Folk Tales--Evolutions

When I was younger, one of my favorite activities was swapping ghost stories with friends.  The goal was to scare the most people with a single story.  The one that freaked me out the most was the story of the stolen bone, though I've heard it in different ways.  Anyway, a young man is starving and finds a bone with a large amount of meat on it one day in a field.  He goes home, cooks it, and eats the meat.  That night, the corpse that had lost whatever limb the man ate, comes back to reclaim it. And, in true horror story fashion, the man is never seen or heard of again.  

Freaky, right?  This one bothered me because I like steak and I don't necessarily know where my steak comes from, but that is beside the point.  When reading Diop's The Bone, I felt like that ghost story from my childhood could be The Bone II: Curse of Good Meat or something ridiculous.  In both stories, the bone and choice meat are the main character's downfall.  They are driven by a similar motive, hunger, however there is a different lesson from both.  Diop seems to be telling his audience to avoid being selfish, and the story I knew was more of a be careful with strange meat, both of which are good life lessons.  

Now, that was totally off the wall, but it is what The Bone reminded me of. 

...the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo

I love this poem by Eliot.  I feel like it easily transfers to the current time period.  The speaker and whoever they are travelling with discover the dive bars and seedy hotels.  Now, in 2011, it's like he's going hipster hunting.  "Hey, let's go check out all the ironically cool places that are cool because they are not mainstream" is how I feel this would translate.  

Anywho, I love this poem. I feel that it's ok even though it rhymes.  Rhyming to me is something that is rather elementary. Elementary in the sense that very often that is what people get caught up on when writing poetry at a young age. I care more about the rhythm of a phrase and how it is read aloud.  However, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock rolls off the tongue naturally.  The phrasing isn't difficult; the lines are long enough that they aren't choppy, but not so long that it is hard to get them out in one breath.  I'm hung up on how well it flows.

The language is not extravagant or hard to read.  It is simple, but I feel like there's something I'm missing.  This doesn't come across as a traditional love song.  I feel like there's something that would make it an obvious thing about love, but I'm just not seeing it.

There is a disjointed feeling in this poem.  The beginning stanzas are all about running and living life to the fullest; experiencing everything they can.  by the time you hit the stanzas after the second couplet the speaker begins to question whether it is appropriate to go out of his standard path and explore the dive bars he would normally avoid.  A sense of hopelessness settles over the poem until the very end when he shows a more flippant attitude.

This poem fascinates me.

Things Fall Apart

So I wrote an entire paper on this novel.  I guess it just interested me.

This time however, I'm going to talk about the daughter.  She prefers to act as a boy; She sits like a boy, talks like a boy, and wants to do male tasks.  Now, the question is why does she do this?

There is the first option that tends to feel that it's because she is just programmed that way.  Genetically, she may have a predisposition towards acting as a male child.  At some point, there is the possibility that there was something in her brain that made it easier for her to act as a male.  She could be, in theory, a male in a female body.  However, her actions do not come across as that far off of a rebellious female.  She is able to conform, she just doesn't want to.

The second option would be that she is a child of her environment.  She wants her father's love and support and doesn't get it from him. She knows her brother does and she begins to crave that.  the difference between her and her brother is the fact he is male.  When a child wants something and knows that it is possible if something is added to them, they start to do that.  In this case, the girl has penis envy, according to Freud.

When it comes down to it, it's a nature/nurture question.  In this case however, I feel that the evidence points mostly to the second option which is a nurture issue.  There may be a part of her that is less agreeable which would be genetic, but again, the bigger part of it is the upbringing.

Snow Country

This story, if you have an imagination, is beautiful. The last scene in particular, grabs my attention.  I feel like I get what Shimamura was trying to get across.

You know that watching her fall is horrible and sad.  But, if you focus solely on the fact that she's falling out of a building, that, to me, is too much fear and sorrow to deal with.  You've got to pull out and not focus on the fact that she's not dead yet and will die when she hits the ground.  Instead, to pull the scene out and paint a picture, a static image, takes away some of the horror.  The separation and lack of emotional  connection to the death of a young woman is surprising to me.  The main character had been fascinated with her, but does not seem to be capable of feeling anything for her death.  In order to keep his composure, I feel that he had to pull out or divert his emotion.

Ok, the best example of something like this is as follows.  You know where you were when the planes hit the World Trade Center Towers in 2001.  Heck, I can tell you that the weather was gorgeous and my teacher had the windows open.  I could hear the younger kids on the playground.  I couldn't comprehend the event that I pulled out of the moment.  I feel like that's what happens.  He's so stunned by what is happening that he is pulling out for his own sanity so he can slowly start to understand.  His moment with the Milky Way is familiar to me.  I did the same thing in fourth grade.

I dunno, I understand it this way.

Super behind...whoops.

Ok, so I'm super behind. So, onward we plow.

In a discussion I was having with a friend the other day, I determined that there are not many strong female characters in literature.  I feel like this is the case in this class.  With the exception of In Camera, which is led by a strong feminist, I feel that many women are definitely shown as second best. In Pedro Perama, Susanna was crucial to the plot, but she was not strong.  Her father was a little creepy and Pedro was possessive. In The Rooftop Dwellers, the main character allowed the family that she leased her room from to walk all over her.  The geishas from Snow Country were passive and rather wishy washy.  Joyce's women were not the focus of his piece, however Mrs. Ivers did stand on her own, but in a brusque manner that is not something that most women would like to emulate.

I guess my frustration is that even in the literature of the early 20th Century women were stuck in stereotypical roles. Men were able to be rounded characters.  Joyce attempts this, I feel, by giving the wife a back story in The Dead, but we don't really know what she's thinking like we do with her husband.

In Camera

Yay for Daddy issues! Oh, wait...

Now, I have my own daddy issues. Everyone does at least to some extent. Leila, she may not have the worst issues, but the relationship with her father is left open for interpretation. He comes to her trial, but I'm not sure he's there for the right reasons. I think he only went because it effected him. He was not there for her. His first thought is that it will look good for him. She was a 'hero' for standing up to the government and by default he was awesome.

As soon as he heard that she was raped, he lost his pride in her. He automatically talks about how she is a disgrace to him and how he will never be able to do anything again.

I have a hard time feeling bad for the father or seeing him as a good person. His gut instinct is to protect himself and not his father. He is not a paternal figure that I like. I mean, my ideal father is either Jethro Gibbs from NCIS or Qui-Gon Jinn from Star Wars. Both characters sacrifice themselves for those that they love. The father in In Camera is not sacrificial. He doesn't show fatherly love as I think he should. I don't like him.

Punishment for Picking the Wrong Partner

Tagore has a tendency to write as a woman as shown by No. 27. This to me shows a tendency for appreciating women more than was normal in his time. In Punishment, he is harsh to the strong female character, but like a hero, she is able to overcome and get the final world in.

In Punishment, Tagore is rather fair to both genders. There is a sympathetic character for both genders, but also the ones that you can't really feel sorry for. Radha, sort of deserves my pity, I mean, she may have been a smart ass, but hey, everyone has their moments. I'm not going to lie, if I got stabbed in the head every time I said something sarcastic, I would have been killed millions of times over. Chandara, she did have a dry sense of humor, but it was different. Chandara liked to pick many times rather than blow up like Radha did.

Chandara didn't deal with stress well; she cried all afternoon and had a tendency to tease her husband. Her coping mechanism was probably the best of the four, however. Radha and her husband Dukhiram both explode, which, as shown in the story, leads to bad things. There is a difference between the two of them though. Radha uses words and emotions while Dukhiram is violent. Chandara is manipulative, and Chidam is just kind of there. It is mentioned that he picks at Chandara like she does, but it is in a loving way. I see Chidam as a sort of giant teddy bear. He could act cross with Chandara, but she had him wrapped around her finger.

Chidam is easily manipulated I think, which is probably why he and Chandara weren't at odds like Dukhiram and Radha were. Dukhiram and Radha were both headstrong, rambunctious people, who would have done well in relationships that weren't with each other. Chidam proves he is manipulated easily by the ease with which Dukhiram convinces him to turn in Chandara. It's his wife for goodness sakes, can't he figure that out? But then she has him so wrapped up around her, she makes him feel horrible for even trying to back stab her.

Moral of the story is, make sure that you are a good match for your partner and don't be Dukhiram or Radha, who are loud and obnoxious, but if you love your partner, you darned well try to keep them.

Tonight I Can Write...

Ok, so I'm 19 and I'll be the first to admit, I've known love and what it's like to love someone and be loved in return. Don't get me wrong, however, I hope that I can love more than I have already, because there's so much more to learn but that which I have known was stupendous while it lasted.

Now, I normally don't like poems, stories, and movies about love. Life isn't as easy as they make them seem. Not everyone ends up happy. Somebody gets hurt. Nothing is ever happy and neatly contained. Snow White is twelve, Cinderella wasn't anything more than a girl who talked to animals that couldn't really talk back. Now, if you leave with a man older than you for a 'happy life' 9 times of 10 you get sold into slavery. Not a fairy tale in my book.

Tonight I Can Write..., however, shows us pain and suffering. He loved, she supposedly did, but left, and now he has to pick up the pieces. He goes back and forth on what really happened and how he really feels. I can imagine the tears falling on the page. This poem, when I read it, I feel my heart being ripped open. The last two lines however, "Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her" (2443 Line 31), gives me hope for him. He's learning that it will be ok and that life will continue without her. To me, this is real life. He hurts really bad, but it will be ok.

In the end of the day if we look in a mirror, that mirror, in order to accurately represent ourselves, will not be a solid piece of glass. No one is perfect and without blemish or scars. No, that mirror will be whole, but will be cracked and pieced back together, be it by our own power or that of an outside source. Neruda, in this poem, took his broken mirror and is starting to put pieces of it together. He is healing. Not ignoring the fact that she took a huge chunk out of him. He is moving on. I am proud of him for that.

Leda

Now, this poem is weird for me. I like it, but I feel bad for liking it. Rape shouldn't, in my mind, be so pretty sounding.

I guess why this one struck me was that it addressed it from Zeus' outlook. I mean, rarely do you see what was going through the rapist's mind. "The bird from Olympus, wounded by love" makes me feel bad for Zeus (1720, line 9). He's been hurt, so he just wants something from someone. Much like a child that has had its favorite toy taken away, it lashes out. A child doesn't rape, but throws a tantrum. A kicking, screaming, horrible thing that lets the adult know that the child is not happy.

In this sense, I feel like Dario shows Zeus as a large child that doesn't know how to explain his frustration. He throws a tantrum and acts out upon the nearest person or thing that he knows. I'm not sure he targeted Leda for any reason other than she caught his eye before. I don't think he wanted to hurt her specifically. Zeus had all of his home issues with Hera. She hated his womanizer ways. It was Hera that was so harsh to him and probably wounded him. Now, that is an assumption. It could also be Leda that denied him his desires. When you sit and think about why he is acting out, you feel less bad for him, I guess.

Part of the reason this is so hard to be disgusted by is that it's romanticized, at least in my mind. She struggles, but doesn't seem to actually do anything that would cause damage. I mean, you can struggle, and you can really struggle. He seems to come across as someone who is trying to be her lover. He seeks her lips which is an odd thing in this sort of situation. Often, in situations where the couple is not emotionally bonded, kissing is out of bounds. It gives it a sort of extra desperation, like he just wants to be loved.

This poem is so different than some of the other ones. It seems less vibrant. Everything seems muted. The colors of the swan have changed, from bright white to grey, and the beak has become amber instead of rose-red. The poems after the TR one are much more dark, but dark doesn't describe it right.

I feel that this one is a guilty pleasure. It makes such a beautiful story out of something so utterly horrible.

Sonatina--Thoughts

So, poetry to me is alright. I rarely sit and actually think about it. I will sometimes, but to sit and honestly consider what they are talking about is odd to me. I tend to write, when I do, very straight forward. I have a logical way of thinking. It makes sense to just say what I mean. Poetry though, I feel is trying to fool with you. Nothing means what it seems to mean. It's like listening to a Beatle's song and knowing they were on acid. (Don't believe me listen to Strawberry Fields or I Am the Walrus).

Also, I feel that I will never understand what they are really trying to explain. I'm colour deficient, so I don't see colour like most people. I cannot see the colour teal for example. It's just green to me and I can't tell you what it looks like. I feel like understanding what the poet really means is like that. Only the poet can see all colours and those of us reading are all colour deficient and can't quite agree or fully understand what the poet meant. Gosh darnit, if only they would stick to simple colours (joking of course).

Anyway, Sonatina by Dario. Good poem and fairly straight forward unless you start looking for things. On the surface, the Princess is in her castle very sad and lonely. In the footnotes in our copy, it says he references Sleeping Beauty, but in my opinion, it is more like Rapunzel. She's a princess stuck in her castle and is lonely. Eventually, her fairy godmother shows up and says it's going to be ok.

Now in class, we discussed various meanings. Religion is one of the ones that stuck with me, but that is probably more to do with the fact religion has been pounded into my head for years. Re-reading it, however, I feel that everything but the fairy godmother could happen in real life. There are princesses that don't like life and aren't happy. They have all sorts of servants and things to make her happy. The only part that we don't have factual evidence of is the fairy godmother. To me, that is what is the oddest in the poem.

Now there are a few possible explanations of the fairy godmother. It could be literal, as in magic is occurring and the Princess talks to fairies. At this point, her message may quite honestly be an uplifting one: "Don't worry, Princess. It will be ok soon. You will fulfill your role as a good woman and marrying the nobelman that comes for you." Now, that has some implications of sexism and chauvinism, but I'm not really concerned with that.

The fairy godmother could be, if we are taking this whole thing literally, a hallucination. It was not uncommon for inbreeding to occur within the royal families, because of the want of good royal blood. So the fairy godmother could simply be a sign of her screwed up family history. This line of thought makes sense. If it is a commentary on how not having everything makes you happy, you could take that thought further and argue that not only does it not bring happiness, but it also brings consequences. She has been cursed with schizophrenia perhaps. This would also make sense why the knight has done such outrageous things, such as conquer Death and ride a winged horse.

Well, these aren't things we talked about in class, but they came to me after the discussion and I figured they would make an interesting blog.