Gone with the Wind vs Romeo and Juliet - Essay Example

The Use of Text in Gone With the Wind and Romeo and Juliet Introduction Language in its most general form can be defined as a specific set of symbols, formally arranged around a set of rules that facilitate the transference of meaning from one individual to another. The various elements of language can be combined, taken apart and reconstituted to create entirely new meanings and can be set down in letters or other set symbols to further communicate meaning without benefit of sound. There are various elements of language that can be utilized to convey deep levels of meaning within relatively short passages, pieces of conversation or even within a single sentence or phrase. These elements include phonology, lexis, punctuation, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. By comparing the usage of these elements between two classic texts, such as William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, evidence can be found in each element of language that demonstrate how the usage of language changes over time and place as well as through dominant format of the communication goals. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1597 reflecting the Elizabethan values and traditions of England while focusing on the story of a young couple in Verona. In this way, he also incorporates some of the values that were understood in his time to have been important to people of an even earlier time. Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind in 1936 America reflecting the struggles of the Great Depression and capturing some of the major issues that faced people living in the Civil War south. Like Shakespeare, although she didn’t live during that time period, she incorporates many of the values that were understood in her generation to have been important issues a generation or so earlier. In each case, there is a strong sense of identity reflected in every aspect of the language used. While each novel is written in the same general English language, each illustrates the ideas of love coming to bitter conclusions and each struggles to portray a period of time prior to that in which the author lived, each does so in such a unique way as to make it seem as if they were each written in separate languages all together, which can be teased out by examining the various aspects of language used to tell the story. Lexis In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare establishes early on a formal and literary tone within the lexis of his text. For example, in the Prologue, he indicates the scene of his play is in “fair Verona”, a use of the word ‘fair’ that falls within the formal lexicon, especially used in British English (Longman Dictionary, 2007). Thus, this use of the word indicates a formal tone as well as a regional origin. Other indications of a formal tone emerge in the use of words such as “fearful” in line 9 and “continuance” in line 10. At the same time, a formal tone is adopted with the use of “loins” (5), “star-crossed” (6) and “piteous” (7). Likewise, the regional origin of the text can be found in other words particularly associated with the British lexicon such as “misadventur’d” (7) (Shakespeare). A sense of the archaic enters the text with the use of “thou” throughout the play as well as a continued use of ‘art’. Mitchell, on the other hand, evokes a sense of the past with a heavy use of terms that classify within the old-fashioned lexicon that differs significantly with that evoked in Shakespeare’s text. The old-fashioned words in her text include her use of the word “delicate” to describe Scarlet O’Hara’s features and the regional references to the “South” and “Georgia.” Although there is more than one “Georgia” in the world, the combination with the term “South” immediately identifies the location as being in the American state. Rather than a constant reminder throughout the text, the old-fashioned words included in Mitchell’s text are used sparingly, suggesting a fading charm. The literary lexicon is brought into play with terms like “florid” and “arresting” to describe additional features regarding Scarlet’s appearance (Longman Dictionary, 2007). Like Shakespeare, Mitchell blends this literary lexicon with a formal one, using terms such as “descent” and the technical term “oblique” which suggests a learned audience. While both Shakespeare and Mitchell pull from the same literary and formal lexicon, differences in their manners of speech can be found in the additional lexicons they combine and the degree to which they involve these lexicons within their text that provide regional and temporal information. Shakespeare sprinkles his text with old-fashioned terms to encourage a sense of the ancient past while Mitchell inserts an old-fashioned word here and there for a subtle effect. Both writers include heavy regional references to keep their audiences within the worlds they have created while formal and literary language is used throughout each to encourage the audience to consider the text seriously. Punctuation The differing formats of each work demonstrate a difference in the preferred mode of delivery primarily as it is expressed in the punctuation of the texts. “Punctuation has the primary responsibility of contributing to the plainness of one’s meaning. It has the secondary responsibility of being as invisible as possible, of not calling attention to itself” (Robinson, 2002). In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, written as a play, punctuation plays a large role in making this obvious. Words spoken by different characters are separated from each other by the name of the character being written first and separated from the text of the play by the expedient of placing the name in italics. This is followed by a period and then the words that character is to speak. The end result appears, “Sam. Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals” (Shakespeare, I, i, 1). To ensure everything remains clear to the reader and the actor, the next speaker is then placed on a separate line following the same punctuation pattern as that mentioned for the first speaker, with the name in italics and the words to be spoken following the period. This form of punctuation indicates clearly that this text is intended to be read out loud by various actors, preferably with an expression of emotional response to the actions being described. This suggests a strongly oral tradition and a preferred mode of communication that is not based upon the education level of the audience as much as it is based upon the ability of the masses to understand the modes of speech employed. This obvious mode of identifying the speaker is quite different from that used in the text intended to be read, as it can be seen in Gone with the Wind. Here, when the author wishes to change speakers, a new paragraph is formed, just as that seen in the Shakespeare text, but speakers are either identified within the paragraph, as in: “’I know you two don’t care about being expelled, or Tom either,’ she said. ‘But what about Boyd?’” (Mitchell, 1974: 7) or are merely understood to be the other participant in the conversation as in Scarlet’s question “Why?” after initiating a conversation with Brent and his response, “The war, goose! The war’s going to start any day, and you don’t suppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do you?” (7), where neither speaker is explicitly identified. (For clarity, the beginning and ending double quotations in the above quotations have been added for the purposes of this paper as a means of separating the quoted text from the text of this investigation.) Even in this passage, when the speakers are explicitly identified, Scarlet is identified only as ‘she’ while the words she says begin before her identification and continue after it. Her words are separated from Brent’s by a new quotation mark at the end of her spoken words and a paragraph break before the reader comes across a new quotation mark: “’Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalee’s office over in Fayetteville,’ answered Brent carelessly” (Mitchell, 1974: 7). Again, the double quotes have been inserted for clarity between the quoted text and the written text and again, the speaker is identified well after he has begun to speak. Syntax Changes in the syntax, or word order and inflectional tense, can be tracked in the differences between the text of Romeo and Juliet and that of Gone with the Wind as well. In Shakespeare’s play, written at the end of the 16th century and in England, especially as he was working to indicate an even more ancient time period, Shakespeare’s characters seem to speak with an overly formal, strangely inverted syntax. Instead of telling Gregory that once he’s moved, or excited or instigated, he will strike, Sampson says “I strike quickly, being moved” (I, i: 1065). For users of modern English, this is one of the more easily accepted phrases, but still presents a challenge in forming the mind around the alternative organization of the words. Gregory’s answer gives the clue to the formal style of speech by using words such as ‘thou’ and ‘art’ to tell Sampson that he is not generally quickly moved to strike anything. This same sort of inversion can be found in the speech of the upper classes of Shakespeare’s work as well as can be seen in the lecture the Prince delivers at the close of the opening street fight: “Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word, / By thee, old Capulet and Montague, / Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets” (I, i). A more modern usage would have had the Prince telling the men something more along the lines of “You have disturbed the peace three times already.” By contrast, Mitchell uses more modern syntax in her novel as she describes the opening scene: “Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture” (Mitchell, 1974: 5). This mode of speech seems much more in order. Although the ending phrase could have been placed at the beginning, the sentence still sounds correct to modern users of English regardless of their regional knowledge base. This is because modern words (‘porch’, ‘plantation’) are used in relatively modern order. The slight difference in word order identified at the end of this statement, ‘she made a pretty picture’, is easily explained away by the more formal and literary tone already identified within the novel as a consequence of the lexis used. Phonology Phonology also contributes greatly to the emotional content of each of the texts under examination. Sputtering rage is echoed in the lines of the Prince as he comes upon the fighting Capulet and Montague men in the streets of his city because it is carried in the phonology of his speech. Hard sounds issue from the letters incorporated within the selected words precisely because the sound contributes to the impression the author is struggling to convey. The Prince is halted over the audible stop of the /b/ sound as he addresses the fighters as ‘rebellious subjects’ (bold type is added for emphasis), in which each word is interrupted by the somewhat swallowed sound of the /b/. The sound can only be made by pressing the lips together tightly and then allowing the air to escape somewhat explosively, further highlighting the tightly controlled rage being expressed within the Prince’s speech. The sputtering repeated /p/ sound of ‘peace’ / ‘Profaners’ just as the prince begins expressing his rage and shock that such fighting is occurring within his streets further serves to highlight this action of tightly controlled tension. These sounds are repeated throughout the speech in words that seem carefully selected so as to emphasize this repetition in ‘beasts’, ‘pernicious’ and ‘purple’. Mitchell evokes emotion in similar fashion but to different effect with a gentle schussing sound that occurs to lull the reader into a sense of calm and repose. This occurs in the serene description of Scarlet in the second paragraph of the novel: “But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed” (Mitchell, 1974: 5). (The bold type included above has been added for clarity of discussion.) The repeated soft ‘s’ sound contained in these words tends to remind the reader of quiet times, the librarian’s decorum, or even a gentle whisper in the dark. Just as the sounds of the words selected by Shakespeare served to emphasize the emotion and scene these words were intended to reflect, so does Mitchell’s selection of this soft sound serve to emphasize the quiet and composed picture of Scarlet as she appears on the outside. Yet the end of this passage begins to awaken the mind from this impression with the sudden strong /p/ and hard /k/ found in ‘poorly concealed’ in preparation for the next sentence, in which Scarlet’s inner character is described. Sematics Semantics can be taken to mean a variety of elements of language, so, to keep the scope of the conversation as clearly defined as possible, this discussion will work under the definition offered by Stephen Pulman (1996): “We shall take the scope of semantics to be restricted to the literal interpretations of sentences in a context, ignoring phenomena like irony, metaphor, or conversational implicature.” However, because it is typically presented within the actual text of language, such concepts as simile may be considered to fall within the realm of semantics. For example, the Prince makes his meaning completely clear when speaking to Capulet and old Montague in the first Act of Shakespeare’s play. He chastises them severely: “To wield old partisans in hands as old, Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hates” (Shakespeare, I, i, 1066). While the terminology may not be overly familiar to a modern audience, to one of Shakespeare’s time, the meaning was evident. The Prince is angry with the two gentlemen for making old soldiers loyal to the crown use their weapons (‘hands’) that have rusted with age and disuse (‘canker’d with peace) to break up the festering feud (canker’d hates) that has existed between the two men. Although the same word is used twice in this statement, the meaning of the word changes within the context of the words that follow. Shakespeare uses this technique often throughout his play, constantly playing off the different meanings that can be adopted by words depending upon the context in which they are placed. Mitchell, on the other hand, uses semantics as a means of bringing her ideas into sharper focus through the use of similes: “Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-coloured breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton” (Mitchell, 1974: 6). The statement ‘two bolls of cotton’ brings to mind to one who has seen this image before, the thought of identical white tufts clinging tenaciously to a sharp green stem, so the meaning here is as plain as the item by item description of the young men immediately prior to this statement. Rather than hiding the meaning, the simile works to bring it into further definition by offering the mental picture of a mirror image placed within the terminology of the South. Pragmatics It is a natural offshoot of semantics, the discovery of the literal meaning of the word, for Shakespeare to have ventured off into explorations of pragmatics within the text of his play. “[Pragmatics] distinguishes two intents or meanings in each utterance or communicative act of verbal communication. One is the informative intent or the sentence meaning, and the other the communicative intent or speaker meaning” (Liu, 2005). In the opening lines of Shakespeare’s play, for example, the two servants of the house of Capulet are discussing what they will do if and when they come across individuals of the house of Montague. Sampson tells Gregory: “’Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men I will be cruel with the maids, and cut off their heads.” Gregory answers: “The heads of the maids?” and Sampson replies: “Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.” In this exchange, it can be seen that the pragmatic meaning that was originally intended by Sampson when he referred to the heads of maidens was missed by Gregory because the syntax (word order) of his first statement hinted at a more semantic (literal) translation than his clarification statement following Gregory’s question produced in using the term ‘maidenhead.’ Pragmatics also conveys a world of meaning behind Mitchell’s literally innocuous statement about the three young people who appear at the beginning of her novel: “They had the vigour and alertness of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things in books” (Mitchell, 1974: 6). The literal translation (semantics) conveys no judgment upon the activities of these young people, their experiences or their knowledge base. One pragmatic interpretation of the statement indicates that these young people are relatively uneducated through nothing more than a lack of interest. That this is a somewhat derogatory statement is conveyed in the irony of the author referring to books as dull things belied by the assumption that both author and reader find books relatively fascinating. Evaluation This comparison of the text of Shakespeare as compared to the text of Mitchell demonstrates several changes that have occurred in the way language is used over the centuries. In addition to a change in the preferred mode of expression from one that is performed aloud to an audience to one that is intended to be enjoyed silently and individually, word order (syntax) and dependence on specific lexicons has also shifted from one heavily dependent upon old-fashioned language to one that employs more modern usages. However, similarities remain as authors continue to pull from similar word classifications, such as the literary and formal lexicons, as well as depending upon the use of phonology to help convey emotional content. While pragmatics is often spelled out in Shakespeare’s plays, presumably as the result of a different audience and different mode of delivery that depends more upon memory than providing a means for careful analysis, it becomes more subtly expressed in more modern works in which the benefit of text printed on a page meant for individual perusal allows for a more detailed examination. Bibliography Liu, Shaozhong. (2005). “What is Pragmatics?” College of Foreign Studies. 22 March 2007 from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online. (2007). Essex: Pearson Longman. Mitchell, Margaret. (1936, reprint 1974). Gone with the Wind. London: Pan Books. Pulman, Stephen G. (1996). “Semantics.” Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology. Oregon: Center for Spoken Language Understanding. Available 22 March 2007 from Robinson, Paul. (2002). “The Philosophy of Punctuation.” Opera, Sex and Other Vital Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Available 22 March 2007 from Shakespeare, William. (1597, reprint xxxx). “Romeo and Juliet.” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. London: Odhams Press. Read More