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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES 

Frances Trollope's Insight into the American Identity in Domestic Manners of the Americans 

Not Just Personal: Platonism in The Great Gatsby 

The Rhetoric of American Protest: Thomas Paine and the Education of Tom Joad 

Richard Wright's Freedom: The Existentialism of Uncle Tom's Children 

Out of Eden: Oates's Upon the Sweeping Flood  

Making and Breaking Meaning: Deconstruction, Four-level Allegory, and The Metamorphosis 

POEMS 

Ironing Board  

Modern Mexican Instructions  

Small Blessings 

Treasure Hunt  

Valley Falls  

Wild Horses Dying  

This Year, In Autumn 

Near Spring 

Ranek 

Giving Over  

Hiking the Northeast Trail 

All This Time 

Fragments  

A Parcel of Bones 

REVIEWS 

Frederick J. Ruf; The Creation of Chaos: William James and the Stylistic Making of a Disorderly World  

Glen A. Love; Babbitt: An American Life 

Robert Wexelblatt; The Decline of Our Neighborhood 

Sue Abbott Boyd; Sunset Lodge Poems and World Cardiology 

INDEX to Volume XXXV 

Abstract

For all the angry rejection and amused disinterest she received from Americans then, Frances Trollope, in the view of SUSAN S. KISSEL, masterfully discerned much of the American character that remains as true today as it was in 1832. Associate Professor of English at Northern Kentucky University, Kissel has published a number of articles on Frances Trollope and other British and American writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her book, In Common Cause: The "Conservative" Frances Trollope and the "Radical" Frances Wright, was recently published by The Popular Press of Bowling Green State University.

WILLIAM T. LISTON contends that the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby exhibit Platonic Idealism and that Gatsby is a parody of Platonism. Professor of English at Ball State University. Liston has authored scholarly articles on Shakespeare, one on The Crucible which appeared in the journal in 1979, and Garland has recently published his edition of Francis Quarles's Divine Fancies.

It was Thomas Paine's justification for organized action against injustice that informed John Steinbeck's character of Tom Joad and becomes the central message of The Grapes of Wrath, according to KURT HOCHENAUER, and makes him, not Jim Casy, the pivotal figure in this important novel. Assistant Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Central Oklahoma, Hochenaur has published literary criticism as well as short fiction and poetry in several journals.

TODD RYAN BOSS is a recent graduate of the MFA-Poetry program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He is originally from Fall Creek, Wisconsin.

RENE F. CARDENAS since 1992 has been senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza. From 1962 to 1992 he served in various capacities in government and in private businesses. In recent months more than forty of his poems have been published or accepted for publication in various magazines. He lives in Manassas, Virginia.

PHILIP CIOFFARI, Fort Lee, New Jersey, has published poetry in Southern Poetry Review, Green Mountain Review, Calypso and numerous other journals. He teaches at William Paterson College.

ROBERT S. KING, Winterville, Georgia, has poems published or forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, Negative Capability, and numerous other journals. For love, he edits Gaia: A Journal of Literary and Environmental Arts. For money, he works as publications editor of the University of Georgia's agricultural experiment stations.

LYN LIFSHIN resides in Washington, D.C., but lives on Appletree Lane in Niskayuna, New York. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Ploughshares, Greensboro Review, Cream City Review, and others. Two recent books are Appletree Lane and Children Who Made It to the Cambodian Border. Harcourt has recently released an enlarged edition of her book, Tangled Vines.

MARTIN LAMMON co-edits Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art in the New World and teaches writing and literature at Fairmont State College in West Virginia. His poems and prose have appeared in Ploughshares, Iowa Review, AWP Chronicle, and many other journals.

ERROL MILLER, Monroe, Louisiana, has published poems in Kansas Quarterly, Nebraska Review, Louisiana Literature, and numerous other journals. His chapbook, A Succession of Fine Lives, is forthcoming from March Street Press.

LENARD D. MOORE, Writer-in-Residence for United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, is contributing editor of Small Press Book Review. His latest books include Desert Storm: A Brief History (Los Hombres Press, 1993) and Forever Home (St. Andrews Press, 1992). His essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Colorado Review, Callaloo, and other journals.

MARK NOWAK, St. Paul, Minnesota, edits Furnitures: The Magazine of North American ldeophonics. "To the River that Runneth (Gloria)," a setting of Novak's re-translation of the Latin MASS text by composer Randal Davidson, was recently premiered at Yale University.

BETH SIMON, Madison, Wisconsin, has poems published or forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, and Seattle Review. Her fiction has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly and Chiron Review's "Best" anthology.

MATTHEW J. SPIRENG is assistant city editor for the Kingston (New York) Daily Freeman. He has published poems in more than forty journals, including Southern Humanities Review, Yankee, and Carolina Quarterly.

PHILIP TOBIN, Seattle, Washington, has poems published or forthcoming in Poet Lore, Seattle Review, and Duckabush Journal. He is one of the chief editors of The Poem and the World, an international poetry anthology, which has just published its first volume.

RALPH WILSON has published poems in numerous magazines, and his book manuscript, The Black Bridge, received first prize in poetry in the Utah Original Writing Competition in 1992. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Rebecca, and son, Ryan.

STEVE WILSON teaches in the creative writing program at Southwest Texas State University. His poems have appeared recently in Negative Capability, Midwest Quarterly, and The Prose Poem: An International Journal. His is author of Allegory Dance (Black Tie Press) and editor of The Anatomy of Water: A Sampling of Contemporary American Prose Peotry (Linwood Publishers). He lives in San Marcos, Texas.

JAMES R. JAYE sees in the work of Richard Wright both a naturalistic appreciation of forces beyond human control and an existential challenge of revolt, personal choice, and free will to combat this seemingly deterministic world. Recipient of an M.A. from Kent State University, Jaye now serves as the Development and Public Relations Associate for the Lyric Opera of Cleveland. This is Jaye's first scholarly publication.

As the Biblical removal from Eden forced humanity to confront hostility from a wrathful deity, in the natural environment, and in human form, argues GREG JOHNSON, so too do Joyce Carol Oates's characters in Upon the Sweeping Flood face conflicts which allow them to grow or be destroyed. Author of two earlier critical studies, Emily Dickinson: Perception and the Poet's Quest (1985) and Understanding Joyce Carol Oates (1987), Johnson has also published two collections of short fiction, most recently A Friendly Deceit. The present essay is taken from the 1994 book, Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction and is printed here by permission of Twayne Publishers, an imprint of the Macmillan Publishing Company, 866 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022. Johnson is Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State College in Georgia.

Finding the allegorical categories of sign, symbol, significance, and spirit transformed much as Gregor Samsa was himself transformed and given meaning that is as difficult to discern as is the notion of a human becoming a gigantic, loathsome insect is to accept, GAVRIEL BEN-EPHRAIM provides a guide to Franz Kafka's meaning in The Metamorphosis. Lecturer in English Literature at Tel Aviv University and presently a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, Ben-Ephraim is author of articles of 19th- and 20th-century literature and The Moon's Dominion, a study of the dominant women in D. H. Lawrence's fiction. He is currently writing a full-length work of Eros and Thanatos in the English Romanic novel.

ROBERT W. BARDEEN is pastor of The Presbyterian Church of Pittsburg and has taught a philosophy course on ethics at PSU.

CHARLES CAGLE is an award-winning creative writer who teaches his art both on and off the PSU campus.

KATHLEEN DE GRAVE is Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at PSU and teaches in the English Department.

JO McDOUGALL is a poet who teaches in the PSU Department of English.

ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE AND LECTURE

The editors of The Midwest Quarterly invite submission of articles on any aspect of Victorian and Modern British literature to be considered for the annual Victor J. Emmett, Jr., Memorial Prize. The winning article will be published in The Midwest Quarterly, and the author will receive an honorarium and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the annual Victor J. Emmett, Jr., Memorial Lecture. The late Victor J. Emmett, Jr., was for many years Professor of English at Pittsburg State University and this journal's Editor-in-Chief.

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE FIRST ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE

On behalf of the family of the late Professor Victor J. Emmett, Jr., the faculty of the English Department and the editors of The Midwest Quarterly are happy to announce the winner of the first Emmett Memorial Prize:

Carolyn Nelson, West Virginia University--Morgantown, for her essay, "'Return to me again': The Threat of Religious Seduction in Novels by Victorian Women," which appeared in the Spring 1994 issue of The Midwest Quarterly.

Dr. Nelson will receive an honorarium provided by an endowment set up by the Emmett family and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the Emmett Memorial Lecture during fall, 1994.

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In accordance with database agreements, the full text of the issue is not available for download. Pittsburg State Digital Commons has only provided the front matter for author and publication information.

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