Silas Marner 3 Essay, Research Paper

George Eliot’s Silas Marner is an engaging novel intertwining money, sex, and family feuds during the 18th century. The title character is a friendless weaver who cares only for his cache of gold. He is ultimately redeemed through his love for Eppie, an abandoned golden-haired baby girl, whom he discovers shortly after he is robbed and rears as his own child. Through symbolism, the speaker conveys the message that with life’s hardships come its treasures.

Eliot uses the character Eppie to represent happiness, love, and new beginnings; whereas gold to symbolize sadness and loneliness. Silas’s life is unmeaningful and monotonous when all he has is his gold. “He handled [the coins], he counted them, like the satisfaction of a thirst to him that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship.”(68) Money often changes a person, but it should not replace a human presence as a friend. With the arrival of Eppie after Silas’s gold is stolen, his life becomes meaningful, joyous, and new emotions are evoked from him. “Silas pressed [the child] to him, and almost unconsciously uttered sounds of hushing tenderness ” (167) Eppie becomes Silas’s treasure in life. Silas rears up Eppie as his own child and his life never becomes bleak again.

Life just comes with hardships and treasures. You can’t have one without the other. In Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, the title character is subjected to a difficult life. As the novel progresses however, Nicholas’s life becomes more bearable and in the end, he receives one of the greatest treasures of life, love. To live a difficult life makes the good things worth a lot more. I agree with the speaker in Silas Marner because there is absolutely no exception-you cannot find a life without its treasures, no matter how small.

Silas unknowingly changes the course of his life once he takes on the task of raising a child. Today, life still comes with its hardships and treasures, but many of us don’t realize what the treasures are until they are gone. George Eliot’s Silas Marner clearly presents to us this fact in a simple way. Perhaps we oughtn’t take things for granted and should be thankful for what we do have.