Kate Pulls a Pete Townshend

In Act 2, Scene 1 of Shakespeare strongly suggests the actions and physical appearance of Hortensio through the characters’ dialogue, despite his providing only minimal stage directions. The only direction given to the actor playing Hortensio is “Enter Hortensio with his head broke.” This rather ambiguous and somewhat nonsensical statement initially leaves Hortensio’s entrance almost entirely open to interpretation. Although his head clearly cannot be physically fractured, as he has the capacity to walk into the room and talk without any signs of pain, there are many possibilities as to what may have happened to his head. A close reading of the subsequent dialogue significantly narrows down the possibilities. Baptista’s initial inquiry as Hortensio arrives on stage, “why dost thou look so pale?” indicates that the actor playing Hortensio must enter while appearing visibly out of sorts. In Hortensio’s following monologue, he strongly alludes to the current status of the lute following Katherine’s first lesson, as “she hath broke the lute to me”. This suggests a scene in which Katherine physically breaks the lute in a manner that somehow involves Hortensio. Since the opening stage directions mentioned Hortensio’s head, his subsequent exposition fits within the actor’s expanding mental picture of the scene “And with that word she struck me one the head, And through the instrument my pate made way”. This portion of Hortensio’s speech completes the aspiring actor’s picture of his character at this juncture; Hortensio must enter the stage with a broken lute around his neck like a collar. The exposition is not yet complete at this stage of Hortensio’s monologue. On the off chance that an actor might still not understand Hortensio’s intended appearance, Shakespeare offers one final hint when Hortensio says “ And there I stood amazed for a while, As on a pillory, looking through the lute”. This reference to one’s head sticking out through a wooden opening in a pillory, makes the lute’s position on Hortensio even more clear. None of these expository statements are necessary for the audience’s understanding of the scene if the actors portray it successfully; rather they serve to increase the actors’ understanding of the scene while simultaneously adding to the humorous events appearing on stage.

All Day I Dream About Shrews

Submissiveness, passiveness, weakness; women with these characteristics are strongly desired by the sixteenth century men who are the primary characters in The Taming of the Shrew. The simplistic playgoer could take the view that Shakespeare simply reflected the societal values of his era in the characters of his play, but this does not fit the mould of a typical Shakespearian play. Rather he tended to subtly challenge convention through a thin veneer of outward conformity.
Before the audience meets Katherine, they are exposed only to Gremio’s view of her. One could reasonably expect from Gremio’s introduction that she breathes fire and munches on infants for breakfast. Gremio believes that Katherine treats men so poorly that she should be publicly shamed “To cart her, rather. She’s too rough for me.” However, in the first scene, Katherine responds with a biting comment only after the first insult has been thrown. The audience is left to wonder if Katherine is truly as malicious as was first presented.
This alludes to the hidden contrary nature of The Taming of the Shrew; the docile women are outwardly presented as more desirable, yet Katherine is the woman who the audience likes best. Shakespeare creates a woman who is sharp, witty, and intelligent; but other, somewhat dislikeable, characters then tell the audience to despise her. Whom will the audience choose to believe, their own feelings or the statements of these characters?
The final two acts of the play make Shakespeare’s intentions clear, the new “tamed” Katherine, who is presented with pride by Petruccioto first his servants and then her family, no longer has those characteristics that originally made her vibrant and dynamic. Rather, she has become a Stepford Wife, a dull automaton, with Bianca suddenly appearing vibrant by comparison. Shakespeare demonstrates that the “taming” of one’s wife is ultimately counterproductive as it strips her of all the originally made her unique.

What They Really Want is a Man Just Like Daddy...

Stockholm syndrome, generally inferred to apply only to kidnapping victims, is a psychological disorder in which the victim of the kidnapping bonds with and develops an emotional attachment to the kidnapper. This emotional bond, or emotional dependence, to a tormentor can develop in other abusive relationships as well; James Joyce clearly demonstrates the affliction in his short story “Eveline” in The Dubliners. Eveline’s father had consistently and continuously emotionally abused her, her brothers, and her mother. Her father had physically abused Eveline’s brothers and mother as well. Yet although Eveline claimed that “she would not be treated as her mother had been”, she still formed a distorted emotional attachment to her father. The strength of this attachment became ever more clear, both to Eveline and reader, as the reality of possible departure neared. Eveline began to focus on her positive memories of time spent with her father “Not long before…he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her”. Eveline focused on the less unpleasant moments of her known life when forced to confront the possibility of the unknown. She could imagine what her life might resemble if she chose to leave with Frank, and she imagined a very positive future, but the lack of certainty frightened her. Eveline had been bound to her father by years of mistreatment; she identified with and drew close to her tormentor. This knowledge swirls through Eveline’s psyche until the moment Eveline set foot on the pier next to the boat; only then is the realization allowed to crash down upon her, rooting her to the dock. She prefers her known misery, after all her father had conditioned her to prefer known misery, to the possibility of an enjoyable life. After the epiphany occurred, it rooted her in place, leaving the reader to imagine her slow, miserable, return to her father’s house after the boat disappears over the horizon.

Beating an Incredibly Dead Horse a Little More

The reader who struggles with the text of The Metamorphosis soon realizes that achieving an empathic stance toward Gregor--or his family--is not easy. At first, the reader might feel sorry for Gregor, just as one feels sorry for any victim of a catastrophe. But sympathy is not empathy. His metamorphosis into a bug, and a debilitated one at that, captures his essential characteristics that existed before the metamorphosis: annoying, loathsome, brittle, and easily crushed. "The Metamorphosis" can be seen as a reaction against bourgeois society and its demands. Gregor's manifest physical separation may represent his alienation and inarticulate yearnings. He had been a "vermin," crushed and circumscribed by authority and routine. He had been imprisoned by social and economic demands: "Just don't stay in bed being useless . . . . " After all, Kafkaesque defines us. It's the one word that tells us what we are, what we can expect, how the world works. And to find out what that means, you read Kafka. You read 'The Metamorphosis,' which is about a man who wakes up as a big bug, and then you know. Kafka’s tales are also described by the term ‘uncanny,’ which, strictly defined, applies to literature that deals with themes beyond knowledge, thus beyond rational explanation, as many events in his stories surely are. You see Gregor's life story and personal identity change dramatically when he becomes a vermin. After the introduction, readers are left wondering if Gregor really did awake, or if he is indeed sleeping, still caught in some horrific hallucination. As a character that induces both disgust and empathy, Gregor might be considered a grotesque. Lastly, the translator and reader must grapple with the story's first sentence -- the sentence that announces, without apparent surprise, that Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find he'd become an insect.

Beating an Incredibly Dead Horse

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is one of the most frequently anthologized and analyzed pieces of a modern literature, and as such it has been examined from almost every possible perspective. One aspect of the story that is rarely discussed is the importance, or lack thereof, of Gregor Samsa’s transformation into an insect. Could Gregor’s burdensome nature, and the lack of joy in his life, been expressed without venturing into the absurd? While it would certainly not have made for a story in Kafka’s style, the same general argument could have been presented as a realist piece of literature.
Gregor’s miserable life, even before the transformation, is quickly made clear to the reader in the opening pages. He despises his job and works only out of a sense of obligation to his parents. He had been a drone, a cog in the machinery of his company. He has not rebelled against his unfortunate position; rather he accepted it meekly. Gregor’s transformation symbolizes a passive rebellion against the world that has ground him down for his entire adult life. He tires of being a part of the system and withdraws from it, but society views those who withdraw from it as repulsive, lazy, unworthy.
Imagine instead that Gregor woke up that morning and resigned from his job, announced to the world that he did not wish to work any longer, and was instead expecting his family to care for him. While much less dramatic, and less shocking, this is essentially what transpired. Many more readers could relate to a situation such as this, which creates a connection between reader and protagonist on a more realistic level. A reader can have sympathy for Gregor’s unfortunate transformation into an insect, but he cannot understand it. Readers are better able to relate to a situation that they better understand. By cloaking The Metamorphosis in allegory, Kafka allows his readers to avoid the true meaning of his story if they choose to focus on the outward plot: the sad fantasy tale about a man who turns into a bug and dies.

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's Door

American writers in the early nineteenth century often confronted the nature of faith, morality and sin, since the American religious establishment had just undergone forty years of rapid evolution. The original Puritan values that had existed in New England since the first European settlements were being confronted by more tolerant religious viewpoints. It is against this background that works like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown must be examined. In this piece Hawthorne allegorically puts forward the two blatantly conflicting views of the lifelong religious experience. The older, Puritan, view held that outward demonstrations of piety, austerity, and morality were the most important components of personal religious faith. The reformers held that personal action, the goodness in everyday life, was more important than public prayer or other outward indications of faith. Goodman Brown encounters the most outwardly pious people in his community during his time with the devil, and he finds that despite their public pronouncements during the light of day, they are evil and corrupt inside. The part of themselves they do not let others see is wholly different from their outward persona. Through Goodman Brown’s eyes the reader discovers that the old method of demonstrating one’s faith is worthless as there is no means for a community to evaluate the truth of a person’s pronouncements. If outward expressions of faith are inherently untrustworthy, then faith is best kept a private matter, between one’s self, one’s conscience, and God.

Hawthorne argues that the best measure of morality is not what the community decides, but what each individual knows to be true within. The author, just like Goodman Brown, has become disillusioned with Puritan ideals and has lost his “Faith” in the old ideas of morality. Goodman Brown, however, does not learn his lesson completely. He continues to concern himself with the morality of others and thus “his dying hour was gloom”. Hawthorne offers a path away from this life of misery, accept that you have no control over anyone except for yourself and lead your life as your conscience guides you.

You Can't Handle the Grace!

Marquez uses the winged man as an example of how God’s grace can be bestowed on the needy in less than traditional guises. Pelayo and Elisenda are in dire straits at the beginning of the story; their child is chronically ill and crabs constantly overrun their ramshackle house. They clearly need a stroke of good fortune, but they do not expect anyone, especially God, to come to their aid. It is against this backdrop that a mysterious winged man appears; although he does not directly help the family, he is a curiosity in the village and thus becomes a source of revenue for the family. While the winged man is unable to perform the standard set of sudden miracles, blind men did not suddenly recover their sight, during the winged man’s stay the host family’s sickly child becomes well. Only once the fortunes of Pelayo and Elisenda have been reversed does the winged man begin to make attempts of leave. Although the family was not blessed with the answer to its prayers in a blaze of heavenly glory, the net effect is the same. Marquez suggests that God may not respond to the needs of mortals in the manner that we expect, but God still works subtly to improve our lives.

I left my paragraph essentially as it was since I thought I built a well formed, if brief, argument as to how the angel can be seen as an agent of God. I use concrete examples to demonstrate why the family was in need of heavenly aid, and how the appearance of the winged man improved their circumstances. I explain how the aid the winged man provides differs from what is traditionally expected of divine intervention. I conclude by reiterating that this story might be trying to demonstrate, through an exaggerated example, that God can intervene in our lives through a seemingly normal event.

Grace Returns For More

Marquez uses the winged man as an example of how God’s grace can be bestowed on the needy in less than traditional guises. Pelayo and Elisenda are in dire straits at the beginning of the story; their child is chronically ill and crabs constantly overrun their ramshackle house. They clearly need a stroke of good fortune, but they do not expect anyone, especially God, to come to their aid. It is against this backdrop that a mysterious winged man appears; although he does not directly help the family, he is a curiosity in the village and thus becomes a source of revenue for the family. While the winged man is unable to perform the standard set of sudden miracles, blind men did not suddenly recover their sight, during the winged man’s stay the host family’s sickly child becomes well. Only once the fortunes of Pelayo and Elisenda have been reversed does the winged man begin to make attempts of leave. Although the family was not blessed with the answer to its prayers in a blaze of heavenly glory, the net effect is the same. Marquez suggests that God may not respond to the needs of mortals in the manner that we expect, but God still works subtly to improve our lives.

Grace: God's Unmerited Favor

The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
Marquez uses the winged man as an example of how God’s grace can be bestowed on the needy in less than traditional guises.

Sympathy for the Devil?

Authors often seem to write experimental stories with the express purpose of stretching their ability to influence a reader’s opinion. An author make create a completely detestable character just to see if she can force the reader to feel compassion for that character because of the circumstances that the character is found in. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, much of the first seventy percent of the story consists of extensive characterizations of the grandmother as a bigoted, self-absorbed, and self-centered old woman. O’Connor clearly does not attempt to sugar coat her depiction of the grandmother, and there is very little indication that the grandmother has any redeeming features. The grandmother’s lack of compassion is demonstrated through her anecdote about the black child who ate a watermelon marked with the initials E.A.T. The grandmother could not care less about the black people around her or those who she views to be beneath her in the social order, except when they can act as objects of amusement. The encounter with the Misfit is the scenario that O’Connor uses in an attempt to force the reader to feel some degree of compassion for the grandmother. Although the encounter with the Misfit escalates because of the grandmother’s loose tongue and foolishness, the reader is slowly shown hints that the grandmother is melting under the sudden convergence of many forces beyond her control. O’Connor first shows this subtly, through the grandmother’s tone of voice. “The grandmother shrieked…the grandmother almost screamed…the grandmother called out in a tragic voice.” The grandmother next shows her loss of control through her actions, “The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim…but it came off in her hand.” The reader is shown that the grandmother grasp on events, her grasp on her life, is falling apart as quickly as the hat. Suddenly, in several paragraphs, O’Connor has turned the grandmother from an object of disgust to one of pity. After forcing this transformation, the author is free to portray the grandmother in a slightly more sympathetic, although still selfish light, as the grandmother pleads for her life while the rest of her family is executed. With her control over the reader firmly established, O’Connor presents the reader with an interesting quandary in the final scene. Is the grandmother preaching to the Misfit to save herself, or is she genuinely interested in his soul?

The Plum Strikes Back

I am Legally Required to Say
I have filed
for divorce
as of one
yesterday

I am
taking the house
and the
red Ferrari

Please pick
up our son from
daycare he
is all yours

This poem follows the form of This Is Just to Say but differs greatly in the nature of the subject material. The consumed plums, the subject of Williams’ poem are inconsequential in the both the narrator and the recipient’s life. However, this divorce notice will significantly affect the lives of the narrator and the recipient. The original poem makes light of the idea of an unabashed admission of guilt for a minor transgression. This parody imagines a world where this cavalier attitude is extended to all aspects of life. Although the subject mater of the original poem is rather light, the narrator’s apparent lack of compassion for the feeling of his companion, his lack of remorse for inconveniencing her, is disconcerting. One wonders if this is simply one more example of self-centeredness on the narrator’s part and if so, whether this would cause the companion to realize that she was in a less than loving relationship. In this parody, she responds in kind, this last incident finally pushed her over the edge and she wants no more to do with the original narrator. She doesn’t even want to interact with their son any longer since he is a reminder of her former relationship with the original narrator. The narrator of the parody responds the original narrator with the same lack of compassion and detached disinterest that characterize the original narrator. The form is closely mimicked; in all but several lines the number of syllables in the parody are the same as in the original poem. The structure with three stanzas of four lines is used, along with a title that can be read as the first line of the poem. The parody is therefore comprehensive in that the content and form mirror that of the original poem while mocking the attitude of the narrator of the original poem.

Who Loves the Ode?

The ode has become a clichéd and often poorly imitated form of poetry, frequently written by students in high school English classes and lovable losers in teen dramas. But is the form, as written during its heyday, an effective method of capturing the nature of an object or concept by personification? The poetry of John Keats, who wrote odes long before they became cliché, demonstrates that the personification of inanimate objects is an effective tool for allowing the reader to obtain a closer connection to that object. In the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats breathes life and relevance into an ancient piece of pottery by casting it as an eternal observer that has existed through the ages. He uses flowery language to subtly express this point
“Thou, silent from, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!”
The urn is not just an object, it is a chronicler of human history, a monument to human history “a friend to man”.
In Ode to a Nightingale Keats uses the nightingale as a framework in which he lays out his own concerns about mortality. Again this use of the ode is not silly, clichéd or laughable; rather it is a valuable construct for the examination of a serious subject. Keats explains that while the nightingale itself may be mortal, its song is eternal
“The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days be emperor and clown”
The narrator sees his own mortality reflected in the fleeting nature of the nightingale’s song, but he places his own brief existence into a cosmic continuum of existences in order to give it a greater meaning. The ode is only an ineffective and laughable form of poetry when a particular ode does not have any greater meaning. If one were to write an ode to a pencil and refer only to its physical characteristics, the poem would indeed be cliché. But if one writes an ode to a pencil and relates the object to the struggles or emotions of the human experience, then that ode has just as much meaning as any other piece of poetry.

The Wonder of Ambiguity

Any person with a satisfactory knowledge of a particular language can tell a story in explicit excruciating detail. That person need not have an extensive vocabulary or knack for storytelling, but still the story will be told and the listener will understand it. There is very little interest in those types of stories, perhaps because they require no particular skill to produce, but also because they involve no interaction on the part of the reader. The minimalist style in poems like The Red Wheelbarrow and In a Station of the Metro is appealing précising because the lack of an overriding narrative forced the reader to be an active participant. The first three words of The Red Wheelbarrow “so much depends” immediately draw the reader into the moment described by Williams. As the reader continues, the mind is filled with questions, why does much depend on the red wheelbarrow, how can an inanimate object have this degree of significance? The open structure forces the reader to construct possible situations where a wheelbarrow could have significance, his eye lingers on every word, every choice of line break. Why is there a line break in the word wheelbarrow? Could this signify some characteristic of the object, or does it signify some slowness in the narrator’s mental state. Each detail, the reader decides, must have been mentioned for a reason; the white chickens have some intimate connection to the rain-glazed wheelbarrow. The two lines of In a Station of the Metro pose fewer questions to the reader, but still allow a unique mental picture of the metro station to be painted by each reader. The metaphor for the faces “Petals on a wet, black bough” is unusual and forces the reader to rethink their initial impression of the scene multiple times. The mystery is what makes these poems thought provoking and it is what makes reading them an interesting intellectual exercise.

The Midlife Crisis from Two Opposing Mindsets

The speaker in My Last Duchess outwardly expresses a great deal of affection for the duchess whose portrait he is describing to the audience. He was her husband and only after the duchess’s death, he claims, has he realized the extent of his love for her. Now that it is too late for him to express his love to her personally, he is forced to simply tell whoever will listen. However, he has moved on and is now trying to woo that daughter of a count. This fact, mentioned at the conclusion of poem, puts some degree of doubt into the veracity of the speaker’s claims of love for the duchess. It could all be an act for the benefit of the listener, who works for this count.
The six lines
“...I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object.”
hint strongly at the speaker’s ulterior and less noble motives. He seems more concerned with the count’s reputation for generosity and the size of the dowry he will receive for a marriage to the count’s daughter. This speaker is more concerned with improving his own fortunes than he is with his duchess or his betrothed.

The speaker in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is very much preoccupied with himself as well, but in a greatly different fashion. He is concerned about going out because he is afraid that those that see him will judge him unfavorably. The speaker is very conscious of his own aging process, and he is sure that all who see him find the signs of his age just as conspicuous as he does. He worries about he thinning hair “They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’” and “Shall I part my hair behind?”. He worries about his own mortality, “And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and\ snicker”. The speaker is so preoccupied with his own age related changes that he is socially paralyzed and can do nothing but complain to the audience. Furthermore, because of this constant worry he is unable to enjoy the time he still has.

Both speakers are preoccupied with their own concerns during the narration of each respective poem. However, the speaker in My Last Duchess is proactively improving his situation by negotiating a dowry to go along with his new bride, unlike the speaker in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock who is unable to take any action because his worries continuously occupy his thoughts.

The Sonnet's Last Stand

Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument in 1881, very much at the tail end of the sonnet’s era. He attempts to increase the effectiveness of his defense of the form, despite its restrictive nature, by delivering his argument as a sonnet. However his defense of the sonnet as a form, at times, seems to be a mere veil for a subtle defense of his own body of work. The first stanza speaks of the confluence of emotion, events, and time that leads to the creation of a sonnet. A person who did not experience the “dead deathless hour” which inspired the sonnet, he argues, cannot be expected to understand the poem. This is less of a defense of the sonnet as an art form, and more of a shield against present and potential critics of Rossetti’s sonnets. Rossetti merely claims that the sonnet is a unique tribute to its particular inspiration and is therefore above criticism. The second stanza then strays from Rossetti’s defense of his own work and focuses on the defense of the sonnet, ostensibly the purpose of this poem. He claims that the sonnet reveals the soul of the poet and also illuminates the reader providing a path to god, the source of the poet’s power. This second portion of the sonnet’s defense is not as passionate; the flowery language and increasingly complex metaphors cover for a lack of substance that hints at the author’s true intentions in writing the poem. While he demonstrates that the sonnet can act as a vessel for these beautiful words, the more concrete and clear claims were made during first stanza in defense of his own work. The irony is that this defense of the sonnet has been weakened by its own constrictive nature. Rossetti is forced to expand his poem, to conform to the rhyming convention, and his poem suffers from a slightly dual nature. Sadly, prose may have been a better medium to defend both his own sonnets and the sonnet as a form.

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