George Santayana

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Jim says to Oliver, ''It's the devil ... as sends us the toothache and the east wind and the tax on beer." Perhaps so as Oliver "was born under a bad star."

Jim seeks solace in punting. Here is what that activity looks like:





Oliver enjoys the outdoors and determines that "In nature, if things were left alone they would be perfect." He takes lessons in punting which ''restores peace and balance to his mind'' as the sport removes ''all the mysteries oo miseries of the universe." Unlike others in this environs, the activity strengthens his resolve "his will to do right."

A certain preacher is met. As with New England Yankees, his name is pronounced Pēē bo dē rather than Pē BOD dē. He and a school master rant on endlessly and this puts Peter to sleep. School master is offended by that even though he fails to realize that Peter's health is declining.

Oliver thrives while in England and excels in sports. He and his dad discuss England's complexity and the image of Jacob's Ladder. Symbolically, it represents a vision of a stairway to Heaven. It is a "fabulous moral order'' and is the one way to divine reward. Punishment and discipline are the means of ascending Jacob's Ladder. Yet, it is a false god, a myth. Just the same ''let everything flourish that is capable of flourishing." "Life, for the spirit, was no walk ... it was an ocean voyage ... in which you must choose your own course ... Your hardboiled moralists were idolaters and hypnotized by their own words ... in the moral world there is no single pole, no single tree on which heights and depths could be measured." Life is a pilgrimage of spirit. Life is bewitchment. Useless thinking a "torment". Thus we must all seek a rational purpose, some moral philosophy and move on.


to p 320

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Autumn. Seasonal decline.

While Oliver remains optimistic about things, his father Peter remains fatalist. Yet, he has a certain admiration for his son: "He has skipped his parents and drawn his character from his remote ancestors {the Puritans}. He's like a two-edged sword, as merciless in one direction as in the other." He tells him "Your mother hasn't realized what a Puritan you are ... here at last was a recognition of his true nature. What a relief, what an encouragement, to be enlightened and confirmed in his self possession, in his integrity!" ... Puritan he was conscious of being and determined to remain, if this meant self directed and inflexibly himself. ''

Peter appears to feel his work as a father has been done. Having no further aim in life. He commits suicide. There is virtually no mourning for this loss. He was buried overseas, not in Yankeeland despite his heritage.

Oliver further contemplates "simply doing his Duty to Others ... His allegiance must be to his own conscience, to his own reason."


to p 350

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The current world does not respect the piety nor the moralism of the old Puritans and their descendants. Because of this the world does not give Oliver the means to achieve his purposes and leads to his estrangement from others. "Existence was a complication, a commitment, a pose." Despite his great wealth, he traveled second class and felt good about it. In fact, this gave him the "wonderful happiness of solitude ... The point was to be a gentleman, to be vowed to defend and exalt the beautiful in all things , to be the Champion of tenderness, of honesty, of all things." He quotes Caleb in saying that he "thinks God has chosen me to be a second Messiah." Yet he says, there is no need to have second class ~ only ONE class. He disdains luxury. "I hate pleasure. I hate what is called having a good time. I hate stimulants. I hate 'dope'. It's all a cheat." Jim muses: ""it's no use trying to live on principles contrary to nature ... {Oliver} is a poet without words."



to p 394

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In his final year of schooling, Oliver plays one last of football, a sport that "brings out the fighting instinct, and you do things you wouldn't do in cold blood." But, "that's life ... Naturally each man counts for what's in him." Despite his misgivings about the sport he "couldn't refuse" to play. He attributed that to a "horrid tyranny" which he did not specifically identify though he likely meant face saving. Now that he is injured he wonder who his true friends are. As he recovers and settles into the school dorms he learns that the room he has been assigned to was used at one time by Emerson. He is immersed in the collegiate atmosphere but wonders, "Perhaps all this religion and philosophy and poetry and art were a disease to be killed off presently by natural selection."

Despite this, he continues to "pursue higher things" because "it was the puritan's turn to be in the twentieth [century]: the martyrs of a poetic and chivalrous cause ... a form sense of direction." His room is rather spartan. And now he turns to the sport of rowing where his team has everything set up for him. He achieves great serenity from rowing.

Oliver feels drawn to a higher purpose in life. But he lives in spartan digs while contemplating lofty ideals. He derives spiritual fulfillment from rowing which, ironically, was viewed as an elitist sport. His residency is at Divinity Hall which bespeaks of a life of monasticism. "Possessions are such a bore." "True religion must recognize the power actually at work in the world and study its workings honestly." His classes: Indian philosophy, Metaphysics, Plato, Ethics, and Art. "One religion is as good as another when good people practice it.

Thus, he's more than a puritan -- he is a pilgrim as well.



to p 435

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Harvard rowing club 1910-1915










The legendary Harry Parker ~ coach from the 1960s to 2013:






Was said to be quite a task master but he got results and was beloved by his athletes and fans of the great sport of collegiate regatta.

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darn ~ forgot to include a note on Oliver's positioning in regatta: re was assigned to be stroke which is a crucial position. This because he is the one who sets the pace/rhythm whereas the coxswain is mostly responsible for steerage

the 1 is at the bow (front) of the boat or shell as it is called
the 8 is at the stern - nearest to the cox


illustrated below:






He was put into this position because of his drive, intensity, hard work, and natural leadership.

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this might illustrate the positions a bit better:







stroke is # 8

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Oliver studies very intensely with philosophy as his main classes. Philosophy ''belonged to the shady side of the world; it was all a chaos of talk, of argument, of opinion. " He found these studies empowering as "he possessed by nature an incorruptible spirit, hating compromises and vagueness, and not afraid of being cruel in the interest of truth."


philo = love
sophy = wisdom


"Life isn't what it's cracked up to be. It's just a trap. You're caught in it, and can't get out. Unless that is unless you're quick and clever ... cheat the hangman ... Even if death seems to spare us, time itself slowly kills everything we love ... you had better give up heroism ... The use of riches isn't to disperse riches, but to cultivate the art of living, to produce beautiful houses, beautiful manners, beautiful speech, beautiful charities ... there can be no real happiness in this world."



to p 468

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With "His own mind perfectly simple and free, innocent of all world or religious entanglements; and self-consciousness in him, as in so many philosophers, intercepted intuition ... I am trying to save my soul." He "needed love" but did not find it in the few females he was acquainted with nor did he find any fulfillment in any church despite having relatives associated with several Christian institutions. He was "too profound, too original in his mind to breathe freely in any church." While he continued to find some measure of fulfillment in sports, he felt that being "captain of the crew [rowing team] was a curse to him ... But it was no use swimming against the stream, the stream of circumstances. Better to give it all up. Better spend your life going from house to house dosing people with aspirin -- the best thing a doctor could do -- until you took your last does of aspirin yourself." {interesting how he continues to think about dope} ... Sculling alone is what I really like ... [rather than] dope yourself with pious fictions. ''


He had a failed romantic relationship and sent a marriage proposal to his intended. However she never got the letter and could not reply. He took that as a rejection which meant he was now "free". But what he didn't know is that with this "freedom" it would lead to him marching off to the military. This would seal his fate.



to p 506

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Oliver wished he could be free spirited as that was ''enviable''. "Enviable if you wish to be happy; but impossible if you wish to do right, to make yourself and the world better. You are merely encouraging the fools to be fools, the rascals to be rascals, and the prostitutes to be prostitutes. You might fall in love with nature ... but you mustn't become a pagan in your heart ... because it was the very nature of the heart to choose a pure good, and to cleave to it. There was , there couldn't help being, a single supreme allegiance, a dedication to truth, to mercy, to this threadmill of bitter amusements ... So confirmed in his spiritual self reliance ..." that he resolved to let his conscience with German philosophy and moderation to be his guides. "The right direction for a moral man would always lead to ultimate order and kindness. In this quest he was to be ably assisted by aesthetic philosophy as "Art must canalise nature, prevent disastrous inundations, and render waters navigable and sweet."

He continued to study with greater fervency in England but finds its empiricism to be faulty as its "inspiration cheats us with some mirage ... Why does experience leave us so desolate, so puzzled, so tired, that like Plato and Plotinus and the Christian saints we must look to some imaginary heaven or some impossible utopia for encouragement and for peace?" Thus, Puritanism like all of Christianity failed to deliver salvation or solace for him.



World War I

"They haven't the least notion as to what they're fighting about ... The world is full of people, hungry people, pushing people, barbarous people: you've got to crush them or be crushed." Some believe that good will come out of this war. Oliver is not so sure. Some will profit but he asks, 'how many will be killed and tortured?' "I should be glad to die now, if I could find something to die for ... It's a blind current that sweeps us on, we don't know for how long or to what issue." It's a "wretched" world.



to p 538

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Oliver thought ''all conflicts and contradictions as unnecessary and perverse ... his love of rightness" made him abhor the war and his lack or inability of intervening to stop it. While he viewed wealth as a burden (how strange!) he bemoaned that the wealth could not be used to end the war. How he wish he could ''do good, to abolish injustice,to diffuse happiness!" War was hell and irrational just like football ~ a product of herd instinct. But he felt compelled to enlist. Notwithstanding his patriotism, he praised the German resolve: "the categorical imperative, and the will to dominate: how manfully they had risen to what they believed was the call of Providence ...

... when we move upward from chaos, we aspire towards truth, perfection, and simplicity: but when we reflect and turn inwards from the highest achievement, we find sorrow and disillusion and a murmur of the winds."


Despite all his wealth Oliver lived a life of asceticism. But it was voluntary. Now in the military he was alone, friendly,and without enthusiasm. He felt like a "nobody ... weary, faded, slow ... frequent illnesses ... he craved rest ... he demanded something to build upon, sound principles and sure possessions ... he had a transcendental mind ,,, the sight of suffering, the knowledge of suffering, was intolerant to him ... [He had] a sort of premonition that I shan't live long."

Everywhere he went the sense of fatalism prevailed. He sees a black swan which he views as an omen.

"I would gladly devote my life to religion, if there were a religion that were true. But Christianity and all other religions are so childishly false that I wonder how some people can put up with them ... nothing but myths and poetic apologues ... Christian fables ... ''

He was "an ascetic without faith". He was looking gaunt, distressed, and alienated ... He would die as he had lived lived, with lead in his wings." He increasingly became more skeptical as "philosophy that is not a religion is only a vague science or a loose eloquence ... Science and art are prodigious shams." Now, more fatalist than ever, he draws out his will naming friends, family, and just a few institutions.


to p 578

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Oliver is rejected by a second potential lover. Indeed, throughout the story, it is the men who are most thoughtful, more giving, less demanding, and far less indifferent than the women. He contemplates the works and thoughts of Plato: "Plato was talking poetry about a love that is an inspiration, a divine madness; whereas I was talking dead prose about general benevolence, friendliness, and charity ... [re those women] I was not seeing the reality at all, but only an image, only a mirage, of my own situation ... the inspiration of a profound desire ... the true lover's tragedy is not in being jilted; it is being accepted ... I have been a conscript all my life: a conscript son, a conscript schoolboy, a conscript athlete, a conscript soldier; at least I am not a conscript husband ... the idea of a divine being ... is an idol of the mind, an impossible object ... I need to be honest, I need to be true, I need to be just ... My people first went to America as exiles into a stark wilderness to lead a life apart, purer and soberer than the carnival life of Christendom ... Perhaps it is time for us to die ... Either the truth or nothing ... It is my duty ... to keep myself as much as possible from complicity in wrong."


Oliver dies. Not from battle casualty but because he swerved his vehicle to avoid crashing onto someone. He sacrificed right up to the very end of his life. And this was several days after the Armistice.

It shakes one's faith in Providence, this cutting down of the green bough, when there's so much dead wood in the world ready for burning ... God bless the charitable giver, and reward him in the other world, for in this he was too pure and good to endure our wretchedness ... he was a poet ... When was there ever such sweetness and such integrity?



to the Epilogue

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The story began with a Prologue in which the writer Professor Santayana recalled meeting Mario Van de Weyer (Oliver's cousin) in Paris, years after his retirement from Harvard. It was him who persuaded the writer to compile the book. The story ends in the Epilogue where the two meet again.

"Vanny" or Mario as he was better known, in contrast to Puritanical Oliver, was a hedonist. He freely borrowed large sums of money from Oliver to finance his Bohemian lifestyle. He was raised in Europe and was not acquainted with the staid lifestyle of old school New England Yankees. He laughs at the universe, is very witty, and hasn't a care in the world. Because of that he had no problem in leeching Oliver for money. The latter "loved" him (Platonic) and readily gave him what he needed. As the years progressed he was attracted to rather exotic women, one of whom was older than him. But Vanny had much vanity and didn't care. Unlike Oliver who regarded all equally, he was an anti Semite who used the objectionable term "sheeny" in describing a Jewish scholar-athlete. Unlike Oliver who found his ideal spot in the research library, Vanny found his in the Harvard frat house. Later on when Oliver bought a modest car, Vanny bought a luxury car and made it a point to be seen driving it. But he does strongly support WW I as he was (technically speaking) a European with Continental sensibilities. He also enlists, is injured but readily survives. He sincerely believes much good will come out of the war as it will purge the world of evil elitists.

After the war, 15 years elapse and the scene shifts to both Rome and Paris ~ two Bohemian centers where Mario/Vanny is thriving. Professor Santayana tells him "any future worth having will spring from men like you, not from weedy intellectuals or self-inhibited puritans. Fortune will never smile on those who disown the living forces of nature ... the truth cannot help triumphing at the last judgment ... in the real world we are all unjust to one another ... A moral nature burdened and over-strung, and a critical faculty fearless but helplessly subjective - isn't that the true tragedy of your ultimate Puritan? ''

The book ends with the two of them having an argument over philosophy with the conclusion suggesting that all ideals, philosophies, and even life itself all too often being an illusion.

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Brilliant philosophy Professor KD Irani from City College of New York:







When I was a freshman at that school in 1970, he inspired me to read the The Last Puritan. Fascinating scholar - there are several videos about him in youtube.