On Suicide and Resurrection

Sylvia Plaths‘s “Lady Lazarus” is a vivid look into the mind of the author mere months before the end of her life. She is known, in the vaguest of terms, as a member of the literary group entitled the “Confessional Poets.” In these writers’ poems, the speaker is, in fact, usually the poet herself. These poets express their own lives, thoughts, and feelings through their poems and in this way (as our book has pointed out) the poems are sometimes more useful to the authors than they may be to the readers.

In “Lady Lazarus,” Sylvia Plath recounts not only a suicide attempt (and her plans for another one) but also her successful rebirths. She begins her poem with a simple fact. She has done “it” again. She manages “it” every decade. At this point, the reader has no idea what she might be referring to. What follows is a simile and two metaphors which compare her inner sufferings to those of the Jews during World War II. The literary device of stanzas two and three is a favourite of Miss Plath: the Holocaust analogy (which is also evident in another of her poems, “Daddy”) Plath seems to favour these comparisons because of the strong emotions they evoke. Also, her German father is usually alluded to through such Nazi terms. Many have called her allusions to the suffering of the Jews unfounded. They believe she is trivializing the atrocities of the Holocaust. For, of course, what could a blonde little American girl born to a middle-class family possibly know about suffering? That’s the thing about Miss Plath; she likes to shock. To disgust. To evoke such terrible emotions from her readers. This is how she shares her feelings with her audience.

Stanzas two and three are also the first instance of Sylvia Plath’s objectification of herself. She is not a person. She is a paperweight. She is linen. She submits herself to the world around her. And yet, in stanza four, she has taken control. Ordering the peeling off of her napkin, she seems to rise above the others gathered there. She is fully aware of the effect she has over the crowd. Aware that she is terrifying.

Stanza four is also a direct reference to the title of her poem, her allusion to the biblical character of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. He left his tomb still wrapped in his grave cloths which were removed by Jesus’s followers (here placed with men at a side-show).

Stanzas five and six expose the reader to horrific descriptions of the body that will outlive her apparent death. Then, suddenly, the poem’s image changes from a description of her corpse, to her smiling face. Her age. The juxtaposition between stanzas 6 and 7 is shocking. She seems renewed, if you will. And then, something else surprising: her proclamation of her superiority over death. She has nine times to die. Again, she is above mere mortals. She is immune to death. She is immortal. Miss Plath seems filled with such a confidence in her own ability to return from death, the question has been raised whether she truly meant to die in her next suicide attempt.

This is what’s referred to in stanza 8. “This is Number Three.” Capitalized. Titled. One year in every ten. She is thirty years old. Now the “it” is becoming clear. The author is planning to kill herself. Again. The fact that this poem was written not two months before she succeeded makes the line even more ominous and terrible. Her next line is filled with understatement. Her deaths are a trash? Her diction makes the action feel more like a chore she performs every decade. One merely to please “the peanut-crunching crowd.”

And then she becomes an object again. Her body is a freak show at a traveling carnival. She’s like nothing found in nature. She has risen from death. This fact alienates her from the surrounding crowd, makes her special, while also giving her a certain power over them. The speaker’s relationship with the “crowd” jumps from being submissive to being god-like again and again throughout the poem. In this way, the reader comes to learn of Sylvia Plath’s own self-view. In many ways she was arrogant, yes. (That’s evident throughout her poems and her published journals.) And yet, she is also very meek. (Be this because of her own inclination or because of society’s demands of women.)

“The crowd” is also a frightening creation. A group of faceless individuals who show almost too much interest in the revived suicide. They revel in morbid spectacle. They seem more monster than the zombie.

The poem then jumps, in stanza 12, to more autobiographical information. She refers the to the “first time it happened.” When Sylvia Plath was 10, (the same year she lost her father, by the way) she almost drowned in a swimming accident. “It was an accident.” Those words finally close the mystery of the “it.” “It” does not refer to suicide. How can it if the first time “it” happened was an accident? No, the “it” of the poem is her resurrection. Her inevitable resurrection that follows her every brush with death. Looking solely at the resurrection aspect of the poem, it seems that Miss Plath is certain she will always be able to come back. At least, the first eight times anyway. Did she truly mean to die not a few months later?

The “second time” Sylvia Plath mentions in “Lady Lazarus” refers to her first suicide attempt at the age of 21. She took a large overdose of sleeping pills, then crawled into a hole in the basement of her family’s house to die. She “rocked shut / As a seashell.” She was revived, of course, and in that way, cheated death a second time and as a result, as will be later referenced, became a prize of the doctors who made it possible.

“Dying / Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.” Here, Sylvia Plath makes her wittier, even egotistical, side show. Some are natural-born athletes. Some; natural-born artists. Sylvia Plath is a natural-born die-r. (All right, so, that might not actually be a word. Humour me.) She places herself, once again, above others in regard to the skill with which she dies. In the skill with which she comes back from the dead. For, of course, only she is capable of such a feat. To Miss Plath, her resurrection is a show. A spectacle meant to shock others. In this way, her resurrection slightly mirrors her poetry: personal and tortured and yet public and shocking.

And she likes it. She loves the reactions her crowd gives her. “[T]he same brute / amused shout. / That knocks me out.” That line should be given special attention due to her masterful use of the enjambed line. “The same place, the same face, the same brute” If one is to pause at the end of the line, “brute” takes on a whole new connotation. She comes back to a brute. Her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, perhaps? Society? Only when combined with the next two words does the effect become less blunt. More vulgar.

Though, of course, there is a charge. Again, she resorts to prostituting herself to the surrounding crowd.

She then refers to her doctor, the man who brought her back from death. And yet, she calls him her enemy. Her doctor has not only brought her back to a life she never wanted, but also, in the process, has taken away her identity. She is no longer her own woman. Her life belongs to the man who returned her to the living. She is his magnum opus and, as such, she is no better than an object.

It is here, in her last few stanzas of “Lady Lazarus,” that her feminist side shines through. Her semi-autobiographical fiction novel, The Bell Jar, makes clear her feminist views and these can be seen in the warnings of stanzas 27 and 28. “Herr God, Herr Lucifer. / Beware. / Beware.” The German equivalent of “Mr.” is three-in-one: another reference to the suffering of the Holocaust (the suffering that’s happening within the author’s own mind); a reference to her German father, the prominent male figure in her young life who left her prematurely; and a reference to the male sex as a whole. Each syllable seems to be filled with hate. Each “Herr” rhymes with “ware,” giving a forceful bite to the words.

The final stanza recounts another resurrection. This time, the normally light-haired Sylvia Plath depicts herself with fiery hair, rising from her ashes, an obvious comparison between herself and the mythical Phoenix. Her last line is filled with an ominous warning toward the men in her life. She “eat[s] men like air.” An obvious desire to fight against the domineering power of every man she has known. The Sylvia Plath depicted at the end of her poem is one who has burst through society’s chains. In life, she never actualized her liberation. Perhaps she was planning to after her third resurrection.

Some have called “Lady Lazarus” depressing and morbid, and yet, while it might be both on some levels, the main point of the poem is not to depress but to explore. In these last few months before her death, when Sylvia Plath was churning out poems at the furious rate of two or three a day, she not only expresses the state of her own troubled mind, but also looks over her life, her deaths, and seeks closure within herself. Lady Lazarus is a culmination of all of her dying feelings: her objectification, her inferiority, her belief in her own ability to conquer death, her “Daddy” issues, her life, her egotism, her flippant, playful side, her feminism, her wit, and her own warped psyche. Unable to express her inner dialogues with the outside world, with society, she vents her insanity using only pen and paper and sculpts masterpieces.

1672 words.

On Definition A and Definition B

The term “success” has been thrown about dozens of times in class discussions this past week and yet, “success” is a highly relative term. If I may use a rhetorical example I observed in countless of last year’s Senior Speeches: according to Merriam Webster dictionary, the term “success” can mean either “a favorable or desired outcome” or “the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.” Upon first glance, it seems obvious that neither of these definitions can be seen within the Loman family. And yet, on closer inspection, perhaps “success” *can* be found.

By the end of the play, Biff has come to a stunning realization, a final disillusionment. He finally frees himself from the mesh of lies that have supported his father and his household. In a way, this could certainly be seen as “a favorable or desired outcome.” So, perhaps, in his own way, Biff *has,* if inadvertently, stumbled upon success. Sure, he may not look upon this disillusionment as true success, but it is without a doubt one of the single greatest moments of his young life. For, now that he has stumbled upon this hidden success, Biff is now free to work toward true happiness, the ultimate “favorable or desired outcome.”

What is odd, though, is how limiting the second definition of “success” actually is. Can not one achieve success without “the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence?” For some, of course, the answer is “no.” In my personal opinion, the definition of “success” is unique for each individual person. Now, I am usually not one to go against the dictionary, however, in this instance, I believe it to be necessary. Was becoming a prominent salesman truly the key to “success” in Willy’s life? Probably not. I can just as easily see the man killing himself as a “successful” CEO. His life would still be empty. His life would still be devoid of that which would have given him the true “favorable or desired outcome:” happiness for himself and his two sons. Would it be possible for Willy *ever* to achieve full “success?” Again, probably not. He is too set in his ways and his dreams. However, his boys still have that opportunity, and Biff seems well on his way.

373

On Act III and Seriously?

Alright, was I the only one surprised with Act III of A Doll’s House? I mean, seriously. Where the hell did that ending come from? Dr. Rank dies, Krogstad shows a complete change of heart and runs off with Mrs. Linde, Nora runs off without any thought of her children (but that’s an entirely different blog entry), and everything about Nora’s forgery is revealed to Torvald but this exposure seems to no longer be that big of a deal! I’m sorry but Act III seems so out of place with the entire rest of the play! Acts I and II seemed to be leading………somewhere! And instead, the audience is faced with a shot from left field! For such an example of “realism,” the ending hardly seems realistic in the slightest. How will Nora meet the demands of life on her own? Has Torvald seen *any* emotional growth? Nothing has come to any satisfying conclusion! (Except, perhaps, Dr. Rank, but was it seriously necessary to kill him off?) I guess my main issue is with Krogstad and his immediate reversal of attitude. He was used until he was no longer useful to the plot and then cast aside. What depth is there in that? Acts I and II gave me so much hope. I was looking forward to an amazingly sweet ending! And then was faced with…….this. ……..…..Gosh, it’s like Episode I.

231 words.

On Rehearsal and My Blog

Alright, due to several costume issues, I had to stay rather late at rehearsal tonight. I am merely posting to say I have just gotten home and am writing my blog now. It shall be up soon.

Good things come to those who wait.

-MJPT

On Hamlet and The Simpsons

Sadly, I could not manage to actually post the video directly do my blog like I did with The Who, but here's the link. The Simpsons do Hamlet. Enjoy.

http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/54549/detail/

-MJPT

P.S. AP English students should also enjoy the Oedipus allusion in the first few seconds.

On Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

The friendly, philosophical, interchangeable, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s life-long friends, are condemned to death by the very man they thought they could trust. What the Hell, Robert? What the Hell? (Please excuse the Hemingway allusion. It’s for you, Schooner.) Does friendship mean nothing to Hamlet? Or is he merely so concentrated on revenge that he focuses on nothing else? (A la Edmond Dantes of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo) In the course of the play, it is established that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are good friends of the Danish prince. And yet, Hamlet willingly and unflinchingly writes his friends off to death without a second glance. Seriously, Hamlet? It has been argued by many that Rosenstern and Guildencrantz deserved their terrible fate. After all, they sided with the corrupt king to become spies against their friend. They are a symbol of the corrupting power of the court. But really, can we blame them? It’s not like they were doing anything….evil. Or really that terrible at all! They were merely following the orders of the king so that they might uncover the truth behind Hamlet’s madness and, by doing so, help cure their childhood friend. Hamlet suspects the two have “sided” with Claudius from the beginning and, upon realizing his suspicions are true, decides first to write them from his life and then, suddenly, end their lives with a letter! (Hamlet, like a Sith, seems to deal in absolutes.) What does this reveal about Hamlet’s character? In what mental state must a man be to have no regard for the lives of, if not friends, acquaintances? Obviously, not the correct one. We know that Hamlet’s a bit mad, however, that does not excuse him from killing R & G. One might pardon Hamlet for wishing to kill Claudius. One might also even pardon Hamlet for ending Polonius’s life, for he truly did not mean to kill Ophelia’s father. (Even though stabbing might NOT be the best way to discover what’s behind a curtain. I have discovered that simply asking for a name BEFORE stabbing can avert potentially embarrassing murders.) But one can simply not write off Hamlet’s murder of Guildencrantz and Rosenstern. No matter how awesome Hamlet might be, this murder puts a serious spot (Out, damned spot!) on his record.

The fact that the Danish prince ends the lives of two innocent people, people he once called friends, cannot be overlooked in a discussion of his character. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become merely pawns in Hamlet’s elaborate plan of revenge. They are not with him; they are against him. They must be destroyed. In this way, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are tragic. Their fates are out of their control. They are swept away by actions they don’t understand. And, sadly, they meet their end because of a depressed prince.

RIP Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

On Unfavourable Characters and Likeability

First and foremost, I would like to apologize to all commenters for my late posting. The blog completely escaped my mind. With my first English class on Tuesday, I don’t really tend to think of it when contemplating homework due for Monday. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Most of the discussion in class has resolved around which of the characters in Antigone is the more likable. However, looking over the top choices -- Creon, Antigone, Ismene -- it is difficult to see a clear winner. We’ve got Creon, some crazed tyrant who has led himself to believe that he *is* the state. Antigone, a woman who is solely led by her own stubborn will and, while admirable in her own way, is so narrow-minded she shuns all who might disagree with her. And Ismene, a sister who cannot stand up for her own beliefs and is tossed aside by everyone when they see she is not willing to do what it takes. Were the house to be broken into at this very moment by a well-read robber and were he to put a gun to my head and thrust a copy of Sophocles’s Antigone into my hands and were he then to force me to choose the character I liked most or surrender my life to him…..………I’d choose Ismene. He’d then set the gun down and we’d have a lovely chat comparing and contrasting the differing themes of Oedipus Rex and Antigone over tea and scones. But I digress.

The odd thing is, it has become apparent that we don’t *need* to like the characters in a story. One can enjoy a piece of literature or drama without feeling any sympathy at all for any of the characters. Sure, it definitely *helps* if the reader can identify with the protagonist or even a secondary character but it seems not to be essential for a well-written work of literary genius. Another example of use of less than favourable characters is Emily Brontë ’s, Wuthering Heights. I mean, who *actually* likes Heathcliff or Catherine? But despite this, the novel is still a masterpiece of English literature.

Granted, it’s a rather odd thought. How can one commit to a piece of literature, spend so much time reading and analyzing it, and *not* dislike spending the time required to do so with such annoying characters? Yet, I can easily say in the same breath that I dislike every character found within Antigone and yet I thoroughly enjoy the play. It seems that themes trump characters. Not in every circumstance, of course. But when in the hands of an extremely skilled author or playwright, a handful of disagreeable characters can be molded into a fantastic, timeless story.

(Alright, 8 am on Monday morning isn’t bad! Plus, if there are any commenters who have forgotten, here’s an untouched blog entry!)

On Tolstoy and Condemnation

It is human nature to fear to death. As I stated both in class and in my Senior Speech, necrophobia is number one on most lists of Americans’ most popular fears. With the exception of Gerasim, basically every single character within Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich refuses to face his or her own mortality. Why is this? Of course, death is frightening. I fear It as well. What reason do we have not to fear it? It’s inevitable. We are unable to escape its grasp. I can easily relate to both Ivan’s and Peter’s fears.

And yet, the story seems to promote the acceptance of death and those who have the ability to look upon their own mortality without fear. Why should this fear of death be seen as a negative personality trait? I would condemn the rest of the characters far more for their narcissism, materialism, and their mesh of falsity they construct then for their simple fear of the unknown. Though, perhaps this is what Tolstoy is condemning: The fact that the characters ignore death (just as they ignore the severity of Ivan’s illness) despite the fact that it is inevitable. Instead of at least *trying* to come to terms with death (if they succeed is inconsequential), they ignore it all together. Perhaps this refusal to admit the inevitable is their flaw. Even I can admit -- most of the time, anyway -- that we will all, at some time or another, reach the end of our lives. I try not to ignore that fact.

Yet, though titled The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the novella revolves around the life he and his contemporaries led. It was not how he died, nor how he feared death, but the fact that he wasted his life purely with trivial matters that is the focus of the story. Perhaps this fear of death only comes from the realization one has not lived his or her life properly. Perhaps this is why no character can face it. Because no character can face the fact that his or her life has been lived poorly. Despite their riches and their positions, they are unable to look upon death because they cannot look upon their wasted lives.

In the end, it seems, Tolstoy’s novella about necrophobia seems not to be about the fear of death at all, but about the fear of having lived a life that was not worth the pain.

P.S. I would merely like to add that I rather enjoyed the thinning of the chapters that occurred throughout the novella as both the reader and Ivan traveled closer and closer to his death. It gave me the feeling that not only was time quickening, but also that time was running out.

On Literary Criticism and Self-Inflicted Questions

“Three Ways of Going Wrong: Kipling, Conrad, Coetzee” by Douglass Kerr comes to some interesting conclusions and constructs connections which I would not have noticed had they not been pointed out to me. The connection between Kurtz and the Magistrate, for example, would have gone completely unnoticed were I not to have read this article. Also, his discussion of the outlaw and the lawman was particularly interesting.

However, I was less intrigued by the article than by the questions that suddenly and inexplicably jumped into my mind while reading the criticism. For some reason, I began musing upon the ideas of how the empire -- and indeed civilization and society itself -- is portrayed within the two novels: “Heart of Darkness” and “Waiting for the Barbarians.” In what ways is the empire viewed in each of the novels? (Well, one’s a novella.) It seems to me that in “Heart of Darkness” society and civilization are viewed as being beneficial to Europeans. For when Kurtz wanders too far from the empire’s tight grip, he looses himself in the savagery and darkness that surrounds him. His escape from society leads to his downfall. However, in “Waiting for the Barbarians,” Coetzee remarks upon the corrupting and poisoning influences of empirical life. The empire is seen as something evil, something unfeeling, something ignorant of the peaceful lives the barbarians lead outside the grasp of “civilization.” In fact, in Coetzee’s work, are not the citizens of the empire more barbaric than those who live far from their walls and regulations? For two literary works that are so similar in subject matter, it came as quite a surprise to think upon how the two differ.

And now I begin to wonder: “Why?” How can two books with similar themes, characters, and commentary have conflicting ideas on the benefits of empire? I have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer.

Overall, though, I thought the criticism was well worth reading. (This, despite the fact that I am now agonizing over my own questions.)

I hope you have a lovely winter break.

On Style and First Impressions

Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians is quite the different experience from reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The fact that the novel is written in the present voice is very interesting. The reader witnesses the action as it happens -- quite unlike the memories being retold in Heart of Darkness. As discussed in class, this prevents most foreshadowing and gives the reader an eerie uncertainty of what might happen later on in the novel.

Waiting for the Barbarians reads very quickly. Most of the sentences are short and to the point -- which is a far cry from the lengthy, flowery sentences of Conrad’s, who seems to delight in listing adjective after adjective.

This is, indeed, another detail which differentiates the two works of literature: Coetzee’s lack of long descriptive passages. Sure, there are small portions of description, however, the action is always moving forward. Each sentence and phrase seems to hold something of significance to either setting, character, plot, or theme. These full sentences make it extremely unbeneficial to become distracted while reading the novel, or to merely skim over lines. Missing a sentence could cause the reader to miss crucial bits of information and leave him or her lost within the plot. (Wait…. What just happened? When did he leave the granary? And where did those people come from?)

The text is also broken up frequently into portions of a few pages by pairs of asterisks, which allow the reader frequent breaks and gives the illusion of an even faster progression through the novel.

Overall, though, I seem to be enjoying Waiting for the Barbarians quite a bit. I am very much a fan of the asterisk breaks as mentioned in the previous paragraph. (I was never one for long chapters. They make my progress seem much slower.) I look forward to the completion of the text and its discussion in class. (319)

Happy Thanksgiving (Break)!

On "To Boldly Go" and Heart of Darkness

Notes on Linda J. Dryden's "To Boldly Go": Heart of Darkness and Popular Culture

-Heart of Darkness is a novella that has not yet been "closed" because the story is still relevant in the 21st Century.

-The story continues to be re birthed over and over again through parodies and references in popular culture.

-There is "a broader interdependence between popular culture and some of our most valued literary products."

-Without Heart of Darkness, either Apocalypse Now would never have been made, or it would have been a completely different film. Less powerful. Less enduring.

-Did Conrad's work continue to be popular because of its lasting literary merit? Or was it Coppola's Apocalypse Now that renewed interest in the novella?

-"In a sense, a kind of two-way process is enacted here whereby literature is influencing the more populist media of the cinema, which itself is reflecting that literature back at an audience who subsequently find a new relevance in a 'old masterpiece' "

-"High" culture, as it is called, seems to be seeping into popular culture which blurs the dividing line between the two.

-Star Trek uses the same themes and plot points that Heart of Darkness uses. Africans are replaced with alien species, however, both raise the same questions regarding race relations and colonialism.

-Popular culture cannot exist without "high" culture to draw upon.

-"The point is that without the elite products of our culture, such as literature, popular culture itself would be impoverished, lacking in cultural reference points on which to base its narratives."

-Heart of Darkness is apparently "one of the most frequently quoted texts within popular culture and media."

"It has become part of our cultural heritage."

On Closure and Stability

While the last section of The Sound and the Fury does not close the novel definitely -- many ends are left open and possibility for the future still remains -- one aspect of the section does help give the novel a base and some form of closure. This device is, of course, the use of a third-person narrative. By leaving behind the stream-of-consciousness method used in the first three sections, William Faulkner creates a foundation which offers the reader a small portion of -- if one can say this in regard to the Compson family. -- stability. Abandoning the chaos and disorder of the minds of the Compson men, the reader is finally able to see the Compson family in a third-person panorama. By disengaging the reader with the characters, Faulkner allows the reader to look back over the novel as a whole and put together -- within his/her own mind -- the entire tragedy of the Compson family. The reader sees each event in chronological order, piecing together the story bit by bit and finally is able to see the entire arch of the novel. In this way, the last sections offers closure -- closure that the novel would indeed lack were the story to end with yet more twisted memories. (212)

On Quentin and His Symbols

The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury
May Cameron Brown
American Literature, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Jan., 1980), pp. 544-553
Published by: Duke University Press

“No battle is ever won. …They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” (93) This quote from Quentin’s father epitomizes the nihilistic view that becomes the death of Quentin, a view that is found within various symbols throughout his section.

Throughout the article, May Cameron Brown explores, step by step, the recurring themes of the last day of Quentin Compson’s life and in what way they lead to the young man’s suicide. Of the symbols she discusses, the three that stood out where time, shadow, and twilight.

“For Quentin, time is painful and destructive. He lives in the past, which he attempts to reconstruct by imaginatively damning himself and Caddy to the purifying flames of hell. …Because time is his enemy, responsible for his loss of Caddy and hence for his suffering, he seeks to destroy it by breaking his grandfather‘s watch and then to escape it by avoiding all instruments which record time. The more desperate he is in his efforts to avoid time, the more conscious of it he becomes.” (Brown 545-546) For Quentin, time is a trap. No matter how hard he tries, Quentin is powerless both to stop time and to move it backwards. He is as a stone within a stream, the world -- time itself -- surrounds him, flowing past him, regardless of his desires or wants.

Throughout Quentin’s section, another predominate symbol is that of the shadow. In a way, the shadow is connected to time, for it is a simple way for the reader to know what time of day it is. However, the shadow also symbolizes Quentin and his disassociation from the rest of the world. The boy feels he is a shade of a person and, either resulting from this feeling or because of it, feels he is unable to effect the corporeal world. Brown points out, “It is Quentin’s partial awareness of the emptiness of words and values which creates his despair and isolates him in a world of shadows.” (Brown 550)

Finally, because of Quentin’s deep connection with shadows, his most sacred moment is, fittingly enough, that time of shadows, twilight. We all know twilight to be important since it was Faulkner’s first title for the novel. Even Quentin is aware of this affinity he has to the time after sunset. “On a conscious level Quentin associates twilight with a peaceful state, with the anticipated suicide when time will cease to torture him. …[Twilight] is for him both a quality of light and a quality of mind.” (Brown 551) In fact, the whole of Quentin’s section takes place during his last day alive, the twilight of his life.

May Cameron Brown explains some interesting symbols that are present throughout the second part of Faulkner’s novel which not only include time, shadow, and twilight, but also mirrors, doors, sisters, and water. By looking beyond the obvious, Brown discovers a deeper meaning than could ever be stumbled upon during a first reading and, in turn, creates a more fulfilling portion of The Sound and the Fury.
553 Words

On Repression and Psychosis

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a disturbing look into the mind of a woman who has been pushed past her emotional cliff-face into the turbulent seas of insanity. This woman, who is obviously not her in right mind to begin with, is forced into a small room where she is not permitted to do anything even remotely active. All she can do to occupy her time is lie there and let her imagination run wild.

This freedom of her mind is what conjures up the woman behind the wallpaper. This feral woman who claws at her surroundings is trapped, unable to free herself, and becomes even more bestial by the moment. The woman behind the wallpaper is obviously a physical representation of the real wife’s subconscious. Not able to express herself through what many would call normal means, forcing herself to put on this docile, domestic mask in front of her husband, friends, and company, living day after day, week after week, staying subservient to her husband who does not allow her even to express herself or show any part of her personality but for her meek-tempered, apologetic, docile housemaid side, forces her to bottle her emotions and psychosis deep within her, where it builds and builds until it is unable to contain itself and erupts from her subconscious, projecting itself onto the walls in a physical manifestation of her inner turmoil in an act which finally frees her from the constraints imposed upon her by outside forces and allows her inner personality to reign free.

What the wife sees behind the wallpaper is actually herself. This is confirmed at the end with the transformation of the wife into the woman. Despite the placid outward appearance, an inner war is waging within the wife. It was only a matter of time before that inner turmoil was able to burst free from the mild-mannered wife’s outer façade.

The story is also a commentary on the social position of women at the time. The wife is forced into trying to change herself for her husband and to meet the expectations society has of her. She is not expected to express herself. She is not expected to think for herself. She is not even expected to act for herself. The wife is pressed into this mold the society of the time expects all women to fit within and in order to do this, she must subdue her true self. She is slowly drowning, losing herself to the demands of her patriarchal society. As Sylvia Plath described, the wife is a woman “in the bell jar, [whose life is as] blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”

The yellow wallpaper of the dilapidated room symbolizes the binding confines of society from which the crazed woman -- the wife’s tormented subconscious -- tries desperately to escape. This ugly, peeling, wallpaper is society’s hidden, unattractive side which forces the wife to conform.

At the conclusion of the story, the subconscious of the wife has finally burst forth, transformed by the repression into a twisted, vicious, shade of a person. The story is a lesson regarding the stifling of one’s true self and the consequences of such an action. Because, really, who wants to turn into the lady behind the wallpaper? (551)

On the Husband and The S.A.R

The characters that Raymond Carver creates in his short story “Cathedral,” simply put, are more than they appear. At first glance, the husband of the story seems like a shallow, simple character. A character one might find more at home as a secondary character in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, perhaps, or in any novel written by Stephenie Meyer. However, when read more closely, the depth of the character of the husband begins to show through.

We get the initial and most revealing view of the husband--a character who we never learn the actual name of--through the narration of the story, as it is told in the first person through his eyes. The reader learns about the character merely through the ways he describes things. We listen to his tone, his inflections, his somewhat bitter and sarcastic comments. (And yes, I say “listen” despite the fact that the reader never literally hears a sound but for the turning of the pages.) The husband’s thoughts are short and clear. Never flowery. Always efficient. At first read, throughout most of the novel, the husband seems aloof, slightly bitter, quiet, and almost apathetic. He is reluctant to let the blind man, Robert, sleep at his house. He has a drinking problem. He smokes cannabis. He isn’t religious. He leads what some may call an uneventful, slightly depressing life. He simply lives from day to day, forcing himself through the routine of everyday life. To those who don’t take the time to read into the character, it must seem like he doesn’t care about anything at all.

This idea of the husband not caring, however, is a false one. In fact, the character who seems so rough and apathetic on the outside shows the reader his thoughtful half throughout the course of his narration. The first one and a half pages are dedicated not to himself, or the setting, or the theme, but instead to telling the reader all about his wife. The fact that he’s bitter about “the man who’d first enjoyed [his wife’s] favors,” (4) is a sign of how much he actually cares about her. How much the wife actually cares for her husband, however, is a different essay. Despite what her actual feelings are for the man who married her, the husband cares for her more than he ever lets on in the story. He tries to be hospitable to the man his wife is obviously more interested in than her own husband and later even tries to protect her modesty in front of him. These are not the actions of a man apathetic to his wife.

The husband is also a character who can easily put himself in another person’s situation. (The exception to this power is, of course, the fact that he cannot put himself in the mind of a blind man. At first, anyway.) When he hears the story of Robert’s wife, Beulah, his heart actually goes out to the woman. He feels for the “pitiful life this woman must have led.” (15) He even is shocked and saddened over the thought of “a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.” That’s a powerful, emotional thought no two-dimensional character could ever conceive.

Strangely enough, the character of the husband reminds me of another complex character found in a famous novel of one of Raymond Carver’s main influences. That character: Jake Barnes. That author: none other than the influential Ernest Hemingway. Both characters seem apathetic and both are almost completely disillusioned with the world around them. Both are fans of alcohol. And both have much more complex emotions than they actually let on. Not to get on too much of a tangent, but Jake Barnes, like the husband, sets up this exterior shield which hides his true self from others around him. The two characters both have an amazing amount of love (Yes, you heard correctly, Ernest Hemingway wrote about love!) within them that they are either afraid or unwilling to show. Anyway, while not important to the character development in the short story, I merely wanted to point out that were these two characters ever to meet, they would have “such a damned good time together.”

We never learn the name of the narrator, this husband who has a much deeper side than he lets on, but we learn so much more about this character’s character that one hardly cares! His name seems almost trivial in the grand scheme of things. And what’s amazing is that we learn all about this character merely through his narration of one simple evening spent with his wife and her blind friend. And think about it. If the husband did not have this hidden, softer side, he would never go through the powerful transformation that he does at the end of the story. Where would the be story be then?(819)

Why is the husband so reluctant to express this softer side to those around him?

Why *don’t* we learn the wife and the husband’s names?

Why *do* we learn Robert and Beulah’s names?

What’s the deal with the whole dinner scene?

What happened at the end of the story? How? Why?

On Baba O'Riley and Teenage Wasteland

I merely thought I'd post this video for those who would like to listen to the song referred to in the short story. The song is called Baba O'Riley (not Teenage Wasteland as many assume) and was written by Pete Townshend of the Who.

Enjoy!

(Also, if you wait until the end of the video, you can watch a few Who music videos as well!)

On Miss Emily and J.K. Rowling

Miss Emily in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily is a woman with a problem. And no, I am not speaking of her problem with necrophilia. (Though, that is related to her larger problem.) Miss Emily is a character who simply cannot let go. She cannot bear to see the people she loves leave her and that is what compels this lovely, Southern woman to act in ways one would not think possible.

Grief, and the feelings of loneliness that accompany them, are experienced by all people. The way others choose to deal with these feelings, however, vary from person to person. Miss Emily has difficultly moving past the first step of grief: Denial. When she experiences the death of her father, Miss Emily refuses to even acknowledge his death for three days! This denial is even brought to the extreme when she kills Homer rather than lose him, and even refuses to let go of the dead body, preferring instead to lie with the corpse night after night than admit to herself that he, and her father for that matter, is dead.

This fear and hatred of death is nothing special and haunts most cultures around the world. Miss Emily’s unwillingness to admit that those she loved have left her reminds me of “The Tale of the Three Brothers” mentioned in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This story is about three brothers who, after cheating Death out of their lives, are each granted a wish. The eldest brother asks for a wand more powerful than any in existence. By this reasoning, he considers himself more powerful than Death. His wish is granted and he receives the wand, but shortly enough, after bragging to all around him of the wand’s power, the eldest brother is killed and his wand stolen. Thus, Death claims the first brother. The middle brother, whose love had perished, asks for a stone that can return those who have died to the living world. With it, he calls back his love from Death. However, this woman is not the one who left him. She is a soul trapped in the mortal world and curses her fate. The middle brother is thus driven to suicide by watching the woman he once loved suffer. Thus, Death claims the second brother. However, the youngest brother asks for an invisibility cloak. He then hides from Death for the rest of his long life, fathering a son, and in turn passing the cloak to the boy when he is finally ready to walk with Death as his equal.

Miss Emily is most similar to the middle brother. Both of the two refuse to let the ones they love pass “through the veil.” However, the obsession they have is unhealthy as it prevents them from moving on with their lives. Both unable to even pass the first stage of grief cripples the two to a point of stasis. The two are both very relatable though, despite the fact that one is a borderline necrophiliac, as who would not wish a dead loved one to return?

Death haunts us all. We know of no way to escape it or reverse it. This is what makes it imperative to find ways to deal with it. Society usually frowns upon necrophilia, so it’s best to find a more suitable way to deal with your insecurity about lost.

Simply put: If you can’t deal with loss, I suggest you seek professional help rather than kill your lover and sleep with his dead body. Just a thought. (593)

On Summer Reading and Sylvia Plath

To begin with, the required list of books read over the summer:

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (of course)
Old School, Tobias Wolff
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer (Yes, I read it. Yes, it was terrible.)
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Dracula, Bram Stoker (And to all those Twilight/Stephenie Meyer fans out there: You want a *good* piece of vampire fiction?! Read Bram Stoker. That, or Anne Rice. At least their novels don't read like poor fanfiction.)

(Looking over this list, it seems only Old School, Pride and Prejudice, and Breaking Dawn were books that I had read for the first time this summer.)

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“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

The first sentence of Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar brilliantly sets the tone of the stark, real, horribly believable journey of one woman into the depths of madness and back to the shores of sanity. Esther Greenwood, the lady whom the novel revolves around, is a young woman who travels to New York over the summer for a internship with a prominent magazine. Esther is a character who watches the world; she does not participate in it. Her eye is detached from the chaos that envelops her as she observes from afar. In her own words: “I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”

Esther then travels back to her home in Massachusetts where she struggles to decide what to do with the rest of her life and slowly begins to drown in depression. She is subjected to a traumatic experience involving an improperly executed electroshock treatment and later ends up crawling into the cellar where she swallows a severe overdose of sleeping pills in an attempt to kill herself.

After being sent to a new mental hospital, Esther begins a slow, life-changing recovery. Scattered throughout these events in her life are others: a rejection for a writing course taught by a distinguished author, more electroshock treatments, the suicide of a friend, a handful of love affairs with a variety of gentlemen, and the loss of her virginity. The novel ends as Miss Greenwood is led before a group of doctors who will decide if she is well enough to leave the hospital. The reader never learns what becomes of this interview, for the novel ends with the sentence, “The eyes and faces all turned themselves toward me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.”

Esther Greenwood is a woman who knows exactly what she wants in life. Everything. But she can't decide on any choice before her and as she turns from "one mutually exclusive thing" to "another," she watches opportunity slip from her hands.

Esther is a character distinguished from her friends. She feels neither the buzz nor the excitement of New York City her friends do. Her world is silent. Her world is one within her own mind. And as she feels this sense of isolation, this pressing feeling of separation traps her. Like a bell jar. And suffocates her.

Sylvia Plath’s writing is brutal and honest, her descriptions, stark and real. No detail is spared in her dark, gritty world. Esther’s descent into madness is reasonable. The transition is slow and while she becomes increasingly insane, the reader sees each step in her life as rational and even “sane.”

The novel is gripping, chilling. One that you will question and ponder long after finished. (623 words)

The following is a selection of quotes from the novel. They are not included in the word count.

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

"I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on the silver log, pointing out to sea, like a sort of soul-compass, after I was dead."

"How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?"