Great Works MW 2:55 Spring 2013

While I was reading Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American slave, the book was so vivid that I felt as if I was watching a movie. The way the central character, Fredrick Douglas narrates his life story as a slave, its so heart touching and sad as well. There are so many things to be said about this narrative but without tempting myself with so many ideas, I will focus on some factor which actually provoked him to gain his freedom.

Brutality towards a salve is one of the key ingredients of this narrative which Douglas encounter at very early age. I think, at some point, the brutality made him think about gaining his freedom. Throughout the entire story, we can see so many scenes of brutality. Douglas narrated his terrifying first experience when his aunt, Hester was getting brutally punished by his master because of disobeying his order and meeting with another man (C 1.P 4).My personal interpretation about this brutality towards a slave was not just to punished them but also producing enormous amount of fear in them so that they can’t even think about standing up to their master. The death of a salve was the cheapest thing ever, even the kid says “it was worth a half cent to kill a “nigger”, and a half cent to bury one” (C4 P12). In the narrative we see couples of time Douglas get punished by his masters without any valid reason. Perhaps, this brutality made him believe that he doesn’t deserve it as a human being so he needed to be free in order to gain a normal human life.

Alienation from the rest of the world is also a key factor that provoked Douglas to think about his freedom. According to the narrative, if we look back early 19th century of American society, slaves weren’t aware of their age (C1, P1).  Since ignorance was the intension of the masters, they never really looked at the slaves as real humans but as if they were nothing significant. As a central character, Douglas didn’t know who his father was. He was separated from his mother at an early age, even when his mother died he didn’t feel anything special about it. The reason behind the alienation was to make them salves in mentality, as well, where they were physically born slaves. The fact that the slaves were so convinced about their enslaved lifestyle, it made the slave masters quite successful to turn them mentally crippled. The perfect example, for instance, would be when the slaves form different plantation fighting with each other about whose master is richer, kinder and smarter. Instead of being concerned about their own miserable life, they’re more concerned about who they represent(C 3 P 9). This alienation influenced questions in young Douglas’s mind we see him asking why the white children knew their age and he didn’t (C1P1). His questions were the first initiative towards his freedom.

The vivid imagery of a slave’s experience was horrifying. They were treated as animals or objects. We see that in the narrative, whenever the ownership changed, they counted with the livestock as a property. Overall, all the factors provoked Frederick Douglas to find a way to gain his freedom because he wanted a normal human life, not the life of an animal. In search of that, he found that reading and writing is the only thing that can give him freedom. In the narrative, we also see his struggle for learning to read and write. It was determined by his master that education for Douglas would be a threat because they thought that if he accomplished reading and writing, he’ll become unmanageable as a slave. We see how he saves his bread and gives that bread to the poor white children in the neighborhood, and in return, they taught him how to read. In the end, we found that all his struggles paid off. He was able to escape to New York and eventually earn his freedom. Most importantly, he finally learned the real meaning of abolition (movement to end slavery). This narrative was a great example to the existing slaves of that time and inspired them to follow his footstep.

Parvez

I have read all of the selected poems from Emily Dickinson and as I read them I noticed a common theme with all of them. I felt like in all of the poems I read I had this dark vibe while reading them.  Most of the poem reoccurring theme was death and immortality. One other thing that I found interesting about Dickinson poems was that none on them had titles. I also find it strange that she will start a sentence with and capitalize words like “and” and also “because” conjunction words, but since she was an English Major, I felt she had some kind of reasoning behind this. Also another quality I picked up reading her poems was that I felt the made sense and at the same time did not make any sense. It was like you thought you comprehended, and on the next line you will get confused right away. I will go about analyzing the poem number 712.

In the first stanza, Emily Dickinson has made death and living thing (I know it sounds contradicting, I felt the same exact way). In the first couple of lines, “Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me” She wrote the word Death with a capital D and it was not at the beginning of a sentence. Usually a word with be spelled with a capital letter in the middle of a sentence if it’s a special nouns. And also on the next line, she also substituted the word death with the pronoun word “he”. Both of these techniques I saw gave me the clue that she turned death into a person. Reading the first two line, she was basically saying that not matter how hard she tries, she would not be able to escape death. I drew this picture in my mind that death was like a cab driver and the speaker was waiting to get picked up by him.  In line 1-4 “The Carriage held but just Ourselves – and Immortality.” Emily also made Immortality as another living thing as well. In this case I saw the Carriage as a train that had the speaker and also Immortality as another passenger on the train.

In the second stanza, She starts off with the line “We drove – He knew no haste.” What she was saying was that Death was taking her on a journey. The second half of the line can be interpreted in different ways. One way I have interpreted this line was saying that Death was always calm and collective. Then she goes about saying “And I had put away My Labor and my leisure too, For his Civility” the line gave me an imagery that Death was a tour guide and she everything she was doing she stop and gave him her undivided attention, like a classroom setting when the teacher is lecturing and the students put away their cellphones, homework assignments from other classes and etc.  

Through out the rest of the poem, after reading it many times and also searching Google to back up my thinking, I realized that during the smooth journey the final destination was the poets grave.  During all the other lines, she has described what she saw likewise lines 9-12 “we passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – we passed the Fields of gazing Grain” all this reminds me of my earlier reference to the poet being on the train and seeing out of the window like how little kids will do. This stanza started out positive, but then when she said, “We passed the Setting Sun.” I felt was the very thin line from light to darkness. Why I say that is even thought watching the sunset is a beautiful thing, it’s also the start to nighttime. Like wise the rest of the poem was darkness, or I should say the rest of her ride to the grave is getting dark.

Reading the “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman I fall in love in his poems. The philosophy of his deep thoughts about the world and himself overwhelmed my mind. I tried to understand his “I” and his ”What”, tried to share his opinion about all events in the Universe. I wanted to understand every single world and sentence, every thought and intonation, wanted to be one equal thing with him. And I want to tell you guys it is impossible, just because his writing is unique and extraordinary, interesting and unbelievable. From the beginning, from the first words of the poem “Song of Myself” I thought Walt is a very selfish man, who talks about himself and his personality in majestic, grand, imperial manner. And the reader has to admire him and “assume what he assumes.” However, while reading further I changed my opinion to the opposite way. Undoubtedly, his poem is about himself but and life in America, about daily life of its citizens, about You and Me, about Us.

What the people saw every day in America of 19^th century inspired him to write his opinion about daily routine life and people. He talk about crime, murders, death, birth, woman that hurry up home from work to deliver a baby, poor people dying from the hunger, prostitution. The urban life was disgusting for him, where was no freedom, and he found it in the country area. He enjoyed the time there: ”I helped,..I hunt… Kindling a fire…falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.” That time was a great racial and status inequality, and mainly it was a slavery time for America. Walt was not a slave but he defiantly was against any inequality in the society. He did not discriminate people by any qualities as sex, race, skin color, or material status in the society. All people on the Earth were equal for him. I guess if he could he would support every person in need like he did it for the slave from his poem.

Walt described his feeling and emotions so realistic that we get the sense of his present around us. Reading the poem we felt the smell of perfumes, “the smoke of his breath”, “the beating of his heart”, the “sniff of green leaves and dry leaves” with him and more and more and more. Reading him I had a feeling that his voice somewhere behind me and tells me everything about him, his story, history of his life. “Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.” I had a sense of his “I” somewhere around me. Didn’t you feel the same? The poem is written that way that he makes us the witness of his life and without our wish to create the history, reading his thoughts.

In his poem he presents a lyrical hero, his “I”, who is not a single one thing in the poem. He represents himself in “I” but also every living thing on the Earth. “I” is not only in what surrounding him every day: emotions, events, people, but also something special.  He emphasizes this word a big role in his poem. He separates “I” from himself and give it a soul, something as living organism, whose role is witnessing his life. But it is a positive substance not material but “light”, “intangible” and “weightless”. I think he emphases that all people combines in ”I”, the represents of variety of people’s emotions, pain, feelings, lifes and wishes. I is not a single structure, it is many-sided thing. Sounds like he tries to speak from all of us, tries to place himself on our place: “you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself” He is kind of guide us with his thoughts to the right way of our life destination.  His lyrical person “I” makes some kind of friendship with the reader, connect to us thought the reading to our mind. And that is how we get to know Walt Whitman. He stats that every part and element of the world, every living organism, every person on the Earth is “I “and equal, because they all have been born and dyed equally.

He shares with us his opinion about circle of life. He stats there is always and permanent moving of life creation in the world:

“Out of the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,

Always knit of identity,

Always disjunction, always a breed of life.”

Walt does not recognize death as something bad and as a finish of the life’s path: “the smallest sprout shows there is really no death.” He believes death temporarily exists. Death just makes a creation of life. Everything is moving forward by death and death is not an obstacle on the way of life and birth: “And the die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” Moreover, “Song of Myself” is a proof of Walt’s words, because he is alive in his book, in his “I”.

From Walt’s poem we have been introduced not only to American life but also to Walt Whitman himself. Through the Walt’s feelings, emotions and parts of his life in America we get to know him as a sensitive person. We read his thoughts on a paper and get to know what type of person he was. . I found a reflection of my thought in his writing, and even I had the sense that I know him or already knew. And I understood his temper, character, personality and wishes. Who is it, Mr. Whitman? He is a very kind and fair person, who wants to stats the equality in the world. He did not do crimes and bad things. We get to know him as a good person who worked hard, wrote poems and wanted to achieve equity, fairness and truth in the poem. He “dances, laughs, sings”, loves this world and enjoys it every single day.  He is a happy person. All his writing represenst his aspiration for living and teach us to enjoy every day and appreciate life.

He has freedom of speaking in his writing and the words create the real song about him. Walt does not seem to be afraid of people’s opinion and discussions, their anger and complaints. He is a white man does not afraid to write about his compassion to the black slaves. He is a freely open person for us and people who were around him that time. He loves everybody and everything. Walt is ready to sacrifices all he has for us, and even himself:

“Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,…

No asking the sky to come down to my good will,

Scattering if freely forever.”

For me everything is obvious, Walt Whitman is an open book that we have to read, read and read again. Then more you read then more you will find answers on the question: “Who am I?” We all are part of the big Universe, equal in front of death and life, and have our own path here to find ourselves as Walt did in his poem. Ask yourself: What do you think is “I”? What is “I”?

Who are You? What are You?

Don’t you think it is an everlasting question as well as Walt Whitman’s words and thoughts?…

Answering on them every one of you will find own answer like it did Walt Whitman. And You will know the song of Yourself.

Anna Kapitsa

The poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, is about a knight who with some sort of difficulty (inferring from the first to third stanzas: “O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering … Fast withereth too.”) was approached, relieved, and put to death eventually by a beautiful and yet dreadful goddess; I described the lady as goddess because in the poem, the knight describes her as “a faery’s child”, and also no human can lull a person asleep. The poor knight was beauty trapped and gave everything he could to her(the 5^th stanza: “I made a garland for her head, and bracelets too, and fragrant zone;”), and when he realized he was trapped, it was too late. In my opinion, Keats’s intention in this poem is to advise men how dangerous it can be to fall in love with fatally beautiful woman; and by “fatally beautiful woman”, I mean a woman who possesses beauty and uses it for a evil purpose.

In the poem, “Bright Star”, Keats says that he desires to be steadfast as the bright star not to watch his love at a distance as the star does to “the moving water” and “the new soft-fallen mask of snow” but instead to feel his love. He mentions the moving waters and snow on mountains: things that are parts of eternal nature, to describe his eternal affection toward his lover. This poem explains Keats’s deep love with someone because in the poem, he mentions “Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, … and so live ever – or else swoon to death” which to me meant that he would exist steadfast for his love, not for other reasons, and he would rather die if it was not for his love. Then I wondered why he had to use a star among many steadfast things to describe his love. So I mused over the words that he uses to describe the star and tried interpreting “bright” as something that can metaphorically be bright: passion, and “lone” as “only”. And I came to a conclusion that he might have wanted to be the only passionate and eternal love of his loved one.

Additionally, with regard to the two letters, the one Keats wrote to his brothers shows his daily life and his interests at the time. Apparently, his interests are focused on arts and literature. In the other letter written to J.H. Reynolds, Keats provides his opinion about leading a happy life, which is to read and ponder over “Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose”. However, throughout the letter, he uses his sophistication to conceal his indolence. He claims that “the Minds of Mortals” are different from one another and therefore have different ways of thinking, but eventually at the end, they all come together (from the line 14 to 20: “man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Webb of his Soul … and [at] last greet each other at the Journeys end). I think that this idea is what is behind Keats’s indolence and the main reason why Keats takes so passive a way when it comes to learning – because, with this notion, you don’t have to actively run around to learn and find answers, but rather, you just have to sit, be a “passive and receptive” flower waiting for “noble insects” to come by and learn from them as Keats says in the poem (from the line 18 to 22: “Now it is more noble to sit like Jove [than] to fly like Mercury … taking hints from every noble insects that favors us with a visit”). He also refers to the poem he wrote in the letter and how he was led to the thoughts: “by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness – I have no read any Books”, which is also an implication that he does not value active learning. And at the end of the letter, he himself admits that he is “sensible all this is a mere sophistication … to excuse my indolence”.

In “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, the first two stanzas start with the same sentence. Stanzas I presents the state (alone and loitering) and ends up with lifeless (sedge wither’d and no birds sing).   Stanzas II is more about the feeling. Keats uses squirrel’s granary is full to contrast lifeless.  Stanzas III says lily at the beginning and then shift to a fading rose. Lily is a symbol of death and rose is a symbol of beauty. It means that beauty will leave after your death. Stanzas IV-VI and Stanzas VII-IX have a different focus. IV-VI start with the word “I”, but VII-IX shift the focus and the main character is the lady. Stanzas X and XI talk about the dream. In the end, Stanzas XI is using the same line (On the cold hill’s side) as Stanzas IX. It kind of pulls me back to the moment when the dream starts. In the end, it repeats from Stanzas I which reinforce the loneliness and lifeless.

In “Ode on Melancholy”, the tone of the first stanzas is negative. Many words are death-related such as poisonous wine, Proserpine, death-moth and owl. The second stanzas suggest the solution. However, in the last stanzas, it gives the conclusion of beauty – must die. Melancholy exists inside the temple of delight and also takes control of everything (Veil’d Melancholy has her Sovran shrine). In order to see the melancholy, you have to peel off the joy and then reveal the sadness. I also curious about Keats is using “she” for Melancholy. Does he mean that even the world is dominated by men but it is actually controlled by women?

“Bright Star” is different from Keats other poems. The idea is much lighter. He repeats the word stedfast twice, one at the beginning and the other in the middle of the poem, which send out a message of stableness (peaceful). While I was reading the poem, the tone sounds like a child takes to his/her mother (the start) when they both lying on the bed (Pillow’d upon my fair love’s repening breast).

-Kahing

Keats mentions poisonous trees and death-related things at the beginning of the poem, Ode ton Melancholy, such as Lethe which according to Greek Mythology is a river whose water when drunk makes the dead’s souls forget their life on earth, the death-moth, and the downy owl (I found on the internet that owls represents not only wisdom but also doom and death). And at the same time, he advises not to be close to those dreadful things because shade, which I think also symbolizes death, “will drown the wakeful anguish of the soul”. At first, I thought it was contradictory because I considered removing the wakeful pain of the soul as a good thing. But then, after some thinking, I realized that since this poem is about melancholy, and people with depression more easily take self-destructive actions, the poet intended to make people aware that if they surround themselves with negative things, they will eventually choose to kill themselves in order to permanently eliminate the anguish of their soul.

Then the poet goes on to provide suggestions to overcome melancholy (“Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, … feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes”). However, at the end of the poem, Keats hints the impossibility of living in permanent pleasure by referring that beauty, joy, and pleasure are all temporary (She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die; … Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:) and the coexistence of sadness and pleasure (“in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine”).

I think that what Keats intended to say in this poem is very straightforward, which can be broken down into three simple sentences: 1. Don’t let depression kill you, 2. Enjoy the temporary entertainments if they help you relieve, and 3. However, never forget that sadness will always be there.

Additionally, while reading the Ode to a Nightingale, I found some relevance between the two odes. In the Ode to a Nightingale, Keats speaks of the sadness of the world around him (the whole 3rd stanza: “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget … Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow”), and the means he took to avoid the sadness (the 6th stanza: “for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death”). Inferring from “for many a time”, I realized that he repeatedly took self-destructive measures as the means to avoid the sadness. And at the very end of the poem, he finds himself unable to distinguish reality from imagery (the last stanza: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:– do I wake or sleep?”). Consequently, I assumed that Keats as a person who experienced firsthand the harmful effect of melancholy wrote the poem, “Ode on Melancholy”, to admonish people.

Xin Chen

Poems by Willam Wordsworth

For this blog post, I’m going to discuss the selected poems by William Wordsworth. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” “A Slumber Did My Spirit” and “Nutting.”

In “I Wandered Lonely as Cloud,” I think the theme for this poem is being trapped in the beauty of nature. At first, he described the scenes that he has encountered the daffodils around the lake. He describes the daffodils to be “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6).   He kind of relates the scene with the stars in the Milky Way “Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way” (line7-8). I don’t get the relationship between the two because if you can see the flowers dancing, one often doesn’t connect it with the stars in the Milky Way. But the scene is so beautiful that whenever he feels empty or trapped in thoughts, he would think of the scene in his mind, “ and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils”(line 23-24).   It somehow brings him pleasure whenever he wants to escape from the world and lost in his thoughts. When one gets lost in their thoughts, they often think of stuff that gives them pleasure, trapped in the imaginary places that they wish to be.

In the second poem “ A Slumber Did My Spirit,” I think this poem is about a time when he was in denial of not accepting that an important woman in his life has died. “A slumber did my spirit seal: I had no human fears: she seemed a thing that could not feel” (line 1-3). He seems to be trapped in thought that she is still alive, then in the second and last stanza he seems to realized that she is dead because he says that her body will be a part of Earth which implies that she is dead, “ Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees” (line 7-8).

Both the “ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and “A Slumber Did My Spirit” can relate to each other because they’re both about getting trapped in thoughts. I thinks that they’re opposite of each other, one is about something beautiful invading his thoughts and latter is about him in denial, trying to keep reality out of his mind.

As for the last poem, “Nutting,” I didn’t really get the whole thing but I think it’s about him describing the experience of a young boy getting “flowers” in the nature when he was young.  I think this poem has some sexual connotations. It seems as long he’s talking about pure and innocent nature, he describes it as “A virgin scene”(line 20) I think he’s relating it virginity and purity. Another example is when he’s playing with the flowers, the metaphor of comparing the one’s virginity as taking flowers from the woods, to “deflower.’ “Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played” (line25).  And that’s not all, there’re many words that I can point out that gives the idea that sex is involved. Lets start with the title “tall and erected”, “as joy delight in”, ”boyish hopes”, “through beds of matted fern” and etc.

The only relationship I found in all three is that the nature is involved with all of them. In the first poem, it describes its love for scenery in nature, the second one is comparing one’s death to nature, and the last one compares the virginity of a woman to nature. Nature plays a slightly different role in all three but they’re involved in someway.so the three poems is basically about love for nature,  virginity and death.

Tasmina Sharmi

Grasmere Journals- Dorothy Wordsworth

In her work The Grasmere journals, Dorothy Wordsworth chronicles her life over the period of three years (1800-1803). Because the excerpts we read were not in chronological order the thoughts are sporadic however one consistency does remain through all Wordsworths journal entries. The audience can clearly view Wordsworths love of nature through her vivid descriptions and use of similes and personification to bring the world around her to life. The world around her not only influences her behavior but also parallels her emotions.

Wordsworth begins her journal when her brother William leaves her. Its odd that rather than writing where he’s going or when he’s coming back she points her focus to nature and most of the entry is describing the environment. She describes the lake as “dull and melancholy” which perhaps mimics her feelings of Williams departure. She then goes on and gives a beautiful depiction of a bunch of flowers a “palish yellow flower”, crawfoot, geraniums, anemonies, primroses once she resolves to keep a journal for Williams pleasure.

Many other parts of Wordsworths journal entries also contain the same pattern of descriptions of nature. She portrays the wind, rain, flowers, hills, vales, lake meadows, mosses, twigs, stones, snow, and the sun. She preserves the colors, shapes, and scents to appeal to the senses. Some examples include:

“To the left the bright silver Stream inlaid the flat & very green meadows, winding like a serpent.”

“A beautiful yellow, palish yellow flower, that looked thick round & double, & smelt very sweet-I supposed it was a ranunculus-Crowfoot, the grassy-leaved Rabbit- toothed white flower, strawberries, Geranium-scentless violet, anemones two kinds, orchises, primroses.”

In a particular journal article Wordsworth writes about her walk with William she describes walking over a field and seeing a bunch of flowers near the roadside over the field and in the woods but she focuses in on the daffodil. This is very interesting because in our other assigned reading the poet William Wordsworth also seems to be describing the same situation. When reading both you can see that there are stark similarities between the two. They both describe the daffodils as “dancing” and the wind/ breeze blowing over them and the waves of the lake surrounding the daffodils. They both also use similar language Dorothy describes the daffodils as appearing “gay” while William states a “poet could not but be gay” in the company of such beautiful daffodils. Although William uses a more joyful romantic approach and Dorothy uses a more descriptive book like approach we can see the huge influence nature has on both writers.

Another interesting aspect I noticed about Dorothy Wordsworths journal articles is her relationship with her brother William. In the beginning of the journal we are not sure the relation between the two but as we read on and find out he is her brother many of her actions seems to blur the lines of a sibling relationship and almost seems to cross to a romantic one. We can see in the beginning when William leaves Dorthy says “My heart was so full that I could hardly speak to W when I gave him a farewell kiss… after a flood of tears my heart was easier” this seems innocent enough but feels more like the leaving of a lover than a brother. In a later journal article Dorothy describes the day her brother gets married to Mary rather than it seeming like a happy occasion Dorothy describes it as “being over” and how she could “stand it no longer”. It almost seems as if she is unhappy at her brother getting married. She also reveals she wears the wedding ring all night prior to the marriage. When William returns from the wedding she also refers to him as “my beloved”. It is also strange how often William is mentioned in the journal and how she is writing a journal which is often private not only for herself but also for Williams “pleasure”.

Although Grasmere Journals seems to be a diary of the ordinary events of Dorothy Wordsworths life it provides insight of her relationships mainly with her brother. It also allows us to see the romantic nature of this period and how nature influences her writing and life.