Robinson Jeffers Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Edward A. Nickerson

Critical Essay by Edward A. Nickerson

Even a casual reading leads one to conclude that much of Robinson Jeffers' poetry is profoundly apocalyptic. Fires, deluges, storms, and earthquakes menace the lives of his major characters, and serve as constant reminders of nature's catastrophic potential. There are forebodings of Armageddon and gloomy speculations about man's fate. A number of narratives result in the destruction of a small group of people in such a way as to suggest that they symbolize the human race itself. All of these facts recall strikingly the apocalyptic books and passages of the Bible. The Biblical writers, like Jeffers, thought of man as incapable of permanent self-improvement, and envisioned redemption as coming only after Armageddon and a series of natural catastrophes had destroyed mankind. Believing this, they fixed their gaze on the coming doom and on the glorious new heaven and earth that would succeed it. Calling for "the rejection of human solipsism...
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