Week 7

                                                     

 Howl

Today we will watch Into the Wild.  Then we will discuss its contents–scenes, images, plot elements, characters and themes.  One question to lead the discussion:  what has Christopher McCandless's journey into the "wild" to teach us about right living?  He, after all, was in pursuit of the "Truth, " and sought to kill the false being he felt lived within him.  Does he discover what he was seeking?

 I have a take home set of questions for you to do, and it will serve for grade purposes as response #5.

----------------Notes on the Persona, one of Carl Jung's Five Basic Archetypes--------

In dictionaries the word persona is defined as (1) person, and (2) the characters of a drama, novel, etc.  It is related to the familiar words personality, personal, personify, personate, and impersonate, each suggestive of the individual identity, and the ways in which that identity is manifest or portrayed–distinctive appearance, behavior, attitudes, voice, etc.  In Carl Jung's writings, the Persona–the social face or mask– is an aspect of the totality of Self.  It, along with the Shadow, Anima and Animus, coexist in the greater whole.  The Shadow/Unconscious Dark elements of Self stand in contrast to the Ego/Conscious Light elements and bear a compensatory relationship to each other.  Shadow elements are associated with animal nature, the instincts, that which is wild and uncivilized within us, but which is a source of primal energy, creativity and spontaneity.  Anima and animus are aspects of the Soul Image, an archetypal image of the opposite sex which may appear in dreams and fantasies and which is often projected onto others, particularly in the experience of falling in love.  The study of archetypes and symbols encourages understanding of  how opposites may be transcended or bridged, with the resultant experience being one of wholeness, consciousness and the unconscious melded.  The psychic reality is an essential aspect of Jung's thought, and includes even what is strictly "illusory."  Inner and outer worlds are perceived in images and the contents of psychic processes and experiences at times personified, as in the figures of gods and goddesses.

The ancient goddess figure called Aphrodite/Venus personified feminine beauty, the bloom of spring, love, and uninhibited, unself-conscious sexuality.  Only the virgin goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia were said to be immune from her power (Huffington The God of Greece).  She has a heavenly and earthly aspect, a light and a dark side, to which our instinctual desire for love may have acquainted us.  She is not to be toyed with.  The arrows of her son Cupid (Eros) will magically transform some, and fatally poison others.

                                                   Venus at Her Mirror

In the Morning                      by Steve Kowit (1938-  )

In the morning

holding her mirror,

the young woman

touches

her tender

lip with

her finger &

then with 

the tip of 

her tongue

licks it &

smiles

& admires her

eyes.

Cosmetics Do No Good           by Steve Kowit (1938-  )

Cosmetics do no good:

no shadow, rouge, mascara, lipstick–

nothing helps.

However artfully I comb my hair,

embellishing my throat & wrists with jewels,

it is no use–there is no

semblance of the beautiful young girl

I was

& long for still.

My loveliness is past,

and no one could be more aware than I am

that coquettishness at this age

only renders me ridiculous.

I know it.  Nonetheless,

I primp myself before the glass

like an infatuated schoolgirl

fussing over every detail,

practicing whatever subtlety

may please him.

I cannot help myself.

The God of Passion has his will of me

& I am tossed about 

between humiliation & desire,

rectitude & lust,

disintegration & renewal, ruin & salvation.

Week 6

                                                    Redwoods, Jedediah Smith State Park


The groves were God's first temples. ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn" 

Today you'll have opportunity for practice recitation and we will address "The White Heron" and "Tintern Abbey" and then, perhaps, begin the film Into the Wild, which is based on the true story of a young man, just graduated from college, with honors, who runs away from home and family to explore the "wild" in search of a more authentic life/self.

 Next week we will discuss its contents, scenes, images, plot elements, and themes.

Response 4 (350 words minimum, due week 7):  Discuss what you find most compelling in story, poem or film (thus far).  Refer to specific scenes and images and the ideas and feelings they elicited.  You may  convey freely your personal associations and /or memories of like experiences in the development.

Week 5

The Dove. a Symbol of . . .

The following free verse poem is by Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse during the American Civil War.  In it he sees beyond the immediate violent conflict between North and South in recognition of the "divine" humanity of all involved, and the healing inevitably to come.  Notice his long, free verse lines, stretching out from among the shorter and providing an expansive, heightened sense of feeling:

Reconciliation

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

The Lady of Shallott

Welcome back to class.  I hope you are all doing well.  

     Today we pick up where we left off last week, reviewing the autobiographical narratives by, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Bukowski and Sarah Orne Jewett's fiction "The White Heron," writers from very different eras who yet tell stories about the travails of growing up that in certain respects are similar.  We will discuss the similarities and differences in class, but here I will indicate some of the similarities in theme that I have noted:

• A narrator/protagonist who feels himself in opposition to family and others and thus feels isolated or alone and vulnerable to some degree
• A narrator/protagonist who struggles to find and assert himself and in so many ways feel strong
• A narrator/protagonist who discovers where his powers lie and exercises them
• A narrator/protagonist who considers the consequences of his actions, and regards with sympathy  the weak, meek, and humble
• A narrator/protagonist who seeks understanding, even wisdom, through reflection, reading and writing
• A narrator/protagonist who shows awareness of the social mask and who hides certain aspects of his self
• A narrator/protagonist who invites readers to see the challenges of growing up by relating key memories and experiences from that journey

We do not see in Bukowski's work the kind of conversation with God that St. Augustine enacts in his autobiographical Confessions.  We do not see elements of prayer and religious devotion.  Bukowski's work is not a religious confession nor a conversion narrative; in fact, we would all have to read more of his work to understand his spiritual or religious ideas and attitudes clearly.  He is, it seems to me, clearly seeking the Truth of his experience and trying to convey it in his narrative work, however unflattering the light he shines upon himself and others.  This, too, the articulation of Truth, is St. Augustine's aim.

--------------
I asked that you bring something to recite (not by memory) today in class, so we will see what you've brought, listen to your readings, which should be fun!  There is an excellent recording of "My Last Duchess" at the link below that I hope to play, providing the computer cooperates.  Here is the link to student performance videos I spoke of in class:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/theater/hamlet-student-instagram-videos.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

If we have time next week or the next we will look at  autobiographical excerpts by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), a Native American writer who recorded her memories of Sioux life in South Dakota, including the influence of her mother, the natural world around them, the legends and rituals of her tribe, and her meeting with white missionaries.  In addition, "The Navaho Night Chant," a piece still performed today by the Navaho, offers a look into the way that poetry and chanting come together in a ritual of healing and transformation intended to return its participants to a renewed sense of vitality and wholeness.

                                                      Tintern Abbey (12th Century)

I have also a selection of poems I'd like to address, time permitting.  They will serve to underscore the narrative themes in the prose pieces we are reading, provide review of earlier themes and concepts,  and will move us along to the next works.  One is "Tintern Abbey," a romantic poem in blank verse by William Wordsworth:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html   At the following link you may read background and see in photos the beauty of the abbey:  http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html  Another is Alfred Lord Tennyson's rhymed narrative (ballad) of "The Lady of Shallot," based on the medieval tales of King Arthur. And yet others include Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale."  

Posted below is the description of essay 3, which is due week 6 or 7:  

 Essay #3, due week 6: Compose a 600-700 word (minimum length) essay that introduces the text(s) by title and author and proceeds to support a thesis point or claim about the text(s). You may address poetry and/or prose selections but two or more selections must be addressed under a comprehensive thesis, the essay unified by the thesis, with each serving to develop and support your thesis. Include some description of the formal structure of the poem and/or prose elements, for example, stanza form, line length and rhyme pattern, use of repetition or anaphora, use of narrative structure, setting, plot, character,  conspicuous sound devices, imagery, figurative elements (such as metaphor, simile, symbol, personification).  Remember, narrative always involves the perspective or point of view of the narrator (first person or third person typically, as well as plot, setting, character development, tone or mood, and central thematic concerns. Lyric poems may have little in the way of narrative or story, though they always have a speaker and the speaker provides perspective, along with whatever other voices may be presented in the poem.  Provide support and evidence for your claims in the form of textual summary and direct quotation, formatted in the MLA style, with line citations. Avoid using quotation unnecessarily or dropping quotations in without commentary. Integrate short quotations into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted. Title your essay (do not use the poetry or prose story title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present). Double‐space the lines. 

Week 4

Jabberwocky                         by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

   And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son

   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

   The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

   Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

   And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

   The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

   And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

   He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

   Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

   He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

   And the mome raths outgrabe.

                                   –from Through the Looking-Glass

For another charming, though cruel, nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, see "The Walrus and the Carpenter."

Today we will finish "The Hunting of the Snark," by Lewis Carroll and associated readings and then on to the short prose stories by Guy de Maupassant and Charles Bukowski, with the focus on childhood, adolescence . . . growing up.    "The White Heron," by Sarah Orne Jewett is another that, like the first two, takes as its subject childhood and growing up, its pains, particular burdens and joys, family, social isolation, and the role of authority, often male-identified, in the protagonist's life. All are stories of initiation into experience and knowledge of one sort or another. The Confessions, by St. Augustine,  is the oldest complete autobiographical work we have and describes somewhat the author's religious conversion and confessions of sin and guilt. He is at pains to show to God and man how he has learned to see God's just and guiding hand in his life, even in those times his life was given over to what he calls wickedness. We may read excerpts; the full text is available at http://www.online-literature.com/saint-augustine/confessions-of-saint-augustine/.

----------------

In Charles Bukowski's  “Son of Satan,” a semi-autobiographical account, the author tells how a group of boys alleviate the boredom of day in the suburbs by torturing an erstwhile playmate, Simpson, a kid rather quiet, different, the narrator says, perhaps simply weaker than they in some way, “a loner. Probably lonely.” Not so different in fact, we can imagine. But the narrator takes his offhand boast of having lain with a girl under the narrator’s house as a challenge, territorial perhaps, though they know in all likelihood it was just a boast, “a lie” Simpson had come up with in hearing them talk of such things. After a brief “trial” they hang him from his porch.

      Before Simpson comes to serious bodily harm, the narrator cuts him down, and then the narrator goes for a long walk, feeling lost, “vacant” and somewhat remorseful. His shoes are thin and “hurt [his] feet.”  When he says that the “nails started coming through the soles,” we might imagine the story of Christ, whose feet were nailed to a cross. When he gets home his father is waiting for him, and he wants answers. But the boy, perhaps unable to explain, and afraid, chooses instead to fight his angry father, who for all he knows, might kill him. In the end, the boy is hiding under the bed, hoping to elude the big man’s grasp, waiting.

      The power and influence of parents and other authority figures is something we contend with throughout our lives as we come into our own. The story, to me, illustrates something of the cruelty, suffering, and longing for relief that mark a human life. The narrator is coming to terms with these experiences in, perhaps,  the only way he knows. The fight between him and his father, their coming to blows, appears a crucial departure in his young life.

------------------

                                                      Vulcan, Greek God of the Forge

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” 

― Charles Bukowski

Homework:  Poetry Essay #2, due week 5:  Compose a short essay of 250-350 (three paragraphs ought to do it) words on a poem from the handout.  Introduce the subject piece by title and author, describe briefly what the poem is about, its form (free verse or rhymed, stanza type and number), and proceed to your thesis idea, which is an arguable claim, an interpretative claim/opinion you have arrived at after consideration of the text’s structure and sense.  Support or prove your thesis idea in the body paragraph(s) by reference to specific lines and words in the poem text and explanation of their meaning.  Provide a brief conclusion that underscores your central focus and point.

Integrate short quotations (less than four lines) into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted.  Remember, all use of original wording should be enclosed in quotation marks or otherwise indicated as original source material.  Title your essay (do not use the poetry title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present).  Double‐space the lines.  Bring the printed copy to class week 4, or email it to ndoyle@aii.edu if you cannot be in class to submit it.

Topic suggestions:  
the poem as symbol or allegory of imagination and its powers, the search for truth, love, happiness or whatever theme you discover 

the poem as meditation on nature's shows 
the theme of life's progression– childhood, adolescence, maturity 

the uses of allusion –mythological, biblical, historical– in poetry                       

A Guide to the Study of Literature:  Explore the pages and links at the site below, where you will find helpful introductory material and insightful essays and responses to the themes and topics readers have discovered in literature.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/read_lyr.html

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------