Ashley Garreau
Professor Teresa
Coronado
ENG 226 American
Literature to 1855
25 November 2014
Mimicking the Birds
John T. Trowbridge's poem, "Darius Green and
his Flying Machine,” was published in a volume entitled “Vagabonds and Others”
in Boston and New York by Houghton Mifflin Co., written in 1869. This text is a once-famous now almost forgotten poem
that launched the entire idea of boy geniuses and the creation of steam-driven
machines, hence making it a big early contributor to the concept of
steampunk. The poem also tells
a whimsical and playful tale of a very intelligent son of a farmer who takes
his dreams and tries to make them a reality with clever invention. Besides
being a symbol of an entire culture and a playful introduction to what the
world has commonly used as a method of transportation, the airplane, it is also
very inspiring to the American dreamer with the common human longings to do
great things with their own mind and hands. It is important in understanding
American culture before 1870 because the poem gives us a look into a simpler
time before all the higher technology came around, when people were starting to
get many ideas of invention and creations that have evolved into what they are today from those simpler starting
points. It is always important to see how things start because it seems to
be a common pattern that history repeats itself. It is also significant to research
to keep track of the beginning of a process to understand its evolution. Trowbridge
shows a good representation of the start to creating a flying machine.
John T. Trowbridge was born in Ogden, New York on
September 18, 1827 and had an early interest for literature and published his
first poem at the age of 13 (Wikipedia). He received
a fantastic education growing up and started working as a teacher and on a farm
for one year in Illinois (Wikipedia). In 1847, he moved to New York City to become an author and there he was
able to publish in periodicals as well as working in a pencil case engraving
factory (Wikipedia). Trowbridge
later moved to Boston in 1848 and married in 1860, then in June 1867, he bought a house in Arlington
Massachusetts where he lived until his death on February 12, 1916 (Wikipedia). He wrote many adventure stories and juvenile novels
and poems during his writing career and is today best remembered for his study, “The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined
Cities” in 1866 (Wikipedia). Trowbridge
was a very good and “judicious” friend to Walt Whitman and they inspired each
other’s writing careers. He became known for his work appealing to a more youthful
audience.
Trowbridge was a very popular poet in the
seventies and eighties, especially with the younger generation. One critic wrote that Trowbridge started a new era in
juvenile American literature (Modern Language Quarterly). The poem, “Darius Green and his Flying Machine”, is
about an intuitive farm boy who straps mechanical wings that he creates to his
back and attempts to fly by jumping out of his barn loft. Trowbridge writes the
verse, "Darius was clearly of the opinion / That the air is also man's
dominion / And that with paddle or fin or pinion, / We soon or late shall
navigate / The azure as now we sail the sea" (37-43). This was very
prophetic to American culture with our progression in our abilities of
aviation. Trowbridge dreamed of a successful flying machine and little did he
know, they would be perfected and become a very common use of
transportation.
There are some very intriguing Greek mythology
references within the poem relating to having the power of flight. Trowbridge writes, “And
wise he must have been to do more/ Than
ever a genius did before/ Excepting Daedalus of yore/ And his son Icarus, who wore/ Upon their backs/ Those wings of wax/ He had
read about in the old almanacs” (30-36). Trowbridge is comparing the genius and heroism of
Darius Green for his inspiring invention to the mythological Greek figures
Daedalus and his son Icarus. In
the myth they are both trapped in a tower and since they cannot leave by land
or sea, Daedalus starts fabricating wings for him and Icarus to escape and
teaches him how to fly them. Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high for the
sun would melt the wax of the wings and not fly too low for the sea would soak
the feathers. Icarus ends up flying too close to the sun and melts his wings
and drowns in the sea. There
is a historical parallel between the poem and the myth for Darius Green crashes
at the end of the poem like Icarus when he attempts to fly. It is an eye-opening example of mankind from many
periods and cultures of time always having that desire to be like the birds and
control the airwaves. As Darius reasons in the poem, “The birds can fly, ‘an
why can’t I?” (48-49). Many more to come have attempted to take flight in imaginative
and inventive ways, such as in the genre, Steampunk.
Flight also became a huge theme in the Steampunk subculture, with
airships and various other flying machines becoming typically Steampunk, in
which case Darius’s flying contraption, was like an early form of the popular
subculture. There are many popular tales of boy geniuses, one
example is the cartoon, “Dexter’s Lab” from the nineties generation which comes
to mind, But Darius was one of the first who launched the idea and was very influential
on writers like Edward S. Ellis who some date as the beginning of steampunk
next to Trowbridge’s poem. Darius’s adventures launched the idea
that continues to be popular today. There are many inventors out
there still trying to create new concepts, especially involving flight, such as
the futuristic dream of jet packs and hover cars which is popular within the Steampunk
genre. Though in the poem, Darius does not succeed with his
invention, many others took inspiration from his attempts and found ways to
make it a successful one.
At the end of the poem, Darius jumps from the
barn loft with his flying machine and crashes to the ground in a failed
attempt. In lines 212-216 Trowbridge states, “Shall we notice
the moral here/ This is the moral: stick to your sphere/But, if you insist, as
you have a right/on spreading your wings for a loftier flight/the moral is take care how you light!” He explains that
the moral is to stay on the ground and not fly, but if you do, to watch for
lack of vision and perhaps lack of intelligence by referring to “light” or
could also be referencing to the sun melting the wings like in the tale of
Daedalus and Icarus which is referenced in earlier lines. There could also be a religious connotation in
relating to god’s divine light and trying to go against his plan since humans
weren’t born with the ability of flight. This may further be supported with the lines, “As a
demon is hurled by an angel's spear, Heels
over head, to his proper sphere” (190-191). Trowbridge states that humans
belong on the ground which is originally as most would assume god intended. As we know though, aviators today did not take
Trowbridge’s advice in sticking to the earth, because flying machines have
evolved greatly since the idea of Darius’s creation. His story very much works parallel with that of the
Wright Brothers in their escapades to invent a working flying machine.
Just as flight was a dream for Darius in the
poem, it was also the same for the Wright brothers. Orville and Wilbur Wright were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are
credited with inventing and building
the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled,
powered ability of flight possible for humans in 1903. Before
and after the Wright’s demonstrations of powered, fixed-wing flight, Physicists
concluded that nobody was going to leave the ground by strapping wings to their
arms and flapping around. This was heavily demonstrated
in Trowbridge’s poem about Darius Green. Darius learns in the poem that inventing and
attempting to fly is very fun, but the crash landing is not. Trowbridge established a hero that could be
categorized with many others, who hoped to fly and be successful, which
aviation historians classify as ornithopters which means “bird wings”. The Wright brothers started off just as a couple of
young Darius Greens and pushed on even after the crash landings.
Overall, the poem, “Darius Green and his Flying
Machine” by John Townsend Trowbridge is a good representation of how American
dreamers of that time could go to great heights, literally in the case of
Darius Green, to perfect their invention, which is still relevant to how
inventors are still coming up with new ideas every day. Humans have always been fascinated and envious of
bird’s power of flight. The airplane is somewhat of a romantic symbol in
literature for the romanticized ideas of the power of flight, and even thinking
religiously, it gets people closer to god. Aviation is still a growing concept in the minds of
many engineers and genius inventors and this poem is a symbol of that
intelligent process of construction. There are many fans of Steampunk in this
day and age as well as many Engineers out there that can appreciate the first
and messy trials and errors to aviation and flying machines as well as the
representation of the process of going through said trials and error when
creating any new invention. This poem is a good addition to the
Great Lakes Canon because it’s all about the
evolution of ideas which will always be essential to worldly growth and we will
always be mimicking the birds.
Work Cited
"Daedalus
and Icarus." Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Foundation, 16 Nov. 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
"John
Townsend Trowbridge." Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Foundation, 16 Nov. 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
Coleman,
Rufus A. “Trowbridge and Clemens.” EBSCO
Host. 9: 216-223. Modern Language Quarterly 1948. Web. 16 November 2014.
Nevins,
Jess. "Darius Green, the Boy Who Launched Steampunk." Io9. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
The
Biography of John Townsend Trowbridge. "The Biography of John Townsend
Trowbridge." Poemhunter.com.
N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
Trowbridge,
John T. "Full Text of "Darius Green and His Flying-machine." Internet Archive. Houghton Mifflin
Company, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
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