Everday Use

There is a clear theme here of appreciating your family heritage. Dee (or Wangero) is embarrassed of her mother, sister, and house. Mama mentioned several times how Dee left them behind for “nicer things”. I didn’t quite understand why Dee’s mother allowed her to have such an unappreciative attitude while she was growing up. I got the feeling that Mama was intimidated by Dee as much as Maggie was. Mama said how Dee basically walked all over them because she had more of an education. “She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folk’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice.” I think Mama wanted Dee to have the opportunity to get an education and experience the world outside theirs and that’s why she raised money to send her to school.

When Dee came back she pretended to have changed her ways by taking pictures of her family and her house, eating all of her mother’s food, and trying to take things home with her. In reality she made her family uncomfortable, treating them like they were in a documentary in the pictures, bringing a strange man with her and changing her name. Mama felt their heritage would be better remembered by Maggie, who actually spent time with her grandmother learning how to make the quilts and would put the quilts to good use. “’Maggie can’t appreciate those quilts! She probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use!’ ‘I reckon she would. God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with nobody using ‘em. I hope she will!’ I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wanergo) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style.” By trying to get back her heritage, Dee is only rejecting it even more. I’m just glad Mama finally stood up to her, and quit trying to win the approval of her daughter that she was never going to get.

Fences

During the whole play, Troy came off as a very bitter character. He had a rough past, so I feel a little sorry for him, but I also feel like he could have saved himself a lot of grief throughout the play. It’s ironic because his father treated him badly so I thought maybe he would want to prevent that kind of relationship with his own sons. However, he accused Lyons of coming around just for money and didn’t allow Cory to follow his dreams of playing football in college.

He definitely took Rose for granted. She was always doing things for him and wanted so badly for her family to stay together (her reason behind having the fence built) and Troy repays her by having an affair. What made me really mad was when he tried to make excuses for himself after he confessed to Rose: “It’s just …She give me a different idea…a different understanding about myself. I can step out of this house and get away from the pressures and problems…be a different man.” Did he really think that would justify his unfaithfulness?! At first I was upset with Rose for letting Troy stick around the house after the confession, but I was very impressed with her nobility to help take care of Raynell.

 

Lady Lazarus

     Clearly the author here is very depressed. She seems to want her life over with, yet she says, “like the cat I have nine times to die.” It’s as if attempting to kill herself has become some crazy habit or obsession.  She even has a time table for it: “One year in every ten”. I guess the more appropriate thing to say would be that resurrecting herself is the obsession since she refers to herself as “Lady Lazarus”. The author made parallels from her story and the event in the Bible when Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. She talks about a “grave cave”. This could be referring to a tomb, like what Lazarus might have been put in after he died. Plath also talks about being stripped of filaments: “Them unwrap me hand and foot-“. Lazarus was most likely wrapped in some kind of cloth before put in the tomb. Closer to the end of the poem, she obsesses over her resurrection some more by relating herself to a phoenix: “I turn and burn…Ash, ash-…Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair. A phoenix is a mythical creature that sets fire when it’s time to die and later is reborn from the ashes.  Perhaps she sees her suicide attempts as a way to be “reborn".

Separating

It surprised me that Richard was the more sensitive one throughout the whole story. He tried not to cry while he fixed a lock on a door: “…clumsily hammered and chiseled, each blow a kind of sob in Richard’s ears.” He did cry at the supper table: “The tears would not stop leaking through, they came not through a hole that could be plugged but through a permeable spot in the membrane, steadily, purely, endlessly, fruitfully.” Joan seemed really unemotional the entire time.

My first thought was that Richard must not want to go through with the separation because of how emotional he was and the way he had such a hard time telling his children, especially when he kept putting off telling his second son.  Then I started second guessing myself. When he was talking to John he said “We’ll think about getting you transferred. Life’s too short to be miserable.” Why would he say that when he himself seems to be miserable? Then when he’s bringing Richard Jr. home we find out that there’s another woman in Richard’s life. “The home of the woman Richard hoped to marry stood across the green.” Perhaps Richard was having an affair and that is the reason he is so emotional, because he feels such guilt. This statement could be supported when Richard said to Joan in their bedroom, “they never questioned the reasons we gave. No thought of a third person. Not even Judith.” They must have been surprised/relieved that the children didn’t figure it out.

Black Boy

This story is from Wright's autobiography. I found that out after I read the story and couldn't believe it. Wright and Harrison were treated like toys. I was deceived at first because the story sets us in a factory where a young black boy works in the same place where "At each machine a white man was...working intently" and he gets a "daily lunch of a hamburger and peanuts". To me, Wright's situation didn't sound so bad. He even says "I was at peace with the world".

Then Mr. Olin enters the scene. It makes me wonder how long all those factory workers had been concocting this plan. He's so manipulative, starting out by asking Wright "do you believe that I'm your friend?" Of course he's not!...Poor Wright wanted to be able to trust his employers but he admits to himself that "apprehension was rising in me".

All throughout the story Wright and Harrison were like puppets. I think the white men knew all along they could get the boys to do whatever they wanted if they just kept pushing. However, I hoped and hoped that they would resist. Wright and Harrison knew they were probably being playing with. They kept telling each other "He's trying to make us kill each other for nothing" "To white men we're like dogs or cocks" "They wouldn't care if we killed each other". I hate that the white men turned Wright and Harrison against each other for their own entertainment. Wright says "The hate we felt for the men whom we had tried to cheat went into the blows we threw at each other." And after the fight "I could not look at Harrison. I hated him and I hated myself." Not only did the men turn Wright and Harrison against each other but Wright against himself.

Marianne Moore- "Poetry"

Moore is very passionate about the fact that poetry is not something to just play around with. She thinks it's only worth reading when the subject is "genuine". I have to agree with her. I don't like reading anything that doesn't have purpose. She says things like hands, hair, and eyes are all good subjects because they are useful things, but only if you keep the poetry unique and understandable. It's nice to know there are poets out there (though Moore is no longer alive) that feel it's important to write their poetry in terms that everyone can understand. I realize some people are deeper thinkers than others, but sometimes a writer will lose my interest if I can't even comprehend a line of their work. It doesn't motivate me to want to read more. So I really appreciate this poem, especially lines 9-11 ("we do not admire what we cannot understand"). Moore also emphasizes the importance of imagination, which I think is neat. I think the imagination should be involved in everything. Moore seemed to think imagination was at the core of good poetry and I agree. No imagination means "insolence and triviality". The only way to get around that according to Moore is by using "raw materials and...genuine". You have to start with a simple and original idea\subject and combine it with imagination.

Anecdote of the Jar

I think this poem is definitely up for interpretation. From what I've read about Wallace Stevens, he liked to his poems to be that way. He didn't like to give straightforward thoughts, but preferred to leave room for readers to think on their own.

After reading this many times it occurred to me that a jar does not belong on a hill or in the wilderness, whether it's in Tennessee or anywhere else. The poem says "It made the slovenly wilderness/ Surround that hill." I think this could be compared to industrialization and colonization and how fast putting one thing that is out of the ordinary (building, house, etc.) into a rural area can change that area. It makes the area become like that thing. Most likely, if you were to build a business in the middle of nowhere more people would start building next to you and the wilderness would become less and less: "And sprawled around it, no longer wild".  The poem also points out how much power man has over nature (wilderness). "It took dominion everywhere." Putting something man made in the middle of the wild gives the humans the upperhand. However, humans/or the man made thing ("jar") may have control but for now it will look out of place: "It did not give of bird or bush,/ Like nothing else in Tennessee."

Home Burial

     This was a very sad poem about death and failure to communicate. First of all, we know the couple lost their young child. The mother is still grieving and the father seems to have moved on in the mourning process. The mother can't seem to understand why the father does not feel the same way she does. She thinks he's being callous. Instead of crying with her he dug the child's grave. "If you had any feelings, you dug/ With your own hand--how could you?--his little grave"
     I think the wife is wrong to assume her husband is not grieving as well, I just think he has a different way of grieving than her...he put all his pain and sorrow into the physical work of digging the grave. The father wants very badly for his wife to stay with him and find comfort in him, but he feels she's being a little overdramatic. "I do think, though, you overdo it a little." He could definitely try harder too when it comes to empathizing with his wife.
     It's too bad neither person is willing to accept the other person's way of showing sadness and pain. This makes for another tragedy, now it's not just the death of their child, but also the falling apart of their marriage.
     I know that Frost lost children of his own so this poem probably has a lot of real meaning for him. I wonder if he experienced this type of conflict with his own wife..?

Roman Fever

     Who knew a couple of “ripe but well-cared for middle aged women” could be so devious?! I think Wharton wanted to portray how women can be two-faced and so good at holding grudges. I honestly thought at the beginning that they were close friends, vacationing in Rome together with their families. Not only was their meeting in Rome a complete coincidence (or so it said), but the women were not close friends; they only pretended to be. Their friendship started to seem a little off to me once we began to hear their thoughts: “It always will be, to me.” “Grace Ansley was always old-fashioned.” What really tipped me off though was when the narrator said how the ladies, “who had been intimate since childhood, reflected how little they knew each other.”  From then on it seemed everything they said to each other, or thought about each other had a spiteful hidden motive. We learn they lived very similar lives. They were even neighbors. But that didn’t mean they got along.
     Mrs. Slade was clearly setting herself up so she could dump the news on Mrs. Ansley about the letter. I think Mrs. Ansley suspected something when Mrs. Slade brought up Aunt Harriet and the sister that died. I was shocked to find out what everything had been leading up to…That Grace had been secretly in love with Delphin. I couldn’t believe how much pleasure Alida took in rubbing it in Mrs. Ansley’s face that she won Delphin in the end, so part of me was a little happy to find out Grace had indeed met with Delphin that night. My mind was blown when I read that last line, “I had Barbara.” I guess Mrs. Ansley wasn’t as old-fashioned as Mrs. Slade took her to be.

 

 

 

THE PASSING OF GRANDISON

I have to admit this story took me by surprise. Right up until the end I really thought that Grandison was a naïve slave who just wanted to get back to the plantation. I believe he took the entire Owens family by surprise too. Dick drove me crazy throughout the entire story with his ignorant and selfish ways. The only reason Dick wanted to free Grandison was to impress a girl...He didn’t really care about Grandison’s well-being…“if she knew how he was working, and under what difficulties, to accomplish something serious for her sake, she would no longer keep him in suspense, but overwhelm him with love and admiration.” (p 647) He was practically willing to get Grandison killed for the cause. He said it himself: (though I don’t think he truly meant it) “I do not deserve to be an American citizen; I ought not to have the advantages I possess over you”. Dick had no idea he was truly helping Grandison plan an escape, which goes to show how lazy and stupid he really was.

I really wonder how long Grandison had the whole thing planned? It made me really happy at the end when Grandison and the colonel could see each other as Grandison and his family rode away. “The colonel saw Grandison point him out to one of the crew of the vessel, who waved his hand derisively toward the colonel. The latter shook his fist impotently –and the incident was closed.” Ironic for the colonel but completely organized on Grandison’s part. Ha!