Which character do you believe has changed the most, in Silas :: Free Essay Writer

Which character do you believe has changed the most, in Silas Marner, giving reasons why? Change can be natural or provoked manually, it is unavoidable, it is inevitable, it is imperative and it can be both welcome and greeted with apprehension. The Concise Oxford Dictionary says change is to, ‘Make or become different’, and the Oxford Thesaurus offers these alternatives, ‘adapt, adjust, alter, amend, convert, modify and transform’. Change and its effects is the underlying theme of Silas Marner. The novel is a fable because it has a strong moral message, which is change, and based on one fictitious individual and how they should and should not cope with both positive and negative change. It is a story ultimately about redemption within oneself due to catastrophic changes to a lifestyle. In this particular case, the life in question is that of Silas Marner’s. As the title suggests, the main character is Marner and it was customary of 19th century writers to name their novel on the main character and from there after, follow the change and development of that character within their environment. This would infer that Marner is the main character, and that he is to undertake the most change throughout the course of the story. A wise assumption perhaps, but under closer observation there may be more to consider than first anticipated. Other characters from whom we can extract good examples of various types of change from are Aaron Winthrop, Nancy Lammeter, and Eppie. Yet, the only character to experience change radical enough to rival Marner’s is Godfrey Cass. However, before I can describe in detail what changes these two characters have experienced we need to know what they were like before any change, at the beginning of the story. Obviously, in order to change, the subject needs to change from something to something else; and to gauge how much change has taken place, there needs to be a comparison between the past and present. So, what are the two characters like when we first meet them? The first mention of Marner is at the beginning of the second paragraph. At this time, Marner is in Raveloe having already left Lantern Yard: ‘In the early years of this century such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone pit.’ This does not tell us much about Marner’s character but a change in character is not the only thing to attract interest. The text gives us an insight into his appearance by saying, ‘such a linen weaver,’. To me this is implying Marner is quite a stereotypical linen-weaver,