holy. batman. quityerwhining!

"For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self." p. 117

first of all, STOP. WHINING. I'm sick of it. I get that you're miserable, but are you really so miserable that you can't even shake it for a moment? you're in the English countryside, and you can't pretend to enjoy it?! you make me sad. so be it. (come, Patsy!). after finishing, I realize that this as a foreshadowing to Victor going bye-bye. and by "going bye-bye", I mean jumping ship. literally. he's miserable. he might have been recovering, but retelling this story to Walton just made everything gush back and he got miserable all over again. and this time he really can't shake it. poor guy.

presagio.

"I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end." p. 98

I should have picked up on this right about this part of the book... Nick starts talking about "the end". he reflects more about Gatsby's life as a whole. he foreshadows Gatsby's death a mere five pages later. uh-duh. I feel a little stupid now for not noticing it, but I was still kinda worried about Myrtle dying and trying to figure out where Tom was and so on and so forth. the end of the book isn't super clear about all of that. that's probably typical. the reader doesn't need to know EXACTLY where people go. it's sorta like that object permanence thing that babies learn when they're a few months old: just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. it's pretty well placed, actually. right at the coattails of the Myrtle incident. right after the big to-do between Gatsby and Tom. boo. well played, Fitzgerald.

aaaaaand the winner is...

oh. yikes. you mean you DON'T want to be the winner?
whoops. this is... erm. awkward [IT'SONLYAWKWARDIFYOUMAKIEITAWKWARD!]

the first question in the book asks first what a "lottery" is, and then how that title leads you to think something very different.

a lottery is something that is regarded as a chance event. that perfectly fits the action of a story. everything was indeed random, so based on that we shouldn't really expect anything different? right? WRONG-O! today's society tells us that a lottery is a game where you win. the story provides exactly the opposite. life is not a game, so there goes that theory. most importantly, the "winner" of this particular lottery is anything but! I'm not sure that anyone chalks up the loss of life as a "win" in their scorebook (who would even keep a book of that sort of thing?!) but, in that way, this title is incredibly misleading in terms of what the story presents.

I'm with everyone else on this one... this is weird.

I personally find it pretty gross that "A Rose For Emily" ends in a rose colored room with a decaying carass. is that really the rose we're supposed to envision? really?

I definitely understand why the book put this short story in POV. It has pretty clear breaks where the people speaking change. the coolest thing about this though is that every change brought a new insight to Miss Emily's life, not necessarily in chronological order, but more like tangents. just like when you're speaking with a group of people and something that one person says gets you to go off onto a similar, related, but not exactly the same topic. rad.

intersting imagery I found in this: she's described using words for death before she's even dead. examples: she is described as having a skeletal frame and that she was so plump she looked like a body long submerged in water, therefore, drowned. yikes? gross? and then she goes and kicks the bucket. after sleeping(?) with a dead man.
so creepy. so gross. yet so intriguing..

I mean, why doesn't she talk about this? why is she hiding a dead body in her house?

the world may never know.

I think it's a bit morbid

to be writing eulogies for people who aren't dead. but that's precisely why an elegy is written. NOT a eulogy. there's a huge difference, obviously, between dead and alive. now, all dead and mostly dead you'd have to consult Miracle Max on. but, dead v. alive, I can do.

anyway, the speaker in the poem definitely sounds a little fearful of his life after his father's death. he says repeatedly that his father is ready to go. this sounds just fine, right? but that's not how he feels. he doesn't want his father to die, obviously. largely due to the fact that he doesn't believe that he'll see his father ever again, I think.

the last few lines really provide some powerful imagery too. his father's death is an embarkation, or so his father thinks. the speaker feels that it is much more permanent though. the speaker feels that his father will not ever see him standing on the dock shouting "Welcome back" because he's never coming back and the speaker is not going to be able to follow him. how sad.

Edward

reminds me of Edward Scissorhands, first of all. but it's name. and the fact that the star is Johnny Depp who stars in the movie of the story that this poem REALLY reminds me of: Sweeney Todd.

the poem is very repetitive. VERY. I'm not sure if you all noticed that or not, but it irritated me.

at first, Edward lies about what really happened. first, he says that the blood on his sword is from his hawk, but mom knows better. same deal with the steer or ox or whatever. he doesn't want to admit that he killed his father. it's quite likely that he feels shame for doing so, and doesn't want to admit to it. however, the mother keeps pushing him to tell her. this leads me to believe that she knew exactly what happened. a normal mother, I think, would have been terrified to find this out, but this mother is surprisingly chill about the whole thing. perhaps too chill? I'm thinking she had something to do with it in some way. I mean, she sure as heck doesn't seem to show any sadness. and she doesn't really make Edward feel bad about anything either. she asks him what'll happen to his family: "let them beg" and what will happen to his dear old mother: he wishes a "curse of hell" upon her. but his plan, apparently is to pack up and leave town.

and his mother seems to support this. not your typical family, I don't think.

I wish I knew who wrote this/when it was written. not that it's necessary, but I'm curious. it's a rather strange topic, y'know?

does anyone remember

that weird "Crossing Over" show that used to be on TV? where some guy could "contact" dead people. weird. anyway... on to relevant things:

"Crossing the Bar" is about death. of course. but, it doesn't make death the bad guy or anything. in fact, the speaker doesn't even want people sad when he's gone: "and may there be no sadness of farewell/When I embark". Throughout the poem, the speaker makes it pretty clear that he's come to terms with death. he's not afraid of it. he knows it's inevitable, so he's accepting of it. he's got no resignations about life, so he's good to go whenever. the whole image of a sandbar is really interesting to me too. I see it as three very distinct phases: before the bar is where the waves are crashing and things are tumultuous. that part represents life. the sandbar is the "crossing over" point, the "one clear call" that takes him from life to the third phase: the afterlife where it's calm and tranquil. it's the place where he "hope[s] to see [his] Pilot face to face". where he aspires to see God and meet him personally.

this hope is a looking to the future sort of hope whereas in "The Oxen", the hope is more nostalgic and looking backward.

c'mon barbie, let's go party

I really don't like that song, though the "Dutch" version is quite humorous.

anyway,

I really liked this poem. sure, it was a bit morbid, and maybe a bit dramatic on the surface, but when really analyzed, it's clear that society holds men and women to different standards. In the poem, this girl is not described as anything other than a girl with intelligence, health, strong arms, a sex drive, and ability to work with her hands well. nothing wrong with that, right? I mean, in a guy, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. in fact, all of that is EXPECTED to be present in a being of the male gender. but she's a girl. and somehow all of these are flaws.

the speaker intentionally leaves out any physical description as to whether the girl is pretty or ugly. it's SOCIETY's view of the girl that gets projected. according to society, she's just a "fat nose on thick legs" (like 11) and that's such a terrible thing that she feels the need to apologize for it. the ridicule and shame she feels for being the way she is grows to be so intense that she kills herself. only then, at the funeral, does anyone ever look at her and say "doesn't she look pretty?". for whatever reason, society couldn't accept her for who she was and what she looked like when she was alive. only in death could she find that people did find beauty in her. the tragedy in this isn't exaggerated either, and that's the most haunting part.

"After Apple-Picking"

oh, Robert Frost, you and your allegories.

I find this poem to be full of regret. I mean, the speaker's "ladder" is still pointed toward heaven, but he's got a whole basket of "apples" still to fill. to me, this screams "I'm going to die eventually and I haven't done anything productive with my life yet". the speaker tells how he's left some apples up in the tree. these are missed opportunities that he either passed up or didn't have the initiative to go after. However, he also says "For I have had too much of apple-picking: I am overtired" which suggests that he's been doing a lot or did a lot at one point and just got burnt out. right now he doesn't have the time or effort to continue to pick apples, take risks, discover new opportunities.

I haven't determined for certain if death is imminent or not, but for whatever reason the speaker doesn't feel like there's any more he can do. something tells me from the attitude of it though that no matter how much he may regret not doing more, he isn't going to try to fix that now. he does say that eventually he'll be sleeping, but he clarifies and says that it might just be "human sleep" and he's not sure either. regardless, the speaker is overwhelmed and has begun to overthink past mistakes or shortcomings, but isn't really going to try to fix them.

gangrene is not a weird shade of green - TTTC

"After the rot cleared up, once I could think straight, I devoted a lot of time to figuring ways to get back at him."

(p. 181)

so even in war, there's revenge. or something like it. this little piece is sort of a cliff hanger. I mean, there's a break in the story here, and it doesn't continue forward with the story directly afterward. it gives a little side-note about what you can learn from being shot. but this excerpt seems to be a foreshadowing of something to come. as I continued to read this chapter, it became more and more clear to me that O'Brien was going to do SOMETHING to get Jorgenson back. I was never sure what he was going to do exactly. that's not the point. the main idea here is that something would be done. a lot of devoted time can't go unwasted, I guess. you don't almost let someone die of shock in a war and expect not to get something nasty in return? is that really the lesson here?

mistakes = tragedy in war - TTTC

"A stupid mistake. That's all it was, a mistake, but it had killed Kiowa."

(p. 161)

"In the field though, the causes were immediate. A moment of carelessness or bad judgment or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever."

(p. 170)

wow, if that doesn't make you re- and over-think all of your actions first...
sure, in a war environment every decision has a little bit more gravity, especially if you're in command, but this whole "think before you act" idea has been around since the beginning of time probably. it's still pretty powerful, I think. there's no greater guilt than knowing you could have prevented something, but didn't because you were distracted or not paying attention or lazy. it's a plague that I find especially prevalent in today's society, sadly. if only people were a liiiiittle more tolerant or a liiitle more attentive, proactive, focused... the world could be a better place.

in this chapter, "In The Field", we see the other soldiers talking to one another more. we definitely get a taste of colloquialism in use. sure, it doesn't seem that different from what we use when we speak, but it's still colloquial. for example: "Screw him." (p. 159) and "Man, I got to find it." (p. 165) in formal English are grammatically incorrect and/or inappropriate in formal situations, but given the circumstances are completely okay.