Gregorik Andras Essay Example For Students

Gregorik Andras Essay I. Thick fabric II. Stoicheia III. Three types of prose narration IV. The Augustan novel V. Conclusion no matter what kind of pleasure may await his senses, unless it serves exclusively the glory of God, he needs to cut it off of him, giving it up out of his love towards Jesus Christ 1 I. Taking its time to establish a radically theological point of view, this essay aims to apply it to the body of novel literature in 18th century England, probing and inquiring it whether it is in support of Christianity as laid down in the New Testament or not. It assumes the stance of an advocate of the narrow path, the strict and unforgiving measuring scale of those few taking the Christian way of life truly seriously. Thus, the arguments and deductions featured herein which are the actual purpose of the piece may well strike materialist and novel-advocate minds as unnotable and subjective. The author, on the other hand, is firmly convinced on the grounds of faith that the conclusions to come are as objective as it is possible, being based on the revelations of the Holy Trinity. All views and opinions featured are his own except where signified. First of all, we may start the discussion with an analogy that sets the mood and aligns the frame of mind to the possible uncommonness of the argument system to be introduced. The images of this analogy will also come handy later and might ease the essays overall understanding for those unaccustomed to the exclusively religious take on life. Picture, if you will, a high wall and thousands of bricks it is comprised of; now picture one of the single bricks coming to life, finding itself as part of the wall. This brick in the wall is unable to measure the dimensions of the structure it was built inside. In case it could come loose and jump out of the wall with the help of a supernatural force, it might be frightened at the sight of the oppressive building it used to support for long and vow never to return to it, but serve its saviour instead. The only means of establishing a distance between the Truth and human cultures tailormade truth we indulge in does not seem to be any of the traditional manmade tools for extracting and gathering knowledge: psychology, sociology, philosophy and their clever alloys leave us running in circles when seeking the cure for all the ominous signs and phenomena in our society. The only means seem to be the one science which was initiated by Someone other than man: theology. The liberated brick from the wall, now supported by God, might arrive at the following conclusion while gazing at the building: something is inherently wrong with this structure. Junk relationships, junk ideals and junk goals form the cornerstones of peoples lives, while they are walking about with a wide plastic smile and are made to believe that they are following a flawless, unquestionably great life-scheme that will lead them to permanent happiness. Better yet, they are already following it. The brick would now feel terribly sorry for all his ex-fellows still in the wall in oblivion. He would keep on contemplating: this is not a new issue at all, tracing back to ancient Rome, and even further back in time, perhaps right down to the original sin. What can be said for sure is that by the Eighteenth Century human culture had finally become something that has nothing to do with Gods original purpose for mankind. Slowly but surely, we have defined a value system that makes society appear more and more similar to a Satanic cult when compared to the authoritative systems of ancient times: those of Greece, Judaism and Christianity. Now Satanic cults especially those masquerading as righteous organizations utilize the methods of brainwashing, mass deception, hypocrisy and driving devotees to commit ever worse sins, while making them believe that they are on their way to personal and social fulfillment. It is as if mans culture has become a hermetic homeostasis created by his weakness and tunnel vision based on materialism. According to God, children need to be connected to Him mentally and emotionally in order to get to know life and gather experiences with His guidance. Now young people born into this society are first of all cut off and pulled away from God and then treated with internalized skills instead, which are needed in the process of linking them with a set of sophisticated, prefabricated pleasure hooks, designed to bind them into this homeostasis. The thick fabric of both high and low literature, education and upbringing swiftly builds up these devices in the children, and the devices start to function as pleasure hook receptors from a very early age. Those affected with them become active seekers and users of a range of activity packs: shopping, dating, sex, polite conversation, travel, newspapers, sports and so on. As exaggerated as it may sound, these packs have the power to permanently claim ones soul for the fee of some pleasure. They are subject to constant propagation, glorification and accentuation from the part of this thick fabric, which is the reason why young adults quickly develop the conviction that these comprise the essence of being. They are persuaded to feel that they are alive only as much as they pursue these activities. The infinite domain of life, where this fabric grows thin and finally disappears and where the liberated brick is now happy to fade into remains in hiding from them. To illustrate our point even further, we may also turn to a parable by Simone Weil2, mystic mind of the early 20th century. The world is a labyrinth, she explains, and the opening of this labyrinth is none else than the beauty of the world, alluring all of us to enter. And we do enter, during the beginning of our life, enchanted by the beauty of the world. After a few steps, however, we come to realize that this beauty is frayed and quickly dissolving before our eyes. The tunnels of the labyrinth destroy its memories and the original opening is nowhere to be found. All of a sudden we feel completely alone, wandering lonely, losing the help of everyone important to us, losing even our sense of ourself. We do not know anymore if we are actually progressing or just circling around ourself. Most of our fellow wanderers give up their unsung struggle without the slightest bit of knowledge on their situation. Changing Things for the Better EssayIt is a sort of lying that makes a great hole in the heart, at which by degrees a habit of lying enters in. 8 This statement needs even less comment. He had taken up the godless profession of novel-writing out of pressure of his circumstances, financial and social. Our interest in him in this essay is based on the fact that he was one of Christian upbringing and his apparent aim in his first novel, Robinson Crusoe, was to take Cervantes genre and try to apply it to sacred means; we shall examine if he managed to create an example of the secondary narration. Robinson Crusoe was supposed to be a parable on the way a once loyal believer becomes entangled in mundane affairs he becomes a wealthy merchant that eventually entrap him he wrecks his ship but is finally saved by the grace of the Lord the end of the novel. Since the subject is entirely secular to begin with, the conditions for our criteria are not given a chance. Furthermore, Defoe himself becomes mundanely entangled during the course of writing: his complicating of things with circumstantial physical details is far from good Christian writing. An even more serious objection is that an undercurrent of non-religious values pervades every page: we see Crusoe rewarded by life for his sins; it is told that he was born into the middle station of low life9 only to emerge later as a rich slave trader by untold suspicious means. Also, Crusoes acts manifested in the novel are less than Christan-like: he decides to sell the Moorish boy who saved his life for sixty silvers; later, he seems to treat Friday in a condescending, unequal manner that Defoe does not condemn. We may now argue that Robinson turned out to be Defoes sub-conscious celebration of stoicheia that found a new ally in Englands Augustan tendencies. The novel, then, is to be written off as third rate and harmful. We now promptly turn to Moll Flanders which is regarded as the authors best novel. Sadly, the moral bankruptcy of this prototype of the British social novel is even less debatable. Centering on a basically amoral woman, it tells the long-winded story of how almost all the characters in her life adored and admired her while she kept treating them with dishonesty and abandon. The neglectment of Molls bloodchildren by both her and the author is beyond words and gives reason enough in itself to classify the book as base literature. In the end, Molls stolen goods formed the basis of her wealth and harmony. Jonathan Swift was picked also based on his well-documented affiliation with Christianity and his attempt to create a decidedly sublime theological satire in Gullivers Travels. Deemed by critics as one of the key Augustan novels, the first books are regarded as less controversial and less serious than the last one on which we are focusing. The first books, in fact, are peripheral in their lengthy examination and caricature of human affairs, and are not fit to Christian consideration. The last book presents the land of the Houyhnhms and the caveman-like Yahoos, and isolated from the rest of the novel almost makes it as secondary narration. The problem, again, is the substitution of Biblical imagery with complete fiction. As a blameless Irish clergyman, Swift is less suspect of being a covert advocate of stoicheia than Defoe; he fought his daily battles with his pre-industrial environment, a war reflected most notably in this last book of his novel. His faith seems to be strong, which is one thing. His Gulliver, even at its best, does not relate directly to the Scripture, which is another thing, equally as important. He made up an imaginary world instead which has much to say to the unwitting secular individual, but still comes off as a misapplication of his faith. It is the final deduction that makes this last book slightly noteworthy: Swift argues that man has the likeness of Yahoos due to the original sin and he needs the Christian miracle to escape his beast-like identity. In the process, he must avoid becoming the likeness of the Houyhnhms who represent the lifeless, logic- and reason-based reality of the Augustan era. Samuel Richardson easily surpasses the previous two in psychological depth and character forming, but also reaches new lows in hypocrisy and exploitation. As D. H. Lawrence remarks, Boccaccio at his hottest seems to me less pornographical than Pamela or Clarissa Harlowe. 10 We include Richardson because it is inevitable in any discussion of the 18th century novel. His Pamela is a prime example of the lengthy third rate narration type. It sets up the theme of virtue rewarded, then lingers endlessly on episodes of thin-veiled pornography as a landlord goes on and on in his attempts to seduce a young maiden whose dreams are filled with ideas of rape, but whose waking moments resound to prate about her honour11. Pamela is hailed to this day as the first truly complex psychological novel, which is a praise irrelevant to our system of values, as being complex and analytical makes no sense in case of the exclusion of the Divine. In Clarissa Harlowe, this kind of hurtful secular complexity is taken even further, to the point of sickly obsession, with the whole tumult ending with the death of the protagonist. V. The examination could go on for several pages, from Fieldings Joseph Andrews to Smolletts Humphrey Clinker, but the point is made clear: the novel genre in general, including its 17th century South-European forefathers and its 18th century British pioneers, is of secondary value at best when it comes to the all-essential questions of life. These questions are fully covered in the one book that embodies the category of primary narration. Any subsequent specimens of epic prose narration are potentially damaging or at least irrelevant which, in this context, also qualifies as harmful. Unfortunately, the masses advocating and fervently reading the ocean of secular novels which are in no case second, but third rate material are the equivalents of the lost wanderers in Simone Weils labyrinth, or the oblivious bricks in the wall in our other analogy. The thick fabric of hexing stoicheia might never grow thin for them.