• The Nature of Happiness- Themes-
Most commentators who have analyzed imagery of landscape and the natural world in Rasselas have looked at the paradisiacal descripion of the Happy Valley from which Prince Rasselas and his party escape.(1) To approach nature and landscape in Rasselas in these terms is to see it as something that Rasselas and his group reject in order to begin their quest for an acceptable "choice of life." This is to suggest that landscape and the natural world do not have a major role in that quest, as the still-naive Rasselas can already reject nature's fascination as the source of a happy life before he is educated by the experiences which constitute the narrative. By contrast, I wish to suggest that Rasselas' party is confronted by what might be called the "choice of nature" - the hope that life in natural surroundings will be of lasting happiness - at a later stage during its travels and that such a choice of life is pictured as a seductive and recurrent delusion which besets moral actors. As such, nature and landscape are far more than a "background" or "springboard" in Rasselas, and it follows that they are important as an exemplification of Johnson's Christian view of moral choice. The contours of Johnson's view of moral choice will be further illuminated by juxtaposing the response Ellis Cornelia Knight made to Johnson in Dinarbas, her 1790 "continuation" of Rasselas. In Dinarbas, Knight recognized Johnson's skepticism about the role of nature and landscape in a happy life, and responded to it by establishing a positive vision of the "choice of nature" in a moral life. I will suggest that these conflicting views of the "choice of nature" relate to the differing theological positions of Johnson and Knight.
Many structural divisions of Rasselas have been suggested,(2) but the most important section from the present perspective is chapters 19-22, which deflate delusions about place, nature, and landscape and their relation to human happiness. These chapters act as a unit with the claims being made for the pleasures attached to place ascending from the aesthetic to the sensate, from the sensate to the mental, and from the mental to the divine. Johnson treats these delusions about place with increasing firmness and ridicule, accordant with the increasing danger of the error being committed in the choice of life? Johnson returned to these delusions throughout Rasselas, The four chapters act as a chain of events, a structure characteristic of philosophical tales such as Rasselas. Johnson's chain of events in chapters 19 to 22 ends with the destruction of rationalistic conceptions of the Chain of Being, incorporating them as the highest and most profane delusion about man's relationship with nature, and completing a sequence which begins with the farcical errors of the pastoral.
Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the "happy valley" in order to make their "choice of life." By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they come to understand the nature of happiness, and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and philosophical questions concerning many aspects of the human condition, including the business of a poet, the stability of reason, the immortality of the soul, and how to find ****************************ment. The tale suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge need not be entirely beyond reach.
• Tabula Rasa:
if a person is like am empty sheet of paper- any body can write on it- like an infant- a newly born baby- he is a Tabula Rasa- he does not know anything- he does not have any memories- and then his parents start teaching him- he starts to know people- he grows up- gets information and form his character
While living in the valley, Rasselas and his group did not have experience of the world outside the valley. The princess was afraid when escaping the valley. Rasselas and his sister were Tabula Rasa. They start their searching for happiness. They start writing collecting knowledge as if writing on that blank sheet.
After escaping from the Happy Valley and an initial period in Cairo, Rasselas' group sets out to find a hermit, to "enquire whether that happiness, which public life could not afford, was to be found in solitude. It is in the chapters describing this journey that the "choice of nature" is discussed and found wanting.
In chapter 19, "A glimpse of pastoral life," the route to the hermit's cave "lay through fields, where shepherds tended their flocks. Imlac points out that "pastoral simplicity" has frequently been celebrated .
In the Happy Valley of Rasselas, however, where "every desire was immediately granted," Johnson makes it quite clear that the young Prince of Abyssinia is most certainly not happy. Laments Rasselas, "I am hungry and thirsty like [a beast], but when thirst and hunger cease I am not at rest; I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fullness" .
For Rasselas, at least, the satisfaction of desires--Johnson's own definition of happiness--obviously does not bring happiness.
This is taken from the written lectures of Dr. Maha
Themes- the nature of happiness in Rasselas
in "Rasselas", Despite having everything in the Happy Valley, people there are not happy. They are described as prisoners. Despite all the elements that are there in the Happy Valley, there is unhappiness. Rasselas feels unhappy this is why he decided to leave the valley to the outside world. He is not satisfied with his life in the valley. This unhappiness is the motif that caused him to go and see the outside world. It is because of human curiosity, the desire for knowledge. He wants to have first hand knowledge. He does not want to get it from lessons. He wants to have his own experience in life.
The author hints to some things in chapter 1. these hints come true in chapter 2. He just hints that these people are living in luxuries, happily, having all sources for entertainment, but they are like prisoners. This is what happens actually in chapter 2. Rasselas starts having the feeling of boredom. He begins to question his teachers. He starts having this idea of escape. Most of the themes are in the first chapter. In the following chapters they are realized as we read along in the novel.
One of the major themes in the novel is the desire for first hand knowledge. The nature of happiness is another major theme. The novelist is a pessimistic. He thought that people can never be happy- there is no happiness on earth. Happiness is something allusive. Happiness has an illusive nature.
Samuel Johnson was mainly a philosopher- a man of ideas. He always thinks about the nature of things.
In Rasselas the theme can be about the nature of happiness, the human desire to get first hand experience. This is something philosophical or serious. Johnson wrote many books about philosophy. This is the only book that can be considered as a novel. Some critics say that it is not a true novel; it is a book of moral allegory, philosophy.
One of the important themes in Rasselas is the theme of
freedom.