Playing Analyst

After reading this weeks section of Gardiner, I feel that I have a better understanding of my disdain for reading plays. In the beginning of chapter 7 the author remarks that few people "read plays for pleasure in the same way that we might take a novel with us to the beach." (Pg. 113) The page goes on to explain methods to benefit a reader's understanding of plays. I have always had trouble visualizing a play, so this helps to explain my struggle with the genre.
The sample analysis in the end was very intriguing to me. I felt that if I could read a play with a specific analysis in mind, like Mrs. Peters' ethical journey, I could enjoy the play more. I might be able to see the play through Mrs. Peters' eyesI look forward to reading more plays in the future in order to test out my theory that a specific analysis will facilitate in my enthusiasm and understanding if reading plays.

Stories

I really enjoyed the poem "Cinderella," because it is not all sunshine and roses like the Disney version. This poem takes a well known story from Disney and depicts its origin, which is part of the Grimm fairy tales. This version uses the dove in order to give Cinderella everything that she desires, rather than a magical Godmother. The dove symbolizes the pure love of the mother, as well as the animalistic instincts that a mother would have if her child were being wronged. When Cinderella is in need, the dove is there to provide for her since the mother can not be. When Cinderella is being wronged by others, the dove comes to her aid. I could not help but picture the dove as the spiritual essence that the mother left behind, instead of smiling "down from heaven in the seam of a cloud" like the mother said that she would do. Overall, I thoroughly prefer this work and its gruesome details in comparison to Disney's adaptation. 

The second poem made me laugh. Most of the time you really do not want to know the true story because it does not have the soft edges or enthusiasm that an alternative version has. I could not help but think of the different versions of Cinderella and how most (if Grimm's version is more like the true story since it is where the adaptation came from) do not want to know about eyes being pecked out or women cutting their feet to make a shoe fit. The two poems went hand in hand for me after making this connection that the first is like the true story that the second says you should not ask for. My mind then went to the saying that there is a right side, wrong side, my side, and his side to every story. The variations are what allow for adaptation, and most of the time the preferable choice of which side we accept is due to the fact that we innately dislike confrontation and discomfort.

Wyatt v.s. Rossetti v.s. Hacker

Between the three poems that we read for class, my favorite was Rossetti's "Song." I believe that this was my favorite because I was enamored by the tone and beauty of the words. I can not help but think of the poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" while reading this poem. I feel that the author is telling those close to her that it is okay to move on with life. The speaker will not need frivolities at her grave because she will not know of them. She is telling the reader that it is okay to remember the good times, but that they should forget how terrible the feeling of loss is. This poem speaks to anyone that has dealt with loss, and I believe that the author may help many to get past their grief and on to healing through this poem.
The second poem was Marilyn Hacker's "Villanelle." I enjoyed reading this poem, but not as much as the first. I agree with the author that "every day we separate." I feel that we do separate and change and mold new aspects of our life into a new self. This poem had a beautiful message!
The last poem was Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They Flee from me." I could not help but feel that this poem is about prostitution. I believe that the author is describing his various encounters with prostitutes, and how once they have had use of each other they are free to move on. I do not know why, but I can not gain any positive influence from this work. I prefer poems that promote emotion or further thinking. I have never truly enjoyed poems that do not provide emotion, humor, or a deeper understanding. Maybe I am missing something in Wyatt's poem, but I did not gain anything from it. What about you? Which did you prefer? Did you gain something from Wyatt's poem? If so, then please fill me in!

The Beauty of Sadness

I was amazed at how depressing this poem was. I felt that the author was trying to get me to notice the negativity in nature and the human existence. " Sophocles long ago/Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought/ Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow/ Of human misery;" This excerpt from the poem gives a sense that the sound of the sea mimics the sound made by humans in agony. I realized that when I read the poem (the fourth time) I read each line as if it was a sigh. The comparison of something so vast to our own troubles makes them seem like they are just as vast and never-ending.

The author's word choice helped me to make the connection that the poem was not positive, but instead exemplified the struggles of everyday life. He uses the following words in the work: grating roar; fling; tremulous; sadness; misery;melancholy; withdrawing roar; and dreary. These words all help to set the tone for the last stanza in which the author is expressing that he and his love must be there for one another since the world and everyone in it will not be there to offer comfort or solace.

"And we here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night." This excerpt sums up his work perfectly. I found it to mean that as we hide away in the darkness with our own troubles the world is wrought with chaos and ignorance. We must attend to our own struggles because the world is too busy handling the constant ebb and flow of life.

Although I found this poem to be slightly depressing, I was also enamored by the words. The author took something that is often considered sublime (the ocean) and uses the sublime to set the tone of misery (rather than awe) in the work. I have often looked at the ocean as the tide rose and fell, but my thoughts were primarily on the fact that my problems were minute in comparison. This poem uses the same image to depict that, much like the waves that crash on the beach and take some of it with them with each tide, each time we experience the emotions of the world we begin to be worn down by them.    

A New Understanding

As I was reading the Feminist Criticism in our copy of The Dead, I was struck by a new understanding of why I found the work hard to relate to. "The narrative voice has a bourgeois agenda: to produce a flattering picture of Irish middle-class life whose center of security and reliability is Gabriel Conroy, a paterfamilias to a family of women." This excerpt from page 193 made me realize that part of the reason I could not enjoy the work was because I was not someone who would be affected by any of the agendas set aside by the narrative voice. I feel that if the story had been told from Gretta's view, then I might have gotten more meaning from the text.

On page 195 you read of the narratives attitude towards Gretta. From this portion of the criticism I was able to add cause to why I could not appreciated the comments that Gabriel had made about Gretta. Gretta was used as an object and a symbol, which might seem romantic to many but to me the dehumanization was disrespectful. I can not help but think of all of the crude comments that are made by a man who sees a woman that he believes to be hot or sexy. Why not beautiful? Pretty? Gorgeous? Why do men feel the need to use rash words to describe their feelings towards a woman? I was able to realize that another reason that I could not empathize with Gabriel in the story was because he was often belittling the women or his wife. Was this a constraint for the rest of my female peers out there?

Literature: An Object or Piece of Art

"The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results( what it is and what it does).... It begins by trying to derive the standards of criticism from the psychological effects of a poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. The outcome...is that the poem itself as an object of specifically critical judgement, tend to disappear." This excerpt is from the reader response section of "The Dead." I was so caught up when I read this that I was not able to get much from the rest of the section. Essentially this quote says that what the reader believes the work means is completely irrelevant. I was appalled. I have always been told that literature is like a dance, it takes both the reader and the writer to make a successful work.

However in the following paragraph Fish argues that "literature exists when it is read." I could not agree more. A work is just words on a page, but when the audience reads the words they come to life. I feel that it is almost impossible to read a novel/poem without putting our own experiences into the interpretation. This is how critics are able to develop their own assessments of a work. I find this statement similar to the question if a tree makes a noise when it falls in a forest without anyone around. I am of the mind that if no one is around to hear the noise then it does not matter, so if no one is able to read a work and make an analysis using their own experience then the work is just an object taking up space instead of a piece of art.

Realization of Inadequacy

I must admit that the first portion of the work was really difficult to get in to. The story was just about a family and a party, and I could not find any real depth in the story. Halfway through I was able to finally get in to the story. I enjoyed getting to experience the setting through Gabriel's thoughts.
The most influential portion of the work for me was the scene of Gretta listening to the song. This set the scene for the rest of the story. Gabriel was enamoured once more with his wife, but she was caught in misery of the past. I feel that the scene in the inn was a turning point in Gabriel's life because he finally realized that he had not experienced as much as the wife who me he desperately tried to shelter. The irony of this struck me! The author emphasized how Gabriel coddled his wife, but the story comes full circle for Gabriel to finally see that he is not truly above her and does not really possess the right/experience to guide her life.

Literary Skills and the Lie of a Single Truth

I feel very lucky to have had educators throughout the years have taught me to reread, critical read, and analyze texts. I love that Gardner addresses that literary texts do not have a hidden meaning. I have had too many professors that teach a certain work means this and anything else is wrong. I strongly feel that every text has the possibility to mean something different to each reader.
In class the other day, we read My Papa's Waltz. I had always read this work as one about abuse. This was because a professor several years ago gave us the poem to read, and asked us what we thought it meant. The professor then spent an hour lecturing on its "true" meaning about abuse. I finally was able to see the many truths that could be possible in this work. I feel that giving a student credit for their own analysis is crucial to not stunting their literary growth.
This chapter gives an outline of how to become a better reader. I was lucky to posessess many of these skills early on because of my Father and teachers, but many individuals are not so lucky. I believe that a teacher should demonstrate each of the skills listed in this chapter in order to help his or her students further their literary capacity. What do you think? Do you believe that any one work has one "true" meaning?

Names: Sharing is Out of the Question

This week in Gleick's work The Information, the passage about names caught my attention the most. When an individual is expecting they always strive to pick a name that is original, but with so many people in the world the task can be cumbersome. Gleick states "Names became a special problem: their disambiguation; their complexity; their collisions. The nearly limitless flow of information had the effect of throwing all the world's items into a single arena, where they seemed to play a frantic game of Bumper Cars." Also, a little further down on page 388 he states "Impossible as it seems, the modern world is running out of names." These quotes emulate the difficulty of naming a child something original, picking the name for your business, or naming your band.

Our society is not accepting of two groups using the same name because that name becomes the group's "brand," much like Coca-Cola or Nike. In 1919 this struggle was also alive, so telegraph companies prompted their customers to pick a code name (which they had to pay for.) This continues today with the names of artists and actors/actresses. Gleick mentions several famous names that are associated with one face and not to be replicated by another, for example Julia Roberts. The name is actually very common, but an aspiring actress would be prompted to change their name because Julia Roberts (the actress) already exists and there can be only one. Imagine if this were the case with educators. I have had several teachers that have the same name (since we normally call them by their title and last name alone). I could only imagine the uproar that there could only be one Dr. Blah-Blah in the world, so you must change your name in order to become a teacher. The idea seems silly when you look at it that way.

Another debate mentioned about names is the one of using a location's name as the name of a car or some other object, individual, or company. How can a corporation or individual be expected to pick any name in any language for its own if there is to be constant conflict? No wonder we have odd names for browsers, such as Google, Yahoo!, etc... Certain names have been coined and bought to represent a singular item/individual, and I believe that those should be left alone; however, not everyone or everything can be expected to pay massive amounts of money to "own" a name. No one mentions how the jaguar or mustang felt about their name being used by car companies. I believe that it is crucial for more companies/individuals to develop more leniency towards others having similar names. Honestly we are all just human, and there are only so many words at our disposal now! I feel that the majority of society strives to be original, but after such a long existence does that word really have any credibility in society today?

What do you think? Should we all just start coming up with gibberish to appease those that have already claimed a certain name? Does the idea that anyone with any sort of fame can dictate what another goes by have merit?

As a side note, if you have not already looked into remixing in today's society then I recommend it. Even the major industries have made a fortune on remix, so why should names be any different for the average person?

Innovations

I never truly paid attention to the many modes of measurement, but my eyes were opened after reading a few passages by James Gleick. I really enjoyed the references to information as a unit of measure, such as information being "the unit of life" as referred to by Werner Loewenstein on page 9 of Gleick's work. I realize that as technology has advance people have grown to desire more information in a much more urgent manner. If you look out across campus, then you will struggle to find one person without some type of electronic device in their possession. I have realized how difficult it is to have a discussion with anyone without them having to look up what we are discussing or start texting. We would not be where we are now without the innovations of Bell Labs or the brilliant scientists mentioned in Gleick's work. 

Where do you think we would be now without the innovations of the telephone? Computer? Internet? I personally feel that we would have eventually gotten to the level of technological advancement we are now, but not as quickly. The amazing scientists and inventors that have ushered us into the "Age of Information" (as referenced in Gleick's work) have been both a blessing and a curse. The world is no longer one that we can depend on our neighbors or trust what we read because the webs of information are no longer purely factual or non-fictional but they are biased and often untrue.

To Read is To Attempt Comprehension

Last night's reading was very enlightening to me. I was enthralled by the images of the human brain that depicted the regions in which we hear words, see words, read words, and generate verbs. On page 38 and 39, Dr. Merlin C. Wittrock states " To comprehend a text we not only read it, in the nominal sense of the word, we construct a meaning for it." I found this quote to be very accurate as to how I read. I thoroughly enjoy to read, but I enjoy the comprehension that I gain from a text even more. In the text we are told of the "silent reader" which I definitely resonate with. I often enter my own world when I am immersed in a novel or poem. I find that the freedom literature offers to a reader is incomparable to anything else. My motto has always been why should you alter your state of mind with a substance when you can just enter a new world via an enthralling work? In the text on page 53," Emerson believed that reading a book was a private and solitary business," and I agree to a certain extent. I believe that the act of reading alone to gain enjoyment is more achievable than when the text is shared in a group effort. I never enjoyed "popcorn" reading in school for this reason, but I truly enjoyed when we would discuss the text that we had read on our own. What do you think? Is reading more enjoyable alone or in a group? Which do you benefit from more?

The Necessity of Literature

Why is it necessary to take courses in college that teach us how to write proficiently? Should we not know by now how to write? The answer to these questions are addressed in "Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide" by Janet E. Gardner. Gardner states on page 2, " The answer as to why people do need to learn these skills is that imaginative literature is different from most of the other writing we read every day, and reading and writing about literature requires, and builds, a very different set of skills than those we bring to a Wikepedia article or a Facebook posting." Gardner also addresses why an individual should read literature, and I agree with her point that literature is not only informational, but helps us to develop certain skills necessary to succeed in the written world. Why is it that individuals often feel literature to be out of date and irrelevant in our world today? I believe that many individuals are unable to recognize the importance of literature, and in turn discount it as being irrelevant. How can reading Shakespeare relate to my life today? The themes that many of the authors in our history depict in their works are still at play in our everyday life, and by reading these works we are given certain guidelines to working through our everyday turmoils.
In "A History of Reading"  by Alberto Manguel we are able to see the view of a man who believes literature has been a pivotal role in his development. I agree that literature is very pivotal in each individual's development because they are able to gleam hints about how certain situations can be managed. Human nature causes us to be less likely to know what to do in a foreign situation, but if you really wanted a hint about how to handle a situation you almost certainly can find a work of literature to help you through your predicament. Why do you feel that it is essential for an individual to expose themselves to literature? What can we gain from being well versed in many different forms of literary works?