Dover Beach is a poem that is to be presented as a dramatic monologue. It is divided into four distinct thematic sections, each of which uses the previous stanza to build its own message. The first stanza is the first section, of course. This stanza describes the scene that the speaker sees, but offers little deeper meaning. It simply describes first of the farthest images (“the French coast”) and last the closest images (“the pebbles which the waves draw back”). This section does little more than paint pictures in the readers’ minds with use of connotative language, and it is not until the very last two lines (“bring the eternal note of sadness in”) that we can posit the presences of a deeper significance behind Arnold’s words. This contrast becomes the key to the poem.
Once the speaker has described the physical world that his eyes see, the poem moves to what is inside the speaker’s mind. The flow of description comes closer and closer to the speaker’s core. The second stanzas reference to Sophocles suggests the speaker’s inner musings about the sound of the sea and the history and ramifications of this sound.
The third section builds upon the image of Sophocles by showing that is was not just long-dead Sophocles who was aware of the melancholy truth of the sea, but also the reader. The sound of the sea and his musings over Sophocles lead him to realize that yes, indeed, the scene before him is not beautiful and peaceful, but sad and painful. The image of the night-time beach comes to represent a dreary, lonely, pointless existence. The perpetual beating of the waves of the beach makes man’s short existence seem inconsequential.
The fourth section of the poem contains the true point of the poem: that love is the only thing that gives life meaning. In lines thirty-one through thirty-three, the speaker pronounces that the world only seems like a nice place, but in fact offers up none of the comforts that humans seek: joy, love, light, certitude, peace, and help for pain. Arnold emphasizes the world’s lack of these qualities by repetition of the word “nor” in line 34. The speaker is imploring his lover (the supposed audience of the poem) to continue loving him as he loves her, for with a lack of their mutual love, life is unlivable.
The view presented at the end of the poem seems to clash with the image set out in the first stanza of the poem. The poem opens up with an idyllic and romantic description of Dover Beach and, by extension, the beauty of the world; however, it ends with the succinct observation that the world sucks and the people that live it in whom you actually care about are the only reason to continue living. This could possibly be considered a love poem, but the overall tone of the verses is one of sadness, melancholy, hopelessness, and loss of faith.
The first stanza of the poem suggests a sonnet. It is divided into an octave, then a sestet with a turn at line nine. The rhyme scheme is not correct though, nor is the meter, and the tone of the poem is not that of a typical sonnet, but Arnold’s intent to create the initial feeling of a romantic poem is unmistakable. But then the poem dives straight into melancholic images mixed with classical allusions to “Sophocles” and “ignorant armies.” The poem’s tone slowly changes from peacefully romantic to sad and melancholic, but seems to switch back to romanticism at the top of the fourth stanza (“Ah, love, let us be true to one another!” line 29) but this is yet another set up for a depressing observation that the world seems nice but is actually just cold and unfeeling and unsympathetic to human feelings.
The last stanza’s assertion of the world’s disappointments is anti-romantic. Instead of glorifying nature’s beauty and expounding on its enthralling abilities, Arnold tells us that humans may find no solace in the natural world, for it is an immortal, unfeeling machine which has not changed since the time of Sophocles.
The poem is designed to trick up the reader. The introduction makes the permanence of nature seem as though it were one of its comforting aspects, but by the end of the poem we learn that it’s permanence is exactly what makes it unfeeling and uncomforting. Love is what human’s really need, for is it human and sympathetic. Arnold is essentially criticizing the human condition.(776)
Monday, April 27, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Tender is the Night, and Haply the Queen Moon is On Her Throne
I have chosen to write about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. I was originally drawn to it because of how much I enjoyed Great Gatsby, and although the tone of Tender is the Night is vastly different, I enjoyed it for many of the same reasons.
As of now, I have completed reading the book, but will continue to re-read sections that are relevant to my paper’s topic. The topic of my paper will be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s view on the American Dream and how the events of his life led to his disillusionment with the whole idea of this American ideal. Since the book is largely autobiographical, I will compare sections of the book which relate the disillusionment with the ideas of material success and love to happenings in Fitzgerald’s life that perhaps altered his view on such topics.
I am a few pages into my preliminary draft at the moment, and I feel that I am making good progress towards attaining an excellent argument for my thesis.
PS, my apologies for the belatedness of this posting.
As of now, I have completed reading the book, but will continue to re-read sections that are relevant to my paper’s topic. The topic of my paper will be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s view on the American Dream and how the events of his life led to his disillusionment with the whole idea of this American ideal. Since the book is largely autobiographical, I will compare sections of the book which relate the disillusionment with the ideas of material success and love to happenings in Fitzgerald’s life that perhaps altered his view on such topics.
I am a few pages into my preliminary draft at the moment, and I feel that I am making good progress towards attaining an excellent argument for my thesis.
PS, my apologies for the belatedness of this posting.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The One Real Discussion We Had
Success. The idea of success has been the main topic of our class's discussion relating to "Death of a Salesman" this week. Therefore, I have no real option but to blog on the idea of success.
In the play, Willy Loman is the catalyst for our discussion of success. He lived his life as a salesman, and probably a mediocre one at that, and is now at a point where he is no longer effective at the job he has chosen and can no longer make a living as a salesman. He is old. He is washed-up. He is fired. At this point, the reader cannot help but see Willy's life as a failure--the opposite of success. But even were Willy a less awful salesperson, his impossible ideal of a successful salesman would prevent him from achieving any sort of satisfaction from his job. He sees success as a salesman as the adoration of every buyer and seller that one ever comes into contact with. He sees success as popularity and memory after death. But the fact is that even a good salesman is not going to be particularly popular nor his death mourned by many.
So there it is. Willy could not achieve success even were he competent due to his high standard for success. This brings into the discussion the relativity of success. Success is completely subjective, so whether or not one acheives it is an entirely personal phenomenon; however, we can posit that one constant in the achievation of success is satisfaction. That is really the important part of success: achieving satisfaction.
Once again, satisfaction is a completely personal condition, and what each person needs to gain satisfaction is completely different. But we can be one-hundred percent sure that with success comes satisfaction, although perhaps satisfaction can come without success.
So what we can conclude is that success cannot be easily defined as making a certain amount of money, or befriending a certain number of people, or anything along those lines: success can be defined as the completion of life goals that is rewarded with personal, lasting satisfaction.
In the play, Willy Loman is the catalyst for our discussion of success. He lived his life as a salesman, and probably a mediocre one at that, and is now at a point where he is no longer effective at the job he has chosen and can no longer make a living as a salesman. He is old. He is washed-up. He is fired. At this point, the reader cannot help but see Willy's life as a failure--the opposite of success. But even were Willy a less awful salesperson, his impossible ideal of a successful salesman would prevent him from achieving any sort of satisfaction from his job. He sees success as a salesman as the adoration of every buyer and seller that one ever comes into contact with. He sees success as popularity and memory after death. But the fact is that even a good salesman is not going to be particularly popular nor his death mourned by many.
So there it is. Willy could not achieve success even were he competent due to his high standard for success. This brings into the discussion the relativity of success. Success is completely subjective, so whether or not one acheives it is an entirely personal phenomenon; however, we can posit that one constant in the achievation of success is satisfaction. That is really the important part of success: achieving satisfaction.
Once again, satisfaction is a completely personal condition, and what each person needs to gain satisfaction is completely different. But we can be one-hundred percent sure that with success comes satisfaction, although perhaps satisfaction can come without success.
So what we can conclude is that success cannot be easily defined as making a certain amount of money, or befriending a certain number of people, or anything along those lines: success can be defined as the completion of life goals that is rewarded with personal, lasting satisfaction.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Freedom or Death
One of the underlying themes and meanings of Ibsen’s play is Nora’s search for freedom. Not the sort of freedom granted to her by a national authority, not the sort of freedom that the greatest country on earth, America, grants to its citizens, but freedom from her worries and responsibilities. Worries and responsibilities that do not come from her role as a woman in the household—she doesn’t even raise her own children—but rather worries and responsibilities that she has set upon herself by forging her father’s signature and illegally borrowing money from a less-than-beneficent moneylender, Krogstad.
Throughout most of “The Doll House,” Nora feels that if she can simply pay off the money she owes to Krogstad, her problems will simply disappear. What she does not realize, however, is that the money she owes is not the source of her problems, but rather to whom she owes to money. Krogstad uses Nora’s debt as a way to ruin her. When Krogstad is fired, he gains revenge on Torvald by revealing the truth about Nora’s past activities, thus ruining Nora’s life, and by extension Torvalds.
But by the time Krogstad ruins Nora and Torvald, Nora has already realized that she cannot gain personal freedom by paying back the money. At this point she has even realized that it is not the blackmail power that Krogstad held over her that prevented her from being free to live her life. She has realized that it was her relationship with her husband that was her biggest impediment to living a life free from worry and meaningless responsibilities. She no longer wants to be a “little squirrel” or any other diminutive form of cute animal: she had been treated like that her whole life.
Nora’s father treated her like a dumb kitten, and Nora’s husband treated her like a dumb kitten. The blackmail situation with Krogstad only served as a catalyst for her to realize that she wanted to be free from her persona as an empty headed girl. The threat of her husband leaving her and divorcing her due to her actions led her to consider a life without her husband. Were Nora to lose her husband, she would, for the first time in her life, not be associated with a dominating, condescending male figure.
At the final scene, Nora gains the strength to say that for once in her life, she will “make sense of [her]self and everything around her.” She leaves Torvald to pursue her own destiny for the first time in her life. The divorce from her husband means a divorce from her entire life as a “little spendthrift” and a start to a new life as her own person.
Throughout most of “The Doll House,” Nora feels that if she can simply pay off the money she owes to Krogstad, her problems will simply disappear. What she does not realize, however, is that the money she owes is not the source of her problems, but rather to whom she owes to money. Krogstad uses Nora’s debt as a way to ruin her. When Krogstad is fired, he gains revenge on Torvald by revealing the truth about Nora’s past activities, thus ruining Nora’s life, and by extension Torvalds.
But by the time Krogstad ruins Nora and Torvald, Nora has already realized that she cannot gain personal freedom by paying back the money. At this point she has even realized that it is not the blackmail power that Krogstad held over her that prevented her from being free to live her life. She has realized that it was her relationship with her husband that was her biggest impediment to living a life free from worry and meaningless responsibilities. She no longer wants to be a “little squirrel” or any other diminutive form of cute animal: she had been treated like that her whole life.
Nora’s father treated her like a dumb kitten, and Nora’s husband treated her like a dumb kitten. The blackmail situation with Krogstad only served as a catalyst for her to realize that she wanted to be free from her persona as an empty headed girl. The threat of her husband leaving her and divorcing her due to her actions led her to consider a life without her husband. Were Nora to lose her husband, she would, for the first time in her life, not be associated with a dominating, condescending male figure.
At the final scene, Nora gains the strength to say that for once in her life, she will “make sense of [her]self and everything around her.” She leaves Torvald to pursue her own destiny for the first time in her life. The divorce from her husband means a divorce from her entire life as a “little spendthrift” and a start to a new life as her own person.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Hamlet's Sanity
Hamlet's sanity became a question for me when I realized that he was going to change the course of his actions and of his life based on a conversation he had with a ghost. On top of that, Hamlet's patterns of behavior indicate that he has some sort of mental disturbance.
Hamlet himself puts up a mask of insanity in order to achieve tactical ends, something he he himself admits. Polonius, too, hypothesizes that Hamlet's apparent mental problems are a self-aware ruse that he is using to further himself towards his ultimate end, revenge for his father's death.
Furthermore, Hamlet has undergone severe mental trauma. The death of his father and the discovery that his mother remarried his father's brother. Additionally, he learns that his uncle actually poisoned his father in order to kill him and marry Hamlet's mother in order to gain a powerful position in the Danish kingdom. Ergo, Hamlet is suffering from not only grief due to the death of his fathers, but also anger and hatred towards his uncle whom he must destroy.
However, while at the beginning of the play, the only person who comes into contact with the ghost in Hamlet, later in the play, Horatio too hears the ghost. This validates Hamlet's contact with the ghost as an actual event and not just a hallucination.
It is interesting to consider that idea that the main character of a Shakespeare play may possibly be insane. Since the play is centered around Hamlet, if he was insane, would the audience be seeing the story through the lens of a madman, or would the audience be able to tell the difference between the rumination of a madman and the actual events that occur? Such a play would be reminiscent of the sections of The Sound and the Fury which are told from Benjy's perspective. This is also an amusing connection because Faulkner named the novel after a Shakespeare quote!
In the end though, when all of the evidence is collected and compiled and analyzed, we must conclude that Hamlet is perfectly sane.
Hamlet himself puts up a mask of insanity in order to achieve tactical ends, something he he himself admits. Polonius, too, hypothesizes that Hamlet's apparent mental problems are a self-aware ruse that he is using to further himself towards his ultimate end, revenge for his father's death.
Furthermore, Hamlet has undergone severe mental trauma. The death of his father and the discovery that his mother remarried his father's brother. Additionally, he learns that his uncle actually poisoned his father in order to kill him and marry Hamlet's mother in order to gain a powerful position in the Danish kingdom. Ergo, Hamlet is suffering from not only grief due to the death of his fathers, but also anger and hatred towards his uncle whom he must destroy.
However, while at the beginning of the play, the only person who comes into contact with the ghost in Hamlet, later in the play, Horatio too hears the ghost. This validates Hamlet's contact with the ghost as an actual event and not just a hallucination.
It is interesting to consider that idea that the main character of a Shakespeare play may possibly be insane. Since the play is centered around Hamlet, if he was insane, would the audience be seeing the story through the lens of a madman, or would the audience be able to tell the difference between the rumination of a madman and the actual events that occur? Such a play would be reminiscent of the sections of The Sound and the Fury which are told from Benjy's perspective. This is also an amusing connection because Faulkner named the novel after a Shakespeare quote!
In the end though, when all of the evidence is collected and compiled and analyzed, we must conclude that Hamlet is perfectly sane.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Oedipus Complexity
Despite the fact that Oedipus’s fate has been predicated, one may argue that his downfall is actually a result of his own actions. One may also argue that the prophecy of Oedipus’s downfall was a self-fulfilling one, since Oedipus was indeed aware of the prophecy and changed his actions because of it. It can be argued that had Oedipus not been aware of the prophecy, he would not have followed it through.
Oedipus seems, at the beginning, to be an upstanding member of Greek society. He is well respected and well placed socially. This sets him up for his tragic fall. In order for Oedipus to be considering a tragic hero, he must start out as a person of renown and importance so that his tragic fall is pronounced enough that the audience can actually care about it. His tragic flaw becomes apparent quickly in this play. As in most Greek tragedies, or really just Greek stories in general, the heroes tragic flaw is overconfidence: hubris. Hubris brings the downfall of almost all Greek mythological characters.
Think, for example of Icarus, who was so confident that in his waxen wings that he flew too close to the sun and drown in the sea when his wings melted. Or perhaps think of Niobe who boasted that she was better than the goddess Leto because she had born seven times more children than her. She was punished for her hubris by the death of her offspring.
Oedipus too, is brought down by his own hubris. He is so confident in his leadership that he does too little to help the plague-stricken populous of his city, Thebes. He also rejects the negative predictions from Tiresias as treason and accepts the assurances from Jocaste that prophecies do not come true.
By accusing a prophet of the gods and embracing another who rejects those deities, Oedipus is essentially rejecting the gods. Rejection of the gods is the most blasphemous and damning form of hubris, but it is also the most common and hardest to avoid, especially for mortals who live their lives well without interference or blessings from the unseen deities.
It is easy to forget or ignore the gods, but in Greek myth, the gods are very active, very watchful, and very sensitive to being forgotten or ignored. By rejecting the god’s, Oedipus seals his own fate and fulfills the prophecy; therefore, he initiates his downfall.
Oedipus seems, at the beginning, to be an upstanding member of Greek society. He is well respected and well placed socially. This sets him up for his tragic fall. In order for Oedipus to be considering a tragic hero, he must start out as a person of renown and importance so that his tragic fall is pronounced enough that the audience can actually care about it. His tragic flaw becomes apparent quickly in this play. As in most Greek tragedies, or really just Greek stories in general, the heroes tragic flaw is overconfidence: hubris. Hubris brings the downfall of almost all Greek mythological characters.
Think, for example of Icarus, who was so confident that in his waxen wings that he flew too close to the sun and drown in the sea when his wings melted. Or perhaps think of Niobe who boasted that she was better than the goddess Leto because she had born seven times more children than her. She was punished for her hubris by the death of her offspring.
Oedipus too, is brought down by his own hubris. He is so confident in his leadership that he does too little to help the plague-stricken populous of his city, Thebes. He also rejects the negative predictions from Tiresias as treason and accepts the assurances from Jocaste that prophecies do not come true.
By accusing a prophet of the gods and embracing another who rejects those deities, Oedipus is essentially rejecting the gods. Rejection of the gods is the most blasphemous and damning form of hubris, but it is also the most common and hardest to avoid, especially for mortals who live their lives well without interference or blessings from the unseen deities.
It is easy to forget or ignore the gods, but in Greek myth, the gods are very active, very watchful, and very sensitive to being forgotten or ignored. By rejecting the god’s, Oedipus seals his own fate and fulfills the prophecy; therefore, he initiates his downfall.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
How do you Keep Warm in Russia?
Many aspects of the structure and story of The Death of Ivan Ilych are designed as to easily allow the author to comment effectively and profoundly on the position of Ivan in his culture, how he is thought of by his acquaintances, and even on Russian society on a whole. Tolstoy opens the story of The Death of Ivan Ilych with Ivan’s funeral specifically for this purpose. This entry will focus on the use of the funeral as a way for Tolstoy to characterize Ivan.
All of descriptions of the people and the reactions of the people who attend the funeral focus around their lack of connection to Ivan. This trend shows the reader that Ivan has failed to—or was unable to—create meaningful personal relationships in his life. Even his wife, the person whom the reader would most expect to be seriously affected by Ivan’s death, only cries because she feels as though it is the expectation of society for her to do so. The only person who actually sheds true tears is Ivan’s son, who has retained the true feeling and sympathy of a child. His empathetic psyche has not yet been iced over by the unfeeling, unfriendly formality of Russian culture. Those, such as Gerasim, who are actually sad about Ivan’s passing, don’t even really lament his death. They just accept it and move on.
This whole scenario indicates that Ivan cannot form personal relationships. He reduces things, such as his marriage, to equations. He treats his personal life as if it were a business. Tolstoy suggest Ivan’s dealing with his life and personal relationships this way is a symptom of having to deal with life in Russian society. The coldness of the culture and the people mean that people, such as Ivan, must themselves become cold. Ivan’s personal lack of meaningful personal relationships is of course his own fault, but he is a product of a society that produces people such as him.
All of descriptions of the people and the reactions of the people who attend the funeral focus around their lack of connection to Ivan. This trend shows the reader that Ivan has failed to—or was unable to—create meaningful personal relationships in his life. Even his wife, the person whom the reader would most expect to be seriously affected by Ivan’s death, only cries because she feels as though it is the expectation of society for her to do so. The only person who actually sheds true tears is Ivan’s son, who has retained the true feeling and sympathy of a child. His empathetic psyche has not yet been iced over by the unfeeling, unfriendly formality of Russian culture. Those, such as Gerasim, who are actually sad about Ivan’s passing, don’t even really lament his death. They just accept it and move on.
This whole scenario indicates that Ivan cannot form personal relationships. He reduces things, such as his marriage, to equations. He treats his personal life as if it were a business. Tolstoy suggest Ivan’s dealing with his life and personal relationships this way is a symptom of having to deal with life in Russian society. The coldness of the culture and the people mean that people, such as Ivan, must themselves become cold. Ivan’s personal lack of meaningful personal relationships is of course his own fault, but he is a product of a society that produces people such as him.
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