second time around

As we discussed in class on thursday, the plot is moved along in the story by the characters, and that these characters are joined to nature and their individual history. But what if that the environment is itself a character and that it interacts with the persons in the plot? In this final essay I will show that the environment affects the people characters in the story and how this interaction affects the psyche and that between the two can move the plot of the story. For the Gothic, I will use:
Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.
Dark Romanticism, slected works of Edgar Allen Poe is a natural selection for this section of the essay.


If you please Julie, I am having trouble finding sources for what we talked about, I searched ebsco and jstor any other suggestions?

Step 1 for the final paper

For this, our final paper I will be discussing the relationhsip between Dark Romanticism and the Gothic genre. For the Gothic aspect I will be using Edgar Huntly and for the Dark Romanticism of course I will use Poe's Ligeia. Now thats not say that Ploidori is strictly out of the question, I just haven't decided yet as to whether or not I will need to go into it that far. Also if time allows and I can make it work I would like to discuss some early gothic paintings that we have discussed in class using but not limited to Rossitti. I want to find out if indeed the two genre's are related in some manner. By using the class readings and other research material I should be able to answer the question, Are They Related? The reason that I have chosen the above mentioned genre is that they are of intrest to me and would like to find out more about them.

Driving Miss Daisy

I tried and tried to find another approach to what Howells was saying in his article about Daisy Miller and I couldn't. I found this story a bit irratating at best. For me this story is a about atypical americans, in other words who we are not. They are portrayed as rich or at least well to do, which most are not. Daisy doesnt seem to realize that not all americans know each other nor do they know of the same people that she knows, "There was an English lady we met in the cars-I think her name was Miss Featherstone; perhaps you know her". I did not get "that color" that we talked about in class nor the flavor of europe, it could just have been a setting in the hampton's or any other setting where the upper crust hang out. She tries to fit in using big words and phrases that quite frankly most other people dont use, "he's the most fastidious man I ever saw" (had to look that one up).I don't see Daisy as an independent women but as someone who doesn't know who she is or where she is going, even though she quite a bit older than her brother, she is still just a child. This almost seems that she has been so sheltered that she doesnt quite have a grasp of what the real world is all about. Miss Daisy speaks of society, "The only thing I don't like,' she proceeded, 'is the society. Thre isn't any society; or if there is, I don't know where it keeps itself". She talks of society (her circles?) as if everyone else doesn't exist. If she was in the high circles or high society she would know were they hang out and surley wouldn't be hanging out, walking the streets and talking to strangers at an outside cafe. Again she doesn't know where her place is in society.

Stubborn, Thick or Practical

I took the reading of The Revolt of "Mother" in a historical context. In the times of this story (1890's) everyone in a family had a role, for good or bad, everyone played a role. The head of the house is the father, he made the decisions for the family, he is the one responsible to the family making sure there were enough food in the house, made sure the house is repaired and brought in the money to make sure the family is taken care of. The wife's role is to take care of the house, kids and make no decisions on her own. At this time the animals were very valuable to the work that the husband had to do. Back then there was no talking about what to do in the family environment as there is today. The son follows the father and takes up a male role and like wise is the same for the daughter and the mom. They all had a place in the family. As for the father and his house, in those days the men are somewhat satisified with what they have, they aren't out for riches (I think), they just make due with what they have. See in the 1890's the people are still recovering from the Civil War and they are still trying to make a living the best way they can, and so if you have a house that doesn't leak, is liveable and not falling apart you make due, because not everyone has what you may have.
Granted the mother is fed up with the living conditions (the house), and since the animals were living better than they were I can see her point. On their wedding day fourty years ago, the father did promise her a new house and didn't keep his promise. I can't really agree with what she did but I understand why she did it and in the end so did the father.
In terms of today this wouldn't happen. Everything is supposed to be equal, but is it really. In some families the roles are reversed and the men stay at home and the women work, the men take care of the household chores and kids, not a bad idea really.
As for the stop fool aspect of it, the father shouldn't have left, big mistake on his part, he should have made due with the horse he had. The son or the field hand should have had his back, but they didn't. They let the mother run the roost so to speak, not a bad idea in the end, she got what she wanted finally and the father had to swallow his pride. As for me, I wouldn't have left until the hay was in the barn and the cow's came home.

War Week

Natalie M. Houston's article is mainly about the Crimean War, there are some simularities in both the Civil War and Crimean War. To place these wars into some context, this is the first time in history that people, I mean civilians, non-military types, have been able to see soldiers out in the open field. Most people would not have the stomach to see just what battle is all about, so they (the photographers) would take pictures in the forms of staged shots. They didn't have the materials in which to take pictures of the action and movement, they would just blur. As Jennifer Green Lewis notes, "The pictures are, without execption, invested with a sense of physical well-being and, indeed, order that belies the suffering and destruction of this (or any) war". This statement is really at the core of the pictures. However, the pictures of the Civil War do in fact show that war is and evil place to be in, and in some instances show that soldiers do die in war as some of the images show, now how many of those images finally made it to the paper or magizine I cannot be sure but it would more than what the reader in England would see. TheVictorian reader in England wanted there pictures to be warm and fussy, they didnt want to see the face of war they just wanted to know that their soldiers were in fact doing their duty, and for that they relied on the captions that went along with the pictures. " These images only obliquelyrepresent the labor of war by recording its pleasurable lulls. By focusing on the officers and portraying them in this stylized manner, the real hardships faced by the troops are minimized". Doing a staged picture in this way doesn't show how hard life is for the soldier on the front line, something that the Queen didn't want the public to see or know about. In this way the Queen could control the opinions of the public, if the real picutes came out the public outcry could have stopped the war or at the very least would have made the Crimean War so unpopular that she, (the Queen) would have to order a stop to it.
The amazing part of this article is that Houston made the assertion that these pictures were made as a or "functioned as souvenirs. This is an aspect that I hadn't thought about before. In some ways I do agree with her in that aspect. At the top of this page, the gentleman on the right side of the picture is that of Capt. George Armstrong Custer, now looking at him sitting in the saddle, his back is arched and not in a comfortable way, now I have ridden a horse before and the way that he is sitting is not a functionable way to sit atop a horse. The contention is that these pictures were made more for the souvenirs aspect of the wars rather than of the historical aspect of the time in which they were made. Nowdays they are a part of history.

extra credit

"Here in not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses". Whitman had it right even in his day, we are a nation of nations. America is a melting pot of the world, no where else in the world can you find such a diverse range of people. We take the huddled masses when they untie the strings of their former nations to become Americans. In Whitmans time there was a mass entrance into the US, from europe they came in droves to escape a potatoe famine as with the irish, or from part far and wide they came. In our own time the vietnamese came, in boats, in planes they came. None really caring what the particulars or details are just that they wanted out of where they were and trying to a better life, after all in their eyes America's streets are paved with gold.

Whitman Post

First of all I must admit my ignorance in that I didn't know that it was a Whitman poem. Now having said that I don't believe that Levi has in any way distorted any of the Whitman poem, if anything it inhanced it...Levi did in fact made a corrleation between the both. Look Levi jeans have been around longer than the poem. The were the pioneers of the jean industry. They were the first of the rugged paints of the working man. Whitman himself, at first glance, was a pioneer of the work that he did and if you look at him he is also a very rugged man. If Levi had conveyed that more, in other words made it known that it was Whitman's voice and poem, then the public maybe would have understood it more, and also the message that Levi was trying to give out.

I had seen the ad's before, and I for one just change the channel when any comericals come on, that is why I have a remote. I had on the occacion been subject to the commericals and at first was not sure why or how anything related to the selling of the jeans, and frankly I still don't see the relationship between the subject matter and the selling of the jeans.

I think that McCracken's claim may have more truth in it than anyone will admit to. Look, most of the public are just like I am when it comes to poetry, mostly ignorant to it. Some is taught in school but not enough to be remembered. But advertisers are out there in the public domain, TV. Everyone that I know has a set. Most have cable or satalite link and are therefore exposed more to TV than they are to litature. TV is available to the masses just as the poets of the past had the masses. People back then had noTV and so were exposed to poetry more than they are now. Its just a sign of the times. In the past, life was more laid back, more down to earth, people cared about one another more so than they do now; nowdays it is fast money, fast people, fast sex, and faster cars and no one cares about anyone but themselves.

Painting that I wish I could do

Thomas Cole, The Fall of Kaaterdskill, 1826

I chose this particular painting because it seems to relate to what we have been talking about in class, Dark Romanticism. It has a dark background, on person in nature all by himself. Ruskin talks about the "difference in the impression we convey, because we cannot approach her light. All such jues are usually given by her with an intensity of sunbeams which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it cannot rest on the acutal colors, nor understand what they are". In this instance the rain clouds in the background lets the colors in the foreground appear more bright. In this way the observer is more apt to concentrate on the color in the foreground and the single person in the middle of the painting. If the dark clouds were not there, the color of the trees, the waterfall and the small person would be lost. "I think that nature mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using red without it". The yellow helps to give the red a more vivid color than with red alone. The red and yellow counter balances the dark shadows of the trees and the dark clouds. In nature, espically in the fall, one can see these same colors in person. With the darks there are reds and yellows all balancing. After looking at this peice you can close your eyes and just imaging the smell of the on coming rain storm, hear the rustling of the leaves on the trees and hear the distinct flowing of the water, the coldness of the air, one can just see the passion and power of the art.

Wonder and Mystery

There is an air of mystery from the begining of this story. It is Sunday, services are about to start when the parishners notice that there minister has a black veil on.
This veil makes the people wonder what may be wrong with the minister or even if it their minister at all. " Are you sure it is our parsons?"
Most importantly what is it the minister is wanting to hide? Is there a sin that he wishes to hide from? This little peice of cloth changes the whole persona of the minister. From the accounts of the story, the minister was an outgoing and personable gentleman and not gloomy at all. Now for the most part ministers are already dressed mostly in black and the veil just adds to the mystery on sunday moring. Sunday morning services are supposed to be full of light, praising God; this would be contrary to atmostphere of the morning. For the funeral scene the veil is enhances the mood of the moment. Something like the black veil would not be questioned. With the veil the minister can see the dead women in the casket, his eyes watching the dead, making peace with the dead.
Just one peice of cloth discourages people from talking to the minister, kids make fun of him, people talk about him and yet they do not ask as to why he wearing the veil, at first. Elizabeth made the attempt to find out but was unsuccesful. For catholics, confessing ones sins is an important part the their religion. The black veil is just like a confessional, in which the priest is conceiled behing a closed door and a screen. People can confess their sins, he can visit the dying so they can confess.
The veil hides the eyes, the mouth is were truth comes from. Even on their own death beds, people flinch at the sight of the veil, but comfort and truth give them relief. The moral of this story should be, its not on the outside what counts, but whats on the inside.

Circles

Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew that what theat signified,
A new genesis were here.

"We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms".
"St. Ausgustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere".

Like St. Augustine, Emerson studied Plato and what Plato came up with is aptly named Plato's Theory of Forms. After reading Emerson's essay it dawned on me that he was refering to Plato's form theory ( I did a paper on it once). Take a ball for instance, basketball baseball any ball, and look past it, now what you see is just a cirlce. Take away it color or properties, seperate it from that object, the ball, and consider it by itself and you are contemplating a form. Now you are just thinking about the roundness or circle. Plato believed that this property existed apart from the balls, in a different mode of existence than the balls. The form is not just the idea of roundness you have in your mind, it exists independently of the balls whether someone thinks of them or not they are there.
Nature centres into balls. We can think that makes balls(circles) and life revolves around these circles. We can contemplate the meaning of life and come to no concrete conclusion, because life is just a circle. It is there if you think about it or not. You can scan the profile of the shpere and make no conclusions about what you think because the sphere is never concluded.
St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle, he is everywhere and yet no where. We have to contemplate this cirlce and come to a conclusion as to wheter or not God really exists. Plato explained this as transcendent. A form does not exist in space in that it can be in many places at once, even if one does not believe in the existance of God the form still exists.
Emerson gave up the ministry as an antiquated profession and that people worship in the dead forms of their forefathers. He thought that people will still worship reguardless of what he had to say on sunday. People will still worship in a way that their forfather worshiped or not, the circle is still there to contemplate.

Poem

This poem as I see it, is a warning to humans that mother nature can give and she can take. Mother nature, in our imagination, shows us the power of wind, earth, water, sunshine and storm. She feeds us and we continually take what she has provided. " A peopled world it is; in size a tiny room". The world used to be a place where one could lose yourself in, but in modern times there is hardly any room to move where there are no people. "Burried beneath the glittering lake! Its place no longer to found, Yet the lost fragments shall remain, To fertilize some other ground". How much ground has been lost? The Glaciers melt, the polar ice caps are melting and in the process the ground that is being lost is fertilizing some other ground, mostly under water. The lakes, rivers and oceans are rising, and most people who have beach front property are losing their ground at an alarming rate. The emotions that people have is that of losing the home that they have built. Fear of the rising tide and finding their house in the middle of the ocean. Mother nature, in the future will try to reclaim the land from man/woman because we have not tried to work with nature to live in harmoney with it. We have taken for granted what she has given and we expect more, how much more can she give? If we could just sit back and enjoy what has been given we then can move more in harmoney with nature. Along with the warning I can see (from my memories) the flowers on the tundra in bloom, the clouds dancing in the blue sky, the sound of the water in the river moving on an endless journey toward the sea, those were the days in Alaska that I remember the most. No sound of people, no airplanes overhead, just the still and quiet of nature. People just need to stop and smell the roses and contemplate nature and the gifts that she can bring.
The "floating island" is that we are going away from nature and nature is going to reclaim what isn't ours by right, we are just custodians of the earth and if don't take care of it we are going to lose it out of our own carelessness.

Symbolism

It seems to me like everything Edgar does is at night. If anyone spends enough time in the woods and has experienced it at night it is a scary place. Shadows move, critters are out feeding and to be alone in the woods is even more so. Brown discribes a scene " We, at last, arrived at the verge of a considerable precipice. He kept along the edge"(pg 19 para. 1). If we look at it in a symbolic gesture, we can make a case for the precipice as being the formation of America. That is, the start of a new country apart from England. The revolution is done, the formation of a new country, we are feeling invinciable in that no other country in the world has been able to do what we (our forefathers) did. England at the time was the most powerful country on the planet and with the defeat of England they had to be feeling pretty good about themselves at that time. "The stranger kept along the verge of the cliff, which gradually declined till it terminated in the valley"(pg 19 para 2). The long steady decline of the cliff relates to the broken ties that we had with England. Before the war we traded with the mother land, they supplied things that we were not yet able to produce for ourselves and when the trail comes down off the cliff and ends in the valley that is when we have to fend for ourselves. The trail is full of sharp and rugged rocks and so the trail is not a smooth place to walk. The same could be said of Franklin's time in England, trying to get the king to see our independence. " He then proceeded to remove the stalks, which, as I immediately perceived, concealed the mouth of a cavern. He plunged into the darkness, and in a few moments, his steps were heard no more!"(pg 19 para 2). At this point America is born but, what to do now that we have our independence? We have no back up with England, we are at a most vunerable time in that anyone could come and attack us and take what ever they wanted. America for the most part could not withstand another war, the solders are tired, we didn't have the money to pay a military to fight. The stalks that Brown talks about is the red coats (England), they have been defeated and removed, and were heard no more.
As I read this book, I always got a sence darkness, no light, no color, everything is done at night. Another might have used the daylight to do his activities, shown more color in the woods, and had more flowers in the fields. Even in the mountains and forests here in Washington there are wild flowers and during the day the views are most impressive. Now having said that I don't think that changing the foreground would help the story. The times that he lived were terror filled. Starting anew not knowing what was to come next, he did capture the times in which he lived.

Terror and Horror

Terror, Terror is the person who sits in front of the window in the former Twin Towers and sees a jetliner coming straight at them. How does one council themselves knowing that death is at hand, afterall that is what ultimate Terror really is. What does one say to ones self knowing what is about to happen and do you really have peace in the presents of knowing? Do think about family and friends? In those last few seconds of life do you have any regrets about the argument that you had with that significant other that morning, did you kiss your child goodby? Do you and a brief second to comtemplate your mortality?
Watching it on TV, reading about it in the newspaper leaves its own Terror on those who are witness to such tradegy, not wanting to place themselves in others place, we still wonder what if.
Horror is related to those who are witness to the event and to those who lived it. The Horror for those on the ground is watching someone on the top floor jump knowing that they are about to die. The Horror for them is watching the tower fall and knowing that there are people still in the buliding knowing what fait lies for them. Horror for those in the building is contemplating what to do next. Knowing that all the exits are blocked and no way out what to do? I would imagine that for some that would be the most horrifying thing to think about, what to do. For some killing ones self is against their religion and of course god, but do you think that god will forgive this? Some people decided to jump from the building through their own choice in lew of the alternative of burning alive or suffocating from the smoke or even being buried under the millions of tons of rubble that once was the tower. The thought process that they must have gone through would be Horror all in itself.

clueless in english 372

what to say, what to say.....I graduate in the spring, I have a 10yr old son. I am more at home at work than in a classroom setting so to that end I try to keep to myself (doubt that will happen in this class). I work full time, take a full load of classes, and have my son most of the week so that keeps me busy. I do all of the manly stuff fish, hunt, camp and play poker online and on real tables.I am closer to the 50 mark than I like to admit, so most of the time I am stuck in the 70's and 80's realm, music and tv, movies ect.. I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and served for 10yrs as a combat medical specalist. I like to learn new things which is why I took this class. something different something new, we'll see how that works out.