Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway wrote many works and almost all of them contained at least some elements of autobiography.  Aside from the memoir A Movable Feast and the semi autobiographical work, A Farewell to Arms,  many of his works contained many elements of his own life.  In the twenties he was part of the American expatriate group in Paris which is very closely alluded to in his novel The Sun Also Rises.  He was also an avid fan of Spanish bull fighting which is a major feature in the plot of the novel.   A Farewell to Arms is the story of a fictional character who is an ambulance driver in world war one which is what Hemingway did in the war which shows the connection to his own life. This novel is technically fiction but contains many events and elements that Hemingway himself experienced.  

For Whom the Bell Tolls is another work by Hemingway that contains many autobiographical elements but is a fictional work.  This novel is about the Spanish Civil War in 1937.  Hemingway was a journalist at this time and was sent by the the US to report on the war.  He experienced lots of the war first hand and incorporated much of this into the novel.  While reporting on the war he was present at many of the major battles and talked about much of this in the book even though it only covers a time frame of four days.  This book has three different types of characters in it, Purely fictional characters, characters he based of real people, and actual figures in the war.   This shows how he writes a fictional book but still makes it seem very realistic and almost biographical as if he was actually there when the actions in the book are taking place.

This use of his own experiences gives his novels a realistic feel that makes then even more riveting.  Hemingway led an extremely interesting life as he was and ambulance driver in the first world war who was injured and honored, a journalist during the Spanish civil war, and was a member of the expatriate community in Paris during the most exciting times of Paris's history.  This allows him to include these things in his novels in a way that is not possible to duplicate by just telling about something that happened.  People have tried to tell of the extravagant night life of Paris in the twenties but few can do it with the authority and insight that Hemingway brings to his novel.

Gender Roles

This week we started a new unit in AP lit of gender roles.  This unit introduces the gender lens of reading literature which and be a very new and different way of approaching many literary works.  When you view a book from a gender lens taking into account the status of the two genders and how the author viewed the relationship between males and females it can shed new light on literature.  Even if a book is not a necessarily feminist work and is not a work focused on gender roles the author always has views about gender that come out in his or her writing.  Whether it is a view that women are subordinate to women or that women need more rights, or simply that the two genders are equal and should be treated with equality.

We have been assigned books in class that we are supposed to read in a gender lens paying attention to the authors views and opinions toward gender.  The book I was assigned was The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.  This book was not written as a feminist book in any way but there are many interesting views expressed about the different genders and their roles in society.  One of the main characters was Lady Brett Ashley who was a upper class woman in Paris during the time that this novel took place.  She was originally British and is a very non-womanly woman even though she is described as highly attractive by the men in the novel.  She does things like smoke and drink in huge quantities which was not very common for women of this time.  This was especially not something that an upper class British woman would typically do as they are usually very ladylike.

She is offset by the very sensitive man Robert Cohn who has many of the traits that commonly associated with women.  He talks to Jake about all of his problems which is usually something that women do.  He has serious relationship problems, all of which he relates to Jake while they are eating.  He is very emotional and cries frequently but tries to counter this by boxing and drinking copious amounts of alcohol as does everyone in this novel.  He does not know how to go about his relationship with Brett and if you didn't know better you'd think he was a woman talking about her problems with a man when he is relating his problems to Jake.

These are the kind of things that you look for when looking through a gender lens so that you can see the different views that each author has toward gender.  Whether they are feminists, anti feminists, or neutral all authors portray some opinion of gender into their works.

Make-up Week Four

          The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway is a novel about the wild nightlife of Paris in the nineteen twenties.  The narrator of the novel, Jake Barnes is suffering from an unfulfilled love life with Lady Brett Ashley in the beginning of the novel which basically just follows them as they travel from club to club and cafe to cafe as they get drunk.  This novel heavily resembles The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 and The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926 so the writers are writing in similar times and both are just following the first World War.  They are also both set in the 1920s and follow the crazy nightlife in the city that they are set in.  In New York Gatsby is throwing huge parties and in Paris Brett and Jake are visiting club after club with all of the other upper class members of society.          
          These to works are also similar in their character's inability to hold a stable love life.  Jake Barnes' equivalent in The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway has a very shaky relationship with Jordan Baker.  Neither of them really knows whether or not they love each other and nothing really comes of the relationship throughput the book.  While Jake and Brett definitely love each other this love is not often acted upon nor is it understood and they both frequently have other relationships even while they are seeing each other.  They do not even bother to keep these relationships secret from one another leaving it open and talking about them freely.   
          The Narrators best Friends also both have ill fated or rocky relationships with women that they love, or think they love.  Gatsby and Daisy Buchannon both believe that they love each other and even go on to have an affair but in the end their relationship is not fulfilled and as soon as Daisy learns that he is a bootlegger she detests him.  At the end of the novel she doesn't attend his funeral and goes back to life with her husband as if nothing had happened leaving one to question the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby.  Robert Cohn, Jake's best Friend also has a very bad relationship in the beginning of the novel with the woman he thought he loved, Frances.  They are dependant on each other but they cant stand each other and they even go so far as to get into a fight in a cafe in the presence of Jake.
          These books have very similar qualities and not just because they are set in the same time period.  The plot is similar with all of the partying and many of the characters have similarly unsuccessful relationships.             

Make-up Week One

          In Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Proffesor, Foster describes a specific character type as a vampire character.  He says that a vampire when it wakes up, says "In order to remain undead i must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own."  A vampire character can not live on their own. They require other characters to give their lives a purpose or substance, without others they would have nothing to do and would not be worthy of being written about.

          Jack Burden in All the King's Men is a quintessential example of a vampire character.  Without the other characters in the book he would have one of the most dull and uneventful lifes ever.  He rides characters like willie's success and basically lives off of him.  He states in the book when asked why he works for Willie that he is not sure and doesnt know what he would do without him.  Even in childhood he attaches to Anne and Adam Stanton and lives there life spending much time with there family and with judge Irwin.  Part of this may not be his fault but the fault of the lack of a parent in either his mother or father.  His mother was basically trapped in a teenager's body running around partying and going to clubs and his father left.  His mother could not keep a husband for long after the scholarly attorney left which also negatively effected his ability to love his own life. 

          Even his name Burden is a sign of his being a vampire character.  He is a burden on all of the people around him.  He burdens them down and leeches off their life.  Vampires are the ultimate burden on the people around them as they suck out their blood and infect them into becoming vampires themselves.  This is essentially what Jack Burden does to the people around them as he leeches of their life and leaves them either dead or suffering from some mental illness in the case of Sadie Burke.

"Reflective"

          I have been reading a lot of poetry recently for the poetry notebook and have found some rather interesting poems.  One such poem is "Reflective" by A. R. Ammons.  This poem has a very unique structure that really makes you think.  At first glance it may seem like a short and simple poem but then if you read closer and analyse it it is really very confusing.
               I found a
               weed
               that had a

               mirror in it
               and that
               mirror

               looked in at
               a mirror
               in

               me that
               had a
               weed in it.

          If you have ever looked in a mirror when there is a mirror or other reflective surface behind you  this has the same effect.  Weeds are typically given a negative connotation and the mirror is allowing him to see into and reflect on himself.  I believe that the fact that the original weed has a mirror inside of it symbolizes that bad things, symbolized by the weed, allow us to see into ourselves and affect our inner soul which is the mirror inside of him.   This means that the corrupt things we do will have an influence on our inner soul and personalty.  This is illustrated in the poem by the weed that he sees in the beginning of the poem being on the mirror inside him by the end of the poem.

         This connects to The Picture of Dorian Gray as this occurs to Dorian except in a quite different way.  When Dorian does something wicked, the mark, or weed, that would have been put on his soul, the mirror inside him, is put on the painting instead.  This illustrates perfectly the concept that the the evil things you do will have an effect on you, as the things that Dorian did, like killing his friends and pushing people commit suicide, have a profound impact on how his painting looks.  It becomes distorted and scarred just like the clean mirror inside of the speaker in the poem becomes marred by the presence of the weed on it. 

          When someone does something bad it corrupts them as seen in this poem where the weed, which is bad, corrupts the mirror, and in Dorian Gray with his picture.  These corrupt acts serve to help a person reflect on their character and see inside themselves.  The title of this poem, "Reflective", and the presence of mirrors in the poem demonstrate this reflectiveness and help to show that the speaker in the poem is reflecting upon him or herself.

Winesburg, Ohio

          Winesburg, Ohio is full of connections between the different stories in the novel as well as other famous works and stories.  Anderson repeated motifs of everything from hands to darkness to grotesqueness.  He described almost every character in the stories' hands in a very specific way bringing out every little detail.  He also emphasized characters like Wing Biddlebaum's hands in the book "Hands". I am not sure what this intense fascination with hands that Anderson shows means but it has to have some symbolism and must connect to the rest of the novel in some way.         
          Anderson also has a very fascinating role for George Willard in this novel.  George is like a sponge that soaks up all of the truths that all of the other characters in the book tell him.  Characters Like Wing, Enoch, and Wash Williams all tell a truth to George Willard.  Wash is telling him the evils of women and what a bad idea it would be to get married, Enoch is telling him the story of his love affair and all about his imaginary friends, and wing i trying not to let him conform and be like the rest of society.  He takes all of these truths along with the truths that all the other characters tell him and i believe he becomes the old man in the first book and writes the book of the grotesques that is describe.  He bases all of the grotesques in The Book of the Grotesques off the the citizens of Winesburg and the truths that he mentions in the first chapter are all of the truths that he collected while living in Winesburg before he left.
            He is also used to tell the stories of the other characters many times.  Enoch Robinson and Wash Williams are both drawn to George to tell their stories even when they wont talk to anyone else.  George uses this later to write the book of the grotesque and this attraction that these people have to him is just further proof that George is the old man in "The Book of the Grotesque".  In the first chapter of the novel a carpenter comes to the old mans house to fix him a bed and then all of a sudden the carpenter is telling George his life story and breaking down crying.  This would not happen to most people but seems to happen a lot to George Willard and it would not be too out of the question for it to happen to him again.  This fits the pattern of how people react and talk to George easily and makes it seem as if this old man is in fact George Willard.