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.