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1.Read T.S. Eliot’s long poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”    As I mentioned last week, I would like us to give Hypothes.is another try.  Please access the poem HERE  and as you read, use Hypothes.is to make notes, ask questions, record the meanings of any unfamiliar words, and add anything other thoughts or connections that occur to you as you are reading.   In order to annotate the text and share your annotations with our class, you need to first sign in to Hypothes.is, then select ENG2850 from the pull-down menu (The alternative is “Public”).    You may also enjoy hearing Eliot read his poem aloud, which you can do HERE.   Please make 4-6 annotations before we discuss the poem on Wednesday 4/28 during our Zoom call.

2.Choose a moment in the poem that seems to you to be crying out for more extensive explication and analysis.  This could be a passage that you find really challenging, or it could be a passage that you feel you already have some insight into.  I would recommend choosing a passage of 2-4 lines.  Offer a detailed analysis of your passage, including the following:

-copy the lines you are analyzing, and be sure to identify their line numbers.

-explain the literal meaning of the passage.

-what made you choose this passage?

-what words, terms, or names did you need to look up? What do they mean?

-what symbolism, imagery, or other poetic devices is Eliot employing in these lines?

-how do these lines connect to the central concerns of the poem as a whole?

-what do you still not understand about your passage?

-what resources (if any) did you consult in order to complete this assignment?  My preference would be that you rely on. your own native intelligence and curiosity to complete this assignment, but if you do consult any outside sources, they must be acknowledged appropriately.  (Remember that any time you offer an idea that you found in another source, whether you quote from that source or not, you must include a parenthetical citation identifying your source.  Failure to do so is plagiarism, a serious academic offense.  Consult me if you have questions about this!)

Please post this assignment (as a free-standing blog post) by Friday, April 30th.

3.Introduction to Literary Modernism – Please stay tuned for a brief video I recorded introducing the next major aesthetic movement we will be exploring (Literary Modernism) and saying a few words about the beginning of the 20th Century.  My original lecture did not record properly, so I will be re-recording and posting this, hopefully by Friday evening, April 23rd.

4. Slight Schedule Change: If you have been following along on our syllabus, you will note that I have deviated slightly from the reading schedule listed on the syllabus.  This coming week, we are only reading T.S. Eliot.  The following week (5/3 and 5/5), we will be reading and discussing Kafka, “The Metamorphosis.”  It is a longer text, so you might want to begin reading it now, while our reading load is modest.  After Kafka, we will be reading Borowski’s “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” ( May 10th), Salih’s “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” (May 12th), and Allende’s “And of Clay are We Created” (May 17th)

5. Any Questions? Please feel free to reach out to me via email or Slack if you have questions about any of this.  We are approaching the end of the semester, and I don’t want you to fall behind or lose your momentum as life gets increasingly busy.  You can sign up for office hours HERE.

The connection that I chose is between Chandara and Harriet Jacobs. I want to mainly focus on the way they both want to make choices on their free will and not fall into someone else’s grasp. Whether it be the egregious act of slavery for Jacobs or the act of being opressed by his husband for Chandara. Both hate being controlled by a party which they can’t control. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacob is being pursued by her slave owner which she goes into hiding in an attic so small that she couldn’t even stand in. She continued to live there for several years “Yet I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave” (Chapter 21). I was reminded of this audacious act when I was reading Punishment, Chandara was offered a way out of her death sentence if she would just listen to her husband. “Don’t worry- if you do what I tell you, you’ll be quite safe.” (pg 893) is what Chidam told Chandara, however despite that Chandara refuses to use his advice and much prefers death. We understood that there was previous tension between them causing them to have a fallout.  Chidam just like Dr. Flint required full control of their women, and felt that their pride was being attacked when their women were getting out of control. This led Chandara and Jacobs to build up pent-up rage inside of them and when they finally got the chance to get away, they seized it. In both texts, we see how extremely oppressed Chandara and Jacobs were. They were being suffocated in their relationships and when someone gets pushed to the edge, they were both happy with going with the choice that they felt like they were in control of. 

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” is very similar to “Hedda Gabler” by Henrik Ibsen. In both texts we see that death comes upon characters who don’t really have a lot of freedom. Hedda and Chandara are both similar characters. They both are in unhappy marriages with very little freedom. They both rely on their husbands to bring home money and food for them. Chandara instead fights with her sister-in-law all Radha and no one cares because women in Bangladesh have very little power. Chidam also doesn’t allow Chandara to go to ghat by herself and forces her to have very little freedom. When Chidam’s brother Dukhiram kills his wife, Radha Chidam says Chandara did it to protect his older brother. “Chidam asked Chandara to take the blame on herself. She was dumbfounded”. This quote shows that Chandara isn’t even valuable to Chidam and that he is willing to get rid of her because he chooses his brother over his wife. Hedda and Chandara are very similar here for the fact that both are living in a male dominated society and they want to escape their lives than suffer the consequences of their husbands’ actions. “Then please give it to me sir, said Chandara. ‘Do what you like I can’t take it anymore’”. Chandara is willing to die because of Chidam and Dukhiram since she feels powerless and wants to become free of them. The only way she can become free is to be killed. Hedda Gabler dies in a similar fashion. Since she gave Lovborg the pistol that he used to kill himself she is guilty of a crime, the only person who knows this is Judge Brack. Brack promises to keep her crime a secret if she has an affair with him. Hedda decides to escape Brack and the unhappy life she is in by killing herself. Similarly, to Chandara, Hedda could only be free by doing this.

Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” I think is similar to the story Du Tenth, because I think the have similar conclusion, they both died. In Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” The older brother killed his wife, however the younger brother do not want his brother to get crime, and go to jail, so he tell his own wife to said that is his wifi kill the older brother’s wifi. I think this is the similar point to Du Tenth, In the article, it said “This was what he instructed his wife to say:” The elder wife was about to attack me with the vegatable-slicer. I picked yp a farm-knife to stop her, and it somehow cut into her.” This was all RAmlochan’s invention. He had generously supplied Chidam with the proofs and embroidery that the story would required.” And when the police questioned Chandara, she said,” Yes, I killed her.” Also in Du Tenth, “ All day he would see Du Tenth beside him, crusing him. In time, he died. People said it was revenge exacted from the depths of the river.” In both article, the similar point is that the both article have people died, so I think this is the similar and have contract between the two novel.

In Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment”, the reason why Chidam accuses his own wife for the murder of Radha was because he couldn’t grasp the idea of letting Chandra have an independent life. Chandra had gone to a ghat by herself and was talking with some man after finding this out, Chidam had said “If I ever hear that you’ve been to the ghat on your own, I’ll break every bone in your body” which shows the patriarchal marriage between them. When Chidam Tagore uses the theme of power in a hierarchrial society when he says that the women would constantly quarrel and no one would pay attention. It symbolizes how little or no power these women had and made me think of a class structure in where the weaker ones were fighting among themselves to have a power each other without actually gaining anything. When Chandra had fled to her maternal uncle’s house it shows how highly she valued the idea of freedom and when she realizes that her husband accuses her instead of his brother, she is faced with a harsh reality of herself and her place in this marriage and the society. A character from another reading who faced a similar conflict was Hedda Gabler. Hedda and Radha are unable to find their individuality in the marriage and are trapped in a patriarchal society where only actions of men are valued or influenced. Rather than being satisfied with this position, they both seek escapism in death. Radha expressed “I shall give my youth to the gallows instead of to you. My final ties in this life will be with them” shows how she had sacrificed herself in order to find her own expression. Similarly, Hedda Gabler had shot herself in the temple to take control over her own destiny rather than being controlled by Judge Brack.

In “Punishment”, Rabindranath Tagore tells a story about women’s resistance to patriarchy. Chandara being asked to be a scapegoat to exonerated for her hunsband’s brother Dukhiram Rui. Chandara’s hunsband Chidam Rui promiss he will save her after she confess her murder. However, Chandara stated categorically that she killed her sister-in-law. Even though the real murderor, Dukhiram admit his crime, but Chandara still insis her confession. At the end she was condemned to be hanged. I think it has similar idea with Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger. Du Tenth and Chandara are betrayed by their lovers, they are all choose death to show their disappointed. Both of the authors are feel sympathy for the fact that women can’t escape the control of men. Women are nothing but men’s accessories. The only way to get rid of the men’s power is death.

Leo Tolstoy’s , “Death of Ivan Ilyich” I think this is a very interesting article and this is a very thoughtful article after I finished reading this, and also I did tell me a lot about the people’s life truth. For example the people in the article Ivan, he suppose have a really good life, however he got a miserable thing happened to him, he got the disease and separation, so I think this will teach him a lot about he people’s life. He died so suddenly, when he know he got the disease, and he start to know that he can not live in him own space, and he should not always compare with others, because that will make you feel more pressure, you should do your part very well, and live your own life pretty, that is enough for a person’s whole life. I think we could sympathy for Ivan, because this is not happened to us, we do not know the exactly feel about the same thing, but when we have something that very small, and make people feel pressure a lot, I think I can empathy how his feeling about it.  If the thing really happened to us, I think we all want other people will empathy to us, that is also a strong feeling can help you feeling better, even it can not make you get well as soon s possible, however that will help a lot. In my mind I just have only thought no matter what other people are talking about just do yourself job pretty, and do not care about other people are talking abut, you will not feel that a lot pressure on yourself, it will give you a lot pressure if you continuous do that.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich was a novel that is very much relatable to the current world we are living in. Just as Ilyich is trying to climb up the corporate ladder, he is also trying to climb up the social ladder or pretending to be. Ilyich for the longer half of his life is obsessed with how he was presented to other people around him. He marries not for love but because of the connection he thinks his wife will provide. He gets a better job not because it’s fulfilling work to him but because he can show off his new and fancier apartment. It seems almost parallel to the world we are living in now. With the rise of social media, everyone is trying to take a snapshot of their life’s highlight in order to boast to their friends and families. But no one now talks about the behind-the-scenes and how most of it is a facade. It is incredible to see how easily someone can lose sight of what truly matters, not materials but meaningful relationships. Just like Ilyich who becomes isolated and ill, the world also gets isolated and ill due to the recent pandemic. During this quarantine, I certainly have realized that I lost sight of what really matters too. I too was caught up with the hustle and bustle and not realizing how I have been neglecting my meaningful relationships whether it be friends or family. However, I did find the lack of communications in the novel foreign. I understand it’s really easy to get sidetracked with your career especially when you have bills to pay and mouths to feed, but most of the conflict could’ve been avoided if Ilyich just spoke up. Perhaps because I am a “gen z” and feel entitled to speak up about how I feel, I think Ilyich should’ve spoken up about his distress and made his epiphany sooner.

Leo Tolstoy’s , “Death of Ivan Ilyich” was a reflection of reality about life and death. Ivan led a very ordinary life doing what was expected of him from his career, to personal life.  Death came suddenly to Ivan which taught him something about life and himself during his most vulnerable stage. Often we are so consumed by other people’s action and rewards which make us compare ourselves to others and do whatever other people are doing assuming its the right thing to do. However, Totlstoy shows us that we shouldn’t live by other people’s validation because it can never give you a true lesson or happiness. When Ivan experiences illness and isolation, he realizes the importance of having a true and meaningful life which shows that one must have a purpose or meaning to live by which would make you feel fulfilled even in death something that is true to yourself rather than for others. It made me reflect to one of the greatest quote said by Nietzche who said, “to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” Tolstoy teaches us about the sad reality that when one fails to be live life as a true individual and also shows how painful and disturbing life and death can be. Tolstoy’s way of showing it in Ivan’s slow and painful death made me question a lot of things about life and my own meanings in life about the things that truly matter. I believe Tolstoy was also delivering a message that sometimes we find our true selves whenever we are not living in a comfort and peace, that a very tough situations can in fact shape us. Reading this novella in a time like this really made me challenge myself in a way and to actually focus on the things that truly matters to me and makes me feel fulfilled in the soul.

What is the significance of Lovborg’s unfinished manuscript?  Why does Hedda burn it? What ramifications does that act have for Lovborg and the other characters in the play?

The unfinished manuscript is significant is because that means his whole life. “I have torn my own life to pieces. So why should I not tear my life-work too”?  I think why he burn it it is because he is very lealous person, she can not believe the trust that other person is better than herself, that is why she burn it. The ramification does the act have for lovborg and the other character in the play is that he think its wrong that he dunk than then burn it. And that is one reason that cause himself suicide or death.