Unit 6 · Topic 6.3

6.3 Contrasts that create ambiguity

When a text puts two things side by side that don't fit, like two characters, two places or a character's words and actions, the contrast is usually deliberate. These contrasts create nuance and ambiguity: they make a single, simple reading harder to hold. Your job is to explain the tension, not to explain it away.

Key terms

contrast
ambiguity
nuance
contradiction
complexity

Contrast, nuance and ambiguity

A contrast is a difference that the text makes noticeable. Nuance means fine shades of meaning, the opposite of black and white. Ambiguity means a detail or situation supports more than one reasonable reading.

Contrasts create both. When a character speaks like a saint and acts like a villain, you can't simply label them. When a peaceful scene sits next to a violent one, each colors how you read the other. Strong readers treat these clashes as clues to the work's complexity.

Where to look

A character's words against their actions, or their public face against their private thoughts.
Two characters in the same situation who respond differently (see foils in 6.1).
Two settings, like a city and the country, or a home and a place of exile.
The narrator's judgment against what the events actually show.
The beginning of a work against its end.

Frankenstein: who is the monster?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is built on a contrast that never resolves. Victor Frankenstein, the educated scientist, abandons the being he made the moment it comes to life. The creature teaches himself to read, studies books like Paradise Lost, and speaks with real eloquence. He also murders Victor's young brother, William.

When the two finally meet, the creature argues his case: "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend." Victor answers with insults. The creature's beautiful speech sits right next to his crimes, and Victor's cruelty sits next to his suffering. The novel never tells you which of them deserves more blame. That ambiguity is a large part of why it still gets argued about.

Work	The contrast	The question it raises
A Doll's House (Ibsen)	Nora's playful, childish manner vs. the secret loan she took out to save her husband's life	Is Nora the silly wife Torvald thinks she is, or the strongest person in the house?
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)	Gatsby's huge, crowded parties vs. Gatsby standing alone, apart from his guests	Is Gatsby a social success or a deeply lonely man?
Great Expectations (Dickens)	Wemmick's cold manner at the law office vs. his warmth at home with his father	Which one is the real Wemmick, and what does the city do to people?

How to handle a contradiction in your writing

Don't pick one side of the contradiction and ignore the other. Name both, then explain what the tension shows. Useful sentence frames help: "Although X, Y, which suggests…" or "The contrast between X and Y complicates…"

Explaining a tension like this is one of the clearest ways to show sophistication, because you're working with the text's complexity instead of flattening it.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Writing about a contrast without resolving it too fast
A student reads the creature's line, "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend," and writes: "The creature is evil because he kills William." Explain what this reading misses, and write a stronger claim.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Notice the contrast the student ignored: the creature speaks thoughtfully and blames his violence on how he was treated.
2. Step 2: Check the word choice. "Benevolent and good" describes his past; "fiend" describes what he became. The sentence is about change caused by misery.
3. Step 3: Don't swing to the opposite extreme ("the creature is innocent"). He did commit murder.
4. Step 4: Write a claim that holds both sides and says what the tension suggests.
Answer: Stronger claim: Shelley pairs the creature's moving self-defense with his crimes so that readers can neither excuse him nor dismiss him. His line "misery made me a fiend" blames his violence on the cruelty he met, which shifts some guilt onto Victor and the people who rejected him, but the murders keep that guilt from shifting entirely. The contrast makes the novel ask whether monstrousness is born or made.

Common mistakes

Treating a contradiction as a mistake by the author. Assume it's deliberate and ask what it does.
Resolving ambiguity too quickly by choosing one reading and ignoring evidence for the other.
Saying a text "is ambiguous" without naming the two readings it supports.

On the exam

When a multiple-choice question asks about the effect of side-by-side details, first name the two things being contrasted. Then pick the answer that explains what the contrast does, not one that just restates the details.
In essays, a sentence that explains a tension ("Although…, …") is a natural route to the sophistication point, if you develop it rather than mention it once.

Connected topics

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Check yourself

4 questions on 6.3 Contrasts that create ambiguity. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

NORA. Just fancy, my husband has been made manager of the Bank!

MRS LINDE. Your husband? What good luck!

NORA. Yes, tremendous! A barrister’s profession is such an uncertain thing, especially if he won’t undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally Torvald has never been willing to do that, and I quite agree with him. You may imagine how pleased we are! He is to take up his work in the Bank at the New Year, and then he will have a big salary and lots of commissions. For the future we can live quite differently—we can do just as we like. I feel so relieved and so happy, Christine! It will be splendid to have heaps of money and not need to have any anxiety, won’t it?

MRS LINDE. Yes, anyhow I think it would be delightful to have what one needs.

NORA. No, not only what one needs, but heaps and heaps of money.

MRS LINDE. [smiling]. Nora, Nora, haven’t you learned sense yet? In our schooldays you were a great spendthrift.

NORA. [laughing]. Yes, that is what Torvald says now. [Wags her finger at her.] But “Nora, Nora” is not so silly as you think. We have not been in a position for me to waste money. We have both had to work.

MRS LINDE. You too?

NORA. Yes; odds and ends, needlework, crotchet-work, embroidery, and that kind of thing. [Dropping her voice.] And other things as well. You know Torvald left his office when we were married? There was no prospect of promotion there, and he had to try and earn more than before. But during the first year he over-worked himself dreadfully. You see, he had to make money every way he could, and he worked early and late; but he couldn’t stand it, and fell dreadfully ill, and the doctors said it was necessary for him to go south.

MRS LINDE. You spent a whole year in Italy, didn’t you?

NORA. Yes. It was no easy matter to get away, I can tell you. It was just after Ivar was born; but naturally we had to go. It was a wonderfully beautiful journey, and it saved Torvald’s life. But it cost a tremendous lot of money, Christine.

MRS LINDE. So I should think.

NORA. It cost about two hundred and fifty pounds. That’s a lot, isn’t it?

MRS LINDE. Yes, and in emergencies like that it is lucky to have the money.

NORA. I ought to tell you that we had it from papa.

MRS LINDE. Oh, I see. It was just about that time that he died, wasn’t it?

NORA. Yes; and, just think of it, I couldn’t go and nurse him. I was expecting little Ivar’s birth every day and I had my poor sick Torvald to look after. My dear, kind father—I never saw him again, Christine. That was the saddest time I have known since our marriage.

MRS LINDE. I know how fond you were of him. And then you went off to Italy?

NORA. Yes; you see we had money then, and the doctors insisted on our going, so we started a month later.

MRS LINDE. And your husband came back quite well?

NORA. As sound as a bell!

MRS LINDE. But—the doctor?

NORA. What doctor?

MRS LINDE. I thought your maid said the gentleman who arrived here just as I did, was the doctor?

NORA. Yes, that was Doctor Rank, but he doesn’t come here professionally. He is our greatest friend, and comes in at least once every day. No, Torvald has not had an hour’s illness since then, and our children are strong and healthy and so am I. [Jumps up and claps her hands.] Christine! Christine! it’s good to be alive and happy!—But how horrid of me; I am talking of nothing but my own affairs. [Sits on a stool near her, and rests her arms on her knees.] You mustn’t be angry with me. Tell me, is it really true that you did not love your husband? Why did you marry him?

MRS LINDE. My mother was alive then, and was bedridden and helpless, and I had to provide for my two younger brothers; so I did not think I was justified in refusing his offer.

NORA. No, perhaps you were quite right. He was rich at that time, then?

MRS LINDE. I believe he was quite well off. But his business was a precarious one; and, when he died, it all went to pieces and there was nothing left.

NORA. And then?—

MRS LINDE. Well, I had to turn my hand to anything I could find—first a small shop, then a small school, and so on. The last three years have seemed like one long working-day, with no rest. Now it is at an end, Nora. My poor mother needs me no more, for she is gone; and the boys do not need me either; they have got situations and can shift for themselves.

NORA. What a relief you must feel if—

MRS LINDE. No, indeed; I only feel my life unspeakably empty. No one to live for anymore. [Gets up restlessly.] That was why I could not stand the life in my little backwater any longer. I hope it may be easier here to find something which will busy me and occupy my thoughts. If only I could have the good luck to get some regular work—office work of some kind—

NORA. But, Christine, that is so frightfully tiring, and you look tired out now. You had far better go away to some watering-place.

MRS LINDE. [walking to the window]. I have no father to give me money for a journey, Nora.

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, Act I (1879), translated by R. Farquharson Sharp (1910)

Question 1 of 4

A careful reader of Nora’s account of the trip to Italy (paragraphs 9–19) is most likely to notice which tension?

Question 2 of 4

Which claim about the passage is best supported?

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

He was the only man of us who still “followed the sea.” The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899; in book form 1902), the opening. Two excerpts: three paragraphs describing the sunset and the river’s history are left out between paragraphs 3 and 4.

Question 3 of 4

Paragraph 2 contrasts the “luminous space” of the estuary with air “condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.” This contrast chiefly

Question 4 of 4

Marlow’s remark “And this also… has been one of the dark places of the earth” (paragraph 5) is surprising chiefly because it

0 of 4 answered