Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown"

“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story that deals with religion both explicitly and implicitly. In the story Goodman Brown takes part in a ritual that changes his life. Many who read the short story feel that Hawthorne implies a meaning about religion. In “Young Goodman Brown” Nathaniel Hawthorne makes a philosophical statement when he reveals to his protagonist Goodman Brown, the true nature of humanity.

The allusion to the story of Adam and Eve and the fall of man supports the interpretation that Hawthorne believes mankind is inherently wicked. The story of Goodman Brown has many conspicuous references to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. For example, the old man who meets Brown has a staff that is carved like a snake and at some points even looks like it is moving like a snake. This supports the interpretation that the old man is the Devil and his staff is the snake from the story of Adam and Eve who can be seen as an extension of the Devil, just as the staff is an extension of the old man. The old man then begins to convince Brown to continue on to some unmentioned task which is presumably evil. This mirrors the way that the snake convinced Eve to try the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. When Brown succumbs to evil by joining the ritual in the forest, his eyes are opened to the true nature of the world, just as the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened to the nature of sin once they had tasted the apple. Finally, Goodman Brown returns to his village, and lives forever as an outside, similar to how Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden after their initial sin.

The character of goody Cloyse reveals Hawthorne’s intentions as to whether mankind is wicked or evil. Cloyse, who Goodman Brown claims is a pious old lady who “taught him catechism”, is seen wandering about the forest for no apparent reason and then begins conversing with the old man, who we know is most likely a devil figure. This part does not further the plot and seems to only function to expose the wickedness of a character that was previously perceived to be a good Puritan. This comes before we discover that, in fact, all of the settlers are present at the forest ritual including deacon Cooker and the Reverend. This supports that all the settlers, even all of mankind are sinners and when Goodman Brown realizes this he becomes changed forever, and he lives his life as an outcast.

Hawthorne’s view of humanity as portrayed in “Young Goodman Brown” supports that of Thomas Hobbes, that humankind is naturally evil, unless ruled over by a superior power, such as government or religion. Salem, the location of “Young Goodman Brown” is a traditionally Puritan area and Hawthorne himself was a Puritan. The Puritan movement called for more personal purity and religious devotion, and is generally considered to be a very strict religion with a low tolerance for sin. For Hawthorne to write a story such as this, that suggests that humankind is naturally evil would be very dangerous in his traditional Puritan community, which is most likely why Hawthorne chose to make the story take place in a dream like environment.

Slaughterhouse Five

My post is related to the free-write from Thursday.

Authors often modify the structure of stories using the perception of time. One such novel that employs this effect is Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is abducted by aliens called the Tralfamadorians. Pilgrim then becomes unstuck in time, causing him to experience random events in his life in no particular order. Vonnegut uses this in order to show an idea called non-determinism, that one has no choice in their life. The idea emphasizes the tragedy in Pilgrim’s life and the traumatic events including World War II that have caused him to become desensitized. Thus we as the reader jump from World War II to an alien abduction to the mundane life of the Pilgrim as an optometrist. Vonnegut contrasts the quotidian to the near deadly and science-fiction adventures of Billy Pilgrim.

Thesis - A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Thesis: In "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses a contrast between the communities reactions to both the old man and the spider-woman to highlight the nature of human beings and faith. Their fleeting curiosity with the old man reveals their unwillingness to believe something that contradicts with preexisting dogmas that cannot be properly explained, while they are fascinated by the spider-woman because she explains herself in a way that the people can believe.

I have a very long winded thesis, and I apologize for that, but I always like to write about the author's intentions when using certain devices, so in this case I focused on Marquez's use of magical realism in the old man and the spider-woman.

This is Just to Tell You

That I have
killed my
wife that was
in the painting

and which you
probably
thought
I had loved

Forgive me
she was beautiful
so happy
and so alive


My parody is a mix of two poems, similar to Hudgins' "The Swans Skip School". I took the plot from Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and put it into an apology note. I thought that the surface tone is as non-chalant as William's "This is Just to Say" (Although Browning's character has a lot more going on under the surface). I imitated the general form of Williams' poem, I tried to match syllables roughly, but didn't strictly follow that. The visual form including stanzas and enjambment/line length is similar to the original. This poem is a summary of the overall message of "My Last Duchess". It's basically everything that the speaker is hinting at and trying not to say.

Parody in Yeats, Brooks, and Hudgins

Oh my goodness, I woke up today planning to read the three posts for today and then realized that I was one of those posts, so I'm sorry its so late but here's my contribution.

Andrew Hudgins combines the themes from both "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks and "The Wild Swans at Coole" by William Yeats in his parody "The Wild Swans Skip School". In his parody Hudgins aims to show his admiration for the two poets in a humorous way. It seems that he admires Yeats the most, the title for the parody rhymes with Yeats' original title. While the author most likely does admire Brooks, the reader gets the feeling that Hudgins uses her form and themes simply to contrast with Yeats's original ideas.

Hudgins specifically mentions Yeats in the third line of his poem and it seems as though he is playfully making fun of Yeats interpretation of the swans. In "The Wild Swans at Coole" Yeats uses an admiring and majestic tone with regards to the swans, while Hudgins portrays them as delinquents that skip school, similar to the characters in "We Real Cool". Also later in the poem Hudgins writes "We / won't stay. We / fly 'way." In these lines, the swans are mocking how Yeats admired their the swan couple. Also the final line in "The Swans Skip School" is almost like a much less beautiful version of Yeats' final line "To find they have flown away?"

The sentence "We / scorn Yeats" by Hudgins makes it seem as though the swans are ridiculing Yeats for his drastic misinterpretation of their nature, and he is also linking the behavior of the pool players to swans which could also be a parody of Brook's characters. Hudgins is not mocking either of the two poets, since he chose to combine their work and it is even more unlikely since both poets were highly acclaimed. Hudgins is simply showing his admiration for two works and a interesting link he has found between two seemingly unrelated works. Why would he be mocking two completely unrelated poems by combining the elements of both of them? It is much more likely that Hudgins is showing admiration for two poems he admires.

Red Wheel Barrow

In "The Red Wheelbarrow" William Carlos Williams presents a strong image of a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain next to white chickens. In fact, the poem consists of mostly imagery except for the first two lines. Williams uses the image of the red wheelbarrow next to white chickens as a distinct picture that the author forms in his or her head. The way the author reveals things piece by piece almost makes it seem as though the reader is looking at a picture that is slowly zooming out, from the red wheelbarrow, to the rain, and to the chickens and it seems as though the picture will keep zooming out to encompass the green grass, the picket fence, and the dusty road. It seems as though Williams emphasizes how every moment of our everyday lives is made up of simple objects.
Like a red wheelbarrow that's glazed with rain, next to the white chickens.

Modernist Protagonists

We saw the Modernist perspective in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and we saw some distinctive earmarks of the Modernist protagonist. J. Alfred Prufrock has similarities to many other protagonists with a modernist point of view, such as Septimus Smith in Virginia Woolf's Mrs.Dalloway . Another hero with strikingly similar ideas is Frederic Henry in Ernest Hemmingway's A Farewell to Arms. While not as radically modernist as Eliot's or Woolf's works, Hemmingway uses many modernist ideas and he himself lived during the time of Modernism.
A notable characteristic that these characters share is a preoccupation with death or related issues. Prufrock is concerned about his aging and whether his life will be worthwhile. Similarly Frederic Henry lives with a confirmed acknowledgment of death. He drinks, smokes, and enjoys women, but he always seems detached and hesitant to show his emotion possibly due to the fear that the people he loves will die. Septimus on the other hand does not fear death, however his life has been severely altered by encounters with death on the battlefields of World War I, as has Henry's. Septimus feels that he no longer fits in to society and is often absorbed in his own thoughts, and instead sees death as an escape from a world that he could not hope to understand, and ends up committing suicide.
Septimus and Prufrock both allow their minds to wander which can be illustrated clearly because Woolf and Eliot both use a form of stream-of-consciousness narration, in which we seem to be in the character's mind. This is one of the new innovations in Modernism, and in both Mrs. Dalloway and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" we gain an enormous amount of insight into our characters mentality in a short amount of actual time (One day in Mrs. Dalloway, a few minutes most likely in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

I'm sorry this isn't as tight as a traditional analysis essay, it meanders a little too much.

Rossetti's Sextet: Form Analysis

Lines 9 – 14 of “A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul – its converse, to what Power ‘tis due-
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life or dower in Love’s high retinue,
It serve; or ‘mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,
In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death

PARAPHRASING
A sonnet is a coin, the front of it shows/ the soul, the back shows what theme fuels the sonnet/, whether it serves as a tribute to the majestic appeals/ of Life or gift in the presence of Love’s retinue(important people like at a hearing or dowry decision);/ or in the breath of the dark wharf, into Charon’s palm it pays the toll to Death.

The form of the second half – the sextet – of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Italian sonnet “A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument” visually and rhythmically affects the reading and meaning of the sonnet. Through use of syntax and visual form, Rossetti highlights three themes within his sonnet: the dual purpose of sonnet, the lighter, optimistic purposes of poetry, and the final couplet is dedicated to the motive of death. The sonnet style as well as the form of poetry allows him to use line breaks, punctuation, and rhythm creatively and highlight some of his ideas. Unfortunately, the sonnet form – specifically the Italian sonnet form – shackles him at the same time and limit him to a strict rhyme scheme and a general meter
Visually, Rossetti uses indentation to divide the lines into three sections, and as we shall see, these three sections all have their own characteristic form. The first section is dedicated to the duality of a sonnet. Rossetti emphasizes this syntactically by using a colon in the middle of the ninth line and a hyphen and comma in the middle of the tenth. This use of caesura rhythmically divides these two lines into parts, the colon and comma specifically divide their respective lines into two halves reinforce the idea of two sides of a coin that Rossetti discusses. The second section explains two common uses of the sonnet: to pay highlight the appeals of life, and to serve as a gift in the presence of love. These lines all form one clause, because they are both themes of positive happier sonnets. In contrast, the third section is a couplet that is solely dedicated to grave negative theme of death within sonnets. The rhyme scheme for this sextet is ABABCC, the couplet seemingly disturbs the pattern of the sextet and forcefully brings it to a halt, which emphasizes the theme of death in sonnets.
As we can see the sonnet allows Rossetti to accentuate his idea through its form, however due to the nature of the Italian sonnet and its strict rhyme scheme, it feels as though Rossetti often resorts to some odd vocabulary and syntax. Also, although Rossetti’s sonnet reads beautifully, the reader often finds himself slowly picking apart the knot that is his sentence structure, especially in the final sextet, which is made up completely of one rather long sentence.


On a personal note (not really part of this entry), I really liked this poem, especially the whole metafictional (there might be a better word for what I’m trying to say here) theme. A sonnet that talks about the nature of sonnets! Woah...

Blog is online.

Howdy,

Aaron has a blog now. Yay! First class wide post to follow shortly.

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Aaron Baucom