You suck; you’ve always told me what to do; always told me how to live my life; always controlled my every motion; you’ve always imposed yourself onto me, why? For my sake? No, never. It has always been for your sake that you’ve imposed this robotic regimen on me. A non-ending numbing pain like a never ending sentence continued solely by semicolons, but not anymore!

I am my own person, I am intelligent and I am strong and I will not do as you tell me simply because you tell me so. I will learn and do as I see fit, and if the world sees me as you say then that is too bad for them. For I am me, not you, nor them, I am. And if I find that you happened to be right about something, or that I did not like a thing, then I will correct my actions because I decide it so. Because I want to change my actions, not because you want me to change my actions.

I have found the world far different than you have seen it. There is harshness, and cruelty in it. But not by all. I pity you now, you who has shut himself away so tightly in your little scope of reality that you are blind to the largeness of the world. It is vast and you are small. It is vast and I am big, for I see it as it is not as I would have it. For I am me, you are you, and they are them; and we are all so small.

There are a lot of relations between the characters in Mrs. Dalloway’s one day and her reflections, though not all are as directly related. Septimus for example is connected to Mrs. Dalloway because of many psychological aspects of their personalities. While Septimus is a war veteran and because of that is paranoid, depressed, and generally what society might call crazy, Mrs Dalloway is not any of those things. But both represent in their thoughts or actions the wrongness of society’s outlook on war and the treatment of the men who came back from it alive, the lack of an attempt to understand mental illnesses. Both suffer through depression and both are misunderstood by the world. Mrs Dalloway is seen as a cold distant women when she is in fact not.

Sally is connected to Dalloway as a childhood ‘Friend’, with perhaps all of the hidden implications that the quotations may imply. They felt very personal and passionate emotions for one another, crossing nearly into a category one might reserve for lovers, a place that it seems no one else truly entered again with Clarissa Dalloway.

Richard Dalloway, or Mr. Dalloway is Clarissa’s husband… though that relationship lacks any of the same passion that Sally offered. The two of them are close but at the same time cold and off-standish, Mr. Dalloway is a conservative man who never expresses affection properly, and Clarissa is as mentioned before seen as a cold woman, who refuses sex with her husband.

Lastly Peter Walsh, an… acquaintance of Clarissa’s who is smitten for her. He come back from India and immediately goes to Clarissa to discuss with her an array of things, but mainly ends up displaying his emotions for her. He loves Clarissa and is torn by the fact that she is already married to Richard. An unrequited love.

Matthew leaves the threshold of his home, going through the normal ritualistic pat-down, phone, check, keys, check, wallet, check, brain?… sure. Sigh, right then keep going. He paid no attention to the blocks as he passed them, instead lost in his head among thoughts of what needs doing and who needs calling, when he got to the railway overpass leading to the mall and subway. Dry as a bone. He like this bridge, usually, sometimes there are huddles of teenagers looking like they might want to vandalize something, but sometimes there’s a little kid with their parent, looking over the side as a train comes by and jumping up as it passes under them, as if it would have hit them. He’d done that to with his parents standing by and watching, imaginably with equal glee to the looks of the parents he saw now. But there was no one here today, not as he crossed the bridge or as he started down from it. As he took a step down he slipped, and launched his keys from his hand down onto the tracks below. Peering over the side he couldn’t see his keys anymore, but that had been years ago on a snowy day, and his keys were not there anymore.

“The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” and “Discourse on the logic of language” are both very compelling pieces on the topic of slavery that touch upon some of the pain involved in slavery. The poem “Discourse…” focuses on the strife and friction caused by the conflicts of language, Fredrick Douglass compliments the poem and adds context to that strife.

“Discourse on the logic of language” repeats often the difference between a mother tongue and a father tongue, a father tongue is a foreign tongue, a foreign anguish, whereas a mother tongue is a native tongue. “English is my father tongue…  English is my mother tongue…” there is a contradiction made and repeated throughout the poem that English is both their native tongue, a foreign language, and their anguish.  The poem also talks at length about brief interactions between a new born child and her mother, about a desperate attempt to give to her the language of her mother, her breath, her tongue.

Frederick Douglass and his narrative compliment this poem and fill in the blanks very well, giving us an insight into the lives of slaves and their views on language and the anguish of their lives. The anguish that brought them to these foreign lands that they call home, that breaks the bonds between a daughter and mother, between a son and his mother. Such that Fredrick Douglass even writes “…received tidings of her death (his mother’s) with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.” In the next paragraph he talks about how his father is unknown to him, but that it was said to be his master. A white man, a foreign man. “…such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships…” their father enforcing the cruelties pushed onto them and their masters wife being one who inflicts her disdain onto them as well.

This process and situation existed intentionally, serving as a means of making rebellions more difficult, and as a means to further dehumanize the slaves. To the white men controlling the situation, the less human the slaves are the easier it is for them to justify slavery. That attempt to justify slavery, to dehumanize slaves, is perhaps the greatest sin, the most damaging one at least to everyone, everyone. It dehumanized everyone.

Both The Lamb and the Tyger poems hold parallels with the story of Frankenstein and the creature. It’s almost funny given how short the poems are that they can hold so many similarities with the creature. That said I’m going back and forth between which poem has better similarities with the creature. My first reaction was that it was The Lamb, but that quickly changed as I read Tyger.

The Lamb is a poem that explores the little lamb who knows not it’s creator. Only to learn that his creator is a Lamb as well. Now both these points are comparable in some way to the creature and Frankenstein. Rather simplistically both the lamb and the creature initially don’t know who their creator is, only later to find out. The second part is hardly a connection to the creature from the book and more a connection with the common interpretation of the name Frankenstein. Commonly thought that Frankenstein is the creature itself and not the creator, much as the little lamb is called the same as it’s creator the Lamb. This connection is tenuous at best.

Tyger. This poem in contrast with The Lamb makes no explicit mention of not knowing who the creator is at first, only late showing that it does not know it’s creator, and that it may be the same individual as the one who created the little lamb. There are a few more lines than a simple lack of knowledge as a similarity that connect the Tyger to the creature; “…thy fearful symmetry?”, “…hand dare seize the fire?”, “…twist the sinews of thy heart?”, “Did he smile his work to see?”, and “…deadly terrors clasp!” First “…thy fearful symmetry” shows a connection between the tiger and the creature because the creature is described as having beautiful parts, that when brought together and brought to life are horrifying. “… hand, dare grasp the fire” this describes to me the relationship between Frankenstein , the hand and the creature, the fire. I make this connection through interpreting the creature as the fire, dangerous, but also the act of creating a flame of life. Playing with fire. “…twist the sinews of thy heart” illustrates what happened to the creature, humanity rejects him. “Did he smile his work to see?” illustrates Frankenstein’s rejection of his creation… he never smiled at his work, only ever rejecting it as a monster. Lastly, “…deadly terrors clasp!” can be a way to show the lethality of the creature, being very similar to Frankenstein’s description of the creature “…one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped…”

In conclusion for the reasons above I believe that Tyger the poem has more in common with the creature and the story of Frankenstein than The Lamb. The lamb as I see it only rally has one thing in common with the book and tiger has that as well, beyond that tyger has many more points in common with the creature to give it credence. That said it is easier for tyger to have those points because nothing was explicitly decided upon. Nearly everything mentioned is a question not a statement implying similarities not guaranteeing them.

AmTrak Station and Bus terminal – Nothing is impossible…  (Journey to the west)

This may seem a lazy choice, but it is the most fitting I think for me and this station. For me this location is a memory of my first experience going to a distant college, Oswego University. That, was the first taste of freedom and independence that I had completely separate from home and the city. Now (aside from the car) I see this station as a means for escape and ability to do anything.

Lenox Hill Hospital – At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call being. (Song of myself)

This quote to me means to come to an understanding of life. As well as to come to a realization of our own mortality, as such Lenox Hill Hospital is a fitting location to deal with the mortality of man and the puzzle of life. For me, it’s where my father passed away, and where I had my first real experience with death.

Astoria – In the beginning god created heaven and earth. (Genisis)

Pretty simple, though not perfect, I grew up in Astoria, so for me it was my beginning. Where I learned about the world around me.