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A Song from the Front Yard
I've stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want to peek at the back
Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it's fine
How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it's fine. Honest, I do.
And I'd like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Paige Haggard
Lynn and Rivers
ENGL 701b
Brooks poem
Essay on Yards
Brooks' poem "A Song from the Front Yard" contrasts the life of law-abidding citizens to the lives of people living outside the norm. The poet awareness of the turmoils of the life on the edge is superimposed over the words of young urban girl romanicized view. The title itself embraces this complexity because it is a song from the front yard about the back yard.
From the very first stanza, the reader is presented with the duality of front versus back. The speaker has "stayed in the front yard all [her] life" yet (or perhaps as a direct result of this sheltering) she wants "to peek at the back/Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows." This backyard "weed" Brooks pairs with a rose ("A girl gets sick of a rose"). First, the very locations of the yards have specific connotations. In the dichotmy of front versus back, the front yard encompasses the face of the house -- in essence, it is public domain. Hence, the activities in the front yard are only those residents of the houses deem sociably acceptable, those that are righteous within the majority. By contrast, the back yard is the private yard. The back yard would naturally contain the back door. The back door is the not the main entrance of the house; more than likely, only family members (and, if in the right social group, servants) would use the back door. "Back door" also has more purient meanings but in general taking on the connotations of events that are best kept secret because they are outside the norm. The back yard is described as rough which would also indicate possible activities outside of typical law abidding citizens. Since the front and back yards represent specific activites, too, they represent the personas which are inclined to do these activities. In fact, the front yard could compare to super-ego and the back yard equated with the id.
Next take the two yards' representative plants. The rose is in the front yard. A rose bush requires much upkeep, needing specifc soil with the correct pH balance, the proper nutrients and appropriate amount of drainage. They are succeptible to many diseases and a number of insects. Compare that to weeds ... weeds, an inspecific term including many kinds of plants, grow anywhere there is soil. Let dirt lay fallow and weeds flourish with no man-made aid. The back yard is "untended" therefore unsupervised, whereas the front is kept up, both for appearances and the welfare of the plants out front. The word " rough" also means any ground, which is overgrown and adds to the meaning of "untended." It is interesting to note that the singular of weed is used and one wonders if perhaps it could be a reference to the infamous weed, marijuana, which would further the illegal aspect of the back yard. Regardless of its smokability, this backyard weed is described as "hungry, " which layers a meaning of eagerness. At this point, it would seem, at least from the speaker's perspective, that the back yard is more robust and consequently more alive than the front yard. The rose of the front is tended and kept public, which could allude to the possibility of pretense as well as propriety; the speaker grows weary of its color and smell. However, the back is vital, if rugged, the weed thriving and hungry for life (and certainly the phenomenon of "munchies" adds more credance for “The Weed” slant).
The speaker declares in the second stanza: "I want go in in the back yard now/And maybe down the alley,/ To where the charity children play." The alley is now added to the back yard as a desirable place for the speaker. Alleys traditionally have negative connotations since they are dark and often offer no escape should danger arise. Speak-easies are an alley phenomenom and shady doctors have offices in alleys. Murders, robberies and rapes take place in alleys. Still it isn’t late at night because the speaker sees only "charity children, " children in some way living off the welfare of the state. The speaker wants to play with these children because she wants "to have a good time today" and those children, "They do some wonderful things. / They have some wonderful fun." Wonderful's a signifcanct adjective for it goes beyond meaning good to meaning, literally, "full of wonder." These children, their seeming freedom, inspire awe and envy within the speaker. It is important that Brooks uses the word "fun" since it means both "amusement" and "ridicule."
The speaker's mother introduces the first element of derision when she "sneers" at their play by presuming these childrens' fates and personality types ["Johnnie Mae/Will grow up to be a bad woman" and "that George'll be taken to Jail soon or late (on account that last winter he sold our back gate."]. Yet these children "dont' have to go in at quarter to nine." This lack of curfew makes their life seem far more desirable than the speaker's current life.
The speaker says "it is fine" twice and then swears, "Honest, I do" – these comments indicate an acceptance of the life and persona one would adopt in the back yard. She'd "like to be a bad woman, too, /And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace. /And strut down the streets with paint on [her] face." This description of "a bad woman" keys into the speaker’s impression of this world. "Brave" means not just "dauntless" but "a fine show" and "excellent" as well. The stockings are black, a traditionally seductive color, and lace, which is very exotic. The speaker imagines herself not just walking but strutting down the street. Make-up is viewed as paint, as decoration, again exotic. The speaker wants a life that she thinks is more interesting, more daring, a life that’s more free than the one she has lived in the front yard.
Even though the speaker's view is quite evident, Brooks makes a alternate view of events evident, within the speaker's own words, that the actuality of the world is vastly different from the superficial romanticized vew, if in fact, the speaker really wants to be a real part of that world. To begin with, the speaker has not been in the back yard ... the song is from the front yard, which forewarns the reader that the speaker is ignorant of the veracity of her image of the back yard. She also says that she wants "to peek in the back." A peek is the brief look so it's not even evident that the speaker fully wants to carry out her thoughts. The back is "rough" has a definition relating to abuse. It is "untended" -- while that lacks an element of supervision it also implies a lack of care. "Hungry" implies that base needs are need met as well as a lack fertility. The fact that the speaker finds wonder in these charity children lends itself to the idea that she is deluded by her own perception to the truth of their situation. While the speaker thinks it great they can stay out past nine, this fact shows evidence that no one is caring for these children and looking after their welfare, thereby making it easy for Johnnie Mae to fall to "a bad woman" and for George to get thrown in jail. The fact that the gate was stolen last winter implies that perhaps it was stolen out of need for money for necessities as opposed to reasons of vandalism or theft for addiction. Additionally, the gate is not essential to the house; George didn't steal money or rob anyone directly ... he merely stole a gate. There is an element of bravado in the speaker's image of herself in brave night-black stocking strutting down the street with a painted face. This element of bravado belies the lower self-esteem from walking the streets for money. The face paint adds to the image of someone hiding behind a facade. While black is often considered provocative, it is also a color of mourning in American society.
The reader gets a true sense of the speaker's longing for a daring life. Yet, Brook's craftily overlays a poetic warning against the allure of the back yard and the "bad" life. Hence with one poem the reader is presented with both a song about the glories and the realities of a reckless life.
Works Cited
Brooks, Gwendolyn. "A Song from the Front Yard." ed. Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair. The Norton
Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.
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After Midnight
The dark streets are deserted,
With only a drugstore glowing
Softly, like a sleeping body;
With one white, naked bulb
In the back, that shines
On suicides and abortions
Who lives in these dark houses?
I am suddenly aware
I might live here myself.
The garage man returns
And puts the change in my hand,
Counting the singles carefully.
Louis Simpson
Paige Haggard
Lynn and Rivers
ENGL 701b
Simpson poem
Midnight Thoughts
In the short poem, Simpson creates tensions between images of the dark streets and the light cast from a drugstore. This interplay of light and dark contrast not just illumination and shadows but the connotation of dealings in the light and dark. However, instead of creating a morality of a dichotomous world, Simpson uses these contrasts to explore alienation within the landscape and within its human inhabitants.
From the very title, "After Midnight," Simpson establishes a scene ... it is after midnight. She describes the streets as dark and deserted, both words reaffirming that is late but they establish a feeling of isolation and the beginnings of foreboding since dark not only means “devoid of light” and “low lit” but “evil” and “secret” as well. The only light is “a drugstore glowing,/Softly, like a sleeping body.” The term “glowing” implies possibly the sort of incandescent light used to illuminate the drugstore or it could also imply that the drugstore is not darkly colored and appears to glow in the gloom of the dark, deserted midnight streets. Perhaps, too, the word "glow" indicates a pallor that is brighter than the darkness but is not necesssarily a positive thing. The adjective adds to the subtle ambiance of the drugstore by comparing it to a sleeping body, implying a lack of activity at the drugstore. However, the word "body" furthers the sense of foreboding introduced in the first line of the poem.
In the second stanza, the reader is told there is “one white, naked bulb / In the back.” Perhaps this bulb is the only source of light for the drugstore. If so , it is important to note that the effect over the whole store is that of glowing but to look at just the white bulb is incredibly harsh. It is uncovered (“naked”) and it casts a direct light -- it both is exposed and exposes. To add to the exposure, the reader is told that this bare bulb “shines / On suicides and abortions” -- thereby, implying the term body again. It is unlikely that actual suicides and abortion take place under the light since such activities would be conducted indoors, yet the fact that the light shines in the back of the drugstore, a location generally associated with shady dealings and socially unpopular activities, implies these sorts of activities take place in the back of the drugstore after hours. Or the description could be metaphorical; the harsh light seems to be the only light in the street so that if anyone were to go to and fro on such business, this light will expose that person, if briefly, to the dark streets. Again, it is appropriate that the time period is after midnight ... a time when things not normally discussed in polite society more readily occur.
It is important to look at the specific word choices of “suicides" and "abortion.” The poet did not choose murder specifically or anything associated with drug deals. While suicides and abortion can be construed as murder in a certain context, they do not imply the same sort of amorality, lack of ethics or even brutality as the word “murder” implies. Suicides and abortions are choices of desperate times, suicides often occurring when a person has lost the will to live, abortion occurring when one can’t afford, physically, emotionally, or financially to support another life. These two decisions add to the feeling of desolation and alienation that the speaker has created within in the first stanza; these are decisions made in desolate and metaphorically midnight hours. Ultimately, there is no company in suicides and abortions. The other important fact about these two incidents is that many people have either considered or been involved in a situation that could have ended in these decisions.
As the speaker views the cityscape with its inherent isolation, he/she wonders “Who lives in these dark house?” Again, the word “dark” is used, again to imply lack of light, which spreads to mean a lack of hope. Naturally, he’s not wondering about the specific names of the tenants ... in fact, he is more than likely meaning not just the inhabitants of these houses but the people who frequent this area in their desperate moments and anyone who finds themselves in such desperate moments. He is also becoming aware how detached from humanity the streets and houses seem. The speaker then declares, “I am suddenly aware / I might live here myself.” The speaker sees that he is not merely baring witness to a few "other" people’s desperation, but he could find himself in or a part of such a desperate moment; he realizes all humans can be pushed these measures, given the right circumstances.
The final stanza brings the speaker out of his ruminations back to his current time and place: “The garage man returns / And put the change in my hand, / Counting the singles carefully.” While this exchange gives the reader a reason as to why the speaker is in this unfamiliar part of town, the exchange also serves to highlight the isolation the speaker has been witnessing. Normally, one would expect the appearance of another human to dispel such dismal thought. Yet the garage doesn’t engage the speaker in conversation but simply counts out the change. The mere word “carefully” implies a concern for money, perhaps both on the part of the garage man as well as the speaker. If the speaker is referring a person who runs a parking garage as opposed to a mechanic (because there is room for both meanings within the text), the act of counting back the change carefully takes on an element of greed as if the man is giving the speaker plenty of reason to tip the garage man well ... again, not something that readily dispels loneliness.
Throughout the poem, Simpson plays with the specific images of light and dark. Ultimately both work together to create a feeling of isolation and desperation as well as playing with our associations with light and dark. Despite social connotations of light and dark, Simpson combines them to explore a theme of isolation and desperation that underlies the entire poem.
Works Cited
Simpson, Louis. "After Midnight." ed. Czelaw Milosz. A Book of Luminous Things. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
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Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it -- it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less --
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty space
Between stars -- on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Robert Frost
Paige Haggard
Lynn and Rivers
ENGL 701b
Frost Poem
Exploration of "Desert Places"
The complexity of Robert Frost's poem "Desert Places" ultimately revolves around how the title sets up expectations of desert places, which Frost twists around with the central image and then continues to twist as he explores other meanings for desert places.
The “Desert Places” immediately sets up the possibility of irony within its title. While the word desert means, “a desolate or forbidding area” and can take on the meaning of “forsaken” as well as “barren,” the word “desert” generally takes on the connation of a specific sort of desolate area, that of an arid wasteland. Yet, Frost disperses this assumption with the first lines and image of the poem, “Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast/ In a field I looked into going past.” The reader is not presented with dry sandy wasteland but with a snowy landscape. The world "field" implies that the area is fertile enough to use to grow crops, which also undermines the original conjecture that the land is barren. Indeed, further into the first stanza, the speaker states “And the ground is almost covered smooth in snow, / But a few weeds and stubble showing last.” The land is not even completely covered with snow; the description implies a few inches of snow and it definitely hints to a sense of fertility in the land. The term “stubble” refers to the stalks of herbs or grasses after the harvest, which might even indicate plants grown for the benefit of man.
We then move to the second stanza: “The woods around it have it -- it is theirs.” Again, the land isn’t barren in the terms of that the land cannot support plant life. However, this fifth line implies a sense of desolation because the woods now “own” the field. The field, at this point, is of no use to man so it is now a part of the woods. The speaker describes the animals as “smothered in their lairs.” “Smother” is a word that means cover with the implication of cutting off air and while we, the readers, know the animals are not cut off from air within their “lairs” or their dens, we can appreciate the feeling of entrapment that the snow encourages. The wild animals can’t really go much out of their dens since it is so cold and while there is some vegetation, there’s not much. The speaker then states that he is “too absent-spirited to count;/ The loneliness includes me unawares.” “Absent-spirited” is a intriguing turn of a phrase. Typically, we would expect the term “absent-minded” which means “lost in thought” or “unaware” so absent-spirited implicates this meaning but, instead of just his attention being absent, the speaker’s spirit is absent. This detail hearkens back to one of the meanings of desert, “desolate.” It seems that he is desolate, too, like the place. Then, the speaker introduces the word “loneliness.” Loneliness refers not just to the animals isolated in the dens but also to the woods and the field since they are now cut off from man by the snow. The speaker himself is included in this loneliness “unawares.” The placement of this adjective is very crafty because it could mean that the speaker is included in the loneliness unawares because he is absent-spirited or it could mean that the loneliness encompasses him without being cognizant of him in particular.
The speaker continues with his use of the word lonely:
“And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less --
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow/
With no expression, nothing to express.”
;
We, the readers, know that he means it will get worse before it gets better but what does he mean by that? The fact that he equates the more loneliness with a “blanker whiteness” would indicate that he is associating the increase of loneliness with an increase in snow, with the blanker whiteness meaning that the snow will soon be thick enough for no weeds or stubble to show through. Hence, the loneliness is connected with the snow and thereby the snow is connected also with this feeling of isolation which would indicate that the loneliness and the snow will get deeper and worse before it gets less, temporally speaking before the spring comes. The adjective “benighted” implies that it’s now night. However this word also has a meaning of “existing in a state of intellectual, moral or social darkness” and while it is obvious that snow itself, an inanimate object, cannot be intellectually, morally or socially dark,the snow does have implications toward society and man latter in the poem. The last line, “With no expression, nothing to express” indicates the snow is all the speaker sees ... the animals are hibernating, there are no other humans around and the plants are covered in snow. This predominance of snow, which has nothing to communicate to the speaker, amplifies the loneliness and adds to the desolation implied in the title.
In the last stanza, the speaker takes the reader out of the snow and the woods -- “They cannot scare me with their empty space / Between stars -- on stars where no human race is.” The “they” would be the scientists or anyone who speaks of outer space and how the speaker phrases the sentiment, “they cannot scare me,” would imply that innate within the facts that there are empty space and stars with no human inhabitants is the ability to scare a listener. Certainly, the idea that in the whole of space there is so much that is inhabitable by humans, so much that is nothing, is a disconcerting fact. Yet, the speaker is not scared by this thought because, as he phrases it, “I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places.” In short, he is not afraid of the emptiness of space because there are so many desert places near home. The phrasing of this line is very ambiguous because he could simply be speaking of the desert place that he is surveying in the snow, which lacks human comfort and closeness, or he could be implying desert places within himself ... the sort of desert places that would make him absent-spirited. If, in fact, he is implying desolation within, then it is very obvious why desert places in spaces don’t scare him -- why should outer space scare him when, being on earth and near to humans, he can, within himself ,tap into a desert place? This idea of inner emptiness links back to the "benighted snow" by associating to a darkness of the intellect, society or morality. If the speaker has such empty spaces within himself, then most men must have the desert places of the souls, an idea which further amplifies why the empty space of outer space shouldn't scare the speaker.
With the title, Frost calls to mind images of deserts yet quickly turns that around with his discussion of the snow. Then, Frost's discourse on the snow leads him to the exploration of other desert places, in space, within himself and within the soul of man, turning at what first glance appears to be a pleasant description of snow into a philosophical discussion.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. "Desert Places." ed. Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair. The Norton
Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.
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The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind
In the sound of the few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens
Paige Haggard
Lynn and Rivers
ENGL 701b
Stevens poem
Observations of "The Snow Man"
Stevens introduces into his poem "The Snow Man" many complexities, whether the complexity relates to multiple meanings for words and words associated with these connotations or the paradox of meaning introduced by the last line of the poem that opens the poem up to several different possibilities of readings:
“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun;”
Mind means “recollection, memory, intention, desire, opinion, view, disposition, mood”: recollection and memory are related; intention and desire are similar, though intention has the connotation of will and thought while desire could have the implication of will as well as instinct combined with emotion; opinion and view are ultimately the same; and disposition and mood appear to be just two words for the same phenomenon. So, one must have either the memory of winter, a winter will, a winter world view, or a wintry mood. Or, to put it more simply, if the ultimate snowman mind has all of the above, one must have the state of being of winter, must be of the essence of winter.
This snow man who is one with the elements of winter would be able to “regard” and “behold” various natural phenomenon. Both regard and behold have the basic meaning of “see” but their connotations are more aloof and more formal in meaning and behold somehow has an element of ritualistic awe since it means “perceive through sight. With regard defined as “to consider and appraise usually from a particular point of view” encourages a meaning of watching with intellectual interest. These word choices hint, with their meanings, at the crucial reason for having a mind of winter, to see this landscape and “not to think/Of any misery in the sound of the wind;” these words which indicate a dispassionate observer that Stevens presents with this twist of this line, someone who does not put his own negative connotations of winter onto the non-emotional landscape.
It is interesting to note the details of the landscape, “the boughs of the pine trees crusted with snow,” “the junipers shagged with ice” and “the spruces rough in the distant glitter” are all images of evergreens covered with some aspect of winter, be it snow, ice or their collective glitter. It is also interesting to note the picturesquely detached manner the visuals of the scenery are depicted. Yet it is the movement to the sound of the landscape that the threat of emotion creeps in ...
“...in the sound of the wind
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
This wind "For the listener, who listens in the snow” (a.k.a. the snow man) holds no misery, no sadness. It is simply the wind. The reason why this listener hears nothing else in the wind is because he is "nothing himself" and therefore "beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." Stevens thereby introduces a paradox at the very end of what seems to be a straightforward scenic poem. The snow man, because he is listening in the snow, because he "one" with winter, doesn't imagine in his sight and sound anything that isn't there, such as emotion, as well as sees the fact that there simply isn't any sort of emotion or foreshadowing in this scenery. He sees the scene as dispassionately, as detached as a camera.
This last line opens the poem up to many different readings. First, Stevens is calling attention to the creative power of the imagination. It is the human mind that sees misery in the trees hanging with snow and ice; it is the human imagination that senses loneliness in the landscape. So is Stevens saying that the snow man must be devoid of emotion, of imagination, to see the scene for what it is? Or does the snow man merely need to acknowledge that his imagination and emotional state taint his perception of the scene and with this acknowledgment make the appropriate accommodations, thereby making himself "nothing"? Or perhaps Stevens is suggesting something more Zen than that ... perhaps he is saying, to witness to true scene of the landscape, the observer must be totally in the winter moment, not caught up in his personal ego. Again, this would result in the snow man being "nothing." Or perhaps, Stevens is merely an actual snow man, the only one who could indeed manage to see the winter scene for what it is because a man made of snow is the only one who would have a mind of winter. An actual snowman, too, would be nothing.
Whether Stevens intended the poem to be a descriptive riddle about a snow man, to be yet another lesson in the creative ability of the mind, or to be an exercise in Zen, is not really the point. The point, in fact, is that, with his choice of words, Stevens opens up the poem to all of these readings, with none of them contradicting or undercutting the others.
Works Cited
Stevens, Wallace. "The Snow Man." The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 1982.
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Paige Haggard
Lynn and Rivers
ENGL 701b
Reader Response
The Story of her Hour
At first, Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" seems to be a story about a woman coming to terms with grief; yet as the story progresses it becomes apparent that this is a story about her anticipated freedom.
It's important to note Mrs. Mallard is only called "Mrs. Mallard." Her maiden name is never used and her first name isn't used until she is "free" of Mr. Mallard. She is basically the only person in the story who has an identity solely dependent on someone else. Brently Mallard is called by his full name twice. Her sister is called by her given name, Josephine, and even though Richards is called by his sir name, it is still his original name. He has been a Richards since birth.
In paragraph three, Chopin tells us that Mrs. Mallard did not hear the news of her husband's death as many women have, "with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." The phrase seems to refer to the phenomenon of people not believing the truth of a catastrophic event at first hearing. This phrase also seems to indicate that Mrs. Mallard is not the sort of person not to look at the truth of a situation when it's staring her dead in the eye. As a result she immediately falls to crying and, "[w]hen the storm of grief had spent itself, she went away to her room alone."
It is alone in her room that Mrs. Mallard comes to terms with the "significance" of her husband's death. As she sits in the chair, sobbing occasionally, staring out the window, Chopin describes the lady's face as young and fair "whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength." The strength detail makes sense since strength is viewed as important when mourning the loss of a loved one. Yet, "repression" is an unusual and unexpected detail to add to the description of Mrs. Mallard.
Mrs. Mallard waits "fearfully" for "something" to come to her. This something is "too subtle and elusive to name." Even as she begins to recognize "the thing that was approaching to possess her... she was striving to beat it back with her will." Since Mrs. Mallard thus far has been depicted as being a strong person and since she is crying, one might assume she is trying to stave off insurmountable grief. The first line of the story tells us that "Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble," one could think she's afraid of facing the grief because it might kill her.
Finally, she abandons herself to this "thing"; when she does, one word escapes from her mouth -- "free." That is an extremely odd comment to come out of a newly-made (within the hour) widow. At this word, "[h]er pulse beats fast, and coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body." This description would make it seem Mrs. Mallard had been dying (her pulse slow, her blood cold) and it is the news of husband's death that revives her.
Chopin tells us that Mrs. Mallard doesn't ask if were "a monstrous joy -- meaning Mrs. Mallard doesn't worry if this life seized from his death is bad. After all, she realizes that she will weep for him again when she sees the body and the reality of his death is undeniable; he "never looked save with love upon her" and he therefore deserves her grief. But Mrs. Mallard, being a woman of strength, can see beyond this moment to "a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely." During these years, she would live for herself. It is from here on that the noun of "repression" makes sense, for "[t]here would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose upon a fellow creature." An intention she realizes "in that brief moment of illumination" is a crime against the other person, regardless of intention.
It is this realization that she is free from another person's expectations, free from another person's identity which rejuvenates Mrs. Mallard's life. She spends the rest of the hour not grieving but thinking of all the possible ways her life might progress with this new freedom. In fact, she "[breathes] a quick prayer that life might be long." When she emerges from her room, Chopin states that "she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory."
Yet this victory is short-lived for no sooner is she downstairs to reclaim her life ,then Brently Mallard walks through the door. Mrs. Mallard drops dead at the sight of him, "died of heart disease -- of joy that kills." These last lines of the story are beautiful. They imply that the doctors think she died because she was overjoyed by the sight of her husband being alive. We, the readers, know of the possible "monstrous joy" that she realized in that "brief moment of illumination." She finally could admit at his death that she did not enjoy living with him, living through him, living for him. And at his death, she realized she was free ... probably more free than she was before him because she now had an established household, more free because, now that she had been married once, she never had to be married again. She never has to subsume her personality for someone else. Indeed, the name Mallard is hers to have uncontested now that Brently Mallard was dead.
However, when Brently Mallard turns out not to be dead, going back to that life, to that "repression" was many times worse. She had in that hour lived many lives; "the story of an hour" was in fact many stories ... all stories of her independence. Hence, when she knew he wasn't dead, it was devastating ... she died as a result of that lure of freedom, a "joy that kills."
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." ed. Steven Lynn. How Literature Matters. Boston: Longman, 2002.
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The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image of out o Spirtus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
Paige Haggard
Lynn & Rivers
ENGL 701b
Deconstruction
"The Second Coming" of Yeats
In its essence, "The Second Coming" is a poem that is deconstructive. There are many lines within the work that invert typical social hierarchies, even typical hierarchies of religions. Yet even with its deconstructive elements, the text can still be deconstructed even further so that even the validity of its prophecy can be called into question.
Within the first stanza of "The Second Coming," Yeats presents many related oppositions in which "[t]hings fall apart" (3). In the first two lines, Yeats describes a falcon flying in ever widening circles because the falconer's call cannot be heard. This image depicts a dominant power unable to exert its power over a submissive element, and therefore the very fact that falcon does not respond to the summons inverts this specific power structure. Yeats tells the reader further that "the center cannot hold" (3); a center implies a structure or form focusing around this center, and the central nature of the center implies its crucial nature -- a wheel without an axis is useless. It follows that if "the centre cannot hold," then the implied structure cannot hold and if the structure cannot hold, then order cannot hold. Order is the function of government and a lack of order would imply chaos which, in turn, leads to the next line of the poem ... "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" (4). Along with anarchy is loosed a "blood-dimmed tide" and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned" (5-6). Already, within six lines, Yeats has inverted several connected binary pairs ... master and slave is inverted and at the heart of that power structure is the image of a circle without a center which directly leads to the opposition of order and anarchy, with anarchy assuming the dominant position of the hierarchy. Anarchy directly leads to a loss of innocence which then leads to the fact that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity" (7-8). Yeats presents a world that is being turned upside down, a world without any stability thereby allowing the detrimental forces of chaos to rule.
Yeats continues to invert the normal, expected order of things; he declares in the stanza: "surely some revelation is at hand;/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand" (9-10). The very phrase "Second Coming" suggest the expected second coming of Jesus Christ and hence the end of the world. Yet, Yeats quickly inverts that expectation with the following lines:
"The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze bland and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant birds." (11-17)
Rather than the return of the benevolent Christ, Yeats perceives an emergence of sphinx-like creature who is diametrically opposed to the accepted conventions of Christ. First, this creature is not even human ... it merely has the head of a man. Rather than compassionate, the beast has a gaze that is "blank and pitiless." Further down the stanza, Yeats describes this creature as a "rough beast" (21) -- again there is an emphasis on its lack of humanity and instead of "gentle" like Christ, it is "rough."
The question remains why does Yeats invert chaos for order, a sphinx for the Son of Man? Perhaps Yeats is depicting the events leading up to the second coming of Christ. While this sphinx is obviously not the beast with seven horns that occurs most frequently in "Revelation," there is an unspecified beast in the eleventh chapter of the book which makes war on two prophets; however, this beast is from the bottomless pit while Yeats' beast if from the desert. Too, the last lines of the poem hint at a different reason for the beast's emergence:
"but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" (18-22)
These lines indicate that this rough beast is being born instead of the Christ child. In fact, Christ's birth disturbed twenty centuries of sleep for the beast, which would mean the beast is older than the Christ child. First,the sheer shape of this creature indicates its antiquity; the idea of the sphinx has been around at least as long as the pyramids which makes it far older than Christ who was only born two thousand years ago. In fact, twenty centuries is two thousand years so the beast existed before his birth and this beast slept during Christ's reign over the earth. Yeats also implies that it's Christ's rule, his "rocking" cradle" that has vexed to nightmare" this sleep. There is the implication as well that it is Christ's rule that has led to the inversion of order in the first stanza. Indeed, there has been much bloodshed in the name of Christ. So perhaps Yeats is taking his deconstruction even further to include the Judeo-Christian background of Western civilization. Perhaps he is suggesting that older gods are disturbed by the dominance of this upstart god, Christ.
Still it's important not to leave the text behind when analyzing Yeats' potential deconstructions. Yeats tells us that this image of the sphinx is a "vast image out of Spiritus Mundi " ... he himself is not witnessing this emergence in person but rather through a vision ... a vision that is sent through the world spirit, which is not to discount the vision but to point out that visions, often by their very nature, are symbolic. He states later in the stanza that after he sees it moving through the desert, "That darkness drops again" (18); this statement indicates the vision is over. Only then does he say that he knows that this creature's sleep has been disturbed by Christ and that it slouches toward Bethlehem for its birth. Since the vision is over, and these details weren't implicit within the vision -- these "facts" are what Yeats personally perceives as the truth from his vision. Hence, we readers are allowed to distrust his comments because they are not even a part of the vision.
The actual meaning of the vision and this particular second coming remains unclear. One can interpret it as events predicted in "revelation" but the words of the poem contradict this interpretation. Or one can interpret the poem as the vengeance of some older god upon a god who has overthrown its worship but since Yeats' receives this information form a vision of a beast striding through the desert, the reader cannot be certain that Yeats himself has interpreted the vision properly. Even as the poem is deconstructive by nature, it still can break down upon carefully inspection of the text.
Works Cited
Yeats, William Butler. "The Second Coming." ed. Steven Lynn. How Literature Matters. Boston: Longman, 2002.
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A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Allen Ginsberg
Paige Haggard
ENGL 701b
Lynn & Rivers
Biographical Essay
Words across Time
It's quite obvious that in "A Supermarket in California" Allen Ginsberg is refering to Walt Whitman's poem "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry." In fact, it would seem Ginsberg's poem is a response to Whitman's since the two poems together read like a dialogue.
Whitman's "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry" is a poem in which Whitman feels a connection with the people which he encounters briefly on the ferry. In sections 1 through 4, Whitman speaks of the women and men whose faces he encounters; he tells them "you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose" (5). Later, he states, "I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence/ Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt/Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd" (21-23) -- not only does Whitman feel a connection to this particular group of people on the ferry but he feels a connection to even their children and to their children's children. Whitman, ever the poet of nature, recounts the beauty of the world around him whether it be in the circling gulls or in the boats in the water.
Within section 5, there's a shift, a shift from the general you of the people passing to a more specific you:
"What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not -- distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around
I too felt the curious abrupt questions stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night...." (54-61)
With this passage, Whitman speaks of his awareness of his homosexuality to the reader. He speaks to the reader as if the reader himself knows not just of these longings but also of the location of these longings; this shared knowledge of place and feeling makes the speaker and the you one. Whitman continues to relate the import of these feelings to his reader in section 6. "It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall/The dark threw its patches down upon me also/The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious, /My great thoughts as I suppposed them, were they not in reality meagre?" (65-68). This section introduces an element of self-doubt to the poem. Whitman goes on to recount his sins ... "I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, /Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd" (71-2).
Whitman's address to this you continues in section 7:
"Closer yet I approach you,
What thoughts have you of me now, I had as much of you -- I laid in my stores in advance,
I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who know but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?" (86-91)
In section 8, Whitman speaks more directly of this connection he feels to his location and to the people of this location -- "What is more subtle that this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face?/ Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?" (96-97). In this moment, the you understands that they are connected just as Whitman understands this.
Whitman ends the poem by directly addressing the world ... he speaks to the river, to the ships, to the hills. He speaks to the people he has watched and he blesses them all. Suddenly the "I" of the speaker switches to a "we" (a logical consequence of the connection with the specific you) and this "we" ends the poem with a benediction for all those Whitman has blessed:
"We fathom you not -- we love you -- there is perfection in you also
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul." (130-132)
Considering the content of the seventh section of "Crosssing the Brooklyn Ferry," it is no coincidence, then, that Ginsberg begins his poem by echoing the seventh section -- "What thoughts I have you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a heaache of self-conscious looking at the full moon" (1). Ginsberg is responding to Whitman and his paean of the interconnection of humanity within the city, continuing this dialogue Whitman opened with his poem. The "'headache of self conscious" refers to Whitman's "curious abrupt questions," to the awareness of homosexual tendencies. Thus, Ginsberg begins his leg of a journey Whitman started almost exactly a hundred years before, only this time Ginsberg ends up in "the neon fruit supermarket" "shopping for images" of inspirations like the ones Whitman enumerated in his free verse time and time again. This image opens the poem up immediately with trippy, ironic humor, ushering immediately in the theme of homosexuality since fruit is slang term for "homsexual." Instead of waxing poetic or being pensive, Ginsberg makes jokes -- "Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!" (3). Yet, admist his quips, Ginsberg hints at the "dark patches" which fell upon Whitman ... "What peaches and what penumbras?" (3). The use of word "penumbra" doesn't just hint at shadows and shades in the Whitman reference but subtly suggests that along with the darkness , there is an element of illumination, just as an eclipse penumbra involves both light and shade. Ginsberg reference to Lorca, another homosexual writer, implies further the source of Ginsberg dis-ease and perhaps the source of his irony, his homosexuality.
Ginsberg sees Whitman "childless, loney old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys ... asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?" (4-5). The image of Whitman, burly and bearded, flirting with grocery boys extends the humor with the use of bananas as phallic symbols and the use the euphomism for penis, "meat." Too, Ginsberg's isolation and Whitman's commadarie are highlighted. Whitman, though in unfamiliar territory, far from the Brooklyn and the late 19th century, is able to attempt communication with the other participants in the image supermarket while Ginsberg can merely bear witness to Whitman's connections as he follows Whitman "in and out of the brillant stacks of cans." The only person interested in Ginsberg is the store dectective and even this is, coffessedly, in Ginsberg's imagination. Just as Whitman connected with the people of his era, he connects to those of Ginsberg's generation and it is through Whitman that Ginsberg attempts to end his own isolation.
Though it is Ginsberg's poem and his "trip," Whitman is the tripmaster, the guide. Ginsberg asks, "Which way does your beard point tonight?" (8) and then reveals his uncomfortable sense of the situation in an aside --"(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)" (9). Unlike the model poet Whitman set forth in his Leaves of Grass, Ginsberg is not a child who goes forth to become what is around him. Ginsberg is a self-conscious kid of the modern era, who used drugs to "cleanse the doors of perception." Yes, he's heir to the Romantic passion of Blake and Whitman but more modern and therefore more prone to feel absurd. And it is this self-consciousness that makes Ginsberg all that much more aware of his loneliness, of his isolation -- "Will we walk all through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in house, we'll both be lonely" (10). Again, the shadows add to the sense of separtion and unlike Whitman, who feels a connection to his specific you, Ginsberg is uncomforted by his companion, in part because he is too aware of the perceived lunacy of a connection that spans a century. The next line reveals the source of separation, at least for Ginsberg; "Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?" (11). Both Whitman and Ginsberg lost an America of love ...Whitman's America was split by slavery and was soon to be at war against itself, and Ginsberg's America was torn not just by police actions against Communism but was also wracked within by the inner turmoil of generations trying to free themselves from the slavery of bigotry. Even the forced American dream of normalcy, consumerism and "democracy." inspires loved lost and tribulation. The last line reiterates Whitman's role of mentor for Ginsberg dubs him "courage-teacher." Whitman was courageous because he dared to write his verse in his form, dared to express his sexuality, dared to express the love he felt for his nation. Ginsberg queries his mentor one last time before the poem's close: "what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?" (12). Indeed, what America did Whitman see at the close of the 19th century ... could he see the first rays of the dawn of the 20th century, the century that took Whitman's pride of democracy to Asian soil to save the world from Communisim?
The beautiful aspect of pairing these two poems is the fact that Whitman could have been speaking to Ginsberg from the past. Born in Jersey and a student of Columbia University, Ginsberg had "walk'd the street of Manhattan island" and it was in New York where he first faced the truth of his homosexuality. It was in Harlem that Ginsberg heard the voice of Blake and found God. And truly what were "the count of the scores ... of years" between these two soul brothers? Is that in fact communion, drawing inspiration from another soul, and isn't genuis honoring those that come before and after you?
Bibilography
Caveney, Graham. Screaming with Joy: the Life of Allen
Ginsberg. New York: Broadway Books, 1999.
Cavitch, David. My Soul and I: the Inner Life of Walt
Whitman. Boston: Beacon PR, 1985.
ed. Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair. The Norton
Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.
Simpson, Louis. A Revolution in Taste. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc, 1978.
Allen, Gay Wilson. Walt Whitman. New York: Grove PR,
Inc., 1961.
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Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
1
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west -- sun there half an hour high -- I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple compact, well-joined scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
3
It avails not, time nor place -- distance avails not,
I am with you, you mean and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you on the river and sky, s I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd.
Just you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.
I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south, Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water,
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw abroad those that were near me,
saw the white sails of schooner and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the beg steam -tug closely flank'd on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with red and yellow light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same -- others who look back on me because I look'd forward to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night).
5
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it, it avails not -- distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receive'd identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.
6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone you know what it is to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusal, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.
Was one with the rest, the day s and haps of the rest,
Was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms one my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told
them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part of that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you – I laid in my stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should some home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
8
Ah what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my f ace?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach – what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?
9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out question and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, living and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! lay the part that looks back on the actor or the actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from, you!
Diverge, the fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'd schooner, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,
Thrive, cites -- bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is more lasting.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate hence forward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside -- we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not -- we love you -- there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
Walt Whitman
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Paige Haggard
Lynn and Rivers
ENGL 701b
Psychological Paper
Soul Divided
Jung defines the animus as the male aspect of the female soul and the anima as the female aspect of the male soul. Both the anima and the animus are necessary for a well-balanced, self-actualized soul. There is much language throughout the play Othello that depict Othello and Desdemona in their appropriate gender roles, and indeed, it would seem that Othello is the manifestation in flesh of Desdemona's animus, just as Desdemona is the physical form of the Othello's anima. This soulful bond between the two was so strong that Desdemona could not deny Othello anything, not even her own life, and Othello could not live without Desdemona once he had murdered her.
The language of the text in reference to both Othello and Desdemona illustrate their gender roles. Desdemona is frequently described using typically feminine terms. She is called "gentle Desdemona" (1.2.25), referred to as "gentle mistress" (1.3180) and "gentle lady" (2.1.120) and described by Cassio as "a most fresh and delicate creature" (2.2.171). Othello uses the words "sweet" (2.1.201) and "sweeting" (2.2.224) as well as "sweet Desdemona" (3.1.57) as terms of endearment for her. All of these terms bring to mind the first half of that nursery rhyme which tell us what little girls are made of ... "sugar and spice and everything nice." Desdemona is even described as "Virtuous Desdemona" (3.1.31) and Cassio states that she has "An inviting eye and methinks right modest" (2.2.20). Her father doesn't believe that Desdemona would be so rash as to elope because she is "A maiden never bold;/Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion /Blushed at herself" (1.3.157-61). So, Desdemona is the paragon of feminine beauty and modesty, gentle and sweet. She also acts within the appropriate female role of sympathizer and nurturer. It is her compassion for Othello's travails that inclines her to fall in love with Othello:
"I did consent
And often did beguile her of her tears
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth had suffered. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs" (1.3.157-61).
In Act 3, Scene 3, when Othello complains of having a headache, she is quick to try to ease the pain by applying pressure to it with her handkerchief. Moreover, Desdemona embodies the womanly virtue of duty. She admits to her father, "I do perceive here a divided duty/To you I am bound for life and education .... But here's my husband..." (1.3.182-187); just as her mother before her, she chooses to follow her husband. Even when Othello strikes her in Act 4, she dutifully obeys him, leaving him and then quickly returning at his command.
Othello, too, is described appropriately for his role of male. He is referred to as the "Valiant Moor" (1.3.49) and as the "Noble Moor"( 4.1.251). The very fact that he is a general and is held in high respect by the Venetian government speaks to his maleness. The Duke sends for Othello audience as soon as he has word of the Turks invading Cyprus, which again says much about his status as a male. The stories he relates to the Brabantio (as well to the Duke in defense of his elopement) are a warrior's tales; he speaks of "disastrous chances" (1.3.136) and "hairbreadth scapes" (1.3.138). Othello tells how he was "taken by the insolent foe/And sold into slavery, of his redemption thence" (1.3.139-40). As any good man of action, Othello freely admits:
"Rude am I in speech,
And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace
For since these arms of mine had seven years pith ...
They have used their dearest action in the tented field;
And little of this great world can I speak
More than pertains to feats of broils and battle" (1.3.83-89).
He is a fighter, not a talker. He is a man, strong and brave who's lived a man's life. Later in the scene, he admits, "I do agrize/A natural and prompt alacrity /I find in hardness" (1.3.232-234), again underlying the fact that he is not soft or womanly but a man.
Othello and Desdemona are drawn to each other because they are opposites -- "She loved me for the dangers I had passed,/And I loved her that she did pity them" (1.3.169-70). Desdemona even "wished/That heaven had made her such a man" (1.3.164-65); it would seem she had found her animus. And Othello, "upon this hint" (1.3.168), wooed and won her, his anima.
Jung believed that the anima/animus balanced the soul and so it would follow that Othello's love for Desdemona balanced his soul and her love him balances her soul. She is quick to state in the third scene of Act 1that if she were left behind while he goes to war that it would be "a heavy interim [that] support / By his dear absence" (259-60). She also states that, "My heart's subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord" (251-52). Later, Othello states "My life upon her faith" (1.3.295), which shows that his life is made better through her love. When they are reunited on Cyprus, Othello proclaims that through Desdemona, "My soul hath her content so absolute/That not another comfort like to this/ Succeeds in unknown fate" (2.1.182-86); for the first time, Othello, the warrior, has found peace. Later, in Scene Three of Act Two, he states, ominously, "And when I love thee not/Chaos is come again" (99-100).
What also speaks to the idea that they are each other's soul complement is the fact that, once they are united through love, they take on the traits of the other sex, both through action and through words. Desdemona defends her rash actions to the Duke and her father in the third scene of the first act:
"That I did love the Moor to live with him
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world. " (249-51)
Remember, this is coming from the girl that would blush at her own actions; it would seem her love for the Moor inspires her to bravery. In first scene of Act 2, Cassio describes her as "our captain's captain" (761), just as Iago claims later in the act, in the third scene, that "Our general's wife is now the general" (273). Othello calls her his "fair warrior" (2.1.174). In the first scene on Cyprus, Othello realizes he is more in touch with his feminine side when he states, "I prattle out of fashion and I dote / In mine own comforts" (2.3.202-3), since verbosity was general a trait ascribed to women. The fact that they can inspire the other to act or be described in the fashion of opposite gender illustrates that they are each other's soul complement.
However, the most overwhelming evidence that Desdemona is Othello's anima and he her animus is the fact that Othello loses all reason once he begins to doubt Desdemona's faithfulness, which consequently leads to both them losing their lives; it was just as he predicted, "when I love thee not/Chaos is come again" (99-100). In the beginning of the play, when Othello is safe in Desdemona's love, he is very calm and rational. In the first scene of the play, he ensures that his men and Brabantio's attendants do not fight. In the second act, he ends the brawl between Cassio and Montavo; in fact, he relieves Cassio of his duty because of rash behavior. Yet, once Iago's poison of lies takes effect, Othello loses his calm. He proclaims to Iago, "Thou hast set me on the rack" (3.2.351) and even before he has any real proof, he yells he'll "tear her to pieces" (3.3.446). In Act 4, he is so overwhelmed with turmoil at the thought of Desdemona's infidelity, he falls into a trance. He is incapable of keeping his temper ... he hits Desdemona for no reason and constantly harangues her. In the second scene of the fourth act, he doesn't so much ask her if she's faithful as he accuses her of and berates her for being a whore. Desdemona foreshadows her demise with these lines: "His unkindness may defeat my life/but never taint my love" (4.2.167-8). Once Othello realizes what he's done, killed his true love, he, must die as well for he can't live without part of his soul -- "why should honor outlive honesty" (5.2.254)?
Thus, after looking at the text as a whole, there are many indications that Othello and Desdemona had found something special in one another. He had found the female complement to his warrior self, and she had found her champion, her animus. Too, it is because of this special bound that made their tragic ending inevitable. A soul cannot live easily when it mistrusts half of itself, nor can it live when half of it is dead.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Othello. ed. Steven Lynn. How Literature Matters. Boston: Longman, 2002. 953-1072.
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Paige Haggard
ENGL 701b
Rivers and Lynn
Political Paper
America Is from Mars
The cultures Ralph Salisbury features in "Hoopa, the White Deer Dance" are mainly American and Hupa. What is intriguing about the representation of American society is that it highlights the aggressive and short-sighted nature of American society. Contrasted with this belligerent aspect of American are the peaceful ways of the Hupa
Havel himself associates solely with the role of soldier stating his "own perspective had been that of reluctant soldier, drinking beers, inhaling joyful smoke, pontificating about baseball ... seeking solace from a girl's magazine photo"(134). His troop takes the place of a family unit; Havel even had a father figure in this military tribe "Even though Havel's buddy had been black and only twenty, he had been the capable, stalwart father Havel had known from two to five "(134). Indeed, active military duty is the only society that both Havel and his father fully share. Havel's father was in both World War II and the Korean War. To further highlight the bellicose tendencies of the US, Salisbury points out that "half of Havel's ancestors [had] dispossessed and subjugated the other half" as Havel wonders whether "the new US slogan, 'Make Love, No War,' only [means] make soldiers for future invasions"(134).
Too, the true representative of the US Society, the drunk tourist, supports this violent aspect of American society. From his first entrance into the story, the tourist is belligerent, trying to force the worth of his dollars onto Hupa culture. When the Hook dancer neglects to take the bait of currency, the tourist becomes irate with a tribe that doesn't subscribe to his consumeristic impulse: "You've got a one hell of a tourist attraction here, yelling that 'Hate, Hate, Hate!' at folks whose taxes feed you"(139). In essence, the tribe owes him a spectacle in exchange for his tax money. Later, he runs into one of the trucks of the tribe. He immediately gets out of his car to intimidate a near-by Hupa and the tourist spews violence instead of remorse.
The critique on US society is implicit in the juxtaposition with the Hupa tribe. The tourists are upset that there are no war dances or war bonnets. Instead, tourists are met with ceremonies which encourages forgiveness. At a point where another culture will connect with Hoopa culture, the Hupa choose The White Deer Ceremonies in which "the Hupa forgive every insult, real or imagined, every hurt, intended or accidental"(136). This is powerful medicine to make public -- a medicine that actualizes the magnanimity and humanitarianism that US government often pays lip service but rarely fulfills. It is important to keep in mind that the Hupa are never violent throughout the entire text ... not even toward the drunk tourist. It is only through the matched violence of Ann and Horseman that the tourist's violence is quelled and neither of Ann nor Horseman are members of the Hupa society. The Medicine Woman fully exemplifies this peaceful impulse of the Hupa as she presents the reality of Havel's mom's situation. The Medicine Woman is not excusing these actions because she is warning Havel against becoming like his mother, her niece. Yet by explaining the motivations of his mom's actions, the Medicine Woman is allowing Havel to find that place of peace within himself.
Salisbury critique is not just the aggressive emphasis of the US but also of America's short-sightedness. The push of the Cherokee from their lands into the hills surrounding Cherokee land and with the Trail of Tears highlights the fact that the US government focused solely on the immediate needs of the white populace ... nevermind there was an entire continent to meet the needs of this white populace. Salisbury illustrates with the details of past US war slogans ["The Crusade Against Totalitarism," "The Crusade against Communism" and "The War to End All Wars" (138)] how the US. citizens focus merely on the current moment of war as if there will be no other moment of relevance in the future. In the next paragraph, Salisbury brings up the fact that US took over Bikini Island to test out nuclear bombs. This event was catastrophic to the people of Bikini Island because they were moved to Rongerik Atoll Island and most of the islanders nearly starved to death because US supplies were insufficient and the island ecosystem could not support that large number of people. This careless scientific endeavor is immortalized not any sort of memorial but in the frivolous use of the word "bikini" as a swimsuit. The Havel's troop in Vietname further illustrates the limited vision of the US. Granted, the soldiers of Vietnam were forced into an artificial state of "now" because they didn't know if they would have a next day or next week but their acts, like raping the women of Vietnam, belie that they cannot comprehend beyond their own basic needs. The tourist symbolizes this as well. He is only concerned with gratifying his immediate desires, like his need for memorabilia, as typified with his Thunderbird embossed wallet, or in simply venting his frustration on innocent bystanders. Too, Havel has inherited this virus of myopia. He cannot help Ann with the decision of abortion, and he cannot immediately go seek her out; he cannot see nor believe in the future and therefore cannot act in any manner for it.
On the other hand, even the most close-minded of the Hupa, the man who calls Ann "walkie-talkie woman," the one who seems to reduce the connection between men and women to the mere act of copulation, has some sense of the future, some sense outside of himself. Yes, he is showing hints of bigotry by saying "'White girls turn to fancy laundry-ger-ie and purri-fumes and powerder" (135) but he can still comprehend the future ... it just so happens by his standards white women turn more fake with the progression of time. Naturally, the Medicine Woman is more fully attuned to the future. She says to Havel that the reason he could fix her chair was because he could sense himself old and needing such a chair. She tells him, "Don't stand around like some gawking tourist not know what to do, not knowing how to live one breath of his life let alone live some years of grandkids from now" (140-41). In short, she tells him to feel within himself this moment and all the moments ahead of him. And it is this advice, this acceptance of the fact of the future, that enables Havel to finally live. The magic of Hupa medicine works on Havel; the representation of the problems of the melting pot of America finds the courage to believe in the future and move forward, from the static present into a present which is moving forward.
And it is within Havel we see the mission of Salisbury, "Hoopa, the White Deer Dance." It is not simply to criticize the US and illustrate the righteous ways of Native American cultures. Salisbury's goal is the same goal of the White Deer Dance -- to initiate healing and forgiveness so that we can all move from a present stagnated by a festering past and move a present alive with the hope of the future.
Works Cited
Salisbury, Ralph. "Hoopa, the White Deer Dance." The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 1999. ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. New York: St. Martin's Press,1998.
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