what did he mean? (heathcliff)
hey there, before heathcliff died he said he had to reach something (talked of struggling to reach a shore..metaphore thing) and that he was close to his aim... but what was this aim.. this chases me since I've finished the story.
did he want to die to be united with cathy in death or did he want something else?? help me, take a look at the end of the story, remember the facts and tell me what you think .. thx
Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.
His aim was to destroy The Grange and Wuthering Heights. So, he makes sure that when Cathy and Edgar were married and have a child, Hindley's son Hareton is forced out of sight through the debts of his father (Heathcliff has paid them and so gained possession of WH), that he himself gets a child with Edgar's only sister and has the two children marry. He unites the two fortunes (Linton and Heathcliff) and unites the two estates and then he has the power to destroy both of them. He wanted to demolish both estates, breaking them down to their foundations. But he did not reac his goal as he started to doubt what the purpose of that would be.
But that was somewhere in the book at the end, wasn't it?
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I think he wants to be right, and to see what he has worked for flourished. Maybe not at Wuthering Heights and Thrusscross Grange, although after trying to be a part of Catherine, he wanted Linton and Cathy as something he didn't have. That makes a little sense.
Half the time, Linton was lying to Heathcliff about how 'macho' he is around Cathy. I suppose Linton thought that maybe he was making his son happy.
I don't think he wanted to die, I think he wanted to create beautiful things. Perhaps there were other ways to go about it, however he was on a mission.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?Eliot
Yes I think you understood the point. He wants to die because his beloved Cathy (who he could never be united with during in life) has died. He must now seek her in the afterlife. Very sad and powerful ending.
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