Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the structural symmetry of the opening and closing scenes in "The Rise of Silas Lapham" by William Dean Howells in order to demonstrate the moral change that Silas Lapham has undergone. The author uses the opening and closing interviews to explore the deeper aspects of Silas' morality and identity. The author also makes use of various critical reviews.

From the Paper:

"The structural symmetry, which appears in the opening and closing scenes in The Rise of Silas Lapham, provides a lens through which the true transformation of Silas Lapham can be viewed. The two scenes, which both involve an interview with Colonel Lapham concerning his "solidity," mirror each other in order to demonstrate the moral change that Silas has undergone. The novel is an exchange between beginnings and endings, for Silas must eventually fall in order to rise. The financial risen but morally fallen man portrayed in the opening interview becomes the morally risen but financially fallen man in the closing interview. Thus, as Wai-Chee Dimock states in , "The Economy of Pain," "What makes Lapham's fictive trajectory possible" is a crucial and animating process of exchange: an exchange between beginnings and endings, between what he starts out with and what he ends up with" (Dimock 82-83). Given this perspective, it is then essential to analyze Lapham's transformation through the parallel exchange between the opening and closing scenes."

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