The Final

Studying for this is going to be interesting.  We've gone over a lot of information about authors, themes, poetry explication, poetry words, lenses, and the stories and poems themselves.  Where to start?  I guess at the beginning is the best place.

Poetry Day

Yesterday we had "Poetry Day" in class.  I was very pleasantly surprised at the level of talent in our class for writing.  Granted we have some Creative Writing majors, but that doesn't mean that they have to be good at writing poetry.  Yet, they still were.  Others surprised me more with the amount of emotion they seemed to pack into such small and such few words.  The poems were very thought provoking or moving throughout the class.  However, I feel as though my choice of a Romantic era poet was a bit in bad taste considering the other selection.  Still, "Daffodils" is one of my favorite poems of all time.  It is the quintessential poem to me of how a Transcendentalist or Romanticist thinks.  Its all in the moment of wonderment and absolute loss of self and the mind becomes nothing more than a vessel to hold the great things that we as people have come to experience.  I suppose thats what I wanted to say in class, I just couldn't get it out.  If you enjoyed "Daffodils" then I have a few suggestions for things that give the same feeling...the band Rush, the song "Good Feeling" by The Violent Femmes, going to Ireland, climbing a mountain, walking along a stream in silence of mind and just truly listening.  These are all things that I've done.  If you have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them and try them out.

The Drowning...a more appropriate title?

Joyce's "The Dead" finishes a set of short stories that I will never forget.  Yet, I can't help but feel the people in the story were wrongly labeled. They may be "dead" on the inside, or intellectually, or even their ambition is dead, but I feel like they all have the ability to rise from this "death" especially Gabriel.  Dr. Reed mentioned that Gabriel may well be an interpretation of Joyce if he had stayed in Ireland and not left his "fatherland, holy father, and family."  I think Joyce wants the reader to think that the characters are dead and unable to fully realize themselves because of the choices they made, but if you look at Gabriel, he has myriad choices to make just in the story itself.  If he had changed just a few of these decisions he may well have begun to surface from "drowning."  Still, I believe he didn't because of his untamable emotions and desires at the end of the story.  They draw him back under the surface as he lusts for someone who is never thinking of him.

Pedro Paramo Squared = Confusion

Just today I finished reading Pedro Paramo the second time.  I still don't know wether or not I think that Jaun Preciado is dead or alive at the beginning of the story.  I'm still confused as to the timeline of his death if he is alive and I still don't know who in the town is alive or dead when he is there.  I feel as though you have to choose a way to interpret it so as not to become bogged down by thoughts about who could be in which plane or who is a ghost.  Juan is definitively dead when he is buried, but some of the other people seem alive, even though you know they are dead.  There is another problem you encounter, it happens when the narration begins to shift from Juan to the others.  You begin to distrust the narrator.  Now, I had read this whole story as if the narrator was speaking the truth the whole time and then it comes to the possibility that he was dead and the dead do not always speak the truth.  Now we have a problem, don't we?  Therein lies my confusion.

Awkward times reading poetry :D

So, I was in the library reading "Leda and the Swan" by Yeats and it struck me that I was reading about rape in a very populated room.  This led me to think about the possibilities of what other people could be reading.  Obviously this was fairly awkward.  However, what made matters worse was the fact that I was sitting next to a periodical that had an article about how classical allusions to rape that students have to read was making them desensitized to it...weird, right?

(This happened on the 16th in the Great Room, so I apologize if you were there.)

Humpty Dumpty

When reading Things Fall Apart I kept getting the feeling that people hardly ever talk about putting things back together again.  It seems to me that things only continue to go to hell regardless of what people or characters do.  Maybe thats how life is sometimes, but I like to think at least a little more optimistically.  Okonkwo only seems to lose things and status and people from his family as the story trudges on.  If he gained things would it defeat the point of the story?
Another interesting point I noticed was the "Evil Forest" idea.  The Evil Forest in the beginning is a place of rituals and death and pestilence.  It is an area of no return.  Yet, the missionaries, when they arrive, are allowed to build their church on the ground of the evil forest.  Its almost as if the more "primitive"...or "indigenous" religions are testing this new kid on the block or attempting to get rid of it.  The villagers believe that the ground that the evil forest is on is evil and that the missionaries will die or they will not be able to last.  However, they do last, and they are actually quite fine.  In one fell swoop they have dispelled two central ideas to this native culture.  It is one way of portraying the westernizing religion as a culturally destructive force in a different sense.  Not that it tries to eradicate the old ways, although it does, but that it proves them and their central ideas wrong.

Being Forgetful

I almost forgot to post this.  I am now officially an English major.  Its...refreshing?  I don't know if thats the right word, but I'll go with it.  Now, how to tell my parents?  That is always the hardest part.  I always crave my dad's approval and he always seems aloof to my decisions.  I always expect my mom's approval and she always has something to say about my decisions and the problems with them.  Whatever they end up saying, I'm excited to be an English major.  I think I might want to teach...you never know.  I guess this means I have to choose a favorite author and poem and such now haha.

Its Cold...

Snow Country...an interesting story to say the least.  When I was finally finished with the short novel I was left with a feeling as though more could be written.  However, when we discussed it in class I understood that the "unfinished" is beautiful to the Japanese.  Still though, there was something lacking to me.  The first half was a great first half and, as we talked about in class, could've been the whole thing.  Now I don't want you to be getting the wrong idea from this post.  I enjoyed reading the story and I enjoyed the idea and the complexities and unsolvable triangles of it.  I just didn't understand the lack of a completed thought at the ending.  Sometimes when I reread the end I feel as though I'm grasping at something that I can't quite touch and I don't know what it is either.
One final thought, why the bugs?  What was so interesting about a bunch of dead bugs?  I get that he was bored and that the bugs are a metaphor, but wouldn't just one description have done the job?

Surrealism...

Surrealism...the only form of imagery that makes me actually see anything when I read it.  Why does no one else like it?  I get that its a little odd at first to read, but it makes everything much more lively to describe.  Think about it from the authors point of view; would you rather describe something in plain detail, or make everything about it pop and be fascinating?  When someone looks at surrealist paintings or drawings, possibly even sculptures, it makes them think.  It makes them decide what exactly is being represented.  That is the quality I find enjoyable about surrealism.  The reader or the viewer has complete control over how they see the object in its surrealist state.

Amichai

So I should've written this post a couple of weeks ago, but I was slacking.  One of the flaws I'll admit to having is procrastination.  But, for sake of brevity I won't talk about that (or maybe I'm just procrastinating that as well...?).  Yehuda Amichai was born in Germany during a time when it was far from beneficial to be Jewish.  However, when I was doing research, I was surprised to learn that Germany had a program at first to deport the majority of the Jewish population to Israel.  Amichai's parents took this ticket and went. His upbringing during multiple times of strife shaped his poetry into a love for an ideal represented by his city, Jerusalem.  Jerusalem means many things to many people and has changed "hands" plenty of times over the course of history.  Its interesting that the city itself was, over time, split into many areas so the different people claiming it could coexist in a faux-peace. It is a beautiful place, yet, it has caused more death than what it is worth.