Theme+of+Character+Connections+and+Juxtaposition

In many ways, // Wuthering Heights // is a story about two different generations with heavy thematic concentration of the first generation’s effect on the second. The first generation of characters in // Wuthering Heights // includes Heathcliff, Hindley, the late Catherine, and Edgar and Isabella Linton. The second consists of Hareton, Linton, and young Catherine. What is remarkable about these two separate sets of characters is that many of the situations of the first generation are reflected in the second. For example, Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship and the one between Hareton and Catherine are // very //similar. Heathcliff is the wild-child among the civilized Earnshaws. He runs amok and lives mostly outside in the stables. He is despised by his “step-brother”, Hindley. Hareton also seems to be a ruffian. He throws stones at what he presumes are strangers and runs around the moors and disregards the limits of Wuthering Height’s gates. The two boys also fall in love with a more civilized girl who, at first, evades them and loves another, but ends up loving them in the end. There is a glaring difference between the two relationships, however. While Heathcliff’s ends tragically, turning him into a hermit-like, bitter and morbid man, Hareton’s relationship with Catherine ends with hope and happiness. One of the most powerful scenes in the book is when Heathcliff decides to refrain from interfering with Hareton and Catherine, thus allowing their relationship to take its own coarse, unlike his own.
 * Juxtaposition of Characters **