English and American Philosophical Fiction

GROUP 7, FILSAFAT. English and American Philosophical Fiction.

Group 7. Serli Dewi ( N1D2211422) Uut Sri Utami (N1D2210933) Septi maymunah (N1D2211414) Sri Wahyuni (N1D2211445) Zulkifli (N1D221099) Veren Karolina Bidang (N1D221094).

.. English (and, to a lesser extent, American) literature initially it was the novel of manners that predominated. In the 20th century this was all to change. But even the 19tth century saw the publication in English of a number of important novels of ideas..

One of the most famous of these is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( 1797,-1851 )’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus,, published in 1818. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the novelist and pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1816 she married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The theme of her famous Gothic novel Frankenstein is familiar from the numerous media versions of the original tale. . In it, the young Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein becomes convinced that the idea of the "spark" of life has a scientific basis; he succeeds in demonstrating this by assembling human remains into a grotesque but functional body, and shocking it into life. The resulting creature is pathetically eager to be loved, despite the fact that its appearance horrifies all who see it. When its maker refuses to create a mate for it, the creature goes on a rampage in which Frankenstein's wife and brother are killed. Determined to destroy his creation, Frankenstein pursues it across the world, until, in a final confrontation deep in the Arctic, Frankenstein perishes, his mind gone. The creature, consumed..

In Frankenstein several themes stand out. Written during the period in which modern science began its irreversible transformation of human life, it may be taken as an early warning against the misuse of science, an issue which has achieved a new urgency in our time. The creature may be seen as an embodiment of the 18th century political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of the natural man, who, innocent at birth, is corrupted by exposure to the world's evils. Another possible interpretation is that the creature represents the evil latent in human beings, so needing nothing more than the opportunity to exist in order to become a monster. In any event, the novel (which some critics regard as the first true work of science fiction) is unquestionably the first taking as its major theme the relationship between humanity and science, and the dangers therein..

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).

In Nightmare Abbey (1818) Peacock punctures the Romantic Movement, with parodies of Coleridge, Byron and Shelley ..

oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was celebrated as a playwright, aesthete, and wit. His only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), while containing witticisms in abundance, is also a serious moral fable. In the course of having his portrait painted by his friend Basil Hallward , the wealthy young aesthete Dorian Gray meets Lord Henry Wotton, a hedonist whose epigrammatic brilliance greatly impresses the young man. At the very moment that Lord Henry is expatiating on the supreme importance of retaining one's youth and beauty, Hallward completes the portrait. On seeing it Dorian expresses the wish that he could remain always as he now is, and that the picture itself age in his place. This perverse aspiration is fulfilled in a strange manner. Dorian abandons himself over the years to every depravity that his mind can devise, bringing misery and disgrace to all associated with him, and yet retains his ageless good looks. It transpires that it is the picture, locked away in an attic, which bears the marks of degeneration, and the face it portrays appears as if it is being slowly eaten away by the leprosies of sin. Dorian finally shows the picture to Hallward , who at first refuses to believe that it is his work. When Hallward recognizes it, he is horrified by what it signifies, and urges Dorian to repent. In a fit of resentment at Hallward , Dorian murders him. Dorian comes to blame the picture itself for leading him astray, and takes a knife to it. His servants hear a crash and a cry and, upon gaining entrance to the attic, find on the wall a portrait of their master as he was in his youth, and, on the floor, a withered and loathsome old man with a knife through his heart ..

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), born a Pole with original name Jozef Korzeniowski , became one of the greatest English novelists. In his novels Conrad’s chief concern is the behaviour of human beings in extremis. In Lord Jim (1900), the character Jim is first mate on the steamship Patna. During a voyage to Mecca, the ship, with its complement of pilgrims, strikes a submerged object and appears to be on the verge of sinking. When, in an effort to save their own skins, the crew begins to lower a lifeboat, Jim at first appears to be an idealistic onlooker, but then, on impulse, jumps into the water: the meaning of this action forms the pivot of the novel..

The novels of the English writer Graham Greene (1904-91) reflect many of the themes of the crime and suspense genre—pursuit, guilt, treachery and failure. But above all he is concerned with the nature of morality. Greene was a convert to Roman Catholicism in 1926 and the concept of “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God” informs a number of his novels. In Brighton Rock (1938), for example, a story set in the town’s corrupt underworld, the vicious young ex-Catholic gang leader Pinkie is, because of his upbringing, always in contact with the “possibility” of grace. Yet Ida, the prostitute, although kindly and helpful, is not. She values the distinction between right and wrong, but with no means of judging except experience; while Pinkie at least has access to the means of distinguishing good from evil. Here Greene seems to suggest that the achieving of Grace is the necessary condition for an authentic and meaningful life, and that without it even virtues are of no account..

The Power and the Glory (1940), which arose out of Greene’s commissioned visit to Mexico in 1937 to report on religious persecution there, is set in the violent conflict of a new revolutionary republic where the Church is outlawed and the priesthood banned. The novel traces the “martyrdom” of a drunken and lecherous priest who rediscovers his integrity: Greene’s view seems to be that the violence and decay of the “whisky priest” will in some way result in his resurrection as a man. His opponent, a police lieutenant acknowledged by the priest as a good and honourable man, represents the nonreligious, humanist standpoint. The priest is finally executed, an event imbued with Christlike implications, and the novel closes on a subdued note of triumph at the Church’s survival in the face of religious intolerance. The Quiet American (1955) is a more overtly political work, but still exhibits the typical Greene preoccupations with betrayal and guilt. The novel, set in Vietnam during the French colonial war against the Vietminh, revolves around the death of Alden Pyle— the Quiet American of the title—a naïve and high-minded idealist who has arrived in the country as a member of the Economic Aid Mission, “impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance”. The narrator, Thomas Fowler, is a middle-aged English journalist, cynical and detached. Estranged from his wife in England, Fowler lives with an Annamite girl, Phuong,. Pyle steals Phuong from Fowler, enticing her by the offer of marriage and a home in America. He has become involved in subversive politics and begins to direct funds to a small guerilla army, headed by a nationalist general, under the mistaken belief that doing so will assist in the struggle against communism. When Fowler learns that the American has played a part in a bomb explosion in a local café, causing horrific injuries, he informs on Pyle, thereby causing the latter’s murder. But Fowler is uncomfortably aware that his motives are hardly pure, since he is partly driven by jealousy over the loss of his mistress. At the novel’s end Fowler has retrieved Phuong, and now finds himself in a position to marry her, but he is left in the morally ambiguous position of wishing that “there existed someone to whom I could say I was sorry.”.

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