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The Beast in the Jungle | Introduction

Literary critics generally agree that Henry James’s career can be divided into three periods, the first from 1876 to the mid-1880s, the second from the mid-1880s to 1897, and the third from 1897 to his death. James’s ‘‘The Beast in the Jungle’’ was written and published in the final phase of James’s career (1903). Like other works composed during this period, this story’s style is the product of James’s desire to minutely render the permutations of an individual consciousness, in this case the mind of the story’s protagonist, John Marcher. Thematically, this story can be linked to one of the greatest novels of his later period, The Ambassadors, which was also published in 1903.

Both ‘‘The Beast in the Jungle’’ and The Ambassadors, even if in different ways, present the reader with the idea of the failure to live life. ‘‘The Beast in the Jungle’’ is the story of John Marcher, who believes he is destined for a special fate. This conviction is so profound that instead of delving into life, Marcher chooses to live at life’s fringe, waiting for this special event to occur. When, at the end of his life, Marcher decides that he was mistaken in his conviction, and that nothing of momentous import was in fact to be his destiny, he is left a broken man. He realizes that his exceptionality is of a purely negative aspect: ‘‘The fate he had been marked for he met with a vengeance—he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, the man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened.’’

The Beast in the Jungle Summary

‘‘The Beast in the Jungle’’ is divided into six sections, each part designated by a roman numeral (I-VI). In the first section, James introduces the protagonist of the story, John Marcher. Marcher is at a manor house in the English countryside where he sees a woman whose face and manner stir his memory, although he is unable to recollect the circumstances of their acquaintance. Before he leaves, Marcher finds himself at close quarters with the woman. The moment she speaks to him he remembers where they met—in Italy where both were vacationing ten years previously. During this short renewal of their acquaintance, she reminds him that he had imparted to her a grave secret in Italy: he had told her that it was his conviction that he was destined to experience a monumental and devastating event, but as to the nature of this event, and when it might occur, he had no inkling. Marcher, who still fervently retains this conviction, is both pleased and shocked to meet the only human being to whom he has ever confided his deepest, and perhaps his only, secret. By the end of their conversation May Bartram has agreed to become his special friend, a friend who will wait and watch with him until the moment his fate is at last revealed.

In Section II Bartram receives an inheritance which allows her to set herself up in a London home. Bartram’s and Marcher’s proximity leads to a life in which they are constant companions. Most of this part of James’s story details Marcher’s pleased feelings over having a companion to keep him company during his ‘‘vigil.’’ There is a sense of much time passing quickly.

Section III opens with Marcher and Bartram... » Complete The Beast in the Jungle Summary