The "Laws of Probability"

"The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born" ("The Lottery," 265).

"Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villages, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd" (266).

All right, Perrine, you're asking for it; I've whipped out math in blogs before this one, and I'm not afraid to do it again. I quote the third question. "What normal law of probability has been suspended in this story? Granting this initial implausibility, does the story proceed naturally?"

At first, I wasn't sure what Perrine was talking about, but then I had a little epiphany. Perrine wants to know what happened during the lottery that was implausible. For Perrine, I have two answers, and then I will explode on him.

First, Old Man Warner is "the oldest man in town" (5). Some people might find it odd that someone as old as Old Man Warner would have survived the lottery every year of his life and classify that as "implausible." Second, Tessie Hutchinson was the one person who showed up late to the lottery, and it just so happened that she was the . . . winner (77-79). Is that at all likely?

My first objective in this post is to determine the plausibility of these two scenarios. I'm going to make two assumptions so I can do the math: the population of this village has remained constant at 300 people during Old Man Warner's entire life, and Old Man Warner (OMW, for short) is 150 years old (a generously high age).

• The probability of OMW's survival of the lottery for his entire life is (299/300)^150, or about a 60.6% chance.
• The probability of Tessie's death as the sole latecomer is simply (1/300), or about a 0.3% chance.
• The probability of any person winning the lottery is also (1/300), or about a 0.3% chance.

Certainly, the more implausible case of the first two is the second one -- it's extremely unlikely that the sole latecomer to the lottery would be the winner. Surprisingly, it's somewhat likely that someone can live to be 150 years old without winning the lottery in the village.

My second objective in this post is to say this very clearly. NO NORMAL LAW OF PROBABILITY HAS BEEN SUSPENDED, AND YOUR SENTENCE USES PASSIVE VOICE. I feel very strongly about this. Just because it was unlikely that Tessie (the only person who came late) would be stoned does not mean that a law of probability was suspended. The laws of probability always stand, even when the most likely outcome does not occur.

Unless someone can convince me that Perrine was referring to some other rule of probability, I will remain angry at him. Perrine, you stick to literature, and I'll stick to math, and we won't have to cross each other anymore once I finish this class.

Jovial and Whimsical Tone

Haha, just kidding.

"Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside, too" ("Popular Mechanics," 1).

The setting in the story is very vague -- first, the characters were "in the bedroom" (2), and then they moved "into the kitchen" (19). Other than that, there are few concrete details in the setting.

What we know from the first paragraph is the weather outside and its relationship with the moods of the characters in the story. The snow was "melting into dirty water," and the darkness outside reflected the darkness "on the inside" of the characters. The darkness shows up again when the kitchen window gives "no light" (31). That dark and dreary setting sets a gloomy atmosphere of the story. Certainly, the darkness also lives within the characters due to their actions (particularly at the end -- I can't say what happened specifically, but I'm pretty sure that baby is a goner).

There is one more setting detail. The beginning of the story is in the bedroom, but when the male character moves toward the female, she takes "a step back into the kitchen" (19). That little move -- that tiny shift in setting -- was kind of a defensive move, and it foreshadowed the escalation of their argument over the baby.

Additionally, I've been informed that "Popular Mechanics" is the name of a magazine, which I didn't know. My initial reaction to the title was that it meant "things that people do on a regular basis." If that's the case, then the title applies this story to life in general, and it becomes an allegory for any kind of conflict in which an issue is decided suddenly without thinking of consequences.

"And lying, she knew, was a sin."

"Zoe came up, slow, from behind and gave him a shove. His arms slipped forward, off the railing, out over the street. Beer spilled out of his bottle, raining twenty stories down to the street" ("You're Ugly, Too," 194).

But don't worry -- she was just joking! It reminds me of a certain Kenny who points a gun at a certain Tub to play a joke on him, but that one is a little bit more extreme.

I learned the different between verbal irony and sarcasm when I read the preface to one of the poetry units. Much like the difference between situational irony and coincidence, nobody seems to know it. I'm not even sure that I know what the difference is, but here it is. Verbal irony is any general instance of saying one thing but meaning another. Sarcasm is more specific and is sometimes a type of verbal irony; however, it's more abrasive or offensive. The difference between the two is easily observed (sorry about the passive voice -- I'm on a tight schedule) in the character of Zoe.

"She used to insist it was irony, something gently layered and sophisticated, something alien to the Midwest, but her students kept calling it sarcasm, something they felt qualified to recognize, and now she had to agree. It wasn't irony" (6). I'm here to argue that while sometimes she is definitely sarcastic, there are times when she is just being ironic.

When Zoe says that an "ultrasound" sounds like "a really great stereo system," she is not being sarcastic because her words are not harsh (57). Really, once the funny part is over, it's just kind of a sad statement. On the other hand, the joke about "you're ugly, too" is sarcastic (66). And since somebody is offended in sarcasm, it's that much funnier.

I'm not sure what else I wanted to cover in this post. Oh, yes. I think the point of the story could be to point out when humor goes too far, and I quoted the most concrete example of that in the story at the beginning of my post.

Does humor ever really go too far, though?

"And isn't it ironic?"

"'My brave little man!' she said with her eyes shining. 'It was God did it you were there. You were his guardian angel'" ("The Drunkard," 84).

Allow me to point out to the mother that only one page ago, this "guardian angel" was drunk on the streets threatening and cursing at old women (68-70). One of the questions in the book asks about the principal irony in the story, so I've come up with a list of possibilities. The irony in this story, if I'm not mistaken, is situational irony, and here are a few examples of that within the story:

• As I quoted previously, the mother praised her little boy for being "brave" and his father's "guardian angel," praise one wouldn't expect going to a boy who drank an entire glass of porter (34).
• The literal "drunkard" in the story is the father -- drinking is his "greatest weakness" (11) -- yet the only character who gets drunk in the story is a little boy (whose age is probably somewhere around ten as he is on the cusp of being able to look after his younger sibling -- 15).
• The little boy saved his father from drinking during the story by means of drinking himself. Not . . . drinking himself -- "himself" is not an object of the gerund in my last sentence.

To determine the main irony in "The Drunkard," I can probably combine the three situational ironies above into one grand ironic statement. The little boy in "The Drunkard" prevents his alcoholic father from drinking and wins the praise of his mother by drinking alcohol himself.

A lot of people -- including songwriters -- have trouble understanding irony, so I thought I might help with this quote from Hank Green: "Alanis Morissette, when you get a death row pardon two minutes too late, that is extremely unfortunate. It is not, however, ironic."

Google Autocomplete: Always Proving That People Are Weird

"'Why does she come here at all -- who wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old mug at home?'

'It's her fu-fur which is so funny,' giggled the girl. 'It's exactly like a fried whiting'" ("Miss Brill," 13-14).

This post is dedicated to my small group. Think of this as a position blog -- I'm here to prove you wrong. (That sounds like a good, Christian life motto for me!) My position: Miss Brill is a dynamic character.

"Every Sunday," Miss Brill spent her afternoon eavesdropping on the lives of other people, and she never failed to show up to "her part" as "an actress" (9). Additionally, "she usually bought a slice of honeycake at the bakers" afterward (17). As usual, Miss Brill showed up for the "play" on this Sunday; however, she "passed the baker's by" this time (18). Something about what the boy and girl said to Miss Brill caused a change in her character.

That final paragraph goes on to describe how she entered her little "cupboard" of a room, quickly put away her fur, and "thought she heard something crying." What could possibly have been crying in her bedroom? No, Jimmy -- not a cat, not Miss Brill's ghost, and not the ghost of Miss Brill who was actually a cat the whole time (though that would be an excellent plot twist). I think it was Miss Brill who was crying.

Maybe she was still suppressing part of the truth of her depressing lifestyle, but she could no longer suppress it entirely. She has a life with no real communication, and no real friends; during the story, she came to some sort of realization, so she is dynamic. Therefore:

Yes, yes, dynamic, yes, no, yes, that's not a question, yes, and that's also not a question.

"Wait a minute -- the cat!"

"Then the man and his wife burst wildly into the garden and for some reason (the cat, probably) the alarm set up wailing against the screams while the bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coil with saws, wire-cutters, choppers, and they carried it -- the man, the wife, the hysterical trusted housemaid [sic] and the weeping gardener -- into the house" ("Once upon a Time," 18).

That sentence is so good that I forgive the lack of Oxford comma (which doesn't happen very often). This is my kind of story. Situational irony arguably tops my list of favorite literary devices, and there's plenty of situational irony here I can talk about. About which . . . I can talk. Here we go!

The more this family and their neighbors upped their houses' security systems, the less safe the family and the neighbors actually were. "Under cover of the electronic harpies' discourse intruders sawed the iron bars and broke into homes, taking away hi-fi equipment, television sets, cassette players [what are those?], cameras and radios, jewelry and clothing, and sometimes were hungry enough to devour everything in the refrigerator or paused audaciously to drink the whiskey in the cabinets or patio bars" (12). What gave the intruders this ability? Why, the burglar alarm systems, of course. People were so accustomed to frequent false alarms that intruders could easily break into homes during a frenzy of shrilling alarms.

Then, the family's little boy was reduced to a bleeding mass, and I'm not going to quote that part again. What was the direct cause of the boy's fate? Why, the family's new security wall, of course. Childlike curiosity led the boy into the trap intended not for him but for intruders. Here's a picture of a concentration camp fence, referenced in the story (16):

One of the more obvious situational ironies was the phrase "happily ever after" (9), which unfortunately no longer applied to the family after the story's conclusion.

Needless to say, it was THE CAT:

"Your bird -- there was nothing I could do -- he just caught fire!"

"'I in the thorny bush,' she said. 'Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush'" ("A Worn Path," 8).

Here is my precise, well-developed sentence that states as fully as possible the theme of the story, avoiding cliches and oversimplification, which is probably inferior to the themes that other people find: "Persistence and courage, more than age and strength, can lead to a humble yet satisfying reward." And now, I will support that.

The first half of my theme: Phoenix exhibits "persistence and courage," even though her "age and strength" are serious obstacles. Throughout the story, Phoenix overcame several obstacles on her journey -- she persevered through a thorny bush (8), mounted a log (13), encountered a ghost-like scarecrow (24), faced a hunter's dog (35), and stared down the barrel of a gun (55). Her response to all of these situations was pure fearlessness. Phoenix is an "old Negro woman" (1), her eyes "blue with age" (2), but her endurance and fearlessness ultimately lead her to her reward. What a nice lead-in to the second half of my theme!

The second half of my theme: Phoenix's reward was "humble yet satisfying." According to the nurse, the old woman makes trips "as regular as clockwork" (78) because her grandson has a throat problem (84). With the two nickels she acquired along her journey, she decided to buy her sick grandson a little windmill (103). At the close of the story, Phoenix shows her appreciation with a "little nod" and amazingly continued on her journey (104). Something about going to Hell and back again for her grandson gives her a sense of satisfaction because she keeps doing it.

I feel I should add that the tears of a phoenix have tremendous healing powers, and the claws of a phoenix can gouge out the eyes of a basilisk. Fawkes is pretty humble, persistent, and courageous in Harry Potter. Maybe that's how Eudora Welty decided to name her character "Phoenix."

Pros and Cons

"No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!" ("Eveline," 24).

The sixth question for "Eveline" in Perrine's awkwardly shaped textbook asks if Eveline decided not to board the ship. My answer is that she could have made a logical decision based on her feelings about her present circumstances and her potential life with Frank, but Eveline herself never made that conscious decision. First, let's look at the pros and cons of Eveline's life, which Eveline should have done more critically:

Pros: Her home is "familiar" to her, and she "never dreamed of being divided" from the objects within her house -- she shows no desire to part with that familiarity (3). Additionally, while her father can be violent, threatening, frugal, restrictive, and completely incompetent, he can be "very nice" sometimes and made her toast once (13). Who could leave a model father like that? In all seriousness, Eveline has a connection to her father not because he is an apt father but because he is her father. Finally, she promised her dead mother that she would "keep the home together as long as she could" (14). To be clear, she made the promise when her dead mother was alive.

Cons: Eveline works extremely hard "in the Stores" for her family, and her supervisor, Miss Gavan, was demanding of her (5). I already listed the cons of her father within the pros, but I can repeat them: "violent, threatening, frugal, restrictive, and completely incompetent" (9). In addition to the difficult life at home, Eveline has a potential life with promise. In Buenos Aires, Eveline would marry Frank, who is "kind," "manly," and "open-hearted" (10). Spell check thinks I should change "open-hearted" to "open-heated" -- perhaps this is an indication of Frank's loving warmth. This potential life serves as a kind of foil to her present life in Dublin.

How did Eveline finally make the decision not to board the ship? For the same reason that I think she is the one of the most annoying characters we have encountered in this class; Eveline made a last minute decision, and it seems like there was no will in the decision. She "prayed to God to direct her," so there could have been some divine intervention (19). When a metaphorical "bell clanged upon her heart," Eveline had an epiphany that Frank would metaphorically "drown her" (20-22). "No! No! No! It was impossible" (24). Eveline could not decide to leave with Frank, for whatever sudden reason, which probably had something to do with a theme having to do with a spiritual connection to one's home that prevents him from exploring new destinations.

With submission, sir . . .

"So that Turkey's paroxysms only coming on about twelve o'clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other like guards" ("Bartleby the Scrivener," 13).

Question Thirteen asks about humor, so let's talk about the humor.

I found this story a bit tedious but genuinely funny. The images of certain characters was extremely humorous to me -- it took a while for me to recover after the "guards" simile. What it does is characterizes Turkey and Nippers in a very engaging way; it also creates some sympathy for the narrator, who has to deal with exactly one ill-tempered person at a time. The little repetitive phrases like "with submission, sir" (Turkey, various moments) also served as what I thought were funny characterization methods. There are other instances like this, but let's turn to Bartleby.

There's a strong contrast between the narrator and Bartleby when the narrator asks for something to be done. For example, when the narrator first explained that Bartleby needed to help examine the copies, he did so "hurriedly" with little patience (30). Bartleby, on the other hand, always maintained composure, no matter how weird he was. There are very ironic moments where the narrator will describe how intensely hardworking Bartleby is, and then Bartleby will inconsistently be of no assistance to the narrator.

Then again, I couldn't stop laughing when I was reading the poem "Edward," so I probably have little right to speak on the subject of humor.

I would prefer not to analyze this story.

"The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men?" ("Bartleby the Scrivener," 250).

Question Eight asks about Bartleby's motivation behind his behavior, Melville's motivation behind his withholding this piece of information, and the extent to which this information adequately explains Bartleby. So I'm going to answer about it!

The narrator suggests that if Bartleby were already pallidly hopeless, working in the Dead Letter Office would make him even more hopeless. If this rumor is true, which is all I can assume, then Bartleby spent a great deal of time sorting dead letters for destruction -- letters, bank notes, rings never to be delivered. Bartleby's "I would prefer not to" attitude may not be annoying as much as it is hopeless. If I lacked hope to the extent that Bartleby did, I would have trouble working as a copyist, too -- perhaps not to Bartleby's extent, but characters have to be exaggerated.

So why does Melville hold off this last piece of information? I think that Melville wants us to detest Bartleby during the story. How annoying is it that he refuses to be of any additional help to the narrator? How creepy is it that he stays in the office for abnormal amounts of time and refuses to leave even when the office is gone? Then, once we have this crucial piece of information, we might (reluctantly) develop a feeling of pity for Bartleby. It's kind of like a guilt trip, I think. We spend the entire three hours we read the story being put off by Bartleby's words and actions when we fail to consider what traumatic past he may have endured. Bartleby may seem flat on the surface but is very round on the inside. I'm not calling him fat.

This is kind of morphing into a bland theme of "don't judge someone because you don't know what his situation is." Melville says it better. Albeit much longer.

I hate Kenny. Haha, just kidding.

"Kenny turned to Tub. 'I hate you.'

Tub shot from the waist" ("Hunters in the Snow," 79-80).

Let's synthesize the last two units! There are several instances in the story where plot and characterization work together, and important plot points are arguably a direct result of characeters' personalities.

Example One: "You Shot Me"

Kenny's character is described very richly in the beginning of the story; a huge part of his character is his inability to know where to stop a practical joke. He nearly ran over Tub on the first page of the story, but Kenny was "just messing around" (7). He provoked Frank about a secret babysitter situation, but Kenny laughed it off (22). Unsurprisingly, this got him into a wee bit of trouble. Kenny pretended to shoot a post, a tree, and a dog out of hatred (71-78). A direct result of this character trait was Tub's shooting Kenny out of personal defense (80). I had no idea it was a joke until Kenny said he was "just kidding around" again (84).

Example Two: We Don't Need Directions

The farmer gave Tub and Frank directions to the nearest hospital, but Tub left them "on the table back there" at a bar where they stopped (209). Tub's character is revealed throughout the story to be, well, not very quick in the mind. Or the body. As an ultimate result, the three characters never arrived at the hospital in time to help Kenny (239). Good work, Tub.

If I could find it, I would embed the clip of "Pirates of the Caribbean" where the guy says, "He shot me!" Just so you know.

An "Aha Moment"

"I did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open" ("Everyday Use," 76).

Mrs. Johnson's unprecedented words and actions with Dee illustrate a major change in character -- the narrator is a dynamic character. Both Mrs. Johnson's motivation and foreshadowing throughout the story make this a fitting shift in character.

I would describe both the narrator and Maggie as "simple." Mrs. Johnson is a rough, hardworking mother, and Maggie lacks "good looks," "money," and "quickness," much like her mother (13). While Mrs. Johnson and Maggie share this special connection, Dee has developed a different "style," which the narrator passively resented (12). "No" was a word Mrs. Johnson has rarely spoken to her eldest daughter (2). That's the before situation -- there is a conflict between Dee and her mother, and I knew it would be resolved, probably by her mother finally saying that word, "no."

Several plot elements probably drove the mother to refuse to let Dee have her mother's quilts. Dee detached herself from her "oppressive" family by changing her name to "Wangero" (25). Then, she took the family's churn top, a tool both beautiful and useful to Mrs. Johnson (54). Then, when the narrator suddenly refused to allow Dee to take the quilts, Dee accused her of not understanding her heritage (81).

I attribute the narrator's sudden shift to an epiphany, and I believe that this change in character is permanent -- it fits perfectly. The narrator made a promise to Maggie (64) -- or at least said she did -- because she is legitimately closer to Maggie. Additionally, Dee's actions were inconsistent; she abandoned her family name, yet accused Mrs. Johnson of not understanding her heritage. Go, Mrs. Johnson!

Also, Big Dee (in video game form -- 0:33):

Evidence that I need to sleep:

"We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that" ("A Rose for Emily," 28).

This is not going to be one of my most profound blog posts. I would just like to express my confusion and theories about the conflicts within these three short stories. Specifically, I'm going to try to identify the protagonists and the antagonists of all of the stories, which is mostly speculative and kind of difficult for me. I don't expect these to be completely accurate. Then, I will pose a question about "A Rose for Emily."

How I Met My Husband:

• Protagonist: Edie (the central character -- this one is easy to identify)
• Antagonist: Herself (maybe? Specifically, Edie's past self before she became "wiser")

Interpreter of Maladies:

• Protagonist: Mr. Kapasi (alternatively, Mrs. Das, as a lot of action revolves around her)
• Antagonist: Umm, himself (an internal conflict about Mrs. Das, perhaps; if the protagonist is Mrs. Das, I would say the antagonist is herself, as well, due to her unstable family life)

A Rose for Emily:

• Protagonist: Emily (alternatively, the town as a collective "we," but the action revolves more around Emily, I think)
• Antagonist: The town ("we"), who always seem to be working against her (alternatively, Emily if the town is the protagonist)

Here's my question. Let's say that the protagonist of "A Rose for Emily" is indeed Emily. Recalling that the book defines a "happy ending" as the solving of the protagonist's problems, and observing that Emily solved her problem with Homer by murdering him, doesn't "A Rose for Emily" have a happy ending?

"Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of use lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair" ("A Rose for Emily," 60).

How many people used that quote, do you think? Also, I had to read this story a few times to understand; the chronology is all mixed up, which is nice and rhetorical and everything, but it's not easy to read.

The evidence seems to be there that Emily murdered Homer -- the poison she bought, the iron-gray hair, and the presence of his body in her house. I'm going to talk about motivation; why would Emily murder Homer? Let's take a look at some possibilities!

• The town pressed her for taxes (4).
• Her father died (15).
• Potentially, she was crazy (28).
• Homer was not a good fit for her -- a Yankee, a foreman (30).
• Homer himself liked men (43).

There are clues all over the story that foreshadow Emily's murdering Homer. She handles situations without leaving her house, as she did with the people collecting taxes, and she clings to people after they die, as she did with her dead father. It's likely that because Homer was not a good fit for Emily and he liked men, Emily could not leave him the way a normal person would. She left him Emily-style -- she didn't leave her house, and she clung to his dead body.

This is all kind of gross.

Pain or guilt? Or am I the only person who cares about this scrap of paper?

"The paper curled as Mr. Kapasi wrote his address in clear, careful letters. She would write to him, asking about his days interpreting at the doctor's office, and he would respond eloquently, choosing only the most entertaining anecdotes, ones that would make her laugh out loud as she read them in her house in New Jersey" ("Interpreter of Maladies," 89).

The central conflict in this story is emotional, inside Mr. Kapasi, and in response to Mrs. Question Four (that question is a girl), I would argue that the conflict is resolved. During the story, Mr. Kapasi develops of "feeling of intoxication" for Mrs. Das, who his unhappily married like himself (79). The "scrap of paper" (88) on which he wrote his address serves as a metaphor for Mr. Kapasi's fantasy-relationship with Mrs. Das, which changes throughout the plot.

Mr. Kapasi first develops his feelings for Mrs. Das just before he writes his information on the scrap of paper, and once he does, the fantasy begins. "The promise that he would hear from Mrs. Das" (89) makes everything in the world seem right. Later, he develops a desire to be "alone with her" (100) and an obsession with when he will hear back from her (109). The feeling begins to fade when Mrs. Das assumed that Mr. Kapasi had children (147 -- my favorite integer). By the time the paper "fluttered away in the wind" (179), Mr. Kapasi preserves an image of the Das family from the monkey attack, which is not a particularly flattering image.

When the scrap of paper was in Mrs. Das's purse, Mr. Kapasi fantasized about their potential relationship. When the paper was absent from the purse, Mr. Kapasi had no intimate feelings toward Mrs. Das. Thus, the presence of the scrap of paper is a metaphor for that fantasy-relationship.

If I define the major conflict in the story as Mr. Kapasi's internal relationship development with Mrs. Das, then the conflict is resolved. When the scrap of paper flies away, Mr. Kapasi has come to the conclusion that he has different family values than Mrs. Das, and she does not have any feelings for him.

No Post on Sundays

"I was always smiling when the mailman got there, and continued smiling even after he gave me the mail and I saw today wasn't the day" ("How I Met My Husband," 196).

That, Mr. Question One, is where my expectations as a reader were overturned definitively. That's not to say that there weren't elements throughout the plot that suggested the turn of events at the end of the story.

The plot structure was mostly chronological with two exceptions -- a flashback (the story of how Edie got her job) and a few subtle references to the future. For the most part, the flashback characterized Edie as common and humble (making her a sympathetic character) as she dropped out of school and started simple work (23-24). The future references, on the other hand, foreshadowed the end of the story. Phrases like "I see that now, but didn't then" (157) and "I didn't figure out till years later" (195) suggested an impending shift in Edie's life in which she would become wiser.

Another element within the plot was the slow revelation that Chris Waters was arguably very unsuitable for Edie. He was engaged to Alice (93), was not very close with her (117), and cheated on her -- without intimacy, of course (143). The simple girl, Edie, needed someone who was ready to settle down, a prerequisite Chris clearly did not meet (I originally typed "meat").

Although I did not completely expect Edie to settle down with someone other than Chris until the second-to-last page of the story, I recognize that the arrangement of the plot gave me, the reader, clues about Edie's future with not Chris but Carmichael.

YOU'RE an oxymoron!

The number of poems I analyze and my level of maturity are inversely proportional, so I apologize.

"A sweet disorder in the dress / Kindles in clothes a wantonness" ("Delight in Disorder," 1-2).

I have a huge problem with Google Chrome's thinking that "villanelle" is a spelling error while "wantonness" is just fine. It's not even in my AHD! Oh, yes it is. Apparently, it's the noun form of "wanton," which means "immoral or unchaste." I'm going to leave it up in the air as to what the speaker is saying in those two lines. Anyway, my purpose in quoting that line was to point out the oxymoron "sweet disorder."

The speaker draws a lot of parallels between disorder/wildness and sweetness/civility, so he's very interested in waffles. I mean, he's very interested in disorder. This is reflected very nicely in the poem's structure! Allow me to explain.

The lines of the poem are not as pretty as they could be because the lengths of the lines are kind of jagged. Also, the rhyming is a little bit off, but it's there -- "thrown" and "distraction" (3-4), for instance. It has a continuous structure, so it's not cut up into nice even little stanzas. The poem has a certain degree of disorder to it, just like what the speaker likes!

"Not only did she do them wrong, she did every one of them in."

"'The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, / Mother, Mother, / The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, / Such counsels you gave to me, O'" ("Edward," 53-56).

Apparently, this poem is brought to you by horrible parenting. If I wrote this poem, I would remain anonymous, too.

The repetitious repetition in this poem added a lot of emotion and suspense. And for me, black humor. I totally read the words to this poem with a song in my head -- how could I not? I was dancing around a bonfire in my head singing a song about some upper class guy who killed his dad, abandoned his family, and left his mother the curse of hell. Does it get any more jolly than that?

I'm more than willing to write a tune to this poem if nobody else has already. It would stand alongside such classic Tom Lehrer hits as "The Irish Ballad" about a maid who killed her entire family.

Speaking of Tom Lehrer, I am very confident that I can draw a parallel between the song "To His Coy Mistress" and the song "When You Are Old and Gray." I mean, that song was running through my head during the entire class discussion. Sorry about the Tom Lehrer overload.

English or Italian?

"One short sleep passed, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die" ("Death, be not proud," 13-14).

We've gooot another sonnet! This one is apparently both English and Italian, but I feel like it follows the English form more closely with respect to rhyme. Let me try this: abba abba cddc ee -- is that anything close to the rhyming scheme? If so, it ends in a rhyming couplet like the English sonnet. However, there's a shift in the nice abba pattern after eight lines which is deceptively Italian.

What about the thought process of the poem? Blistex addresses death in an apostrophe, personifying death as wrongly "proud" (1). It argues that death has no reason to be proud -- it's not "mighty and dreadful" (2) as some say, and even when people "die," they don't actually die. Headphones points out that death is associated with "rest and sleep" (5), both very peaceful things, and good men are always ready to embrace death. Then, we get to Lanyard, who says that death depends on "fate" and "chance" and is associated with things like "prison" and "war" (9-10).

I feel like there's no real shift in thought between lines eight and nine. The real shift comes between lines twelve and thirteen. The first twelve lines discuss why death should not be proud; then, the last two lines is a concluding defeat of death, as you will.

Therefore, I dub this poem an English sonnet which is also a tiny bit Italian. It's a little confused about its nationality.

I should probably not take everything in this poem literally.

"Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light" ("Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," 18-19 and half of the other lines).

I'd first like to point out that we wrote villanelles last year in English, and I wrote mine about an old man telling kids to get off his lawn. The benefit of the villanelle is presumably the repetition of two refrains over and over again, connecting all of the ideas throughout the poem.

Going "gentle into that good night" is probably a euphemism-y metaphor for a quiet death like our friend Tennyson described in "Crossing the Bar." However, as the speaker addresses his father, he is making a case against a quiet death. Question two is staring me down, so I'm going to try to tackle the speaker's view of the various types of men toward death.

The speaker argues that they all have relatively calamitous deaths for separate reasons:

• Wise men: because their words "forked no lightning" (5), which presents a bunch of confusing images to me, most of which end in electrocution. I think it means that the words of the wise aren't received as well as they would like them to be.
• Good men: because their "frail deeds" did not "dance" as they would have liked them to (8)? Maybe the deeds of good men seem unsubstantial and ineffective in retrospect.
• Wild men: because they "grieved" the sun as the "caught and sang" it (10-11). This is a little bit too metaphorical for my taste. It's a metaphor for . . . being ashamed of their lives, perhaps.
• Grave men: because they see with "blinding sight" (13). They have a very good understanding of life and death.

That was a lot of speculation on my part. My point is that the speaker doesn't want his father to go "gently" because none of those other guys in the four groups go gently for whatever reasons.

Ooh.

Blistex, Headphones, and Lanyard

"This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long" ("That time of year," 13-14).

Let's talk a little bit about the organization of this poem. This is a Shakespearean sonnet, which the introduction says "consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet." In this case, the first three quatrains present three different images, and the concluding couplet presents a . . . conclusion. I don't want to keep calling the quatrains "quatrain one," "quatrain two," and "quatrain three," so I'll call them "Blistex," "Headphones," and "Lanyard," respectively.

Blistex introduces an image of autumn turning to winter -- "when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang" (2). Headphones discusses the end of the day -- "after sunset fadeth in the west" (6) -- and refers to "death's second self" (8) which confuses me. Is "death's second self" the end of the day? Finally, Lanyard talks about a fire that burns life -- "the glowing of such fire, / That on the ashes of his youth doth lie" (9-10).

The images of Blistex, Headphones, and Lanyard all discuss the end to something usually regarded as beautiful (autumn, daytime, and life). They also all say something about how whomever the speaker is addressing sees those images in the speaker. Just looking at those three stanzas alone, the speaker seems to me like a person who destroys all life that crosses its path like a bulldozer, so I'm assuming I should try to understand the concluding couplet. I quoted it at the beginning of the post.

I'm not very good at paraphrasing Shakespeare. I'll try. "You see these images in me, so your love for me is growing stronger." And then there's a weird infinitive phrase, and I'm not sure how it fits with the other line. "To love aptly what you must leave before long." I suppose autumn, daytime, and life are all things we love but have to leave before long. I think the speaker is comparing his audience's (his love's?) views of him to how we view those three images; his love knows that he's not going to be around forever, so she loves him even more.

"Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

"Now let us sport us while we may, / And now, like amorous birds of prey, / Rather at once our time devour / Than languish in his slow-chapped power" ("To His Coy Mistress," 37-40).

I like identifying and creating arguments, and my favorite essay last year was the argument essay, so I'm going to answer question three. "Outline the speaker's argument in three sentences that begin with the words If, But, and Therefore. Is the argument valid?

If we had all the time in the world, we could develop our love slowly, but we are immortal; therefore, we must utilize our time well.

I think that the speaker is a little bit extreme in comparing playing "coy" (title) to developing love from the "Flood" to the "conversion of the Jews" (8-10) and to admiring each other for "thirty thousand" years (16). Personally, I think the speaker is just trying to get into his mistress's pants as he refers to her "long-preserved virginity" (28). But they're overstatements, so I guess it makes sense rhetorically. The truth behind it is that the speaker and his lover cannot wait to love each other -- they must "devour" their time now (39).

Carpe diem, right?

I think it's a valid argument, though the comparisons are a little bit extreme. Being shy and flirtatious is nice to an extent, but it can't become the extent. We need to be "like amorous bird of prey" and such. Similes are good.

"me / a princess"

"so i goes ta flushm down / but sohelpmegod he starts talkin / bout a golden ball / an how i can be a princess / me a princess" ("Hazel Tells LaVerne," 9-13).

What did I notice? There's no capitalization and no punctuation, but the poem still flows nicely because Machan started new lines with new phrases and clauses. When we read Shakespeare freshmen year, we said that when somebody spoke in prose, he was usually drunk or uneducated. That might be the case with the speaker in this poem; I'll call her "Hazel." (I'm not sure why -- I just have a good feeling about it.) She does not capitalize or punctuate or use proper grammar because she is less educated and probably of a lower social class.

I also noticed that the phrase "me a princess" was repeated, which probably means that it's important. That repetition underscores how the author feels about being a princess -- it would be completely ridiculous. Why? I would say because of her lower social status. It makes her feel less of a "worthy" person than the cliche princesses in fairy tales.

I just worked up to figuring out the theme, I think. People who rank lower socially don't feel worthy of higher statuses.

Maybe the person who came up with the new movie "The Princess and the Frog" thought of the idea after reading this poem. I really liked that movie -- it was jazzy, and we ate spaghetti tacos when we watched it.

In Celebration of My Third Poem by Donne

"What I will say, I will not tell thee now, / Lest that preserve thee" ("The Apparition," 14-15).

In deducing the connotative situation of this poem, I'm zeroing in on lines like "thou thinkst thee free / From all solicitation from me" (2-3) and "in worse arms shall see" (5). The speaker claims that his "murderess," likely a former lover ("my love is spent," line 15), isn't off the hook. She will receive some sort of persistent request from the speaker, and I don't think it's a nice one. The speaker seems to imply that his "murderess" cheated on him -- that's why I think he wants her to "painfully repent" (16). I split that infinitive in service of the quote's cohesion.

So I'm going to analyze my quoted line based on that situation.

What is the speaker going to say to her? It's an empty threat. However, empty threats can be the most powerful ones. When we threaten people like that, they usually assume the worst. I don't think the speaker actually has a plan as to what he's going to say to his "murderess," or even if he's going to say anything to her at all, but if he does, I know it can't be good. The tone throughout the poem is very judgmental of the woman in question, and this quote extends the tone to threatening, as well.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

"And may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea" ("Crossing the Bar," 3-4).

I distinctly remember reading this in Channel 1 today and getting "We Will All Go Together When We Go" stuck in my head. Tom Lehrer sings, "We will all char together when we char, and let there be no moaning of the bar." Good allusion, Mr. Lehrer -- he's so smart!

I'm going to dissect the meaning of this metaphor here. "When I put out to sea" (4) is a metaphor for death. Later, "When I have crossed the bar" (16) serves as another metaphor for death, but what about "no moaning of the bar"?

Looking at it in the context of Tom Lehrer's song (which I know I'm not supposed to do, Perrine, but bear with me), we must accept that we're all going to "char" when the bomb drops on all of us. Lehrer sings about why dying together is a good thing -- it's a "comforting fact" that we're all going to be glowing with radiation when we all die, and there's no reason to "moan."

I'm going to use the definition of "bar" in my AHD that says "attorneys considered as a group." A "bar" defined thus is a group of attorneys, who state someone's case on behalf of him. The speaker does not want the "bar" -- those metaphorical "attorneys" -- to mourn his death on his behalf. Rather, he wants a quiet, subdued, and peaceful death.

You're not all that special, but you are.

"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare" ("My mistress' eyes," 13-14).

In the first twelve lines of Shakespeare's sonnet, the speaker identifies a handful of love cliches and disproves that his mistress exemplifies them. For example, the first line identifies the cliche "your eyes are like the sun," but the speaker denies this simile -- his love's eyes are "nothing like the sun" (1). The speaker is viewing his lover from a very literal standpoint, and relative to other poets, he is humbling his lover. I would say that the tone in the first twelve lines is judicious and condescending.

I quoted the final two lines at the beginning of this post; they mark a shift in tone, as observed in question three in the textbook. It's a "yet" kind of deal, so the speaker is saying, "My lover isn't as great as other guys claim there lovers are, buuut . . ." something. He thinks his love is as "rare" (13) as all of those other women whose lovers have lied to them. Even though he spends twelve lines describing the ways in which his mistress is not special, he still calls her special in the last two lines. I'd call that a passionate and admiring tone.

You know whose eyes are kind of actually like the sun?

next to of course sharp cheddar coherent poems i

"centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb" ("next to of course god america i," 4-6).

as i read this poem i wondered if i was allowed to write in punctuation in the above quote i would probably add a period after more a question mark after it and a dash after language lack of capitalization i can deal with but punctuation matters so says the poster in mr costello's wall will you let me be yours gloria

i can say a few things for certain that jingoism is extreme nationalism and that the first few lines recite patriotic songs for instance question four asks if cummings admires the dead who did not stop to think based on the fact that this question was asked and we're on a unit of irony i will say no

the last line does little more for me than establish a speaker who drinks rapidly a glass of water after reading this poem i'd like to rapidly throw it against the wall that split infinitive was definitely necessary however i feel like i'm going to have to answer multiple choice questions about it

Folding Laundry: Metaphor for Love? Or the Black Plauge?

"A mountain of unsorted wash / could not fill / the empty side of the bed" ("Sorting Laundry," 49-51).

I think this poem is pretty adorable. (You know, until we discuss it in class and I find out it's actually a metaphor for the Black Plague. I don't . . . think it is. Nope. I just wanted to consider that idea.)

The first three lines establish a metaphor. As the speaker folds clothes, she thinks of folding her lover into her life. When I fold clothes, I think of how horrible I am at folding shirts -- they just never look good once I'm finished. I need one of those shirt folders. Maybe I'll try to think of something more philosophical next time. I'll get back to you on that one.

For most of the duration of the poem, the speaker describes in detail all of the clothes, towels, and sheets she folds as she does the laundry, and how they are connected to her and her lover. "So many shirts and skirts and pants / recycling week after week, head over heals / recapitulating themselves" (16-18). It's just very nice!

The last three lines (quoted above) contain an overstatement, "a mountain of unsorted wash," which is supported by the continuous and lengthy description in the poem of all of the laundry the speaker was folding. What the speaker is saying at the end is that a mountain of just her own clothes would not be able to fill the empty side of the "bed." Her lover is an integral part of her life.

"Why, Professor Dumbledore, you look absolutely ravishing!"

"Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me" ("Batter my heart, three-personed God," 12-14).

In this poem, the speaker is addressing God, asking Him to "batter" him so that he can "rise and stand" (1-3). That paradox is nice and everything, but I'm going to focus on the last three lines, which contain two paradoxes. Both paradoxes are resolved by the double meanings of certain words (like "batter" in this first example). Okay, the last two paradoxes . . .

The speaker asks God to "imprison" him, for unless God "enthralls" him, he cannot be "free." At first glance, that makes no sense because one who is imprisoned is not free. However, the word "enthrall" can mean to captivate in a charming way or in a slavery-y way. The speaker is suggesting that it would be oh-so-charming if God were to enslave him; that would make him free of evil.

Then, the speaker asks God to "ravish" him, for unless God ravishes him, he cannot be chaste. If we just use one definition of "ravish" -- to rape -- this statement seems contradictory. Rape is not chaste. However, "ravish" can also mean to fill with joy, which is more of what the speaker is requesting.

My argument here is that the speaker wants to be figuratively imprisoned and raped, and he literally wants to be charmed and filled with joy. Iiii sincerely hope it's not the other way around.

"Water, water, everywhere" but not a "drop to drink"

"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains" ("Ozymandias," 10-12).

This is irony of the situational variety. King Ozymandias is "mighty," "cold," and "wrinkled"; those conceptions of him have survived for centuries since he ruled Ancient Egypt. Simultaneously, the words on the pedestal recall Ozymandias's "mighty works"; those works are nowhere to be seen. We expect Ozymandias's mighty works to remain because of his aforementioned power and might, but instead, the sand around his crumbled statue is "boundless and bare" (13).

In Ozymandias's case, people remembered the "despair" of his cruel tyranny longer than his "mighty works" lasted. It's a nice reminder that though our attitudes are not exactly immortal, our material accomplishments are certainly more mortal.

So, I was reading the introduction to situational irony, and I came across the example "water, water, everywhere" but not a "drop to drink." Like what happened with Ozymandias, this is the opposite of what we would expect to happen. I felt pretty cool because I knew exactly where this reference originated -- in Hank Green's song "This is Not Harry Potter."

(There was some verbal irony in that last sentence.)

"We sit down in our Thinking Chair and think, think, thiiiink."

"Much Madness is divinest Sense -- / To a discerning Eye -- / Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --" ("Much Madness is divinest Sense," 1-3).

My new strategy is to blog about the weirdest poems of the unit, so I'll naturally begin with Emily Dickinson.

That quote up there is a paradox, which I know because equating madness and sense is an apparent contradiction and because the first question in the book told me so. Since it's a paradox, there must be some sort of truth behind it. Let's investigate.

"To a discerning eye" (2) suggests that the speaker sides with those who equate insanity and good sense. Dickinson also writes that those who "demur" are viewed as dangerous and are "handled with a chain" (7-8), so she is not with the majority. "Handled with a chain" sounds like an understatement to me; "handled" is a very light way of saying "imprisoned" or "strangled." Let's keep investigating.

"Madness" is a fairly ambiguous word -- insanity has many interpretations -- but that word "demur" shrinks the area of interpretation to some kind of objection. Here's what I have written in my Handy Dandy Notebook (ding!):

• The speaker sees a connection between insanity and sense.
• The majority sees a connection between compliance and sense.
• When a person objects, the majority suppresses them.

This poem gives me the idea that the speaker doesn't think that locking up all the crazy rebels is such a good idea. (I mean, they're probably going to escape, anyway.)

The Joy of Cooking (in your pants)

"Best with horseradish / and economical -- it will probably grow back" ("The Joy of Cooking," 5-6).

There was a speck on my computer screen to the right of that closing parenthesis, and I thought it was a period, so I kept clicking to the right of the speck but my cursor would never get to the other side of it! Man. Poetry is hard.

This poem is definitely metaphorical, but I also think it's amusing -- I laughed a little bit about the quote I quoted. We'll get to that a little bit more later. What's happening in this poem, though, is that the speaker is judging her sister's talkativity (don't tell me that's not a word) and her brother's heartlessness.

Her sister's tongue has a lot of parts to it -- the skin, roots, and bones -- and it will probably "grow back." That suggests to me that she talks too much and is unyielding in whatever she says. Her brother's heart is firm, dry, and not interesting, and it barely feeds two people. I can interpret that as a brother who is kind of callous and boring, and he has little love to offer.

I haven't gone through the funniest poem titles for "in your pants" yet, so I'll do that now:

• "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" in your pants
• "The Convergence of the Twain" in your pants
• "I taste a liquor never brewed" in your pants
• "The Joy of Cooking" in your pants

EXPLOSION!

"Or does it explode?" ("Dream Deferred," 11).

The basic structure of Hughes's poem is this:

• First stanza: four rhetorical questions, each presenting one simile
• Second stanza: one declarative sentence, presenting one simile
• Third stanza: one rhetorical question, presenting one metaphor

The speaker begins by comparing a dream deferred to a dried-up raisin, an oozing sore, smelly meat, and crusty candy. All of these comparisons suggest that an abandoned dream deteriorates and pesters us. The second stanza compares it to a heavy load, suggesting that it drags us down.

There's nothing wrong with those comparisons because they all have truth to them, but they aren't as vivid as the final metaphor, directly comparing a deferred dream to an "explosion." When we abandon a dream, the results are sudden, sharp, and violent -- this image makes abandoning a dream less appealing.

The speaker uses his first four rhetorical questions to deny that things like raisins and meat are not vivid enough comparisons for a deferred dream. The second stanza's declarative sentence is a detached resignation -- maybe it's just something that drags us down like a load. Then, the third stanza's rhetorical question is an assertion that a deferred dream and an explosion have the same effects. The metaphor and the italics single out that image as the most significant one.

Dying and Journeying are Very Different Things

"And though it in the center sit, / Yet when the other far doth roam, / It leans, and hearkens after it, / And grows erect, as that comes home" ("A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," 29-32).

Donne's poem presents images of both death and journeying. It seems to me like the speaker is using figurative images of death to compare them to his journey in which he will depart from his love -- in other words, I don't think he's going to die soon.

The initial stanza is a simile -- "as virtuous men pass mildly away" (1) -- to introduce a figurative image of death. The title also presents a picture of mourning, public grief over someone's death. However, details in the poem suggest to me that the speaker is not pondering his impending death.

The "priests," or the true lovers in the poem, engage in "refined" love that is "inter-assured of the mind" (17-20), and when they depart, their souls behave in a special way. Their souls endure an "expansion," hearkening after each other, and even if they are two different souls, they are like "compasses" because they spin in the same direction (25-28). Then, there are implications of those lovers reuniting -- "as that comes home" (32) and "makes me end where I begun" (36).

I suppose they could be reuniting in the afterlife, but the images of a journey -- the compass and the longing for company -- seem to be predominant.

Toad on the Road

"For something sufficiently toad-like / Squats in me, too; / Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, / And cold as snow" ("Toads," 25-28).

It's like a more elegant version of "The Lazy Song." I despise that song.

My goal in this post is to identify the two metaphorical toads described in the poem. The first one is easy because it's explicit: "the toad work" (1). That first toad represents the speaker's questioning view of work as he ponders a bunch of alliterative lifestyles -- "Lecturers, lispers, / Losels, loblolly-men, louts" (10-11). Those people "don't end as paupers," "seem to like" their lives," and do not actually "starve." So essentially, the first toad (work) restrains the author who doesn't understand the necessity of it.

I'm going to say that the second toad is the speaker's pragmatic and positive view of work. The similes I quoted at the beginning of the post suggest that this toad is steady and unyielding. With a pun on the word "stuff" in the sixth stanza, the speaker develops his point that work and pensions are "stuff" that form dreams (which apparently happened in The Tempest -- I don't recall). The second toad won't allow the speaker to "blarney" or get everything he wants "at one sitting" (32). He has a steady conscience (the second toad) that reminds him that work creates dreams, which require patience and effort to achieve. That's a more uplifting and reasonable view of work than the one presented in the first half of the poem with the restrictive toad.

Has anyone else read Toad on the Road? It's a classic.

I'll drink to that!

"Inebriate of Air -- am I -- / And Debauchee of Dew -- / Reeling -- thro endless summer days -- / From inns of Molten Blue --" ("I taste a liquor never brewed," 5-8).

The second question in the book makes it explicit that this poem is an extended metaphor -- a conceit, if you will. I'm pretty cool with accepting that because the speaker is obviously not just talking about drinking alcohol; there is a deeper meaning.

Literally in the poem, the speaker begins to "taste a liquor" (1). She is an "Inebriate" (5) and a "Debauchee" (6), and by the end of the poem, she is a leaning "Tippler" (15). However, certain phrases suggest a figurative meaning.

Firstly, the alcohol is "never brewed" (1), so I know it can't be real alcohol. The things which she is figuratively drinking are listed in the second stanza -- "Air," "dew," and "inns of Molten Blue." All of those things are beautiful components of nature. Air is fresh and crisp, dew settles in drops on plants in the morning, and "Molten Blue" seems like a sky (but I could also see it as water). The speaker is not drinking liquor but is appreciating the world to such an extent that she can compare it to intoxication.

Sometimes I'm kind of delirious when I'm extremely happy. I'm not sure if I can compare it to alcohol or not; from what I know about alcohol, it makes people less in touch with their consciousness and inhibitions. People do crazy things when they're drunk, so I guess they can do crazy things when they're admiring the world around them! I blame my title on being tired.

London . . . in your pants?

"In every cry of every man, / In every Infant's cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban, / The mind-forged manacles I hear" ("London," 5-8).

I had the most trouble understanding Blake's poem out of all of them, so I'm going to embrace that and blog about my confusion. First of all, I did notice a few things that are probably key -- the dark, somber tone and the woeful motif of crying. Essentially, what I know for sure is that London is not such a happy place in this poem (litotes).

The third question asks for the meaning of line eight, which I quoted at the top. My best guess is that every person and infant in London is full of sorrow because they're restrained in some way. The only thing I can think of that would restrain them is the monarchy, which is kind of mentioned in the twelfth line. Speaking of which . . .

I don't understand the subsequent stanza at all. "And the hapless Soldier's sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls" (11-12). The figurative "Soldier" is apparently unlucky and frustrated about something that has to do with the "Palace," which I think could be the crown, which has a lot of power to restrain (hence the "manacles").

And what about that last part? All I see is that there are prostitutes who "blast" the Infant's tear. So in addition to blaming the crown for London's woe, I think that Blake could also be blaming anyone (mostly prostitutes) who "blights" (16) the family.

I'm trying to be very honest with the things I don't understand about this poem. I think it's working. I'll add the label "ambiguity" because I think that could be going on here.

Kinesthetic Imagery: Fun Stuff

"As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, / the movement of his powerful soft strides / is like a ritual dance around a center / in which a mighty will stands paralyzed" ("The Panther," 5-8).

According to the introduction of imagery by Perrine, the images in this second stanza are primarily kinesthetic images, meaning they have to do with muscle sense. The words "cramped" and "paralyzed" illustrate confinement through images of muscle discomfort. When the undefined image in the last stanza enters in, the panther's muscles are described as "tensed" and "arrested" (11), further suggesting confinement.

The imagery in this poem translated better to me than the imagery of any of the other assigned poems to read -- I mean, to study. While most of the poems dealt with the sights and sounds of nature or gloomy and woeful feelings, this poem dealt with restraint. I'm not really all that into that kind of stuff, but in this poem, immediately, I recalled how horrible sleep paralysis is for me. Waking up and not being able to move is a horrible feeling that never gets better no matter how often it occurs. I could vividly feel and understand the panther's desire to roam free.

Also, I'm not even really sure what a panther is. I assume that it's something that usually is unrestrained and wild and is kind of like a lion. I'll look at some pictures. The babies are kind of adorable, but I don't want to cross them:

"And took he forth a saw, and cleft her in twain."

"Till the Spinner of the Years / Said 'Now!' And each one hears, / And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres" ("The Convergence of the Twain," 31-33).

The only other time I remember hearing the word "twain" is in Rowan Atkinson's "Amazing Jesus." The part I quoted is between 2:35 and 2:55:

At first, when I read the title and the helpful epigraph, I thought that the "twain" might have been two halves of the ship, or something. Did the Titanic break in two? I don't know these things.

However, the "twain" are the vain and "opulent" Titanic (8) and its "sinister mate" (19), the iceberg. Of course, the poem's denotative situation is the meeting of those two separate spheres. What I liked about the structure was that in each stanza, there were two lines of approximate length x followed by a third line of approximate length 2x. The stanza construction in which two lines "converged" into a third line that was twice as long reflects the convergence of the Titanic and the iceberg.

The other question I want to answer is what I think of the "Immanent Will" and the "Spinner of the Years." I absolutely loved the final stanza where "the Spinner of the Years / Said 'Now!'" (31-32). At first, it made me think of God's commands in the creation story. However, I don't think God is the undefined Being in the poem. The text says that the Being created "a sinister mate" (19), which is not what an benevolent God would do; it also uses the word "consummation" (33), which suggests to me a fulfillment of what was inevitably going to occur. Therefore, I think the "Immanent Will" and the "Spinner of the Years" are fate.

My first-ever sad poems! Hooray!

"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" ("I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," 1).

Emily Dickinson "felt a Funeral in [her] Brain" (1), which I think reveals a lot about the imagery in the poem. She felt the numbness of her mind (8) and the "Boots of Lead" (11), and she heard the beating of Drums (6) and the lifting and creaking of a box "across [her] Soul" (9-10). She felt and heard, but she did not see, so her imagery was confined mostly to those two senses. The images still conveyed the somberness and pain of a funeral, but it was fresh to me because I (presumably like most people) associate events with what we see. Dickinson gave me the perspective of feeling and hearing the event.

Now, I'm going to defend my belief about what happens to the speaker in the final stanza -- she dies. She imagines the feeling of a funeral in her brain for the duration of the poem, and that picture in her mind becomes real when she herself dies at the conclusion. She "dropped down, and down" (18), and death is often associated with descent. She "hit a World" (19) because it was new to her -- she was unfamiliar with death, so it hit her when she died. She "Finished knowing" (20) because she lost consciousness, something that seems to happen when people die.

I'm skipping "The Widow's Lament" in my blog posts, but I have a theory I wish to express. The poem is extremely depressing, which is obvious, but I think that the reason the poem is extremely depressing is that the poet himself had an extremely depressing life because his name is "William Williams."

I need some more tissues if I want to keep analyzing this one.

"A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning / In Eden garden" ("Spring," 10-11).

Hopkins's central point is his first sentence: "Nothing is so beautiful as spring" (1). The poem's imagery effectively reflects that beauty of spring. "Echoing timber" (4), leaving and blooming peartrees (6), and a blue sky "all in a rush" (7) within the first stanza let the reader experience the most rich and beautiful facets of spring. As I read this poem, my eyes got watery and I sneezed a few times, so the imagery also messed with my allergies. This is true -- I have witnesses.

This poem contains two allusions in the final two stanzas. First, Hopkins relates Spring to the beauty of the Garden of Eden. The poem glorifies the beauty of spring, but then presents a contrasting warning -- "Have, get, before it cloy" (11). I think that Hopkins wants to express that spring is so beautiful that it cannot last, and anything that precedes or follows it cannot compare to its "sweet being." Next, "Spring" discusses the "innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy" (13). The purpose of the convergence of these two allusions is to realize both the beauty and the innocence of Spring that we must embrace while it lasts.

Hopkins could have reworded a few lines to express his point more clearly, but the poem would have lost its rhyming structure and alliteration. The second line's alliteration jumped out at me -- "when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush" -- because it gave the poem a rhythm I could follow. The soft, rhythmic consonants repeated in these lines reflect the subtle, sequenced season of Spring. That . . . was unintentional. But I like it.

For the record, I think that this poem's central theme is moot for people who have to deal with this:

CPCTC

"A poem -- in fact, any pattern of words -- defines an area of meaning, no more. Any interpretation is acceptable which lies within that area" ("The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry," 4).

Sometimes it's easier for me to whine about something a little bit before I can start talking about how I also appreciate it; this principle applies to the essay I just read about poetry, so here I go. Perrine was a little bit too cocky for my taste. Maybe his straightforward assertions made me feel like that irrationally. I felt like he was trying to create strife by saying things like "there are correct and incorrect readings" (1) and "the poem is a description of a sunset" (3). He was ready to be all, "I know you don't think that what I'm saying is true, but I know that it's true, and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong and I'm right." Whatever floats his boat. Then, by the part where he said, "ordinarily we have only the internal evidence of the poem itself on which to rest an interpretation" (3), I was a bit peeved that he was gladly typing pages and pages about how to prove that his interpretations were true without explaining how to discover interpretations. I'm over that now because I realize that his purpose was not to give us explication techniques -- he just wanted to explain that some interpretations are right and that some are wrong, which I can swallow pretty easily after reading what he had to say. Additionally, he actually said a few helpful things to someone like me who's not so great at interpretation.

What I quoted at the beginning of this post was my favorite part. The "area" explanation made complete sense to me. The reason that a poem isn't open to any interpretation is that it has words which limit the interpretation. That doesn't mean that there's always one way to view a poem, but it does mean that there are invalid ways to view it -- namely, when a view falls outside a set area. The more words a writer uses, the smaller that area becomes. That puts a good picture in my mind. Another helpful part of the essay was Perrine's distinguishing between metaphorical poems and symbolic poems. "The essential difference between a metaphor and a literary symbol is that a metaphor means something else than what it is, a literary symbol means something more than what it is" (5). Melville's poem was not (as I originally assumed) about a marching army. It was about the stars because it was metaphorical -- the language in that poem said "stars, stars, stars," and Perrine makes me feel silly for missing that. However, Blake's symbolic poem is open to more interpretation. It's hard for me to grasp that the poem is about a rose and a worm and also about something bigger than them, but it's not hard for me to understand the area to which I must confine what I find the rose and the worm to symbolize. Metaphors are challenging because they point to only one answer that can be difficult to discover. Symbols are challenging because they point to scores of answers that are subject to people's unique takes. So overall, while a few components of the essay made me go "Gahh," it was a helpful piece to read.

What We Have Learned

"'And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heard could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go'" (Never Let Me Go, 272).

Reading books is kind of pointless unless you learn anything, so take it away, French Peas!

• Structure in life is important, but predestination dehumanizes.
• To an extent, we are all sheltered and should be aware of the mystery of the outside world.
• The past is a healthy thing upon which we can reflect.
• Human dignity should trump scientific achievement.
• Though they aren't always obvious, there are good thing in this world; we should hold on to them and make sure we never have to lose them.

I could deal with the cover of Brave New World -- a guy with a mechanical torso -- no problem. But the cover of Never Let Me Go is kind of scary for me, and I've noticed that I tend to set the book upside down after I read a portion of it. I'm assuming it's a really, really close-up picture of Kathy. For the most part, it's just a huge face, and I wanted to find something interesting in it, but it's just a huge face. There's a light reflected in her right eye that looks like a life saver or a Froot Loop. It's probably just a light.

How'd those predictions turn out?

"She shook her head slowly from side to side. 'There's no truth in the rumour. I'm sorry. I truly am'" (Never Let Me Go, 258).

Now that I've finished the book, it's time for me to revisit those predictions I made (the first five at about the halfway point in the book, and the sixth one with four chapters left in the book).

1. Correct! The entire world of cloning, sheltering, caring, and donating was explicitly explained in chapter twenty-two by Miss Emily, and all of my questions were answered (256).
2. Correct! It took Ruth years to admit to Kathy finally that Kathy and Tommy would make a good couple. By that time, it almost seemed too late for them to have a decent relationship (239).
3. Wrong! Kathy and Tommy took their trip to Norfolk the chapter after I predicted that would be the climax. The climax, instead, was when Miss Emily explained that the students' artwork was to prove that clones had souls (260).
4. Wrong! Kathy was a carer for twelve years because the system wanted her to be a carer for twelve years. The whole deferral thing was totally a rumor and had nothing to do with that (258).
5. Wrong! The clones do not share thoughts and memories with their possibles. The clones' only purpose in life is to advance science by donating whatever the world needs from their bodies. The only connection they have with their possibles is the fact that they share DNA -- nothing more.
6. Correct! In the end, like how John failed to reform civilization, Kathy and Tommy failed to get a deferral and learned the dark truth about their reality (258).

The ending of Never Let Me Go had the same effectiveness of Brave New World, warning the reader that once science becomes dehumanizing, going backward is nearly impossible.

"When in doubt, move a pawn."

"'I can see,' Miss Emily said, 'that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns'" (Never Let Me Go, 266).

As I've said, my favorite quotes in the book have been analogies, and now that I'm finished reading, I think it's appropriate that this is the last analogy I'm going to analyze. Miss Emily is comparing the students (or clones, as these last few chapters verified) to pawns in a game of chess. They're insignificant parts of society controlled by everyone else. This analogy does not make cloning for the sake of scientific progress seem like such a great idea.

That last part -- "'But think of it. You were lucky pawns'" -- has a bit of a double meaning for me. Miss Emily intended it to be a comforting reminder, but it had the opposite effect on my brain. There shouldn't have to be lucky pawns because there shouldn't be any pawns at all. Additionally, it doesn't help me to think that most of the world's clones live in horrible situations when I know that the "lucky" ones are the ones with truncated, unaware lives.

The sad comparison of the students to pawns is a reminder of one of the themes of the novel. Scientific progress should not stand in the way of human dignity.

You're an idiot.

"'Of course not, stupid'" (Never Let Me Go, 243).

Shortest quote yet, woohoo! This part reminded me of another part in the book that reminded me of something I couldn't remember (page 170):

"'It's not going to be in Woolworth's now, you idiot!'"

"'Tommy, you idiot.'"

"'All right. You're a complete idiot, but all right.'"

Obviously, a common theme in the relationship between Kathy and Tommy is Kathy's persistence that Tommy's an idiot. It's kind of cute! Actually, I don't think it's kind of cute -- I think I'm supposed to think it's cute.

As I said, the excerpt from page 170 reminded me of something that I couldn't remember, and when I came across Kathy's calling Tommy stupid a second time, I just had to pursue it. I talked with a reliable source, and got this information:

"Robin [from How I Met Your Mother] says 'You're an idiot,' instead of 'I love you,' and if she DOES say 'I love you,' Ted says it means she's already broken up with you in her mind" (reliable source).

So I think the conclusion we can draw here is that Kathy and Robin have a lot in common. Hey, this is my first How I Met Your Mother reference!

Predestination Predictions

"'I was pretty much ready when I became a donor. It felt right. After all, it's what we're supposed to be doing, isn't it?'" (Never Let Me Go, 227).

Again, we have a reminder of the recurring theme of predestination. Ruth's words in this quote were enhanced a few pages later when they saw the poster of the office, reminding them of Ruth's old aspirations. At that point, I believe, Ruth had some sort of epiphany that people should at least try to do things that sound unfeasible. I think that's why Ruth told Kathy that she should try to get a deferral with Tommy.

The theme of predestination in Brave New World was presented through a few rebellious people. Bernard and Helmholtz both left their positions in civilization to be banished to a place where they could express themselves more freely. John, the protagonist (I think), tried to rebel against the order of civilization when he threw soma out the window. I'm adding a late prediction to my list:

6. I think it's going to be similar in Never Let Me Go. Kathy and Tommy are going to try to rebel against the social norm and try to get a deferral at their age. (By the way, they're basing all of this on theory, so they could be after something that doesn't exist.) I'm a little nervous that it's going to turn out like it did in Brave New World with the characters' inability to behave how they want to in society. John's ultimate failure was a good warning against predestination, and I think it's probably going to be a similar failure with Kathy and Tommy.

Mm, cheese . . .

"'And do you suppose' -- I said this gently, without a hint of sarcasm -- 'if we're driving all that way, we should think about calling in on Tommy? Seeing his centre's just down the road from where this boat's meant to be?'" (Never Let Me Go, 216).

Kathy's discussion with Ruth in chapter eighteen revealed her to be a dynamic character. When she was a teenager, she was very sarcastic (as I quoted in an earlier post):

"'It didn't hurt, did it? When I hit you?' 

'Sure. Fractured skull. Concussion, the lot. Even Crow Face might notice it. That's if I ever get up there'" (Never Let Me Go, 14).

Additionally, the two of them were able to talk without any quarreling. The mature conversation effectively demonstrates that the characters are no longer children or teenagers but adults. Even Ruth, now, is comfortable reflecting on the past without trying to pretend it didn't happen.

I also want to point out another euphemism in the book: Kathy said that donors "complete" rather than die. I feeeeel like that was the exact same word used in Brave New World to describe death, but I might be wrong about that.

Speaking of being comfortable reflecting on the past, there's one thing I forgot to include in an earlier blog. One of the veterans talked about how "eating cheese late at night always disturbed your sleep" (189); it reminded Kathy of Hailsham, but it reminded me of how I always eat cheese late at night. The word "always" in that sentence was not a hyperbole.

Supporting a Hypothesis (that cooouuuld be right)

"'What does it matter anyway? What's the rhubarb patch got to do with anything? Just get on with what you were saying'" (Never Let Me Go, 190 and 202).

My goal of this post is to support this hypothesis: Kathy's motivation for leaving the Cottages is that her unique connection to the past has weakened her ties with her friends.

My first piece of evidence is the symbol of the "essays" (197). Few people at the Cottages took their assigned essay as seriously as Kathy did. The essays didn't seem all that important even to Kathy, but she read and took notes enthusiastically. She figured that since essays were important at Hailsham, if she treated them with importance at the Cottages, she could maintain the binding between the Hailsham students.

My second piece of evidence is the above quote that showed up twice in chapters sixteen and seventeen. Kathy continued to make references to things that happened at Hailsham to Ruth, but Ruth never responded to them well. Kathy wanted to keep her present life connected with her past, whereas her friend was more intent on cutting off that connection.

Once Kathy's difference from her friends weakened their relationships, she had no second thoughts about beginning her training to become a carer (202). I've known since the beginning of the novel that Kathy is, for some reason, a special person (since being a carer for twelve years is apparently a big deal [3]), and I think that stems from her special connection with the past.

Thus ends Part Two.

Getting Things Straight

"Suppose two people say they're truly in love, and they want extra time to be together. Then you see, Kath, there has to be a way to judge if they're really telling the truth" (Never Let Me Go, 175).

Now that I've read chapter fifteen, I'm going to differentiate between three things that have been confused in my mind for my whole life: symbols, motifs, and themes. I'll give one example of each of them.

1. Symbol: "'Judy Bridgewater. Songs After Dark'" (170). Symbols stand for something bigger than them, and I'm sure this tape has to symbolize something(s). For me, it stands for the connection between Kathy's past and her present. The reason that these flashbacks are happening is that they're important to the person into whom she developed, and the tape "brings back memories of that afternoon in Norfolk every bit as much as it does our Hailsham days" (173).

2. Motif: "'Like I said, Kath, Ruth doesn't know about the animals'" (179). A motif is a recurring idea, and I feel like the strong connection between Tommy and Kathy versus the weak connection between Tommy and Ruth is everywhere in the novel. When they were in the shop, Kathy was very aware that they were the only two people in it. Tommy and Kathy can have heart-to-heart conversations that Tommy and Ruth cannot have.

3. Theme: the complexity of love (quoted at the beginning of this post). Love is an important part of human life, and throughout the novel, especially in Part Two, the characters have been trying to figure out what it means and implies. They've already recognized that love is something extremely difficult to judge and lies with "'our souls'" (176). There have also been hints of the idea that physical intimacy cannot stand for emotional connection, another common theme about love.