The Reason for Journeys in Literature Essay

In coming to understand the world around us, we are more accustomed to looking out and judging what we see based upon ideas that exist on the surface of our being instead of why we might feel that way. The journey to the self is a direction of focus we’re not used to and we are terrified of what we might find there. Since we don’t usually look this way, we are not certain of the terrain and this presents a source of inner tension. On the one hand, we understand this is fundamentally who we are so we should be very familiar with the territory. On the other hand, we have to admit that we really don’t know the ground and therefore aren’t as familiar with who is what we are as we thought. Examining our ideas and beliefs, understanding why we hold these beliefs and ideas can reveal elements of our personality that aren’t as pretty as we’d like them to be. Discovering these monsters within is much like finding a sleeping dragon in a cave, unaware it was there, and found ourselves confronted with a fire-breathing, claw-wielding giant that must be subdued or defeated before we can move on. This unfamiliar darkness and the possibility of danger are why many people seem to feel that it is necessary to leave home in order to discover the self.

It is easier to confront and combat these demons when one is far away from home and people who might remember and judge what has happened. Much of the literature studied this term has been focused on exploring this theme of the personal journey and whether it is a journey of enlightenment or one of danger as it has been understood through time. It is the contention of this work that this journey, whether taken internally or externally, is both enlightening and dangerous as the individual is forced to either accept and explore their inner strengths and abilities for success or reject them and fall into failure.

Christopher Marlowe captured the story of Dr. Faustus sometime around 1620 illustrating the unfulfilling and ultimately dangerous prospect of the personal journey, whether it was internal or external. At its opening, Dr. Faustus, the main character in Dr. Faustus, is introduced as a scholar who is famed the world over for his extensive knowledge, who feels he has reached the limits of knowledge yet still hungers for power. This illustrates that internal enlightenment, which Faustus had well beyond the common man, only served to fuel a passion for more. Tempted by the allure of magic, he trades his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of having everything he wants, enabling him to make the external personal journey. Rather than using his new powers to free his country or help the poor, Faustus chooses to waste the opportunity he has to fulfill his desire for more knowledge by practicing the most base parlor tricks for the Emperor as well as several pranks on others such as the tricks he performs on the Pope at a special banquet in Act III, Scene 1. As the Pope crosses himself following an invisible Faustus grabbing his dishes out of the air, Faustus tells him “Well, there’s the second time. Aware the third; / I give you fair warning. / [The POPE crosses himself again, and FAUSTUS hits him a box / of the ear; and they all run away.]” (Marlowe, 1996). Although Mephastophilis, the devil’s servant, tells Faustus nothing but the truth, including the horrors he suffers wherever he goes as the result of his own choice for magic, Faustus focuses on those who would deceive him such as Cornelius and the evil devil. Trying to make the study of magic seem like the best thing that ever happened to him, Cornelius tells Faustus “the miracles that magic will perform / will make thee vow to study nothing else” (Marlowe, 1996: Act 1, Scene 1) while the evil angel distracts Faustus from thoughts of repentance to “think of honour and of wealth” (Marlowe, 1996: Act 1, Scene 5) instead. Faustus continues to deceive himself that he’s doing the right thing for his own well-being despite repeated feelings of trepidation and warnings from others such as the good angel and the old man – “I might prevail / To guide thy steps unto the way of life, / By which sweet path thou mayst attain the goal / That shall conduct thee to celestial rest!” (Marlowe, 1996: Act III, Scene III). Dr. Faustus is provided the truth from the beginning and suffers eternally for his complete deceit of himself.

Not long after this cheerful piece was written, John Milton came forward with yet more warnings against taking the personal journey of questioning the status quo in his epic poem Paradise Lost published in the mid-1600s. Through the different treatments of Satan and his followers and the fall of mankind, Milton attempts to demonstrate proof of free will as opposed to predestination. Although Satan accuses God over and over again for his damnation as if it were predestined that he be forever punished for simply being what he was created to be, he also provides several clues that indicate he recognizes the power of Free Will. As early as the first book, he says, “The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n./ What matter where, if I be still the same, / And what I should be, all but less then hee / Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least / We shall be free; … / Here we may reign secure, and in my choice / To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: / Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.” In this statement, Satan is both accepting his own free will (the mind is its own place), and insisting upon predestination (what matter where, if I still be the same). However, he finishes by focusing on the power of free choice to determine his perception of existence (make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n). Had he not taken the personal journey to feel excessive pride in his own abilities, he would not have fallen.

That free will also apply to man, Milton writes in Book 3 that God made man “just and right / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. / … Freely they stood who stood, and feel who fell. / Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere / Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, / Where onely what they needs must do, appeard.” In this passage, Milton is suggesting that the reason God gave man free will was so that he would be able to freely choose whether to worship God or not, the sincere gift given rather than the homage duly paid as a necessary condition of existence. Without free will, in other words, God has no way of knowing whether His creations truly appreciate Him or are simply acting out the motions of their strings. The angel, warning Adam about Satan’s presence in the garden, communicates this idea in Book 5 when he says “but to persevere / He left it thy power, ordaind thy will / By nature free, not over-rul’d by Fate / Inextrcable, or strict necessity; / Our voluntarie service he requires.” This conversation has Adam revealing that God had tested his sense of free will on his first day waking: “I, ere thou spak’st, / Knew it not good for Man to be alone, / And no such companie as then thou saw’st / Intended thee, for trial onely brought, / To see how thou could’st just of fit and meet” (Book 7). After the fall, though, instead of falling into the same mindset of stubborn rebellion and rejection, Adam and Eve take a more submissive pose, constantly asking for God’s forgiveness and accepting of their punishment (Book, 12). As had been anticipated by Belial at the beginning of the tale, acceptance and supplication yielded mankind a chance at reunification with God as opposed to eternal damnation and exile. Instead of constant questioning, man is recommended to bow in eternal thankfulness and accept whatever is sent his way.

The novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, breaks from this tradition enough to question the scientific value of such questioning. He presents the story of a scientist who discovers a potion that enables him to separate himself into two distinct personalities that operate independently of each other, but only one is permitted to act at a time. The purpose of this potion was to provide the scientist with a means of separating the good portion of his nature from the evil and it is successful, but the evil proves too strong and he becomes completely unable to control it or withstand it. In the end, the good doctor loses his life by abandoning himself to the strength of the monstrous evil portion of his being. The evil in Mr. Hyde is immediately apparent in the talk of the town after he trampled a young girl in the street. This half of the good doctor was left without any kind of conscience or other reason to restrain his actions and was thus free to commit any sort of evil he might choose to engage. Regardless of what the respectable and good-hearted Dr. Jekyll might have felt about these actions, Hyde was capable of carrying them out without feeling any remorse or guilt as it is described, “And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot” (p. 21). He is not immediately associated with Dr. Jekyll in spite of their shared body simply because of the vast differences between his actions and the known personality of the doctor. In an age when manners and comportment were of primary importance in determining the worth of the individual, Mr. Hyde made it a point to forego such niceties. As Mr. Enfield tells Mr. Utterson, “my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do what they call good” (p. 6). This illustrates not only the evil of the man Mr. Hyde, but also the level to which manners and proper behavior were held sacred and the effect such a person might have upon the reputation and good-standing of the people they may come into contact with.

As the story progresses, Dr. Jekyll is seen to exercise some control over the creature by stopping the potion, but the evil, once released, cannot be so easily contained, highlighting the dangers of the personal journey. Mr. Hyde begins emerging in Dr. Jekyll’s sleep and, once released, this constrained evil bursts out in even greater force, this time committing murder. The details provided from the maid’s story indicate that “all of a sudden he [Mr. Hyde] broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway” (Ch. 4). Mr. Hyde’s ability to completely take over the form of Dr. Jekyll, regardless of whether the potion has been taken or not and regardless of the level of Dr. Jekyll’s awareness, eventually emerging even during the day, leads Dr. Jekyll to the conclusion that his life is over with the close of his final letter as his body becomes completely inhabited by Mr. Hyde. It is perhaps his last act of goodness that causes Mr. Hyde to commit suicide rather than emerging from the Doctor’s laboratory to commit brutal and consistent evil on the city until the time he is caught.

William Wordsworth wrote his poem Prelude in 1888 illustrating his own sense of personal journey as it is discovered within and through interaction with nature. He does this by comparing his inner experience with what he sees of the outer experience. Book seven describes Wordsworth’s experiences of Bartholomew Fair, particularly upon his impressions of the city in general from his Nature-influenced and withdrawn perspective. “Of what the mighty City is itself / To all except a Straggler here and there, / To the whole swarm of its inhabitants” (pp. 696-698) is how he describes the people he encounters indicating a single-image mentality imbuing the minds below. The concept of the single mind is highlighted further as Wordsworth describes the people as “The slaves unrespited of low pursuits / Living amid the same perpetual flow / Of trivial objects, melted and reduced / To one identity” (pp. 700-703). Not only do these people have no free will, as indicated by the choice of the word ‘slaves’, they also have no sense of value, constantly chasing after things that don’t matter and that all represent the same end result, one common identity. It is this enclosed, mindless state that so many associates with the concepts of staying at home. The idea that these pursuits are valueless is underscored with his qualification that these “have no law, no meaning, and no end” (p. 704). This image conjures up, especially to an individual as intimately familiar with nature as Wordsworth was himself, impressions of beehives, anthills and other pesky, swarming insects that do little to ease a person’s comfort or to highlight the unique nature of the self. In this sense, the city and the people in it have become “an undistinguishable world to men” (p. 699), further separating the concept of the individual from the hive.

While this swarm is at home in the crazy, monstrous bustling of city life, the individual thinking man discovers himself in the form of a journey outside of the ‘hive’ or into the self. Despite his own presence here in the city, Wordsworth indicates that in the London he experiences, there is no room for a man such as himself to remain individually disconnected from the group. Although he mentions there is “a Straggler here and there” (p. 697) among the crowd, the term selected does not necessarily relieve the recipient of inclusion in the general swarm. Instead, the use of the word ‘straggler’ indicates that while a few tend to stand out from the crowd in some respect, they nevertheless remain caught up in the crowd mentality and have lost the sense of self that resides so strongly within Wordsworth. This is not necessarily their choice or design, nor does it indicate a lack of mental faculties, rather Wordsworth tends to see it as the inevitable result of living in such constrained conditions and never fully being able to leave the realms of the ‘comfortable.’ “Oppression under which even highest minds / Must labour, whence the strongest are not free” (pp. 705-706). The image that emerges, then, of London or ‘home’ in general is of a hive of mindless activity with no purpose, no end and no promise in which thinking minds, creativity and innovation cannot possibly thrive.

Wordsworth seems to find a way out of this morass of humanity in the power that Nature has instilled in him. “But though the picture weary out the eye, / By nature of an unmanageable sight, / It is not wholly so to him who looks / In steadiness” (pp. 707-710). By standing back and taking an objective viewpoint, journeying out of the commonplace, Wordsworth indicates that one can gain the sense of self that seems to be completely lacking in the humanity of the city. This is because of the ability to see not only the individual parts as they mill around below, but also of the whole design, which becomes liberating in much the same way that he has found in nature. Looking upon the city in this way, Wordsworth says, “The Spirit of Nature was upon me here; / The Soul of Beauty and enduring life / Was present as a habit, and diffused, / Through meager lines and colours, and the press / Of self-destroying, transitory things / Composure and ennobling Harmony” (pp. 734-740). While this sense of harmony was not available to the population in general, Wordsworth himself was able to find a sense of peace, beauty and design by separating himself from the general press and allowing himself to simply observe. Thus, unlike Stevenson, the journey taken is enlightening and positive.

While the late Victorian period may seem, through Stevenson’s story, to fear the concept of the personal journey and, through Wordsworth’s observations, to embrace it as a form of enlightenment, other texts created during this time period, such as Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest written in 1894 seem to take a more optimistic and lighthearted view. Working in direct opposition to the normal aspirations of men in the Victorian period, the two main characters in this play, Algernon “Algy” Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, are each seeking a means of escaping the strict social constraints placed upon them by their high birth. Each one of them chooses to do so by developing an alter ego or alias identity. For each man, this other identity is an individual who provides each with a bit of breathing space from their usual social groups. “You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose” (Wilde, Act 1, Scene 1) Algy tells Jack. Thus, they invent an ‘other’ that they can become, jumping consistently from one persona to another as a means of retaining the social status of their circles, but still affording them the room to play that their natural inclinations demand and thus providing them with their own, relatively safe, personal journeys. Although this deception allows them the freedom they’ve been missing, when they each fall in love with a woman who believes them to be someone else, these creations are not as easy to lose and the personal journey becomes complicated.

Through their various twists to try to convince their respective ladies to marry them, both Algy and Jack discover that all their deceptions were, in the end, absolutely true expressions of who they really were. Like the good doctor in Stevenson’s novel, this personal journey has simply given them the means to explore another element of their internal character. The interesting thing about these men, though, is that even this alter ego provides them with a means of remaining firmly within their social sphere despite their aberrant behavior. Trapped within these guises, they each manage to fall in love with women who have come to know them as men named Earnest. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Algernon has had his name legally changed as a means of enticing his sweetheart, Cecily, who is also Jack’s ward, into marrying him and thus gaining access to the country lifestyle he’d been dreaming of from the city. It is also revealed that Jack’s given name was actually Earnest, given to him by his birth parents. However, he didn’t know this because he was lost as a baby by his nurse, who turns out to be Cecily’s tutor. This frees him to marry the woman of his dreams, Gwendolyn Fairfax, who insists on marrying a city aristocrat. Finally, it is learned that Algernon is, in reality, Earnest’s younger brother, thus fulfilling both men’s desire for a male relative he can depend upon and proving each man’s excuse for an escape to have been a discovery of their true inner natures. They are rewarded for their relatively innocent personal journeys by ending their stories with the women they loved and the fully rounded family they had each desired.