Friday, May 8, 2009

About the Class


English 204 has been a great experience. I found myself developing as a writer, and most importantly, as a thinker.


Surprisingly enough, the poetic analysis paper was the best part of the class. It gave me an appreciation for poetry which I was lacking all this time. I also appreciate the fact that we did not dwell on nit-picky details and still managed to do some in-depth analysis of the texts we read. In high school, I was accustomed to getting carried away with every little symbol, trying to find meaning in every little thing. An example of a text that has been ruthlessly dissected is The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Reading this book in an AP English class in high school made me realize just how ridiculous it was to take a book and spend hours talking about one tiny little detail which Joyce may have just randomly stuck in there. So I asked my teacher if Joyce really intended us to pick up on all these things and if they were indeed as meaningful as we had been trained to interpret them as. And she said, "No, Joyce would probably make fun of us!" Indeed, later I found the quote by Joyce himself: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

I don't care much for Joyce. His book was is not the most interesting but his prose is often brilliant and he left his mark in the world of classic literature and keeps us "busy for centuries arguing over what [he] meant." This is what writing tends to do: immortalize the writer and baffle/confuse the reader. This is very good. All books should seek to confuse their readers because confusion will provoke readers to discover something about themselves and the world. As we saw in the class, that discovery can also be that the book itself sucks or that the book is excellent.

Perhaps the greatest thing about a college English class is that the professor does not direct students to pick up certain literary techniques. Whatever we pick up on is what we ourselves have discovered. There is no forced interpretation and the scope of interpretation itself is very broad and liberal.

Just taking a glance at my previous blog entries, I can see a tremendous change in my writing. The best part about being an English major is that I will continue to see my writing develop and this class has only made me a little more confident for the English courses I will take in the future. Thanks Professor Ramachandran!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

My Unhealthy Obsession with A's


I've spent quite some time explaining to my mom that A+'s don't exist in college. When I was little, if I came home with a 97 on a test, my mom would ask me, "Where are the remaining 3 points?" If I came home with a 100, my mom would ask me, "Where's the extra credit?" Such was life - The subject matter was irrelevant and the only thing of consequence was the grade.


Growing up, I had a hard time in school. I was expected to excel in everything but I couldn't get my head out of books; in all other subjects but English and Social Studies, I was a mediocre student. If I could bring myself to care enough about doing well in a subject I didn't care about, I would excel in it but I was often unable to generate that much ambition. But in high school, I realized that I was, in fact, in love with the act of learning. Information and the act of thinking is what has and continues to sustain me as an individual. So I gave up the mechanical process of generating A's in subjects I couldn't care less about. I began to focus on things I actually liked doing such as writing. But still, the mechanical part of me remained; as long as I was getting A's, I felt as though I was writing well. An A- would leave me devastated. Though I was doing what I truly liked, I was restricting it and making it an unnatural thing. I had trained myself to follow the conventions of conventional writing. And I was rewarded for these conventional, hackneyed essays with A+'s which reinforced my misconception that I was writing great things. This combined with my fairly decent grades in everything else got me ranking amongst the top 25 of my graduating class. It hadn't been my goal, yet still, I found myself rejoicing.

Then I came to college and took a writing class, quite confident of my writing abilities, only to discover that an A+ paper in high school is a B/B- paper in college. This convinced me that high school had low standards making my writing low standard. So I emailed my writing professor an obnoxious number of times to figure out how to bring every paper up to an A. And when I did get an A, I thought I had finally learned how to write good papers.

In truth, I am only beginning to learn how to write now. I got an A in Writing 102, but aside from forming grammatically correct, complex sentences, my papers didn't say very much. A good paper is not testimony to the fact that the conventions of grammar are working, but rather a substantiated statement of the writer's opinion about something. In order to make the statement have any effect upon anyone, it has to be readable. It shouldn't leave the reader puzzled and irritated. I was brought to the epiphany this semester that needless words, rigid sentences, and the need to sound sophisticated creates a rather crappy paper. What good is something that is well written, if it only makes the reader miserable in the act of reading it? So, I've been brought to the realization that I have a bad case of perfectionism which is making my papers boring.

It's hard not to be grade-oriented in college. I can be totally idealistic and say, "No, learning alone is the purpose of college" but in truth, no grad school/med school will want to accept someone whose grades suck. A's will always be most desirable and satisfying but at the same time, I've found that when I write loosely, without the A obsession, I most importantly end up conveying why I care about the topic. Writing loosely also allows me to omit half of the needless words which would otherwise serve as space-fillers and attempts to sound sophisticated. This is the most important lesson I've learned about writing: no matter how profound the subject matter, boring, repetitive writing will reduce it to crap. In that sense, Odysseus in America was not a completely pointless read/skim. It is a fine example of a book that misconstrues length as a means of substantiating its thesis. In the future, I may find myself referring to this book as an example of the type of writing I should not be doing; as Professor Ramachandran said in class today, "Don't write like Shay in your paper."

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Dangerous Women? Catharsis?


By now, I've come to the conclusion that Jonathan Shay's PHD/MD drivel is pretty much shit and the only reason I still have things to say about it is because it's so bad. I was completely stunned (in a bad way) by the essay (for that is what it ultimately is) when I got up to the chapter called, "Witches, Goddesses, Queens, Wives--Dangerous Women." Whatever we know of literature comes from perspective. Shay's perspective, as far as I comprehended it at least, is that the Odyssey presents women as dangerous and untrustworthy. Oh. That's one interpretation but to be convincing, Shay would have to argue against the countless ways in which women are presented as strong, powerful, and supportive towards men. Having read the
Odyssey I think differently and I get so distracted by how much I disagree with Shay's interpretation due to his lack of convincingness that I forget that the point of the essay is to talk about the Vietnam veterans. There we go. The extended Odyssey allusion/reference fails.

It continues to fail throughout. Sure, I like the idea of Shay's book but the way he wrote it makes me side with a good friend of mine who said, "The only thing worse than war is a book about war." A person who hasn't read the Odyssey will be able to concentrate only on the information about the veterans. A person who has read the Odyssey will become totally distracted like I did. I became more interested in Shay's interpretation of the Odyssey, as opposed to its connection with the war veterans. But wait, that's because the connection becomes increasingly stupid and relentlessly pointless as the essay goes on (and on and on).

There are several reasons why I am bitter. For one thing, large paragraphs are dedicated Shay's retelling of the Odyssey. I have tremendous respect for anyone who has the patience to fill 253 pages, even if it is 253 pages full of bullshit. It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, and dedication. But I'm not saying Shay has written bullshit; Shay has simply written a decent essay that does not work for many reasons. First of all, I do not need to read a summary of a book I've already read. But that's just me. Now, here's what I gathered from this chapter: Dangerous women and whores, and sex with prostitutes renders army veterans distrustful of and dissatisfied with their wives. Not being a psychologist, I can't ever know if that's a logical argument. But maybe that's the problem with this book--maybe it only reaches out to policymakers and psychologists?

When I read the Odyssey, I thought that women were presented as powerful. Nausicaa habitually handed Odysseus over to "toughs who habitually kill strangers?" Euryclea is the kind of woman who "can accidentally get you killed by seeing through your disguise?"
Oh, now that I think about it, this is a great excerpt and I must quote it in its entirety:

"Turning back to Odysseus as a veteran (rather than as a military leader), the Odyssey shows how dangerous a woman may be to returning veterans: she can trick you onto a fragile sea raft from the safety of dry land and then drown you (Calypso), she can betray you to assassins who lie in wait for you (Clytemnestra and--who knows?--maybe Penelope), she can see through and betray your disguise, getting you killed (Helen's chance to blow Odysseus's disguise to the Trojans), she can accidentally get you killed by seeing through your disguise (Odysseus's old childhood nurse, Eurycleia), she can hand you over to toughs who habitually kill strangers (Nausicaa), she can turn you into a caged pig eating acorns or castrate you in her bed (Circe), she can fill you with such obsession that you forget to eat and starve to death (Sirens), she can literally eat men alive (Scylla). [Oh look, the sentence finally ended]. She may have gotten you and your friends into the war to begin with, where most of them were killed (Helen)."

These two sentences were slightly more difficult to type than they were to read. Shay's writing style makes me not want to read this book. Furthermore, I can't help but feel that Shay's interpretation presents women in a worse way than Homer does. True, Clytemnestra ruthlessly kills her husband and this makes us wonder whether Penelope will do the same--or rather, it makes Odysseus wonder. But what about Penelope as the loyal wife? What about Penelope as Odysseus's equal who actually does understand Odysseus when he returns? What about Penelope's own compromise? After all, she takes back a man who has been sleeping around with countless women for over ten years. Also, what about the fact that if it were not for Nausicaa "handing Odysseus over" to her people, he would still be wandering perhaps.

But I still get where Shay is trying to go with this. He's trying to say that this is a misconception men have of their wives when they return. But so what? What if veterans have this misconception? What do we do about it? How do we stop veterans from beating up their wives? How do we prevent them from feeling lonely because they longer can have sex with whores in Vietnam? How do we cure their fear of the dangerous prostitutes they had sex with in Vietnam? I perused this chapter, but could not place my finger on a spot where Shay offers a solution to this problem.

Here's what Emerson says:

"Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason."

We can't help PTSD. Yes, it hurts character. Yes, it's wrong for veterans to have to go through this. But what can we do? We can be nicer and that will make things easier but it won't solve the problem. And contrary to what Emerson says, the veterans have had so many "electric shocks" that they've been put out of communication with their own reason.

I wish this book offered a solution. But maybe it proves that there is no solution. So everyone should attend to their own work, skim Shay's 253 page essay (which could have saved a lot of paper if it were shortened by even 100 pages), be nice to veterans and respect them for their tremendous sacrifice to our country, and "already the evil begins to be repaired."

To conclude, if I was trying to make the point that Shay's book ultimately serves no purpose, then this blog entry in many ways serves no purpose, for it is just as incohesive as this chapter and countless other chapters which I've given myself the pain of only skimming. But I do like the letter "A" a whole lot, especially the way it appears on Solar. It will be a nice contrast to the "C" I will get in Calculus.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

A War Poem


I've noticed that often, songs/poems about war work better than books about war. Often, the Vietnam War becomes a hackneyed topic in literature. So much of modern literature seems to have been dedicated to the Vietnam War. At one point, we stop and wonder, "what's the point of it all?" We're never going to know how war veterans feel because the simple fact of the matter is, we have never been to war. The writer is either begging for sympathy (a wasted/wasteful emotion) or trying to get his story and his feelings out. Why are songs/poems a better medium? Well for one thing, usually, poems are short (unless you're talking about the Odyssey) and poems will focus on one emotion which is transmitted to the reader through the poem's artistic nature. Sadly enough, what we're ultimately concerned with is entertainment. Even when we think we want to gain insight and be enlightened, it seems as though our ulterior motive is entertainment. We want to have other-worldly experiences. We want to sit in the comfort of our homes and get a glimpse into what the warfront looks like. What a good text makes us realize is that the idea of war is drastically different from the actual reality of war. But this message won't get to us, we won't realize how bad and horrible war is until the writer appeals to our interest.


Though I am completely annoyed with Shay's book, I love the fact that it has spurred so much class discussion. All of a sudden, we have so much to say because many of us don't like this book. I like the fact that we read a poem and heard a song, while reading this because the song and the poem gets to us while Shay's book doesn't. Perhaps the most valuable thing I've gotten out of this class is an appreciation for poetry, especially after I found myself completely immersed in Sylvia Plath's poem.

Here's a poem written about the Vietnam War by Bruce Weigl:

Song of Napalm


for my wife


After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding,

We stood in the doorway watching horses
Walk off lazily across the pasture’s hill.
We stared through the black screen,
Our vision altered by the distance
So I thought I saw a mist
Kicked up around their hooves when they faded
Like cut-out horses
Away from us.
The grass was never more blue in that light, more
Scarlet; beyond the pasture
Trees scraped their voices into the wind, branches
Crisscrossed the sky like barbed wire
But you said they were only branches.

Okay. The storm stopped pounding.
I am trying to say this straight: for once
I was sane enough to pause and breathe
Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain
I turned my back on the old curses. I believed
They swung finally away from me ...

But still the branches are wire
And thunder is the pounding mortar,
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly,
Her hands reaching for the no one
Who waits in waves of heat before her.

So I can keep on living,
So I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
Beat inside her until she rises
Above the stinking jungle and her pain
Eases, and your pain, and mine.

But the lie swings back again.
The lie works only as long as it takes to speak
And the girl runs only as far
As the napalm allows
Until her burning tendons and crackling
Muscles draw her up
into that final position

Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing
Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
And not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.
(Poetryfoundation.org)

I wrote a poetic analysis paper on this poem for my AP English class during my senior year of high school. I remember flipping through the pages of a huge anthology book and being thoroughly disappointed by the selection of poetry it had to offer until i came across this one. I was moved by Weigl's ability to take one image and create such a powerful effect through it. It pertains to the subject at hand because it is captures post traumatic stress disorder so well. While at war, the soldier becomes overwhelmed to the extent that everything reminds him of the image of the warfront. The narrator of this poem looks at trees and he sees barbed wire. He hears thunder and he thinks of "pounding mortar." He writes, "she is burned behind my eyes." He creates the image of a burning girl which we see through his eyes and then he uses the word "burned" to describe the irreversible effect it had on his mind.

This poem grabs our interest before breaking the harsh reality to us. Once we are engaged, we can be unsettled into getting the author's point. The title of the poem is rather ironic. A song would be melodious and perhaps pleasant but napalm is a toxic substance that burns on contact with skin. He describes a tranquil melancholy setting in which he is disturbed by his own thoughts. The tranquility is then disturbed by the image of a girl described almost majestically--"I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings / Beat inside her until she rises." He transforms this image in his mind into one that is more beautiful than deathly. Then he realizes he can't fool himself into believing that she flew away from her pain gracefully. He writes, "And the girl runs only as far / As the napalm allows / Until her burning tendons and crackling / Muscles draw her up / into that final position / Burning bodies so perfectly assume." This is a horrific image. It allows the reader to see for himself what a war veteran has seen which leads to the understanding that war is a terrible thing. Most importantly, it allows the reader to understand why these war veterans are suffering from PTSD.

Does Odysseus in America work?


Authors who write books about war have to be very careful. The first thing to consider is, why a writer would choose to write about war. Clearly there is some message he is trying to convey. With regards to a book about war, this message is usually amplified by the content of the novel; the gruesome, harsh, bitter reality of war has to move us and unsettle us into wanting to read the rest of the book. In Shay's case, he wants us to have some respect for our veterans. His repeated use of the term "mind-fuck" really keeps his argument alive because it really sums up how the veteran returning from a traumatic experience is going to feel. The message is powerful. Shay poses the following question: how can you remove a civilian from his civilized society, dehumanize, mechanize, and harden him in every way possible, and then expect him to integrate himself, once again, into that civilized society?


This is all very well. We, as people, do need to wonder why war veterans who were sent to war as a result of being drafted are treated like shit by the political and social systems. However, as readers, we're hard to get to. Authors write that something is disturbing, something is surprising, something is unappealing but until they show us how it's disturbing, surprising, or unappealing, we won't care--that's why we have banned adjectives in English classes. It's best to let the reader infer based on telling details. Shay's novel is full of telling details, but he gives us the inferences too. This leaves no room for pondering, or coming to any particular realization about anything. I am currently enrolled in EGL 206, The Survey of British Literature, and often I am unable to engage in the discussion because it's a 100 people lecture hall and I end up having to listen to the same ten people talking. Oftentimes, I feel a little self-conscious when it comes to contributing and having 100 people looking at me, and at other times, I lack incentive. Anyway, the point is, there are some people who would prefer to sit through an 80 minute lecture and not say a word, and there are others, such as myself, who cannot sit in one spot for 80 minutes listening to a few people talk about their interpretations. It can lead to new insight, but usually it's boring. Similarly, Shay's book is full of insight, but it's boring because it's a 250 page essay which makes the inferences for us.

I picked up this book and expected to be dazzled by an authentic, unconventional discourse paralleling Odysseus and war veterans. I was thoroughly disappointed. As a reader, I want to read something I haven't read before. Style matters. I'm not against books about war. It just so happens to be that The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, one of my favorite books, is also about warfare. I would read this book over and over again. O'Brien says his book is fiction, but then again, it's not. The experience is real though the people are not. And he really captures the essence of the human sentiments running through a soldier's mind. His diction is eloquent and compelling. He sort of blends fiction and non-fiction in his novel.

I found that Shay's novel ultimately does not work and genre has nothing to do with it. Non-fiction can be terrific. Unfortunately this book is not terrific. For one thing, I thought the Odysseus allusion was really cool at first. I was stricken by Shay's take on Odysseus's interaction with the Phaecians. I hadn't thought about the fact that Odysseus could have been offended by the atmosphere and the Demodocus's singing. Another thing I hadn't thought about was how Odysseus's introduction of himself to the King is rather ridiculous and strange. He introduces himself as a wily man. Shay asks why someone who seeks shelter and help from strangers would introduce himself as a conman to imply that perhaps, Odysseus isn't as calm, collected and in control as we thought he was. As I read on, I began to feel as though the repeated parallels between Odysseus and the veterans become annoying and tedious. For one thing, I realized that this parallel stopped working. The Odyssey is about coming home and how hard it is to come home, but Odysseus is not a warrior. If there was a way around the fight that will lead to the same end, he'd be the one to contrive it. The troops however, are taught to reason less, and act more. Alas, Odysseus's experience is not exactly the same as the army veterans. And knowing Odysseus, his decision to introduce himself as a wily man seems to be well thought out rather than an instance in which he loses control. After all, the Phaecians seek to be entertained and entertainment is what they get. Maybe, Odysseus's way of introducing himself is his way of intriguing them. Yes, he does seek thrills in his episode with the Cyclops, but this does not have any physical implications. The war veterans have gone through physical torture primarily and seen physical torture which has left them emotionally scarred. It all boils down to how effective Shay's Odyssey theme is.

This is the problem with referring to a classic. One has to really consider the counterarguments which reveal the ways in which drawing such parallels doesn't work. If they outweigh the reasons why they do work, then it's best to leave the classic alone. Shay makes his point very clear. It just doesn't move the reader into buying it.

Also, not to sound as though I've been desensetized to the atrocities of war, I feel as though Shay's use of language is bland and uninteresting. As a person who loves words and believes in the potential of word choice and syntax to have an enormous impact on the quality of a written work, I am not moved at all by Shay's novel. From the perspective of someone who has a Chemistry and Calculus final to be tortured by, the tediousness of this book really begins to irritate. I'd rather be reading something that lets me think rather than doing all the thinking for me. I guess ultimately, Shay's book does get us to think, but not about what the content of his book is. Instead, we find ourselves wondering whether his argument and method works or doesn't work which is also a useful thing for it's own reasons, I guess. We have to read things which we find to be not so great or we wouldn't appreciate things that are great. In the end it's all about perspective.

Monday, April 13, 2009

"The Literary Imagination"


In my last entry, I mentioned that there were similarities between Charles Dicken's Hard Times, which I coincidentally happened to be reading for my British Literature class, and Rushdie's novel. Then I read the essay, "The Literary Imagination," by Martha C. Nussbaum and was surprised to find that her entire essay focused on Hard Times.

Nussbaum does a great job in talking about the value of literature and what the literary imagination does for us. She points out that if Mr. Gradgrind finds that literature must be suppressed, then clearly literature has great power over us. In Rushdie's book, the politician Snooty Buttoo hires Rashid to help him gain popularity by telling stories. Although he tries to utilize Rashid's storytelling for a political cause, it's the storytelling that intrigues people. In the end, storytelling has greater power. In fact, we are so intrigued by literature and the literary imagination that the more it is suppressed, the more we are drawn to it; when speech and storytelling are in danger of suppression, the Land of Gup finally goes to war with the Land of Chup. As the Cultmaster says, and as Mr. Grandgrind says, Fact is to be given the greatest importance and fanciful thoughts are to be shunned. Nussbaum adresses this question--"why novels and not histories or biographies?" She answers this question by writing, "Literary art, [Aristotle] said, is more 'philosophical' than history, because history simply shows us 'what happened,' whereas works of literary art show us 'things such as might happen' in human life."

But what happens in Rushdie's novel can't happen in real life. While reading the book, I was quite sure that Haroun's adventure would turn out to be a dream and was surprised when it wasn't. This is where literary imagination plays its biggest role. In presenting things that are absurd and unrealistic, it urges us to imagine a world of absurdity and surrealism. Through the surrealism, we are able to discern "what could happen." Though it's impossible for the Earth to have a second moon inhabited by creatures who are at war with one another about free speech, this fanciful story brings us to the realization that the suppression of free speech and the "public imagination" is all too real. This brings me back to what I wrote in my paper on Sylvia Plath's poem. Literary works shock us into realizing things. Nussbaum writes, "Because it summons powerful emotions, it disconcerts and puzzles. It inspires distrust of conventional pieties and exacts a frenquently painful confrontation with one's own thoughts and intentions...Literary works that promote identification and emotional reaction cut through those self-protective stratagems, requiring us to see and to respond to many things that may be difficult to confront." In his essay "Circles," Emerson says the same thing when he talks about the effect of being unsettled: "People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them." Literature "disconcerts and puzzles" us, or in Emerson's words, unsettles us. Emerson says that being unsettled is a desirable condition and Nussbaum explains that this is so because "[literary works] make this process palatable by giving us pleasure in the very act of confrontation."

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Haroun and the Sea of Stories


Spring break may have involved a great deal of procrastination but somehow, I managed to finish reading Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Even more shocking is the fact that I was able to finish reading it in one sitting, perhaps because I found it to be a lighthearted and enjoyable.

I've been meaning to read other books by Rushdie, only that I never got around to doing it. So I looked up Rushdie on Wikipedia and found that he wrote this book right after his highly controversial publication, The Satanic Verses. I wonder if this had anything to do with the blatantly emphasized themes in Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The most obvious of these themes is the suppression of free speech and more importantly, the pollution of people's imaginations. As a children's book, it encourages children to imagine. Reality is more often than not imposed upon us; it's enough that it's always with us. When the Cultmaster says, "You'd have done better to stick with Facts, but you were stuffed with stories," I was reminded of Charles Dicken's Hard Times which I finished reading only a few hours before picking up Rushdie's book. This is something Mr. Grandgrind might have said to Sissy Jupe. Dickens and Rushdie both write the word "fact" with a capital F. The first letter of various other words is capitalizes. This gives the word more emphasis and importance.

I also feel as though this book transcended its lighthearted tone in terms of its content. Rushdie presents a world in which all speech is barred being at war with a world that loves speech. This land of silence attempts to spread its influence over the land of speech. This entire scenario is very grave and serious if we take it outside the context of a children's book. What I found particularly interesting was the part where Rushdie talks about the burning of the Pages. It reminded me of excerpts I've read on censorship and the burning of books. Being strongly opposed to censorship, I appreciated Rushdie's book a lot. As the Hoopoe said, "Is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full?" (Power with a capital P. Speech with a capital S.)

Aside from talking about the suppression of speech and imagination, Rushdie seems to be making a big statement about what a good story is made of. General Kitab, who's name literally translates to mean book, "was on many occasions actually provoking such disputes, and then joining in with enthusiastic glee, sometimes taking one side, and at other times (just for fun) expressing the opposite point of view." This happens to be what good books do: present all aspects of a topic (though they eventually must take a stand.) Another instance in which Rushdie talks about good stories is when Blabbermouth says, "I always thought storytelling was like juggling. You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle then up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any." To me, this also meant that in order to keep the appeal of literature in general, alive, one has to be good at keeping a balance in terms of the elements which the work is comprised of. For some reason, this reminded me of the differences between the Homeric Odyssey and Walcott's Odyssey which were created entirely as a result of a difference in language and setting. By juggling the olden tale with the contemporary language and the surreal settings, Walcott, too, presents something that is authentic and entertaining.

Authenticity is another thing that Rushdie talks about. If people rely on their imaginations, they can come up with innovative stories. Along with the need to be creative, Rushdie stresses the need for individuals to articulate their ideas as well. Silence pollutes and destroys great stories.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Walcott's Odyssey


From the beginning, Walcott's Odyssey is a complete departure from the Homeric Odyssey. Starting with the narrator, blind Billy Blue who represents the blind bard Homer, we see that this play is a parody. Homer invokes the muse in the beginning. Billy Blue says he is telling us the story because we like to hear such stories. This says a lot. For one thing, entertainment value is the primary reason why people watch plays. The contemporary speech makes the play altogether more interesting to watch. Our familiarity with the plot as a classic makes it humorous.

It seemed as though Walcott made it a point to present everything as the opposite of how Homer presents it. Homer starts with the story of Telemachus. Walcott starts with Troy. He gives us a glimpse of the hero, Odysseus, first. Odysseus is not the valiant and amazing hero we see in the Homeric Odyssey. He is rather warlike and we see his internal conflict right away through the use of Thersites as a foil.

Moving on, we see Walcott's characterization of women; Penelope is more assertive, Circe's sexuality is played up to an extreme and Nausika's character is put in an entirely new perspective. In the Odyssey, we don't see much of Nausika. She is the pure and completely restrained daughter of King Alcinous. Walcott shows us a lot more of her character. She's a typical teenager caught in between childhood and adulthood. She is extremely flirtacious and constantly wants to talk about sex. Clearly, she's not getting any. This brings us back to the Homeric theme of growing up which was only seen in Telemachus. Here, Nausika parallels Telemachus's story of growing up. He is desperately trying to make the transition into manhood while she is desperately trying to make the transition into womanhood. Here, Arete is not present. In Telemachus's life, Odysseus is not present. This has a tremendous impact on how these two characters mature into adults.

What I found to be most intriguing about Walcott's play is his rendition of the underworld scene. Walcott's surreal choice of setting is most important in this scene. Earlier, the Cyclops scene was set on a "long, grey, empty wharf" and Odysseus and his men randomly encountered a philosopher who said some very strange things to them. Now, the underworld is set in the underground and there is a random machine with a mirror. His mother, Anticlea, is dressed in a coat, hat, and scarf. This is all very strange. Also, Odysseus does not encounter all of the other characters such as Agamemnon and Achilles.

But why the underground? Yes, it is under, but it is also a place of transportation. Anticlea says, "You never get off. The train goes on forever." This is a different perspective on death. In Homer's Odyssey, death is presented as static condition. The dead are in one place, oblivious of their surrounding and suffering. Here, they are oblivious, but moving constantly on a train going nowhere. This nonetheless comes back to Homer, but from a different direction, as it all amounts to not going anywhere in the end. Anticlea cannot see her reflection in the mirror. She is gone from the real world and is underneath. We can envision a train, going on endlessly in a dark tunnel.

In Walcott's Odyssey, we clearly see the emotion better. We don't have to search for it in metaphors. This differentiates drama from poetry. Drama can be altogether more enjoyable and entertaining, as the characteristics and emotions are expressed entirely in dialogue. We also note that Walcott is, in many ways, poking fun at the Odyssey. It's like taking a classic down from its pedestal and placing it within the sphere of our tangible world. Parodies thrive on humor. This reminded me of one of my favorite parodies: the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You, which is a parody of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Parodies just go to show how a drastic change in setting and language can entirely change the the interpretation and the tone of a literary work.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

"One Art"


Elizabeth Bishop’s poem had a lasting impact upon me. Perhaps, we feel a deep connection to things we can relate to in our own lives. Who hasn’t felt the heavy, debilitating, crushing force of loss? Elizabeth Bishop talks about loss and we remember our own losses. We remember “lost door keys, the hour badly spent.” Bishop says so eloquently what we all want to say sometimes.


Truth is, we all lose what which we love in life. We lose door keys, we lose watches, we lose homes, we lose our roots and finally, we lose our loved ones. Loss progresses. We start by losing trivial things and then we lose things that have the ability to create a disaster in our lives. We “master” the art of losing because quite frankly, we have no choice. It’s an immutable feature of life. “So many things seem to be filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” Is it really not a disaster? Does the narrator force herself to believe this? She does indeed force herself to “write it!” How can it not be disaster then?

It is disaster but we don’t want it to be. We want to “accept the fluster,” we learn to “[lose] faster,” so loss becomes something that’s not hard to “master.” This works because then, we lose “vaster” things, and keep reminding ourselves that loss is “no disaster.”

But what is the art that Elizabeth Bishop is really talking about? Is it our ability to force ourselves to rationalize our situation without throwing ourselves into disaster? Sylvia Plath’s poem represents loss in a painful and horrific way. Sylvia Plath was not so concerned with rationalizing. Sylvia Plath killed herself at the age of 30. Is rationalizing our losses what ultimately keeps us sane and alive?

Through the mechanics of Bishop's poem, we see the narrator constricting herself. She is suffocated by her rationality. Her poem is a villanelle, difficult to write, and very controlled. The narrator is also very controlled. She forces herself to get over herself. Sylvia Plath forces herself upon us. We cared about Sylvia Plath because she forced us to care. We care about Bishop because we care about the realities of our own lives. Stifling our emotions makes us sad. Allowing our emotions to control us kills us. We’d rather be sad than dead.

The word “disaster” is repeated several times. The rhyme in this poem brings us back to this word. Disaster would readily define us if we allowed it to. We’re always leaning towards that state, being pulled towards it. And we resist. We resist disaster so much that even when it is disaster, we refuse to accept that it is. Accepting disaster would make reality swing back with great force, debilitating force.

I’ve read “Daddy” about a hundred times now. I keep trying to pull out every emotion and every word connected to that emotion. I keep trying to find one single unifying theme in Plath’s poem. It’s an outburst. It’s obnoxious. Then, I think about Bishop’s poem and realize that Plath’s poem is about losing control.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Why should we care?


From an early age, we're told that poetry is beautiful. Does that make us like it? It certainly makes us believe that we should like poetry because we like beautiful things. I spent some time hating on poetry instead. This was until I realized that everything we find beautiful is poetry. A beautiful song is poetry. Beautifully written prose is poetry. Poetry is technique and through the clever use of technique, poets draw us in. But why should we care to be drawn in? I hated poetry because I believed that anything that requires a tremendous amount of effort to comprehend is not worth my time and patience. Why force understanding upon ourselves? Good poetry is that which forces us to feel rather than understand. This is what the element of shock does to us. Shocking poems are great.

Shocking/good poems are belligerent and their poets are even more belligerent. They intrude into our calm, collected lives and pester us. They place images before our eyes that we may not necessarily want to see. They make us hear sounds which may annoy us. Poets suck us into their minds without our consent. We become confused, angry, bewildered, and most importantly, shocked.

Shocking poems are what we need to concern ourselves with as critics. But why in the world should we want to read 80 lines of poetry in which we find Sylvia Plath whining and bitching about her father? When I first read "Daddy," I thought, "Great, here's another self-pitying brat talking about loss and sadness and a dissatisfying childhood." Then, I heard Plath's reading of her poem with all the bitterness in her voice and I began to care. I cared enough to spend two days picking her poem apart--perhaps to try and comprehend where Sylvia Plath got the audacity to write something so outrageous and more importantly, to understand how and why "Daddy" riles us up like it does.

The thing about Sylvia Plath's poem is that it screams at us for no apparent reason. Plath is repetitive without being redundant. Her poem is yelling obscenities and so, after we hear her poem, we bash her, label her a whiner, and call her ignorant for likening the genocide of millions to her own individual suffering. But Sylvia Plath has gotten to us. She has made enough of a statement to get people riled up. Clearly, she wanted to shock her readers and shocked we readers are. We are shocked when she says she felt like a Jew even though she wasn't a Jew. We are shocked when she calls her daddy a Nazi and a bastard even though he was not a Nazi. Moreso, we are shocked that she refers to her dad as "daddy" in spite of depicting him as a Nazi. Sylvia Plath gets to us and sucks us into her own twisted mind.

As readers, we simultaneously love and hate the feeling of being unsettled and displaced from our comfort zones. Good poetry is able to do this to us. To interlope into our lives, bring us out into the open and carry us to a great height. We have a fear of heights but at the same time, a love for the feeling of freedom that great heights instill within us. Sylvia Plath's poem does this to us and though we may call her whiner, she is a creative, smart, and effective whiner. It's poetry! She can say whatever she wants and so she does, loudly. She forces us to believe her and we do because we can see all the ugly images and hear all the disconcerting sounds in her poem. Then, we find out she's not a Jew and these images are only in her head. Then, we become angry, but Sylvia Plath has already gotten to us. She has made us believe her suffering and she has made us care about her suffering because we care about good writers. We are intrigued by them because their poetry has the power to provoke our anger and our praise--by displaying either emotion, we've demonstrated the poem's ability to force us to care.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Are Great Books great?


Now, shifting my focus to literature, I do actually wonder what renders a work of literature as a classic (this thought was brought on by the reading from Richter). Would I ever have known that any book is a classic if I was not told that it was? Perhaps not. Today, I reflected on the fact that most of the books on my list of favorites are classics. One explanation that Tompkins discusses is that these works are classics because they have stood the test of time. They have persisted through changing times and have been widely read all this time, thus earning classic status. I do agree with this somewhat, yet I can also see the counterargument that these books are just imposed upon us. There are many books I've read in high school which I hated and was forced to complete, simply because people with bad taste (though pragmatically speaking, taste that just differed from my own) had decided that they were phenomenal. Nonetheless, I feel as though I would have missed out on vital literary experiences, had I not been prompted to read books such as The Great Gatsby, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Gulliver's Travels (and the list goes on). Of course, one's own taste will render the final verdict on whether a book is good or bad, but it is safe to say that most of the Great Books are actually great and should be read.

What makes a book a classic is its ability to captivate the human experience. Times change, situations change, but the human experience remains intrinsic to all of mankind. Greek mythology is the framework of the
Odyssey, but the prevalent themes encapsulate experiences that pertain to human beings regardless of culture. The content that emanates often from the subtext of a work is what makes the writing timeless, because at any given point, humans are going to experience these universal sentiments and emotions. It's true that there are many other books that address the same topics of interest yet do not qualify as classics. When I hear of the word classic though, I think of something that's the first of its kind.

What differentiates a good classic from a bad classic is diction and most importantly the manner in which the author executes the plot. For example,
Ethan Frome is irrefutably a classic because Edith Wharton excellently captures the melancholy life of a man who makes a bad choice in life. I didn't like the book when I read it because the plot was mundane and the symbolism too excessive--I find that whenever the symbolism is being focused on more than the actual content and form, the literary quality of a work is being defiled. For one thing, when there are too many objects and details that can be interpreted as symbols, we start over-interpreting the writing and ultimately its literary appeal is lost. Why focus on symbols that may or may not be there when the author's content and form is already conveying the point in a more straightforward manner? The only kind of symbol that I feel is legit is a symbol in the form of a motif--there has to be a reason why Hawthorne brings up a scaffold and a rosebush more than once in The Scarlet Letter; it's not random. Another thing I've noticed is that for some people, themes are enough to make a book a fantastic read. Perhaps I'm just a stickler for good diction and syntax since I love words so much. However, an author's choice of words reveals far more than random details. Most importantly, instead of being forced to look for symbols, students should be forced to read closely! Not that details are bad, but in most situations I like referring to this quote by Oscar Wilde:

“One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.”

After I've read a good book, I don't necessarily remember random details, but I always seem to remember quotes from the book and how the book made me feel (the feeling comes entirely from the manner in which the author conveys his ideas--formal quality of the text, the best of which is captured in memorable quotes). I'm all for absorbing the essence of literature rather than “[torturing] a confession out of it” as Billy Collins claims in his poem, “Introduction to Poetry.” And speaking of poetry, poems seem to be scrutinized and dissected to even greater lengths than books. Perhaps this is why I never developed a taste for poetry. We, as students, are told to look for many things, yet we are rarely encouraged to first comprehend the poem's meaning. We always come back to content and form when it comes to understanding the meaning of any written work, so why not just begin with content and form and stick with it? It happens too often that we're forced to take our opinions from others. Something can be a classic but it doesn't have to be good. Usually though if a classic, even if it's bad, is a classic indeed, it will leave the reader open to the idea of taking a second look. I never liked
Ethan Frome but I do believe that it has substance and is worth taking another stab at.

Some last thoughts on the Odyssey


Whenever I sit down and try to write about the
Odyssey I find that I actually don't have much to say about it, hence the amount of time that has passed since my last post. Perhaps this is because whatever I feel and think about the epic has already been thoroughly discussed in class. Also, the Odyssey has too much substance! There is just so much that Homer is trying to tell us in his frequent digressions and often I feel that in my writing, I'm not able to rise to the level of the text I am writing about. Anything that I might possibly write about is either way too generic or has already been discussed thoroughly enough.

Nonetheless, since I haven't really written anything for a while, here are a few general thoughts:

For one thing, I feel as though Odysseus's descent into the underworld could not be a more perfect climax to the story. And an interesting enough climax it is--normally, the climax is the highest point in the novel yet Hades is quite literally the lowest point. In some ways, it makes me envision an upside down Freytag's triangle. I honestly am of the opinion that one has to hit rock bottom before bouncing back up again. This is sort of like a rejuvenation of the soul. Who can better explain the appeal of life than a dead person? Every stop in Odysseus's journey poses the temptation of an ignorantly blissful life. Lingering in a stupor and forgetting the problems which plague the mind is a most appealing and tempting condition which allows one to move away from the act of living. The underworld is the most extreme form of that condition, in which one has literally moved away from life and eternally forgets life. Note that the ghosts are completely oblivious to everything until they drink the blood that is supposed to make them aware. This condition is not unlike the condition of the Lotos Eaters. What Homer is basically showing us is a contrast to the act of living, the underworld being the most blatant and literal. When the ghosts actually do remember, they find that they would rather be alive. Though we often desire to forget the things we'd rather not deal with, perhaps we might not desire the same if we actually did forget; once we've forgotten, we obviously can't remember that we've forgotten anything and therefore can never contemplate whether this is a condition we desire in place of our previous state of cognizance. Odysseus is allotted this opportunity to contemplate. Furthermore, after Odysseus has gone to the underworld, he has gone the farthest anyone can ever go. The farthest place is where the plot reaches its apex: the climax.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Books 4-6


The instance in which Penelope discovers that Telemakhos has left in search of his father reveals a great deal about the relationship between mother and son. She thinks of him as her baby, not a full grown man yet and this is precisely what Telemakhos is trying to move beyond. I think that this is what has made Telemakhos so nonchalant and soft in the beginning. He has all this potential stored within him, yet Penelope can't see him as more than her little boy. Without a father's presence to toughen him up, Telemakhos remains a quiet, passive child. It can very well be that Homer is trying to show us how the lack of a father's presence has prolonged Telemakhos's childhood in a sense. It is very obvious that Penelope is tough in her own way for showing the suitors a cold shoulder, but it's also true that mothers tend to baby their children more than fathers. This is imperative in revealing how Telemakhos was, and most importantly, what he was seen as.

It's kind of sad to think that on one hand we've got Penelope being a faithful wife amidst a mob of men who want her, while on the other hand Odysseus is having affairs with countless women on his way home. I would say that he's delaying his homecoming on purpose on the account that the longer he stays away from home, the more women he can encounter and have affairs with. What's holding me back from that conclusion is that the reader must not forget that Odysseus angered Poseidon multiple times by being boastful and blinding the Cyclops and so, Poseidon is giving him a hard time in the form of natural obstacles. I can sympathize with Odysseus for the latter because if you've got a giant, freaky-looking monster about to eat you, you'd want to do anything to stop that from happening. However, Odysseus's over-confidence gives off a certain essence of his character. He is a flawed hero and all this time he doesn't bother to get on better terms with Poseidon. This is not only a statement about his pride, but also a statement that raises the question of how badly Odysseus actually wants to go home. Clearly, the gods are petty. In many ways, they are childish and just as flawed, if not more flawed than mortals. If you sacrifice enough animals along with a few materialistic objects, the gods are happy. The way I see it, Greek gods and goddesses have always been favorable towards mortals who keep reminding them of their authority and grandeur. Athena is a goddess and has no need for gold and heaps of animal flesh. She has enough of that but to sacrifice a heifer and have its horns guilded in gold is like sucking up to Athena and telling her that she is the best. Odysseus could easily win back Poseidon's favor if he wanted to and quite frankly, a man who really wants to go home after years and years of being tossed around from island to island would do all in his power to make the situation more agreeable for himself. Instead, he chooses to stick around and enjoy himself with Kalypso. If he could trick a giant Cyclops, he could clearly have found a way to get away from Kalypso. I think he clung to her more than she to him.

All this time, Odysseus may have been physically deterred in many ways from getting home, but mainly he was mentally deterred. Odysseus is a thinker and he has proven his capability of thinking himself out of the stickiest situations, time and time again. Yet when Homer first reveals him to the reader, he is crying over his situation rather than doing something to get himself out. He feels guilty perhaps for cheating on Penelope or more likely, he misses the place where he has the most authority and respect, but clearly not enough to do something about it (I mean, come on, the choice is between immortality and all this other trivial stuff). Also, since the question of Penelope's fidelity has been brought up, I really don't think Penelope would have secretly cheated on Odysseus and then pretended not to have done so. The idea just goes against the whole act of going through the effort of weaving and unravelling her work each day. She's clever but not conniving. To me, it makes more sense to think that Odysseus goes home to a wife who has remained faithful to him unlike Klytemnestra and Helen, yet he still wont be happy. Odysseus becomes defined by his troubles and endless journeys. As insensible as it sounds, it's almost as though Odysseus cannot settle down with a trouble-free life. Sometimes achieving your highest goal too soon is not such a good thing. It leaves you with nothing more to strive for so you can't even live satisfied with your accomplishment--the satisfaction actually comes from the active pursuit of that goal. As long as Odysseus is in the act of trying to get back home he is satisfied, as his pursuit of that goal has much more to offer than the goal itself.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Some initial thoughts on the Odyssey


The
Odyssey is a work of literature that I have long been familiar with, just not as well as I would like to be. I believe that there are certain works of literature that one should not miss out on reading, the Odyssey being one of them. Reading the Odyssey now makes me a bit nostalgic, as it takes me back to my sixth grade ELA class.


Being that I was only 11, I was certainly not able to appreciate and evaluate all that the Odyssey has to offer. I addition to that, I read a version written in the form of a novel instead of a poem. Of course, I didn't get the real essence of it. Nonetheless, my teacher covered a tremendous amount of background information before we began reading the Odyssey; this information is essential when it comes to actually understanding the references that Homer makes. We started off with basic Greek mythology--the story of Gaea and Uranus and the lineage of gods and goddesses that followed. Greek mythology intrigued me then and it has held my interest to this day.

There is a certain quality about Greek mythology which reaches out to the reader across the centuries. I've always seen Greek mythology as a window into ancient Greek civilization--a window through which one can see a vivid image of what the land looked like, what the people looked like, how they dressed, how they interacted with one another, the values they cherished, and most importantly, the fear and uncertainty in their minds ameliorated by the beliefs they held. Greek mythology serves as a testimony of the ancient Greek mindset which is not unlike the mindset of any young civilization. To give the mysteries of their everyday encounters a meaning, these people came to develop myths. The Mayas were notorious for having done this (ironically this attempt at coming to better terms with their mysterious and unpredictable world ultimately led to their demise), and so were the Aryans of ancient India. I have found striking similarities between Greek mythology and Indian mythology; this says a lot about the nature of mythology: The unknown which is so deeply connected to people's daily lives intrigues them to the extent that they seek a divine explanation for it.

I would have forgotten most of what I had learned about Greek mythology in sixth grade (though most of the myths such as Athena's birth from Zeus's head are memorable) if I hadn't been required to brush up on it last year in AP English, as Greek mythology is often alluded to in the classic works of literature, as well as the contemporary works. This exposure certainly gives me the advantage of not having to grapple with complicated Greek names for the first time! In reality, I don't even think Greek names are that hard to pronounce, but that's just me. However, I do think that in spite of delivering a phenomenal rendition of the Odyssey, Fitzgerald does tend to complicate the spelling of the names. It could either be that, or it could be the simple fact that I'm so used to seeing Achilles spelled a certain way, yet Fitzgerald spells it as Akhilleus.

The fact that Homer orally delivered this epic poem and had the whole thing memorized is something I did not know. This is remarkable and also explains why I keep finding repetitive lines as I read.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Reflecting on Purves and Vendler


Upon reading Alan Purves’
Telling Our Story about Teaching Literature and Helen Vendler’s What We Have Loved, Others Will Love, I was compelled to think of my early experiences with written language. Though I found Vendler’s essay to be convoluted in the sense that it often became wordier than it should have been, it shed light on some areas which are deeply connected to my experiences with reading and writing.

I spent much of my childhood immersed in books. It was to the point that my mom felt as though I had life issues and had to resort to taking my books away from me. My childhood memories are mostly associated with mile-long walks to and from the library each week, hauling twenty books with me. I read anything I could get my hands on and reading may have been a way to fill enormous gaps of time, but the effects it has had upon me have been more far-reaching than that. In many ways, it carried me beyond myself. It made me aware of ideas that were worth my attention, thus broadening my perspective. For me, the experience can best be described in terms of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote in The Great Gatsby:
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. This inexhaustible variety is what books filled my mind with.

Having been so intimately exposed to written language from an early age, I often find that writing comes to me as second-nature (though the placement of commas tends to be problematic at times). This is precisely what Vendler describes in her essay. She describes that
writers—easy and natural writers—have always been, first of all, readers. Just as spoken language is absorbed by the ear, so written language has to be learned from the pages of writers. The great thing about writing is that there is always room for improvement, and so I find that the more I read, the better I am able to write.

Throughout high school, the English classes I took consisted of a form of literary analysis which was more along the lines of dissecting literature; it oftentimes involved forcing symbols out of the text, leading to over-interpretation and in turn, depreciation of the text’s value. Nonetheless, the act of thoughtfully reading which came with the often mechanical act of analyzing literature allowed me to extrapolate meaning from much of what I read. However, there have been several Great Books which I have found to be no more than a bore as a result of such over-interpretation which as Purves insists, strays from focusing on the more important aspects of literature: the content, form and
the spaces between words in the text. Nonetheless, according to Purves, it’s not supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a mental discipline. The idea sounds altogether motivating! Shouldn’t we all be mentally disciplined in some way or another?

On a side note, since we can already ascertain that the sense of being connected makes literature altogether more appealing, I would like to note that I appreciate Purves’ comment in which he states that
there is no reason why students should read Shakespeare; he wrote not to be read but to be performed in a noisy amphitheater with no scenery and few seats for the audience. Though I don’t completely agree, I can relate, as in spite of my keen interest in the study of literature, I’ve found that I have very neutral feelings regarding Shakespeare’s works. I thought nearly everyone involved in this pursuit was in love with Shakespeare. Though I don’t think that reading Shakespeare is altogether useless, I don’t think his works are exceptional. Therefore, I can certainly appreciate someone thinking along the lines of how I think.

Finally, I am pursuing an English major in spite of being on the premed track because I’ve learned over time that this is what will prevent me from becoming a regurgitating science textbook. The fact that Vendler received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry is encouraging to me. It goes to show that no matter what one’s interests are, everyone has something to gain from literature. It is in an analytical state of mind that I have been able to learn more about myself through the study of various nonrelated disciplines.