Even though we had a really good discussion in class about "The Gifts of War" by Margaret Drabble, there were a few issues I wanted to explore more for my blog. The story really impressed me a lot with its complexity, and to me one of its strongest themes concerns the institution of marriage. When I first read the piece and before the class discussion, I felt that "The Gifts of War" was primarily focused on marriage, and the other themes of war and class fell to the background for me. I think this is because Drabble paints such a harrowing picture of marriage--the abuse stayed in my mind long after I finished reading the story.
One of the most interesting parts to me was how Kevin's mother (nameless--just another victim of the "war" that is marriage) felt that she had no choice but to accept her "lot" as she calls it. She says that she is ignorant and doesn't "expect to know anything" (2824); the wife has to just be silent and keep living her horrible life. This makes sense because I know many people who are this way in their marriages, especially because Kevin's mother is poor and really has no chance at a better life. Another reason she says she perseveres through life is because of her son. He is the only happiness in his mother's life, and her man-hating hasn't been able to touch Kevin yet because he is still young: "He wasn't a proper man yet, he couldn't inflict true pain" (2824). Drabble equates being a man with inflicting pain on others, and uses other unsavory adjectives to describe her husband such as, "stubbly, disgusting, ill, malingering, unkind" (2827). Kevin's mother is trapped in an abusive marriage, but luckily has her son to keep her happy (or as happy as she'll ever become).
The other really interesting part of this to me is how Drabble compares and contrasts Kevin's mother with Frances and the other younger girls. They might have different views from her about class and the war, but the most important and stressed differences are in how the two generations think about marriage and men. Kevin's mother says that she was "penniless then as now, but still hopeful" (2827) when she was a young girl looking for love. Today, she is penniless but has lost all hope in the idea of marriage; she even says that she envies the young girls who have romantic ideas about men because she is so disillusioned with the whole thing. Kevin's mother wants to say to these girls, "What do you think you're playing at? Where do you think it leads you, what do you think you're asking for?" (2827). Kevin's mother goes on to compare girls like Frances to "condemned cattle and sacrificial virgins" (2827). This shows exactly how the older woman feels about marriage: it is a trap and a sacrifice of good women. While for Kevin's mother's generation of wives, "time had taught them all" (2827), Frances is young and silly about love. She says that she spends hours thinking about her emotions and feelings for her friend Michael, and protests the war for him, even though it is the last thing she would have done herself. The contrast between the two women is drastic.
Clearly, "The Gifts of War" is about many different issues, but I saw marriage for women as one of the central ideas the story explores. That being said, I understood Kevin's mother's breakdown at the end of the story as an epiphany of sorts about her life in general. I thought that she finally understood she would always be defeated in her life no matter what, the same way she is defeated in her marriage. The woman is suffering from the war in general, but she is most affected and disillusioned with the world and the people around her because of the war that is her daily life in her marriage.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Explication of "Poem" by e.e. cummings
First of all, I really wanted to have a copy of the poem in this post, but it is a little long for that. So instead, here is a link that can take you right to the poem!
http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/4/cummings/beauty.htm
Modernism is one of my absolute favorite literary periods; I love all of the radical changes occurring during the years 1900-1950. The changes were happening in every part of life: science, technology, religion, economics, and social views. One of the most drastic changes in my opinion happened with the rise of capitalism and materialism in America. This country became the place of frozen meals and barbie dolls within a matter of years, and many Modernist writers reacted to that sudden boom. e. e. cummings was merely one of many, but he is worth taking note of because he not only argued about the changing times, he performed that argument in the form of his poetry. For example, cummings broke traditional poetry norms all over the place by having irregular lines, crazy syntax, broken-up words, and punctuation that was the furthest thing from "traditional." His writing shook people out of their comfort zones, and his approach to the changing time period he lived in was unique.
This poem, which is humorously titled, "Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal," is set up in the typical style of cummings: no regular form at all. He breaks lines wherever he wants to (though his line breaks are highly important), uses no regular rhyme scheme, and (though not important to the form exactly) all rules of grammar go flying out the window. The speaker of "Poem" speaks in a very casual tone to readers; he even addresses readers of the poem as "kiddos" in the first line.
The plot of the poem is harder to summarize because it isn't a narrative. The speaker seems to be having a rant of some sort, and the ensuing words are jumbled and somewhat confusing. It seems strange at first because the poem is mostly made up of popular brand names, slogans, and famous songs and people's names. For example, he cites the brands Gillette razor blades, Kodak, and Wrigley gum. He also randomly throws into the poem slogans such as "Just Add Hot Water and Serve" (Campbell Soup) and "comes out like a ribbon lies flat on the brush" (Colgate toothpaste). What cummings seems to be doing by mixing together all of these popular symbols into a jumbled mess is critiquing the rising materialism of American society. This is revealed in the negative language he uses toward both America and the mass-produced items. cummings rewrites the lyrics to the patriotic song "My Country Tis of Thee" when he says, "my country, 'tis of/you, land of the Cluett/Shirt Boston Garter...of you i sing: Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham/land above all of Just Add Hot Water and Serve" (3-12). Pinkham was a popular figure during this time; she created a pill that supposedly instantly cured all kinds of 'women's ailments.' By putting someone like her next to the figure of Abraham Lincoln and equating their positions, cummings is saying that Americans value the contributions of Pinkham and Lincoln equally as much, which is ludicrous. However, it is a comment on the rampant consumer culture existent at this time.
Each of these stanzas in "Poem" is just as rich and complicated as the one before it, and it takes a lot of outside research to figure out exactly what product from the early 1920s each brand and slogan represents. The pessimism continues throughout: "A/mer/i/ca, I/love,/You. And there're a/hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers" (36-42). Near the end of the poem (or collection of phrases and product names), he describes Americans as "tensetendoned and with/upward vacant eyes painfully/ perpetually crouched, quivering" (48-50). The reader expects some kind of closure in the last lines of "Poem," but cummings stays true to form and concludes with only the Colgate toothpaste slogan.
While America's materialism is the most obvious theme in the poem, I found a smaller and more interesting idea in lines 30-33: "...according/to such supposedly indigenous/throstles Art is O World O Life/a formula." Writing about art in art is a topic we've talked about a lot in class, but it was a surprising theme in a poem like this one, surrounded by discussion of "stuff" when art is so valuable and intangible (the opposite of material goods). cummings is saying that according to some people, art is an exact formula that people follow; however, to him that is not the case (and he proves that throughout all of his poetry). cummings even just proved he could create art out of the meaningless brand names and slogans and materialism. I think calling this piece "Poem" reiterates that fact; he is making a sly comment that this is art, and can simply be called what it is. Obviously, there is much more to go into with this poem (my analysis only covered the tiniest portion of this piece), but it is clear that cummings not only wanted to say something in his poetry, but also DO something different from anything readers in the early twentieth century had ever seen before.
http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/4/cummings/beauty.htm
Modernism is one of my absolute favorite literary periods; I love all of the radical changes occurring during the years 1900-1950. The changes were happening in every part of life: science, technology, religion, economics, and social views. One of the most drastic changes in my opinion happened with the rise of capitalism and materialism in America. This country became the place of frozen meals and barbie dolls within a matter of years, and many Modernist writers reacted to that sudden boom. e. e. cummings was merely one of many, but he is worth taking note of because he not only argued about the changing times, he performed that argument in the form of his poetry. For example, cummings broke traditional poetry norms all over the place by having irregular lines, crazy syntax, broken-up words, and punctuation that was the furthest thing from "traditional." His writing shook people out of their comfort zones, and his approach to the changing time period he lived in was unique.
This poem, which is humorously titled, "Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal," is set up in the typical style of cummings: no regular form at all. He breaks lines wherever he wants to (though his line breaks are highly important), uses no regular rhyme scheme, and (though not important to the form exactly) all rules of grammar go flying out the window. The speaker of "Poem" speaks in a very casual tone to readers; he even addresses readers of the poem as "kiddos" in the first line.
The plot of the poem is harder to summarize because it isn't a narrative. The speaker seems to be having a rant of some sort, and the ensuing words are jumbled and somewhat confusing. It seems strange at first because the poem is mostly made up of popular brand names, slogans, and famous songs and people's names. For example, he cites the brands Gillette razor blades, Kodak, and Wrigley gum. He also randomly throws into the poem slogans such as "Just Add Hot Water and Serve" (Campbell Soup) and "comes out like a ribbon lies flat on the brush" (Colgate toothpaste). What cummings seems to be doing by mixing together all of these popular symbols into a jumbled mess is critiquing the rising materialism of American society. This is revealed in the negative language he uses toward both America and the mass-produced items. cummings rewrites the lyrics to the patriotic song "My Country Tis of Thee" when he says, "my country, 'tis of/you, land of the Cluett/Shirt Boston Garter...of you i sing: Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham/land above all of Just Add Hot Water and Serve" (3-12). Pinkham was a popular figure during this time; she created a pill that supposedly instantly cured all kinds of 'women's ailments.' By putting someone like her next to the figure of Abraham Lincoln and equating their positions, cummings is saying that Americans value the contributions of Pinkham and Lincoln equally as much, which is ludicrous. However, it is a comment on the rampant consumer culture existent at this time.
Each of these stanzas in "Poem" is just as rich and complicated as the one before it, and it takes a lot of outside research to figure out exactly what product from the early 1920s each brand and slogan represents. The pessimism continues throughout: "A/mer/i/ca, I/love,/You. And there're a/hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers" (36-42). Near the end of the poem (or collection of phrases and product names), he describes Americans as "tensetendoned and with/upward vacant eyes painfully/ perpetually crouched, quivering" (48-50). The reader expects some kind of closure in the last lines of "Poem," but cummings stays true to form and concludes with only the Colgate toothpaste slogan.
While America's materialism is the most obvious theme in the poem, I found a smaller and more interesting idea in lines 30-33: "...according/to such supposedly indigenous/throstles Art is O World O Life/a formula." Writing about art in art is a topic we've talked about a lot in class, but it was a surprising theme in a poem like this one, surrounded by discussion of "stuff" when art is so valuable and intangible (the opposite of material goods). cummings is saying that according to some people, art is an exact formula that people follow; however, to him that is not the case (and he proves that throughout all of his poetry). cummings even just proved he could create art out of the meaningless brand names and slogans and materialism. I think calling this piece "Poem" reiterates that fact; he is making a sly comment that this is art, and can simply be called what it is. Obviously, there is much more to go into with this poem (my analysis only covered the tiniest portion of this piece), but it is clear that cummings not only wanted to say something in his poetry, but also DO something different from anything readers in the early twentieth century had ever seen before.
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