When I began reading T.S. Eliot it certainly made me think more then I have been doing in the past with the poems. This poem was written in 1922 after WWI and references to WWI quite a bit. The poem, to me, is very confusing and I kept reading over and over again to even make sense of some sections.
The Waste Land is very dark, depressing, has information overload but yet very historic. The deeper I dug into the poem the more I began to make sense of it. The first section of the poem is titled the "The Burial of the Dead", sounds great? NOT. I thought to myself why would I want to read something that is titled that way. The title threw me off and the poem is nothing what you expect it to be. Eliot is talking about more then just literarily burying the dead. He is talking about the seasons dying. Summer is great but then fall comes around and everything dies. Also in the first section he says, "I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter." Made me think of how the birds migrate south in the winter for the warm weather. Maybe the world which he is living in "dies" so to speak because all of this.
This poem speaks about many different things, and has a lot of different speakers through out. For example (I'll just stick with "The Burial of the Dead") Section 1 has four subsections and each section seems to have a different speaker. How do I know this? Well in the first one he plain out tells us its Marie, in the other ones he makes references and sort of points out who the main speaker is. Like the ghost in the fourth subsection.
The poem it self through is very depressing. He seems unhappy. WWI probably had a great influence on that. At least I would say so. Through out the war 15 million people were killed. Good reason to be upset I’d say. I think he felt very betrayed, nothing was the same and a lot of people had to start over with their lives. Kind of interesting how he named the poem “The Waste Land” like everything is just wasted.
Very confusing and a hard poem to read but with a lot of help from the footnotes and some research online I have began to sort of understand it. Although I don’t think I will be reading it for fun any time soon.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Chandler "Red Wind"
Chandler’s “Red Wind” had left me in awe. I usually do not like to read mystery/crime or suspense stories but this one I could not put the book down. It kept me wanting to read more and more to see what was going to happen next. And as a reader that is what I expect from a great novel or a story. What a great change of reading from our previous reading assignments it was actually entertaining.
Red Wind, like I said is a story about a detective who witnessed a shooting and now is a liability to the murderer. Chandler goes into great detail and I could picture clearly what he is saying. I actually could visualize in my head the street, the bar, the cars, the people you name it. As an author you want to do that to keep your reader interested through out the story. As a writer this is a great thought to always keep in mind. Imagery is one of the most important things in a short story or a book. At least I think so.
I have read so many books or short stories where the start is great and when you get to the middle or few pages into it you lose sense of what the author is trying to say. You basically get bored and don’t want to read anymore.
I would have to say that my favorite part of this story is when the kid in the bar says “I don’t like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don’t like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don’t like them in the first place.” So simple yet so catchy. Something I could easily see in a movie or a TV show.
It think it was very clever the way Dalmas captured the killer. He was calm and didn’t panic. Dalmas was a very smart man who as a detective have probably been dealing with people like that before.
Great story and I would recommend to everyone.
Red Wind, like I said is a story about a detective who witnessed a shooting and now is a liability to the murderer. Chandler goes into great detail and I could picture clearly what he is saying. I actually could visualize in my head the street, the bar, the cars, the people you name it. As an author you want to do that to keep your reader interested through out the story. As a writer this is a great thought to always keep in mind. Imagery is one of the most important things in a short story or a book. At least I think so.
I have read so many books or short stories where the start is great and when you get to the middle or few pages into it you lose sense of what the author is trying to say. You basically get bored and don’t want to read anymore.
I would have to say that my favorite part of this story is when the kid in the bar says “I don’t like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don’t like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don’t like them in the first place.” So simple yet so catchy. Something I could easily see in a movie or a TV show.
It think it was very clever the way Dalmas captured the killer. He was calm and didn’t panic. Dalmas was a very smart man who as a detective have probably been dealing with people like that before.
Great story and I would recommend to everyone.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Feminist Manifesto
While reading this piece I came to realize that there were a lot more going in back in the day then just slavery and racism. Mina Loy's Feminist Manifesto made me see how hard women had it.
"Cease to place your confidence in economic legislation, vice-crusades & uniform education-you are glossing over Reality." I'm really glad that she had a foot note here because I did not understand what she was talking about. It was very hard for a woman to be her own individual because of the law. She could not own land, did not have access to higher education. Women were programmed to be depended on the man. First it was their father, then they were married off and the husband took of them. I'm very proud of her for saying and writing all of this. It is too bad it was not published earlier but again considering the circumstances in the early 19th hundreds she would have gotten in trouble for writing this.
Another point that strikes me in the text when she says: “Leave off looking to men to find out what you are not – seek within yourselves to find out what you are”. This to me is really a great quote. Many women should read it now and realized that they need to figure out who and what they are without a man. Loy seems to be like a very educated and a smart woman. Also I could tell that she is speaking from experience. The words that are emphasized in bold, large letters are telling us something. She obviously wants us to pay attention to them.
Another passage that stood out to me was on page 1504 “… would the unconditional surgical destruction of her virginity through-out the female population at puberty.” Kind of a disturbing thing to me but maybe during the time this was written it would actually work. Maybe man wouldn’t be possessive as much.
I chose to write about this well because first of all it stood out to me and also to say the least how very happy I am that I do not have to live by the rules that women had to live by in the early days. I’m very independent and could not imagine being dependent on a man right now. I love them but I want to live my own life and could not stand to being told what to do. I’m happy that she realized that finding your self does not need to be looked for in a man or anyone else for that matter.
"Cease to place your confidence in economic legislation, vice-crusades & uniform education-you are glossing over Reality." I'm really glad that she had a foot note here because I did not understand what she was talking about. It was very hard for a woman to be her own individual because of the law. She could not own land, did not have access to higher education. Women were programmed to be depended on the man. First it was their father, then they were married off and the husband took of them. I'm very proud of her for saying and writing all of this. It is too bad it was not published earlier but again considering the circumstances in the early 19th hundreds she would have gotten in trouble for writing this.
Another point that strikes me in the text when she says: “Leave off looking to men to find out what you are not – seek within yourselves to find out what you are”. This to me is really a great quote. Many women should read it now and realized that they need to figure out who and what they are without a man. Loy seems to be like a very educated and a smart woman. Also I could tell that she is speaking from experience. The words that are emphasized in bold, large letters are telling us something. She obviously wants us to pay attention to them.
Another passage that stood out to me was on page 1504 “… would the unconditional surgical destruction of her virginity through-out the female population at puberty.” Kind of a disturbing thing to me but maybe during the time this was written it would actually work. Maybe man wouldn’t be possessive as much.
I chose to write about this well because first of all it stood out to me and also to say the least how very happy I am that I do not have to live by the rules that women had to live by in the early days. I’m very independent and could not imagine being dependent on a man right now. I love them but I want to live my own life and could not stand to being told what to do. I’m happy that she realized that finding your self does not need to be looked for in a man or anyone else for that matter.
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