Epilogue

        After completing all of my posts for the texts we read in class, I have learned many things about blogging and literary analysis. I learned that rather than writing a set essay as my post, I would rather display my flow of ideas while writing. It is perfectly fine to start your post with one idea and then explain how your thoughts changed while analyzing the text and conclude with a different idea on what the author was suggesting about the meaning of life. It was also very interesting to see the varying outlooks that each author seemed to have on life. Some texts were very dreary and they seemed to suggest that life had no meaning and none of it truly mattered, and other authors showed that life was about being resilient and seeing goodness even in the worst circumstances. I really enjoyed analyzing each text and seeing how the author's craft affected the themes. It was easy sometimes to get more hung up on the content and forget to analyze and identify the author's craft which was something I needed to work on throughout my blog. I think the texts we read this year were great as they had a wide range of themes and perspectives on what it means to be human. Many of the texts focused on themes of death which is important to acknowledge because death is a big part of being human and its effect on life can be interpreted differently by different authors. Reading these texts also helped me formulate my own ideas on what it means to be and why we do what we do. Overall, this blog has been very interesting to create and I have learned a lot and developed my ability to analyze literature.

Blog Post for Fences

Fences Blog Post

Fences by August Wilson is a play that deals with relevant issues in American society like racism, misogyny, class divide, and age divide. Wilson uses the characters in this play to demonstrate how these issues have affected everyday people. These characters have goals and aspirations, but those goals seem to be out of reach to them because of the problems they face in their lives. This theme of unrealized goals due to societal issues starts to show what Wilson thinks about the human condition. Life is spent trying to fulfil your dreams and overcome obstacles, but things don't always work out, and many people are left trapped financially and emotionally. August Wilson’s Fences uses symbolism and characters to establish the central concern of not being able to pursue one’s dreams which shows how issues in American society cause people to live lives they don't want to live. 

        The main character in this play, Troy, lives a conflicted life as he was once a talented baseball player, but because he was black, he wasn't allowed to join the major leagues and is now too old to play. His inability to pursue his dream because of racism in society has made him bitter and resentful of society for not allowing him to achieve his goals. Troy takes this resentment out on his family by being extremely controlling in their lives and not allowing them to pursue their dreams either. Troy shows this resentment when he lashes out at Cory after Cory begged him to quit his job to be on the football team.         TROY. Like you? I go out of here every morning… bust my butt…putting up with them crackers everyday…cause I like you? You about the biggest fool I ever saw. (pause) It’s my JOB. It’s my responsibility! You understand that? A man got to take care of his family. (1.3, 38)                           Here, Troy talks to Cory like he is just some job that needs to get done, and he shows his lack of emotional attachment to his children which stems from the abuse he received from his father as a child. The use of the word Crackers also shows how the racial divide in America has angered Troy to the point that he resents white people because of how he was treated in the past by racism. This rant from troy shows how angry he is with society, and how he doesn't believe his son’s dream can come true because of how Troy’s sports dream was crushed in the past by racism. Now Troy only believes in working a job that he has no passion for to get by in life and he is trying to convince Cory to do the same. Troy’s conflict demonstrates what Wilson suggests about the human condition, we try to pursue our dreams, but if we fail to do so we are left hopeless and bitter.

        Another important character in this play is Death. Troy personifies death throughout the play as he has conversations with it where he argues and pleads with Death. This personified character, Death, is a symbol of all of the negative forces like racism and abuse that Troy has experienced in his life trying to take him down. Death also helps further the theme of the Fences in the text because Troy wants to build a fence around him to keep death out. This can be seen when he says.                                                               TROY. All right… Mr. Death. See now… I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take and build a fence around this yard. See? I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See? You stay over there until you’re ready for me. Then you come on (2.2, 77)                                                                                                                                   Troy is trying to negotiate with Death, telling it that he isn't ready to die yet showing that he still has some purpose in life. His purpose is his goal to become a garbage truck driver which was previously only a white man’s job. This goal that Troy has shows that he still has some energy to fight against the racist system that denied him from achieving his dreams in the past. This personified Death helps show what Wilson suggests about life. He suggests that life is a constant struggle where death looms over us. That looming threat over us can make us focus on solely trying to escape death by working and not focusing on achieving our goals and dreams. Wilson wants to show the struggles that people face in life because of racism, but also empower people with the ability to overcome those struggles. 

Troy and his struggles in life are a representation of the struggles of common people in America who deal with issues like racism and financial struggle. Wilson wants to show in depth how those struggles can tear people and families apart by causing them to not be able to focus on their future, only survival in the present. Troy stated that he wasn’t scared of death, but his constant struggle to overcome it left him unable to achieve his goals or have loving relationships with his family. Fear is life’s greatest opponent. 

Blog post on Opened Ground

What does Seamus Heaney tell us about what it means to be human?

  Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney is a collection of poems that deal mostly with events that occured in Heaney’s life and show his perspectives on them. Heaney’s poems focus especially on his early life and his ties with Ireland, the country in which he was raised. Heaney uses a lot of vivid nature imagery to describe the effect that the land of Ireland had on him. Heaney also describes his complex relations with his family and how they developed over time. Seamus Heaney’s work Opened Ground establishes the central concern of hard relationships with family using nature imagery, metaphor, and the motif of time.

The poem from Opened Ground that I will examine is “A Call”. A Call is a poem that interests me because it dives deeper into the relationship between Heaney and his father. In earlier poems from Opened Ground, Heaney builds a story about the relationship between him and his father that gave the reader the sense that while Heaney looked up to his father, he felt disconnected from him in many ways. For example, Heaney always refers to his father as “my father” and never refers to him as ‘dad’ or by his name. This cold diction of ‘Father’ shows Heaney's disconnect and difficult relationship he had with his father. “A Call” occurs much later in Heaney’s life when he is an adult calling his parents and asking to speak to his father. The devices of nature imagery and metaphor allow us to better understand Heaney’s relationship with his father. When Heaney is waiting for his father to get on the phone his mother tells him his father is weeding, and Heaney starts an extended metaphor about how how he sees his father weeding. Heanye uses vivid imagery to describe exactly how he imagines his father weeding “gently pulling up / everything, not tapered frail and leafless, / Pleased to feel each little weed-root break,” (lines 6-8) This vivid description of his father’s actions and feelings shows just how much Heaney understands and knows his father that he is able to put himself in that very moment where his father is working. Heaney has always admired his fathers work in his poetry and that theme continues in “A Call”.  Heaney’s focus on family and the land in this poem begins to show that Heaney feels the meaning of being human is respecting  and embracing the land and the people around you. This first section of the poem is meant to illustrate Heaney’s deep connection with his father which leads up to the central concern presented in the next three stanzas.

The central concern becomes evident in the last three stanzas of “A Call”, but there is still some mystery surrounding what the source of the concern is. Heaney uses the motif of time when referencing the ticking of a hall clock that can be heard in the background of the phone call “I found myself listening to / The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks” (lines 9-10). The auditory imagery of the hall clock instills a sense that time is winding down which is causing the central concern. Heaney then explores the idea of death and how it is linked to time winding down and a lack of time. While Heaney does not explicitly state who or what is running out of time, this allows the reader to infer that his father is reaching old age and Heaney does not have much time left with him. The final line in this poem is very powerful and develops the reader’s perception of Heaney’s relationship with his father “Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.” (line 15). Heaney does not tell us what his father spoke about, that is unimportant to him, the only thing he could think about and write about their conversation is that he didn't tell his father he loved him. A sense of regret is instilled here which puts everything that prefaced this line into context. Everything that Heaney wrote about his father, the land in which his father worked, and time which was seemingly slipping away was meant to preface the regret he felt for not even being able to tell his father he loved him. 

This regret that Heaney felt shows what he believes it means to be human. He believes in taking as much time as possible to appreciate his family and the world around him because we don't have very much time on earth and sometimes we fail to spend that time in a meaningful way. I believe Heaney wrote this poem because he regretted not having resolved his issues with his father sooner. There is not enough time to wait to show love to the people close to you, because at some point it will be too late.

Our Deepest human needs are to be seen and heard, to feel connected.

Blog post on Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 Slouching Towards Bethlehem blog post

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion is an unconventional collection of essays which show Didion’s views of the world in the time of California’s hippie movement. Didion’s essays focus on drugs, addiction, violence, rebellion, and loss. The essays also seem to jump around a lot, skipping from topic to topic with no clear transition which is not dissimilar to the characters within those essays. Didion reveals a clear difference between how the people she speaks with see life and how she sees it which shows what she thinks about the human condition. Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem uses irony and motifs of children to express the constant need for humans to rebel and the self-destructive nature of those rebellious counter cultures.

The essay I am focusing on is “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” because it intrigued me with its loose structure and commentary on California’s hippie movement. Didion, an educated writer, interviews dropouts, runaways, and addicts which gives two very different perspectives on this movement. We see Didion’s perspective where she sees the consequences of society’s atomization and drug culture, and we see the perspectives of the people who take part in the movement who believe they are creating a counter-culture to combat the problems society faces by turning towards a new way of life. Didion uses examples of how children are affected by this movement to show the views that the people that take part in the drug culture express. Didion visits a five year old on acid and states “I start to ask if any of the other children in High Kindergarten get stoned, but I falter at the key words”(128). In this encounter, the child sees her life constantly on drugs as normal, but Didion is left speechless at the thought of it. The parents of this child normalize giving her such dangerous substances because it is seen as ‘groovy’ and rebellious. Didion also describes another child, Michael. “ Michael is three years old. He is a bright child but does not yet talk”(95). Didion, as a writer, stresses the importance of words, and this child is at a severe disadvantage because he cannot use them. Didion continues this motif of children throughout this essay to show the true victims of this culture. They are lured into a culture that causes rape, violence, and addiction by anti-establishment rhetoric which promises freedom and enlightenment.

Didion clearly states her view of this movement when she says “They are less in rebellion against the society than ignorant of it, able only to feed back certain of its most publicized self-doubts, Vietnam, Saran-Wrap, diet pills, the Bomb. They feed back exactly what is given them”(123). Didion sees the irony in this movement and uses a list of popular culture examples of things the hippie movement ironically denounces. What is the difference between diet pills and ‘macrobiotic’ dieting? Why call for the end of the Vietnam war while sustaining a scale model of Vietnam on Haight Street with drug culture? Didion also examines how this rhetoric is fed to children and consumed by them without question, exposing humanity’s need to rebel. The rebellious culture that causes kids to run away from their homes has the same values of self centeredness and greed present in the culture they ran from. Humanity has a tendency to stay in this self destructive cycle of longing for change and rebellion, but sustaining the problems and negative values that have always been ingrained in its culture.

The irony of this counter-culture movement and its consequences are what show Didion's view on the meaning of life and the human condition. Humanity has its set principles, and any attempt to rebel against them will just create a new culture where those same principles are present behind a new façade. This cycle is self destructive and ultimately creates harm when trying to create peace. We try to create change but, if unchecked, we can become that which we abhor.

Blog post on A Dolls House

    What does in mean to be human?

In as far back as we can look in history, women have been mistreated, silenced, and dimitutized by society. This is a sad symptom of traditional gender roles where men are expected to be strong and controlling and their wives submissive to them. Even with the strong presence of these gender roles in society, there are brave women who break free of their oppression and become independent. The play A Doll’s House explores the life of Nora, who is subjected to those gender roles by her husband Helmer. Throughout the story, Nora comes to  realize her mistreatment and belittlement and has the courage to break free from her oppressive husband, and in doing so, Ibsen reveals aspects of our humanity. In the play, Henrik Ibsen utilizes symbolism and diction to explore what it means for us to be human.

One of the main factors explored in the text is how Nora is oppressed by Helmer. She is constantly being belittled and controlled by him, but for most of the play she accepted and allowed his control of her. This ties into the human experience because women have been in similar situations as Nora for as long as we can know, and many of those women were never able to escape their oppression. Ibsen is trying to illustrate how we accept these set beliefs in our society even when they harm others and even when they are harmful to us. One way we can see Nora being subjected to this oppression is through the use of Diminutive diction. Helmer constantly diminutizes Nora by comparing her to small animals like when he says “My little bird must never do that again! A song bird must have a clean beak to chirp with”(25). Helmer treats Nora like a pet by calling her a bird which is weak and small, this matches the societal expectation of women being weaker and smaller physically and emotionally. He suspects her of lying and instead of outright saying it he uses a childish metaphor saying she needs a clean beak. This diminutive diction shows How men like Helmer think women lack the capacity to make decisions themselves and have personal lives. Ibsen is trying to show that our human nature is to adopt these oppressive human traditions and use them to keep a societal order where women are seen as accessories. The problem with our human nature is that it doesn't give everyone the chance to explore their own humanity free of the bonds of societal norms. 

As humans, we always strive for free will even when we lack it. We want to make decisions on our own and create our own paths. Ibsen uses Nora to show how the oppressed can break free from their oppressors because of their will to do so. Our human nature is what gives us this will to strive for better opportunity. Ibsen uses symbolism of doors to show how Nora uses her will to break free from her oppressive relationship with Helmer “Helmer: Nora! Nora! Empty! She is gone. The most wonderful thing of all----? [The sound of a door shutting is heard from below]”(72). The door symbolizes Nora shutting out Helmer on by herself. This is a very brave thing to do for a woman in this time period and her bravery shows how human nature gives us the will to make these life changing decisions. The contrast in human nature causing Helmer to oppress Nora and Nora to try to escape that oppression shows the cycle of oppression in our society. Humans cause oppression to be ever present, but it is in people’s nature to try to break free from that oppression.

Within the play, Ibsen uses literary devices to show what it means to be human and shed light on how human nature causes a cycle of oppression.

Blog Post on Never Let Me Go

 Never Let Me Go - What does it mean to be human?

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a novel which explores how people live in a society where some people are clones that are predetermined to be organ donors for other people. The novel follows the main character, Kathy, who is a clone, from childhood to the time she is destined to become a donor. Ishiguro wants to emphasize that the donors are no different from ‘normal’ people and they have hopes and aspirations that they will never get to achieve because of their predetermined fate. Ishiguro uses metaphor and irony to illustrate how humans use false hope and lies to hide from the negative aspects of their lives.. 

The extract I will be examining is from pages 257-258 and it is a scene where Kathy and her boyfriend Tommy are making a plea to their old Hailsham teachers Miss Emily and Madame to be able to differ from Tommy’s last donation before he dies. Kathy and Tommy heard a rumor that couples that truly loved each other could get deferrals from donating for a few years so they could live together for a little more before they died. Madame tells them the hard truth when she says “Within Hailsham itself, whenever this talk started up, I made sure to stamp it out good and proper. But as for what students said after they’d left us, what could I do?”(257). Madame uses a metaphor here to compare her trying to break down rumors to stamping them out like they are some sort of fire. This metaphor really brings out the picture that Ishiguro is trying to paint about human nature; that humans will always try to find a spark of hope in a situation where they are hopeless. That spark of hope becomes a fire as it is spread around and others start believing in it as well. Kathy’s reaction to the devastating news also shows how hope is so prevalent in human nature. Kathy thought “and even though Miss Emily’s words should have crushed us, there was an aspect to them that implied something further, something being held back, that suggested we hadn’t yet got to the bottom of things. “(258). Kathy is still trying to plead and hope even though she knows her fate is predetermined. Kathy’s denial is ironic because it is known that her fate has always been to be a donor and it will never be changed. 

In this extract, Ishiguro also explores the humaneness, or lack thereof, of this donor system. Madame states “Even back when Hailsham was considered a shining beacon, an example of how we might move to a more humane and better way of doing things”(258). Madame uses a metaphor to compare Hailsham to a beacon that people look up to to be more humane. The irony in this comparison is that there is no real way to make forcing people to donate their organs humane. This shows how humans will try to twist how they think about things to justify their actions. In our society this practice would be seen as cruel and inhumane, but their society seems to have accepted it. It is interesting to see how similar the behaviors of the victims of this inhumane system are to the benefactors. The victims create rumors and fantasies to create false hope and detract from their fates, and the benefactors twist their actions to make them seem more humane. This shows how human nature is to try to hide the negative aspects of life and not face them. 

Ishiguro uses this irony to show how human nature is to not face our problems but to hide them. We are unable to face our inadequacies and that does not allow us to enact positive change. Nobody in Never Let Me Go wanted to stop the donor program because it allowed them to live longer, and selfishness denied any form of humaneness. All of this shows that the meaning of life is different for people on different levels of society. The people that are oppressed live lives of hope that something may change in their favor, and the people who benefit from oppression live lives of selfishness and denial because they don't want to face the fact that what they are doing is wrong.

"We live in a paradox, desiring change while craving the comfort of constancy".

Blog Post on The Stranger

 

What does it mean to be human?

    The Stranger by Albert Camus is a novel which dives into the unconventional life of the main character Meursault. Meursault is very detached from reality and seemingly doesn't care about anything. Meursault also seems to attribute his actions to his surroundings rather than his own doing. Meursault's character is meant to show the meaninglessness and absurdity of human life. Camus uses irony and a motif of fate to express the absurdity of human nature and the meaninglessness of life. 

    The extract I am examining is from pages 120-122 and it is a scene where Meursault is angrily expressing his feelings about life to the jail chaplain who is trying to reason with him. Meursault expresses his feelings about fate when he says “what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me”. Here, Meursault brings up a religious motif of God which is connected to the idea of fate. Meursault expresses that his God doesn't matter to him because he believes that the belief in God will not affect the tragic fate of death that everyone faces. Meursualt's diction when he says “the fate they think they elect” shows how he feels trapped in the one true constant in life which is death, and he sees that whatever path in life people take will still result in death. Meursault also says that “a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future”. The imagery of the dark wind and the depth of his future shows how he feels he is sinking into the inevitable fate of death which will sweep over him. The darkness of the wind shows how he sees death as final with nothing promised afterward because the wind will level him into the dark abyss of nothingness. Meursault's view of fate sheds light on why he seems so unfazed about receiving a death sentence because he has come to terms with the inevitability and unpredictability of death.

    Camus also uses irony to show how absurd human values are. Meursault thinks “What would it matter if he were accused of murder and then executed because he didn't cry at his mother's funeral”? The irony of this statement is that Meursault was not executed because of the crime he committed, but it was because of a completely unrelated event which was seen as a portrayal of his character. This shows how humans will twist emotion to use it against other people as a deciding factor in an important decision. Meursault also thinks “What did it matter that Raymond was as much my friend as Celeste, who was worth a lot more than him”? The irony in this statement is that he was condemned to death because the individuals he associated with were a portrayal of his character. He sees how humans deem some people good and others evil and how associating with someone considered evil implies that he is evil as well. The repetition of Meursault saying “what did it matter” shows how he views the case against him as absurd. 

    The absurdity of Meursault's death sentence and the inevitability of death are both factors that show how life really has no meaning at all and morals are just constructs which are used to make meaningless decisions. Meursault sees the irony of life and never worries about his future because he knows the only certain thing in his future is death. Camus uses Meursault to show how the meaning of life is that it has no meaning and worrying about fitting in and pleasing people is pointless because none of that matters when you are dead. 

    If everything you have ever done is meaningless when you die, and the only constant in life is death, then life itself is meaningless.