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Example research essay topic: Greek Mythology Van Der - 1,563 words

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... rst impulse is to bring Ellen back home. Her focus has changed from purely "godly" concerns to human concerns. Although previously she had been the first to condemn her, to cut her off from her allowance when she refused to divorce, she suddenly identifies and sympathizes with Ellen's plight. Something has changed in Catherine; she is now mortal.

She invites Archer to her home, specifically denying May the invitation. Archer tells Catherine that she is handsome, but Catherine immediately uses the complement as a segue to champion her granddaughter. She says, "Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen. " She is the first of the gods of New York Society to see beauty in Ellen. She also resolutely decides that Ellen must stay with her and receive her allowance: "The minute I laid eyes on her, I said: You sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!' " A clearer indication of this change in her mortality is her own recognition of the change.

Catherine says, "She hadn't been here five minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her if only, for the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!" This statement is highly ironic because, of course, literally she has not been able to see the floor because of her extreme obesity. But on another level, she admits to being off the floor, not leveled in reality, on the ground and in a mortal existence. Through Catherine we realize that it is possible for someone to relinquish his place among the gods and choose a mortal existence. Despite the fact that Newland recognizes the possibility to shift from an immortal existence to a mortal existence, he remains in the pantheon. In the pantheon, Newland plays the role of Apollo. In Greek mythology Diana (called Artemis by the Greeks) and Apollo are the "archer" pair.

Artemis and Apollo are the great twin archers in mythology; May makes clear, particularly to Ellen that she and Newland are "the same in all feelings" cementing the analogy between the mythological archers and the New York Archers. Janey, Newland's sister, is referred to as "Cassandra-like. " In Greek mythology, Cassandra is the gossipy lover of Apollo, thus, once again securing the analogy between Newland and Apollo. Apart from the godlike similarities, Newland also behaves as an immortal in other ways. For example, he, like the van der Luydens, often senses that he is alive but dead.

In conversation with May, he thinks to himself, "I've caught my death already! I am dead. I've been dead for months and months. " In another scene, Wharton describes Newland as "absent from life, " as though her were dead. By being godlike like May and simultaneously alive-in-death like the van der Luydens, Archer is an immortal and fits in well in New York's pantheon. Despite his "immortal" characteristics, his mortality is starkly visible, particularly when he visits Ellen. Early on, Newland sees evidence of his mortality first in the literature that he reads.

He first begins to feel trapped in his role when May and Mrs. Welland insists he go from family to family announcing his engagement. He feels like he is a "wild animal cunningly trapped." He supposes that his readings from anthropology are forcing him to take such a coarse view. Further evidence of his mortality is in his agreement with Ellen. On their first meeting in her home, she tries to explain away the van der Luydens's place in the pantheon. She suggests that they remain powerful and exclusive because they "receive so seldom"; thus, she debases their immortality.

Newland, "laughed and sacrificed them. " Newland is able, like Catherine, to become mortal and sacrifice his gods. But, he lacks the boldness to do it outside of Ellen's company. With Ellen he is able to view New York "as through the wrong end of a telescope. " But once he steps outside her company, "New York once again becomes vast and imminent and May the loveliest woman in it. " Newland's mortality is addressed more directly by the Marchioness Manson: in jest, she says while referring to Dr. Carver, "How merciless he is to us weak mortals, Mr.

Archer!" Although the expression is clearly just humor, there is also the question of Archer's mortality that is distinctly articulated. Not only does Newland recognize his mortality in the conversations he has with others, but he also sees it reflected in his studies of relics and of future inventions. Through a comparison with his readings, Newland comes to understand his society as a "hieroglyphic world." Hieroglyphs are obscure symbols, but they are also very ancient. In this comparison, Newland shows an understanding that all the codes of his "modern society" will someday be as obscure and meaningless as hieroglyphs. He compares the simulated reluctance of May's acceptance of the engagement as similar to "the books of Primitive Man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, where the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parent's tent. " In comparing the rituals of the "immortal society" in which he lives with the barbaric and ancient traditions of the past, he understands that his society, too, will one day be gone.

This acceptance is extremely "mortal"; the recognition of the near possible end to his pantheon shows that he is, at heart, not an immortal. The final meeting between Ellen and Newland in the museum highlights this sense of impending mortality that Ellen and Newland share but that the other immortals can not seem to grasp. Newland and Ellen begin their final conversation while staring at a relic from a society that may once have been as powerful and "immortal" as New York society. Ellen says, "After a while nothing matters any more than these little things that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled: Use unknown. '" Ellen and Newland both realize that all the rules and regulations that have forbidden their happiness will soon become relics just like the museum exhibit. In an earlier scene, the same sense of mortality is found by looking into the future rather than the past.

Ellen and Newland speak lightly about the future of the telephone and the fantastic predictions of Jules Verne and Edgar Poe. They speak of the future and speak of the past, placing themselves in a transient age, and naming themselves as mortals that are born, grow old and die. Although he clearly possesses the characteristics of the mortals and immortals, Newland is unable to "fall from immortality" as Catherine did; he is unable to vocally champion and publicly love Ellen as Catherine is able to. Unlike Catherine, Newland never chooses to act against the rules of the immortal society. Instead he lives a life of pretend, upholding the rules of "immortals" while suffering as a mortal. His life of face is so convincing that people begin to call him "a good citizen." He allows his true love, the only other mortal who had been included in the pantheon, to live alone, exiled.

Meanwhile, his lack of boldness makes him "miss the flower of life, " the freedom that he, ironically, had always pictured himself as possessing. He can never freely choose the life he wishes to live. And, in this sense, his "immortal" life is more paralyzing than liberating. Ironically, it is the mortals who are free to live where they want to live and be who they want to be. The juxtaposition of mortality and immortality in Age of Innocence is the most informative tool that Wharton could have used to relate the true nature of the last pantheon in American history. Newland, in his struggle to confront his own mortality and then in his cowardice to deny it, is the most befitting narrator for a tale of such a society.

He is simultaneously in the circle of gods, while also a mortal, rejecting and criticizing the lives that the others lead. His decision not to cheat on May and not to abandon his unborn child is simultaneously a tribute to his understanding of immortality and mortality. He stays with her, partially because he is sheltered, protected and empowered by the pantheon. At the same time, he and Ellen agree that a life of infidelity would make him "just like the others. " A life of cavorting and carousing, like that of Larry Lefferts, would be a life of the cold "immortals. " So, in his decision to be forever faithful, his life is a tribute to the compassion of human mortality.

In this sense, Wharton leaves the question of whether Newland is a mortal or an immortal open. He never seems to grow old, or age just as the immortals. At the same time, his compassion and fidelity are so unlike the characteristics of the others that he seems entirely distinct from them. Perhaps Wharton places Newland in the paradox position between mortality and immortality intentionally. After all, Newland, in his position of flux, has the gift of an insider perspective while maintaining a critical eye.

Simultaneously, he lacks the power to change and reconstruct his society in order to allow us, readers, to observe his entrapment in the marble mausoleum of New York society.


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Research essay sample on Greek Mythology Van Der

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