Victimized

It is obvious to the reader that Blanche is a victim of various delusions and violence throughout the play of “A Streetcar Named Desire”. She emotionally and physically is treated horribly all throughout the play. Although, Blanche is not the only one that falls under the category of victim in this play, Stella and Mitch are also victimized in the play.

Stella is a victim in the play in the sense that she is caught between Stanley and Blanche, two completely different worlds. She cares to Blanche because she is her sister and they grew up together. She also thinks that Blanche has been through a great deal of tragedy, and that she should be there for her older sister. On the other hand, Stella has to support her husband Stanley because that is her new life that she has chosen, and it truly does make her happy. In this situation, Stella is a victim of choosing the past, Blanche, or the present, Stanley. In the end, she chooses the side of her present, with her new born child, husband, and new life. This is seen in the last seen when Stella and Stanley basically call a Doctor from an asylum to take her away. Also, Stella is seen to have chose Stanley over Blanche because when Blanche must have told Stella about the rape that occurred, Stella says “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley”, which just shows that she rather not believe her own sister in order to not risk the chance of losing her new life with Stanley.

Another character that is victimized throughout the play is Mitch. He is a victim of all the lies that Blanche feeds him. He does not know any different than to believe Blanche, even though the audience of the play knows that he is being lied to. In this sense, Williams want the audience to be sympathetic towards Mitch. He is also a victim of pressure. I feel like one of the main reasons he starts talking to Blanche in the first place is not because he likes her, but because he a great deal of pressure to get married because the is the ideal thing to do at there age. Just as Blanche wants to get married before she gets to old, Mitch is also in that same position. Mitch also gets pressure from his mother, whom he loves dearly, because wants to see Mitch married before she passes away and Mitch wants to fulfill that wish for her before her death.

Stan the Man

In “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Tennessee Williams does not leave much room for interpretation when it comes to the characters. For instance, Stanley Kowalski, one of the main characters in the drama, is portrayed as a brute. The audience can not only see this but is told this when Blanche says “he acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one…” You can tell the Stanley is being portrayed as brute male by the words the Williams uses to describe him, such as “animal” and the “grunts” that he makes. Also, When Stanley beats the baby bearing Stella, he is presented as a brute with no control. Also, when he yells out Stella’s name after all the fighting is over, he is portrayed to be animal-like in his way of calling her. As he yells out Stella’s name, Williams make sure to let the audience know that he is doing it with “heaven-splitting violence”.

On the contrary, Stanley is also given room for alternative understandings. Although he is seen as the alpha male that wants to be in control for everything, he is also given human emotions and characters. You can tell all throughout the drama that Stanley does love Stella very much. He knows that beating her was wrong, and “He was as good as a lamb when [Stella] came back and…very, very ashamed of himself”. Also, Stanley is seen as somewhat sensitive when it comes to his ethnicity. He himself says” I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one-hundred-per-cent American, born and raised on the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it…” Williams might have added this into the play to let the audience relate to Stanley. The audience is more likely to keep interest in the story if the audience s able to relate to the characters of the drama.

Over all, I think Williams establishes Stanley as a brute beast like character with an alpha male personality. It is hard to escape the reality that Stanley likes to be the dominant one in any relationship, whether it is with his wife Stella, or just with his friends. But Williams also gives way to some lenience on Stanley as to let the audience relate with the character by giving him a sensitive side that is not seen very much all throughout the drama.

Differences between Narrative and Drama

Narrative and drama are different in many different aspects. “Trifles”, the drama, and “A Jury of Her Peers”, the narrative text, are both written by Susan Glaspell. It is the same story that is told, but is different from each other in many ways. One main difference that I see between drama and narrative is the difference of viewpoint. In narrative, the viewpoint is a private relationship between the reader and whatever viewpoint the author gives the reader. On the other hand, drama is more interactive, and the reader can take multiple positions on the scope of the story. For example, in “A Jury of Her Peers”, the reader instantly is given the viewpoint of Mrs. Hale and is not really given much information about the others. For most of the narrative, it is only Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters talking amongst themselves sin the kitchen, while the men are not even shown in the picture. In contradiction to that, in the drama “Trifles”, the viewpoint is not so finely set, and the reader gets to make decisions on which view he/she would like to see it from. The viewer can either view it from Mrs. Hales point, Mrs. Peters, or anybody else shown in the story. It is a matter of who the reader can relate to more.

These multiple viewpoints can emerge because of the fact that in drama the reader is being told the story as it unfolds. In a narrative, the story has already happened, and now the reader is reading about it. In drama, the reader is treated as if it is the plot is unfolding for the first time. For example, the drama is as if you were watching a football game, as a narrative is as if you are reading about the game the next morning on the internet. The sense of intimacy that is brought with “being there” is lost.

When Reality Hits

In “The Sisters”, by James Joyce, the reverend that has passed away is the character that experiences paralysis and epiphany. The reverend had experienced physical paralysis because of the fact that he had three strokes. When a person experiences a stroke, a certain part of your body is physically paralyzed due to the shock that your body/brain is put through. Not only did he have a physical paralysis, he also had an emotional paralysis. This could be seen through his actions. Some examples of his paralysis are when “the chalice broke” and it “affected his mind”. For the Christian faith, it is believed that the chalice is the cup that carries the blood of Christ after its trans-configuration. The priest drops the chalice but thankfully it was empty. Another example of his paralysis is when he would be found “with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth open”. His physical paralysis is seen through this imagery of his mouth being open because a person with a stroke sometimes cannot control their bodily functions. Also, the emotional paralysis is seen when he drops the book that contains all the songs and hymns of the Christian Faith.

It is unknown to the reader what the true epiphany that the reverend had was, but it could be seen that the epiphany led the reverend to have lost his faith in Christianity. For a person who has devoted his life to his faith, to have an epiphany which questions your faith is like having an epiphany in which it questions your life.

Another story in which a paralysis and epiphany occur is in James Joyce’s other short story “Araby”. In this short story, the protagonist Araby is put through a paralysis by love. The young love that he feels for one of his friend’s older sisters blinds him and puts him in a state of paralysis. When the young boy goes to the bazaar with the intention of buying his love a gift, he finds a stall where he could have possibly bought something for her. While he is there, he see’s a young girl, probably about the same age as his love, flirting with soldiers. It is at this point that he has an epiphany. My interpretation of his epiphany is that as he see’s this flirting, he realizes that his love never flirted with him as this girl at the bazaar is flirting with the soldiers.

It is not as paramount as the reverend’s epiphany was, but it is similar in the sense that it has changed Araby’s faith that he had in his love just as the reverends faith in his religion was altered.

Grateful to be Human!

In Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, there seems to be a very thin line between reality and fantasy. The reality of the short story is that Gregor, the protagonist of the story, is a young man with a boring life that revolves around work and supporting his family. The fantastic part of the story starts right form the first line of the short story “as Gregor Samsa awoke one morning” (89) and found himself “transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”.

Some of the elements that make it realistic are the detailed descriptions Kafka gives the reader. For example, Gregor “could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments”, and “His numerous legs…waved helplessly before his eyes”. It is hard for the reader to not believe that Gregor has really turned into a bug with such detailed descriptions of Gregor’s transformed insect body.

I do believe that Gregor has transformed into a bug, but there is also the side where this transformation from human to bug could be more symbolic than real. I believe that this transformation symbolizes the boring life that Gregor carried. In many ways he was like a bug. He slept in different places and grew use to being alone. He did not have friends let alone any acquaintances. He only ate to satisfy his appetite and go forth with what was more important to him, which was his work. Also, it shows the true significance that Gregor really had in his family. In the beginning of the story, Gregor makes it seem as if his family is highly dependant on his income and that his family is incapable of surviving without him. The metamorphosis exploits the reality of the situation completely. It shows that Gregor is truly not needed in the family and that sadly, when he dies, the family acts as if a huge burden has been lifted off of them and they can finally live a normal life that they dream of.

is it religion?

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, a family encounters an old man who has enormous wings. Pelayo and Elisenda, the husband wife that found the old man, decide to put the old man into the chicken coop because the old man seems physically incapable of doing anything. Eventually, the word gets out to the town that there is an old man with wings, and Pelayo and Elisenda decide to charge people to come see the old man for there own profit. Eventually the people of the town start to wonder if the old man really is an angel, and decide to call the priest to get the final word. The priest judges whether this man is just an old man with wings, or if he really is an angel only by the words of the bible, and not by any other means.

“The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers.” This is a perfect example of how the priest only obeys what the bible tells him. The priest has never spoke to an angel or god himself before, how is he so sure that the Language of god is truly Latin. Also, the priest judges that the old man is really not an angel by the way he smells, and the fact that his wings were “strewn with parasites”. He has not ever seen an angel before, but he only judges by the words that are in the bible, and does not use his own judgment. This opens a new point that society relies to heavily on religion and forget to use there own judgments.

Marquez also critiques the Catholic Church when it comes to the hierarchy in the system. It represents more a government then it does a religion. For example “he promised to write to his bishop so that the latter would write to his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict form the highest courts.” Marquez openly makes it sound as if he was talking about a government body with its different levels of power.

Emily Rose has a facebook!

Facebook status: Never a day goes by where I feel that I am alone anymore.

Compare People: Friends voted Emily as
1. Most antisocial
2. Most talked about
3. Most “let off the hook”

Favorite type of novel: romantic novels
Favorite pass times: daydreaming and acting.

Thread:

Emily: Homer will you please come back. I miss having your company and I feel as if I am not complete without you.

Homer Barron: I will be back soon. I will make sure to spend time with you when I get back. See you soon.

Emily: I don’t want you to leave when you get back. I want you to stay with me so we can be together.

I chose to give that Emily that specific facebook status to basically create irony for the people that have read and understand “A Rose for Emily”. She has Homer Barron locked up in the upstairs of her house, and the reason she did it was so he would not be able to leave and she would never have to be alone again.

Even though she probably would not have many friends, on the part where her friends get to vote for her, I put her as the most anti-social because she is never seen by the townspeople. She is also voted the most talked about because of how much the townspeople gossip about her. This is an important point since the reason we know so much about Emily is through the gossip of the townspeople. She is also voted the most “let off the hook” because the mayor does not even make her pay the taxes. She is given special treatment even by the upper echelon of society.

I put her favorite type of novel to be any type of romantic novel. The reason I chose this is because I think the reason she keeps Homer Barron upstairs is because she is in love with him and never wants him to leave. As sick as that might sound and as demented her perception of love may be, I think she did it for love.

I also put her favorite pass times as daydreaming and acting. Since she does not get out of the house much, she must have a great deal of time to herself. When one is alone for an extended amount of time, daydreaming is hard not to do. A also chose acting as a pass time because every time she lays next to Homer Barron’s dead corpse, I picture Emily Rose acting as if he were alive, possibly even talking to him as if he was able to hold a conversation.

The thread between Homer and Emily is a fairly normal conversation. I wanted to make it sound normal because I pictured Emily as a normal person before I found out what she did to Homer Barron in order to keep him with her forever. The thread also foreshadows what she is planning to do when he gets back, which is to murder him and keep him for herself.

Just to Let You Know

I have gone to
dinner
with that same
person

in which
you were probably
going
to marry

Forgive me
she is beautiful
so nice
and gullable




This is a parody of "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams, except instead of writing about how he had stole the plums from an icebox, my poem is about a guy who stole a girlfriend from his friend. I tried ot keep it on the same idea wen it comes ot stealing, but decided that the tone of the poem would be more noticeable with a more serious event. Both poems have the same amount of lines, number of punctuations, and number of capital letters. I had to change the number of syllables in a few lines to fit what I was really trying to say.
In the original poem, the form and content sent the tone as being nonchalant and making the apology sarcastic. Williams use of short words such as "sweet" and "cold" gives the apology less seriousness to it. In my poem, I tried to give the same pseudo-apology by using words such as "nice" and "gullable". My parody of William's poem is giving praise to his poem because it shows that his poem is worth noting and learning from.

I Swear I Didn't Write It

Between the first three words of "Ode to a Nightingale," "My heart aches," and its last, "sleep," John Keats describes a brief personal escape from an existence whose suffering he can no longer endure. The "I" who speaks eight times in this perfect eight-stanza lyric is Keats himself, not a surrogate persona. Ambiguity, irony, and even implication have no place here, but biography does. Keats' letters show that he certainly believed the poet possessed "negative capability," the self-nullifying power to enter other things and speak as and for them. "Ode to a Nightingale" depicts one such experience. True enough, Keats leaves his "sole self" (72) to join with the nightingale in verse that briefly realizes, in human language, the ageless beauty of its unintelligible song.

In "Ode to a Nightingale" A major concern is Keats's perception of the conflicted nature of human life, i.e., the interconnection or mixture of pain/joy, intensity of feeling/numbness of feeling, life/death, mortal/immortal, the actual/the ideal, and separation/connection. In this ode, Keats focuses on immediate, concrete sensations and emotions, from which the reader can draw a conclusion or abstraction.

John Keats is known for his vibrant use of imagery in his poetry. Keats's imagery ranges among all our physical sensations: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, temperature, weight, pressure, hunger, thirst, sexuality, and movement. Examples of Synaesthetic Images are, TASTING of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!O for a beaker of the warm South, (stanza II). Here the poet TASTES the visual ("Flora and the country green"), activity ("Dance"), sound ("Provencal song"), and mood or pleasure ("mirth"); also the visual ("sunburnt") is combined with a pleasurable emotional state ("mirth"). With the beaker there is finally something to taste, but what is being tasted is temperature ("warm") and a locationJohn Keats presented in his poetry many issues, such as nature, existence and the soul. All of these aspects relate directly to the human spirit. The spiritual nature of Keats poetry concerns itself with exploring human emotions and understanding nature. ("South").

In this ode, The poet falls into a reverie while listening to an actual nightingale sing. He feels joy and pain, an ambivalent response. the poet has beautifully fused pain with imaginary relief or the unconscious joyous things of nature and art. To escape from pain of reality, he begins to move into the world of imagination. When he hears the nightingale, he yearns for fine wine from south France, not to get drunk but to achieve a state of mind, which will give him the pleasure of the company of the beautiful nightingale, “that I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:”(II, 19-20) However, the poet realizes that he does not require wine for being with the bird, so chooses the route of flying to her through his poetry. “ Away! Away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy…………..And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays”(IV, 36,37).

In Stanza VI, Keats yearns to die, a state which he imagines as only joyful, as pain-free, and to merge with the bird's song. The nightingale is characterized as wholly blissful--"full-throated ease" in stanza I and "pouring forth thy soul abroad / In such an ecstasy!" (lines 7-8). The inner pain and grief engulfing the poet is revealed in a very subtle manner. He also realizes that death means he could no longer hear the bird song and will be non-existent. Suddenly the beautiful bird song seems to him more like “requiem”(VI, 60), a song of death.

John Keats presented in his poetry many issues, such as nature, existence and the soul. All of these aspects relate directly to the human spirit. The spiritual nature of Keats poetry concerns itself with exploring human emotions and understanding nature.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

I chose these two images because after I got done reading this poem, the first image that stayed in my head was of a man hunching over on uneven soil working day in and day out to feed his family. To me, this first picture captures that perfectly. I also had to put this next picture in because it shows that writing is also a form of hard work. Writing and hard work are both being compared to each other in this poem, and it would not have been complete if I did not show both sides of the poem. I personally like the second picture a lot. The empty page, in a way, represents the hardship and skill required to write poetry.

The poem I chose was "Digging" by Seamus Heaney. This poem sticks out to the reader for many reasons. He uses a great deal of figurative language,such as the use of imagery, similes, and metaphors. Right from the second line of the poem, Heaney says "the squat pen rests; snug as a gun". To me, comparing a gun to a pen shows that he feels that he can do many impactfull things with his writing utensil. The gun can be a symbol of power and control over a situation, and comparing his pen to a gun shows that he feels that he has power when he has his pen "[in]between [his] finger and [his] thumb."

Seamus Heaney also creates many images with his use of language. One major image that he creates in the readers mind is men, which in his poem are his father and grandfather, that are hard at work doing difficult labor. One way he creates this image of hard labor is through sound imagery. He uses words such as "rasping", "gravelly ground", and "slap" to depict the noise the hard workers are making when their spades are digging into the wet, moist, ground. Heaney also uses the sense of smell to reach out to the reader. In line 25, he writes, "the cold smell of potato mould". Our generation of people that read this poem might not be able to compare to this smell, but I'm sure this addition of olfactory imagery was meant to be used to give the reader a better sense of the type of hard labor his father and grandfather were doing.

The use of the language to create this image of men doing hard labor enhances the idea of the speaker using his pen as his, utensil of choice. All throughout the poem, the speaker focuses mainly on how his father and grandfather not only did a great deal of hard labor, but also how good they were at it. At one point the speaker said that "[his] grandfather could cut more turf in a day/ Than any other man on Toner's blog". The speaker is shown to have a great deal of respect for his elders and looks up to them for doing what they are good at. At the end of the poem, he uses a metaphor comparing the potato pickers spades to his pen. His pen is what he chooses to work with because, like his elders, he is following what he is good at and what he loves to do.

Poetic Form

"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
lines 43-48

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.Will't please you rise? We'll meet
the company below, then.


The duke is telling another person this story while they are both looking at his previous duchess' portrait. The duchess smiled a great deal every time I saw her, but how many other people did she openly smile at also? She kept smiling at other people and would not stop, then she stopped smiling altogether because she died. She looks alive in the picture. Let's go downstairs and meet the others downstairs.

The poetic form of the content helps to enhance the readers understanding of the story that is being told. In line 47, the Duke asks the person to rise and leave where they are to go meet the guests downstairs. If this was to be read in prose, all the reader would get from the Dukes' statement is that he wants to go downstairs to meet the rest of the guests. On the other hand, if it is read in its poetic form, the duke's huge transition from talking about her portrait to suddenly wanting to leave and go downstairs shows a sense of urgency. The sudden transition shows that the Duke might have told his guest a great deal to much about the situation of his previous duchess, and is now trying to urgently start a new topic to skew the other man from thinking about the situation of the previous duchess to much.

The poetic form used by Browning also alters the meaning between the prose version and the original, poetic, version. When read in prose the statement "I gave commands" could mean that the duke gave commands to her Duchess not to smile at so many people, because he was getting jealous. When read in its poetic form, it is obvious that he was getting extremely jealous and that the commands that he gave were not to her, but most likely orders to other men to have her murdered.

It is seen throughout the entire poem that the Duke was getting more and more jealous as time went on, and could not take it anymore. Such as in lines 30-34, he compares himself to others, basically saying that his presence should not be taken for granted. The duke also states the he chooses "never to stoop", saying that he would not even talk to her about his problem. This makes it more believable that he had the duchess murdered.
The duke had a problem with other people getting the same attention from the duchess that he was getting, so now he gets to control who gets to see the duchess' beautiful smile. He controls it by putting the portrait o her behind a curtain, which to me, shows a psychotic side of the duke.