Samantha’s Blog

Madness – The Motif.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

“Who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy.”

“Who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg.”

“Where you scream in a straitjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual ping pong of the abyss.”

Madness can be thought of in two ways, insanity and pure rage.  Sometimes, the line is blurred. One can be so angry, that they are insane. I think that’s the way Ginsberg writes his poem. He is so angry, that everything loses its sanity. Repetition makes you remember things.  If I say “Samantha” five times, its likely that you’ll remember my name is Samantha. Repetition is a literary device used in this sense, but also in a creative sense. When you think of someone who is mad, they tend to tell you the same story fifty different times, because its the only thing on their mind.  When you think of a crazy person, you think of them saying, “Oh this is my fish, my fish, this is my fish,” multiple times.  Madness is weaved into the poem so massively, its even how its written, madly.

Loyalty in “A View From The Bridge” is tragic because it is something that holds people together.  For Eddie, its his family and entire community, loyalty keeps them together.  So when it is thrown away, all hell breaks loose.

Loyalty is important to a blue-collar community because a word is all you have.  You know that the others around you don’t have the money to supply you back, just like you don’t have the money to give, so in that kind of community, you trade words like nickles.  If someone falls back on their word, they’ve lost the trust of the entire community and are pretty screwed, they officially have nothing left to trade.

But loyalty is complicated because, like the issue above, you could put your trust into the wrong hands.  With Eddie, the two submarines [Marco and Rodolpho] are not from his blue-collar community, how does he know if they have gone back on their words?  And that Rodolpho, well, he just wasn’t right.  How could he trust him, and therefore be loyal to him?  This is one of Eddie’s main issues, his other is his concious.  Unlike Carrie, he doesn’t have a rocking chair, we don’t really see him go back and forth.  He’s more implusive, and he is only doing what he feels is right.  But he doesn’t really think of the consequences until his wife points them out.

I think that today, while we have other things to trade rather than just our word, what we say can take us places or hold us back.  Nobody wants to be friends with a liar.  How can your boss trust you if you say you’ll do something, and never do it?  Loyalty all comes with trust, because why would I ally myself with someone I cannot trust?

“Come on back in the shade,” he said. “You mustn’t

feel that way.”

“I don’t feel any way,” the girl said. “I just know things.”

“I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do –”

…

He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

“Do you feel better?” he asked.

“I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”

The woman from the story reminds me of the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper. In reality, the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper is not sick, maybe depressed after birth, but she is not sick or crazy, like Daisy from The Great Gatsby. But the woman from TYW is being forced to feel as though she is sick, much like how The American is making the girl say she feel’s ‘fine.’ [Though, almost whenever a girl says she feels fine.. it usually means the opposite.]

But it could also mean another way. If we take the course of her having an abortion, its not just her she is thinking about. Yeah, she feels fine, there is nothing wrong with her, but the baby won’t feel fine.  And by aborting the baby, there is nothing wrong with her, but she’s saying that there’s something wrong with the baby.

I think she’s lying. I think she doesn’t feel fine and she’s lying, like most women do.

This sculpture (or at least, photo of a sculpture) is called White Slave by Abastenia St. Eberle [found in Gallery B].  This sculpture is about the sex industry, showing the woman as a slave to the lust and greed of men.  Sculptures before her time had not created the raw feelings that this one portrays, and thus this one was found inappropriate, and yet, modern.

The painting to the below is called Gold Fish and Sculpture by Henri Matisse [found in Gallery H].

According to the Armory Show, “Matisse’s work was deemed by many to be much more offensive, immoral, and depraved” as apposed to others.  Matisse’s work seems to be underdevloped, like a child created the painting rather than a true artist.  It looks like something you would hang up on your fridge, rather then your gallery.  But nowadays, we see these kind of paintings all the time.  They’ve become much more accepted.

I think what makes things modern, besides that it hasn’t been done in the past, is the challenging aspect of the art.  Modernism challenges, not just the person observing their pieces, but other artists and the styles in general.  With a painting like this, it challenges those that make their paintings look more like photographs, like the real deal.  For instance, if you judge this painting against the Mona Lisa, what will you notice?  With the Mona Lisa, she looks so life like with her eyes that follow you across the room.  With Matisse’s you do not have the same affect.  I think that a lot of modernism pieces can be better than the past pieces of art, but I am not the biggest fan of a child-like painting.

The sculpture, however, by Abastenia St. Eberleis amazing.  I really love it. :]  I think I like it because its very raw and in your face, much like the harsh books we enjoy reading (like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Crank by Ellen Hopkins) where nothing is sugar coated, just hardcore facts that throw big issues in your face.  When we pair this up against Michaelangleo’s David, we just see David.  Sure, there are stories behind David, but you see none in the sculpture that is created.  With modernism a story is present, whether one that is conveyed by the artist, or one you create enternally.  You don’t get that with older sculptures.

Anyways, while half the things I said are not actually in the tour, I did really like the tour.  The images were really cool and I think I got a lot out of them, as you can tell.

“Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”

Mrs. John (aka, the narrator) wins in the sense that all she really wanted to do was get the woman in the wallpaper out of the wallpaper.  To pull the woman out of her captivity, from behind the dismembered heads of other woman kept against their will.  We learn later that this woman is in fact the narrator, but she herself doesn’t know this.  Also, the excitement one would feel when their captive faints, that would be a self esteem boost.  A form of justice for the injustice that was put upon her.

How she lost, however, is a different story.  The fact is that no one can be expect to stay in the same state of mind when one has been locked in the same room for three months.  She’s absolutely crazy.  There is no pattern on the wall, she imagines in, and while that’s creative, its way more crazy than creative.

657

I dwell in Possibility –

A dwelling can be considered to be a house, like “She returned to her place of dwelling.” And thus we see Dickson living in Possibility, as though the world before her, the life before her, is limitless.

A fairer House than Prose –

If we consider Dickinson’s poems to be in a story format, that this poem has to do with some of her other poems (such as 613), then after reading about how Prose contained her, like in a closet, we understand why dwelling in Possibility would be much more desired.

More numerous of Windows –

Unlike the closet, there are windows in which you may look out and see the inspiration that is within nature.  There is light, which we as writers and students characterize as good, thus making the scene seem more lighthearted and happy.

Superior — for Doors –

Superior basically means better, top of the line, best upon the market.  With the closet, the door was locked.  She was stuck.  With the house of Possibility, her doors are not locked, and therefore superior because they can actually do what they’re meant to do, be opened.  Doors are also thought of as opportunities, and here in the house of Possibilities, her opportunities are better than in the house of Prose.

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Chambers are bedrooms and Cedars are types of trees, like evergreens.  So here she is talking about a bedroom made of trees, perhaps out in nature?  Which I’m sure Emerson would be thrilled about.

Impregnable of Eye –

Impregnable: not to be overcome or overthrown, invincible [Dictionary.com].  The eye, I would say, is like a prying eye, trying to see what Dickinson could be doing with all this possibility, but the ‘impregnable’-ness of it throws me off.  Then again, maybe its not a prying eye, but the mind’s eye.  We all have a third eye: our creativity, our intuition, our potential.  With the way everything else has been said, I lean more to this, an invincible potential.

And for an Everlasting Roof

This line is leading into the next line, setting the reader up for what the ‘Everlasting Roof’ could be.

The Gambrels of the Sky –

The Everlasting Roof is the sky, which brings us back to Emerson, showing that within nature, we learn all about creativity, potential, and the possibility of all the above.  This is another thing the house of Prose does not have.  Within the house of Prose, which we consider to be a real house, the roof is solid, made of wood and impenetrable.  Keeping the creativity out.

Of Visitors — the fairest –

Visitors, muses, the type one would not get in the house of Prose.  Here the word ‘fairest’ relates to the word ‘fairer’ in the second line, pertaining to the house of Prose.  Dickinson further explains in this line how much ‘fairer’ the house of Possibility is.

For Occupation — This –

This line is also pertaining to the line after it, a leading line.  You wonder what type of occupation she is referring to.

The spreading wide of narrow Hands

She is referring to spreading her hands wide.  I think there’s a lot of different interpretations on this front.  Spreading your hands wide, to me, makes me think of Moses parting the Red Sea for his people to cross.  One could think of a green thumb, spreading your hands before your naturalistic work.  I think this is up to the interpreter.

To gather Paradise –

Paradise: a place of extreme beauty, delight, or happiness [Dictionary.com].  By comparing this poem with the other one I have discussed, I think that Dickinson’s paradise is easy to discover.  With this new world of possibilities, she can be whom ever she wishes to be.  With the creativity she has gained from the windows and the light, with the muses that have visited her, and with the doors that OPEN as well as close, she has in fact reached her paradise already.

The house of possibility, where all your dreams can come true. :]

I thought this blog was going to be about the discussion we help within our pods on Monday, so I’m a bit unprepared. I’d already mapped out my blog for the other question.

During the poem, Whitman is in the ‘inbetween’. He is inbetween Brooklyn and Manhattan, he is inbetween crows, he is simply inbetween. While being in the ‘inbetween’, he is an observer. He stands from afar to watch the crowds and the scenery.

The types of crossings we discussed in class, while being completely separate from this blog, I feel should be noted. We discussed how identities cross in the midst of our days, like a corporate woman. During the day, she is ruthless in keeping her position at her workplace, but when she goes home, her features soften a she smiles home. Here, she trades her fax machines and pens for baby powder and diapers. She trades her laptops and data charts for barbies and Disney sing along videos. Much like Whitman’s cross over between two different cities, the working mother crosses between two extremes.

Much like a tide, flowing back between the sea and land, it spends most of its time in the ‘inbetween’.

If that made any sense.

01.) What I liked about this assignment is that everything was based on how we interpted the poem and the pictures that we chose. It was fun to see all of the pictures uploaded onto the blog [thingy]. I really liked that aspect.

02.) I really really didn’t like the website at all. I had a lot of difficulty uploading my picture and getting it to fit and what not, it was really annoying. And I got so many emails, it was annoying.

03.) I learn about everyone else’s views on the poem, which I thought was really interesting.

04.) I would maybe find a different website? One that doens’t flood your inbox with useless emails?

The atmosphere is not a perfume . . . . it has no taste of the distillation . . . . it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever . . . . I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The photo I chose is called Bliss by sauenelske [username] from DeviantArt [for homepage, click here.]

The reason I chose this picture for this specific quote is because I think it captures the meaning behind everything that both Emerson and Whitman are trying to tell their readers. The title ‘Bliss’ also has something to add to the experience. To me, it seems as if lying there, naked, in the grass is like throwing away the barriers society encases us in. Going out into nature and baring it all, taking the teachings from Mother Nature’s books and puting them forth in our everyday life, that’s what those two writers what us to do. And that is what my picture is about.

Plus it just looks really cool.

“Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made” (8).

If you think about the above quote, it really is true. If you grab one book on the Civil War, its going to be the same as the next three you read through. Maybe one of those books will have something that the other three before it didn’t have, but they’re all the same concept. By reading the second book on the Civil War, you are only re-teaching yourself something you’ve been taught.

Emerson thinks that nature is much more important, and I can see his point. Not every plant or tree is the same, let alone the environment it is. Who is to say an apple tree will grow the same here as it would in South America? Our climates are different, our soil is different, and the animals native to our lands are different. With nature, there is always something new to learn and each experience comes with a knowledge that can be put into your every day life.

Like tending a plant, you need to water it, prune it, make sure it has enough sunlight, etc. This is like your career, your children, your relationships. Everything in the world needs help to grow, just like the wildlife outside the four walls that keep you contained in a classroom. And that is what Emerson is talking about in his quote above.