Liberal Humanism In Thomas Hardy's The Withered Arm

Improved Essays
Liberal humanism is the first in the way of organized and structured analysis founded as an official school of thought. Colleges, which at the time of the creation of liberal humanism were mainly religious institutions, were the first places the ten commandments of liberal humanism were set in stone. In order to use liberal humanism, you must first omit all prior understanding and future predictions of the universe. There is nothing except the text you are attempting to analyze. While this particular practice was in use for several years, it has since then become completely irrelevant. Attempting to analyze a more modern text, such as Thomas Hardy's The Withered Arm, with only this method strips the text of all of its impact the author attempted to convaey and any meaning the text might have had on the reader. To find the meaning in anything, any aspect of our lives, we must compare. How can you understand happiness without using all of the other emotions to help you comprehend it? According to those who use liberal humanism, this no context, analyzing is the only way to understand “good” (good under this particular literary umbrella) literature.
Originally, this type of analysis was used specifically to break down religious texts, and in a way this could make sense. By separating yourselfs from the text, students may have been able to see the word of God in a clearer sense then if they were just reading it. The holes in this theory began once the rules were used on more modern texts, such as novels and poetry. Liberal humanism has a firm standing against flowery and descriptive language. It is supposed that this sort of language takes away and distracts from the texts true nature, and that being direct and simple is the finest way to create “good” writing. In this theory most poetry is disregarded as too frivolous to be taken seriously. The different novels that the theory was tested against were just as scrutinized. When Thomas Hardy wrote the Withered Arm, he wrote it within the context of his own worldly experience. Of course, Hardy was never a milkmaid, a bastard child, a beautiful young woman, or a farmer but the reader, and those who analyze the text can infer that Hardy was able to construct those experiences through his own understanding of the world. Hardy wrote this story to tell a message and expand on his own ideas of femininity, class, and self worth. Nonetheless, when using liberal humanism, the reader are meant to disregard the author's own intention and position. Sadly, this is somewhat difficult in this particular situation because the author was a well known individual whose life was public. In this context it becomes difficult to separate, even if only on a subconscious level, as the reader would already be bias in this matter. To continue with this train of thought, perhaps the reader was a milkmaid, or a bastard child, or a young beautiful woman. This would also be an inherent bias, as this would affect how the story was seen. This is one of the biggest problems that comes with using liberal humanism, as no one can possibly completely separate from any text. As human beings, our subconscious minds are constantly forming connections

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Liberal Education is meant to cultivate students, which means it intends to help with personal growth, knowledge, skills and also gives them the opportunity to learn about a variety of subjects including a specific field of their choice. This sounds very much like the purpose of college and lower level educations. David Brooks, who wrote “The Organization Kid” explains his views on liberal education and its effects on students. Brooks argues that these students are extremely intellectual, very respectful and motivated but that their educational upbringing and expectations put on them have left them as nothing more than programmed robots that take orders and have no character. This becomes evident in his interviews with students from Princeton…

    • 1679 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nt1310 Unit 3 Assignment

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    An analysis is breaking a large topic into smaller pieces. This is done to better understand the subject in the text. An analysis is written in your own words. You are not telling the reader about the main viewpoints of the author or what the writing is about, but exploring the structure and the details of the text. The reason for breaking the text into parts is to understand it better.…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The novel Night written by Elie Wiesel is a powerful and touching book. This book allows you to see through the eyes of a 15 year old boy, the torture and other horrors that took place in Auschwitz, a concentration camp run during the holocaust. Through his eyes we see how they were stripped of their basic rights as human, and how when it seemed like they were being humanized, they were really being broken even more. They started to become nothing more than empty shells where a human once lived.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Elie Wiesel and every prisoner of the Holocaust fought with the tension Humanity vs. Dehumanization throughout the book “Night”. At the beginning of the novel Elie and the rest Jews had a regular life. They went to the Synagogue they spent time with families. They were ordinarily human beings. Nonetheless when the Hungarian police started to round up Jews everything began to change.…

    • 344 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Humanization Denied The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a story of a young boy who goes through the holocaust from the time the Germans took over his home town of Sighet to the time he was set free from the Germans and their concentrations camps that totally stripped away their faith, all their rights, human qualities and for some the will to live. This is all due to by the way they were treated and made to feel like they were no longer humans. To define dehumanizing is to say to deprive one of human qualities or attributes; divest of individuality, to render mechanical, artificial or routine. (http://www.dictionary.com) There were many times the Jew were made to feel like they were less than human.…

    • 1473 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today everything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories...” (Wiesel 30).…

    • 690 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the article “Only Connect…”, William Cronon writes about the qualities gained through a liberal arts education. Cronon (1998) believed, that best type of education, is based off “nurturing human talents to expand the amount of freedom”, experienced in a society (p. 1). Even though not many people really understand how a liberal arts education work, it instills values that make effective leaders. Liberal education has changed quite a lot throughout history. This education was once solely for aristocrat males that focus on bettering themselves, to separate themselves from the population.…

    • 876 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Genocides, such as the Holocaust of World War II, test their victims both mentally and physically. In surviving virtual Hell, the dehumanization process enacted upon the victims strips them of their personality, both inside and out. Through standard uniform and a robbery of one’s name, replaced with a number cruelly etched into one’s skin, the walls of a concentration camp physically make the many into one. The degradation that occurs mentally is yet even more tragic. Elie Wiesel, survivor and author of his memoir Night, recounts this experience.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bradbury uses his platform of writing to warn the readers against the exiling of emotion, while this will create the appearance of a dystopia, but in contrary makes a deeper depression in many people. In conclusion, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s character is used to raise awareness and critique humanity about its human nature, enthrallment in technology and depression of mind brought on by inequalities. Although the beliefs of today’s people are changing, Bradbury…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are many different accounts on the fall of the Qin dynasty. The different accounts are either secondary or primary sources. Some are reliable and others not so trustworthy. There are many aspects that make it easier to decipher which sources are not realistic and which really tell the story of the Qin dynasty. Three documents were given to piece together the fall of the Qin dynasty.…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In this style of criticism, we focus on the piece of literature only, ignoring possibilities and intents in favor of what the text presents. Attempting to connect an…

    • 1299 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “We human beings have a remarkable ability to dehumanize one another: to conceive of others as subhuman creatures, and to treat them accordingly” (Smith). This was said by David Livingstone Smith Ph D. and he isn’t necessarily anyone famous, but his arguments and points made in the article, Dehumanization, Genocide, and the Psychology of Indifference, relate unbelievably to Elie Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust in the book, Night. David Livingstone Smith also relates to Night because he brings up dehumanization a lot and that is because the main theme of Night is dehumanization. The book is a recollection of what happened to Elie Wiesel during his time in the Holocaust. Not only in the book were the prisoners dehumanized but also those who…

    • 1179 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Article “Only Connect…The Goals of a Liberal Education” written by William Cronon, talks about what it is to be a liberally educated person, as well as what it takes to be a liberally educated person. Cronon provides examples of the word liberal means in other languages such as Latin, Greek, and Old English. After providing more definitions of the word, at the end, the main definitions are growth and freedom. One of the questions Cronon asks is whether or not certain courses should be required in school in order to provide liberal education to students. He is trying to question if courses like history and writing help people to be more rounded as a reslt of…

    • 117 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Out of all the Humanists discussed in class, Thomas More provides the best insights into the human condition. First of all, in More’s important book, Utopia, he wrote about his ideal and imaginary nation that he wished the world could reflect. In this Utopian society, people share everything, have abundance, work and eat as a community, and lead ordered, regulated lives. More wished that everyone could be equal, and described that in his Utopia “nobody owns anything but everyone is rich – for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?” Secondly, Thomas More advocated a limit on private property to relieve the heavy burden of anxieties on the community.…

    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jane Eyre Human Nature

    • 149 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Human Nature and the principal of what characterizes an individual as a human being plays a strong role in Jane Eyre. Can an individual repress and tame their nature, or is it inherently inescapable? The characters of Jane Eyre are either denying their intrinsic nature by attempting to suppress it, or embracing it as though it is an essential component of human life. Characters which choose to control and suppress their nature and natural tendencies tend to be religious in Jane Eyre. While it makes sense religiously to restrict natural impulses like sexual appetite and avarice, the assumption would be that religious figures would gravitate towards nature and human nature because it would be the epitome of Gods image.…

    • 149 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays