The Writer's Persona

I don't know if we can still post but I'll give it a shot. In another English class we did a close analysis of "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" from a different perspective as in this class. We looked at how the writer's motives and personality comes out in his/her work. It was from a psychoanalytic standpoint, but I kind of threw that out the window and adopted my own interpretation because I'm not a big fan of it.
Anyway, the class began with a short documentary on Eliot... and having read the poem before, I paid close attention to the man behind the words. It was like watching a film adaptation of Prufrock in many aspects. Eliot was contemplative, analytic, but most importantly vicarious. When you read a good poem or book, or even find an appreciation for a specific character in literature, I think there is almost always a piece of the writer that you're reading about. Shakespeare's work has a comical, intellectual and thoughtful air about it; Hemingway is blunt, to the point, and masculine... and I can't help but associate these traits with the writers' own characteristics. Thelonius Monk said "A man's a genius just to play himself." I believe that to be true, that letting yourself into your own work is the basis for a successful piece. Just my thoughts, though :)

Passing

Because of my final paper is focused on Nella Larsen's book Quicksand, I've been thinking a lot more about the depth in the book Passing. What is truly striking about it is that I had never observed so many levels to the title. How does the word passing connect to the book? Well, there is the most obvious answer: the book is about black women who pass as white. But writers are generally not that straight-forward when they title a novel. So what else could passing mean? It is an adjective describing satisfactory performance (often found in this form when describing a test). The book, leaving Irene's actions so vague that she is passing in this way (passing meaning free). Or perhaps she has destroyed the unification of the white and black race, Clare, and thus, in her mind, she is doing satisfactory work. Passing is also a verb, meaning to go by. How often did the white people simply go by the white people and vice versa, the blacks go by the whites without intermixing. Perhaps this is what is meant by passing and that is the way things (in the mind of society) should remain. Therefore, Clare was ultimately doomed as a character because she never just passed one race or another. She didn't conform in either category being a mulatto. Passing can also mean to spread something, such as passing a cold. Therefore, the interaction between the races could be compared to a disease- leading to Clare's destruction. And though I'm sure its not the only other perscription to the word "passing", there is the fact that Clare dies and Clare is therefore on the verge of passing from life to death. There are so many levels to the word passing.

The Big Forces

A lot of the focus in this class has been on what was the change that occurred and who were the people who provoked change. But I think there is a dimension that we often overlook when looking at modernism, or at least I do: the opposition of change. These were not JUST judgemental people. These were eugenicists, masses of people believing in "cleansing" the world of genetic inferiorities, such as the Nazis and the KKK, which was at full-force in the 1920's. Families were torn as tradition was provoked. The nuclear family began to bend and break as gender roles were questioned. Revivalists began to preach of the impurity of the world as others claimed God died. Fear struck the world with wartime hysteria creating such things as internment camps. It seems like a lot was going on, and that's because there was, not just for A minority, but many groups catalyzing each other to change.

Ignorance

It is strange to think that 120,000 Japanese-Americans were placed into internment camps, but the camps could still be kept secret and Americans through fear became hateful (perhaps like citizens after 9/11). There were articles that I read from old newspapers that had the "sensored" versions of relocating Japanese-Americans. There were a multitude of stories suggesting that the temporary confinement of the Japanese-Americans were few. They suggested alternative stories such as new housing displaced Japanese-Americans. Politicians gave their opinions of the federal government interfering with systems outside of their limitations. Its so strange to think what really is being sensored? How much do we know of what is going on in our own country?

Japanese Internment Camps

I researched more about the concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, and I found some alternative writing that came out of it. There is a poem called "That Damned Fence" and it is arranged in quatrains with the first two lines and last two lines rhyming with one another. It is a poem that describes the feeling of being trapped inside, with repetition of "That Damned Fence" throughout the poem.

After reading this poem, I found that in comparison to the haiku, which we read in class, the haiku is much more effective. The ideas in the haiku are not convoluted because the word choice is limited in this style of poetry. The alternative poem that I found on the internet is written by one author, where the haiku is by several authors; and while this would usually make the poem harder to follow because of different writing styles, I think it is good because it offers different perspectives in a chronologically manner. As far as expression of emotion, I think that the haiku does a better job. The emotion is not expressed as clearly to the reader in "That Damned Fence" and I think it is because of the freedom the author had to choose in words and stanzas that a haiku does not offer.

Though both poems were written in the Japanese concentration camps, I think that the haiku produced a better result, and those who did not experience the time can get a better idea of what went on inside.

Artichoke

In "The Pangolin," Marianne Moore's substitution of words for other words or her use of metonymy, is evident throughout the entire poem. Despite her intelligent phrases, I found some of her other lines fairly humorous though they may not have been meant to be.

For example, the word artichoke seemed at first to be out of place in her poem,

"...This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard,"

It seems funny that it is put there, though I like the sound of it. The humor acts in two different ways at the same time, and the artichoke is in comparison to the pangolin. Moore's way of doing this is shocking because an artichoke is a stationary plant. However, the pattern on the leaves of artichokes and on the pangolin resemble one another. The pangolin is an animal that I had never seen or heard of before this poem, so it is a surprise that it can be similar to a plant that is fairly well-known. The humor in Moore's writing is the image that the reader gets after visualizing an artichoke paired with a pangolin, because the reader may think of a walking artichoke... which is in a sense, what Marianne Moore is referring to.

Moore's fascination with the pangolin allows her to describe the armored plates in a way that would otherwise be overlooked. Her humor adds richness to the poem by putting it into context with a scaly covering of an artichoke. Overall, if I understand the meaning of metonymy, I think Moore is successful in making artichoke and pangolin mean the same thing.

Freedom and the Japanese Internment Camps

Writers are often praised when they can take a phrase and incorporate into it a double meaning that gives insight into the heart of society. I noticed that the Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku surpassed this practice, though, and was able to create double meaning not only with the language of the poem, but more importantly with the form of the poem as well.

For instance, haiku generally has a rigid pattern that must be followed to the tee. However, while the Concentration Camp Haiku takes the appearance of a haiku, it does not follow the exact measures set by the previous generation of haiku poets. There is freedom of expression within the style. The triplets can range from a 4-12-7 syllable sequence to a 6-5-7 sequence in the proceeding series, for example.

This breaking away of set rules for poetic forms becomes ironic when one realizes that these poetic liberties were being taken in a poem that depicts imprisonment. When freedom was at a premium for the haiku poets, they tried to gain a sense of freedom through their own art.

Pain Squared

Just to continue the theme of the Japanese haiku, I thought I'd throw in my two cents (and since it's a penny for one's thoughts, I suppose I get to express two).

On the one hand, I find it darkly amusing that America has chosen to try and quietly sweep the whole Japanese internment camp ordeal under the proverbial rug. Granted, I'm not as well-versed with the rationale behind the Executive Order which authorized it so I can't completely condemn the decision (although I do with the current amount of knowledge I possess on the subject). With that out of the way, I found each of the following haiku to have a certain resonance:

On certain days
heart is full of hypocrisy
flowers of gobo are purple

Black clouds instantly shroud
autumn sky
hail storming against us today also

I find the "heart full of hypocrisy" phrase to be quite pertinent. Here were a group of Japanese-Americans who understood that one of Americas great virtues (supposedly) was its acceptance of everyone (unless of course they were black; then they still were considered sub-human. Irony creeps up all the time...). Here the Japanese-Americans were denied the freedoms they probably came here to get in the first place. The insult to that injury was that the German-Americans did not suffer the same fate. Needless to say, this hypocrisy on the part of the American government did not escape the Japanese-Americans. It understandably caused them quite a bit of irritation.

With regard to the second haiku, it figuratively refers to the lives they used to have being swept away by a violent storm. What can one do against a storm? One cannot argue with a storm or any force of nature. In this case, the storm was the government and the Japanese-Americans could not argue with it either.

Not to play the moral equivalency game (although it is fun to do so sometimes), but the Japanese did far worse things to the Chinese in WWII. I'd advise people to check out a book called The Rape of Nanking to see what I'm talking about. It makes what the American government did to the Japanese-Americans look like royal treatment. I don't mean to say those actions by the Japanese excuse America's actions; I bring it up because it shows that human cruelty permeates every society in varying degrees.

P.S. I apologize if this is a bit disjointed. It's rather late and my brain is not working very well (although some would argue that is my normal state).

Simple Yet Powerful

What seems to be a simple and short description when first glancing at the Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku proves to be much different after reading. Even though a limited number of words were used, these haiku tell of the trying circumstances many people faced and express the pain and suffering the Japanese endured while imprisoned. The first poem takes readers on a telling journey through the first year at a concentration camp. A woman is taken in the spring for she writes "at home peony bud/ still firm. At this time she also informs readers that she's able to see her husband the day troops arrest her, but after this point she never mentions him again. Most likely this was the last time she saw her husband, and it's extremely difficult to think of never seeing a loved one again. The poet then takes readers through the summer months, into the winter with "Withered grass on ground," and finally stops again in the spring as "Dandelion has bloomed." Images of the grass and dandelions help the author explain her inner emotions and what she's thinking during this time of her imprisonment and how "On certain days/ heart is full of hypocrisy." In the haiku from the Anthology of Modern American Poetry I felt as if I sat in the concentration camp alongside this writer. I could feel the wind, hear the goat, and see the headless doll. It was if I too saw a victim fall to the ground before me. Even though the Japanese haiku appear choppy by jumping from thought to thought, short, and simple, the poets still express to the audience what they were feeling at the time, and they place readers in the same camp with their description.

Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku

When reading the Haiku from the Japanese American Concentration Camp handout there were several stanzas that really jumped out at me, and I wanted to post them on here. These stanzas really place the reader in the anguish the writers were going through at the time they wrote them.

Black clouds instantly shroud
autumn sky
hail storming against us today also

Winter wind
relentlessly blasting shed
goat bleating

Doll without a head
lying on desk top
one evening

From The Pangolin:

"Fearful yet to be feared," the armored
ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but
engulfs what he can

-These stanzas really capture the pain and the injustice of the imprisoned Japanese Americans and really affected me when I read them.

The Image of Mind

If there was ever an indirect description of something that came across so full and vivid, it is Moore's image of the mind in "The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing." She never addresses the mind specifically, but instead parallels it with very translucent and shining imagery. "...the glaze on a / katydid-wing," "the dove- / neck animated by / sun," "the / mist the heart wears," are all examples of the reflective, fresh, almost gem-like portrayal of the mind. This kind of imagery makes the mind seem contemplative, reflective of reality, yet reflexive and influential on the essence of reality, much like how I would view the mind. There is a lot of light included in this as it relates to the sun and the shining of mist and glazed wings. I think this is important because -- if we think about this allegorically -- the mind needs something to feed off of and analyze. Without a subject, the mind is blank. That is what struck me about Moore's image of the mind: it feels transparent to me, with the ability to refract its subject and warp it or purify it.

Moore's Eternity

Marianne Moore's "What Are Years?" is a pretty profound dialogue on growing older, death, and eternity. There were two passages that really made me think about the concept and kind of gave me solace.
The first is "He / sees the deep and is glad, who accedes to mortality / and in his imprisonment rises / upon himself." The meaning I got from this was that the bird (the supposed subject of the poem) was able to look upon eternity (the deep) and was glad that he was not forced to exist in it, that his existence was temporary. I can sympathize with this because I feel that having to exist forever would be very wearying and mentally overwhelming. Having a temporary existence, in a way, is motivation to make the best of life. If you live forever, there's always tomorrow.
The second passage reads: "Though he is captive, / his mighty singing / says, satisfaction is a lowly / thing, how pure a thing joy is." This correlates with the second half of the previous quote, but focuses more on the fulfillment and enjoyment of striving to extend your mortal impression as far as you can. In many ways this reminds me of "Ode to a Nightingale" where the speaker speaks admiringly and enviously of nature's immortality. He/she realizes, however, that the temporary quality--the mortality--of life is what makes it so invigorating and special. Having no end or beginning takes the momentary enthrallment out of life. In this way, the speaker of "Ode" realizes that his/her current peace and happiness is the apex of life and is finally willing to pass on.
The bird, and therefore the speaker, of "What Are Years?" is reaching the same conclusion: he/she is grateful for the passion of life that mortality brings, and ultimately prefers it over the vastness of eternity. The final lines, "This is mortality, / this is eternity" sums up the revelation: live for the moment and you can experience eternity in everyday life.

I found that "The Walls Do Not Fall" is a pretty unique interpretation of post-war reconstruction and resurrection, especially for how old it is. H.D. creates a religious mutt of a poem that includes mythology, Christianity, and Judaism among others to symbolize the rebirth of hope after the global schism of WW2. Instead of isolating belief, H.D. tries to model the sublime of each religion and fuse it into this one thematic poem. I like how she tries to match each religious persona with its parallels (ex: Amen-Ra and Christ) and presents them as spiritual allies. Especially with Amen-Ra and Christ, who are both resurrection figures of their respective beliefs, are portrayed as returning during the spring time when the desolation of the world is buried beneath new blooms.

Death in Larsen and Hemingway

Not that anyone needs to know this, but I'm playing a bit of catch up with my blog postings. That said, here we go...

After I finished reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, I started thinking about the ending and its similarities and differences from Larsen's Passing. In each book, a major character whom we've come to know and and connect with dies. I found it particularly intriguing that in both books the other main character played a relatively large role in that death.

Starting with Passing, Irene indirectly/directly causes Clare's death. I referred to this slightly on a previous post and I will go into more depth here. The most obvious argument for Irene directly causing Clare's death stems from Irene putting her arm on Clare just prior to Clare falling to her death. Granted, Larsen deliberately leaves this ambiguous (like a "Lady and the Tiger" sort of vibe), but one could legitimately argue that Irene's hatred/resentment of Clare forced its way to the surface an manifested itself through a rage-induced homicide. Indirectly, Irene's behavior in front of Clare's husband causes Clare's husband to come to the party in a rage. Had Irene never made him suspicious, Clare would probably have lived (although one could argue that this sort of occurrence was inevitable). Regardless of the perspective, Irene's emotions inevitably caused the death of Clare. Of course her emotions were those of anger and resentment, emotions which are the converse of Henry's.

In A Farewell to Arms, Henry's physical and emotional actions eventually cause Catherine's death. From a physical perspective, had Henry not deserted the army, it is entirely possible that Catherine would have had a safe delivery. I say that only because lots of stress and travel while pregnant can't be good for one's health or for the baby. Granted, that's not the strongest argument I could muster, but it works for now. Henry's emotional aspects contribute more greatly to Catherine's death. I deliberately left sex out of the physical aspect of my analysis only because for my purposes, the sex is merely a physical expression of an emotional need. Without the emotion (namely, lust), Catherine never would have gotten pregnant. Neither Henry nor Catherine probably wanted a baby at that point (having a baby in the middle of a war in a foreign country can't be too high on anyone's list). So, had Henry not impregnated her, she never would have died. Henry did eventually come to love Catherine (as opposed to lust after her), but his lust and his love led to Catherine's death all the same.

Catherine's death and Clare's death had a large impact on Henry and Irene respectively. At the end of Passing, everything becomes dark to Irene. At the end of A Farewell to Arms, Henry walks out into the rain. Both the dark and the rain obscure one's ability to see clearly. Ironically, both Henry and Irene see life more clearly than they did before the deaths.

Hemingway and Minimalism

William Faulkner once said of Hemingway: "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." Of course Hemingway's response to that was, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

The amusing nature of that exchange aside, Hemingway does have a point. I will admit that I have quite the appreciation for Hemingway because of his approach to writing. His minimalist approach is arguably just as strong or stronger than the more descriptive approach as done by Faulkner or Steinbeck (I like Steinbeck, but hate Faulkner). From one angle, the minimalist approach does not bog the readers down with overly inflated language whose only purpose is to aggressively convince the reader that the author in question possesses a vast lexicon and can whimsically extract exquisitely worded phrases. Instead of all that, the minimalist leaves the description to the reader. Arguably, this causes the reader to become much more actively involved in the story as everything is not laid out.

A Farewell to Arms benefits greatly from this approach as it adds a visceral level to all the proceedings. For example, when Henry and his friends are shelled, Hemingway's description of the violence is very direct. When Hemingway describes Henry's kneecap as halfway down his calf, the reader can immediately visualize that and almost unconsciously adds all the graphic details.

In scenes with Henry and Catherine, this minimalist style causes the reader to actively contemplate what each character feels. It is up to the reader to read in between the lines and fill in the emotions as it were. If Hemingway explored all the minutia of their relationship, it may not have been bad, but it would have deprived the reader of some character speculation.

All of this hearkens back to the imagist poets from earlier in the semester. Take a poem like Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". The poem arguably has more of an impact because of its cryptic nature. Hemingway takes that same idea and applies it to his novel. The result of both is the same: the reader is more actively involved and can potentially get more out of the material than if the authors had spelled everything out in excruciating detail.

Hemingway's mock Iliad

The back of our Scribner edition of Farewell to Arms starts out by calling the book, "The best American novel to emerge from World War I." I was thinking about what this quote meant in comparison to all the horror associated with the Great War.

War used to be romanticized in novels, such as the Homer's Iliad and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. However, WWI shattered many of the idealized perceptions of heroism and courage. Looking at FTA's text, there are many instances in which Hemingway uses images to create somewhat of a mock epic. For example, Hemingway pens in Chapter 1, "The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves." In what appears to be a run-on sentence, Hemingway's use of the the conjunction "and" creates a bond between the leaves and the soldiers. Not only does this paint a picture of the large quantity of soldiers, but it ties these troops to the landscape as well. In other words, one could say that the number of troops was as great as the number of leaves in the countryside. This is actually one technique Hemingway copies from Homer's Iliad. Homer, too, compares troop masses to leaves. However, the backdrop of the bloody World War I gives the image a new sarcastic meaning. Whereas Homer intended to create a beautiful image with this juxtaposition, Hemingway creates an ironic image that foreshadows the pointless waste of life in the novel.

A Lack of Description

When I first started A Farewell to Arms I didn't like the lack of description. When reading the work of descriptive authors the scene they explain comes to life for me. But that wasn't the case for Hemingway's novel. He expressed thoughts and scenes that didn't seem out of the ordinary. For example, after Henry arrives to the front after his leave he says "The fields were green and there were small green shoots on the vines, the trees along the road had small leaves and a breeze came from the sea." We as readers already know that the grass in fields is green. We also understand that in the beginning of spring all natural life sprouts green. Because I wasn't experiencing that moment with Henry I want to be given details that I don't know already. But after listening to Mike's presentation last week I changed my mind. He explained how Hemingway's work lacked description on purpose so that readers can use their imagination. I had never thought about it that way. A lack of description puts the reader to work. Instead of being handed a picturesque scene without doing any thinking at all, Hemingway's audience must fill in the blanks, create their own picture. Now that I understand Hemingway's motive for a lack of description in A Farewell to Arms, I learned to appreciate his work more.

Women's Dependency

While reading A Farewell to Arms, I noticed women in the book are completely dependent upon men, but men cannot be dependent on women. For instance, the nurses are all under command of the doctors. They cannot properly do a task (such as when Frederic first arrives at the new British hospital, but must wait for the doctor to get back before anything can be done to him). The two girls picked-up along the road seen when Frederic and the troops are retreating are completely dependent on the soldiers for safety and for food. Catherine often expresses her desire to be a "good girl". She wants so much to please Frederic, as if she fears that she will be rejected if she does not properly fulfill her womanly duty. However, the statement that men can depend on women is proven false twice in the end. Henry falls in love with Catherine, and yet she dies. He fought so hard for her (and not that she can help it) but she died. He couldn't depend on her. The baby, a boy, was dependent on his mother, the woman, to deliver him safely. Yet he died. Men are clearly given a privileged role throughout the book.

Farewell To Arms

First of all, A Farewell to Arms was horribly depressing. The entire time the two main characters, Henry and Catherine are on this quest to have this beautiful life together, but the obstacles in their life deter them from ever finding this “happy” place in their lives where they can just relax and enjoy each other. Henry, the protagonist of the novel, has no passion in his life until he meets Catherine. Although she at first is just playing this flirty game with Henry, and is just trying to seduce him because of her grief for her dead fiancé, I don’t think she intended to fall in love with him. By the end of the novel, she was pregnant, and I truly think that even though she didn’t mean to truly have feelings for Henry, I do believe by the end of the novel she was completely in love with him. By the end of the novel, it seemed almost too good to be true for the two to finally just have each other. I kind of expected her death and problematic pregnancy to be her demise. I think the plot, and the overall “romantic tragedy” is very stereotypical to the time period. I think people very typically associate these exaggerated romances with war, especially during World War I and this novel fit perfectly into this category.

Nella Larsen

My presentation on Nella Larsen was very informative in helping me to understand the time period. It gave me a first hand perspective of how black women felt during the Harlem Renaissance. Since the Harlem Renaissance impacted urban culture throughout the United States including literature, drama, music, visual art, and dance, it gave blacks a new way to explore “Black America.” Nella Larsen was a “mulatto” woman, and she used this physical aspect of her life throughout her literature. In her two books Quicksand and Passing, she told tales of the mulatto woman, and their struggle to lead fulfilling lives despite the stereotype of the “tragic mulatto.” The mulatto woman also inspired paintings such as “The Octoroon Girl” by Archibald Motley, which featured a light-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. Art and literature featuring the mulatto woman gave her a new “role” in society. The mulatto woman was now the new representative of the “New Negro Woman.” She was seen as a heroine, and emphasized roles of “self-sacrifice,” taking jobs such as teachers, nurses, and librarians. These popular images of the “New Negro Woman” enforced a standard of behavior, appearance, and vocation for all black women at the time. Overall, Larsen and Motley were icon’s throughout the Harlem Renaissance because they made the “New Negro Woman” more modern, independent, and extreme. They defined the “mulatto” as a public icon, and gave the “New Negro Woman” a new outlook and defined her expectations.