Sometimes when thinking about literature or art you have to coin a phrase to capture the idea you are thinking about. I don't know, pardon my lacuna of knowledge, any phrase to describe the use of successive symbols to create relationships of ideas in a work. Consequently I'm using the term "cascading analog" and opposing it to "horizontal analog".
Analog is the use of one thing to signify another. It is the connecting of ideas, saying "this equals this" leading to greater understanding. So for instance, saying that Thomas Jackson is "like a stone wall" doesn't mean that he is low to the ground or that he has loam on him but that he is impenetrable like a stone wall. This is an analog called simile. When we say "She's as sweet as Tupelo honey, like honey from the bee" we are using simile.
When on the other hand we say, "Ted is a mule" we don't mean that he has four legs and grey fur - rather that Ted is stubborn and ornery. This is the analog called metaphor.
Simile and Metaphor are the two major forms of analog in human language and thought. Our whole process of thought, in fact, is based upon analog since we create mental images to comprehend anything & build a network of mental images when trying to make sense of something new.
Sometimes when a poet or artist uses such analog they extend it over the length of a soliloquy, poem, or entire work. So for instance Shakespeare compares his beloved to a summer's day in sonnet 18. Similarly, George Herbert in "The Pulley" uses the metaphor of being pulled up and pulled down by our strengths and weaknesses.
Sometimes the analog is explicit (obvious) as in Robert Burns' "Red, Red Rose" or the Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow". Sometimes the analog is implicit (hidden) as in Wilbur's "Death of a Toad" or Melville's "Moby Dick" (which if you've read it before you are 30 you probably have read it wrong!).
"Horizontal analog", therefore, is when a
series of related images appear over the course of a (longer) work. This
type of analogy operates similar to how a dream might unfold, presenting the
same idea in various forms. Plato, for
instance, uses horizontal analog in his work “The Republic” presenting his idea
of justice (as a ratio between the lesser and the greater) in one form after
another. Here the artist says that
justice looks like this, but more than that it looks like this, and again it
looks like more than that, it looks like this, and &c.
“Cascading analog” operates like a waterfall of images,
not seemingly related to each other and happening in quick succession rather
than drawn out over the course of a long work.
This series of quick flowing images normally occurs with a monumental
event of some kind and indicates that the speaker is trying to deal with
something new and overwhelming. Monumental
experiences in life tend to overwhelm us and inundate us with new and difficult
to process impressions. Like a combat
veteran trying to explain to civilians what warfare is like, or like a survivor
of cancer or someone who has experienced a natural disaster like a tsunami, they
express the immensity of the event by trying to connect it to the experiences
they already have and with which they are familiar.
Shakespeare uses horizontal analog throughout his play,
“Macbeth”, connecting images of water, darkness, sleep, dismemberment
throughout the play. The real question
of the play is not whether Macbeth is a murderer, or what a bad king looks
like, or even what damnation looks like.
Rather it is the question of the loss of meaning or purpose in
life. How does one fight against
purposelessness? For Shakespeare this
seems to have been a perennial question appearing in numerous different works. Next to Hamlet, Macbeth is probably the bard’s
greatest answer to this nominalist question.
During the course of the play Macbeth chooses to act
in such a way to secure a permanent hold on happiness through power. His choices, however, lead him deeper into
blood, chaos, and madness. By the end of
play he has lost everything including even the “eternal jewel”
of mankind (his soul) which he seems to have “Given to the common
enemy of man” (Satan). With his wife
dead, his friends and allies fleeing from him (“fly false thanes and mingle
with the English epicures”), and a massive army besieging his gates Macbeth
seems to be at the end of his tether. This
might appear to be for most an obvious consequence of the choices leading to damnation
& might evoke in some audience members a schadenfreude and
self-congratulation that they, at least, are not damned.
In a masterful use of images, however, the poet suggests
that such a response is shallow, unreflective, and not the point of Macbeth’s
final trajectory. The Bard uses cascading
analog to symbolize the overwhelming finality of Macbeth’s ultimate
destruction. Faced in Act V, scene 5 with
the reality of Lady Macbeth’s death and the loss of his entire life going into
the sewer he utters the great “tomorrow” speech.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
At first read the comments on life seem a jumble of
unrelated images. But as a cascading
analog they work to describe the immensity of what Macbeth is finally realizing
in the play; the ultimate conclusion of the path he has chosen. Each image relates to each successive image analogously. First, the pace of the opening line hangs on
the drudgery of the word “and” – yet again waking up to another tomorrow w/o
hope, change, or forgiveness. This
series of tomorrows sets up a triune relationship between images (similar to
the trinity of the weird sisters, the murderers, and the three major
assassinations of the play). Days creep
by in a petty pace (notice the dental alliteration like spitting; p,p – d,d);
time is likened to a record book (the Domesday book) of syllables already set
down by fate (or “wyrd” in Anglo-Saxon).
Past history is then compared to a candle or lantern leading fools to
their death (again the dental alliteration of d,d; “day to day” “dusty death”). Humans are all fools, in this vision, if they
follow this lantern, namely the pattern of human history w/o providential
redemption. Indeed, the examination of
human history w/o the lens of salvation (“The fool in his heart has said, ‘there
is no god’” says the Psalm 14) seems to indicate a bleak and violent emptiness
to our existence.
Macbeth’s utterance of “Out, out, brief candle!” then
echoes (in a use of horizontal analog) Lady Macbeth’s earlier utterance of “out,
damned spot! Out, I say!” in Act 5, scene 1.
The utterance also ushers in the final three analogs of the soliloquy
wherein Macbeth compares life to
- A walking shadow
- A poor player (actor)
- A tale (told by an idiot)
This leads a reader to question “how is life like a
walking shadow?” “how is life like an actor?”,
“how is life like a tale?” Shakespeare
uses metaphorical analog here, not simile suggesting that the intensity of
Macbeth’s vision. Life, for him, has
become a mere phantom of what it should be; a ghost, the place where the sun is
not. Though it moves around and walks,
nevertheless it is as ephemeral as the thaumatapoioi, the shadows, in Plato’s
cave image. Such an empty, dark,
lifeless existence resembles a bad actor who struts and frets a brief time (an
hour) on the stage of the world (“all the world’s a stage” – “As You Like It”
Act II, scene 7). The double meaning is
that the poor player is also a bad sport; someone who in losing is petty,
small-souled, pusillanimous in his paces.
If life doesn’t get its way it takes its ball and goes home. Instead of the brilliant and joyful
experience of life which we each hope for (honour, love, obedience,
troops of friends) this vision of life in the septic tank of hell becomes
an empty repetitive tale full of noise and anger but meaningless. The vision expressed also implies that the
maker of the world, God, makes only shadows, writes only bad plays, is an idiot
in his creations. The end of such a
vision is itself, hell, nothingness, the Tartarus or cave of shadows. It is an overwhelming vision of existence
without life so immense that Macbeth cannot succinctly express it.
His is a vision that has abandoned salvific realism
for materialistic nominalism. Whether he
fights against this vision is the real crux of the play the outcome of which is
ambiguous. Does Macbeth realizing that
he has been “tied to the stake and cannot fly” defiantly reject the deep damnation
of his own taking off? Even realizing
that, “Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, / And
thou (MacDuff) opposed, being of no woman born,” Macbeth proclaims that, “I
will try the last.”
Indeed, there is something valiant and almost salvific
when Macbeth proclaims
Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
Is “the last” which MacDuff defies the “last syllable
of recorded time”? is it the last
obstacle to his own damnation? Or is it
the last thing opposing his attempt at total rule? It is at least, or so it seems, a return to
martial virtue where Macbeth so excelled at the beginning of the play. Though his bitter statement that he
will not
yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse
Might be the ignoble and damning utterance of Satan’s “non
serviam” it might also prove his salvation.
He refuses to submit to his doppelganger and adversary, MacDuff, and in
that at least he is not damned. His
rejuvenated martial prowess offers him some sense of meaning or purpose to
life.
Perhaps the play is not suggesting that Macbeth
represents an obvious or explicit metaphor for what damnation looks like. Instead, perhaps the play is offering a
vision of one man dealing with the consequences of his own horrible choices,
loss of manhood and meaning in life, and being “cow'd (of his)
better part of man” – an experience so overwhelming that it defies being
captured in words. Against such a
tsunami of horrors, whether they be of our own making or others, perhaps the
only noble response is defiant endurance and opposition and in that sense
perhaps Macbeth finds salvation after all.
