Friday, January 24, 2014

A Good Man

Reading the end of F. O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" bore striking similarities to being punched in the abdomen.




All through the final encounter with The Misfit, I kept waiting for everything to turn out OK. But it didn't. In fact, it got worse. And the story began to feel like a bad dream.




Salvation never came as I expected it to. But it did come.


The moment before she dies, the grandmother looks into the face of the man who has killed the rest of her family and suddenly feels clarity.


"Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" she says to The Misfit. And as she reaches out to touch him, he shoots her three times in the chest. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.


She offers the Misfit acceptance and redemption, and is redeemed in the process. She dies smiling toward heaven.


Perhaps there is something beautiful buried within this horrible, bloody story. However, it continues to leave me with my jaw on the floor, holding onto my stomach.



Word Choice in "Waltz"

There seem to be two general opinions as to the circumstances in T. Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz." Some view it as a boy having a fun "romp" with his father, a nice memory. Others see the poem as a possible description of abuse.


When I first came across the poem, my initial opinion was of the latter. There is no mistaking Roethke's consistent use of rough sounding words such as "battered," "scraped," "knuckle," "buckle," and "beat" in the third and fourth stanzas.


The use of so many harsh words made it hard for me to believe this waltz was always fun. The title perhaps gives something away as well. It is not "Me and My Father's Waltz." The waltz belongs solely to his father.


However, I think this is a perfect example of a poem that you can read too much into, or not enough. It almost stays neutral when he uses to playful term "We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf." If I am to retain my theory of abuse, it is difficult to explain why the child went to bed "Still clinging" to his father's shirt (though it could be done).


But maybe it's just best to let this poem waltz, and let each reader make their own conclusions. I really want this to be a fond memory of a father and son. Such believing is not easy!







Thursday, January 23, 2014

A Father for Biff

I believe a very plausible reason for Willy Loman's indecisiveness and need to appear masculine is his lack, or perhaps want of a father figure in his youth.


When he was only three years old, Willy's father apparently abandoned his family and left for Alaska. Shortly after, Willy was abandoned again, this time by his older brother Ben, who set off in search of their father, only to somehow wind up in Africa where he would make his fortune.


Willy spends his life in the quiet fear that he is not living it in the right way, or teaching his children as he should. When Ben appears to him, there is a feeling of desperation as he attempts to persuade him to stay a little longer and asks him if he's teaching his children in the right way.


Instead of looking at his life and his children as they are, he remains in a state of denial, looking to the universe for some kind of sign that he is doing the right thing, being the right man. He becomes defensive and embarrassed when someone suggests that he is not, and covers up his wounds with lies.


He ends up committing the same crimes as his own father, and abandons his children to his lies and impossible expectations, so that they, like him, have trouble knowing what it is they should be, and how to find a place in the world. And that, I think, is the real tragedy of Willy Loman. His end is an attempt to make amends; to free them from the chains of his denial and expectations, the chains of his love.

A Hundred Indecisions

On first reading, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" isn't a love song at all. The poem speaks of the loneliness and longing of a man who has lost his direction and certainty in a world that for him seems to have become sterile and cold.


It begins with an excerpt from Dante's Inferno, in which Guido da Montefeltro decides it is safe to confess his life story to Dante, as he believes Dante will be unable to return to the world from Hades to tell anyone else. When I think of "love song," I typically expect it to begin with a description of rosy cheeks, or budding flowers... not with a paragraph from the Inferno that basically says "I'm in hell, and so are you."


From there, we are invited to join Prufrock in "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels." But like a bad host, we end up hearing about Prufrock's thinning hair, and his frustration and violent fear of taking any action in his life, asking "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?"


He claims to have known intimacy before, and to "have known the arms already, known them all-- / Arms that are bracelet and white and bare," but I do not believe him. Something about this poem leads me to believe that Prufrock has been isolated from any type of love for most of his life, and his claim to have "known them all" is as thin as the hair upon his head. Maybe it's his name that makes me think this way in my reading. Or perhaps it's his repetition of "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo."


He admits that indecisions have made him lower than Hamlet, and as he grows old he mourns the joys of life that he has missed out on and begins to doubt that its mermaids will ever sing to him. And it was in reading this final section of despair and hopelessness that I realized this poem couldn't be anything but a love song.









Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Shakespeare's Failure

If T.S. Eliot is going to label Shakespeare's Hamlet a failure in "Hamlet and His Problems," I believe he needs to be more specific in his definition of what constitutes an artistic "failure."




Eliot claims that the play "is most certainly an artistic failure" because the playwright is unable to provide a concrete emotion to drive the play forward, and so turns to "buffoonery" to make up for his own inadequacy.




Eliot condemns critics such as Goethe and Coleridge for "the substitution--of their own Hamlet for Shakespeare's--which their creative gift effects." In other words, he finds these critics guilty of adding emotions and motives not directly in the play instead of "treating the whole action of the play as due to Shakespeare's design."



However, Eliot bases his own critique on the foundation that Shakespeare's Hamlet "bears strong evidence" of being adapted from a play by Thomas Kyd known as Spanish Tragedy and therefore views the play not on its own terms, but on how well it holds up to Kyd's alleged original content.


In this case, to constitute the play a "failure" in this way is not only hypocritical, it is almost an irony. For not only is he reading and discussing the play, he is reading and discussing other readings and discussions of it!


If the goal of art is to cause a reaction or to stand the test of time, Shakespeare's Hamlet has gone above and beyond. Eliot can make all the claims he desires about whether or not it is a failed attempt by Shakespeare, but the fact of the matter is that he is still reading and dissecting it over 300 years after it was written, and so am I.








Monday, January 20, 2014

The Worm is Your Only Emperor

One of my favorite lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet occurs in Act IV when Hamlet, asked the whereabouts of Polonius, the man he has just killed, states that Polonius is "At supper."


However, it is "Not where he eats, but where 'a is eaten."


Hamlet then explains to the now confused king that "Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service--two dishes, but to one table. That's the end."


This quip, completely over the head of the king, manages encompass perfectly Hamlet's dim view of life and belittle the king's title at the same time.


For all their struggles and worries while alive, all they are really doing is preparing themselves to be food for the ultimate and final emperor: the worm. In this case, title or standing matters very little, as both are but two different dinner courses.


The troubled prince goes on to say that "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm."


In this statement, to which the king retains his utterly perplexed and nerve-wrecked state, Hamlet expresses the all-too-natural predicament of man: They feed off of one another whether aware of it or not. Clearly hinted at here by Hamlet is the king's betrayal and murder of his brother for his own gains, as well as the probability that someday he too will be someday be the meal of another.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Crickets (Blog #5)

In Y. Kawabata's "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" the narrator witnesses a touching moment between a girl and a boy within a group of children searching for insects in a park with homemade lanterns.


As the narrator, a university student, approaches the scene, he sees the boy hand the girl an insect he has found, telling her it is a grasshopper. The girl accepts it, only to realize that it is a bell cricket, a much more rare and valued insect.


Then, as the two children are standing next to each other, the light from their lanterns flashes upon both of them, reflecting their names (carved into their homemade lanterns) on each other's shirts.


The narrator is the only one who sees this small moment of lights and names. In the end, he gives silent advice to the children and reader, that often in life we mistake a grasshopper for a bell cricket and then in our bitterness mistake a bell cricket for a grasshopper.


There is a melancholy in the narrator's tone as his speech obviously derives from missed opportunities and past experience, perhaps envious of the sign the two children were provided that multicolored night.







Omitting Elephants (Blog #4)

The genius of E. Hemingway is contained in what he leaves out. A perfect example of this can be seen in his very short story, "Hills Like White Elephants."


I was first exposed to this story in my Junior year of high school and I absolutely despised it. It left me asking that horrible question, "is that it?" and blatantly exposed me to my limitations as a reader, leaving me feeling ill.


However, after several  readings and explanations, I began to see what Hemingway was doing and eventually, I found it to be exciting, which still left me feeling ill.


By omitting certain explanations and details, the reader learns more and more about him or herself through what kind of interpretation he or she brings to the vacancy in the text (particularly in the dialogue of "Hills..."). Hemingway forced us to fill in the blanks for ourselves.


So I embraced Hemingway, and spent that summer awkwardly fumbling through works such as In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises, both of which remain engraved upon my list of favorite books to this day.


Though I am sure that I still know and understand nothing, I am indebted to Hemingway for his challenges, and for igniting in me the desire to be struck repeatedly over the head with literature.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Names and Titles (Blog #3)

The importance of names and titles in R. Carver's "Cathedral" is highlighted in B. Qualls' essay "A Narrator's Blindness... ."


A particularly fascinating section of the story is when the narrator refuses to name his wife's first husband, "Her officer," saying "why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want?" (36).


Here he clearly demonstrates his jealousy of the men in his wife's past, including Robert (whom he labels "The blind man"), perhaps because he wishes he was able to connect with her the way others have.


Ironically enough, the narrator fails to mention his own name. This omission is no mistake on Carver's part, and demonstrates that by warding off intimacy with others by using cliché lines and distancing titles ("my wife," "the blind man"), the narrator fails to develop a sense of his own self. It is not until he and Robert are on the floor drawing out a cathedral that he drops his guard, lets go of control, and sees.

O love! O love! (Blog #2)

J. Joyce's "Araby" undoubtedly deals with the torturous experience of a first love. And as with most "first loves," it is never really true love that the hero of the story feels towards Mangan's sister, but rather an obsession and a longing for her as he watches from the safety of windows and street corners.


The innocent, almost "coming of age" aspect of this story could be compared to the author's rather infamous wrestle with his Catholic faith.


In the story, the boy feels a powerful draw toward the sister of his friend, and breathes her name as if it were a prayer. When he hears her disappointment at not being able to attend a festival, he immediately decides that it is his duty to attend the event for her and bring her back a souvenir, almost like a promise to serve God while awaiting His return on earth.


However, when he arrives at the bazaar late, due to the sins of his forgetful uncle, he is suddenly hit with a dark reality. He realizes in the dim atmosphere of the closing festival, that he is not on this self-imposed quest so much for his "love" of Mangan's nameless sister, as he is for himself and his own vanity.


Contrary to the priest, a man of holiness, who was reading novels of romance before his death, the boy in the story was perhaps seeking holiness in his romantic yearning for Mangan's sister.


The story of "Araby" could possibly be looked at as the disappointing outcome of a self-serving faith. Instead of finding a meaningful or fulfilling expression of love at the bazaar, the main character is left with only "anguish and anger" and Qoheleth's cry of vanity.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Wordsworth and Loneliness (Blog #1)









There is something complex about W. Wordsworth's concept of loneliness in his poem "I wandered lonely as a cloud."


In the poem, dated 1807, the narrator, while wandering in a lonely haze, suddenly stumbles upon a vast field of bright yellow daffodils. He refers to this stunning collection of flowers as a "crowd" and takes a moment to observe them as they sway and "dance" in the breeze. "A poet could not but be gay,/In such jocund company," the narrator muses.


Daffodils, rather appropriately, are commonly regarded as flowers symbolic of friendship.


Wordsworth connects with nature when he compares himself to a cloud and the daffodils to dancers. The scene of the daffodils comes back to him whenever he lies on his couch "In vacant or in pensive mood." These flashbacks to the daffodils he refers to as "the bliss of solitude."


This bliss he speaks of is perhaps the comfort of knowing that with nature he is always connected and never really by himself. This idea could be compared with W. Whitman's "I celebrate myself, and sing myself," in which the Whitman declares that "every atom of [his] blood, form'd from this soil, this air," and so every atom belonging to him belongs to everyone and every thing.


If this is true, then both Whitman and Wordsworth are in continual communion with the world and vise versa. The poet is the world, and the world the poet. And is there anything more lonely than that?