meganv’s Blog

Examples:

• who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
                Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
                torsos night after night
  

• lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
                down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
                off Empire State out of the moon,
  

• who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
                behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
                and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
                place Chicago,

• who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
                the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
                the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
                and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
                sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
                threads of the craftsman's loom,

• who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
                cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
                blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
                be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
  

• who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
                an egg,

• who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
                for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
                fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

• who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
                fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
                stores where they thought they were growing
                old and cried,
  

•  who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
                pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
                into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
                ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
  

• fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic,

• Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
  

•  Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
                wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
                They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
                carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
                street!
  

The meaning of the motif in the poem starts as individuals who are killing themselves out of desperation or madness because of the situation that they find themselves in. Ginsberg expands on the situation of these ‘brillant’ ‘angelheaded hipsters’ adding the the physical depravity of their lives through detailed description of their suicide attempts.Those who couldn’t seek the escape in “the Eternity outside of Time” instead are forced to “open antique stores”. Without the escape of death the men grew old, useless and forgotten in time and their lives. Like the items in an antique store. Ginsberg uses this motif because of the symbolic and physical deaths that the narrator sees around him.

The motif is works on the individual and universal level for the narrator and the people he talks about in the poem. There is a building up with all the repetition of acts of suicide. The act goes from personal to a ritualistic level as the first reference to suicide is pertaining to the ‘angelhaired hipsters’ while the last invokes a religious cleansing as the words “holy laughter”, “holy yells” and “river” are used. Ginsberg has them sent off as saints invoking flowers and farewells as the start on a journey to Eternity, Time or some equivalent of heaven. The exclamation marks denotes a joyful tone to suicide making less of a suicidal act and more of a ascension to a higher plane of existence.

Arthur Miller’s “A View From The Bridge”  loyalty is a multiple layered theme that Miller works into the Red Hook community. Miller focuses on the loyalty of a ethnic group that has been forced out of their homeland due to crippling economic troubles. In the face of poverty, the ties between a group of people are the strongest. Miller’s places the setting of the play as a tight knit community that uses its own law and brand of justice, the Sicilian code of honor, to rule the community. All of the neighbors of the Cabrone family are still deeply connected to their Italian roots. Eddie is a outsider to his community because his loyalties lay with the government law rather than the community’s brand of justice.

What is so tragic for Eddie is the thing that he needs to continue living in the world, the love and respect of his niece Catherine, is also the tool for the demise of his family’s happiness. In the beginning of the play Eddie is already starting a downward spiral of his destruction because of his desire for Catherine that conflicts with the loyalty he carries as a husband and a paternal caretaker of his niece. Eddie’s affection for Catherine has already destroyed the happiness of Beatrice who is not allowed to fulfill her duties as wife because Eddie allows Catherine to do them. By the end of the play even Catherine’s happiness is taken away as Eddie breaks his own personal code of honor to sell out Marco and Rodolpho to the Immigration Officers. Eddie’s love for Catherine, which is deemed immoral and unnatural in the play’s society, drives him to sell out his honor and loyalty to the community in an attempt to keep Catherine from being taken away.

Miller uses his play as symbolism for the paranoia of communism that the McCarthy Era produced. Red Hook can be seen as the underground community of American communists that were under persecution during the 1950′s. Miller replicates his own personal dilemma of being called to the House Un-American Activities Committee and faced with the decision to name his fellow communists or be labeled as a un-American and a traitor. Eddie set in a parallel situation when he deliberates on whether or not he should turn his back on his family and community and be a good American citizen by turning in Marco and Rodolpho. While Miller refused to name names he makes  Eddie name his cousins as illegal immigrants to show the animal like behavior that the government was condoning during the 1950′s.

While I have never personally been in a situation where my American identity was put into question I can relate to the familial loyalty that is broken in the Cabrone family. Though never so severe, my family has had periods when sibling loyalty has been broken over favoritism or unjust punishment. Miller’s theme of naming names reminds me of children tattle taling on each other, which is seen as a traitorous action from the stand point of children. There is a thin line between telling the truth to adult authority and giving up your fellow playmate for adult praise.

With Hemmingway’s famous story “Hills Like White Elephants” he presents a great use of dialogue as a literary technique for characterization. Hemmingway’s use of language in the story  involves a lot of reading between the text. The language of the two main characters isn’t about what is being said, but what is not spoken. So what does it mean when after calming down from near hysterics the girl states that “I feel fine”. Obviously the reader cannot take her word, there was near shouting match just a few paragraphs ago.The reader knows, sympathizes, with Jig’s emotional predicament.

By conversing with The American Jig realizes two things: The American is afraid of commitment and Jig wants to have a family. When Jig proclaims “We can have everything” The American disagrees stating “…once they take it away, you never get it back…”. Jig is telling her boyfriend that they can still have a happy life together with a baby they can still travel and enjoy each other’s company. However, The American presents his view of family as a sign of conformity to adulthood and refers to ‘they’ as in married couple and older people who have settled down. When Jig states “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine…” she is announcing that the relationship between them has started towards the end. Jig doesn’t have to worry about The American because whether or not she gets the abortion they won’t be a couple in the future. Jig is saying that she will be fine with that outcome, because she wants to have everything, an adult husband and a children.

The modern movement that swept the Armory show in 1913 was the a grand coming out of a new art style that focused more on the audiences interpretation on what the artwork was saying. Chester Beach’s sculpture “The Unveiling Of A New Dawn” and Henry Reuterdahl’s “Blast Furnaces” are two pieces of artwork that perfectly fit into the genre of Modernist movement. Both pieces of art are meant to being out emotion of the subject of the piece. The style of each piece varies from the classical style of art that had a structured form in technique and also subject matter.  Beach and Reuterdahl’s artwork show the emerging industry and urbanism that was making large changes in American life. Each art piece is an example of the change going through the U.S. that time and the affect it had on the people.

Upon viewing Chester Beach’s sculpture the viewer experiences the fantastic element of the art. The structure of the piece is done in traditional marble statue, but the form completely moves away traditional status of poising men or woman reenacting historical events. Instead, Beach sculpts a human man molding into the globe of smoke which is formed into a man’s face. The title “The Unveiling Of A New Dawn” invokes the feeling of evolution, of growth in the human spirit and mind. The point of Beach’s sculpture is the emotions it invokes, not finding out the true interpretation of the piece.

Similarly, Henry Reuterdahl’s “Blast Furnaces” is a portrait of factory wharf of a city. The style which Reuterdahl paints focuses the viewer’s attention on the feeling of heating and activity as everything in the painting is in motion from the impression of the brush stroke. By taking away the familiar style and technique of classical painting, Reuterdahl is defamiliarizing a common picture of factory life. Rather than just painting a scenario of a bustling industrial wharf, Reuterdahl wants the viewer to feel the heat of the working factories, the movement of working men, the taste of smoking coming from the roof tops-all perceptions that the viewer would make for his or herself. Reuterdahl’s painting is Modernist because it forces the viewer to engage or interpret it differently than what he or she is used to.

Another element of the two pieces of art is the way both artist try to trick the viewer. Beach and Reuterdahl take common scenes, a nude man and a wharf for a factories, and adds a twist that makes each scene unusual. For Beach, he chose to meld the form of a man into a larger sculpture of a man’s face made up from smoke. Different angles would show the viewer different interpretations of what the sculpture is. For Reuterdahl, it is the vibrant color and style of brush stroke that make his painting so vivid. Is the factory on fire? Or the blast of heat from the furnace so intense that it melts the perception of the viewer. There is no right interpretation of Beach and Reuterdahl’s pieces. The way both paints affect the viewer’s thoughts and feelings is proof that both pieces are of the Modernist genre.

In the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper” her husband’s reaction can be considered a Pyrrhic victory. Meaning she was able to win over her husband’s domineering attitude and control over her life at the cost of losing her sanity and chance at happiness.

The narrator’s only link to reality that she had in the beginning of the story was writing her letters, but under her husband’s orders she could only write in secret. The more the husband restricts the narrator the more her obsession grows about the yellow wallpaper in her room. Through the growing fixation of the wallpaper the narrator tries to understand the choatic society that she lives in where her purpose in life is to be a doctor’s wife. The narrator is forced to become insane to gain her individual freedom as a writer, artist and woman. By becoming the creeping woman in the wall paper the narrator gains liberation from a world that she sees is without order.  However, the narrator loses her ties to a loving (though narrow-minded) husband, her baby and a middle class life.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind –

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

• invokes talking, perhaps implying a confession?
• tell the truth in a sideways manner.
• trick people through lying by telling the truth.
• Narrator speaking to the reader, more of a demand than a request.
• How the narrator perceives the world, that truth look like lies
• the two dashes serve as imagery for the first line
• Why is Truth capitalized? Would Tell be capitalized if it wasn’t in the beginning of the sentence? What kind of greater importance is the narrator putting on truth?
• definition of Truth: 1 archaic : fidelity , constancy b: sincerity in action, character, and utterance2 a (1): the state of being the case : fact (2): the body of real things, events, and facts : actuality (3)often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b: a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true <truths of thermodynamics> c: the body of true statements and propositions3 a: the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality bchiefly British : true 2 c: fidelity to an original or to a standard
• By “Tell all” does the narrator mean tell the reader(s) or all the truths?
  

Success in Circuit lies

• continues the capitalization of the first word in the sentence
• capitalized circuit: transitive verb > to make a circuit about
• success is used as an achievement of spreading the lies
• might refer to gossiping, how fact can be twisted around into a lie before coming back to the source
• similar to the game of Telephone
• the narrator is referring to the relationship about truth and lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

• introduces the imagery of light
• comparing light to lies and truth
• use of “our” makes the relationship of the narrator and reader more intimate. Makes the reader play a more active role in the poem
• capitalizes delight:
  1: a high degree of gratification : joy ; also : extreme satisfaction, 2: something that gives great pleasure <her performance was a delight>, 3archaic : the power of affording pleasure
• implies that we are sick in some way with the adjective of ‘infirm’:
  1: a high degree of gratification : joy ; also : extreme satisfaction, 2: something that gives great pleasure <her performance was a delight>, 3archaic : the power of affording pleasure
• We are incapable of true delight due to the lies that we see?
  

The Truth’s superb surprise

• repetition of truth makes it a  character within the poem
• Truth is given possession of something.
• as if Truth is giving a gift to us or the narrator. Highlighting the active role of the reader.
• use of ‘surprise’ leave the reader wondering if it is a good or bad gift.
• contrasting something good with the negative statement of the previous line

As Lightning to the Children eased

• only simile within the poem
• capitalized lightning which can be seen as another form of light and also nature. Image of power and sudden danger.
• capitalized children. Does that mean that children are now a new character? Whose children, the narrator or the reader? Perhaps the narrator and reader are the children.
• Seems like a false simile because lightning usually doesn’t ‘ease’ children or adults. Following that reasoning this line negates the previous positive line before it

With explanation kind

• being provided for the reader and narrator
• the tone reminds me of a paternal or authoritative figure
• being told a lesson or moral
• reverse word order of ‘ explanation’ and ‘kind’ so that the adjective is after the noun
• no capitalization other than the beginning of the line

The Truth must dazzle gradually

• Truth is used as a lighting effect with the phrase “must dazzle”
• implies that truth is slow to understand and must be giving in small increments
• another use of the human sense of sight
• is put stated as an instruction for use

Or every man be blind –

• no capitalization other than the first word of the sentence
• takes the relationship of narrator to reader and broadens it to every one
• final use of sight. Narrator limits the truth to sight only. Does that mean humans can’t distinguish lie and truth other than sight?
• the last line is a warning and morality ending
• the lines work as seconds before thunder rolls and lightning strikes
• dashes provide imagery for lightning flashing

The FLOOD-TIDE vs. “I” in the beginning of Whitman’s poem poses as a physical crossing that the narrator repeatedly goes through. There is a pulling and pushing effect of the tide that mirrors the inhale and exhale rhythm of Whitman’s poem. Also the flow of the tide is constantly noted by the narrator to note the space of time and the ever present force of nature within the lives of the passengers and the narrator. The problem that Whitman is face within the poem is the passive role of the narrator in the beginning of the poem listing descriptions of the crossing from shore to shore. This issue is resolved when the narrator becomes more passionate, addressing nature as a character within the poem and using inclusive words such as “me”.

The “I” vs. Crowd theme is similar to the FLOOD-TIDE vs. “I” in that the narrator is acting as an observer watching the different passengers load and unload on the ferry. Whitman’s poem would not have such as great emotional impact if the reader felt distanced from the narrator and the descriptions in the poem. So mend the mental and emotional rift Whitman first provides a section of the poem where the narrator admits to common human vices. This admission allows the reader to be on equal moral level with the narrator. Also the language that Whitman uses is inclusive, he often uses the phrase “call me by my nighest name” provoke a sense of intimacy when referring to the crowd in his poem. By the end of the poem the narrator is including himself with the crowd in the poem’s catalogs stating “…from the shape of my head, or any one’s head…” in essence making the him a part of the crowd instead of an outsider watching it.

The reason why I chose this image is due to the theme of rebirth that Whitman alludes to on pages 31-32 in his poem “Song of Myself”. Rebirth in Whitman’s poem is more than just a physical rebirth but also an intellectual one. When Whitman states “…tenderly I will use you curling grass…” (31) he means in the capacity of sharing knowledge and a continuation of life in new forms after death. Also, there is a theme of unification from the “young men” to the “offspring taken out of their mother’s laps” – a sense that everyone is connected to nature and through nature there is a relationship with God. By using the image of human hands cupping a plant that is grown in compost soil is a physical metaphor that Whitman uses in his poem.

What is unique about the picture that ties it directly to my quote is the use of human hair within the compost. This imagery is reflected in the poems line “And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves…” (31). People around the world are trying to produce life from dead things, such as compost. not only is the physical effects of compost productive but the philosophy of the interconnection of death and life an be extended to that of human knowledge and life.  This philosophy maintains Whitman’s theme of unification with nature, humanity and God.

I had some trouble digesting Emerson’s “The American Scholar” so please forgive me if what I write are only half-formed ideas.

Emerson finds that colleges and books do not teach a person the proper facilities for that person to be an independent individual. Mostly due to the fact that most colleges and books set a limit to the knowledge that they study. By limit I mean that they promote ideas of past great thinkers without encouraging the students, or borrow to the phrase Emerson uses scholars, to use the ideas and logic they learn has jump boards for their own creative thinking. Instead these scholars are stagnant in their learning absorbing large amounts of knowledge without ever experiencing it in life.

This, Emerson argues, is why a the American scholar must also be creative in reading college books. They must learn to absorb the knowledge given and see were there is truth in the authors words and were there are falsities in the text. Areas where the scholar can apply their own thoughts to disprove theories. This can be done by the scholar learning from life experiences and interactions with their fellow (wo)man. Through creation a scholar is playing an active role in life and truly becoming an individual. Just as the stagnant learning taught in colleges are making the scholar an imitator of past people. Mimickers in life and limited in their ingenuity and resources.

I walked into the street of Salem village dazed at the change of the once familiar streets. The buildings and folk that I once cast a loving and admiring eye upon now were tainted by last night’s unraveling. I saw the once good minister taking his morning walk upon the graveyard. Now changed I could not help but see the sinister humor in chosen path walking path of the minister. Instead of a minister for the faithful he was the dark tormentor of their resting place. I shrank away from the black clothed man as he cast a blessing- no doubt a subverted incantation of dark arts to once again try to entrap my soul. In my haste I overheard the sublime words of the God and turned to see the speaker with faint hope. All dashed when I recognized the voice of Old Deacon Gookin. Oh, how bold of the black worshiper to speak such holy words! How strong the power of the devil to keep the Deacon Gookin from the wrath of God his blasphemy would surely incur.

“What God doth that wizard pray to?” I whispered to myself as I walked past his darkened window.

Further down I saw Goody Cloyse and again the knowledge that such a venerable woman was truly a follower of Satan cut open the wound in my heart. She had taught me catechism. She had taught me CATCHISM. I spied a young girl by her sitting on the porch with a pint of milk beside her. I snatch the child up and away from the witch praying that her soul was not yet tainted by Goody Cloyse’s magics. I walked on haunted by new found knowledge of my townsmen till a saw a golden shine of light. It was Faith, pink ribbons fixed in her hair; she carried the same expression from yesterday’s parting. Once my wife saw me all anxiety fled from her face and joy lightened her features.

At first, I was relived to see my wife, my Faith. For surely such an angel as she had gone untouched from midnight’s dark mass. But suspicion suddenly filled me with an icy chill. I had survived the devil’s trap by throwing my gaze upon God’s heaven. But what of Faith? My Faith who had trembled wide eyed in front of Satan’s alter. I did not see if Faith had heeded my command. Indeed it was odd that upon awakening in the woods Faith was not by my side. Faith with flowing pink ribbons- THE RIBBONS THAT WERE LOST IN THE WOODS – was in town waiting for my return. Faith, who was standing before me all joy and light-but was there a darkness now settled in her eyes? Was her beautiful face now ruined with an edge of impunity in the crook of her smile?

What dark sorcery was this? What maddening hell dream did I awake to?

All ruined, I was in DOUBT of Faith. I could no longer embrace her with the love we had promised each other on our wedding day. Nor could I live happily in the town of Salem for that evil night had revealed me to the SIN of my townsmen. With no escape from the evil taint around me, I sit with the deceivers of faith and listen to their blasphemous mouths sing the holy palms on Sabbath day. No joy could I hope to experience in such a DIN OF WICKEDNESS. I would grow weak with dizziness every time the black clothed minister spoke to the congregation, previous eloquence and passion converted into deceptive words POLLUTING the scared truths of our religion. And Faith, MY WIFE WAS LOST TO ME. I NO LONGER HAVE MY FAITH!

I shall die surrounded by the most wicked sinners of humanity. In Salem I shall be buried by this polluted gloom.