What is a man?
Manhood according to Willy Loman
As I was reading Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" I noticed all the definitions within of what a man is and isn't.
A) A man must be attractive to women:
Willy: "In the greatest country in the world a young man with such -- personal attractiveness gets lost."
Willy: "That's why I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises."
B) Additionally, that man has to be popular with the ladies:
Happy: "About five hundred women would like to know what was said in this room."
C) Only men make promises:
Willy "Just wanna be careful with those girl, Biff, that's all. Don't make any promises. No promises of any kind. Because a girl, y'know, they always believe what you tell 'em, and you're very young, Biff, you're too young to be talking seriously to girls."
D) A man gets married to one of these ladies:
Biff: "Maybe that's my trouble. I'm like a boy. I'm not married, I'm not in business, I just -- I'm like a boy."
E) A man must be good with tools:
Willy: "A man who can't handle tools is not a man."
F) A man looks out for his own interests:
Ben: "Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way."
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The men in "Death of a Salesman" are trapped by a image of masculinity that none of them can match. Happy is great with the women, has a decent job, and yet struggles with loneliness. Biff feels great when he's working in the rugged outdoors, filling an image of masculinity that just doesn't satisfy his father - he's not making enough money to really be a man. Willy is growing older and softer; his image of himself as a man is being threatened up to the very end. There seems to be a decent amount of sibling rivalry in the play - each brother wishes to have what the other possesses as well as misplaced dreams - Willy places his hopes and dreams in the hands of his sons who can only let him down.
I leave you with a final quote to ponder:
Linda: "I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid."
"The full moon, an evil thing, an omen, soft showering the homes of folks she knew."
Does the moon make people crazy? Is there any truth to the legends or is it just an old wives' tale?
Well. I used to work in a restaurant on midnight shifts. I don't think it was my imagination that the nights of the full moon seemed to bring in all the loonies. I think it would be silly to think that the moon didn't affect us - think how lost we would be without that other great celestial object: the sun.
What I found interesting about Jean Toomer's "Blood-Burning Moon" was the way that the people of the town became an inhuman force intent on the death of Tom. "The mob yelled. The mob was silent." No one person is to blame for the situation at hand because the people became of one mind (directed, perhaps by the full moon) and acted as one body.
Ah... "Here We Are" (by Dorothy Parker) Look how far we've come! Hey, women just got the right to vote, right? So it's no big deal if people are still marrying virtual strangers, vowing to spend their lives with someone they hardly know. No wonder things got so awkward on the train - Men and Women, if you haven't noticed, speak completely different languages. Oh, we use the words of the English language, but we use them in completely different ways with different connotations.
Why do you suppose the young woman picks so many arguments with the young man? Is she just nervous or is she starting to question her decision to marry him?
My favorite line is "There was a silence with things going on in it." Isn't that always the case? You stop talking and start thinking. Your partner stops talking and starts thinking. Your minds are churning but you have no idea what the other one is thinking.
Having read a couple of O'Connor's stories over the summer as well as "A Good Man is Hard to Find" recently in EL 150, I wasn't too surprised by the ending of this story. In fact, I was waiting for it. See, in an article we read in Intro to Lit, we learned about the "comedy of circularity" or, if you will, What Goes Around Comes Around.
So when Mrs. May starts off the story complaining about "Some nigger's scrub bull" I knew Mrs. May was in for a nasty surprise at the end of the piece. Ah yeah, gored to death by a bull. In O'Connor's way of thinking, this was a justified ending for Mrs. Crankypants, er, Mrs. May. And, um, it's probably supposed to be funny.
So, I'm curious what everyone thought about the ending. Where you expecting Mrs. May to get gored by the bull? Did you expect the bull to be shot and that be that? What did you think was going to happen?
What struck me about Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly, Too" was the way Zoe seemed to be so disconnected from everything around her. She seems hopelessly neurotic, that way that overly intelligent people seem to be because they are trapped inside their own heads too much. Her students aren't really people, just drones who sit in front of her each day.
Moore writes, "Her students were by and large good midwesterners, spacey with estrogen from large quantities of meats and eggs. They shared their parents' suburban values; their parents had given them things, things, things. They were complacent."
Zoe feels separate and distant from everyone in her life. She has become disillusioned. When a student comes to her searching for meaning, telling Zoe that she wants her major to "mean something." Zoe responds, "Well, there's your problem" as she shows the student to the door. She relates getting her mother's box of decorating magazines to getting a box of her mother's pornography - as if the act of sharing her mother's dreams was pornographic in nature - something nice people simply didn't do.
There are a lot of references to reproduction and related hormones in the piece, from the spacy midwesterners children to the "large, mysterious growth" in Zoe's abdomen to Earl's comment near the end: "Hormones sprayed around, and now men are screwing rocks. Rocks!"
What do you suppose all the talk of sexuality and relationships means in this story? Is Zoe's biological clock a'ticking or is there more to this than that? Is there a greater message to the piece? I'm curious as to what everyone thinks about this story.
When I was reading James McBride's "The Color of Water" this week, I just kept thinking, "Lord, thas a lotta kids!" Can you imagine having 11 brothers and sisters??? Can you imagine the sibling rivalry that must have resulted? No wonder the kings and queens system was an effective way to manage everyone!
Maybe after a certain number of kids, the competition for mom's energy kind of fades away into survival of the fittest. No wonder the kids turned out to be such high achieving adults! Surviving childhood would have ingrained them with an intense desire to succeed (not to mention trying to keep up with the scores of kids that came before 'em!).
I'm glad this book was written - it transcends all borders and transforms into a story of love. Race is such a non-issue that it drives me mad! I simply don't understand what the color of a person's skin has to do with anything.
Why is this tradition of racism still with us? I believe that it's because it is passed down from generation to generation. Parents share their beliefs with their children. As these children grow, they share their beliefs with their kids. And so on and so on.
I feel blessed to have parents who have always been suprisingly open-minded about anything I could imagine: Me: Mom, I'm moving to Ohio to live with a couple of gay men. Mom: Just be careful. Although I did grow up here in what I like to call "white bread, pennsylvania" I turned out the way I did because of my parents.
Although I myself have vowed not to breed, I am certain that my children would be even more open-minded than me. I like the idea of spreading open-minds... much better than spreading minds that are steel-traps refusing to take in anything new. Super.
All that's been going through my head the last few weeks is Europe, Europe, Europe! I can't believe that this trip is actually happening! 59 days and counting! Holy crap!
(You know what I just realized? My calendar, a totally fly Bettie Page calendar by Ozone Productions, LTD. totally has the wrong holiday dates! In other words, the reason Easter crept up on me so fast is because my calendar says Easter is April 10th! No wonder I've been so darn confused...)
Anyway, if you are going to go to Europe anytime in the future, I am going to save you some hassle by presenting you with Moira Does Europe: The Ultimate First Time Guide. I'll try to update with problems / hassles that I'm facing in the process as well as links to sites that helped solve my problems:
First of all, I bought an infinitely helpful book entitled, aptly enough, "First Time Europe: Everything You Need to Know Before You Go" published by Rough Guides. It offers help figuring out a budget, itinerary, and accomodations. It breaks down the different types of rail passes available and includes all sorts of useful information in the appendices. This book was so useful that I didn't even balk at the $14.95 pricetag, and I'm a girl who lives on discount books and thrift store finds.
Links that will aid your European travel experience:
$26 gets you a year-long membership, including discount coupons good for Buy One, Get One free. There is also a Free Nites program that earns you points every night you stay in a participating hostel. Membership includes a directory of all of the hostels in the U.S. plus access to the website which provides international information. Since the card gets you priority access to the hostels as well as a discount, I think it will pay for itself pretty quickly.
International Student Identity Card
Another good card to have is the ISIC, which costs $22 at STA Travel in Oakland, Pittsburgh. Add an extra $3 to get your picture taken, and you have both an extra photo i.d. which could come in handy any time but also access to all sorts of great deals. Word on the street is that ISIC gets you discounts on everything over in Europe, you just have to ask.
You'll need a passport. If you are a subject of the United Kingdom, this site is the only place in the US to get your passport, save walking in to the office in D.C. If you are a U.S. citizen, this site will tell you everything you need to know.
Oh, ye great gods of Automotive Towing, ye! Who knew exactly how useful Triple A was going to turn out to be? Not me!
After researching ticket prices online, my travelling partner and I dashed over to Triple A, hoping to quiz a travel agent and get a price comparison. An hour later, we had just purchased two round-trip tickets to London for $300 cheaper than the ones we'd found online including travel insurance and trip protection. Sweet!
We've been back to see our dear travel agent, (a most highly recommended Linda Rich in Greensburg) who answers our questions and laughs at our jokes, four times. We like Linda. A lot. We'll be paying her a visit next week to purchase our rail passes.
This is the official site with all the information you need. Read the fine print and check out the prices - if you plan far enough in advance, you can get a decent deal on travel by planning to use only certain days and getting a smaller pass. If you are under 26, you get a significant savings as well.
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I hope this links will get you started on living your dream. I'm off to continue working on making mine happen. Oh la la!
When reading Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party, I did take note of all the references to the garden and the different types of plants - the bare dirt where the daisies had been, the 100's of blooming roses, the karakas-trees that would be hidden by the marquee. I didn't necessarily make the Adam / Eve connection but I don't find it to be such a far-fetched metaphor.
The garden described in the story reminds of a wonderful place that lives on in my dreams and memories: Mill Creek Park in Youngstown, Ohio. Maybe one day I'll write a story set in Mill Creek Park based on the Adam and Eve story?
Anyway, the thing about the mythology is cool but I wonder: will I ever make those connections? I'd have to seriously bone up on some mythology of yore in order to pick up references to it. I might be able to catch a reference to the god of war or the goddess of love and I wouldn't miss a reference to those spinners of fate the Moirai... but anything else? Whoosh! Right over my head.
Kids don't read mythology these days, I'm afraid. In fact, kids don't read much of anything. This is, of course, a very sad thing. It is also a fascinating thing because I wonder what we will use as cultural reference points 50 years from now. An interesting question, eh?
I had the unexpected pleasure of attending a peace rally in Oakland yesterday. I was amazed at the volume of people who turned out for the event (an estimated 3000) as well as the wide variety of persons - there were people of every ethnic distinction, people who were large, people who were very small, people on bikes, in wheelchairs, and on foot. There were smokers and non-smokers, young people and older folks, children and adults. There were people in purple shoes, blue shoes, red shoes.
All of these people gathered yesterday to protest the war in Iraq, arguing that the best way to support our American troops is to bring them back home. The scent of Patchouli was in the air, the quiver of excitement and even a little fear as the police officers on horseback (10 or 15 of them) showed up. Memories of protests in the seventies gone awry flashed through our heads, some of us, many of us, too young to have actually been there, but old enough to have heard the stories.
I felt proud and honored to be a part of the festivities. As I stood off to the sidelines, scribbling notes and jotting down slogans from the signs, I couldn't help but to think of Lynne Truss, author of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" - Ms. Truss would have been proud - not an errant apostrophe in sight! No renegade semi-colons, rebellious commas, not even a misplaced colon could marr the sight of all these protest signs! Sure, a few people chose rather than to butcher the punctuation to simply ignore it by placing no punctuation whatsoever in their signs - but I was proud of my fellow protesters, and glad too because I had left all of my sharpies necessary for fixing such errors at home.
There were signs on neon green posterboard proclaiming "War Hurts Everyone" and "Georgie Porgie - You've Made A Big Mess." Note the careful use of both the apostrophe and the dash! You go, you protestin' punctuation maven you! A girl with a small green sign asking "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" amused me to no end and filled with with joy at seeing a well-placed question mark. Although the punctuation was non-existent in the sign stating "Not Proud to Be An American" and "War is Not Christian," I was still glad to see 'em.
After the march, members of several prominent Pittsburgh groups spoke on the subject of war: The Raging Grannies (my personal favorite! their song "follow the money to see what the Bushies have planned" was quite catchy!), Code Pink for Peace, Black Voices for Peace, and members of the Thomas Merton Center.
Some choice quotes, that I hope, will be punctuated correctly:
"A ribbon on your car is not supporting the troops."
"Mr. Santorum, I am a 56 year old woman. I'm 4 foot 11 inches. I might look like a puny little women, but I have just become your worst nightmare."
"Silence is betrayal."
"May god bless you with foolishness to believe that you can make a difference."
It was fabulous event. I came home feeling warm and squishy, believing that maybe the world can be changed for the better and that maybe I can somehow be a part of making that happen. I like that feeling.
I have another question about "A Streetcar Named Desire" that someone might be able to answer for me:
I noticed that in the original New York play, Jessica Tandy starred as Blanche DuBois. This was in 1947. In '51, Jessica Tandy was replaced by Vivian Leigh. It seems like the rest of the cast stayed the same. Does anyone know why this switch occured?
If no one gets back to me, I'll probably surf around later to find the answer... but right now I have a wicked headache and 15 minutes til my lunchbreak....
Who is Blanche DuBois?
"She must have been fond of you. Sick people have such deep, sincere attachments."
She's a liar, that's for sure! Did you pick up on all the lies she tells?
She tells Mitch that she rarely drinks, whereas we "the audience" have already seen her take more than that. She says Stella is a year older than her, but the beginning of the play states, "She is about five years older than Stella." Now, obviously someone watching the play wouldn't have read the stage directions, but I imagine when casting the characters that it would have been made pretty clear that Blanche was the older of the two.
She also says, "Y'know how indifferent I am to money. I think of money in terms of what it does for you."
A - only someone who has tonnes of the stuff could possibly be truly indifferent to money. well, except maybe for a young person who hasn't yet learned the value of cash.
B- by saying that she thinks only of money in terms of "what it does" - she has just shown that she isn't actually indifferent to money.
My question is - Why do you think Blanche lies so much? Which is worse - lying to everyone around you or lying to yourself?
I'm reading "A Streetcar Named Desire" this week for American Literature. I'll be writing more about the play itself later, but I wanted to share two quotes from "On A Streetcar Named Success" written by Tennessee Williams four days before the original New York opening of the play:
"The sort of life which I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock than than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism was created."
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"You know, then, that the public Somebody you are when you 'have a name' is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath and which is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of becoming under your own volition - and knowing these things, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success!"
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Oooh. I don't know exactly what it is about these two quotes that grabbed me, but grab me they did. I like the imagery of life as a struggle but goddess knows it is every step of the way. I also like the idea of a secret self that no one else ever gets to see - I've always been an intensely private person. People only see the sides of me that I want them to see, and I value above all else my alone time - time to recharge, refresh, and think.
And yet there is a part of me that yearns to be known, to make an impact upon the world around me, even as I cringe from the attentions of those around me. I like this quote because it serves as a reminder that the only side of me that really matters is the real me that shimmers and shines deep within. No one can ever define who I am because I am constantly becoming.
This statement reminded me of the self-actualization aspect of Maslow's pyramid. Heard of him?
"There was once this guy named Abraham Maslow, and way back in 1943 he devised an interesting theory about human nature." This blog entry does a decent job of going through the basics.
Anyway, Maslow was a pretty fascinating guy and his idea of self-actualization always appealed to me, back in my psych major days (ah... fond memories of being forced to participate in weird experiments...).
Hmm.. I'm not sure what this says about me as a person but... I just got in a sort-of fight with a Best Buy employee!
I wasn't trying to be spunky, I swear. I just needed a ream of printer paper in order to print out the SEVEN freakin' papers I've had to write over spring break. I was going to go to Office Max originally because it's the closest, but since it's a pain in the arse to go there, I settled on Best Buy figuring I could check out all the funky new technology in the meantime.
I grab my paper, wander around for a minute but not so long as to begin to want, then I wait in line. I get to cashier, put my paper on the counter and say my usual "I don't want a bag, please" to the cashier.
See, I have a personal vendetta against crappy plastic bags. If I have one item that I can just as easily carry to the car without a bag, I always request to not have a bag so that I don't waste the damn things.
I used to say "I don't need a bag" but I found a lot of people still gave me a bag thinking, I guess, that I was just being polite? Since I'm an English major, I consider it my personal duty to experiment with word choice. So I mused on the situation for a while and reached a decent conclusion - I now say want instead of need.
The difference is slight, yes, but effective - we are a want-based society, right? We all pretty much have everything we -need- and we go shopping primarily for those things which we want, right? God forbid someone force something upon me that I don't want right? I'm not sure if the argument is really a valid one, but it works. usually.
Today at Best Buy, however, was a different story. I said, "I don't want a bag, please."
The girl said, "Okay. But I have to give you a bag" as she proceeded to grab a yellow bag and stuff my paper into it. I didn't say anything initially, but the look on my face must have revealed my discontent with the situation. She continued, "See, if you don't have a bag, then they have to check your receipt at the door."
Then she gave me one of those smiles that isn't really smile but a smirk that says "hah! I win!"
So, I admit it, I got mad.
I said, "Okay. But I'm just going to take it right out of the bag."
She smiled again, thinking she had won the battle. "When you get home. Right."
"No," I said, "Right now."
She gave me my change. I reached for the receipt but she stuffed it inside the bag, telling me to "have a nice day" in a tone of voice that means "drop dead, biznitch." Uh huh.
I took the bag, smiled at her in my own special way, then took the paper and the receipt out of the bag, leaving the bag empty on the counter. Then I walked away, as she called after me, "You have to have a bag!" not even disguising the bitchy tone this time. Right.
What the heck is up with this? If I don't want a bag, why should be forced to take one? I let the dude at the door check my receipt. Fine. I would rather take a second to have some guy check my receipt than to waste yet another crappy plastic bag.
I'm really frustrated with this situation. What's the big deal?
I am going to pursue this, you know. I'm never one to let a customer service issue drop. Especially since immediately after leaving Best Buy, I stopped at Office Max anyway, found that the paper was a buck cheaper -and- (this is the key) when I said, "I don't want a bag, please" to the girl at the register, she said (and I quote) "Okay." How incredibly simple!
So. Kudos to Office Max for not being jerkfaces. And boo to Best Buy for forcing corporate wastefulness upon my person! I'll be writing them a mean letter. It will be fun. Oh yes.
Man, famous people get all the breaks, huh? They get the designer clothes, name brand jewelry, and high-quality recreational substances. They get spots on night-time talk shows, the best seats at the movie theater, comped breakfasts at fancy-schmancy hotels in all the cities of the world and their photographs taken 24 hours a day. And now, as Lynne Truss blessedly informs the public, famous people get to use commas however the heck they want! This is outrageous and just plain unfair!
In her book “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” Lynne Truss gives an extraordinarily detailed account of that most pleasing of punctuation points – the comma. The comma, my friends, has always been one of my most favourite (hah! I might not be famous, but I am certainly British.) marks of punctuation, easily beating out the colon, semi-colon, and that wimpy little period. It was a close race with the exclamation point but due to its lowered likelihood of raising one’s blood pressure – I choose the comma.
Why, once upon a time, when I was but a lass trapped in high school, a teacher informed me, quite unfairly, I thought, that I was, and I quote, “Comma happy!” As if it could be possible to love a mark of punctuation TOO much! I was appalled. Comma-happy, my ass! Only… she was right, of course. I proceeded to remove all extraneous uses of the comma from my writing.
Thank goodness too because Ms. Truss has a very firm stance on commas: “People who put in all the commas betray themselves as moral weaklings with empty lives and out-of-date reference books.” Whew! Crack that whip!
I struggled for years to curb my tendency to go overboard with the comma only to one day read this: “When it comes to improving the clarity of a sentence, you can nearly always argue that one should go in; you can nearly always argue that one should come out.” Then I read a passage about the Oxford comma – all those commas I could have left out? Wait a minute!
You mean punctuation is practically arbitrary?
Horrid thought!
Or is it? When Lynne Truss later writes, “Now, so many highly respected writers adopt the splice comma that a rather unfair rule emerges on this one: only do it if you’re famous.”
Oh, right, now I get it: You’ve got to learn all the rules of grammar, stuff ‘em inside your head using up valuable brain cells that could have been used to, say, invent new punctuation… you have to learn all the rules so that you can break them, fabulously well. Well… I guess I’m okay with that.
Oh, man, it's finally happening! I have been dreaming about my Europe-experience for about two years now - it started with a germ of an idea "maybe I'll go to England?" and transformed over time into "Yeah, I think I will go." to "Sweet! I don't have to go to England alone!" into "OMG! I have a plane ticket to London!" quickly to "Oh, crap, I don't have my passport!" to, finally, today's "My passport application is in the mail. Almost." Whew!
It's a BIG pain is the proverbial rear end to get a passport if you aren't a U.S. citizen, ya know. I have to send my application directly to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. That's the only place in the U.S. to get my U.K. Passport so I am subject to the whims of those in the passport office. (This is a little frightening!) The cost is $148, which may or may not include the $12 Federal Express shipping fee.
I have to send: my full birth certificate, my father's full birth certificate, my parents' marriage certificate, and the passport we used to get into this country. All of these documents have to be originals, mind you, so I am also subject to the whims of those who work for the U.S. Postal Service.
As an ex-employee of the United States Postal Service, I must inform you that this aspect, and this aspect alone, terrifies me to no end. I know the meaning of "disgruntled postal worker" firsthand, my friends. I was the person hiding in the breakroom hoping time would suddenly start to fly by instead of dragging its deadstumpy leg behind it. That was the worst job I ever had.
And it gave me a knowledge that to this day fills me with dread: three little keystrokes, three misguided, nay malicious keystrokes and your package goes from being delivered to Wichita to being lost in space, aka Australia, India, Egypt, never to be seen again. If a postal worker is having a bad day, if your package strikes him or her in the wrong manner, you may never see or hear of it again. Muhahaha! Oh wait... I quit that job... right.
So. I must trust my most important of documents to the post office. But, if in order to leave the country, this is what I must do - I will get delivery confirmation for free on the internet and I will glare menacingly at the person behind the counter so that they know, oh they will know, the wrath that will be incurred should my package be lost.
Part of my Spanish class assignment this week involved writing a few sentences (in Spanish! gasp!) about my favorite holiday - here's what I wrote:
Primero te gusta cervasa verde. Luego compra una camisa verde quiza una con palabras rudas. Despues va a pub irlandesa - vea a el "shamrock" en la puerta. Ahora bebe la cervasa verde and diverte!
(Hey! How do I do Spanish punctuation on my blog?)
[translation - First, you must like green beer. Next you buy a green shirt, maybe one with rude words. Now you go to an Irish pub - look for the shamrock on the door. Drink green beer and have fun.]
It ain't much but it's something - It's frustrating for me to try to write in a foreign language because I don't have the flexibility I have in English. I can never quite say in Spanish what I can say in English. It's fun trying to get my sense of humor across in a foreign language, but it's certainly a challenge and it's hard to know if my humor translates.
You know, if you had told me that I would be snorting with laughter at a book about grammar and punctuation over spring break, not only would I have looked upon you with derision, I might have, thrown, a few extra commas into my sentence just to piss ya, off.
While I do think that Lynne Truss, author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", (look, ma, it's the British punctuation!) may, well, spend an inordinate amount of her free time worrying about punctuation errors in society - she seems to hold an especial grudge towards those greengrocers of yore - I can certainly see her point:
She writes, "... what happens when [punctuation] isn't used? Well, if punctuation is the stitching of language, language comes apart, obviously, and all the buttons fall off."
It's true that punctuation is something that many writers never give a second thought. Toss a sentence out there with no discernible punctuation, however, and you've got yourself trouble. I'll admit it - when I heard we were reading a book on punctuation for class, well, I got a case of the shudders - flashbacks to junior high English classes, diagramming sentences on the chalkboard filled my mind.
Ms. Truss continues, "The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning. Punctuation herds words together, keeps others apart."
I'm very big on communicating meaning; therefore, I should pay attention to punctuation. Thanks to Lynne Truss, I have certainly gained a new appreciation for that most over-worked symbol: the apostrophe! Poor little guy!
Finally, I enjoyed the idea of guerilla punctuation gurus running around the country fixing grammatically-incorrect signs in the still of the night. That's a nice heart-warming image.
Weird, I've been having browser troubles with Firefox. I've been using Firefox pretty much exclusively since December or so and I've never had any problems with it before. Yesterday, however, I thought it would be a *brilliant* idea to change my login id. I knew what name I had used and was frustrated to realize that the darn thing wouldn't work.
I immediately contacted Dr. J in a frustrated panic - a whole week without blogging? Oh god! Would would I do with my free time? Homework? *shudders at the thought*
Anyway, I got a new user id set up (thanks!) but that wouldn't work either! Finally, I decided to try it with IE just to be sure and, boom, I'm in! And that's all fine and good but IE crashes every two seconds and pollutes my vision with pop-ups. Horrors!
I'm very proud of myself - I figured out the problem (I basically needed to clear Firefox's memory) and now, despite the major carpal tunnels pains I am experiencing today [ my hand looks like a claw! for real!], here I am updating. Whew!
But hey! Readers - attention! Anyone want any FREE books??? I have a GIANT box of books that I will be donating to the local thrift store soon - stuff ranging from classic fiction (like Heller's Catch-22 & Tolstoy's War and Peace to random non-fiction stuff (a book on religious cults, a few cookbooks, etc.)
My hands are crampy so I can't type up a list - but if you want FREE books, leave a comment telling me what kind of books you would like to read and I'll let you know if I have anything up your alley.
Alright, who needs a break from intellectual pursuits? I know I do! Whew! So, I just took a personality test online (Thanks, Kate!):
| INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population. |
Hmmm. The world may be in trouble. Muhahaha!
So. How accurate are these personality tests? I mean, I'm reading... sounds about right... bookworm? check. thirst for knowledge? check. stubborn? check. "an INTJ sees reality as the pawn of ideas" ? check! the catch-phrase "why not?" ? checkity check check.
okay. so. So, baby, what's your sign Meyers-Briggspersonalitytype?
I have very exciting non-academic news to report - if you sat near me in class yesterday you may have noticing me twitching. This wasn't because I have contracted some weird neurological disfunction from all the sushi I've been eating lately. And, no, I wasn't drunk.
I was, in fact, giddy with joy and antici.... pation.
See... yesterday afternoon around 5 p.m. I did something that will prove to be one of those pivotal moments in the Life of Moira - I shelled out $650 for a plane ticket from Pittsburgh to ... omg I can scarcely contain my excitement - London, England! Yay!
I leave May 23rd, a full two weeks earlier than I had originally anticipated, and come back to "the States" on August 3rd. *leaps up and does a dance of joy*
I still don't have my passport but hey! It's going to be CRAZY man! I'll come back from Europe to have no apartment, no car, and, in all likelihood, no money! This is going to rock!
I am curious though - who out there has been to Europe? Does anyone have any tips or tricks for me? Has anyone stayed in a Youth Hostel? Any horror stories or warnings I should be aware of? Help me out here! I need YOU to give me advice! :c)
An article by Barbara Fuchs called "Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest" starts, "It is an axiom of contemporary criticism that The Tempest is a play about the European colonial experience in America. While this perspective has generated enormously enriched readings of the play, it runs the risk of obscuring the complicated nuances of colonial discourses in the early seventeenth century."
Ms. Fuchs continues on to suggest that a "multi historical interpretation" can help one to understand Shakespeare's play better. This viewpoint of this article, then, falls somewhere in between the hard-core new historicists who wanted Caliban to be Miranda's lesbionic lover and Paul Cantor's article comparing new historicists to marxists.
I like this article's take on matters - understanding never comes from just one source. If you based all of your opinions on, say, what you read in just one newspaper or something, never reading anything else - you wouldn't have a very good perspective on anything. You have to consider who owns the sources and who controls the information.
It's tough to remember to go out there and check a few sources, especially if you aren't writing a research paper and are just learning for the sake of learning. It's very important, however, to get a perspective. Don't take my word for it - get out there and see what other people are saying.
You can form your own opinion better if you are educated about your subject. When you say "This is what I think just because" you aren't proving anything but your own ignorance.
But enough ranting for today! Happy spring break!
I enjoyed reading about poet e.e. cummings in Anthony Robinson's "The Sonnet in the Twentieth Century." e.e. cummings has been a favorite poet of mine since I stumbled across a book of his poetry in a thrift-store long ago. I just read "my father moved through dooms of love" for American Literature this week. I was disappointed that we didn't get to talk about it in class because I really enjoyed it! Ah well...
I enjoyed reading Anthony Robinson's article, especially for the information about e.e. cummings. For instance, I knew that e.e. cummings is considered a bit of a rebellious soul - note the lack of capital letters in his name! I have an older book of poetry that capitalizes his name and I find it irritating - if dude doesn't want capitals... but anyway.
What I didn't know was that cummings "was very much a traditionalist in subject matter and form." He wasn't just randomly throwing poems together - he worked very hard to create what he did.
Robinson writes, "Cummings' genius is making these sonnets seem 'un-sonnetlike.' Working extensively within the form but refusing to be matered by it, he created poems of soaring beauty that stretched the definition of the sonnet, while attesting to its elevance in a modern age."
How neat! I guess that just proves that in order to really be rebellious and make a difference, you need to be working from the inside - in other words, e.e. cummings worked within what was already a well-defined and accepted framework and pushed the limits. He takes what is comfortable and familiar and changes it. I think that is so cool!
Now I'm looking forward to digging out my old, falling apart copy of e.e. cummings poetry in order to re-read his works using what I have learned this semester! Spring break here I come!
This is a response to Kellyn's entry on pagan imagery in "The Tempest":
"What's interesting about paganism is that Christianity pretty much ripped off many of the pagan holidays!
Christmas is right around Yule & Easter is close to Beltane, etc. Christian churches back in the day used to display the pentacle but latter that came to be connoted with "the devil."
Halloween, while not exactly a "Christian" holiday is based on the Wiccan Samhain, the celebration of the harvest - it got the negative connotations from the Christians.
My suspicion is that Shakespeare used pagan imagery for two reasons:
1) he wasn't allowed to use the Christian imagery as explained above by Dr. J &
2) the pagan imagery was already familiar to the people who had been immersed in the practises for generations.
Paganism may have been close to home - how much interaction with Greek or Roman mythology would Shakespeare have had? I'm not sure..."
Blacklist is saying this looks like spam! Grrr!
My mind has been stuffed chock full of literary goodness this whole semester! Intro to Literary Study has been keepin' me blogging like nobody's business!
We started the semester reading a short story called "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Conner which was quite exciting because I had read a book of O'Connor's short stories over the summer so it was neat to learn more about her. Also, it was super to learn, in the words of my friend, "whether Flannery was a boy name or a girl name."
Our second story was also one I had read previously titled "To Build A Fire" by Jack London. As I'm sitting here looking outside at the snow blustering around, I'm realizing that this story about man (or woman?) vs. nature is definitely a good one to read while you are sitting next to a fire with a steaming mug of hot chocolate:
It is really easy as a human being to get lost in the belief that we are above nature, what with our climate-controlled living environments and fancy schmancy objects like solar panels and flashlights that never die. We forget, easily I think, the fact that like it or nature, nature could easily kick our asses. We walk outside, shiver and think, brrrr it's cold, when in fact, most of us don't know anything about the cold.
Our next story was my favorite: "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster which inspired a massive blog entry - can you say research paper anyone? ;c)
Oh, but we didn't stop with fiction! Oh no! We read poetry by Emily Dickinson, Gerald Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, (Oh Prufrock!), Coleridge, Donne, and, of course, Shakespeare! We even dabbled in writing our own stories and blank verse poetry using the knowledge we had gained throughout the semester, especially the knowledge about sonnets! William Shakespeare I am not but I sure had fun trying to be. :c)
The last few weeks have focused on Shakespeare's play "The Tempest" which we further examined by reading academic articles discussing Catholic symbolism (or was that pagan?), feminist ideology, new historicists, and anti-new historicists, and contextualization. By far, I must admit, I enjoyed reading the excerpt by Harold Bloom!
The shining star, I believe, of the semester thus far has got to have been "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" by Thomas Foster - a book that has been useful not just in this class but in American Literature and in my personal adventures! GREAT choice, Dr. J!
Thanks, Kellyn!
You scored as Hamlet. An intense, creative person, your moods swing up and down like a yo-yo. You appear eccentric to those who don't know you well, but there is a method to your madness.
Which Shakespearian Tragic Hero Are You? created with QuizFarm.com |
Okay - did anyone else notice: Harold Bloom is such a diva! I'm not, of course, saying that there is anything at all wrong with this - I happen to be quite a fan of divas... I'm just saying... anyway...
Again, the language is leading, but this time around it's hilarious so I don't mind it as much! Quite a character, this Bloom fellow! We just read an excerpt of his "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" for Intro to Literary Study.
Bloom does make a good point when he writes:
"Marxists, multiculturalists, feminists, nouveau historicists - the usual suspects - know their causes but not Shakespeare's plays."
Again, this illustrates how easily anything can be adapted to fit anyone's opinions - a few words here, a phrase there or here, perhaps ignoring a few choice statements there and bam - literature can be anything you want it to be. This is, of course, one of the things I love about literature but also one of the things that drives me batty.
Bloom also confirms something I had suspected about The Tempest - that's it's basically pointless. Bloom writes, "The play is fundamentally plotless." I knew it! I mean, I'm not saying this isn't a worthwhile play - it must be if so many people can find so many different meanings to it! This play perfectly illustrates the power of literature - 100 different people reading this play could come to 100 different interpretations about the meanings contained within. That's pretty cool.
Can you imagine writing something, anything, that 400 years later people are forced to read gleefully read and analyze in literature classes world wide? -That- my friends is awe-inspiring! That is the true beauty of Shakespeare - still his works touch us and move us to create by interpreting and ripping apart his original works in order to create something new.
My question is: When does a work stop being Shakespeare's and start being public domain? We only have so many stories, right? (Foster tells us there is but one) When so many things are altered about a play doesn't that make it a different play?
Some of the lines in this article just made me giggle:
The part where Bloom discusses Goethe: "... for his Faust's soul is borne off to heaven by little boy angels whose chubby buttocks so intoxicate Mephistopheles with homoerotic lust..." teehee!
and, oh, this part:
"... Shakespeare managed this so brilliantly that ... we still cannot apprehend fully the comic achievement."
hah! it's so funny that no one gets it? beautiful.
finally, I like this phrase
"... our current ideological jamborees..."
Oh, Harry, you surely can turn a phrase! :c)
Lorie Jerrell Leininger's article "The Miranda Trap" is definitely a case of modern ideals being forced upon a 400 year old text - I mean, I don't think you can write off Shakespeare as being an anti-feminist racist prig just because the ideals of his society didn't happen to match those of ours.
The language in this article was definitely leading, which is okay for someone trying to make a point but I found it disconcerting - phrases like "fallen dutifully in love", "sexual bait", and "foolhardy acceptance" pass a judgement upon the characters without allowing a reader to form his or her own opinions - in other words, I feel that this author is not-so-subtly trying to tell me what to think and believe... and I don't like that! I mean, it's interesting... but it is really *appropriate* ?
I did enjoy reading about the possible similiarities between Elizabeth Stuart and Miranda - biographical information like the fact that she had 13 children, lost her husband to the plague, and a son in a tempest in interesting but really... what does that have to do with anything? Miranda is simply a character in a play. Elizabeth Stuart was a living breathing human being. Is a comparision between the two really apt?
I mean, 400 years ago, the world was a LOT different - we can't possibly imagine what the world was like, except perhaps from writings like Shakespeare's that show us a more accurate view of the world than, perhaps, our politicized history textbooks... but can we really pass judgement on that worldview? I don't think that we can.
My question, I suppose, is what relevance do you suppose that this text really has, if any?
No wonder the works of Shakespeare are still around - Shakespeare managed to touch on personal issues that 400 years still have relevance. Our society today is COMPLETELY different but we still love, feel, hate, and more just like back in Shakespeare's day. I found Dabydeen's speech "On Samaroo's Tempus Est" interesting mostly for the different interpretations of The Tempest illustrated within - tho I also enjoyed learning of the discrepancies regarding the play's background.
I guess it just goes to show that anything can relate to anything depending on who's looking - if Caliban can be seen as Miranda's lesbian lover and Prospero the symbol of "the tyrannical European whose technology ... unleashed such havoc in natively communities," then Shakespeare really has managed to create plays that span the gaps of time.
This is, again, illustrated in this passage:
"The twenties' anxiety about the machine has even greater force today, especially after Hiroshima and Auschwitz. The New-Age movement is one expression of that anxiety, though it is possibly fatuous to speak of a movement, given the variousness of New-Age beliefs and practices, from UFO-spotting to aromatherapy."
A few things struck me about Laura Barrett's " 'Material Without Being Real': Photography and the End of Reality in The Great Gatsby" :
First, I found the tidbit about Fitzgerald working at an advertising firm interesting! I also liked the fact that he had written an essay suggesting a way to advertise his next book. I'm all about some guerilla marketing!
Second, this sentence:
"Clearing, the most glaring example of Nick's characteristic ambivalence is his oblique reference to a sexual encounter with Chester McKee at the end of chapter. So veiled and indirect is the episode that most readers barely notice it."
How interesting! I -had- actually noted this passage and meant to ask about it in class, but I ended up getting so distracted by all the Gatsby as God stuff that I completely forgot about that vague reference. I'm glad that's been cleared up!
This article talks about the society at large as compared with Fitzgerald's work. It is fascinating to think of the connection between advertising at its peak vs. the reality of life - what is real? how the heck can anyone know? we really are subjected to a constant flow of images from various forms of media that reality is impossible to discern.
Barrett notes that in the 1920's "producers recognized the merchandising windfall in planted gossip" - now reality has been distorted even further because the powers that be have seen big bucks in falsification. Barrett writes, "Given this superfluity of representative imagery, it is no wonder that Daniel J. Boorstin suggests that 'reality' is an endangered concept in American society." Heck, I'd go so far as to argue that reality is non-existent.
The majority of people's conversations center around television programs or sports game starring characters with whom most people don't have face-to-face interactions - is this reality? People live their lives trying to look like the models on the covers of magazines - is this reality? Surely not... but what is real?
Finally, the mention of the Heisenberg Principle caught my eye:
Have you read anything about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? It's pretty darn nifty! Basically, it says that the mere act of trying to observe an event changes the outcome of the event. Scientists first noticed the principle when observing electron paths - the expectations of the scientists changed the outcome. What's really interesting about this all are the implications thereof - Read more here
I read about the principle in a fabulous book called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I found this site which summarizes the main points.
So how the heck does this relate to The Great Gatsby???
Meaning is valid only to the observer of an event - reality is in the eyes of the beholder, I suppose you could say. And, what you expect is what you get... Gatsby creates his own world and invites within the inhabitants of West Egg. Gatsby is secretly a master of Quantum physics! (plus he's God! cool!)
Bring a vacuum to class. Halfway through class, stand up and start using it. If your professor objects, explain that you "can't stand sitting in this pigsty any longer." Keep vacuuming, grumbling angrily.
I liked this one because it reminds me of my weekend at home. My mom is in England, right? This leaves my brother, a young man of 20, and my father at home alone. This is not a good idea. They live on a diet of Wendy's chili and macaroni and cheese from a box, except for those days when I find it in my heart to go and cook them dinner. They keep up pretty well on the dishes and the laundry but the rest of the house?
Shambles, I tell you!
I went over this weekend to cook dinner and hang out but I couldn't bear the unvacuumed state of the living room so I freaked out and started cleaning. I even, I am proud of myself for this one, convinced my brother to clean his room - a scary mixture of empty soda cans and used crumpled kleenexes from the cold he's been sporting all month. It was appalling, believe me. Now, I am not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination so for me to freak out and start cleaning, well, that's saying a lot. Anyway... that is all.
I am a big e.e. cummings fan! This was my first time reading "my father moved through dooms of love," but I've read a lot of stuff by old e.e. Some people get thrown off, I think, by the screwy punctuation (or the lack thereof) but I find I often enjoy his poetry. especially the dirty ones. hah! anyway...
This poem seems to document the grieving process of the narrator's father: he moved through the "dooms of love", "through depths of height." the poem seems to start in the spring, in April: "his april touch." Although there are a lot of references to "joy" there are similiarly a lot of references to sadness: "and should some why completely weep" , "griefs of joy" , "keen as a midsummer's keen beyond", "my father moved through dooms of feel"
he moves through the various cycles of grief, which as you probably know, aren't neatly packaged but vacillate wildly from one extreme emotion to another - hence the "griefs of joy" - basically - when you love a person so completely and then lose them... it is a grief of joy - you have happy memories coupled with one really horrid memory and your mood swings easily.
the seasons change: soon it is September ("septembering arms of the year") then October ("by octobering flame beckoned"). He gets through winter ("build a world of snow") and soon it is spring again and he sings again ("and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing")
Here, however, is where I get a little confused: now the poem takes a decidely dark and unhappy turn - is it just a person's newfound fear of death and the unknown that follows or is there more to it?
"all we inherit, all bequeath"
we are given everything but when we die we pass it on
i think the last two lines are beautiful:
"because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all"
Good thing I'm taking Intro to Literary Study this semester or I never would have noticed that Robert Frost's "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same" is a sonnet, one with a Shakespeare rhyme scheme no less! Sweet!
The rhyme scheme, if you are wondering, is ABABCDCDEFEFGG. Now, usually with the Shakespearan sonnet, the stanzas' meanings are broken down into 4,4,4 and then the final rhyming couplet. (Usually a sonnet's meaning is done by 8 lines (possibly 4 x 4) and then 6. The Frost poem seems to be more 5, 4, 3, 2.
Here's what I know about the poem: we have a He and a She. She is named Eve. Eve makes me think of the famous duo - add the fact that the He is talking about birds in the garden who sound a bit like Eve and we have us a biblical reference! Is this intentional or not? We also know that Eve isn't around anymore.
Did Eve die? I think she did. I see a sad man staring off into his garden thinking of his love Eve who has flown away to heaven (or wherever) and something in the songs of the birds makes him think of her and remember. The last line confused me for a little bit:
"And to do that to birds was why she came."
My first reading of that suggested, perhaps, malicious intent - as if she had somehow trained the birds... when I re-read the poem I realized that more likely the meaning was that she was meant to play a significant role in the life of "He" - symbolized by the singing of the birds.
You know, it's weird - for as often as I've read The Bell Jar, I really haven't read much of Sylvia Plath's poetry. "Daddy" is an interesting poem. The rhyme scheme pretty much focuses around the "oo" sound as in "you" , "do" , and "shoe." This is consistent throughout the whole of the poem. This poem is, duh, about Plath's father. I wondered though - how did her father die?
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston as the daughter of German immigrant parents. Her father was a professor of biology at Boston University, and had specialized in bees. He has been characterized as authoritarian and died of diabetes in 1940 when Plath was eight years old.
In 1940 after suffering ill health for years, Otto was forced to see a doctor for an infection in his foot. The doctor diagnosed the illness Otto had been suffering from as not cancer, but diabetes--and now so advanced that it threatened his life. Otto's leg had to be amputated in October after he developed gangrene, and he spent the rest of his days in the hospital declining rapidly. Otto Plath died on the night of November 5, 1940, and when the eight-year-old Sylvia was informed of her father's death, she proclaimed "I'll never speak to God again."
I'd like a more scholarly source for her biography, especially considering that one source said her father died of lung cancer not diabetes; however, I don't have the time to do *real* research right now. Anyone know anything about Sylvia Plath's background?
I did like in the 7th passage the feeling of a train from the text:
"An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew." etc.
I wonder, though, if this poem is really about Daddy or if it's more about her model of him:
"And then I know what to do
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw."
I took this to mean that Ms. Plath married a man who reminded her of her father - a man, who if you do end up reading the biographical data, didn't turn out to be such a nice man.
and... oooh! I didn't know that A) The Bell Jar was originally published under the psuedonym Victoria Lucas and B) that it was published only a month before she killed herself.
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