Let's End on a Victimized Note

For this blog, I am going to characterize the victimization of both Mitch and Stella. They are both highly passive characters. With Mitch, we see how he is terribly victimized by Blanche. He courts her like a lady for months and basically receives nothing for it. Mitch does not even end up marrying her because he finds out she has been concealing a past of debauchery. He is taken advantage of by Blanche and feels as though he had been cheated out of a relationship. Part of his vulnerability in the situation stems from the fact that Mitch is desperate. He had been pressured into finding someone to marry by his mother. In a sense, he is a momma's boy. If he was not so desperate for a wife, he probably would not have been taken advantage of, but he was easily victimized by Blanche because he was desperate.

In a similar passive sense, Stella is victimized by Stanley. She is not necessarily desperate though, just blinded by her strong love for him. Despite his beatings and constant abuse, she still loves him. At the end of the play, she even chooses to believe him over Blanche with regards to the rape incident. Through our point of view, she is highly victimized by Stanley although she might not recognize it. In this way she contrasts Mitch's victimization because he actually recognizes it and takes action against his fate of marrying her. Stella seems content with her abuse.

The two characters both end up unhappy at the end of the play, but as time goes on they will probably get better. However, their victimization will probably stick with them for their entire life because of the abuse which they endured.

My Bad....

I did an extra blog that was assigned to specific people.. Hope you all enjoyed my unnecessary input!

Double Take

Stanley is definitely a character who comes off as the manliest brute we care to imagine. Between getting angrily drunk, gambling and beating his wife, Stella, we deduce that he is a character of stubbornness and brutality. However, Williams gives us one instance where we see a little bit of a passionate side in Stanley. At the end of scene eight, Stanley reminds Stella how happy they were before Blanche arrived and ruined their lives together. He even points at that he "was common as dirt," but that she still loved him. Stanley gives us an emotional side in his mini speech to Stella, and to top off his speech, she goes in to labor right as he finishes. It is described that holds her close and takes her outside presumably to a hospital. His compassion here is almost overwhelming to us because we have seen such an angry brute up until this time.

The implications Williams sends is most likely that not everyone is necessarily as they seem. Stanley actually does have the ability to be a compassionate person and show love normally, not just in a drunken state where he usually ends up apologizing like the end of scene three. Stanley apologizes to Stella and the two make up, much to Blanche's concern. His brutality is shadowed by this instance of love he shows through his speech and compassion when he helps her to the hospital. Of course, he quickly reverts to his old ways when he rapes Blanche in the next scene. Williams communicates something important in scene eight then. He becomes a believable character in a way, not just a crazy brute.

The Main Effect

The most distinct quality between drama and narrative is the simple fact that we learn everything through peoples' monologues in a drama and in a narrative we learn everything either through the point of view of a certain character, usually the main one, or from the third person. Usually drama is made for a playwright form and we think of narrative as the typical style for a novel. One of the effects of these two styles' main difference is the type of interaction the reader receives from reading one or the other. A great set of examples that can be used to distinguish the differences are "A Jury of Her Peers" and "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell. The stories have the same plot and storyline, the only difference being that "A Jury of Her Peers" is written as a narrative and "Trifles" is written as drama. In the narrative form, we receive most of our insight from a third person narrator, whereas drama makes us to deduce evidence from the characters' conversations. Another key point is that we learn things just as the characters do in a drama, we don't know anything ahead of time necessarily but in "real time" like the characters do. Drama tends to cut out the scenery details as well, except for maybe a couple lines in the beginning that set the stage. Because of this we have a specific place that the drama will take place as opposed to a variety of places that a narrative entails. There is no worry about the setting of the scene and a focused is placed on the characters' actions. In "Trifles," we are able to pick up on the details of the characters and we learn their motives and thoughts through their words. Drama is a more effective way of involving the reader on a more "realistic" level.

Paralyzed!!

For my close reading I chose The Sisters mainly because I found it to be the most interesting story. The entire story is told through the perspective of a boy in the church, and it begins by him learning through the conversation of others that Father Flynn had died. He was angry at old Cotter because he considered the boy a child. He was finally persuaded of the Father's death when he saw his name on a telegraph and his day of death. The boy goes on to explain the teachings he received from the Father and he also mentioned how the Father thought all of his duties to be quite tedious. This foreshadows the priests paralysis and how he eventually has his epiphany. We then reach the point of when the sisters are talking of how Father Flynn eventually lost his mind. They talked first of how his death was peaceful, and then the eventual downfall of his sanity. During one service, he drops an empty chalice. At this point, the priest undergoes his paralysis. He stares at the empty cup and most likely sees that his life is empty and that he doesn't feel any fulfillment with what he has done in life. This goes back to the boy seeing all of the tedious acts that Father Flynn had to do for the church. The boy's aunt mentions how "He (Father Flynn) was a disappointed man," perhaps because of his lack of fulfillment. This paralysis leads to the priest wandering alone, and eventually one night he was found in his confession-box laughing to himself, causing others to realize that something had gone wrong with him. This was the priests epiphany. His empty life had finally hit him and made him realize that he was not happy with his life. Although the priest's thoughts are not known, we can deduce from the symbolism of the chalice he no longer feels fulfillment in his life.

Relating this to another Joyce story, Araby, we can see the strong effect of the paralysis-epiphany style. The young boy in Araby has quite the crush on another young girl that just so happens to be one of his friend's sister. He makes a journey to the bazaar where he said he would get something for the girl. While at the bazaar, a state of paralysis hits the boy when he sees how cheap romance is. He sees a lady flirting with two soldiers and we can feel that the boy feels cheated. The boy's paralysis hits and moments later he has his epiphany as he lingers into the darkness into the store. His epiphany is realized when he describes himself as "a creature driven and derided by vanity." He goes on to say that his "eyes burned with anguish and anger" showing just how frustrated he had become with his situation.

Both stories show a point where one of the main characters has a point where they see something that would have them learn a lesson, the examples being the chalice and the flirting girl. Their epiphanies came at the same point, which is right at the end of the story. Both epiphanies were fairly major, a priest who feels empty in his faith and a boy who no longer has faith in love. They show the negative side of life, a fairly common theme within Joyce's writing.

Dealing With Change

In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor undergoes a major, and quite unfortunate, physiological change. He awakes one morning to find himself in the body of a large insect. Some find this to be too far fetched, even for the story, and choose to interpret the change on a metaphorical level as opposed to reading it as if Gregor is actually a giant bug. I'll analyze both sides, and eventually show why I believe Gregor has actually undergone this metamorphosis, despite the fact that it is anatomically impossible.

Early on in his state, we learn all about Gregor's life and how he feels about it throughout this change, such as his feelings towards his job. Later we see his family's reaction to his state and realize just how serious of a predicament Gregor is in. He also must deal with the chief, who seems to feel as though Gregor is a highly expendable asset to the company. He works hard during terrible hours just to help relieve his father's debt that he has accrued while his family lives a comfortable life. Consequently, Gregor is one of the hardest workers the chief has, and Gregor expresses how he feels while everyone is in a state of shock. He begins to worry later on about how he will not be able to support his family any more in the body of a bug, and sees how much they have depended on him. The fact that he has worries about this and directly correlates his state to his work shows how Gregor actually could have transformed into a bug. An argument for his human state could also be made though. He still has human thoughts and reactions, so he could just be hallucinating the entire thing.

To rebut the hallucination theory, Gregor shows very bug-like tendencies. He shows no interest in his previously favorite foods and even hides under the sofa. Gregor is very scared of humans and seems to be very shy; he has the personality of a bug. His family's reaction is probably the most convincing piece of evidence that Gregor had indeed turned into a bug. The way his family deals with the transformation shows how much of an effect he had on them. The consequences of his form are a lack of support for the family. The family eventually had to refocus on the future once Gregor was found dead, something that probably didn't happen while he was working to keep their lives comfortable. It is frustrating to see such a hard working man take the sacrifice like that, but he taught the family that they basically needed to stop being lazy. His metamorphosis put his family back on track and made them realize that he couldn't be the one paying the price for his father's debt.

The Wonderful World of Faith

Religion can often be thought of as a crutch for those who are not strong enough to deal with the realities of life. In some senses, this is true, yet at the same time those involved in a church might have to approach twice as many problems compared to a person who isn't involved with such an institution. In Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, we see a man who approaches one of the main problems with the Christian church we have seen since its beginning in the book of Acts in the Bible. This problem is heresy, where people say they are living a morally upright life in relation to the Christian faith when in reality they are actually lying and committing every sin under the sun. This would cause a man such as Goodman Brown to look down upon those who have been living in such a lie when he has not been. We see what happens when Goodman Brown is put into a situation where he finds the congregation actually worshiping the devil and how he reacts to such a scene. Through Goodman Brown we see a man who has turned from a passionate faith to one of dissatisfaction because of the people he has surrounded himself with in the church.

Young Goodman Brown shows a very strong faith when he departs on his journey. He goes into the forest and essentially begins to lose his faith. His wife being named Faith, is actually symbolic to his faith when Goodman Brown cries out "'My Faith is gone! There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given.'" His strong statement is one that actually comes to be partially truthful through what he encounters in the forest. He sees a congregation not devoted to God, like he thought, but one devoted to worshiping the sin of mankind. At this sight he tells Faith to look up to heaven as he did to resist. This shows the devotion of Goodman Brown to his faith, and we see that he never truly renounces his faith. Rather, he loses his faith in the people around him. In some sense, we see that if the "crutch" we receive from religion is placed on the people around us, we will in fact fall away from this faith because of the heresy we see in others around us. Goodman Brown still continues to go to church, however, it seems as though he goes in vain because of the things he witnessed, knowing not whether if it was even real or not. He lived in such a gloomy state up until the last days of his life, and it was described that "they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom."

On a more personal level, I have encountered such a scenario when I was involved with a church in high school. There was a split because the pastor's daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, and many people left the church, including the pastor eventually. They immediately turned their back on those that stayed with the church, however people eventually started stop going. Their faith was not in God but rather in the people that were at the church. They went to church not for God but for people, which can objectively translate into a wrong reason to go to church. This occurred while I was in high school, and seeing this I saw how heretical people were. They were not willing to give someone a second chance, something Jesus actually preaches directly about in the gospels. He explains to one of his disciples that if your brother makes a mistake, you should never stop giving him second chances, his emphasis being on forgiveness. Young Goodman Brown encountered a sin that was occurring in his church, and rather than even approach the people about it, he chose to live a distant life. From Hawthorne's perspective, this story is about the heresy he saw in the church and how he felt about it for the rest of his life. I can't really blame Hawthorne, because I can relate to Goodman Brown as well. I felt as though everyone else in that church was heretical and didn't go for the right purposes. At that point, when you start going and despising almost everyone else there, you realize that you aren't going for the right reasons either. So much like Hawthorne, I left the church behind me also. I still have faith, just not in the people.

Hawthorne presents a great argument within his story of Goodman Brown. We see a man who loses faith primarily because of the people around him. This is why Hawthorne lost his faith as well, because of the people involved with the Salem witch trials. Criticism can be put on both sides, those who committed the sin and those who failed to give a second chance. These are the unfortunate problems we see within churches today, and I'm sure many people go through situations like this. Hawthorne shows us that we should readily give second chances and at the same time hold ourselves accountable so as not to fall into the same boat as those who are heretical about faith.

Miss Emily's Facebook

Shown above is what I believe Miss Emily's profile picture would be. Of course she would be shown alone, perhaps pondering the meaning of her life. The only contradictory aspect of this photo would be her attire. I think she would actually be wearing a different color besides black, however, black is a fair representative color for her. Her life primarily revolves around death, more specifically, Homer Barron. As for other pictures, she might post some of Homer up or maybe some from her younger years. She would not have very many friends either. They would consist mainly of people who have already deceased or perhaps others who moved away. The actual page would not have very many things on it, it would be very bare, that is, if you just happened to be one of the "lucky" friends that gets to see it. From this we can deduce that her privacy settings would be very strict, meaning if you are not one of her close friends, then you probably are not going to see much other than a small profile picture and a date of birth.

Miss Emily's wall would not have very many posts on it, and the only person who really only posts on it is Toby, her servant, or maybe some older comments from Colonel Sartoris regarding her tax situation. An older conversation between her and the colonel might have been:

Colonel Sartoris: Don't you worry about those taxes Miss Emily, your father has donated a great deal of money to the town.

Miss Emily: Oh that is just so kind of you Colonel, the his loss sure has been hard to deal with.

Colonel Sartoris: He was a great man Miss Emily, don't let anyone bother you about those taxes.

Miss Emily was described as an obligation and a tradition of the town. She has an aura of mystery about her that no one can really interpret. Eventually, we are informed of her sad life and how she has held on to the past (namely Homer) for about forty years. Thus, her Facebook page would be representative of this type of life. A closed off life to most people with the exception of a few is a fair interpretation of how she lived. The pictures of her and others of Homer show her strong yet obsessive love for him. Our main source of Miss Emily is gossip we hear from the townsfolk. We don't get any other perspectives on her. The most knowledgeable person to inquire would have been Toby, but he would never tell what Miss Emily has been up to. Thus, her life remained a mystery until the day she died and the town saw the secret she had been keeping in her bed.

Ozy in a Nutshell

Ozy in a Nutshell

Out there in
the desert
lies an old
broken statue

and the guy
was supposedly
important a
thousand years ago.

Now there is
sand rubbing up
against
his shattered
visage.

This parody combines the storyline of "Ozymandias" and the form of "This Is Just to Say." The form copies the three stanzas and short lines of no more than three words. "Ozymandias" was shortened to fit inside the stanzas. I picked the main points of the poem to incorporate into the limited amount of space given by "This Is Just to Say" while still getting the main theme across to the reader.

Ode to a Nightingale

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

This ode was inspired after Keats heard the song of a nightingale while staying with a friend in the country. This poem was also written after the death of his brother and the many references to death in this poem are a reflection of this. Among the thematic concerns in this poem is the wish to escape life through different routes. Although the poem begins by describing the song of an actual nightingale, the nightingale goes on to become a symbol of the immortality of nature.

The poet suddenly cries out "Away! away! for I will fly to thee." He turns to fantasy again; he rejects wine in line 2, and in line 3 he announces he is going to use "the viewless wings of Poesy" to join a fantasy bird. In choosing Poesy, is he calling on analytical or scientific reasoning, on poetry and imagination, on passion, on sensuality, or on some something else?

He contrasts this mode of experience (poetry) to the "dull brain" that "perplexes and retards" (line 4); what way of approaching life does this line reject? What kinds of activities is the brain often associated with, in contrast to the heart, which is associated with emotion?

In line 5, he succeeds or seems to succeed in joining the bird. The imagined world described in the rest of the stanza is dark; what qualities are associated with this darkness, e.g., is it frightening, safe, attractive, empty, fulfilling, sensuous, alive?

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I chose a picture of a sun in the desert for the line from Hughes's "Harlem": "Or does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" This picture was significant because a desert with footsteps pertains to a feeling of hopelessness. The sun beats down on the barren land where nobody wants to be. The raisin is much like the desert floor being soaked in the sun in that little or no life can survive there. The life has been sucked out of the dehydrated raisin and not much remains within this once life-filled fruit. A dream deferred is much like this raisin and desert floor because not much remains of it. The dream has almost no hope of being revived and made a reality. Much like the desert, there is virtually no way to bring back a life filled land.

The Art of Writing

In the poem, "Harlem," the use of similes gives us the essence of what a dream deferred looks like. The first encounter with a simile, a very famous comparison to a dream deferred, is the line, "Does it (the dream) dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?" (lines 2-3). This shows that the dream dries up when it is put off too long, and could be a reference to the dream shifting to something different entirely (grape to a raisin) or that it just runs out of life. The poem gives us vivid imagery through simile by making an indirect comparison to a grape. A grape would represent something full of life, whereas the raisin shows something that is drained, however not useless. The raisin does not necessarily mean that the dream completely dies, but that its purpose has shifted. So the dream is not completely lost, but rather it has changed. The effect of the simile gives us an image to relate a dream deferred to, hence allowing for a better understanding of what Langston Hughes was trying to communicate by asking the question "What happens to a dream deferred?" (line 1). Through the use of similes and symbolism he portrays a dominantly sad outcome for what happens to that dream.
In the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, there is a strong allusion to past events that the narrator is mentioning in this poem to her deceased father. In lines 57-60, the narrator says "I was ten when they buried you/ At twenty I tried to die/ and get back, back, back to you/ I thought even the bones would do." This allusion is to a specific past that she and her father had that contains underlying emotions not fully expressed in the poem. We can only see that she is bitter about her father's death and still holding on to him (however, the end of the poem is her "release"). Her bitterness is towards those who have buried her father. Later we learn that "the villagers never liked [him]/ they are dancing and stamping on [him]" (lines 77-78). This is because of her father's highly racist past that seems to plague her throughout her life. Some earlier lines also make known her own racial bitterness: "I began to talk like a Jew/ I think I may well be a Jew" (lines 34-35). This allusion allows for a very emotional story to unfold as the poem reads on. If it were just the narrator speaking about her father's death and racism, the story would be out right bland. With the allusion, however, the story is gripping and keeps an element of mystery about the poem. We do not know what the father's full story, we just know that he was obviously a very racist man. He could have been a Nazi soldier or just a common racist man. The narrator alludes to something in the second to last line, "They always knew it was you," which makes it seem like he performed a terrible act. We can suspect some of things that he might have done, but that just adds mystery to the story through creating a shady character. Plath effectively created a poem that tells a story without giving away all of the details through the use of allusion.

Poetic Form

Sonnet 73 Shakespeare

"In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by"

You see in me a glowing fire
Where the ashes of my youth lie
As on the deathbed where it will expire
Dying by what it was previously nourished by

The poetic form of this quatrain slightly enhances the meaning of the poem. If written in simple prose, seen in the paraphrase, the section simply displays a dying man's fire becoming extinguished. Shakespeare's conveyed meaning is very similar to the paraphrase. There are no meanings that can be realistically interpreted in any other ways. However, there are some symbols that can potentially hold two different meanings. In the second life, the ashes could be a symbol of either the end of his youthfulness or possibly bad decisions that he made in his youthful years. The third line is about the fire dying down and ending and the fourth line consequently explains why. The fire becomes "Consumed by that which it was nourished by," pertaining to the wood that turned into ashes that eventually will put out the fire. Once again, the poetic form enhances the meaning very little. The symbolism of the "ashes of youth" determine how the fourth line is read. If the ashes are simply his youthful years, then he is dying most likely because of his old age. Yet if they are mistakes, then the fire that is his life is consumed because of past mistakes or from a certain condition possibly. Symbolism is the main literary device enhanced by Shakespeare's poetic form, primarily seen through the "ashes of youth."

This is the third and final quatrain of Sonnet 73, which leads into a heroic couplet. It brings together the idea of Shakespeare expressing his pitiful state in the previous lines and connects it to the couplet where we learn that the man whom Shakespeare wrote to still loves him regardless. In the first and second quatrains, a concern of loneliness and death is recognized. In the third quatrain, this becomes a reality for Shakespeare. His death is encroaching and his youth is over, and he expresses this to the man. The heroic couplet tells us that the man still loves him, and brings resolve at the end of the sonnet.

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