Death of a Salesman/ Last Blog Ever

Well the year is finally coming to a close for real now ad this is the last blog I'm required to do.  Last week was spent watching movies such as Death of a Salesman and The Importance of Being Earnest while our teacher was convalescing. I spoke about Earnest last week and how it rose above my expectations and that i actually found it rather humorous but i want to elaborate a bit more on it.  What i was most surprised about this movie was the fact that it seemed so modern.  You never would have guessed that it was written by the same guy that wrote The picture of Dorian Gray in the 1800s. The humor is modern and seems slightly dirty for someone from that era and it was the polar opposite of the tone of Dorian Gray, Wilde's other book.  You wouldn't believe the same person even wrote it if you didn't already know that he did.

The other movie we watched, Death of a salesman, was also very good if a bit depressing.  This was not the fault of the Movie producers or actors however as it is a slightly down play.  Willie was played very well and the writers did a very good job of portraying his insanity to the viewer's by having asides with characters that aren't there and flashbacks of events that didn't happen with him and his boys.  The play shows the slow decay of willie and how biff and the other family members do a poor job of helping him cope with it.  He is slightly unreasonable however as he yells at his wife unnecessarily and gets unreasonably mad at his sons and other people around him.  The play essentially shows the death of a salesman since willie is no longer capable of being a good salesman and traveling around so his employer has no choice but to fire him. 

Its been a good year and a good four years in high school but its time to move on to bigger and better things as i move forward into college and beyond.  All the books i read in this class and the essays i wrote will help me succeed in the future in english classes and hopefully in the rest of my life.

Reflections

Well the year is coming to an end.  We have taken the AP exam and it is smooth sailing from here on in with only the last lecture project and the final left till we are done.  It has been a good year and i have read some very enlightening books that i would not have read otherwise.  In this hopefully but probably not, final blog i have decided to reflect on some of the more recent occurrences in the class starting with the most important and most stressful one, the AP exam.  I don't think you are supposed to talk about the multiple choice due to the highly classified and potentially dangerous nature of these question so ill just stick to the free response. 

The first two questions were, in my opinion, rather easy.  They were both also almost exactly the same as they both said to analyze the complex relationship between the husband and wife.  Neither of these two couples had particularly positive relationships especially the couple in the second essay since the wife said she wouldn't have married him if she had known how he was going to act.  However they would also sometimes seem like they were getting along when they would reconcile with each other and would be all nice.  All in all i think i performed pretty well on those two essays but i occasionally had trouble relating the examples and individual ideas back to the overall main idea of the piece.

The open question on the other hand was a different story.  I knew what i wanted to write about i just had trouble remembering the details of the work that I chose, The Stranger, relating it all back to the theme of the work.  I chose to write about this book because Mersault has to face justice and deal with it in his own mind.  He has to justify what he did in his mind so that he can find peace and go to his death without feeling guilty about something.  In order to do this he takes the existentialist view that you must take responsibility for your own actions and accept the consequences since it is your fault that you did the thing in the first place.  Mersault does take responsibility and accepts the fact that he is going to have to die for what he did.  He then goes to the guillotine with his head held high and without a feeling of guilt.  We also watched the play The Importance of Being Earnest in class today that i thought was surprisingly funny and very interesting.

Tarruffe

In preparation for the upcoming AP exam we have been reviewing books that we read earlier in the year as well as in past years.  We read many interesting novels and plays and in order to better prepare myself I have decided to blog about one that I haven’t had much time to talk about or discuss with my fellow classmates.  I am going to talk about Tartuffe because I found it slightly confusing however it seems to be apt in response to many of the open ended questions we have been going over in class. 

Tartuffe is a satire criticizing many things like wealthy aristocrats like Tartuffe himself.  He is portrayed as a good person by the not so bright people in the play however at the end you realize that he is really not nice at all.  This play also satirizes stupidity through people like Orgon and Damis.  These people are rash and gullible and tend to ruin all of the plans that the other more guileful characters hatch up.  An example of this is when Damis is hiding underneath the table and overhears the flirtation between Elmire and Tartuffe.  Elmire wants to keep it a secret and not make a big deal out of it because she believes it is not worth troubling her husband with it since she doesn’t go along with the flirtation just tries to get rid of him.  Damis doesn’t seem to understand this however as he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and he decides to run off and tell Elmires husband.  This then proceeds to start the fracas that elmire wanted to avoid by not telling her husband in the first place.

All of this contributes to a theme of the play that you should be careful around people who aren’t very smart because they could get you in trouble.  They all don’t understand this and end up almost being forced to be acquainted with and practically controlled by Tartuffe at the end of the play.  This play also works in another interesting element where he attempts to flatter the king.  At the end of the novel when Tartuffe is about to take over everything and get away with his evil deeds an official of the king swoops in and saves the day, acting on the kings orders of course.  Not only does he stop Tartuffe but he also, being the kind and gracious king that he is decides to pardon orgon for the things that he did that were technically treason even though they were acting for the good King. 

The open ended question is one of the more difficult ones due to the broad nature or it however a believe that I am now all the more prepared after discussing this Play with myself.

Reminiscing on Dorian Gray

The AP exam is quickly approaching and in order to prepare for the open ended question i have been reveiwing a number of novels from earlier in the year.  One novel that i was reviewing that i enjoyed and wanted to look into in more depth was The Picture of Dorian Gray. There are many aspects of the novel that make it the literary classic that it is including the setting, tone and allusion.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was a dreary book about society in London in the nineteen hundreds and how it corrupts mankind.  The setting of the novel does an excellent job of portraying the book's meaning as it is set in rainy, dreary London and many of the most important actions take place at night. This book takes place in the 19th century and is mostly centered on the upper class and nobility. It covers a period of years as there is enough time for people like Basil Hallward to notice that he is not aging at a natural rate. The setting is important to this novel because the climate in London is typically seen as dreary which fits the novel quite well. This time period also fits the novel very well as it is very mysterious to the reader. The fact that it is primarily in the upper class of society also plays an important role in the novel as most of the characters are seen as sophisticated.  

The tone of the novel is also bleak as there are not any happy moments in the novel which gives it a dreadfully negative tone.  The atmosphere relates closely to the setting and the tone as they are very similar since they are both dull and grim.  As I stated earlier I believe that Wilde’s purpose in this book is to show how society in London corrupts man and all of the devices he uses help to support this tremendously.  I thought the book was rather dull however i do believe that it had literary merit as it contained many intricate allusions and motifs throughout the novel.

One such allusion was the allusion to Adam and Eve in the beginning of the novel.  This allusion occured when Dorian and lord Henry were talking in the Garden.  The scene takes place in a garden, like the story of Adam and Eve and it invlolves corruption.  It is at this point in the novel that Dorian makes the change from innocent, young man towhat will become one of the most corrupted characters in all of literature.  After speaking to Lord Henry, the metaphorical serpent, there was a new light in his eyes and when he went back to sit for Basil he was a changed man, eternally corrupted.

Literary Criticism

Last week in class we learned about the different literary criticism techniques.  An example of one of these literary criticisms is a gender role criticism.  The play "A Doll House" can be viewed in a gender role lens very easily.  Some of the characters in "A Doll House" have gender roles that are opposite those accepted by the society at the time that the play was written.  During the time period that this play was written the society was very male dominant and the man of the house was also supposed to be the breadwinner.  In this family however the gender roles are reversed and when Torvold cant bring in enough money to support his family Nora has to take out that loan to keep the family going.  The fact that she does this in secret and doesn't even tell her husband about it shows the extent to which he would be shamed if he or anyone else found out about the loan.  She could also be seen as the controlling presence in the house.  This is completely contrasting to the gender roles accepted by the society of the time.  The wife is supposed to be obedient and do what the husband says.  Their view of women is a very stereotypical view where the woman stays home and cooks and cleans and is obedient.  This is not the case in this family however.  Nora gets what she wants every time.  She manipulates Torvald into doing whatever it she wants or getting whatever she wants.  She then uses this power, which going by society she shouldn't have, to help cover up the loan that she took out that would be severely frowned upon by the entire society.

Gender role criticism doesn't always have to be contradicting the social norms of the time however.  A book can have all of the gender roles fit right in where they are supposed to fit and then they aren't really criticizing anything.  In "A Doll House"  the author is criticizing the male dominance of society and the lack of freedom that women have to make decisions for themselves in the time period that this play takes place.  Another example of a book I read this year that can be viewed under the gender role lens is The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.  In this book the female characters are very powerful and seem to have dominance over the male characters in a society where men have all of the power.

HOD

Since my last post we have done very little other than discuss Heart of Darkness in class and most of my time out of class has been spent annotating the book and touching up on my note card activity.  Since it is all we have been doing i think it is appropriate for me to devote this post to HOD.  The topic for my envelope activity is savagery and primitive behavior.  This book is full of examples of both of these especially since it is located in a place where most of the people are considered savage and all of their behavior is considered primitive by the more "advanced" Europeans of the novel.  One prime example of some savages are the cannibals that Marlow works with on the ship.  He describes them as being inherently savage but having some degree of restraint.  He says, "Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear-or some kind of primitive honour?"(II, 14).   He doesn't know what it is that is holding these savages back from being savage and eating him and all of his men since the Europeans are severely out-numbered and the cannibals have to be getting hungry.  It is also ironic that the cannibals are starting to go hungry due to the fact that the white men threw away all of their hippo meat yet they still don't eat the men, even though it is their fault that they now have no food.  He also queries that it could be some kind of honour that is holding them back from eating the white men, but not just honour, some "primitive" honour.  The savages are not capable of following honour of the European standards, they are only capable of primitive honour, and only enough of that to not eat the men that they are working with.

There are also many images in the book of the men in the steam boat just floating by wild savages and seeming completely removed from them.  Sure they are as repulsed as anyone would be in the face of such utterly primitive behavior but the just float by like a phantom that isn't disturbed by and doesn't disturb its surroundings.  Marlow describes it as "feet stamping", "eyes rolling", and "hands clapping"(7).  These natives are not capable of comprehensible communication and just yell and scream.  Marlow then states, "we were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms"(7), illustrating how they are not effected by the savagery around them, they are unconnected.

Research Paper

Unfortunately I can not write about my feelings on the research paper as I have only gotten to the outline but I can give some feedback about what I have done thus far.  In my opinion limiting the paper to a book that we have read in high school greatly limits the our capacity to be creative.  It is reasonable to limit us to a book that we have read in the past so that we have a deeper understanding of the plot and characters and can focus on more complex aspects of the book but I don't think it should be limited to something we have read in school.  Most of the books we read come out of a relatively strict school approved literary canon.  I have read many books outside of school that have literary merit but may not be a book that a teacher would pick to read in class since they can only fit a limited amount of books into the school year.  Allowing the students to pick any book they have read, with approval from the teacher of course, would broaden the range of books that would be chosen and would have the double accomplishment of allowing the students to write a paper they might have enjoyed more than, say, Heart of Darkness, or One flew over The Cuckoos Nest.  Other than that it is fine and I cant really criticize the time lines since mine aren't the same as anyone else's.

Well that's all i can really say about the research paper so now Ill move on and talk a little about HOD.  In class today we talked about the part in part 1, paragraph 69, about work.  He says, "I don't like work- no man does- but i like what is in the work- the chance to find yourself." (Conrad 97). In class we talked about this quote and I find it very true.  Nobody enjoys working, or at least the working itself.  What you enjoy is the challenge or finding out that you have the ability to do something you didn't know you could do.  In my opinion work that is physically demanding is very satisfying.  Something that requires me to lift stuff or hit stuff like splitting wood or mowing the lawn is at least as enjoyable as work can be. It allows you to push your body to the limit and find yourself.  It is, like Marlow says, "for yourself", It isn't for anyone else, other people may see you working but only you know what it really means to you.

Heart of Darkness

I have to admit I was skeptical about this book at first and not only due to the none too cheery title.  The fact that one of the smarter people in our class expressed his dislike for this book left little hope for me.  However I was surprised in many ways by the novel.  Contrary to my expectations it did not drudge along lingering on every little detail and talking about all of the narrators feelings and thoughts.  That isn't to say that Conrad doesn't delve into many of the more interesting aspects of the human soul and mind.  The title "Heart of Darkness" refers not only to the heart of darkness in the Congo that Marlow and his crew are venturing deeper and deeper into but also the figurative hearts of darkness in the characters of the novel.  It is foreshadowed that one of the characters is going to resort to some kind of brutal savagery at some point in the novel.  In a place like this it would be surprising if someone didn't.  Everything seems decayed and dying from the old railway car that looked, " as dead as the carcass of some animal" to the people that are hiding underneath the trees that are in all forms of pain and look like they could drop dead at any second.

In class we are doing an activity called the envelope activity.  The Motif that i am supposed to be researching is Savagery or primitive behavior.  This novel is full of both of these especially since it is based in the primitive Congo where all of the people are primitive in the European view of the word.  One prime example i found of primitive behavior is when Marlow and the steamboat float by the village of natives.  These people all start to jump around and yell n languages nobody understands and in other words act like primitive people and in the eyes of the Europeans of the day, including the people on the steamboat, like savages.  Not only are the black natives in the Congo viewed as savages but they are treated savagely by the Europeans.  They are put in chains and driven like animals to do the will of the Europeans at the trading post.  They are often not even doing work that really needs to be done an example of this is the huge, pointless, artificial pit that the white people made them build just to keep them busy.  Even when the slaves have been worked to the point that they can no longer work they do not get any respite.  They are thrown aside to the sweltering heat of the trees where they are left to die of starvation or by one of the many wounds that they endure during their labor.

The Guest featuring an extended metaphor

The Guest by Camu is a prime example of existentialism. It presents many of the ideals of existentialists as well as many of the delimas that they face in their lives such as the decisions that they are going to make.  The decision that they ultimately choose is extremely important to the existentialists because they believe that you are essentially defined by the decisions that you make.  In The Guest Daru is faced with the decision of whether to allow the prisoner to escape or to do his duty to the Revolution and turn him over to the authorities. Without a higher power or moral beleif system to help him make this decision he is basically just doing what feels right and going with the flow.  He isnt writing these lyrics down ahead of time, hes freestyling it up, straight up going with the flow.  Hes no traditional singer that has the traditional systems to follow and the lyrics written down ahead of time by some other person.  He makes this decision by himself and it therefore shapes him and he is responsible for the consequences of this decision whatever it may be.  He decided to give the prisoner the chance to walk away and go free because this is what he feels is morally right in his mind, he would have had to face the consequences and take responsibilty for his actions to the other members of the french force but the prisoner follows this very existentialist rule and takes responsibility for his choice to kill his comrade and decides to go to prison.

Daru rejected the mens rule of law because the existentialists have their own morals which they decide themselves.  The actions that he took towards the prisoner, feeding him, unbinding him, and eventually letting him go free, define Daru as a morally honarable person in his mind and therefore he is honorable.

Extistentialism

In class this past week we learned about existentialism while at the same time reading The Stranger by Albert Camus outside of class.  One of the basic elements of existentialism is that you are created by the actions that you take or that the human essence is determined by your life choices.  This is shown in many ways in The Stranger as Meursalt's being and personality are essentially created by the ways that he acts.  How he acts is also very extistentialist.  He does things not because they are morally acceptable or expected by society but because they are something that he wants to do or something that he believes is right or honorable.  When he is attending his mothers funeral he goes against all of the common or expected social responses by not showing external grief and large amounts of respect for his deceased parent.  He smokes at her dead bodies side, drinks coffee with the caretaker, and doesn't cry or show any typical external signs of grief.

In class we also read The Guest which is by Camu as well and is an exceptional example of the existentialist values.  At the end of the story when he gives the prisoner a choice it may seem as if he is dodging the main belief of the existentialists and in their eyes becoming a coward by not making a decisive choice and just passing it along to the prisoner so that he can make the choice, but I believe that he did in fact make a choice.  By Giving the prisoner the option of either walking by himself all the way to prison or going free with money and supplies he did make a decision.  Anyone would believe that if given the choice of going free or going to prison one would choose going free.  This is a reasonable assumption that i believe the teacher made, he gave him the choice simply to make it so he partially followed his part of the bargain and to make it right in his mind which, to an an existentialist, is all that matters.  The fact that The prisoner decided to go to prison instead of taking the easy way out and going to freedom is a very existentialist idea as well.  The believe that as you are defined by your actions you should also take responsibility for them as well.  This man killed another man and in an existentialists mind the only thing that can be done is for him to take full responsibility for his actions.

King Lear and Tragedy

A tragedy has many components almost all of which are present in King Lear. There is a protagonist, Lear, that you can relate to on some level, since all he wants is the love of his daughters and to be able to retire to a life of peace.  Lear has a tragic flaw however in that he is too trusting of his daughters and that he at one point goes quite insane.  His doling out of his empire to his three daughters is a horrible idea but he could not have foreseen the consequences.  How was he supposed to know that two of his daughters would turn on him and conspire to kill him and that he would end up banishing the only daughter that truly loved him?  This did however occur and it led to his tragic downfall.  from the moment that he split up his kingdom to his two daughters they began to plot against him and therefore he indirectly, by giving the kingdom to Regan and Goneril, led to the loss of his sanity and eventually, his own death.

There was another parallel tragedy inside of this already tragic story.  The story of Gloucester and his two sons, Edgar the legitimate one and Edmund the illegitimate one was a tragedy in itself.  The fact that Gloucester and the rest of the noble class believed that it was Edgar that wanted to kill his father instead of Edmund who actually wished the demise of his half-father was as tragic as it was ironic.  Gloucester Banished Edgar and sent out a warrant for his arrest even though it was Edmund that wanted to kill him.  Edgar, the son whose head Gloucester had put put a warrant for ended up saving his life more than once, caring for him after his eyes were gouged out by Cornwall as well as keeping him from committing suicide by jumping off the cliff.  Gloucester's story was tragic to the bitter end when his heart finally broke from being overwhelmed by the fact that it was in fact Edgar who was taking care of him and that Edmund actually wanted him dead.

This play was also tragic just in the fact that such a vast majority of the characters died at the end of the play.  Not only did they die but many of them died from things such as broken hearts or by committing suicide, or even attempting to commit suicide and then later dying from a heart that couldn't handle all the grief of life in the case of Gloucester.  It was a prime example of a tragedy and there really isn't any way it could have been more tragic unless the few main characters that remained at the end of the play had also died.

Grendel

This weekend i began Grendel, by John Gardner, a novel in which Beowulf is told from the point of view of the monster Grendel.  Gardner is a very eccentric man who is rather morbid since the accidental death of his younger brother in his childhood.  You can see much of this influence in many of Gardner's works including Grendel, which has a very dark tone and plot as it is following the life and struggles of a hideous monster, as well as a very gloomy and depressed character; Grendel himself.

As Gardner has this huge weight on his back, since it was he who dealt the death blow to his brother when they were only kids, it seems only right that he would have thoughts of suicide and self-pity.  This is portrayed into the character Grendel when he calls himself, "Pointless, ridiculous monster."(2) and when he is yelling at the black chasms to swallow him up.  He yells, "seize me.  Seize me into your foul black bowls and crush my bones"(5).  This is one of the most obviously suicidal things he could have said.  He is yelling at the chasm to crush his bones and kill him because he is so miserable with his life and what the world has done to him which is literally nothing. 

The entire universe seems to be indifferent to Grendel.  It doesn't matter how much he shakes his fists at it, flips it off, or even just bellows at, it in never seems to give him the respect he thinks he deserves.  At the beginning of the novel he is yelling at a stupid ram to get away from him and cursing its very existence but it just looks at him and goes on standing there.  This pisses him off so much that he unleashes a scream that turns the water he is standing in to ice and even scares himself a little but the ram still does nothing.  It is like he can belong to nothing, he is completely isolated.  Man refuses to allow him into their culture obviously and even nature, where he lives and the animals cant even think, wont accept him.  This just emphasizes the deep feeling of isolation that Ggrendel feels and shows us how he can have all of these suicidal thoughts.

The Hero

This week in AP Lit we started a new unit, the hero unit.  The first book we are reading in this unit is Beowulf, in preparation for Grendel. Beowulf is the perfect example of a hero's journey.  Some of the elements of a heroic myth that we learned were to find glory and to slay a monster and shape the world, which is a characteristic a early hero myths.  This myth follows the universal pattern where the hero has departure, fullfilment, and return. 

Beowulf leaves his homeland of geatland to go face the horrible monster, Grendel, who is terrorizing the Danes.  He leaves the safety of his home and goes into uncertainty to fight a monster that has never been defeated and may not come back with his life, But he still goes.  He then faces the monster, is successful and finds fullfillment.  He not only is fulfilled in that he defeats the monsters physically but he also is fulfilled psycologically as much of this mission is pride based in that he has to defeat Grendel, and later Grendel's mother, in order to sate his desire to raise his level of prestige and elevate his status over its already godly state.

He then returns from his adventures victorious and much better off then he was before he embarked on this mission.  He comes back to the Geats and rules them for many years after he successfully defeats Grendel and his mother.  This shows how this epic follows the universal pattern of hero myths because this was really one of the first recorded hero myths in history, at least in the english language.  Beowulf Departs, Fulfills, and returns.

A Doll's House and Foils

Today in class we wrote a timed writing about foils in A Doll's House and i wrote about the relationship between Kristine Linde and Nora Helmer and how Ibsen uses this relationship to emphasize many of Nora's character traits.  There were also many other foils in this play including Krogstad and doctor Rank and Torvald and Nora's father even though you are never introduced to him in the book, as he died when Nora was young.  These foils serve to illuminate the major characters they are paired with and help to show their significance to Ibsen's purpose in writing this play.

Krogstad and doctor Rank at first seem like polar opposites however with a closer look you see that they serve as foils for each other accentuating their important traits and showing their importance in the play. Dr. Rank just oozes decay and even though he starts out in the beginning of the play as being rather lively and active in his relationship with the Helmers and Torvald in particular as he visits them every day he eventually fades into no relationship choosing instead to coop himself up in his house to die alone in peace slowly decaying until he is no more.  Krogstad on the other hand starts off as a gloomy, deceptive character who is generally disliked by the people in the play even though he shows that he has had a relationship of some kind in the past with Kristine.  He was the one who gave Nora the loan and was therefore the root of all of the Helmer family's problems.  As the play progresses your opinion of him gradually shifts until you sympathize with him and in the end you are happy for him as he ends up in a happy relationship with Kristine and lets Nora off with out having to pay the debt.

Dr. Rank also functions as a foil briefly to show how insensitive and selfish the Helmers are.  At the end of the play Rank leaves a note for Nora saying that he is going to die in his house and that he does not want to be disturbed anymore.  He says that this is for Torvalds own good because he thinks that Torvald cant handle seeing him in his decayed form.  Torvold however takes this almost unnaturally well seeing as his best friend has just told him that he is going to go die in his house without saying good bye and that he never wants to see him again.  He says that it is perfectly dreadful however he is glad to be rid of him and then just goes back talking to Nora and trying to persuade her not to leave him.

Ibsen did an excellent job using foils in this play as almost every major character has a minor character that helps to showcase their traits whether they be good or bad.  This use of foils also helps to show each character's significance to the overall purpose and theme of Ibsen's play.

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.