The Romantics, part one

·      The necessity of Atheism Percy B. Shelley

·      Opium – Drug that inspired many poets, such as Coleridge

o   Descriptions, visions, adjectives, imagination

o   Opium led to Coleridge to his failure

·      Individuality, no superior force that controls us

·      Imagination over science, poets over doctor (Keats)

·      Atheism- no proof of go no need to believe in it

o   Like most thing, if there is no proof it does not exist

o   Against monarchies

§  The fall of monarchy

o   Shelley’s atheism led him to the pursuit of self gratification and self knowledge

§  In the search for love, but with various women, Free-Love

§  He looked for liberty in all actions

·      George Byron, First modern celebrity, Noble of England.

o   Wanted freedom from his family.

o   Wanted a new exiting life

o   Made his life public to find this new way of life

o   He found himself surrounded by fans, especially women

o   It was all about his celebrity life, not his private one

o   Soon scandals started and his name was at risk

§  His name was to big, he had to run

o   The grander the better

·      Keats, poets key is to have no identity so that he could be everything

o   Keats had a life of suffering

§  By 23 he lost his mother, father, and a brother

o   This left an idea that life is beautiful and grand

o    Keats realized he was dying

§  He was an atheist and looked for eternity

·      He found it in art

·      He wrote of death and tried to make all his works eternal

The Basic idea behind these part of the documentary was to summarize the lives of impactful poets and writers of England. The time was full of the search of liberty and the search of eternal life. They turned away from the God and to find eternity in their impression on the people that live after they die. Many of them found it like Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge. They all went in search of an individual life, and one free of for a power that controlled their lives. Byron did not find this due to his choice to leave his live to public opinion.  

Close Reading, with a mix of Close Reading...

1) Ernest Hemingway “A Very Short Story”

            In Ernes Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” he uses a sardonic tone and a very fast and short syntax to show the reader the shortness of love. The man of the relationship leaves to the US to satisfy the women’s need of love, while he is there she falls in love with an Italian, due to the fact that she is out in Italy in the war effort. Because of the very short sentences and the lack of adjectives or descriptions Hemingway makes it seem that the love story is short and not worth the details. There is also irony that Hemingway places in the title, the fact that the story is short does not mean the situation at hand is easy. Love is complicated, shown at the end of the story with the man getting gonorrhea in a taxicab. Hemingway plays with the speed and importance of love in the life of the man with the speed of the syntax and the irony in the title.

2) Patricia Grace

            In Patricia Grace’s untitled poem she uses repetition in the middle of four words. Rain which becomes “Rai-ai-ain”, Child which becomes “Chi-i-ild”, Earth which become “ea-ea-earth”. These tree word reflect the allegory of the poem, life. These tree things represent life and the creation of living things. This is juxtaposed with the death of the mother and her child in the final stanza and that once born one is dead. The syntax of the poem consists of short and concise ideas displayed in a few or even one word which shows the importance of life, that we can show this important theme in a few word that we create. The 

3) “Dis Poem”

            Throughout the poem the poem talks about itself. The poem uses a different dialect in the word “The”, “dis” which is the “poorer” use of the word. The poem uses itself to reflect the bad ideas in history, such as war, economy, and racism. The poem’s diction does not specifically state facts, but mare events. The final phrase of the poem, “ in your mind…” makes us reflect after the events mentioned. The ellipse lives us the thinking feeling that causes a self-reflection of the short and violent pass through history.

4) “Fog” by Carl Sandburg

            The poem is short consisting of only two punctuation marks, two stanzas with a total of six lines.  The shortness of the poem and its syntax shows that fog only stays for a short time. The Fog is also a symbol, a symbol for money. The conclusion of fog being money is from the fog “looking” over the “harbor” which is where economy revolves around. Also the “haunches”, the hip, is where the fog “silently” lays. The last line, says that the fog stays and moves on, but it does not leave, it continues to somewhere else.

5) “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound

            The two lines poem talks metaphorically compares the “faces in the crowd” to the “petals” on a “wet, black bough”. The metaphor is used to compare the uselessness of the people at the Metro. Like petals on a bench they are immobile, placed there by force. Yet this can all be reversed because of the use of the second word, “apparition”. Literally it means that the vision of the people at a Metro came to her, but metaphorically it shows us that the faces are not useless, but are actually powerful.

            With these ideas the reader can conclude that this is a socialist poem because of the fact that the workers usually use the Metro, and if they are forced into the uselessness, but are actually powerful in mass, is a very socialist idea.    

6) “Constantly Risking Absurdity” by Lawerence Ferlinhghetti

            The author uses a moving syntax that makes the text move to show us the dangerous acrobatics of a poet and his poems. He also uses metaphors that compare that poet with an acrobat. In the last stanza there is an illusion with Charley Chaplin that compares the poet and the actor. Charley completed his own stunts, just as an poet must do: create his own risks and poems.

7) “Comin’ Back Ower the Border” by Mary McCabe

            The poem in all ways possible pulls the reader “Back ower the border”. The dialect chosen makes the word sound like they where from the home of the author. The imagery used gives us that feeling, the use of sweet things pulls us back over the border.  

And He Said,

“Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked” (19)

The narrator thinks this just before he enters the fight. He says it to a White woman that is there just before the battle scene is unleashed. It is funny how he now that if he looks he will be beat, or blinded, but he looks anyway to the beautiful sight.

It puzzles my mind… I am writing to see if I reach some kind of answer (sorry if it is kinda hard to follow)

Well “blindness” could be saying that the fact that he looks he will lose sight of the atrocity that is about to be unleashed with him involved, so maybe the blindness could be a good thing. The women, shifts his attention away from the pain that he is receiving.

Another reasoning that has come across my head is the fact that the women distracts him, letting him get crushed. Because she is white she lets him get beat, just like the men that encaged them into the fight.

I’m not really sure, but it’s just something that came up.

What Does't Kill Me...

Invisible Man, apart from the fact that it is a great book that one can re-read a million times and find new things, it touches a common theme for many African-American writer. Ralph Ellison, starts the novel off with the brute force that drives society.

To sum the story up in one sentence… It starts with the story-teller gives a great speech, which we never actually listen to (metaphor…), because of the speech he is invited to an upper-class white gathering, there is a forced brawl and a sexy lady. The Chapter’s most important scene is when the narrator gives his speech after the white men enjoy the blacks beating on each other. Funny enough the speech planned was about social justice. The crowd laughs until the narrator speaks of “social respect” and one crowed member jumps at him. As the narrator swallows his blood, his heritage one might say, he surrenders to the crowd member in shame.

Throughout the act it’s evident how the whites indirectly dominate the course of the blacks. The objective of the fight was for a collage tuition. What does this show? Well, it shows that the education of the blacks depends of the whites, it shows that collages are ran by whites and influenced by whites, it is true, but the hidden way that Ellison shows it is what interreges the reader.

These ideas are found through the novel.