses.
After a change of clothes and a wig, Hawthorne writes, “Wakefield is another man. The new system being now established…” The choice to use the phrase “new system” is important in showing that despite any change Wakefield could make he is still going to fall victim to routine. He will remain obsolete no matter what clothes he is wearing. In the end when Wakefield meets his wife again, it turns out that she is the only reason he is still Wakefield. Without her recognition of him, he was just another moving body that had been forgotten as though he had been dead or “vanished.” He seems to trade his place in the system of marriage for a system of isolation. In either case he is alone, although at least remembered by somebody in the first.
Question 3 -
ReplyDeleteThe narrator gives us a quick overview of the story on Wakefield in the beginning, then delves deeper into detail with the rest of the paragraphs. Immediately, I felt that this was a good way to clearly get the point of the story across and it almost reads like a research paper. Research papers oftentimes start with an abstract that serves as an overall summary of the paper, then delves deeper into details and research within the actual paper. But once I read the entire story, I felt a little different. Hawthorne seems to use the first summation of the story to tell us the objective facts about the story that he read in the paper. But then he starts to tell his own version of the story, and seems to add details and make things up that he doesn't even know about.
The narrator doesn't even know Wakefield personally, but knows intimate details about him, or so it seems. But if we look closely at the details we are given, they are pretty general. The narrator assumes all of these details about Wakefield as well, and because of this it makes me skeptical of Hawthorne. Why is he telling us this story; why does he care? I'm really not sure what the moral of the story is. Perhaps Hawthorne is trying to seem more qualified than he really is since he's adding (possibly) false information to a story he knows little about, and has no real connection to.
I feel that, despite its many merits, the city is essentially a mass of people who cease in general to stand out or matter to each other. It does possess its good qualities (public transportation, museums, art, culture), but “Wakefield” really focuses on the part of the city that is very impersonal, especially when it expresses such fears as this: “We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life.” Having lived in Chicago for a semester, I understand the fear of being swallowed by the city. I too have walked self-consciously down the street, certain that everyone was staring at my not quite fashionable outfit, at the way the wind blew my bangs back and made me look like a total dork. I too have, upon reaching my destination and reflecting on my self-conscious panic, realized that I had not observed a single thing about anyone I had passed in the six blocks I had walked from my apartment to my classroom. I had not noticed a single person with a not quite fashionable outfit or a misplaced bang. I realized that I simply had not looked at all, and that no one else had either. In the city, you are just a bunch of lives exposed to a bunch of other lives, completely terrified the whole time that for some reason they will choose to take their minds out of their own self-conscious sphere and care what you are wearing or what your bangs look like. But they won’t. An individual’s importance exists only in his private sphere: his home, expressed in Wakefield’s vain thoughts regarding “how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week…and…how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances, in which he was a central object, will be affected by his removal.” Wakefield is worried that if he loses his identity in the city he will also lose it in his home, but the home is far less forgetful of its inhabitants than the city is.
ReplyDeleteThe city, though it may seem unnoticeable upon first read, plays a vital role in illustrating the personality of Wakefield as well as setting a moral tone for the story. Though this narrative is set in London, there are no specific descriptions that would otherwise identify this particular city; the readers can, therefore, apply this setting to anywhere as if it were a commentary on city living. Hawthorne presents the notion that an individual, within the constructs of such a highly populated space, would be among, “among a thousand such atoms of mortality” (924). Here he equates individuals to atoms, implying that no one is identifiable in a city. Instead, it is a place to get lost, or bump into someone without recognizing them, as Wakefield managed to do with his wife. During this passage, Hawthorne ends the paragraph with, “After a ten years’ separation, thus Wakefield meets his wife!” (925). Readers, if only for a second, are led to believe that Wakefield’s scheme may have come to an end with their reunion. However, Hawthorne then begins the very next paragraph with, “The throng eddies away, and carries them asunder” (925). This only reinforces the idea that individuality and moral fiber become obscure and begin to fade while inhabiting any city space.
ReplyDeleteThe character of the city manages to ruin Wakefield’s family life and permanently damage Wakefield’s disposition by leaving him racked with guilt. The city is the instrument that makes it possible for Wakefield to carry out his experiment; take Wakefield and his wife out of the city, and their lives would have continued harmlessly.
The city is a sweeping abyss in which one loses his individuality in order to melt into, as described by the narrator.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, however, although the individuality fades upon entrance in the city, I found the juxtaposition of Wakefield's omni-present individuality in the ever-so homogenized city rather interesting throughout the story. It was Wakefield's every move that was being watched, he wonders what life would be like without Wakefield, the individual, if he wasn't there—as if it even matters because by the definition of the city, there is nothing special about him to miss.
According to its description, there is so little difference from one person to the next, that the individual is seemingly disposable, therefore, the thought of being valued as an individual should be inconceivable.
The story does leave off at an interesting spot, however—something that makes my mind wonder still. How is Wakefield exempt from atomic people of "the city"? When he enters his house, is it his individuality that his wife misses? Can they start off right where they left, or is his family so robotic that he can just get in where he fits after all these years and still play the role of father effectively?
I went totally off track here from the question asked, but I wanted to tell somebody about it—and I'm not a big in-class talker.