Response to Robert Frost's "Birches"

I'm going to skip to the point on this one--Frost's "Birches" hits on a lot of heart here, in a lot of ways. After some poignant, moving, and crisp as ice descriptions of birches on an frozen scape, and images of a boy using them to swing down on, arching until they bring him back safely back to the ground, Frost does something different--he hits squarely on some heart, on some real sight on life. Roughly two thirds in he changes prospective, and falls into first-person, and Frosts starts,

"So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open."

For seven lines, Frosts says a lot--a whole of a hell of a lot. With, "So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be." Frost simply begins, establishes himself as the swinger, but what he says after that is definitely worth looking at. He's "weary of considerations" and life is "too much like a pathless wood," just listen to that, "life is too much like a pathless wood" In one line he captures an entire outlook and an entire reality--he captures truth, because life is considerations, to some degree, which can make it feel way to much like being lost alone, pathless among birches.

While, no doubt, it's written with an over the top riff, and reads painfully clearly without mistake that you are reading poetry, sometimes I think that's called for, because how else can you write "life is too much like a pathless wood, where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig's having lashed across it open." with the same heart and soul of experience and with the same poetry without writing exactly that?

Response to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited"

"Babylon Revisited" is as tragic as it is optimistic, and F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn't have written it with more edge and beauty than he did. With reading it brings a question--has Charlie Wales really changed, and does that change mean that he should be allowed to look after his daughter Honoria? Does he deserve this second chance? And actually, what is a second chance?

The "Babylon" that existed for him in Paris years before the story takes place was regrettable, full of mistakes for sure--he drank, he locked his wife out, and he lost a lot of time moving from one party to the next, making it hard to discern between where he started and where he was going. Since then, things have changed, and I think Charlie had definitely changed with them, I mean, how could he have not. His wife has died, he has a daughter who's growing up and becoming her own self, and Paris has shifted from a "Babylon" for the rich and the rich Americans, to a struggling city of average French citizens--nothing has stayed the same, and it clear that Charlie is no exception.

For one, he's no longer a heavy drinker--in fact, he's limited himself to only one drink a day, almost merely just to show his control--some days he doesn't even have his one drink. Way more importantly, though, he wants change. Charlie Wales is choosing to start a new life with his daughter, and he's clearly abandoning his old one--at one point in the story, two of his old drinkings companions show up, and he makes no mistake at kicking they out, away from his new life. In a way, Duncan and Lorraine, his old drinkings companions, really are his "ghosts out of the past" (pg. 1030), representing everything he used know and be, and his rejection and disdain for them in favor of his new life that he wants to start and build.

All this couldn't be a better way of showing Charlie's willingness to change, not to mention showing how much he already has. There's totally no doubt either than Charlie loves his daughter of sure--however the case, then there's the question, though, what it all mean? Does it really mean that he deserves a second chance with Honoria? A second chance to start a new life for him and for her? What is a second chance really?

There are a lot of answers to that question, and few of them are either right or wrong. Like in the song "Please Forgive Me" by musician David Gray, he sings about never having to have to lie, and to never have to say good bye. In a way, I feel he's singing about wanting and waiting for a second chance, or for a first chance--it's hard to discern between the two in his song, which, in a way, is a helluva lot more important than it might seem, because what is a second chance really but just another chance? What I mean is that people are always changing, they never stop, so what's the difference, really, between a first chance and a second, or even a sixth--in the end, they're all the same, because the person being "given" their second chance isn't the same person they were when they had their first.

Therefore, I think that Charlie deserves his chance--maybe not the Charlie from the days of "Babylon", but definitely the Charlie now, the man that he's become, as we know him and as he is through the pages of "Babylon Revisited," as that's the only man being given one.

*Interesting thing here--one of David Gray's most famous tracks is his song "Babylon," off of his 1998 album "White Ladder," which, get this, is the same album to originally feature the track "Please Forgive Me," which is the one I've quoted in this blog. Strangely enough, though, I didn't know this until after I wrote this blog with him in it--crazy mad coincidence, I guess.

Response to Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Tennessee Williams' renowned 1947 play "A Streetcar Named Desire" is an arguable staple in the history of American literature. The play examined issues like the potentially dangerous and destructive nature of certain social norms and the the social "roles" people find themselves playing to conform to them--and how what's considered "normal" isn't always actually right. It tells the story of Blanche--a woman astray, in more ways than one, staying with her sister Stella and Stella's new husband, Stanley, a powerful and impulsive drinker, in New Orleans about the time the story was written.

Blanche is lost in the past as well as the present, constantly regretting and blaming herself for the suicide of her husband, who died some years before the play opens, which makes her grip on reality and the present shaky at best--she's gets not just lost in the moment, but completely loses herself in it, she hides her age, gets lost in her dreams, and refuses to see things as they are, which results in her always having something to hide, because she's also making a mistake of some sort, which leads her to deceive everyone in her life. Stella knows that Stanley is bad news, when he beats her in the play it's clear that it wasn't the first time, but she can't leave him, or won't--she' loves him, even though loving him cripples her--it makes her submit to being possessed and controlled, in a way, and leaves her more and more dependent on him as each day passes. Stanley doesn't have any honor or respect for anything except himself, and only has the power and the cunning to get what he desires--which makes him, in a way, the weakest of the three, and possibly even more detached with reality than Blanche, whose might as well be fast asleep.

While the play definitely opens on a lot important things, and deals with some really dark matter, I can't help but question if Williams did the right thing here--while the subject matter here needs to be dealt with and seen for sure, I feel like, as with a lot Williams ("The Glass Menagerie" comes to mind) he only focuses on the weak people--not the weaknesses of people. None of the characters in the "Streetcar" are strong, or even realistic--they are merely characters, to the most basic degree, left symbolizing the only the weaknesses they embody and represent. Real people are not only what makes them weak, yet in his play that is arguably all we see.

In class we discussed why literature focuses on weak characters, especially women ones from this time period, when there are so many who were not and do not fit that model of submissive and lost and dependent... It was a totally excellent question, worth not just asking, but acting on.

Response to Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"

"The Open Boat" has got to be my second favorite work we've read so far. Crane weaves such a total visual and emotional tapestry here--you're on that boat with those men, and you feel their hunger and the pain in their backs as they take turns rowing the open boat, and it reads more real than anything. The story takes place in a small boat cast out in the middle of the ocean, and opens "after the fact, being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer commodore."

It's the story of four men, a captain, a chef, a correspondent, and an oilier name Billie Higgins (the only character with an actual name) who have just survived a shipwreck and are now stranded out in the middle of the ocean in a small boat. The correspondent and the oilier take turns rowing to keep the boat moving and stable while the chef constantly throws water from the boat to keep it afloat. The captain is hurt, but yet totally provides support in his own way, with leadership and respect for his mean and their current situation. Eventually, they catch sight of the coast, and, after some time, decide to abandon their boat and make a mad dash for the shore. All of the make it except for the oilier, whose found dead face down on the shore-side.

"The Open Boat" was heavily (almost entirely) based off of Crane own real experience surviving a ship wreck which resulted in Crane and three other men, including the captain of the SS Commodore, getting stranded on a life boat, which eventually got overturned in the surf, forcing them to swim to shore--all of them made it to the shore except for one, an oilier named Billie Higgins. Crane, in a way, is actually the correspondent in "The Open Boat."

It's an amazing, incomparable work because of it's unrivaled honesty. The men cast astray aren't characters--they don't represent men, they are men. The writing captures the moments shared on the lonely boat cast off into the blue, when life it at it's most uncertain. The men see how indifferent nature sees their lives, and contemplate fate--yet they are there for each other, and, as bleak and uncertain as it gets, none of them fold, none of them give up or run away, or even complain--they fight on, for their lives that nature and the world has given up on. They show true human strength when it's most called for, and it's mind blowing and heart breaking to read.

Response to Marianne Moore's "Poetry"

In class, someone commented that before she read Marianne Moore's poem "Poetry" she didn't like poetry, but reading it had totally changed her mind. I'm not sure that I can say the same (I've never been a big fan) but I can definitely see how the poem carries that potential, for sure. She opens it with, "I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle" which totally draws in the poetry hater--Moore starts by directly relating to the hater, saying she too dislikes it, but also draws the hater in with a gripping question, because why would a poet hate poetry? Curiosity gets the better of us, and Moore knows it.

She then explains, step by step, elegantly, yet still on more or less simple and relatable terms, why she also loves it. She explains, through poetry, why poetry is in fact important--highlighting that it can be, if done well, and with heart, "useful." "Useful" for helping us experience the powerful feelings and emotions which we have the potential for, that poetry is to some degree "a place for the genuine," where (to paraphrase) hands can really grasp, eyes can freely dilate, and hair can rise--and that these experiences, "these things are important." Moore opens the eyes of the reader, and in just over twenty-five lines of poetry convinces you of its fundamental nature and purpose.

__“In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

__the raw material of poetry in

____all its rawness and

____that which is on the other hand

_genuine, then you are interested in poetry.”

Response to Jack London's "To Build a Fire"

First off, this was totally, most non-egregiously hands down the most unprecedented story we've read so far. "To Build a Fire" is one of a kind, and was written extraordinarily. The totally excellent story opens with the protagonist, an unnamed man hiking, alone, halfway on a trek through Alaska, on his way to reconvene at a camp of other travelers. When the story opens, it's already seventy-five below zero (the unnamed man's spit freezes and cracks before it can hit the ground--a bad sign), and the man, despite his current, life-threatening circumstances, trudges on without a worry. In fact, "not a worry" aren't actually the right words--he doesn't think that he even has anything to worry about, because he doesn't believe that anything could ever happen to him. Yeah, not worrying is actually a good call, worrying definitely won't get you anywhere, but shutting your eyes to the reality of whats actually ahead of you--that's detrimental.

In addition, and arguably his fatal flaw, the man is totally ill prepared for the journey--for one he's trekking all by himself, alone, save for a wolf-dog, something that "the old-timer on Sulphur Creek" told him would be suicide. The only food he has is a bread biscuit soaked in bacon grease with slices of bacon cut in the middle, and other than some matches and chewing tobacco, that's all he carries, which wouldn't be so bad, except that deadly cold, seventy-five below, and he's way too confident to realize it.

In fact, regarding this, if I were asked who (or, appropriately, what) the antagonist was, I'd say that if not the sheer brutal negative degrees Fahrenheit, the antagonist would have to be the man's own sheer arrogance--he was so convinced of his own invincibility that he traveled on, into the wild, until he had no chance of actual survival (bogus!)--basically begging the elements to overtake him. In fact, if it didn't end up being the hidden stream of water which soaked his foot that killed him, it would have totally and egregiously been something else. In a way, he was also the antagonist too.

Jack London's "To Build a Fire" is most definitely a realist piece. In much the same way Bierce does with "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," London kills off his romantic with a fatal dose of reality. London also saturates "To Build a Fire" with details, told and explained with an extremely realist "to the point" style, with basically no emotional bias in the narrative, i.e. giving the reader everything they need to know, and letting them jump to their own conclusions as to the text's meaning and their own, totally individual emotional impact.

To wrap this up with a question (or two), who was more prepared really--the man or the dog? The man had the gear, but not the reasoning, not the "common sense." A soldier, outfitted with all the weapons and training and knowledge to kill isn't necessarily ready for war--ready for killing. And even a traveler, with a most savagely ill and solid trail to follow, as well as solid gear to keep him warm, and a totally sick dog for company, might still not be ready for the actual hike--in fact, it could be the death of him (like, in this case, it totally was). In short, if you aren't honest with yourself, if you're keeping your eyes wide shut, and you aren't thinking outside the box, you could fall off of it, and the fall could kill you.

Response to Susan Glaspell's "Trifles"

This story struck a lot of sparks in class, so I'm just going to skip the usually summery and jump right in--in terms of the ethical right/wrong actions of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, I would have to make the call, that if I had to make the call, I would say that they did the wrong thing by hiding the evidence (the dead canary). However the case, it's totally not because of the reason they had for hiding it--whether of not to protect Mrs. Wright from a harsher trial because she had been wronged for years and driven to murder is a most complicated choice to make, and it's hard if not impossible to call either one (hiding or divulging the possibly incriminating evidence) the right or wrong decision...

Which, in a way, is exactly why what Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale did was wrong--they made an extremely morally grinding decision based on very little other than their own rushed personal conclusions--conclusions based mostly on a almost romantic take the circumstances which lead to a chilling murder committed in cold blood. Over the course of the play, the two women speculated and speculated, drawing conclusions and reminiscing about the romantic good old days, and ended up turning a very real murder into a fantastical tragedy--one that could nearly be played out as a drama similar to "Trifles" itself. Therefore, I think that while maybe the nature of their decision could be right under circumstances, the reality of their actions are that they didn't have enough real facts--concrete knowledge--to make the kind of call that they did. In short, the two women made a life-altering judgment call from how they felt about what happened, and not on what they knew actually happened--most odious.

On the other hand, after writing this, something else totally hit me (square in the face--not), I realized that if, say, the two women did end up divulging the evidence and gave the dead bird to the attorney and the sheriff, the same thing could happen from the other perspective--the attorney and the sheriff could use the canary and make up their own story to overly incriminate Mrs. Wright--essentially do a similar wrong as the two women did--using their own feelings and prejudices on strictly surrounding the dead bird instead of basing her trail on the big picture--weighing all evidence equally. However the case, that last bit was total speculation, and was totally not thought through.

To wrap up this post, I'd have to say that the more we delved into Glaspell's "Trifles" the more I began to understand it. My first read through left me with a most detrimental attitude--I was totally discouraged by the actions (which I then perceived as arrogant, as, to some less degree, I still do) of the two women in the story, and while I still believe that they most definitely messed up, after hearing the debate in class, I feel like now I have a better grasp on it--or, at least, less detrimental.

Response to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

Spooky. This was a most odious piece to read. Gilman totally captured the slow deterioration of a mind slipping into insanity. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" opens with the main character, a women suffering from what appears to be postpartum depression, or at least just extreme anxiety, explaining in the first person, as if she were writing in a journal, to the reader how she and her husband "John," whose a doctor, just moved into a large estate for three weeks, so she can recover. Apparently, Dr. John believes that the best thing for his wife is solitude and seclusion, away from the outside world.

However the case, this totally turns out to be a bad call, as it leaves the writer (who also isn't supposed to write--another part of her husband's prescription) no choice but to live inside--inside the world of herself, which turns out to be most detrimental to her health and mental well-being. Over the course of the piece, divided up into journal entries that supposedly the woman writes while no one is watching, she falls deeper and deeper inside herself, into her obsession with the grotesque wall-paper plastered on the walls of her cell-like bedroom, until, at the story's horrific conclusion she completely looses her mind to it.

In class, a few people made the point that in a way, in her own way, lacking control of her life and her situation, she takes control and escapes with it in the only way she can in a sort of bleak take on freedom. However the case, after reading it, I walked away with the opposite impression--loosing her mind wasn't an extreme case of freedom; it was actually an extreme case of oppression. The poor woman wasn't at last escaping her situation, she was locking herself into it forever. Yeah, definitely a most odious piece to read for sure.

Response to Edith Wharton's "The Other Two"

Edith Wharton's "The Other Two" really caught me off guard. When I started it, just after reading Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," I was expecting the same kind of Roald Dahl style writing--with the expected folding suddenly into the unexpected or the strange, or both, like Roald Dahl's short stories in Lamb to the Slaughter (1953), Kiss Kiss (1960), or Switch Bitch (1974).

So when I finished, naturally, the conclusion had me a little puzzled--while reading the story, I had felt like the writer was gearing me up for some kind of twist (writing the details and the mundane but with sinister motive, again like Roald Dahl) some kind of big conclusion, maybe not as Twilight Zone-esque as the twist at the end of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," but still a twist none the less. Particularly, it seemed like the story was going to end with some sort of major change--like say, Alice leaves Waythorn or visaversa--or even some bigger, more intense and unexpected change or conclusion--more in the "strange" Roald Dahl direction. However, in the end, Edith Wharton's "The Other Two" concluded more or less as relaxed as it started, being more about personal and emotional conclusion than a plot-tied physical one.

I ended up rereading "The Other Two" after class the other day, this time with a more open mind, and without expectation for the Twilight Zone resolution I knew now wasn't going to be there. I most definitely got more out it--it seemed like the piece ended up being just a simple account of man, Waythorn, changing his outlook. "The Other Two" opens with Waythorn being totally uncomfortable even with the mere idea of having to meet either of his wife Alice's two ex-husbands (a la "The Other Two"), and being totally and completely infatuated with her, and over the course of the story, with the other two men, Haskett and Varick, becoming increasingly unavoidable in his life, Waythorn eventually comes to terms with how things are and how thing will have to be, seeing both men for who they both actually are, as well as seeing his wife for who she actually is, under a less blinding light. The twist is the transformation of Waythorn's perspective--moving from, in a way, rejecting his situation to accepting it.

Response to Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

Whoa--"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" had a most unexpected conclusion. In fact, to write about it now, after finishing it, I'll have to reexamine everything I thought I knew about it, and everything I thought that I thought about it. For one, I had originally thought that the story was solidly plot--a tale of a southern "well-to-do" planter's escape from a most heinous death, i.e. death by hanging.

However the case, it turned out that none of that, what I thought the story was about, actually happened. In other words, Peyton Farquhar's (the "well-to-do" planter) totally elaborate and heroic escape (untying his bonds, dodging bullets, swimming to freedom, and cross country hiking back to the safety of his own home) never really happened--when the military sent him off the bridge to hang, the rope didn't actually break, leading to the series of events just listed--instead the noose actually held fast, and Farquhar died right there, on the spot--no escapes, no heroics.

It turned out that the real story was not the heroic escape but actually just the harsh honest truth of a wealthy want-to-be hero, who got out of actually fighting in the civil war because of his social standing and money, and whose embarrassment for doing so along with his fragile concept of reality let the already shallow man get tricked into running straight into enemy territory (he thought he was setting off to do some dangerous secret Confederate opp--he was dead wrong) and getting hanged.

Looking back, I can't help notice the hints that Bierce left, however. For instance, Bierce kept mentioning how Farquhar was feeling pain, "His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly swollen," and how his mind was getting more and more lost, "...despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking..." (both page 306, 4th paragraph). Finishing the story, Twilight Zone twist and all, made me really dig the Realist style of literary writing--"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" was chalk full of information and detail, telling you everything you needed to know as a reader, and so letting you jump to your own conclusions and interpretations, making the last plot-altering piece of information that much sweeter, that much more surprising (or not, depending on if you picked up on the details like some had in class--myself not included) as well as making the total experience reading the story that much more outstanding.

Response to S.O. Jewett's "The White Heron"

I thought "The White Heron" by Sarah Orne Jewett was especially great because of the way she wrote the main character Sylvia--with such total trueity. I feel Jewett really captured exactly what it was like to be nine years old. In fact, Sylvia reminded me a lot of what my own little sister was like when she was about that age, and, actually, when I was that age as well. In terms of writing style, I feel like she wrote "The White Heron" most spontaneously, almost like the way kids think--totally in the moment, and then already onto the next. Like on page 416, at the end of the 2nd paragraph, Jewett moves suddenly from what Mrs. Tilley's saying to a description of some cat that shows up. Also, the totally playful word choices and phrases are most reminiscent of childhood, like, for instance, also on page 416, Jewett writes "So Sylvia had to hunt for her until she found her, and call Co'! Co'! with never an answering Moo, until her childish patience was quite spent." Ill.

In class, we spoke about the choice the girl Sylvia makes at the end of the story--how she decides not to tell her new friend, the unnamed older man hunter/ornithologist, about the white crane she saw while she sat on top a pine tree--the same white crane that the man wanted to hunt and kill for his collection, and the same white crane he would have paid her 10$ for finding. It's actually in my opinion that Sylvia most definitely did the right thing--respecting the earth as it is, instead of selling it out for some short-term reward. And in another way, she not only ended up respecting nature, the earth and all that, but also herself--in a way, this was her independence, her own personal choice she made from what she, herself felt was right, in her heart, from her morals, which takes a lot of guts to do to say the least.