Ad Astra: Issue 1

AD ASTRA A Journal of Aspiration and Achievement

Issue 1 - Autumn / Winter 2012

Front cover: Starry Night by Hannah Smith

Acknowledgements Staff Editor: Student Editor: Art Editor: Production Editor: Consultant Editor: Cover Art: Design & Printing:

Kat Pugh Chris Belous Dora Wade Graham Gardner Elizabeth Phillips Hannah Smith NHA Asssociates Ltd

An online version of this journal is available at www.stmarylebone.com.

Ad astra is wholly owned and produced by The St Marylebone C.E. School. Copyright in text and images resides with the individual authors and creators of those works.

The St Marylebone Church of England School is a charity and an academy trust company, limited by guarantee, and registered in England and Wales.

Company number: 7719620. Registered office: 64 Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 5BA.

AD ASTRA Issue 1 - Autumn / Winter 2012

Contents Artwork by Suzanna Zabrodina List of Contributors Artwork by Suzanna Zabrodina List of Contributors (continued) Artwork by Iona Dugdale About AD ASTRA by Kat Pugh Artwork by Rachael Nagle Student Editorial by Chris Belous Artwork by Sara Espinoza Scepticism and the Challenge to Knowledge

by Rosie Bonner Artwork by Thames Menteth-Wheelwright Scepticism: a Challenge to Knowledge?

by Cliona McLeary Situational Ethics by Lydia Calder Artwork by Sneha Chowdhury Artwork by Bronwen Anwyl Competition and Progress by Diana Beltekian Artwork by Eliza Hancock Nationalism and Aggression by Charlotte Wickens Artwork by Katie South Religion and the English Civil War

by Thames Menteth-Wheelwright Artwork by Katie South

ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x 1 4 5 7 8 10 11 16 17 20 21 26

Evaluating the Marshall Plan by Violet Sun Artwork by Esme Mull The Collapse of the Soviet Union by Grace Wyld Artwork by Hannah Smith Artwork by Hannah Smith Identity in American Literature by Maddy Foord Artwork by Grace Wyld Artwork by Rosie Barker-Willis American values in The Great Gatsby and American Beauty by India Hill Artwork by Matt Dudek Artwork by Jessie Keegan Facing up to Reality by Molly Eagles Artwork by Esme Mull Artwork by Flora Grant The Meaning of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Chris Belous Artwork by Flora Grant Artwork by Matt Dudek Ahmed: a Short Story by Samiha Rahman Artwork by Isabella Busoni-Conway Artwork by Bronwen Anwyl The Cost of University by Conor Fitzpatrick

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Artwork by SUZANNA ZABRODINA. Suzanna studied Fine Art, Maths, Russian and Spanish. She is currently spending a year working in industry

Contributors BRONWEN ANWYL (Year 13) is studying English Literature, Fine Art and History

MATT DUDEK (Year 13) is studying Economics, Art and English. He is aiming to study Art at Kingston and become an architect

ROSIE BARKER-WILLIS studied Art and Design (Textiles), Fine Art and Media, Film & TV Studies. She is now studying Art and Design at Camberwell

IONA DUGDALE studied Art and Design

CHRIS BELOUS (Year 13) is studying Maths,

MOLLY EAGLES studied Biology, English

History, English, German and Latin. She aims to read English and German at Edinburgh

DIANA BELTEKIAN (Year 13) is studying Economics, Government & Politics and Maths.

She is aiming to read Economics at Cambridge prior to a career in academic research

(Textiles), English Literature and Fine Art. She is now studying Art at St Martin’s Literature and History. She is now reading English and Creative Writing at East Anglia

SARA ESPINOZA studied Fine Art, Psychology and Spanish. She is now studying Art at WMC, Camden

CONOR FITZPATRICK (Year 13) is studying ROSIE BONNER studied English Literature, Psychology and Philosophy. She is now reading Philosophical Studies at Newcastle

Maths, Further Maths and Economics. He aims to read Economics at Cambridge

MADDY FOORD studied English Literature, ISABELLA BUSONI-CONWAY (Year 13) is studying Dance, Fine Art and Religious Studies.

She is applying for an Art Foundation year prior to studying Fine Art

History and Psychology. She is now reading Psychology at Newcastle

FLORA GRANT (Year 12) is studying Dance, Psychology and Art

LYDIA CALDER (Year 13) is studying French, Spanish and Religious Studies. She aims to read Modern Foreign Languages in preparation for a career abroad

SNEHA CHOWDHURY studied Classical Civilisation, English Literature and Fine Art. She is now reading English at Kings College, London

SABINA HABIB studied Classical Civilisation, English Literature and Politics. She is now reading English at Leeds

ELIZA HANCOCK studied English Literature, Fine Art and Sociology. She is now studying Art and Ceramics at Bath Spa

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Artwork by SUZANNA ZABRODINA. Suzanna studied Fine Art, Maths, Russian and Spanish. She is currently spending a year working in industry

Contributors INDIA HILL (Year 13) is studying Geography, English Literature and Government & Politics.

She is aiming to read English at Oxford and work in Politics or Journalism

(continued)

HANNAH SMITH studied English Literature, Fine Art and Spanish. She is now reading History of Art at Nottingham

KATIE SOUTH (Year 13) is studying English JESSIE KEEGAN (Year 13) is studying Media, Film & TV, Business Studies and Fine Art. She aims to study an Art Foundation year prior to a degree in Graphic Design or Media

Literature, Fine Art and Drama

VIOLET SUN studied Biology, English Literature and History. She is now reading English at St Andrews

CLIONA MCLEARY studied Fine Art, History and Philosophy. She is now reading Politics and Philosophy at Leeds

THAMES MENTETH-WHEELWRIGHT studied English, Fine Art and History. She is now reading English at Warwick

ESME MULL (Year 13) is studying Fine Art, Psychology and Religious Studies and working towards the Extended Project Qualification. She aims to study an Art Foundation Year prior to a degree in Fine Art

RACHAEL NAGLE (Year 12) is studying Classical Civilisation, Fine Art, Biology and English. She aims to study either Art or English or potentially both

NED PALMER studied Biology, Maths and

CHARLOTTE WICKENS studied English Literature, Politics and Spanish. She is now reading Politics at Leeds

GRACE WYLD studied English Literature, Fine Art, History and Maths. She is now reading History at Oxford

SUZANNA ZABRODINA studied Fine Art, Maths, Russian and Spanish. She is currently spending a year working in Industry

Phsyics. He is currently spending a year working in Industry

SAMIHA RAHMAN (Year 13) is studying Maths, Biology and Chemistry. She aims to study Dentistry at Kings College, London

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Artwork by IONA DUGDALE. Iona studied Art and Design (Textiles), English Literature and Fine Art. She is now studying Art at St Martin’s

About AD ASTRA

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d astra, simply translated, means “to the stars”. We could interpret this phrase as a declaration of intent, an invitation, an exhortation, even a command. But for us at St Marylebone, ad astra connotes something more important: possibility.

As such, the phrase articulates a guiding ethos of St Marylebone. Every member of staff believes in the potential of every student here to reach extraordinary heights, and is dedicated to helping show them the way. Hence AD ASTRA: a journal showcasing some of the best of St Marylebone students’ aspirations and achievements.

Every piece of work in this journal bursts through the strictures of assessment objectives and examboard specifications. Testing and marking, though an integral component of teaching and learning in our increasingly competitive world, should never be allowed to obscure the importance of creation as a good in its own right, whether as an act of affirmation, of rebellion, or of self-definition. To simply file creative works behind exam-board coversheets with a “full-marks” score on the front does not do them justice; even the tiny asterisk in A* is too monochrome and meagre.

Yes, the writing and art included here earned or will earn their creators points which contribute to a score on a list produced by an exam board and submitted through UCAS to universities which add their names to an undergraduate register. But these pieces are so much more than means to this end.

They are the work of students who have dared to question: to explore and engage with ideas, concepts, knowledge and experiences way beyond textbook margins, in the manner admired by William Faulkner, one of the great American men of letters: “At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance - that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight … to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.”

This too is entirely in accordance with both the St Marylebone ethos and the wider context from which the phrase ad astra is taken: “est ad astra mollis e terris via”: “there is no easy way from the earth to the stars”. Great achievements are not a gift; they are the result of great effort, diligence and persistence. We are celebrating here not only the heights attained, but the uncompromisingly aspirational hard work and application involved in getting there.

So as you read, gaze and learn, we hope you will be impressed by the quality of the work here.

Equally, we hope you will be inspired. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars, but the means to getting there are available to all of us. How will you reach ad astra?

KAT PUGH Assistant Head Teacher

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Artwork by RACHAEL NAGLE (Year 12). Rachel is studying Classical Civilisation, Fine Art, Biology and English. She aims to study either Art or English or potentially both.

Student Editorial

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alling this journal AD ASTRA, meaning “to the stars”, is not St Marylebone School’s attempt to show off by saying “we know Latin” – it is our way of expressing the approach that our students take to their lives. Perhaps an extension of this phrase, which comes from Seneca the Younger, encapsulates better what I mean – “est ad astra mollis e terris via”, or “there is no easy way from the earth to the stars”. Maybe our ambitions aren’t quite as lofty (unless someone wants to be an astronaut – unfortunately I wouldn’t know, but it’s entirely possible), but the principle behind this statement is what drives our student body nonetheless: that to get far, academically and in the wider world, you need to aim high and work hard.

This mentality – combining a strong work ethic and the determination to succeed - is what this journal aims to celebrate.

St Marylebone is, amongst many things, a product of its central London setting – it is diverse in ideas and personalities, and there is never a dull moment. AD ASTRA is therefore also a

celebration of variety: the written work here ranges from essays on skepticism and the relationship between competition and progress to a short story; the artwork covers a range of styles and forms, from portraiture to abstract.

What’s most important at St Marylebone is solidarity. Our school would not be what it is today without our strong sense of community, shared experience and common endeavour. We are not just out to achieve our own goals: we also strive to help others achieve theirs by helping, supporting and encouraging one another as much as we can.

That’s why this journal has been created through collaboration between staff and students – to reflect the collaboration that defines our school as a whole.

At the heart of this journal lies the notion of creativity and going beyond the average, so AD ASTRA’s core aim is really twofold. We want to celebrate the amazing achievements of our students, and to suggest ways of taking our achievements even further. We hope you enjoy our efforts.

CHRIS BELOUS Year 13

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Artwork by SARA ESPINOZA Sara studied Fine Art, Psychology and Spanish.

She is now studying Art at WMC, Camden

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To What Extent Does Scepticism Challenge our Claims to Knowledge?

Rosie Bonner

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cepticism is a philosophical school of thought that raises doubts about what we claim to know. For the sceptic, our usual justifications for claiming our beliefs amount to knowledge – for example, I know the chair exists because I can see it – are inadequate. In order to establish certainty in what we claim to know, we must test our beliefs by doubt. If we can doubt a belief, then it is not certain, and therefore is not knowledge.

For the sceptic, what appears to be the case cannot always be inferred as the case; ultimately there is a distinction between appearance and reality.

In order to gain knowledge we must establish the truth about reality, but this is a great challenge as, realistically, we only have appearance to go on. The scope of the sceptic’s claim must not be underestimated: to claim that we have no knowledge is to entirely question the way we live our lives in the world. This essay will explore the varying levels of scepticism, from Mill’s phenominalism, which asserts that knowledge of the world is entirely possible, to the Nature Argument which calls even the most logical truths into question. Ultimately it will conclude that scepticism poses a fundamental challenge to our claims to knowledge and explore options such as the Pyrrohinist response to scepticism.

It is perhaps Descartes’ arguments which best illustrate the first level of scepticism; the claim that we cannot gain knowledge from sense experience.

Cartesian scepticism is the fundamental belief that everything we claim to know could be a deception.

Descartes uses the analogy of an evil demon to illustrate this in his book, The Meditations. How can we be certain of any of our sense experience if it is entirely possible it could be a clever illusion crafted by an evil demon? For Cartesian sceptics it is entirely possible we are living a lie. Furthermore, Descartes also presents the dreaming argument. We gain sense experience from dreams; however, this provides me with no knowledge about the outside world. I may dream that I have wings and the ability to fly, but when I awake this sense perception is inaccurate. Ultimately it seems therefore that scepticism poses a fundamental challenge to our assertions about our knowledge of the world.

Conversely, phenominalists respond to scepticism by making a logical link between our experience and the world of physical effects. One famous phenominalist account was presented by John Stuart Mill. Mill denies that there us any distinction between appearance and reality. For Mill, reality is the experience of possibilities material objects hold.

For example, when I flick a light switch the light will then come on or indeed on occasion it may not.

There is no distinction between our sense experience and reality, no clever trick or illusory curtain; reality is simply what we perceive with our sense experience. Mill’s argument is a direct challenge to Cartesian scepticism as it refuses to engage with the brain in the vat entirely. However, it is extremely apparent that Mill’s argument is a weak one. Mill appears to have very little evidence for his claims other than the fact that he asserts it.

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In addition, ordinary language philosophers attempt to counter the arguments of Cartesian dualists by suggesting that the possibility of error does not cloud all possibility of certainty. They claim that the failure of the sceptic’s argument lies in their use of the word “certain”. In everyday life, with the ordinary language we use, we can be certain of things, provided there is enough evidence to make it highly likely. Ordinary language philosophers would say that I could have certainty I am writing this essay because there is a lot of evidence to support that I am. Thus it is possible to have certainty of sense experience knowledge just as long as you are not searching for certainty to an extreme degree.

However, the obvious counter criticism of this is that the true definition of certainty is “perfect knowledge with total security from error”. The fact that we are only seeking certainty to an extent, permitting room for doubt, defies the very definition of the word. Thus it appears neither Mill nor ordinary language philosophers can overcome the Cartesian sceptic’s assertion that it is impossible to have knowledge of the outside world.

Does this then mean that ultimately we cannot have any type of knowledge? Does Descartes’ Cartesian scepticism force us to the point of little or no knowledge?

Descartes would argue “no”; it is Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum”, which ultimately permits for some knowledge to be salvaged. Cogito Ergo Sum, “I think, therefore I am”, permits for knowledge of one’s own existence because if we are in doubt, we are acknowledging that there is something “doing” this doubting. In other words, we may have knowledge of our own existence because existence is a necessary condition for doubt to occur.

Once the cogito, a transcendental truth, has been established, other transcendental truths may also be established. For example, I can verify my knowledge that language exists because to doubt that language exists one must express and formulate these doubts with language.

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Transcendental truths appear to pose a serious exception to the sceptic’s argument. However, some serious sceptics counter suggestions like transcendental truths with an argument known as the Nature Argument. In some respects the Nature Argument is very similar to Cartesian dualism; it is simply a more extreme version. Although it appears that transcendental truths escape the trap of scepticism, as they rely on reason alone and therefore cannot be the product of an evil demon, is this really the case? Whilst the evil demon banishes certainty of the external world leaving the certainty of only knowledge gained through reason, the nature argument suggests that we may even be deceived about what we reason. Just because I reason that 2 + 2 = 4 this does not mean that this is correct; it is entirely possible that I am being deluded due to the evil actions of a demon. Ultimately the Nature Argument suggests that we cannot have any certain knowledge, be it empirical or rational.

Currently the sceptic’s challenge to our claims to knowledge appears extremely strong. This is perhaps why the arguments of Pyrrohinist’s take a slightly different approach to the problem of scepticism.

Pyrronhism is a school of scepticism which does not deny we have knowledge yet also does not assent to the Epistemist’s claim that we can have knowledge.

In some respects the Pyrronhists appear to have found some sort of middle ground. In order to deny something, one must assent to its negotiation, and for the Pyrronhist this involves a sort of certainly.

Therefore, Pyrronhists do not assent to what they take to be non-evident propositions. Instead of asserting belief they simply yield themselves to the world without any consent or control. This in turn avoids “belief ” as we know it. In refusing to assent they entirely avoid the sceptic’s challenge to our knowledge claims.

Some ridicule this argument by suggesting that the Pyrrohnian is similar to an Alzheimer’s patient: by refusing to assent, the Pyrrhonian becomes a passenger in their own life. They survive only if

someone else is there to guide them and save them from all sorts of potential dangers. However, this criticism appears to miss the point of the Pyrrohinist’s argument somewhat. Assent is only withheld with regard to non-evident propositions. To be truly like an Alzheimer’s patient one would have to refuse to assent to anything in the world at all.

Similarities can be drawn between the Pyrrohinist’s argument and the argument of mitigated scepticism suggested by philosopher Hume. Hume suggested that when exploring scepticism we must be moderate in our approach to academia; instead of making dogmatic statements about whether of not scepticism challenges our claims to knowledge, we must take a more humble approach. Hume seeks to explain our understanding of the world rather than try to justify our beliefs or prove anything about our claims to knowledge.

Ultimately, Hume argues that we have no good reason to believe much of what we believe about the world, but human nature helps us function in all the ways that reason cannot. Hume’s response is a

practical response to the vast issue sceptical challenges to our knowledge claims.

Ultimately it is apparent that the sceptic’s challenge to our claims to knowledge is a vast one.

Cartesian Dualism brings everything we claim to know through sense experience into doubt.

Furthermore the Nature Argument suggests that even knowledge derived from reason is in no way necessarily viable. Fundamentally the alternative routes taken by the Pyrrohnists and Hume with regard to scepticism appear to be the only option still available. Whilst this is true and their humble approach does permit for some sort of avoidance of the sceptics challenge, in some respects they do not engage fully with the argument regarding certain knowledge. Despite the fact that their approach is by far the most practical one available, surely it seems that “being humble” is not the true nature of philosophy. Ultimately it is important to continue the search for absolute certainty in order to once and for all counter the sceptic’s challenge to our knowledge claims.

ROSIE BONNER studied English Literature, Psychology and Philosophy. She is now reading Philosophical Studies at Newcastle.

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Artwork by THAMES MENTETH-WHEELWRIGHT. Thames studied English, Fine Art and History, and is now reading English at Warwick

Scepticism: a Challenge to Knowledge?

Cliona McLeary

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cepticism refers to the doubt of the authenticity of accepted beliefs, which are our claims to knowledge. It supposes that our usual justifications, such as “I can tell this apple exists because I can see it”, are inadequate since they are fallible. Yet, for the empiricist, the sceptic’s argument has little sense or purpose since the world is verified through the senses. For intellectuals like Mill, who ally themselves with the hardcore Empiricist, this common sense realism leaves them in a position that is evidently problematic and very dubious, and consequently is quickly dismissed.

This classic debate, however, fosters two distinct “camps”, or attitudes that are much more robust: 1) Cartesian scepticism; 2) An approach of indifference.

While the most convincing position is that of the Cartesian sceptic, condemning ourselves to a life of uncertainty is surely immensely unfavourable.

Absenting from the debate, in an approach of indifference, provides a more comfortable solution, albeit perhaps not the most philosophically satisfying, as this essay will demonstrate.

Cartesian scepticism widely revolves around the problem of sensory deception, meaning that appearance widely differs from reality. This attitude is indeed very convincing when one considers simply the differing perceptions people have from one another, for example over the colour of the sea. This concept, known as Plato’s Protagoras, exemplifies how the external world varies between individuals, subsequently making knowing which account truly represents reality highly problematic. Indeed when one considers the similar arguments of the Brain in a Vat and Descartes’ Dreaming Argument this problem is even more

apparent. Suppose you are dreaming: is it possible to know for certain when you have stopped? Surely, just as with appearance and reality, it could be just as difficult to distinguish between a dream and reality.

Similarly, it is quite conceivable that thoughts and experiences could be created by an external power; all supposed knowledge would then be fictitious, not of the real external world. Both these arguments reinforce the plausible idea of sensory deception. The Evil Demon scenario only intensifies this doubt, suggesting the possible total deception of our lives, supporting the extreme sceptic.

Yet, it is only when one considers the Nature Argument that the fruition of such extreme scepticism peaks. This form of hyperbolic doubt is comfortably the biggest threat to all our claims to knowledge. Not only does it challenge sense experience ideas, but more crucially our logical faculties. The Nature Argument stands alone in doubting our ability to think logically and rationally. While this is the Cartesian sceptic’s greatest threat, it is also its greatest downfall. If one were to approach life with such extreme doubt what sort of progression and growth could one expect? While it is agreeable that our claims to knowledge could be inaccurate, surely existing with reasonable certainty would be more rational. Indeed what is the actual point in doubting so much? It does not seem imperative to our lives that we have absolute certainty, as the inconvenient and unfavourable difficulties that arise out of it only reduce its appeal. As Wittgenstein said, philosophical difficulties arise when language is allowed to “holiday”; that is, when terms such as “certain” become used in inappropriate ways. This suggests that the sceptic’s argument is founded in an unintelligible AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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starting point, since appealing to the use of ordinary language is by far more practical.

Absenting from the debate and taking a more humble approach seems not only more sensible, but, more importantly, beneficial to the pursuit of philosophical truths and discourse. Whereas it is convincingly impractical to live life according to scepticism, an attitude of indifference removes such limits, encouraging an ability to think and advance.

Hume’s mitigated scepticism and the Pyrrhonian’s attitude exemplify this utilitarian position, abstaining from entering the dogmatic debate. The Pyrrhonians did not assent to that which they took to be nonevident propositions, meaning when there could be legitimate disagreement about the proposition.

Scepticism is a prime example of where one should not assent to the question, since it is widely debated.

The position of the Cartesian sceptic is controversyladen, which is what makes it so unfavourable.

Withholding assent to such non-evident propositions – that is to say, assenting to that which is evident – is clearly more agreeable. While it is out of convenience that one might ally with the Pyrrhonian, is it clearly not more pragmatic? Unlike with ordinary incredulity, or normal doubt, philosophical doubt, namely Cartesian scepticism, comes to no end. One cannot, in principle, remove the grounds for doubt or neutralise them as one in engages in hyperbolic doubt - the same doubt applies to each and every member of the class. This ceaseless succession of doubt is not intelligent but a hindrance to progression; clearly one must reason that it is more insightful to liken one’s thinking to that of the Pyrrhonian.

Hume in many ways takes a very similar stance, proposing mitigated scepticism. He discusses excessive scepticism, asking the point of it since it can have no permanent effect on how we live our lives.

He contrasts this futile hyperbolic doubt with forms of mitigated scepticism, or weaker scepticism, asking us to oppose dogmatic certainty and to act with modesty and caution when collating and holding beliefs. While one could criticise Hume for essentially 6

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abstaining from the debate, his crucial point of it being a difference that makes no difference is particularly convincing, especially when illustrated using the Evil Demon scenario. If we agree with Descartes’ evil demon scenario, that life could be an illusion created by an evil demon, we would have to agree that this demon is undetectable in principle, meaning that it is impossible to catch out, as it is that powerful. So if this is true, that there is no way of detecting this deception, does it actually make any difference to our lives?

Essentially one can argue that if the difference between the real world and that created by the demon is not one we can actually draw, it is not a theory we should take seriously. If so, we eliminate the sceptic’s doubts caused by the Evil Demon possibility, thus suggesting conducting life as the Pyrrhonian, or as Hume suggests, is the correct way. While it fails to undermine the sceptic’s doubt, just as Hume and Pyrrhonism do, it assuredly reinforces its impracticality and pointlessness, thus suggesting the sceptic’s threat could not really exist.

Yet ultimately it is an unfortunate fact that the sceptic raises doubts that appear to be incredibly difficult to deny. The suggestion that we could be wrong, even if only slightly, remains possible.

Nevertheless, the position of the Cartesian sceptic is the least favourable, and most impractical of all approaches. While they hold a very good point, in what way does this help philosophical advancement; and if they are correct what actual difference does it make? The “bystander”, otherwise known as the Pyrrhonian, absents from this problem, and in doing so finds the solution. Although it might appear to merely “sit on the fence”, it is the easiest and probably the most intelligent position to have, and by being so makes the extent scepticism challenges our claims to knowledge, nothing.

CLIONA MCLEARY studied Fine Art, History and Philosophy. She is now reading Politics and Philosophy at Leeds

Examining Four of Fletcher’s Six Principles of Situation Ethics Lydia Calder

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he first principle that I will examine is “Love wills the neighbour good”. By this phrase Fletcher meant that love is expressed by doing good things for and to others. He believed that everybody counts as a neighbour because Jesus taught that this was so in the Bible. When asked “who is our neighbour?” Jesus responded with the parable of The Good Samaritan which describes a Jewish man who has been robbed, beaten up and left lying on the road. A priest and a Levite in turn both passed by and ignored him, whereas a Samaritan stopped, put him up in an inn and attended to his wounds. The significance of this story is that Jews and Samaritans did not get on and therefore it would seem more likely that either the priest or the Levite would offer this man help, but the Samaritan put aside his differences immediately to help the man.

The moral of the story is that you should treat everyone with love no matter who they are.

Fletcher extended this principle, stating that it applies “whether we like him [the neighbour] or not.” An example of this in practice is Martin Luther King Jr’s protest technique. He showed love by remaining peaceful throughout his struggle, despite the fact that the people he struggled against persecuted him and treated him with contempt.

Luther King certainly didn’t like these people for what they were doing, but expressed love for them by being fair. Fletcher created this principle to specify that love didn’t mean liking others but doing good things for everyone where possible.

Secondly, Fletcher stated that “only the end justifies the means; nothing else” which means that the outcome of an action should be the motivation.

An action that results in good is justified because the end outweighs any injustices caused by the means. This teleological principle eliminates legalistic approaches to situations because you could justify many actions as long as they produced a worthy result. For example, in certain cases the commandment “Do not lie” could be deemed acceptable because telling the truth could make a person happier than lying would. However, according to Fletcher, legalism is not the best way to show love, because in some circumstances “Do not lie” would not be appropriate. For instance, in order to spare a small child the reality of a family member’s death, their parents may wish to create a more soothing explanation in order to protect them.

Joseph Fletcher would see this as the correct action because the parents acted out of love and were motivated by the result of comforting their child.

An argument contradicting this principle comes from Immanuel Kant who believed that it was wrong to use people as a means to an end. An example of this is stealing one person’s exam results to give to a person who didn’t do as well. According to Fletcher, if the motive was to love, the action can be justified, whereas Kant would say that regardless of intention, this action is immoral because it is at the expense of another person’s happiness and true grading. In short, Fletcher meant that decisions should be made AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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Artwork by SNEHA CHOWDHURY. Sneha studied Classical Civilisation, English Literature and Fine Art. She is now reading English at Kings College, London.

with the consequence as the main priority which is what determines whether the action was moral or not, regardless of how it was achieved.

Another of Joseph Fletcher’s principles is “Only love is intrinsically good”. He meant that Love is the only thing that is good in its nature; therefore all actions based on love are moral and actions lacking love may not be. An instance where this could apply is abortion; a teenage girl who believed her child would have a poor quality of life due to her age, inexperience and lack of financial help etc., could have an abortion out of love for them. Because the girl made her decision for love of the baby, it is moral because love is intrinsically good. However if in a similar situation, a potential mother who was perfectly able to look after a child decided to have an abortion for selfish reasons she would not be acting morally in the eyes of Fletcher. Due to the fact that this action lacked love, it would be deemed wrong, as Fletcher believed all actions should be motivated by love only.

Joseph Fletcher developed his theory as a Christian who wished to discover the principle aims of his religion. Therefore he only looked to the accounts and word of Jesus in order to determine this; because Jesus is part of the trinity and therefore is God, Fletcher knew that he could trust that His word communicated the real aims of Christianity.

Jesus said that the most important commandment was to “love God” and “your neighbour” with all your heart, mind and soul. In the development of Situation Ethics, Fletcher regarded this as the fundamental rule as Jesus had said it was; therefore he could safely assume that love was the only thing

that you can be sure is purely moral.

Finally, a fourth principle of Fletcher’s is “Love and justice are the same”, implying that to love another person you must provide justice. From this you can deduce that any injustice in the world is the result of a lack of love. For instance in law, if a man is falsely convicted of a crime it is because the worthy criminal decided not show love to the innocent man by confessing themselves. Another example could be a starving child; it could be said that this injustice is a result of wealthy people hoarding their money when they don’t need it rather than sharing it with the people that do need it. The principle can be extended to conclude that if love was correctly shared amongst people, there would be no man-made injustices left.

However, it is subjective as to whether some actions bring about love and what counts as justice.

If a girl’s parents prohibited her from going out every day because they were worried about the things she would face there, from the parents’ point of view they are acting out of love for the child. But the girl herself could feel that her rights and preferences are not being addressed, and that in actual fact there is nothing too threatening for them to be scared of anyway. In a circumstance such as this, it is still difficult to decide what the moral action would be because it could be argued that both options express love and a form of justice depending on individual interpretation of these terms.

All in all, Fletcher developed this theory to make decisions clearer; an action bringing about justice shows love.

LYDIA CALDER (Year 13) is studying French, Spanish and Religious Studies.

She aims to read Modern Foreign Languages in preparation for a career abroad.

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Artwork by BRONWEN ANWYL (Year 13).

Bronwen is studying English Literature, Fine Art and History

To What Extent Does Competition Drive Progress?

Diana Beltekian

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ompetition has historically been a source of progress in political and economic spheres.

It is competition which spurs on many industries, motivates key figures to stand for election and can be traced back in modern history as the root of development. While it has bought innumerable benefits, to come to a satisfactory answer to the question of to what extent does competition drive progress, it is necessary to define what “progress” is.

For these purposes, progress will be defined as “the gradual improvement, growth or development of economic, social or political spheres”. To begin with, the EU unites the three spheres of thought nicely, making it wise to start with its experiences.

The European Union is a community of countries, their governments working toward European integration and prosperity whilst also competing with one another to promote their own interests. Historically, it originated from the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952 which brought “France, Germany, Italy and Benelux countries together in a Community with the aim of organizing free movement of coal, steel and free access to sources of production.” The desire to cooperate and achieve “economic expansion, growth of employment and a [higher] standard of living” required economic competition with other nations and a political environment to allow it. Increasing the level of economic activity relied on a country’s economy flourishing in a competitive domestic and global market, raising GDP, encouraging economic

growth. There are many benefits associated with economic growth satisfying the ECSC’s other goals: growth of employment and a higher standard of living. Competition also has extended benefits, driving progress in more than just the area initially targeted. The root of improvement lies within a country’s competitive success, providing the conditions to accommodate progress; in this instance it was economic progress that furthered progress in social and political spheres.

Today the EU is interpreted through the “notion of realism, which argues that […] states strive to protect their interests relative to each other.”

Regional integration into the EU provides benefits for some while hindering others due to increased competition as more members have joined the community over the years. A controversial policy on which members have not agreed because of the competitive advantage another country may gain and progress faster as a result was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a major source of contention between Germany and France in the past. Agriculture was “an important tradeoff […] on the terms of integration, with France worried that the common market would benefit German industry while providing the French economy with relatively few benefits.” This historically encompassed both economical and political spheres; in the 1950s agriculture contributed a large proportion to France’s GDP, playing an important role in the country’s economy. This success they feared might be AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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compromised through the competition Germany posed when granted access to the common market and the benefits they would gain, stunting France’s economic progress in the process.

This issue was political as much as it was economic, with “French farmers [who] have had a strong domestic political role” pressuring the government to act in their interests; “all attempts to reform EU agricultural policy[…]brought out protesting French farmers in their thousands” confirming popular sovereignty to lie with the people. The government’s political sovereignty was limited; it was the people who voted government into power, so to stay in the voters’ favour, it was tied to their interests. Here competition between the government and the electorate is not in the government’s favour as in the long term they would severely reduce their chances of re-election by opposing the interests of the very people who vote the next party into power.

While competition is portrayed in a negative light from the French farmers’ perspective, there are many benefits of competition which are overlooked, such as from the Germans’ viewpoint. The benefits they received gave their economy a boost through increased trade accommodating progress. Through regional integration, bringing with it competition on various levels – economical, social, political etc – “member states “rise” to standards maintained by more progressive states.” A more competitive environment encourages less advanced member states to raise their standards through innovation and increased efficiency, lowering prices and thus becoming more competitive in the market.

Innovation and increases in efficiency are sources of progress in themselves, driving the country forward.

If these advances do not enable the country to better compete in the European Union’s single market, it will still be more economically developed, improving the performance of domestic firms and future entrepreneurs.

Pressure groups, much like EU members 12

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fulfilling their national interests, wish to influence the policies of government. Working to influence government policy, pressure groups must first gain its support. To accomplish this they must compete with each other in order to reach their perceived form of progress. Their goals differ depending on the group in question. Promotional groups wish to widen information available on a specific issue or encourage particular actions whilst sectional groups seek to influence policy to benefit its members.

NO2ID is a promotional group which campaigned during the Labour government that introduced the first Identity Card Bill in 2004, “opposing the government’s National Identity Scheme and the database state”. Here the group fiercely competed against the government’s proposed policy, arguing it would mean “officials poking into your private life more than ever before,” expressing their strong disapproval. NO2ID succeeded in their competition with the government, stopping the law from being passed. Through petitions and campaigns, they were able to postpone this law until the government of the day faced the next election and lost to the Conservatives who scrapped the policy once in power. This pressure group drove progress through preventing the passing of a law creating an environment in which development and competition may have been stifled by the checks and regulations placed upon citizens. Pressure groups such as NO2ID provide a mouthpiece for the unheard in society and drive progress through competing with questionable government policy.

However, it is not always so easy to compete with the government. It may fiercely oppose the work of pressure groups, as in the case of Margaret Thatcher.

The beginning of Thatcher’s rise to power coincided with the belief that the trade unions’ power was too strong. Margaret Thatcher rose to power in the 1979 elections. As Prime Minister, Thatcher’s economic policies greatly weakened the trade unions which had previously left the country in turmoil with three-day weeks and uncollected mounds of

rubbish due to public worker strikes. Recession in the 1980s saw manufacturing, the main area of union strength, shrink by half. Thatcher appointed Norman Tebbit who continued to strip the unions of their legal protection; they could no longer blockade factories, ports and public bodies.

Through the Thatcher government, trade unions found it very difficult to compete with the government’s plans with their powers removed or restricted. Pressure groups can only compete effectively if given a suitable legal framework in which they can influence government policy and are allowed to compete with the government.

As well as competing with the government, pressure groups compete with each other to reach their own ends, through doing so improving the quality of political decisions. A pluralist theory of the countervailing power states that as one group becomes influential, other groups are formed to combat them and offer rival viewpoints. These opposing groups can be found in all areas of interest, ranging from abortion to smoking. It is proved true in the works of Ash and Forest. The former is an outsider promotional group working to raise awareness of the dangers of tobacco smoking while the latter is a pro-tobacco pressure group “defending the rights of adults who smoke tobacco.” These two groups have competed in influencing government policy as well as public opinion. Ash’s success can be seen through the introduction of the “smokefree legislation” introduced on 1st July 2007 that prohibited smoking in substantially closed areas such as the workplace and public areas. The result of the competition between Ash, pro-tobacco organizations (Forest) and cigarette companies themselves were small steps towards a healthier society; for some a strong incentive to stop smoking altogether. The introduction of this legislation was the product of competition faced by the group pressing for change, in this case Ash, and overcoming the obstacles of groups or institutions that fought for an alternate outcome. The

“smokefree legislation” was a form of progress limiting the environment in which one could smoke, and contributing to the awareness of the dangers of smoking discouraging further use.

As explored, competition is a source of progress.

However, both groups assessed are outsiders. It is usually unlikely, or at the very least incredibly difficult, for outsider groups to directly influence government policy in order to achieve progress.

There is unfair competition between pressure groups in which insider groups distort competition through their ability to consult with important figures at will. Insider groups generally have a more realistic chance of tailoring government policy in their direction of thought. A prime example of a powerful insider sectional group is the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). Their lobbying and campaigning is met with little effective competition and those who they do meet are easily eliminated through the government’s refusal to act in their interests, enthusiasm remaining for the CBI’s policy advice. The CBI’s advantage is the backing they have from Britain’s biggest businesses, which significantly reduces the government’s ability or, more importantly, willingness to refuse their cooperation, distorting competition. In this sense, powerful insider groups having behind-the-scenes influence on the government does not promote progress as they concentrate power amongst the few who have access to those formulating policy. Insider groups reduce other pressure groups’ ability to exert influence on the government, thereby continuing to exclude minorities who are ignored in a majoritarian democracy, preventing them from expressing their opinions through this vehicle of political participation. Competition can only engender progress if all are given an equal opportunity to gain the government’s favour, not trying to convince them that the group they are consistently backing should not have this support.

In an economy as well as for pressure groups, competition is a key component that drives AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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progress, not only in the country’s economy but also politically. It has been commonly accepted that the free market promotes progress through its ability to propel competition. This idea was reinforced in the 1980s, the era when Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher preached free market ideology in the United States and the United Kingdom. The free market is more efficient in its allocation of resources than a command economy as firms and households decide which goods are made, how they are made and for whom. This information is difficult to obtain in a centrally planned economy where it is the government who are making all the decisions without all the necessary information available to them. Thus in a laissez faire economy, there is competition among many firms working to cater to the consumers’ needs and reduce their costs in line with their profit incentive. Partially, it is the lack of a profit incentive in a command economy that removes competition as firms have no reason to innovate or improve their efficiency. A free market is the path towards competition; “in advanced industrial countries, competition among communities makes each try to make itself more attractive to investors’. This can lead to influx of capital through foreign direct investment which serves to improve a country’s infrastructure and service provisions. It is also the ways in which these communities appeal to investors, akin to businesses appealing to consumers that progress is built up within the economy. Free markets contribute to greater “political and civil freedom” with a smaller government and larger market increasing development. Ideally, with fewer regulations and a looser bureaucracy, entrepreneurs should find it easier to set up their own businesses with less red tape, their company then adding another layer to the competitive environment of the market system.

Greater freedom raises social capital while reducing social tension and instability. With people free to undertake their own endeavours the country is able to go from strength to strength, progressing 14

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through the work of its people.

However while this competition may lead to progress in more economically developed countries (MEDCs) it should not be immediately applied to less developed countries (LEDCs) as a source of potential progress whose political climate, economic infrastructure, comparative and competitive advantage differs from that of MEDCs. This is well illustrated in the process of converting a command economy to a free market economy that supposedly encourages competition.

Institutions such as the World Bank work together with the IMF encouraging progress in LEDCs through increasing competition. But as Stiglitz points out, “the ideas that were developed to cope with problems… [were] deemed applicable to countries around the world” and institutions such as the IMF took a “one-size-fits-all approach” that would not tailor the transition to each country’s best interests. This highlights an important point about introducing competition into a developing country.

Countries with weak domestic firms and industries require further development before the country is opened up to competition from abroad.

Highly competitive foreign goods may destroy the frail economic progress that has been achieved through investment in domestic firms. In Russia’s case, their transition in the 1990s from a communist state to a free market required the establishment of institutions that underlay a market economy. Russia had institutions which had names similar to those of the West but did not perform the same functions.

Before any introduction of foreign competition basic safety nets had to be established. For example there was no unemployment under the old system, thus no need for unemployment insurance. Firms provided housing and retirement benefits; introducing a free market would require the establishment of a housing market. These new social safety nets would need to be put in place to ensure a successful transition to a free market.

Unfortunately, Russia’s transition weakened its

economy and brought about disadvantageous social conditions. Only in the correct environment can competition drive progress to ensure a positive rather than negative effect; thus the correct precautions need to be taken, which can be learnt from Russia’s example.

Competition has been a major source of progress on an international, national and local level. It unquestionably provides the competitive environment that promotes the development of countries’ policies and businesses’ strategies, to gain an advantage over their competitors in both political and economical spheres. However, it is important to remember that competition can only drive progress if there are equal opportunities for all who are engaged with it; far-reaching governments, dominant pressure groups and company monopolies all serve to restrict the advances that are brought about through healthy competition, seen through historic examples. Therefore distorted competition does nothing to enhance the rate of progress but rather reduces it through unfairly promoting the interests of one group, simultaneously quashing others. All contenders in all spheres of interest, be it political or economical, through competing in their chosen field, drive wider progress through the interlinked nature of the globe which ultimately leads to a better future.

DIANA BELTEKIAN (Year 13) is studying Economics, Government & Politics and Maths.

She is aiming to read Economics at Cambridge prior to a career in academic research. This essay won Oxford University’s 2011 Staton Essay Prize.

Bibliography Anonymous (2009) “Free Markets: What’s The Cost?”, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/ economics/08/free-marketregulation.asp#axzz23zE2jHJ4, accessed 19th August 2012 Ash (2011) Smoke Free Legislation, Ash fact sheet, http://ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_119.pdf, accessed 18th August 2012 EU (2012) Treaty Establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC Treaty), http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institution al_affairs/treaties/treaties_ecsc_en.htm, accessed 13th August 2012 Forest (2012) Forest Online Homepage, http://www.forest-on-smoking.org.uk, accessed 18th August 2012 Heywood, A. (2008) Essentials of UK Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, London, http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/0230201733.pdf, accessed 17th August McCormick, J. (2011) Understanding the European Union: A Concise Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, New York NO2ID (2012a) About Us (NO2ID), http://www.no2id.net/about/index, accessed 17th August 2012 NO2ID (2012b) What is the Database State?, http://www.no2id.net/dbstate, accessed 17th August 2012 Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its Discontents, Penguin, London Wilenius, P. (2004) Enemies within: Thatcher and the Unions, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ 3067563.stm, accessed 18th August 2012

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Artwork by ELIZA HANCOCK. Eliza studied English Literature, Fine Art and Sociology. She is now studying Art and Ceramics at Bath Spa

Is Nationalism Inherently Aggressive and Destructive?

Charlotte Wickens

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ationalism can be defined as the belief that the nation is central to political organization, yet this is a highly complex ideology due to the fact that it has been associated with many different other ideologies ranging from liberalism to fascism; “Nationalism rarely travels alone.” This, paired with the fact, that according to Michael Freeden, nationalism is “always marked by strong emotionalism and attachment (irrational aspects)” can be seen to breed the forms of nationalism that have been viewed as being aggressive and destructive. However, it can be argued that these forms do misrepresent nationalism as a whole.

There is clear evidence that throughout history nationalism has been aggressive and expansionist.

Expansionist nationalism was characterised by a chauvinistic belief in the superiority of one nation over others. This was evident in the imperialism practiced by the Great European Powers in the nineteenth century, which worked on the basis that the conquering countries were superior to the one being conquered, and that it was almost their duty to colonise these nations. This idea was similarly seen in the fascist regimes of the twentieth century in Italy, Japan and Germany. In these cases the belief in national, cultural and racial superiority inevitably led to an aggressive policy of expansionism due to the fact that they did not respect the autonomy of other nations. This was clearly evident in the policy of lebensraum (living room for the Aryan race)

pursued by Nazi Germany as hysterical nationalistic feeling led to the invasion of Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Rhineland and Poland.

Although, in this form it is difficult to view expansionist nationalism as anything other than inherently aggressive, this does not pertain to the entire ideology as it is due to the links with the ideology of fascism that expansionist nationalism was born, and this aggressive nature is not present in classical nationalism. As a consequence, although this period of history is what the word nationalism is most associated with, it can be seen to be an ideological extreme created though excessive devotion to one’s nation combined with the fascist racialist beliefs, which most nationalists would disregard as being consigned to this period of history alone.

Furthermore, nationalism can be seen as destructive, in particular in post-colonial Africa and Asia. This is due to the fact that anti-colonial nationalism can be to some extent characterised by a hatred of the West, who they had just been liberated from. An example of this is evident in Iran in 1979 when the pro-western Shah of Iran had to flee due to the increasing reaction against his Western-leaning as much as it was against his despotic way of running the country. This antiwestern feeling became more prominent and in Iran the USA is nicknamed the “Great Satan” in some foreign policy documents. This can be seen as destructive due to the fact that it affects relations between nations as there is hostility toward other AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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countries and cultures, rather than the acceptance advocated by liberal nationalism.

In addition to this there is also a destructive internal approach generated by postcolonial nationalism, demonstrated by the amount of internal conflict in previous colonies, especially in Africa. Most notable examples are in the Rwandan genocide, in Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Angola, where it is seen to be vital to suppress tribal differences; that occurred as a result of the formation of the colonies taken by Europeans which placed distinctly different tribes within the same country, in order for the nation as a whole to progress. This has led to violence and civil war amongst warring factions, some of which continue even now. A further problem for these countries, which can also be seen as destructive, is the fact that those who helped liberate the country now control them as despotic rulers, such as in Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe obstinately clings on to power. This idea is explained by George Orwell, as he says that “nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power”, which in the case of Mugabe can be seen to be true.

Yet the extent to which post- and anti-colonial nationalism can be seen to be destructive is debatable due to the non-violent tolerant focus in India, which seems to defy the model set by some nations in Africa in the fact that it was mainly driven by the desire to recover its own cultural identity, while respecting that of other nations. This idea can be seen as one of the main driving forces in post-colonial nationalism, and in many post-colonial nations there is a reviving of a particular aspect of their culture that is distinctly their own in order to assert their new independence and rediscover their identity, which is one of the core themes of nationalism. As a consequence, postcolonial nationalism cannot be seen as simply destructive due to the fact that the uniting feature of these nations is their support for independence from external nations, and with this comes the rejection of the idea that other nations are superior, leading it to be tolerant to other nations rather than aggressive.

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Nationalism is able to lend itself to ideologies that have aggressive and expansionist ideas due to the fact that conservative nationalism contains ideas that can be manipulated into extremes. Conservative nationalism occurs in established nation states, as after attaining independence, there is an obvious turn toward protection of the new national identity, as what has been achieved must be defended from external influences. This is seen in conservative nationalism’s reservations about immigration, as stable society must be based on shared values and beliefs. Immigration brings in people from other cultures and traditions and with this can come the idea of an “us” versus “them” mentality, which creates an idea of distinct differences between nations and their cultural identity, creating an unstable society, unless they assimilate into the “host” society. Parties such as the BNP and the French Front National can take this to the extreme, and aggressively try to expand nationalist feeling onto individuals who do not welcome them.

The emphasis on patriotism that is associated with conservative nationalism can also be seen to make the extreme forms of nationalism possible as it can be warped into excessive pride in one’s country that begins to become chauvinistic.

Although the defence of cultural identity can have aggressive or destructive features, it can be seen more as preservative of the aspects of culture that unify the nation such as language, art, history and institutions.

For example, in Wales they aim to preserve the Welsh language etc. yet maintain a political link with England. Conservative support for tradition is transferred into nationalism by stressing the importance of institutions such as the monarchy as a source of unity in society due to the shared history it represents. Although it can be warped into an aggressive and destructive form of nationalism it is does not inherently support either; conservative nationalism shows a more positive view, which emphasises pride for one’s country, not superiority.

Liberal nationalism explicitly rejects destructive

and aggressive feelings. The focus for liberal nationalists is the concept of self-determination for nation states, so they have their own independence and freedom. They have continued to advocate this since the French Revolution, which was the first instance of liberal nationalism creating selfdetermination for the citizens of France, free from the Ancien Régime. Liberal nationalism is in no way expansionist or aggressive due to the fact that it promotes freedom for all nations, due to the liberal idea of toleration, which means they accept other nations’ right to govern themselves without any infringement of their freedom. These liberal ideas have given rise to liberal internationalism, which advocates self-determination yet allows for a safety net from any aggression from the government of one nation towards its people, which explains

organisations such as the EU and the UN which help to ensure respect for other nations, human rights and trade links. This prevents destructive or aggressive behaviour from nations, as it demands that nations conform to a higher morality based on respect for other nations.

To conclude, it can be seen that the expansionist, negative, aggressive aspects of nationalism are not inherently present within the ideology. Nationalism is a “thin” ideology in that it can be combined with other ideologies, which then use nationalism to endorse their ideas, such as with fascism; it is not nationalism that is inherently aggressive and expansionist. Nationalism is only perceived to be aggressive and destructive as these are the forms that are most memorable and notable in history, yet they are a marginal part of nationalism.

CHARLOTTE WICKENS studied English Literature, Politics and Spanish. She is now reading Politics at Leeds

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Artwork by KATIE SOUTH (Year 13).

Katie is studying English Literature, Fine Art and Drama

The English Civil War 1642 – 1646: to what extent was religion the most significant factor in determining allegiances?

Thames Menteth-Wheelwright

B

etween 1642 and 1646 a civil war divided England: on one side stood the Royalists, headed by King Charles I, and on the other stood Cromwell’s Parliamentarians. Although King Charles I’s personality discouraged Royalist support from within parliament, it was his pursuit of ostensibly high-church policies that forced the English people to choose sides on the basis of religious preference. During the civil war, it was primarily religion that polarised the majority of English people into two camps; while more conservative Anglicans rallied around Charles I to preserve traditional religious values, zealous protestants or “puritans” sided with Cromwell to further reform the church.

Although popular support for both sides existed on all social levels – among the lower orders (the serfs and peasantry), the middling sort (freeholders, masters, craftsmen) and the gentry – popular Royalism prevailed among the landowning elite. The elites supported the King out of a desire to preserve the social order and protect their wealth and authority.

Although there is substantial evidence to suggest that popular allegiances had a regional basis, Parliamentarianism was most prevalent in areas with a strong Puritan tradition while Royalism thrived in religiously conservative communities, thus reinforcing the overriding significance of class and religion.

According to historian Mike Stoyle, divisions in the civil war existed primarily between the “religious conservatives” and the “more Godly Protestants”, suggesting that religion was the most divisive factor in determining political allegiances. Writing in 1664, historian Richard Baxter validates the importance of religion to Parliamentarian supporters with his assertion that “the generality of the people… who were then called puritans… that used to talk of God, and heaven and scripture… adhered to the Parliament”. Equally, historian Keith Lindley argues that the majority of Royalists “believed in a Church governed by bishops, the form of worship laid down in the book of common prayer and the Church’s traditional festivals,” thereby strengthening Stoyle’s profile of a Royalist supporter as a reactionary Anglican and reaffirming the importance of religion to Royalist allegiances. Yet Lindley’s suggestion that Parliamentarians believed they were “engaged in a religious crusade” suggests that they were far more fervent in their religious zeal and supported Cromwell out of a desire for religious change. Lindley’s claim that Parliament attracted those who wished to complete “the… reformation in the Church” is also congruent with Stoyle’s assertion that “more Godly Protestants…” considered the church to be “but half reformed” and shows that religious ideology and a hostility towards Catholicism AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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fostered a militancy among Parliamentarian supporters. Stoyle’s claim that those who were “happy with the Church of England as it had been established at the time of the Reformation [supported the king]” suggests that Royalists were passive in their religious conservatism. Baxter goes further with his claim that the King’s supporters did not “trouble themselves… about matters of God”, suggesting that Royalists were actually irreligious.

Although Royalist sympathisers would have countered that they remained true to more traditional form of Protestantism, the removal of “offensive symbols and images” from churches in late 1641 shows that Puritans and supporters of Parliament actively instigated their religious agenda while religious conservatives merely responded in reaction to such provocation. However, Lindley suggests it was a small elite who were “militant and energetic in their Parliamentarianism” and that the majority of people sided with Parliament out of a “fear of Popery”. Lindley thus implies that allegiances to Parliament were formed out of a need for protection against the ostensible Catholic threat.

Indeed, Robert Baillie’s observation of an alleged papist attack is typical of many reported in London between 1640 and 41: “a sudden bruit ran through the City that the papists had set the House of Commons on fire: in a clap all the City is in alarm”.

This demonstrates popular deep-seated fears of Catholicism. While Baillie revealed this report was later found “utterly groundless”, suggesting that militant Catholics represented no real threat to the church, the fact that Parliamentarians perpetuated these allegations emphasises the extent to which religious ideology dictated popular allegiances.

Yet Stoyle’s belief that at the centre of the conflict “lay the policies and personality of the King himself ” suggests Charles I’s incompetence as a leader polarised political opinion. While Thomas May wrote in 1650 that Charles I’s personal rule (1629-1640) had “much discontented the English nation”, Clarendon’s claim that “if [Charles] had 22

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been of a tougher and more imperious nature he would have found more respect and duty” suggests the King’s weak character and monarchical inadequacy significantly repelled political support.

More convincing is Stoyle’s argument that popular hostility towards Chares was fuelled by his pursuit of ostensibly Catholic policies; his attempt to introduce a Book of Common Prayer in 1937 and his appointment of William Laud - who May dubbed “the English Pope” - as Archbishop of Canterbury would have seemed confirmation of the King’s Catholic preference. John Morill confirms this idea when he asserts that “Puritans hated Charles I and William Laud…principally because they represented a compromise with Popery”.

Equally, due to his prioritisation of traditional Anglican values, Charles I attracted the support of conservative Protestants and Catholics, who rallied around the king as a symbol of religious order and orthodoxy. Essentially it is a false dichotomy to suggest that Charles I’s incompetence as a monarch polarised opinion over religious issues as the unpopularity of his personal rule was as a direct result of his pursuit of high-church policies.

However, many historians argue that the generality of the English people gave the integrity of their local communities a higher priority over national issues of class and religion. Just as historian John Morrill attests that “local tensions and preoccupations proved more important than national issues”, David Underdown’s assertion that “contrasts in popular allegiance had a regional basis and were related to local differences in social structure, economic development and culture” also suggests that socio-economic nuances between geographical areas were the basis for political divisions. Underdown draws attention to the clear geographical pattern of political allegiance: while Royalist supporters were most apparent in “arable regions”, inhabitants of “cloth making and woodpasture districts” typically supported Parliament.

Allegiances in Somerset certainly conform to

Underdown’s pattern: while popular Royalism was most widespread in the arable districts of Blackmore Vale and south east Somerset, fewer Royalists were recorded in north Somerset and north-west Wiltshire clothing districts.

Underdown suggests the reason for this was that those in arable areas conformed to the concept of the “traditional…harmonious, vertically integrated society” in contrast with those in cloth making and wood-pasture districts who wished to “reform society according to their own principles of order and godliness”. Although this implies that these two different “constellations” of social, political and cultural force were the basis of local division, Underdown’s suggestion that Parliamentarian supporters were motivated by the desire to restore “order and godliness” implies that underlying national issues of religion permeated regional affairs and encouraged allegiances. Moreover Lindley challenges the significance of patterns of allegiance in towns and cities; his observation that “In London…the elite ranks of the wealthy and traditionally powerful were especially fertile territory for Royalism” shows that Royalist support was particularly widespread in towns and cities due to the high concentration of landowning elite and gentry. The fact that Parliamentarianism was strongest in those areas with a well established, vibrant Puritan tradition while popular Royalism prevailed in traditional and religiously conservative communities validates the significance of religion and class motivations over local influences.

Yet Underdown argues that many of the lower sorts remained “deferential pawns” and had no real political preference. Baxter’s claim that “the poor ploughman understood but little of these Matters” substantiates Morrill’s argument while corroborating historian Thomas Hobbes’ observation, penned in 1668: “the common people…would have taken any side for pay or plunder”. Neutrality agreements, such as the one made in Cheshire on 23rd December 1642, also reveal the extent of political

neutrality among the peasantry and serf classes.

Essentially they formed allegiances out of economic necessity or force as the first priority of the lower orders was to protect their capital, their homes, and their families. Yet for the majority of the people, religious ideology and class considerations meant that they consciously chose sides.

Christopher Hill argues that the “the civil war was a class war” in which “Charles I was defended by the reactionary forces of the established church and feudal landlords”. Although Hill alludes to the importance of religious motives, he depicts Royalists as reactionaries, intent on maintaining the established pre-civil war social order. Thus while Royalism was popular among conservative landowning gentry and lords, Hill claims that Parliament appealed to the “the trading and industrial classes [and] to the yeomen and the progressive gentry”, revealing that Parliamentarianism was also prevalent among people of a definable social position. Indeed historian Brian Manning’s social analysis of Somerset in the 1640s confirms that “yeomen and clothiers, and the whole “middle rank” …turned to parliament”, corroborating Hill’s claim that popular Parliamentarianism existed among the common people. Yet Manning asserts that these people supported Parliament in order to “defend themselves against the royalist nobility and gentry”, suggesting that the middling sort regarded the upper class as a threat and aligned with Cromwell for protection. Clarendon’s claim that many people believed that they were to be made “no better than slaves to the lords” and adhered to Parliament to “free… themselves from this insupportable tyranny” implies that a suspicion of established authority and a desire to take charge of their own affairs fuelled Parliamentarian allegiances. Indeed to the people of Somerset, this fear was validated by the allegation that Lord Poulett, a prominent landlord and supporter of the king, had said that no yeomen ought to have more than £10 a year. Yet Charles I’s accusation that Parliamentarians deliberately raised AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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“a hatred between the gentry and the commonalty of the kingdom” implies that class divisions were used as propaganda by Parliamentarians, who exaggerated social differences for political advantage.

However, the most effective form of anti-Royalist propaganda was undoubtedly the numerous allegations of papist attacks. Although the nobility were targets of papist vigilantism – William Lily’s observation (1641) that “the present hatred of the citizens was such into Gentleman… that few durst come into the city” substantiates this – popular hostility towards the upper classes was fuelled by religious fears. While the high church tendencies of the elites meant that they were inevitably associated with papists, the generality of the people aligned themselves with Parliament in order to prevent the spread of Catholicism. In this light, historian Barry Coward’s claim that “allegiances of individuals do not appear to have been determined by their social status” seems plausible when applied to Parliamentarian supporters. Coward reveals that there were “prosperous and declining landed gentry [and] merchants on both sides” suggesting that Royalist allegiances also transcended class. Despite this, a common feature of the Royalist supporter

was his desire to maintain social order. Epitomised

by Sir John Hotham’s declaration in 1642 – he feared the “utter ruin of all the nobility” at the hands of the common people and desired “a happy peace” - the moderate nobility rallied around the King primarily out of a fear of social anarchy and class uprising.

Ultimately religion was the most significant factor in determining allegiances to Parliament; while a minority were militant in their Puritanism, Catholic fear forced the generality of the people to side with Parliament, who they believed would restore England to the Protestant fold. In opposing Charles I and his ostensibly high church policies, the people further signalled their rejection of popery and Roman Catholicism. Yet while supporters of Charles I were religious conservatives, their primary intention was to preserve the social order and their feudal authority, hence why so many of the elites rallied around the King.

Essentially national issues of class and religion touched the majority of the English people, although the lowest order most often remained neutral due to political ignorance or indifference.

THAMES MENTETH-WHEELWRIGHT studied English, Fine Art and History. She is now reading English at Warwick

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Bibliography Stoyle, M. (2011) Choosing Sides in the English Civil War, BBC History, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ history/british/civil_war_revolution/choosingsides _01.shtml, viewed on 07/01/2012 Baxter, R. (1696) Reliquiae Baxterianae, Part 1, edited and published by Matthew Sylvester, London Baxter, R. & Bacon, L. (1831) Select Practical Writings of Richard Baxter: with a Life of the Author, Volume 1, Durrie & Peck, New York Bund, J. W. (1920) Diary of Henry Townsend of Elmley Lovett, 1640-1663, The Worcestershire Historical Society, Worcester Clarendon, E.H. (2011) History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England: Begun in the Year 1641, British Library, London Coates, W.H. (ed.) (1942, The Journal of Sir Simonds D”Ewes, 1641, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT Hill, C. (1940) The English Revolution, Lawrence & Wishart, London Hobbes, T. (1992) Behemoth or The Long Parliament (1681), Chicago University Press, Chicago

Husbands, E. (1642) An Extract Collection, Published for Edward Husbands, London Laing, D. (1841-2) The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie (1637 – 1662), 3 vols, The Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh Lily, W. (1735) Observations of God’s Providence, in the Tracts of my Life, London Lindley, K. (1998) The English Civil War and Revolution: A Sourcebook, Routledge, New York Manning, B. (1976) The English People and the English Revolution, Bookmarks, London May, T. (1832) A Breviary of the History of the Parliament of England (1650), R. Wilks, London Morrill, J. (1980) Revolt of the Provinces: Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War, 1630-50, Longman, Oxford Morrill, J. (1993) The Nature of the English Revolution, Longman Publishing, New York Underdown, D. (1985) Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 16031660, Oxford University Press, Oxford

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Artwork by KATIE SOUTH (Year 13).

Katie is studying English Literature, Fine Art and Drama

US Policy of Marshall Aid in 1947: Using the four passages below and your own knowledge, assess the view that the policy was motivated mainly by the altruistic desire to help the economic recovery of Europe Violet Sun

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he rivalries between the US and USSR began to manifest after the Second World War. The possibilities of expansion and spheres of influence in Europe for both sides were greatly facilitated by the chaos and economic situation caused by the war. The policy of the Marshall Plan was outwardly motivated by the altruistic desire to help rebuild the economy of Europe; however this was in reality to prevent communist expansion into an economicallyweakened Europe which would be more susceptible to communist expansion. It was also motivated by the needs of the US to have a stronger Europe for their own economic benefits, which in turn would provide long-term geostrategic superiority for the US. The four passages all suggest that economic stability in Europe was a primary motive for the Marshall Plan; however passages A, B, and C believe that this was significant in order to assist the growing geostrategic dominance of the US and consequent containment of the USSR, whereas passage D favours the view that economic stability was motivated by altruistic reasons. On the other hand passages B and D assign dominance to the US’s role in rebuilding the economic stability of Europe, suggesting that the achievement of economic benefits was also a predominant objective of the Marshall Plan. It is clear however, that the

altruistic desire to help Europe was the least significant motivation of the Marshall Plan; this was merely a façade in order to gain long-term geostrategic dominance over the USSR. An anticommunist incentive was another significant motivation, yet was more influenced by a desire for dominance than being the main factor for the Marshall Plan, as seen in passage B. Passage C implies a more anti-communist agenda, as does passage B. Geostrategic dominance over the USSR and an anti-communist motivation appeared to be interlinked; a desire for geostrategic domination was derived from the US’s fundamental anti-communist desire, and the prevention of communist expansion would be a by-product of the US’s geostrategic dominance over the USSR. Therefore the geostrategic motivation is the most significant motivation of the Marshall Plan, as it was not only the reason for the desire to rebuild Europe economically, but was also linked with anticommunist desires of the US. Furthermore, as passage C states and passage D implies, the Marshall Plan was outwardly altruistic in order to gain the “moral initiative” over the USSR. From the knowledge that the US government had gained about Russia from Kennan’s “Long Telegram”, it was clear that Stalin would view the Marshall Plan suspiciously and more significantly, would not AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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accept aid nor allow its satellite states to accept the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan would therefore allow the US to gain a moral high ground over the USSR; they had offered it indiscriminately to all states, but it would be the actions of the USSR that would condemn economically weak European nations. The expulsion of Yugoslavia from COMINFORM in 1948 and subsequent friendly relations with the US reflects the USSR’s intense distrust of the US’s motivations, and was a moral victory for the US, who was able to claim that capitalism was the superior ideology.

The Marshall Plan certainly did allow the US to gain geostrategic dominance when the USSR took over Czechoslovakia in a coup after the government attempted to sign up for Marshall Aid. Stalin therefore appeared to be the oppressor while the US appeared to be an altruistic, benevolent entity. This would undoubtedly “strain” relationships between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, which would provide the US with an advantage against a less united communist bloc. The geostrategic interests of the US was the most significant as altruistic, anticommunist, and European economic motivations all facilitated the achievement of American geostrategic dominance over the Soviet Union.

While the desire of gaining a geostrategic advantage was the greatest motivation for the Marshall Plan, it was greatly aided by the desire to stabilise the weakened European economy after the Second World War. This had two benefits: the US’s own economy would benefit from an economically strong and united European trading bloc; it also would help to prevent anti-communist expansion and thus maintain dominance over the Soviet Union. Passages A, B and D all support the interpretation that the positive significance of an economically stable Europe was an important principle of the Marshall Plan, but suggests that this was done due to ulterior motives rather than altruistic ones. Passages B, C and D emphasize the need to rebuild Europe’s economic status; however 28

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passage C does not consider this reason to be a significant motivation for the Marshall Plan.

Passages B and D suggest that instead of the Marshall Plan’s economic policies being motivated by purely altruistic reasons, the benefits of an economically strong Europe were in fact the primary motivation behind the Marshall Plan.

Passage D’s incorporation of the “productivity missions” provided for by the Marshall Plan within the passage shows the significance of the economic motivations of the Plan. The unity of Europe economically was of high significance for the US; a strong European market would also lead to a prospering US economy, having produced half of the world’s products. However this also had ulterior motivations. While a stable European market would benefit the US economically, it would also assist an anti-communist front which would ultimately aid the US’s acquisition of geostrategic dominance.

Passage C states that with economic poverty Europe might have been subjected to “hunger, poverty and despair” that the US were unwilling to risk, as it would leave Europe more susceptible to communist ideology, having almost, in passage A’s interpretation, “justified Marxist predictions by collapsing”. Economic chaos would allow the Soviet Union to gain the advantage; therefore by stabilising the economy, the US was preventing them from doing so.

The Marshall Plan also meant that the US would gain more allies which would prevent the Soviet Union from achieving the upper hand; the Marshall Plan’s terms meant that only capitalist markets could get the most benefit out of it; therefore the US hoped that states that signed up would move towards a capitalist structure and away from the allure of communism. The rebuilding of Japan has clearly demonstrated this; America’s influence was so great that its economy quickly flourished, turning it into one of the most powerful countries in the Far East. Similar nations would become natural allies, thus giving the US the geostrategic advantage.

Therefore while the recovery of Europe’s economy was highly significant, it was not the main motivation as it merely facilitated the US’s desire for a geostrategic advantage over the USSR. Anti-communist desires were of lesser importance compared to economic and geostrategic motivations. It existed as a by-product of the other two factors; therefore while passages A, B and C all acknowledge the role that it played in motivating the policy of the Marshall Plan, they also understand that an anti-communist sentiment was, like altruistic reasons, merely an outwardly showing motivation in order to gain support from the public and Congress. Passage A even suggests that the threat of communism was exaggerated in order to try and influence Congress into passing the Marshall Plan; a fear that became more realistic with Stalin’s coup in Czechoslovakia less than a year later. Passage B on the other hand states that by linking the Marshall Plan and its economic and geostrategic motives with anti-communism “would be very popular” in the public’s eyes. There was real fear that the US and USSR would be embroiled in a war soon after the end of the Second World War, which was cleverly exploited to gather support for the Marshall Plan. The risk of communist expansion was realistic as passage C states, but as this was due to economic chaos, the latter was a more significant motivation for the policy of the Marshall Plan. The significance of a economically weakened Europe and need to achieve long-term dominance over the Soviet Union was greater, therefore anticommunism was mostly a pretence rather than a main motivation.

Like anti-communist motives, altruistic reasons were merely meant to be a façade. By appearing generous while the Soviets seemed petty and bitter, the US could claim “the moral initiative”, as stated in passage C. The conflicts between the attitudes of the two superpowers would lead to a strain in the relationship of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, therefore giving the US the long-term

advantage. However while passage C explicitly states that altruistic reasons were a disguise to cover up the true motivations behind the Marshall Plan, passage D believes that the US’s economic policy of the Marshall Plan was in fact motivated by more altruistic reasons. The Marshall Plan did bring much-needed aid to Europe, as acknowledged by passage D, but this was more motivated by the desire to see Europe’s economies stabilised for the US’s own economic benefits. The US was afraid that Greece and Turkey would be susceptible to the Soviet Union due to Britain’s weakened status; they were unable to maintain the £1 million a day needed to keep Greece afloat, and therefore the US sent aid in the form of food and agricultural implements including mules. Altruistic motives were important in maintaining a benevolent façade; however this was only in order to facilitate the dominance of the US and to gain support from the public, as well as to aggravate the relationship between the USSR and Eastern Europe.

The geostrategic interests of the US were by far the most predominant in motivating the policy of the Marshall Plan as the achievement of geopolitical dominance in the early stages of the Cold War would allow the US to gain a long-term dominance over their ideological counterparts; however this was helped by the economic benefits that the Marshall Plan provided. Economic prosperity in Europe led to a stronger Europe less susceptible to the appeal of communism. Therefore economic stability facilitated anti-communist agendas, which in turn aided the dominance of the US over the Soviet Union through means of public support as well as domestic political support from previously reluctant politicians. Altruistic motives were the least significant and least convincing argument for the policy of the Marshall Plan; it had been decided by the US itself that altruism would merely be a façade that would ultimately assist their aim of achieving a long-term geostrategic dominance over the USSR.

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Passages referred to PASSAGE A. “A main objective of the Marshall Plan had been to win the mouths and minds of the West European peoples so as to prevent them from turning Communist. The money needed for the Plan would never have been granted by Congress unless a considerable amount of emphasis had been laid on the danger of Communism in Europe and on the significance of US aid as a protective device. The Russians can hardly be blamed for interpreting the Plan as an attempt to halt their advance and limit their influence. Western capitalism, which had been on the point of justifying Marxist predictions by collapsing, was being resuscitated and given a prosperity highly alluring to countries on the fringe of the USSR. Molotov at Paris, in the conference of 22 June 1947 which he walked out of in protest, had represented Marshall Aid as an attempt by American capitalists to capture additional markets and thus avoid depression. But the Plan later came to be given a more military significance. Its intention was seen as being to recreate the military power of Western Europe, enable Britain and France to resume their roles as Great Powers and provide armies which would be strong enough, especially when backed by American atomic weapons, to recover the position which had been lost between 1944 and 1947.”

From: Michael Balfour, The Adversaries, published in 1981.

PASSAGE B. “The originator of the idea to link the economic recovery of West Germany and France was John Foster Dulles. In a speech of 1947 he put the future of Germany in the context of the economic unity of Europe rather than in the Potsdam view of Germany as an economic entity. He argued that small economic units in a divided Europe could not prosper; Europe had to unite so as to provide a 30

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market large enough to justify modern massproduction techniques. Walter Lippman, an influential columnist, advocated a European economic union. A State, War, Navy coordinating unit was set up to examine the possibility of future foreign loans. The failure of the council of Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Moscow in April 1947 to reach any agreement on Germany speeded up the process. Three reasons suggest themselves to explain the attractiveness of the concept. In the first place, a multinational aid programme in Europe would permit a more rational use of US funds by aiding integration and the division of labour. Secondly, it promised to solve the French problem. France’s desperate need for German reparations would be replaced by US credits, and the marrying of the French and German economies would reduce French fears of German economic power. Thirdly, by linking it to anti-Communism the concept would be very popular in the USA. Benefits, it was emphasized, would accrue to all sides; an expanding European market would take more US goods and a strong Europe would be a powerful bulwark against communist expansion.”

From: Martin McCauley, The Origins of the Cold War, published in 1983.

PASSAGE C. “Marshall - following Truman’s lead – was constructing a Cold War grand strategy. Kennan’s “Long Telegram” had identified the problem: the Soviet Union’s internationally driven hostility towards the outside world. It had however suggested no solution. Now Marshall told Kennan to come up with one: his only guideline was “avoid trivia”. The instruction, it is fair to say, was met. The European Recovery Programme, which Marshall announced in June 1947, committed the United States to nothing less than the reconstruction of Europe. The Marshall Plan, as it instantly became known, did not at that point distinguish between those parts of

the Continent that were under Soviet control and those that were not - but the thinking behind it certainly did. Several premises shaped the Marshall Plan: that the greatest threat to western interests was not the prospect of Soviet military intervention, but rather the risk that hunger, poverty, and despair might cause Europeans to vote their own communists into office, who would then obediently serve Moscow’s wishes; that American economic assistance would produce immediate psychological benefits and later material ones that would reverse this trend; that the Soviet union would not accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining relationships with them, and that the USA could then seize the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War.” From: J. L. Gaddis, The Cold War, published in 2003.

PASSAGE D. “The fact that money from Marshall Aid was to be confined to the West (with Greece and Turkey honorary West Europeans) undoubtedly made it easier for Truman to secure passage of the European Recovery Programme through Congress the following year, 1948. But by then much had changed. In June 1947, however, the offer of aid through Marshall’s new programme was made to all European countries without distinction. Stalin and Molotov were of course suspicious – the terms Marshall was proposing were quite incompatible with the closed Soviet economy - but their sentiments were not widely shared elsewhere in Eastern Europe, in what was not yet a bloc. The programme obliged European governments to plan ahead and calculate future investment needs, it laid on them a requirement to negotiate and confer not just with the USA but with each other, since the trading and exchanges implied in the programme were intended to move from the bilateral to the multilateral as soon as possible. It constrained

governments, businesses and labour unions to collaborate in planning increased rates of output and the conditions likely to facilitate them. And above all it blocked any return to the temptations that had so stymied the inter-war economy; underproduction, mutually destructive protectionism and a collapse of trade. The “productivity missions” funded by the Marshall Plan, brought to the US many thousands of managers, technicians and trade unionists to study the American way of business – 5000 from France alone. Enthusiastic American New Dealers urged upon European colleagues the virtues of freer trade, international collaboration and inter-state integration.”

From: Tony Judt, Postwar, A History of Europe Since 1945, published in 2005

VIOLET SUN studied Biology, English Literature and History. She is now reading English at St Andrews

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Artwork by ESME MULL (Year 13). Esme is studying Fine Art, Psychology and Religious Studies and working towards the extended project qualification. She aims to study an Art Foundation Year prior to a degree in Fine Art.

To What Extent Was the Role of Gorbachev the Most Important Cause of the Collapse of the Soviet Union?

Grace Wyld

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he collapse of the Soviet Union was quite unanticipated. It is the most important turning point in recent history, marking an end to global fear of nuclear annihilation, and the freeing of 285 million people from former socialist control. Most of its historians lived through the events and in the years preceding the collapse an unprecedented access to Soviet policy makers and politicians was made possible by Gorbachev’s revolutionary policy of Glasnost, opening up a plethora of historical resources. It was both a positive victory of good over tyranny, and also in the thawing of such an oppressive empire, the cue for nationalist conflicts to erupt after decades of frozen antagonism, marking the beginning of a new eastern European era.

It is phenomenal that the elites would “let go, so quietly”, allowing and then facilitating dissolution without even suffering foreign occupation, unruliness amongst its enormous military and police, or sustained civil disobedience, and all despite its nuclear power. The USSR was much more than a dictatorship; it was an experiment in non-capitalist empire building in a quasi-federation of states. Ultimately its collapse is a story of “remarkable human actors on a mammoth stage.”

It was a movement of humanity, on the part of

internal politics, international relations and nationalism. Whilst the role of Gorbachev was essential in offering the people of the republics the chance to demand change, ultimately he failed in his pursuit of the “restructuring”, rather than destruction of the Soviet Union. It was the fundamental disparity between life in the west and in the Soviet Union which made “socialism with a human face” impossible, because the empire, built with grave systemic flaws, was incapable of meeting the fundamental needs of its people.

Gorbachev was a secret social democrat, his intended radical reform directly precipitating the collapse of the USSR, as argued by Archie Brown.

Therefore collapse was founded in internal politics.

Alternatively, as Steven Morewood claims, he was a pragmatic reformer who adapted progressively and had little understanding of the consequences that would arise from the unleashing of such reforms. Or conversely, Victor Sebestyen writes that the catalyst for revolution were Gorbachev’s changing relations with Reagan and Thatcher.

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Union; for instance Aleksandr Yakovlev, exiled in 1972, became head of propaganda for the Central Committee in July 1985. Similarly the Congress of People’s Deputies consciously downgraded the importance of many hard-line party officials and proved a victory for critics of the regime, in particular Boris Yeltsin, the “thorn in the party’s flesh”. It facilitated his political comeback, leading to his demand for Russian Sovereignty from the USSR in 1990 and independence in 1991, something quite implausible just two years earlier.

Gorbachev also reformed the Soviet stance on the international stage, believing that Russia was behind in an increasingly inter-dependent world of freedom and choice. Global politics certainly affected the stability of the USSR; increasing amicability between Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher undermined a central assertion of the Soviet Union: the west as the “decadent enemy”. “Star Wars” and SDI likewise undermined the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction and forced Gorbachev to reduce his arms budget and redirect funds towards welfare and economic liberalisation if he wanted to save socialism in the USSR. However, the crushing of internal dissent was most crucial to the system and thus Gorbachev’s reforms of perestroika and glasnost exposed the system’s failures. Gorbachev seemed to forget that Communism had been imposed in the satellite states by his predecessors, and therefore underestimated the extent of nationalist opposition. Ultimately he lost control of his country, the disaster of the Anti-Vodka campaign embarrassingly fuelling the black economy, and like all who came before him, he failed to tackle the “stumbling block” of agriculture. “I wanted to change the Soviet Union, not destroy it…

I admit that I was not free from the illusions of any predecessors”, reveals his pragmatism. Being retrospective however, 5 years after the collapse of his empire, this source shows Gorbachev determinedly attempting to steer a middle course, just as he did preceding the coup in 1991 to try and maintain 34

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maximum support across the board of very divided politics. Ultimately Gorbachev did not intend to precipitate the collapse of socialism, but rather thought it was possibly to steer a middle path of socialist-democracy. The western image created of him as the “man of our time”, the Nobel peace prizewinner, and liberator of the people, is incorrect.

In 1991 he was strikingly unwilling to renounce his power even when his closest allies willed him to do so; the collapse of the Soviet Union was by no means his intention, but in pushing for reform he exposed the system as lacking both domestic support and viable economic infrastructure.

The entrenched systemic flaws established by the centralisation of Soviet history meant collapse was inevitable; a view provided by Stufford. The regime was brought to crisis point not by economic downturn, but by its inability to facilitate liberalisation and democratisation in such an “inclement environment.” An alternative perspective sees the east-west economic gap as the fundamental catalyst, exposing the weaknesses of the Soviet system and thus occasioning its collapse, as advocated by former US ambassador to Moscow, Jack F. Matlock, who argues that “the Soviet economy would not be able to compete with the more dynamic economies in the world, and – barring fundamental reform- would fall further and further behind.” But, though Matlock omits it, Gorbachev’s reforms did effectively hasten the imminent collapse by revealing its inadequacy.

Though he attempted to introduce free marketization to undermine the old control of GOSPLAN, he could not replace it with a viable option, aggravating social discontent. Andropov tried to push the USSR in a similar direction, however, attempting to cleanse politics of the corruption and indolence of the Brezhnev years and return communism to its “true path”, suggesting that this process was underway preGorbachev. Similarly, the repealing of Article 6 on 7th February 1990 broke with Bolshevism and the CPSU monopoly of a one party state but did not fully commit to democracy. Social standards of

education were rising and people were increasingly aware of what they desired, facing instead an absence of social care, money “soaked up” by the military with little left for civilian use; society was sinking “ever deeper into stagnation”.

Demanding the control of their own markets, outer empire “puppets” exposed the heavy dependency of the Soviet economy on them. The USSR would sell Bulgaria cheap oil as a form of subsidy, which would then “immediately turn around and sell it to the west at world market prices and pocket the difference in hard currency.”

Stalinsław Kania’s removal as Polish leader in 1981 reinforces this, recorded by the KGB at the time: “The Soviet model has failed the test. The fact that the USSR was systematically buying grain from the West is an indictment of serious errors in their management… The power of their regime is marked only through their army and powers of coercion.” In the year that Solidarity in Poland was deemed legal, this source reveals early signs of acute satellite awareness of Soviet corruption and offers a clear perspective that the socio-economic system of the USSR had direct social impacts. Furthermore it implies that noncompliance was consistently suppressed, and thus the authorities were not yet inclined to democratisation.

While economic standards were in fact improving - in 1989 the GNP was up 3%, national income 2.4%, and the budget deficit was down from $120 billion to $92 billion - crime rates were up by an enormous 32%. Wages were up in 1990 by 15% whilst productivity was hardly above zero. The late 1970’s saw very similar economic problems; so systemic flaws could not be the primary catalyst. A common Russian saying was “We pretended to work and they pretended to pay us”, proving that these flaws lay not only in their economic structure but also ideology, which, in offering no incentive to work meant the system relied on provoking fear. Eastern Bloc opportunism took advantage of the gap with the west and the Union could not survive through it.

Satellite nationalism was a fundamental vehicle for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mass protest and the power of ordinary people, as advocated by Michael Meyer, was the most concrete catalyst.

However Gorbachev’s loosened grip, though unintentional, certainly impelled nationalist movements into life, allowing the people to overturn the system, as argued by Stephen Kotkin. Differing from the cult of idolisation that had customarily followed holders of the office, Gorbachev unlocked a “Pandora’s box” of suppressed antagonism across tribal boundaries. Coercion, centralisation and false promises with “plans met only by paper” meant Russians had become desensitised and accepting of their situation, as advocated by Bogomolov, a citizen who wrote an article to “Ogonyok” Magazine in 1988. This source is highly revealing of the less conventional outlook of citizen sentiment in the late 1980’s, and though Ogonyok magazine was highly radical, receiving 310,000 letters between 1986 and 1989 makes it reliable and representative of the mass sentiment, angry and disillusioned.

Gorbachev was not truly supported; rather he was the only channel for protesters to advocate what they really wanted, including his usurpation.

Without him, change seemed implausible. But he failed to control nationalism, for instance his inability to mediate in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and was in many ways oblivious and unpredictable: the Politburo not even discussing the Berlin Wall on 9th November 1989, the day preceding its fall. Indeed sustaining unpopular regimes was enormously expensive; for instance, Jaruzelski’s military regime was subsidised up to $2 billion in total; but nonetheless Gorbachev’s refusal to countenance the use of force, instead commanding the unilateral withdrawal of 500,000 troops and 10,000 tanks in 1988, was both surprisingly radical and effective. He also spread nationalism without meaning to; the bloodshed of Georgia in 1989 and Lithuania in 1991 “served as a formidable weapon in the hands of separatists, AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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Artwork by HANNAH SMITH. Hannah studied English Literature, Fine Art and Spanish. She is now reading History of Art at Nottingham

helping them recruit nationalists… placing Moscow on the defensive”. Ultimately, nationalism was essential to the collapse of the Soviet Union because not only did the masses latch onto Gorbachev as the transport towards democracy, they also proved the weaknesses of the Soviet system, which could not prevent satellite countries from demanding freedom.

Ultimately, the collapse of the Soviet Union was not caused by Gorbachev alone. Whilst he presented a fresh face for the empire internationally, encouraged nationalism and in ending the Cold War with Reagan enabled Eastern European liberation, none of this is enough to explain the complete collapse of the greatest empire of the 20th century with such ease.

Gorbachev exposed an absence of infrastructure. The Soviet Union was fundamentally incapable of attaining either domestic support or a place in the strong economic markets of the 21st century.

Ultimately Gorbachev was not a revolutionary, but having risen rapidly through the system by remaining loyal under the stagnation of Brezhnev years, he mistakenly believed that the survival of the Soviet

Union did not require tyranny. Democracy and soviet socialism were entirely incompatible, and it was Gorbachev’s meddling in a dream of its potential that rapidly brought the Soviet Union into the hands of dissidence with little fight. The ultimate catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union was external: the growing contrast between western freedom and prosperity and eastern shortages and stagnation could only provoke increasing rebellion. This is not to say that Gorbachev’s image of being the revolutionary, as presented to the people of Eastern Europe by western media, was not part of the inspirational drive necessary to encourage change, but to simplify the stimulus for collapse down to the role of one individual would be inaccurate. Rather it was the combination of his loosened grip, systemic economic flaws, and discontent at the disparity between the Soviet sphere of influence and the rest of the world.

GRACE WYLD studied English Literature, Fine Art, History and Maths. She is now reading History at Oxford

Bibliography Brown, A. (2011) “Reform, Coup and Collapse: The end of the Soviet State”, BBC History, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/ soviet_end_01.shtml Cerf, C. & Albee, M. (ed.s) (1990) Voices of Glastnost: Letters from the Soviet People to Ogonyok Magazine, Kyle Cathie, London Engel, J.A. (ed.) (2009) The Fall of the Berlin Wall: the Revolutionary Legacy of 1989, Oxford University Press, New York Kotkin, S. (2008) Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000, Oxford University Press, Oxford Marples, D.R. (2004) The Collapse of the Soviet Union 1985-1991, Longman, Oxford Matlock Jr, J.F. (1995) Autopsy on an Empire- the

American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, London Meyer, M. (2010) 1989: The Year that Changed the World, Pocket Books, New York Morewood, S. (1998) “Gorbachev and the Collapse of Communism”, History Review, no.31 Oberdorfer, D. (1992) The Turn - How the Cold War Came to an End: The United States and The Soviet Union 1983-1990, Jonathan Cape, London Sebestyen, V. (2009) Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, Pantheon, London Service, R. (1999) A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, Harvard University Press, Harvard, Mass.

Francis Stufford (2010) Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties Soviet Dream, Faber and Faber, London

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Artwork by HANNAH SMITH. Hannah studied English Literature, Fine Art and Spanish. She is now reading History of Art at Nottingham

How Far is Identity Constrained by Convention in American Literature?

Walt Whitman’s poetry, Auster’s The New York Trilogy and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury Maddy Foord

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he constraints of conventions on identity in American Literature are presented through both the celebration of liberated characters and the portrayal of others whose true self is bound by the conventions that hold them. Walt Whitman’s poetry rejoices in areas of society which are not constrained by conventions, creating the example he wants to set for America. Personally, Whitman can be described as the “true spiritualist”, as he presents himself as a man who has moved beyond the superficial and celebrates all aspects of life in terms of its immaterial value. However, while Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury and Auster in The New York Trilogy have not written to celebrate constraint, they do create characters who portray the negative effects of conventions on identity.

Conventions themselves come in many different forms; customs of society, expectations of family and the restraints that people inflict upon themselves; and these all ultimately mould one’s identity. In The Sound and the Fury for example, the racist conventions of the South which are ingrained in society lead people to succumb to the identity they feel belongs to them, while the expectations of family members lead both Caddy and Ms. Quentin to break free from the people who intend to mould their identities. Ultimately, predisposed ideas about societal norms constrain identity in American

literature, and it becomes the job of the author to liberate these characters.

America in the 1920’s had racist values embedded into the core of society. After the abolishment of slavery at the end of the Civil War it became a power struggle for white people to still feel they held superiority. The deep indentation of these values is portrayed in The Sound and the Fury through the racist values of Jason, whose overgeneralization of the race, such as when he says “But I never knew even a working nigger that you could find when you wanted him, let alone one that lived off the fat of the land”, allows the reader to perceive his stereotype of African Americans. Furthermore, due to his own low income status prior to the Great Depression, Jason scapegoats black Americans, saying, “What this country needs is white labor. Let these dam trifling niggers starve for a couple of years, then they’d see what a soft thing they have”, which is ironic due to his own bank job loss. In this situation it is the previous conventions of a racist society which have formed Jason’s identity.

Furthermore, Faulkner’s use of writing with colloquialism creates the predetermined identity that Jason perceives, such as how in the sentence “sho comin, boss. You done caught me, ain’t you?” the white superiority that Jason wishes to possess is presented. However, Faulkner does not do this to be AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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racist; he presents these characters in an attempt to portray the injustice of racism. Walt Whitman on the other hand outwardly rejects this in “Leaves of Grass”. His wish for equality is portrayed in his outward disgust of racism: “Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you” and “Do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is something else”. Whitman feels that “Envy is ignorance”, as everyone is part of a unified body , as presented in the poems opening lines, “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos”; he instantly expresses himself as part of unified body which revolves around the land that it is built upon.

Whitman further presents the idea that this need to discriminate originates from the lack of identity also ingrained in the society of America, due to the settlers of American creating a very multi-cultural society.

Whitman uses stereotypes as a way of celebrating identity – “I saw the marriage of the trapper… the bride was a red girl” – and further uses the imagery of her hair, that “straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs”, to portray the power and therefore importance that comes with accepting the past and unifying the many cultures of America.

Furthermore, Whitman celebrates nature as much as he celebrates people: “And here you are the mothers laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers”; Whitman personifies nature as well as using epiphora to create a boundless energy. This suggests that identity is not entirely down to the people of America, but is also inscribed by the land they live on, and its boundlessness liberates the identities of the people within, as further suggested by Whitman’s use of free verse throughout the poem.

Sadly, it would appear that the only character in The Sound and the Fury Whitman would admire would be Benjy. Faulkner’s use of asyndeton becomes a metaphor of how his mental illness inhibits him from understanding the order of society, as demonstrated when he says the servant 40

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Luster “laced my shoes and put my cap on. There was a light in the hall. Across the hall we could hear mother”. Benjy does not understand the societal differences between the servant and his mother, thus deterring him from developing racist opinions.

However, the effect that society has on identity can be further explained by how one perceives their self, not just the image put on them by another. This is epitomized in Quentin’s belief, “That was when I realized that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among”. This is demonstrated through Luster’s lack of self-worth: “Nigger’s money good as white folks, I reckon”, as well as in the description of Dilsey’s clothes, “maroon velvet cape with a border of mangy and anonymous fur”. The anonymity surrounding the outfit becomes a simile for Dilsey and both characters identities are moulded by how they perceive themselves. Quentin then uses this as a justification for his racism. “I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are”.

However Quentin’s alternative view to race has also developed through his flaneuristic qualities as he questions the conventions of his family and what is expected of him. His inability to let go of the past is highlighted by the use of aposiopsis through italics when thinking about his father. “Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books; nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned”; the urgency and obscurity of these thoughts represent how his father nihilistic philosophy causes him to self-scrutinize. Quentin attempts to break away from conventions, particularly in the passage with the Italian girl. “I took up the two passages and gave the bread to the little girl, the woman all iron-grey behind the counter, watching us with cold certitude”; he briefly manages to break away, but conventions pull him back when he gets arrested. It is this constraint and the pressures put upon him by his family to succeed which ultimately lead to his self- immolation.

Similarly to Quentin, Quinn in The New York Trilogy questions his own identity. In taking on the role of the detective, Quinn actually tries to succumb to the conventions tied with this. This is demonstrated in his attempt to “[capture] the right tone”, thus creating a persona alike to that of the detective. Here Walt Whitman becomes a prime example for the celebration of one’s own identity. In his poem “Live Oak with Moss” he declares, “Without any companion it grew there, glistening out joyous leaves of dark green, And its loo, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself ”. The tree becomes a metaphor for Whitman and he uses the beauty of nature to celebrate his own identity.

However, to some this appeared grandiloquent, and Charles Dana in his “Review of Leaves of Grass” says “His words… are quite out of place amid the decorum of modern society”, a comment which defines just how strongly Whitman’s belief in the celebration of individual identity broke free from the conventions of his Victorian society.

Written just a few years before “Leaves of Grass”, the modernist piece “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” presents a man who, due to his constraint by society’s conventions, completely opposes the beliefs of Whitman. “My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin- (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”); Prufrock constantly wonders if even the smallest things such as his appearance fit in line with the norms of society. Elliot’s satirical style is explained through the poems modernist references to other works of literature, such as how the line “I should have been a pair of ragged claws” uses iambic pentameter, a subtle link to the works of Shakespeare. In “Prufrock’s Muttering Retreats” it says that the poem is “spoken by the flame of a man who has been asked to identify himself ”; even towards the end of his life Prufrock does not have the courage to identify himself for whom he really is, asking “shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”, juxtaposing the huge questions he once considered

asking and the reality of his identity which still conforms to society. Whitman however in his “Leaves of Grass” turns this around by presenting himself instead of as a slave to society, a man who represents society as a whole. He does this by giving himself and writing through the persona of America. “I am large… I contain multitudes”; Whitman’s identity is the entirety of America and in this he has liberated himself, becoming the true spiritualist. Ultimately, it appears that identity is determined by how we perceive ourselves, and thus by what we consider is reality.

Both Faulkner and Auster question the origins of identity in their novels by materializing the constraints of society into actual characters. In The Sound and the Fury both Caddy and Ms. Quentin feel constrained by their families Southern values and what is expected of them. Caddy breaks free from the conventions of her family when she falls pregnant, as shown when Faulkner uses the “the muddy bottom of [Caddy’s] drawers” as an emblem of her sullied sexuality. Similarly Ms. Quentin is a rebellious teenager and seems to spurn everyone she meets, deceiving her own family to break loose; “I didn’t even know she had a report card. She told me last fall that they had to quit using them this year”. In the uninhibited search for true identity both characters come to destroy the identities which were predisposed to them by their families. Jason describes Caddy’s room as “not a girl’s room. It was not anybody’s room, and … crude and hopeless efforts to feminise it but added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses”. The hollowness of this description triggers pathos in the reader; however both characters by the end of the novel have been emancipated.

This application of identity from family figures can be seen most extremely in The New York Trilogy in Peter Stillman. With the intention of his father to discover the true origins of language, Peter is locked in a small room for many years, and through characterisation Auster shows how strongly this AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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determined his identity. Quinn describes his image: “Everything about Peter Stillman was white. White shirt, open at the neck; white pants, white shoes, white socks” and the connotations with white and purity infer that Peter has no identity, as his constraints have inhibited him from being able to develop one. This is further presented in his use of many names. “Perhaps I am Peter Stillman and perhaps I am not. My real name is Peter Nobody”; a different name is used in different situations suggesting that as Peter has no identity he must create this from his surroundings. This method mirrors that of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” who is given many names such as “Dolores, Lo, Dolly” after the actions of Humbert Humbert destroy her innocence and cause her to develop different personalities when talking to different people. Both Lolita and Peter Stillman have identities damaged by family figures, and while these are not directly societal conventions, just as the liberation of characters in The Sound and the Fury comes to represent the freedom of their identities, characterisation becomes a metaphor for much wider constraints of society.

While it is clear that identities are constrained by society’s conventions, more so are they constrained by the conventions of literature itself, namely in The New York Trilogy. Within the story identity becomes textual and thus determined by the conventions of the hard-boiled fiction genre. Just as Quinn attempts to “[capture] the right tone” due to the identity he feels should be applied to him, this attempt to fit into the role also aligns with the conventions of detective fiction. The most strongly determined identity in the book is that of the “femme fatal”, Virginia Stillman. According to the genre, the image the reader should have of Virginia depends on how Quinn perceives her, and that she should precipitate a sexual response in Quinn that he might calmly act upon with “effortless efficiency”. She is objectified in his description of her, “hips a touch wide, or else voluptuous, 42

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depending on your point of view” and so she becomes simply inscribed in language with reality being controlled by metafiction. This is supported

by Noam Chomsky’s concept of “linguistic competence” which suggests the description of Virginia should clearly show that Quinn has sexual feelings for her, and these conventions should be granted pre-eminence. However within this description there is some indeterminacy, suggesting Quinn too is questioning the role that the detective genre has assigned to him, feeling he should be able to compete with Max Work, the detective from his own stories, “a man who never failed to profit from such situations”. However through this Virginia’s identity is still inscribed by the text as she is ultimately still subjected to the male gaze that the genre has assigned to Quinn.

Similarly in The Sound and the Fury, both Caddy and Ms. Quentin are objectified by those who constrain them. During a fight between Ms. Quentin and Jason he only observes her physicality, saying, “Her kimono came unfastened, flapping about her, damn near naked”. Through this objectification she becomes a sexual object, removing any identity that extends beyond her sexuality. This effect is similarly achieved in the last section of the book. However, instead of assigning Dilsey a literary convention through other characters, Faulkner removes her narrative voice to represent the idea that she does not have a freethinking voice within the story. Ironically, Dilsey is the only character of the story that recognizes the inwardness of the Compson family, but due to the constraints put upon her through the text she cannot express this. Ultimately, identity becomes constrained not purely by the conventions of society but also by the conventions of literature itself.

Once again, Walt Whitman becomes the epitome of a man who has broken away from this constraint in his poetry. “Leaves of Grass” can be called a deconstructed ballad as although there is no narrative voice in some parts he writes as if he were

America. However while his identity is being changed by literature, Whitman celebrates this as a representation of the fact that the true identity of American people is the whole of America and its history, and by suggesting there is total equality in life and death. “The living sleep for their time… the dead sleep for their time”; once again he becomes the true spiritualist. An alikeness to this can be seen in Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl”, as although a text about moral degeneracy, he suggests we must accept all people, including those “who sank all night in submarine light of Bickfor’d floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s”; he is telling the people of America this is reality and it must be accepted. However Whitman is not completely in the clear; in Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work it is commented on that ““Live Oak With Moss” was composed as a sequence of 12 sonnet-like love poems. Whitman… revised some of the poems and altered their order”. They go on to infer that “Whitman may have concluded that the poems, frank in their treatment of male-male love, were too risky, revealing and compromising”, suggesting that although the most liberating of the texts mentioned, due to historical conventions Whitman too was somewhat constrained by literature.

Quentin too is a character who is constrained by American Literary conventions. His character becomes the epitome of teenage angst, a persona which was commonly presented in young male characters of the post-WW1 generation, as well as post-war generations to follow. For example, The Catcher in the Rye became an emblem of alienation and isolation for the disillusioned and restless postwar generation. Written in a subjective style from the point of view of its protagonist Holden Caulfield, his narrative shows a strong alikeness to the confusion seen in Quentin’s. “I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anything. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block

and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I”d never get to the other side of the street”. This melancholy tone mirrors the one Quentin so often presents: “I slowed still more, my shadow pacing me, dragging its head through the weeds that hid the fence”. Ultimately, Quentin’s character has been created to fill that role of so many young men in the post-war generations, filled with angst and alienation, and so in becoming the emblem for these things he too is constrained by the conventions which literature has places upon his character.

It appears that although identity is strongly constrained by the conventions of society, more so is it constrained by the conventions of literature due to the genre which has been assigned. Faulkner’s modernist techniques are used to explain how everything is defined by society and while Auster’s post-modernist technique is used to suggest we must go about life by only looking at superficial appearances, showing no concern to depth, this is used as a positive as it allows one to break away from the conventions which define them. Whitman however reverses this idea by seemingly constraining his identity by giving himself the voice of America in his poetry, but through this actually celebrating the ultimate sense of freedom and equality he wishes to see in the world. Nevertheless, one must note the impact society has on the conventions of literature.

Although genres vary, these are initially based on the reality than appears in the society around us, and so ultimately literature itself is constrained by society, suggesting that whatever path one takes at looking at the constraints of identity on characters, it always comes back down to the conventions of society.

MADDY FOORD studied English Literature, History and Psychology. She is now reading Psychology at Newcastle (continued over) AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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Artwork by GRACE WYLD. Grace studied English Literature, Fine Art, History and Maths. She is now reading History at Oxford

Bibliography Auster, P. (1987) The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber, London Bradshaw, D. (1996) “Prufrock’s Muttering Retreats”, English Review, 7, No. 1 (September), pp.6-9 Chomsky, N., “Linguistic Contributions to the Theory of Mind”, in N. Chomsky, Language and Mind, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York.

Accessed at http://www.marxists.org/reference/ subject/philosophy/works/us/chomsky.htm

Folsom, E. & Price, K.M. (2005) Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work, Blackwell, London Ginsberg, A. (1956) Howl City, Light Books, New York Kummings, D.D. (2009) A Companion to Walt Whitman, Blackwell, London Nabokov, V. (1971) Lolita, Berkley, New York

Dana, CA. (1855) “New publications: Leaves of Grass”, New York Daily Tribune, 23 July

Price, K. M. & Smith, S.B. (1995) Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-century America, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, VA

Elliot, T.S. (1915) “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Poetry Magazine, June

Salinger, J.D. (1951) The Catcher in the Rye, Little, Brown and Company, New York

Faulkner, W. (1995) The Sound and the Fury, Vintage, London

Whitman, W. (1981) Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition, Penguin, London

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Artwork by ROSIE BARKER-WILLIS. Rosie studied Art and Design (Textiles), Fine Art and Media, Film & TV Studies.

She is now studying Art and Design at Camberwell

Hume states, “Fairness, material comfort and freedom: these are probably [America’s] core values.”

To what extent is this view of America presented in Ball’s American Beauty and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?

India Hill

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he very nature of America’s core values according to Hume is both complex and conflicting, as they rely on each other in order to create an ideal society but equally they can easily overwhelm each other. Freedom and fairness work hand in hand as key components in achieving a “richer and fuller society for everyone”, whereas material comfort or money can be seen as the liberating force as well as the enslaving restraint.

Fairness, freedom and material comfort are all values of the American Dream, and according to Hume this makes the dream the central goal of American society. Both Ball and Fitzgerald wrote during times of prosperity and yet they seem to criticize the values of America during these periods, articulating them as a mere facade for an underlying culture of selfinterest and disparity.

In The Great Gatsby the reader sees a great divide between those who share in the prosperity of the “Roaring Twenties” and those who are denied any hope of fairness, freedom or material comfort. Ball articulates an alternative view of American society in American Beauty. An obsession with conspicuous consumption and the mantra of “self-help” imposed

by the housing boom of the nineties destroys Lester Burnham’s family. The main issue that therefore arises with Hume’s values is that they become imbalanced; Ball and Fitzgerald both imply that American society becomes obsessed with material comfort and therefore cannot aspire to be fair or free.

Both texts explore the value of fairness or the idea of a “social order” where everyone is able to “attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable… regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” However, both authors criticise the extent to which society is actually fair through the articulation of the enslaving forces of capitalism, hierarchy and societal expectations.

Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby during “The Roaring Twenties”, a time of great economic prosperity in America; however, for many it was a time of deprivation and inequality. Fitzgerald focuses on these divides between social classes and genders in order to display how social order is void due to an entrenched hierarchy created by capitalism. The Valley of Ashes explores the consequences of conspicuous consumption and delves into the clouded world of those living in AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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poverty during the twenties. The very positioning of the valley, “About half-way between West Egg and New York”, creates this idea of poverty being akin to limbo and the workers like lost souls who have no place in society. Those unfortunate enough to be excluded from financial success were caught in a web where characters such as Tom Buchanan were able to exploit their desperation. In fact Buchanan smugly states, “I”m the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage”, highlighting a disdain for the self-made man and arrogantly stating that his inheritance allowed him to rise above the those sharing in the post-war “prosperity”. Fitzgerald is being ironic in describing the environment as “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat”, as agricultural industry suffered the most during the twenties with the introduction of mechanical farming; many farmers would have lost their jobs.

In the past America’s main source of trade and economy would have based upon agriculture, and here Fitzgerald brings to attention how in the modern era the only things produced by this “fantastical farm” that is post-war capitalist America are the ashes, the burnt waste that was the byproduct of mass production in 1920s America. Ball takes a similar stance on fairness in American Beauty, discussing how materialistic indulgences have resulted in America’s disregard for fairness within society. He highlights the effect of capitalist corruption on Lester when he says, “Our marriage is just for show. A commercial”, implying that the synthetic nature of materialism has swamped his family to the point that even his marriage is a “commercial” an advertisement for the “perfect life” when in fact their marriage is far from it. Here the reader can infer Ball’s intention of displaying the societal pressure placed upon families to fabricate this image of happiness so that they are being deprived any chance of functioning normally.

Ironically Lester states, “for fourteen years I”ve been a whore for the advertising industry”, directly declaring how he has been marginalised and treated 48

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as the worthless worker, the voiceless by-product of capitalist America. A parallel can be drawn between Lester and the ash workers as they are caught in an unfair social order. Ball and Fitzgerald both imply that this is due to the demise of a balanced American Dream caused by capitalist values emphasising the importance of money.

Freedom is articulated as one of America’s core values, as America’s original settlers came in search of freedom in the “new world”. Freedom is therefore paramount to the idea of fulfilling the American Dream. However, both Ball and Fitzgerald make a point of displaying how this value in particular has been abandoned in the pursuit for financial gains. In both American Beauty and The Great Gatsby the reader can observe how the characters are caught in the complex networks of societal restraints which prevent them from achieving their dreams and undermine the idea of freedom being a value held by American society; freedom almost comes across as impossibility. In particular the female characters in both texts come across as restrained; Daisy by her husband and Carolyn by her job and financial concerns. During the twenties, America was still very much a patriarchal society. Daisy, as a young girl, cannot marry Gatsby as he possesses no status and no prospects for the future, and therefore has to marry Tom Buchanan. Jordan Baker describes “hooking [Daisy]… into her dress” – quite literally tying her within marital restraints. She also observes “the pearls… around her neck” purchased by Tom for a generous three hundred and fifty thousand dollars; Fitzgerald implies that Daisy is being choked by money and Tom’s power over her as a man.

Furthermore Tom buys Myrtle a diamond dog leash for her puppy which draws a comparable symbol between the leash and Daisy’s necklace as Fitzgerald makes a point that Tom has Daisy on a leash which prevents her from ever being able to leave him.

In American Beauty, Carolyn is trapped by her job and restrained by her obsession with the importance of money. Carolyn is seen to be a slave of finance, as

almost everything she says sounds as though it’s an advertisement, such as when she says, “nutritious yet savory meal” when disputing at dinner. She seems to brand everything, as though her life has become one never-ending advertising campaign, implying that her job has taken over her life. In Mendes’ film of American Beauty we see a visual interpretation of the way in which Lester is trapped; shots at the beginning of the film show him imprisoned by the windows of his house.

All the values expressed by Hume, especially material comfort, lie central to the fulfilment of the American Dream; clearly defined by Adams as a society where everyone experiences a “richer” way of life. However Adams also goes on to define that the dream is “not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely.” Tanner observes, “Whatever may have been the… aspirations of the original… settlers, the landscape is now dominated entirely by commercial and material considerations”, which highlights how a focus on money has become a corrupting force over the original dream of freedom and fairness.

Both Ball and Fitzgerald make a critique of America’s stance on materialism during the periods that they were writing as society seemed to develop a gluttonous attitude towards material temptation.

In fact the void of almost a century between the two authors shows a steady progression of greed and materialism in America, which are now defining features of their society today. Fitzgerald articulates materialism as a corrupting and enslaving force through the development of Gatsby’s quest for Daisy. When Daisy leaves him she is said to have “vanished into her rich house, into her rich… life, leaving Gatsby – nothing” and he is heartbroken left yearning for her. Daisy and Gatsby cannot be together because he possesses no money and this dooms Gatsby’s dreams of being with her.

Superficially it may seem that Gatsby genuinely loves Daisy; however, on closer reading one can observe how, tragically, Gatsby has mistaken an attraction to money for genuine love, seen when

Gatsby says “Her voice is full of money”; rather than an emotional feature, Gatsby is attracted to her wealth. Gatsby turns to crime in order to gain enough money and status to win Daisy back; however, this does nothing other than win him a bad reputation. Tom informs Gatsby that Daisy would never leave him and “Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger” which proves that materialism has corrupted Gatsby, turning him into a “bootlegger” and ruined his chance of ever fulfilling his dream.

American Beauty presents money as an enslaving force, especially for Carolyn. She is seen to be a slave of finance, as when she and Lester are having the first intimate encounter for a seemingly long time she becomes concerned with Lester spilling beer on the sofa. She exclaims, “This is a $4,000 sofa… It is not just a couch”, highlighting how for her, money reaches into every aspect of her life even though it has created a barrier between her and her husband.

Ball and Fitzgerald articulate how concern over material comfort has grown to the extent where it begins to destroy the character’s hopes of fulfilling their dream. This imbalance proves disastrous and even fatal for Lester and Gatsby.

Both Hume and Adams seem to omit the idea of appreciation of life and love being key components of society. However both Ball and Fitzgerald bring to attention that the values entrenched within society are in fact pointless if those pursuing the dream have no one with whom to share the rewards. Gatsby’s dreams are doomed as he possesses no true appreciation of life as he wastes his time trying to recapture the past. It is tragically ironic that Gatsby, who is “running down like an over-wound clock” and letting his life pass him by, when faced with the truth exclaims, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” He is destined for disaster as he will never be able to share his dreams with the woman he “loves”.

In the minutes before Gatsby dies, Fitzgerald describes how Gatsby “must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves” revealing AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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Artwork by MATT DUDEK (Year 13).

Matt is studying Economics, Art and English.

He is aiming to study Art at Kingston and become an architect.

that when faced the futility of his dream Gatsby recognises his wasted years and the high price he must now pay for “living too long with a single dream”.

Ball discusses the importance of appreciation of life in American Beauty through Ricky and Lester, saying, “as Ricky knows – and Lester learns – things are infinitely deeper than they appear on the surface”. Ball was originally inspired to write the screenplay after “an encounter with a plastic bag outside the World Trade Centre” which in a way presents an extended metaphor. The plastic bag represents the synthetic by-product of a destructive and harmful America; the background of the WTC highlights the dominance of money and the prominence of capitalism in society. However the thing that Ball recognises as beautiful is the bag caught in an updraft, moving freely. Ball implies that the bag is a metaphor for Ricky and Lester; despite being the synthetic by-product of capitalist society, they allow themselves to disconnect and become unconcerned by money and societal constraints and “moving freely”.

In conclusion, Hume is mistaken in saying that fairness, freedom and material comfort are America’s

core values. Certainly America’s original settlers came to the West in search of a richer and fuller society where everyone could live as equals without hierarchy; however Fitzgerald and Ball both illustrate how the American Dream becomes imbalanced as material comfort becomes the main concern, making freedom and fairness an impossibility. Fitzgerald presents the bleak lives of characters that are marginalised by the unfortunate circumstances imposed by capitalism where status and power are more important than equality and freedom. Ball articulates how a family is pulled apart by the heightened financial anxiety emphasised by the housing boom. Ultimately, freedom, fairness and material comfort should be America’s core values and would be if it were not for the corruption of the dream. Ball and Fitzgerald capture the tragic nature of the American Dream where materialism dominates, resulting in the progressive decay of social order.

Any hopes of a redeemable community where life is fair and free are subsequently lost in a compromise where money and possessions replace friendship, love and family.

INDIA HILL (Year 13) is studying Geography, English Literature and Government & Politics.

She is aiming to read English at Oxford and work in Politics or Journalism.

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Artwork by JESSIE KEEGAN (Year 13).

Jessie is studying Media, Film & TV, Business Studies and Fine Art. She aims to study an Art Foundation year prior to a degree in Graphic Design or Media.

Facing up to Reality: Revolutionary Road, A Streetcar named Desire and the Poems of John Keats Molly Eagles

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evolutionary Road, A Streetcar Named Desire and the poems of John Keats all provide explicit evidence of Eliot’s assertion that “human kind / cannot bear very much reality”. This can be seen in the various coping mechanisms that characters in the text choose to employ in order to evade the disagreeable nature of their realities. By assessing how successful these coping tactics are, and whether they sustain “human kind,” one can decide whether the characters in these three texts can bear any level of reality at all.

The unbearable reality of physical decay proves to be overwhelming for characters in all three texts.

In Revolutionary Road the unbearable reality of women physically decaying is first highlighted by Jack’s “chic, childless wife,” who uses makeup in order to retain her youth and physical beauty. On meeting Sally, Frank notes her as a “sodden, aging woman with lips forever painted in the petulant cupid’s bow of her youth”. This indicates how men perceived woman who were married and naturally aging as “sodden” and how the woman, in turn, responded by creating an illusion of beauty and youth. Preservation of appearance would have been particularly instilled in the minds of women in 1950s America, due to the emphasis that the American dream held on preservation; of one’s home, lawn, reputation, and appearance. To “keep

up with the Joneses” even became an idiom for suburban culture, in which one would measure themselves against their neighbour, affirming the importance placed on upkeep and image. It is suggested by Frank’s description that women, once picked by men to be wives like ripe apples from a tree, are left to become “massively soft and wrinkled.” This shows how the mutability and physical decay of woman is still resented.

Keats, like the women in Revolutionary Road, cannot bear the reality of physical decay, as seen in “When I Have Fears”, written in 1818. In this Shakespearean sonnet he is filled with agony over the irreconcilable anxieties and ignorance that are inevitable features of the human condition. In particular, he fears whether and when he will physically “cease to be,” given the recent death of his brother Tom by this time, highlighting to Keats the fragility of life. To add to his fears, his own physical “ripeness” would be crucial in gleaning the “ripen’d grain” from his “teeming brain,” and fulfilling his potential as a poet: his sole pursuit. The dip-thong of “fears” emulates how he is trapped by the fear that he may cease to harvest his artistic produce, and thus not be “among the English poets”. In the second quatrain, the mythical vocabulary in “Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” – that is characteristic of the Romantic AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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era – portray the lack of clarity he endures in not knowing whether he will “live to trace their shadows,” since the future is “cloudy.” The enjambment after “trace” leaves an abyss at the end of the line to embody the truth that is unknown, and unable to be traced by his own pen.

However, unlike Frank, Keats eventually learns not to resent physical decay. He strives to reach negative capability (his coping mechanism) and to evolve beyond “the egotistical sublime” as seen in “Ode to a Nightingale”. At first, his aching heart is portrayed with slurring dip-thongs in the words “pains,” “aches,” and “drowsy,” while the alliteration of “d” in “drunk,” “dull,” and “drains,” emulate a heaviness, and discomfort with his own physical weight. This contrasts with the following synaesthesia of the “plot” of land as “melodious” and the nightingale’s song containing “summer,” indicating a loss of subjectivity, demonstrating Keats as a “Camelion poet,” in which he is no longer rooted in the “dull perplexing brain” of a man. He has instead transcended on the “viewless wings of poesy.” Andrew Motion explains how Keats would often “tell the truth about human experience by removing himself from the ordinary stream of experience”. It was this transcendence above chaos and the unbearable nature of reality that was particularly key during the Romantic era.

Characterized by rebellion and revolution, the Romantic era inspired a wave of poets to transcend the chaos of changing political and cultural structures, by focusing on nature and the heavenly sublime. Motion goes on to remark on how many of Keats’ contemporaries would “leap to the barricades”, while Keats, instead, “celebrates the alternative power of the imagination.”

Similarly in the sonnet “Bright Star”, Keats tries to locate physical permanence in the bright star, but ultimately seeks it in the “soft swell and fall” of his “fair love’s ripening breast”. The words “sweet and soft” indicate the initial comfort he feels, before learning that the comfort itself is not permanent but 54

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in a state of “unrest”. With the conclusion that permanence is un-attained, he uses negative capability to cope with this unbearable reality, as opposed to resenting mutability and trying to recreate an illusion that is more comfortable. The words “sweet unrest” and “tender-taken” epitomize his negative capability due to the dialectic nature of these words and their interplay of contradictory principles.

This suggests that he has seen the unbearable reality of mutability, accepted it, and by using the sonnet form, he renders it beautiful, and by reaching negative capability, attempts to make it bearable.

Mrs. Givings in Revolutionary Road, on the other hand, sees the reality of her own physical decay, finds it unbearable, and so denies it is happening.

Unlike Keats, she has no artistic outlet, and so cannot render this unbearable reality beautiful. Her only art is in “giving” the flawed American dream of home ownership to others as a realtor. The unbearable reality of her own mutability is made explicit when she “flees lightly upstairs” from a tense situation, and is then confronted by her reflection in the mirror which, she convinces herself, is of a “swift, lithe girl”. The monosyllables “slim,” “white,” and “blue,” are used to describe how she would like to see her feet. These fluid, effortless words contrast with the reality of her real feet, which were “tough and knuckled with bunions” and with the visceral nature of the phrase “splayed on the bed”, showing a discrepancy between the ideal, and the truth. The harsh consonants and alliteration in “curling to hide her corneous toenails” also emulate the brittle and harsh reality of her physical decay.

Once this illusion of youth and beauty is confronted she “sprang up” and hides her feet in slippers that were “(really the nicest things in the world for knocking around the house)” while keeping her “jaw shut very tight”. She thus attempts to repress and contain the decay, and the unbearable reality inside the slippers, the parenthesis, and the firm clench of her jaw. One could argue that the deterioration of her external beauty has made her,

like Sally, “massively soft and wrinkled” in the eyes of men in 1950’s American society. With this, her internal beauty is made irrelevant, and men take it upon themselves to thus define the women, or worse, to let them go unheard; demonstrated by Howard Givings cutting her story short at the end of the text: “He had turned off his hearing aid.”

Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire similarly cannot bear the reality of physical decay since she stubbornly associates herself with the era of the southern belle; one of blossoming ripeness and femininity in the Deep South. Physical decay therefore disconnects her from this false identity of a southern belle, and confronts her illusion of youth and beauty, making it quite evident that the southern belle era has expired and decayed like letters from a past lover, which are “yellowing with antiquity”. The stage directions on page eight expose Blanche’s anxiety in approaching the subject of physical beauty.

She rises, turns around, glances nervously, and touches her forehead shakily. The restlessness of her actions show the desperation she feels in asking her sister for reassurance that she is still blossoming, and not “o’er-brimm’d” like the over ripened fruit in “To Autumn”. The italicised “my” shows how she would emphasize the possessive noun on stage, with a tense and demanding pronunciation, which like the question marks and use of exclamatory, show her demanding a response from Stella as a coping mechanism. The ellipses, caesura and gaps in Blanche’s dialogue reveal her fragmented sense of self to the possibility that she is no longer a southern belle, while the gaps also emulate how disconnected she feels without reassurance, and how she would like her sister to fill in the void, and thus assist in evading the reality of physical decay.

Despite gaining reassurance from Stella, that the reality of physical decay is not happening, it becomes increasingly apparent that her external illusion is deteriorating. Her delicate aged appearance and her delicate aged conventions are confronted too much by the reality that she is in a working class,

multicultural district in New Orleans. She therefore goes beyond the external façade of a southern belle in an attempt to preserve her southern belle identity internally. The seemingly naturalistic detail of bathing is paired with the expressionist symbolism of her inner guilt about sleeping with young male students as a teacher. By compulsively washing her body she attempts to fix her past, and rid herself of feeling tainted by her loose behaviour, and thus restore the innocence of a southern belle, noted by her assertion that she is “feeling like a new human being!” after a hot bath. She cleanses herself as if in “ablution” like in “Bright Star”, but in yearning to be as “stedfast as thou art,” the reality is that she is beneath the star, in need of purification like the “earth’s human shores,” and will never be “unchangeable,” or sustain the illusion of a southern belle.

Her failure to sustain this illusion is confirmed by her rejection from Mitch, which reveals that her façade has failed, and her illusion has not been unchanged by time; similar to the decay of fruit in “To Autumn” which cannot “dost keep”, demonstrated by the enjambment that proves the fruit, and the next line of the poem, must fall, and so is ultimately changed by time. In rejecting Blanche’s offer of marriage, Mitch tells Blanche that she is “not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother”. Her reaction in the words “Fire! Fire!

Fire!” shows that she feels all her bathing has failed to purify her and cleanse her to the sufficient innocence of a southern belle. Therefore she reaches for the opposite of water to cleanse her: fire. The critic Felicia Londre agrees: “If all her bathing has not made her clean, she will invoke the opposite of water”. She therefore surrenders her illusion for a short moment; revealing to herself and Mitch, that maybe she is not so pure after all, and to achieve purity, she must take on new extremes; fire. Here, her “reflexive reversion to the Southern Belle’s habits of thought - that is, emotional dependence on a patriarchal system of male protection for the helpless female”, as noted by Londre, has served to make her AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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true reality more unbearable, as she is not chaste or chased like the “unravished bride” in “Grecian Urn,” who has found “stedfast” immortality on the Urn. Blanche is subsequently rejected since Mitch would rather chase a bride still chaste.

Furthermore, her reality is made worse by the increasingly evident fact that she has no male saviour. Even her reliance on Stanley, to reassure her anxieties, is not met. Blanche asks Stanley if he can comprehend that she was once “considered to be – attractive?” The gap in her dialogue anticipates Stanley to finish the sentence for her, and thus reassure her that she is clearly an attractive woman.

Her insecurity is left as a void to be filled by Stanley, and his failure to do so reveals that her illusion has not been sustained. Similarly when writing to the Texas Oilman, Blanche seeks rescue from a male saviour. This is also an example of her inhabiting the thoughts of a southern belle, in which women were of such a lower status that they would run the risk of relying on men in all situations. However, due to the true context of her reality, she is left vulnerable and waiting for rescue with nobody to save her but the doctors at the end of the play. Her coping mechanism thus contributes to her isolation and vulnerability in true reality, as her illusion ultimately fails her. When there nothing to fall back on, her decay is inevitable.

Another element of Blanche’s illusory existence can be seen in her imaginings of Paris, a fiction in which April also indulges. Blanche asserts her superiority over Mitch by speaking in French when she says “I want to create- joie de vivre!” Her attempt to escape the mundane conversation, and dull reality of the date only belittles Mitch, and isolates her; shown by his monosyllabic response “Naw. Naw, I-.” The caesura in-between each word helps emulates the disconnect between Mitch, and Blanche, who has retreated from reality, and how irrelevant her illusion is in comparison to where she is. The colloquial “naw” also highlights Mitch’s lesser intelligence and cultured thoughts in comparison.

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The words “create” and “pretend” show that she is aware that they are not on “the Left Bank in Paris,” but participating in an illusion. The appeal of Paris seems to lie in its old culture and conventions that may compliment the elegance of the southern belle era in the Deep South. One critic, Toles, argues, however, that Blanche uses language “…so resilient and expressive that it transfigures her demeaning situation into something estimable, something allied to beauty”. Toles therefore believes that Blanche’s illusions serve to make her reality more bearable, when it is clear that they only serve to bring on her downfall.

April Wheeler cannot bare the reality of inertia and stupor in suburban New York, so she finds refuge in deluding herself, and Frank, with performances about Paris. Yates describes how April is positioned while indulging in a conversation about Paris; “she made it a maneuver of classic beauty.” Yates’ use of the words “made it” and “maneuver” reveals to the reader, that the scene is done with intention and choreography. The repetition of the past pronoun “would” and the words “more than usual” and “sometimes,” all imply that the conversation is a performance, thoroughly rehearsed, and routine. This not only shows they are both acting, but also reveals that conversations of Paris are nothing more than a pastime, and therefore their resistance to the inertia and stupor can be seen as evidence of the inertia itself since they are repeated. For April, the appeal of Paris seems to lie in the motion and mobility it would create for her.

While Paris offers the physical mobility of migration, it more importantly would provide the motion and mutability of her own life to naturally take process. This process of ripeness has not happened for her; instead of reaching her potential, she had children, moved to the suburbs, and the process was cut short. She imagines, therefore, that she might find fulfilment and the “whole world of marvellous golden people” she has been searching for, in Paris, which is an illusion in itself. Her

unbearable reality, in the meantime, is filled with delusion and theatrics. References to fiction such as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Robert E. Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest, add to the sense of storytelling and illusion in the scene. The free, indirect narration of “she bore hardly resemblance to the stiff, humiliated actress…” reveals Frank’s awareness that April has gone back into her acting role from The Petrified Forest, but with more success this time around. By participating in the act, it therefore also exposes that Frank would rather foster April’s delusional reality in which he convinces himself that their pretence is convincing. A feminist might argue that with the sense of futility and boredom shared by many women in 1950s America, The Petrified Forest offered an alternative world for April. The isolation, and oppression of patriarchal American society, in addition to the lack of sorority at the time, made women the “other”. With this “otherness” highlighted by Simone De Beauvior’s The Second Sex “in 1949, women may have sought refuge in other realities, to make their isolation more bearable, as seen in April, who lives out the role of her fictional character in real life.

Although April and Frank, on first impression, find the reality of inertia to be the most unbearable, it is in fact the reality that they are fundamentally incompatible as a couple that makes for an even more unbearable reality. While Frank is willing to acknowledge that there is more to life than the façade of Suburban of America, shown by his social commentary, revealing that he is aware of the truth, he will not embrace this “truth about human existence” told best by “removing” oneself “from the ordinary stream of experience.” Instead, he remains part of the Suburban culture that he is supposedly disgusted by, even revealing his lack of commitment when he says, “The hell with reality”. This causes a discrepancy between himself and April, who like John Givings, is ready to find the truth, whether it be hideous, physical decay, or total decay: death.

Instead, Frank uses present and charismatic speech

to try and overcome the recurring stasis of the social interactions in 1950’s American suburbia, in an attempt to highlight the truth. He remarks with vivacious zeal on the “comfortable little God damn mediocrity” that his fellow suburbanites endure.

However, Yates’ use of the conditional tense prepares the reader for Frank’s own hypocrisy. Yates reveals that Frank’s seemingly passionate and spontaneous comments are in fact repetitive; this is seen in “Frank would develop the theme,” and “there would follow an anecdote of extreme suburban smugness”, indicating that in attempting to overcome the mundane, he has himself become the mundane with his predictable performance. He would rather gain the admiration of his peers, demonstrated by Milly’s endorsement, and continue his performance of social commentary without acting on it or being the change he wants to see.

One could argue that he fears going beyond purely commenting on the truth of reality, lest he end up like John Givings, who in “giving” the truth, was sectioned. The discrepancy, however, lies in the fact that April wants to run the risk of beginning a life of more substance.

Worse still, Frank has temporarily fostered and participated in April’s plans for Paris (whether she is aware of this is debatable) when he never really intends to make it happen. Essentially he has found his own mobility by participating in the American dream. Promotion, cars, and even infidelity make him feel like “Zeus” or a “Lion”; Frank has found upward motion and a sense of mobility. When April finally realizes that Frank has only been deluding her, she feels fooled, her illusion shatters, and her total decay is imminent. She even tells Frank, “If black could be made into white by talking, you’d be the man for the job.” Ford notes that at the end of the novel, April “finally succumbs to a lack of vigor and becomes complicitous in being lied to, then tricked and demoralized, then driven crazy…” By the end, April’s decay is complete. Frank’s betrayal has shattered April’s illusions and so she destroys the AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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Artwork by ESME MULL (Year 13). Esme is studying Fine Art, Psychology and Religious Studies and working towards the extended project qualification.

She aims to study an Art Foundation Year prior to a degree in Fine Art.

symbolic allusion to their suburban life (her child) inside of her, and by doing so she destroys herself; allowing herself to embrace the true and ultimate reality: death. A feminist might argue that with the patriarchal oppression in 1950s American society now paired with the patriarchal destruction of her alternative reality, the final place she could escape to was death. Frank, and America had fooled her with their dreams: the American dream and Paris.

Therefore, all three texts affirm that human kind cannot bear very much reality. While humankind may employ sustainable coping mechanisms in order to relieve itself of the agony that reality imposes, such as Keats reaching negative capability, and Frank deciding to embrace the American dream, others employ coping mechanisms which eventually contribute to and enhance the unbearable nature of their reality. This can be seen by Blanche and April who escape into worlds that, when punctured and shattered, make for an even more unbearable reality than before. The result is total mental or physical decay.

MOLLY EAGLES studied Biology, English Literature and History. She is now reading English and Creative Writing at East Anglia

Bibliography Ford, R. (2000), “American Beauty”, New York Times Book Review, April 9 Keats, J. (1994) The Complete Poems of John Keats, Modern Library, New York Londre Hardison, F. (1997) “A Streetcar Running Fifty Years”, in The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ed. Matthew C. Roudane, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 56-59 Williams, T. (2009) A Streetcar Named Desire Penguin, London Motion, A. (2010) “An Introduction to the Poetry of John Keats”, Guardian, January 2, viewed on February 2nd 2012 at www.guardian.co.uk/books/ 2010/jan/23/john-keats-andrew-motion Toles, G. (2009) “Blanche Dubois and the Kindness of Endings”, in Tennessee Williams” A Streetcar Named Desire, ed. Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, New York Yates, R. (2001) Revolutionary Road, Methuen, London

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Artwork by FLORA GRANT (Year 12).

Flora is studying Dance, Psychology and Art.

What is the real meaning of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

Chris Belous

T

he Rime of the Ancient Mariner, for its sheer length and breadth of content, cannot be said to have one meaning alone; the interplay of surface and symbol throughout allows the reader, should they so choose, to read whatever meaning is most relevant to them. Coleridge stated that his aim was to imagine “persons and characters supernatural”, and perhaps nothing more, thus requiring the reader to actively engage with the poem and its possibilities - what Roland Barthes termed a “scriptible” approach. Therefore, in spite of the moral and religious meanings that can be taken from the text, the real meaning of the poem is simply that individuals should think for themselves.

As the surface meaning of The Rime is so clearly signposted as to be suspicious, both in the Gloss and in the main text, the sentiment behind it becomes more important the moral itself. The Mariner takes on the role of a preacher in the proclamatory lines, “Farewell, farewell! but this I tell / To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!” (610-611) Here, “I tell” is present indicative – there is no conditional or future that might give the WeddingGuest a choice or room for manoeuvre in hearing the Mariner’s moral. This, coupled with the less subtle “to teach” in the Gloss alongside, makes the Mariner seem dogmatic in his approach; even though the moral itself, to have “love and reverence [for] all things that God made and loveth”, is not problematic, its presentation carries with it an undertone of criticism with regards to moral

indoctrination. As the Gloss adds to this more overtly than the main text, it can be argued that Coleridge is using the revised version to rail against critics such as the infamous Mrs Barbauld, who believed the original lacked a moral even though Coleridge himself believed that its “chief fault” was the “obtrusion of moral sentiment”. Taking this into account, it becomes clear that the surface moral is not part of the true meaning for the poet: rather, it is one of the many potential meanings that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner may hold, whether Coleridge meant the poem to serve an educational purpose or not.

If the surface moral of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner should not be taken at face value, then neither should any other aspect of the poem including the Wedding-Guest. This character can be argued to be a symbol of the reader, because in the supernatural and fantastical world of the Mariner, the Guest becomes the only figure in the poem whom we can naturally relate to. He is clearly deeply connected to reality, as his reaction to the “loud bassoon” in the real world of lines 31-32 interrupts the Mariner’s tale, not only signified by his action initiating a new line, but also by the hyphen that ends the line before it.

Furthermore, his emotional journey is realistic and easy to empathise with – at first, he “beat[s] his breast”, the alliterated plosives emphasising his initial annoyance at the Mariner; later, his statement that he “fear[s]” the Mariner and his hypnotic, AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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Artwork by FLORA GRANT (Year 12). Flora is studying Dance, Psychology and Art.

“glittering eye” suggests that he has, involuntarily or not, become afraid yet also enthralled; finally, he is changed by the Mariner to “a sadder and a wiser man […] the morrow morn”. None of this can be considered out of the ordinary, thus creating a comfort zone for the reader to do as the WeddingGuest does and engage in the suspension of disbelief. The Wedding-Guest is carried away by the Mariner’s story: thus, by proxy, are we. Moreover, by being included in the poem in the first place, the Wedding-Guest becomes an active part of the Mariner’s story, suggesting that the reader is invited to play an active role in the shaping of its meaning as well.

We do not, however, have to become melancholy in the way that the Wedding-Guest does: his response may be interpreted as a wider part of the presentation of religion. The reader may wonder why the character of the Wedding-Guest has the seemingly arbitrary quality of being a guest at a wedding – indeed, if a wedding is a religious, spiritual occasion, why is the Mariner, a man reverent of God, keeping the Guest from attending?

The answer may be that, alongside the criticism of dogma, Coleridge is using the wedding – a comical affair involving “merry din”, a “loud bassoon”, and “feast[ing]”, which has no sign of spirituality associated with it – to comment on the

misinterpretation and corruption of Christianity in general. The Mariner detains the Guest in order to educate him in true spirituality, successfully making him “turn away” at the end of the poem from the symbol of false spirituality that is the wedding.

In a way, the Mariner can be compared to the Christ of the New Testament, as he aimed to reeducate the Jews who had become so mired in custom and ceremony that they had lost sight of the true sentiment behind their practices. Thus, the Guest’s final, sad response might be seen as an admission of shame in his previous misinterpretations and religious behaviour.

The Wedding-Guest finds religious meaning in the Mariner’s tale because it is pertinent to him – yet this may not be the same for other readers. For some, there may be a political or prophetic meaning to be gained; others may simply come away with a greater appreciation of the power of nature; many may find no meaning at all and simply take it as an example of the way in which the human mind is able to weave intricate but implausible stories. The possibilities are infinite, and it would take lifetimes to write about all of them (as some critics are trying to do). This may mean that the real meaning of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is that there isn’t one – or rather, that the meaning of the poem is whatever you make it.

CHRIS BELOUS (Year 13) is studying Maths, History, English, German and Latin. She aims to read English and German at Edinburgh.

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Artwork by MATT DUDEK (Year 13).

Matt is studying Economics, Art and English.

He is aiming to study Art at Kingston and become an architect.

Ahmed: a Short Story Samiha Rahman

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t was 4pm when class finished and the students came rushing out. Immediately, a symphony of mobile ringtones permeated the air with life.

Some students stood solitary, casually smoking.

This cold, grey corner of December transformed into a cornucopia of colour and sound. A fierce wind buffeted the pedestrians from the east, changing hairstyles and throwing coats and umbrellas into flight.

Ahmed walked out with some of his classmates and pretended to laugh along, unaware of the humour in the joke that their laughter followed. As the laughter died out, he awkwardly shuffled his feet outside of the group that they had formed. He stared at his watch and hauled his heavy backpack homewards, turning away from the group. He felt someone tap his shoulder abruptly. “Where are you going?” Michael asked.

Ahmed gulped and pushed up his foggy glasses with a finger. “I-I need to go home, my mother will be worried. It’s getting dark and besides, I have work to do,” he blurted out.

“You sure? We’re headed down to the pub,” Michael said.

“No, you know, not really much of a drink…”

“Oh, that!” Michael said. “Don’t worry about that, mate! They have Coke.”

Ahmed nodded his head nervously. He stood still and looked up at the whole group talking at once.

It’s now or never, he thought.

“Okay.”

They laughed and patted him on the back, before continuing to walk. He slowed down behind and coughed as his throat became drier and drier.

The walk to the pub was one of the longest Ahmed had ever experienced. It was an old white building and it towered over him. His glasses began

to slip off his nose as he became hot and sweaty.

“You guys go ahead,” he said weakly. As they opened the door, a strong stench filled his nostrils.

He assumed this stench was alcohol, an odour he found familiar, yet hard to describe. He could already feel his lunch coming back up. Nevertheless, he slowly walked in and observed the new environment. The broken tunes of old men singing made the pub sound eerie, and the smell of old cigarettes from outside and the alcohol from inside intermingled to leave him feeling uneasy.

He saw two women in what looked like Christmas bunny costumes; they were very revealing. He felt his face flush and he quickly sat down on a stool and watched as his classmates effortlessly chatted amongst themselves. He also saw the selection of drinks available behind the bartender in neat columns. There were also different shapes of coloured bottles, scattered around the table and he tried to spot a drink he could recognize.

“Who’s got the first round then?” asked Lydia, a pretty brunette who Ahmed noticed often in his other modules.

Michael turned to him and asked, a devilish smile on his face, “You sure you won’t give it a try, mate?”

“No, I”ll stick to the Coke,” he smiled back, nervously.

“Oh right, sorry,” mumbled Michael. “Three pints of cider and a normal coke, no ice, is that okay?”

Ahmed nodded his head slightly and sighed calmly. He looked out the window: it was pitch black apart from a dim light on an outdoor table.

The light went and now he could see nothing beyond the pub patio. He looked at his watch and fumbled around with the toothpicks on the side.

Then he felt a tap on his shoulder and rapidly turned around.

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Artwork by ISABELLA BUSONI-CONWAY (Year 13). Isabella is studying Dance, Fine Art and Religious Studies. She is applying for an Art Foundation year prior to studying Fine Art.

“Your drink,” said Ben, another one of his classmates. Ahmed thanked him and took the glass and analysed the drink thoroughly. He carefully placed his nose inside and sniffed for any scent of alcohol. Seems okay, he thought. He took one careful sip, his hands trembling with uncertainty, and swallowed it as quickly as he could. It was the worst coke he had ever had, but he was thirsty and drank it all in another gulp.

He looked around at his group with their pints of cider. The glass mugs were big and wide and filled with what looked like golden dew, topped with a creamy froth. It looks like the best thirst-quencher in the world, thought Ahmed. He couldn’t help but smile as he saw a little golden reflection on Michael’s cider. Michael looked up, and he was smiling, but Ahmed couldn’t help but feel he was a little different from before. “Hey, Ahmed, you seem to be finally getting into the pub spirit.”

Ahmed looked on, still fascinated by the beaming amber liquid within a soft heavenly cloud.

“How about some more coke, eh?” chuckled the barman while cleaning a glass.

Ahmed’s smile slowly faded away. “N-no, thank you,” he stuttered. The barman shrugged. Michael sighed in mock defeat. Ahmed looked down at his beer-mat. He looked at his watch and pushed his glasses back on his nose.

“Come on Ahmed, just a pint, it won’t do you no harm.” By then the group had gone through quite a few rounds. Ahmed could feel cold sweat dripping down his back. He shuddered.

Suddenly, a fat mug of thick, orange liquid landed in front of him and he hastily rose up.

“Just in case you change your mind,” said the barman and winked. Ahmed looked around. He saw the barman whip his towel against his shoulder. He looked to the right and saw Michael’s mates pointing at the pint.

“Go on, mate, just drink it!” one of them said.

The air felt suddenly heavy. Ahmed smiled and he felt his hand, trembling, reach out. His sweaty hands froze at the touch of the thick, slippery glass. His fingers curled around the handle.

Outside, the eastern wind choked to a breeze.

SAMIHA RAHMAN (Year 13) is studying Maths, Biology and Chemistry. She aims to study Dentistry at Kings College, London.

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Artwork by BRONWEN ANWYL (Year 13). Bronwen is studying English Literature, Fine Art and History

Does the Cost of University Represent Good Value for Money?

Conor Fitzpatrick

F

ollowing the recent rise in tuition fees for UK students, many people have begun to question whether the qualification gained is worth the debt incurred. Teenagers could previously drift into higher education without the fear of paying back large loans. Now, however, due to funding cuts, students such as myself have been forced to sit up and pay attention.

The fact is that a three-year university course is now likely to cost £27,000. Critics may argue that this is only the “maximum” that universities can charge, but even London Met – ranked 119 in the UK – will be charging £9,000 a year for many of its courses. This means that the cost of a degree bears little relevance to its quality as, for example, a degree from Cambridge will cost exactly the same amount.

The question of value for money is therefore raised because the potential value of a first-class degree from a prestigious Russell Group university is significantly greater than that of one from a former polytechnic. After all, the purpose of going into higher education for most students is to further their career prospects, and Russell Group universities have the highest employment rates one year after graduation. Choosing to go to university is therefore an investment in your future because you are gambling that your qualification will get you a better job with a wage high enough to pay off your student debt.

In addition, we must also consider the cost of living while at university. Housing, food, clothing

etc. are essentials that simply must be paid for, and even conservative estimates put this figure at £30,000 over three years. This means that students could now face a total debt of approximately £60,000 – equivalent to the deposit for an average house in London. This will put a massive strain on students’ finances, so will force many to get a parttime job. This leaves less time for students to study and take part in extra-curricular activities. They will therefore not be able to fully immerse themselves in the university experience, so will not get total value for money.

As an Economics student, this immediately makes me consider the opportunity cost of going to university. By this, I mean, what else could you be doing for three years? Some would argue that in industries such as journalism, experience is far more valuable than a piece of paper. Here, three years of on-the-job-training may be more useful than a qualification when trying to meet your 8pm deadline in a hot, loud, chaotic office. This shows that higher education may not even help you in some industries – which would make university an unnecessary expense.

However, this depends on whether you are even able to get the job without a degree. Although not technically essential to write for the major broadsheets, it has become the norm for journalists to have a degree. Likewise, areas such as financial services and law are exceedingly difficult to break into without going through a graduate training AD ASTRA - Issue 1

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scheme – with PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte topping The Times’ top graduate employers list.

That said, this culture could be changing.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers have created a pioneering recruitment programme that targets non-graduate school leavers. This appears to be in response to calls that, “our education system trains us to be corporate sheep”. The founder of Kelkoo, Phillip Wilkinson, argues that “we could make a start by having a lot more entrepreneurial style modules that people can take... to really help them understand finance and business.”

Going straight into employment does have another key advantage though – you get paid. Many people, me included, would rather earn money than spend it. Surely it is human instinct to want to get straight into the world of work? Furthermore, many will compare themselves to the likes of Alan Sugar or Richard Branson and believe that they are the next great “wheeler dealer” who can be successful without attending university. They may be more the exception than the rule, but the fact remains that going to university is no guarantee of success. Youth unemployment is at an all-time high and there are a number of graduates struggling to get a job at minimum wage. A £27,000 degree is therefore worthless unless it enables you to get a job, and in this time of austerity there may simply not be enough jobs for every graduate.

Could the answer simply be to go back to the basics? My Nan would often remind me that, in her day, things were much simpler. Very few people went to university – you were just expected to get a job! And how, if you had wanted to become a manager, you”d simply work your way up the company. There was no faffing around with paying for university; you could simply pick an industry and get stuck in. Indeed, it is important to consider that the vast majority of British companies are not large multinationals, and that there are plenty of jobs that require vocational skills such as being a 70

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sales assistant or a plumber.

The system worked, but in this day and age top jobs are off limits to those without a 2.1. The quality of your degree has become a measure of your value to a company. In this sense, a degree is good value for money in that it opens the door to the highest paying jobs, which require a degree. For instance, roles such as teaching, accountancy and law call for professional accreditation which can only be obtained through higher education.

Another benefit of going to university is the overall experience. Writing to a number of top universities, I found that they (unsurprisingly) consider themselves to provide good value for money. Peter Dunn, Head of Communications at Warwick, claims that university is, “value for money because it can offer a unique experience. The best universities, such as Warwick, are globally networked organisations working with partners across the world.” This is significant because it allows “students to develop as globally aware and engaged individuals.” Sophy Ridge, political correspondent at Sky News and a graduate of Oxford, also points out that “What you don’t realise at the time is Oxford is one massive networking experience. You’re studying and making friends with the brightest people in the country - who knows where they may end up in 10 years time?” She feels that there is, “no question that I wouldn’t have got where I am so quickly if it wasn’t for Oxford.”

Furthermore, some students will be dishing out a whopping £27,000 purely for the joy of education.

Here, it is impossible to comment on whether this is value for money because each student will have a different opinion on the value of “knowledge”.

Similarly, many students want to learn how to think for themselves, formulate and defend arguments and accept constructive criticism – skills which are highly valued by employers. For instance, Margaret Exley, owner of Stonecourt Consulting, says that, “If I were a sixth former now, I would go to university. It gives you real understanding of how

the world works and how to solve problems.� These are clearly invaluable skills as they have helped her become a greatly successful woman, but it is again difficult to put a number to these skills as they are not quantitative.

For me, though, university is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to push myself out of my comfort zone. I see it as an opportunity to move away from home, meet new people and become independent. Moreover, I actually enjoy learning, and there is no better place

to do so than at university. In particular, I will relish the prospect of using world class libraries and attending the lectures of leading academics.

However, I accept that university is only good value for money if you make the most of it. I think that if you don’t throw yourself into university wholeheartedly, you will miss out on the best that higher education has to offer.

One thing is for certain though: Student Union bars will always represent good value for money.

CONOR FITZPATRICK (Year 13) is studying Maths, Further Maths and Economics. He aims to read Economics at Cambridge.

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