the Red convertable

Henry and Lyman were brother that lived on a reservation.  They shared a old red convertible with each other.  But now Henry owns all of it.  Lyman got his money for through various jobs.  He seemed to be lucky when it came to earning money.  At first he shined shoes in the American Legion Hall.  Then he sold spiritual bouquets for the mission.  The nuns at the mission let him keep part of the money.  Then he started to wash dishes at this restaurant then became the manager, then owning it.  But after one year as owner it blew down.  They saw the car with a FOR SALE sign in the window.  They immediately bought it.  Henry and Lyman drove may places in that old car.  The details didn’t matter to them.  But they do remember this place in willows.  They laid under trees and meet a girl called Sussy.  She needed a ride to her home in Alaska.  Her home was welcoming and they didn’t want to leave.  The family put them up and feed them.  The kids could ot get over the fact that the brothers didn’t look the same.  They had the same mother.  Soon they left that place and went down through Spokane, Montana along the Canadian border until they got home. It was at that point that the army remembered Henry and took him.  After sending two letters the enemy caught him and there he stayed for three years.   For the government the war was over, but for Henery it was still going on.  He didn’t come back the same.  He was quieter then usual, always moving around, never sitting still.  He was put under a spell  by the  TV. Lyman and his mom talked about sending to the doctor but they might keep him.  So Lyman decided to mess up the car to reach his brother.  It worked,  but in the end they drove it to the river and Henry went under the current.  So Lyman made sure the car followed him down the river. 

     When the story first started out I did not understand the beginning.  “ we own it (the car) together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share.  Now Henry owns the whole car and his younger brother Lyman (that’s myself), Lyman walks everywhere he goes.”  When I got to the end I understood it.  It kind of acts as a framing device for the story.  But the brother aspect of the story is interesting.  We learn  a lot about Lyman because he is the narrator, but not as much about Henry.  We learn that he was laid off from a job and that he is quiet and “built like a brick out house” with a big nose that was sharp as a hatchet.  After that we lear about the effects the war had on him, that he watches television with his had griping the chair or he became a loner.  He became jumpy and mean.  I do wonder why we don’t learn that much about his personality until after he is affected by the war.   I wonder what was actually on the television that made him keep his attention there for so long?  It also seemed like that brothers loved wondering.  They knew they had a home to go back to and their mother did not seem that too shook up about it.  I don’t think they cared where they went as much as they cared about the journey and the people they meet.  I think the reason why Susy stood out to them was because she had a family and they enjoyed their time there.  The Ending was sad, because Henry came to the realization that he won’t be normal again and he decides to commit suicide. Lyman sends the car in after him be

E.B White

Charlotte and Wilbur were alone in the Barn.  Wilbur’s safety was guaranteed and Charlotte was happy with this.  Wilbur asked why Charlotte was so quiet.  Charlotte said that she likes to sit still and that she’s always been rather quiet.   She was tired but peaceful in knowing that the success in the ring (which was also her success) helped to make sure that Wilbur would have a long life.  But she knew that her life was almost done and she would not make it back to the barn.  Willbur asked why Charlotte did all these things for him, such as saving his life.   “You have been my friend” said Charlotte, “That in itself is a tremendous thing.  I wove my webs for you because I liked you.   After all, what’s a life anyway?  We’re born, we live a little while, we die.  A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess with all this trapping and eating files.  By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that”  She then told Wilbur that she wasn’t going back to the barn, that is was to e her resting place.   Wilbur wanted to stay, but Charlotte talked him out of it.  Wilbur raced around the pin, searching his head for ideas.  Finally he decided to save Charlotte’s babies, but the egg sac is up near Charlotte and he can’t reach it.  Willbur runs to get Templeton to get the egg sac. “So It’s old Templeton to the rescue again” said Templeton.  Wilbur begs Templeton to help, but he feels in appreciated for all the times that he has helped Wilbur with the dump.  Wilbur promises Templeton first picks in the slop from now on and Templeton saves the egg sac.   Charolette’s family line survives because of him.

            I think asking about the purpose of one’s life important, whether or not you find the answer is up to you, but you can also make a choice about it.  This is most likely the case for Charlotte.   Through the line, “After all what’s a life anyway?  We’re born, we live a little while, we die.”  It is kind of a nihilistic way to look at ones life, but she is not a nihilist though, since she finds a purpose.  It might be that Charlotte, (if she was a human) is an atheist.  In regards to her death, she doesn’t make a reference to any god or spiritual element.  She is just happy that she was able to make a friend and help to save his life.  There also the topic of being unappreciated.  Templetion has done a lot for Wilbur, but almost never gets  a thanks.  I almost questioned if he would get Charlotte’s children, but in the end he rescued them.  But you would also have to ask what woud have Wilbur done if he didn’t?  Pigs are know to eat almost anything.  Would have Wilbur eat him if he didn’t save the children?

The School!

Everything they tried to take care of died.  The latest thing they took care of was a plant.  The school figured that it should be a part of their education to learn about the root system.  There were 30 kids, so there were 30 dead trees in the ground.  It was pretty sad; having a bunch of little kids just staring at the ground, wondering what went wrong.  It probably had something to do with the soil.  But before that it was the snakes.  The snakes were left in the school during the strike, and the boiler was turned off, so the kids knew what to expect.  Before that was the herb garden.  They probably over watered it. Then there was the fish and that was expected.  But no one expected a puppy.  The Murdoch girl found it under a Gristede truck.  She was afraid that the puppy would have been run over by the truck.  They named the puppy Edgar, after the teacher.  The kids found this amusing and the kept the puppy in the closet. It too also died, but I made sure that the children didn’t see it.  I gave it to the custodian.  Then there was the Korean orphan that the children adopted through the Help the Children program.  But then the child died.  His name was Kim and the kids felt pretty bad about it.  They felt as thought something was wrong with the school.  Then 9 parents passed away and we had the tragedy with Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo.  Then one day they asked the teacher, where did they go and he said nobody knows.  They said “Is death what gives life meaning?” And he said “no life is that which gives meaning to life.”  Then they said “isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken for granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of…..

It was at this point in the story that I came to the realization that these kids might not be normal.  With the many deaths surrounding the school, I was with the teacher in the thought that it was just a series of very unfortunate events.  But then the children showed an intelligence that wasn’t expected of them.  But it never says what grade they are in.  Yes, they are called children in the story, but most teachers in grade school call their students children.  As a whole the story is morbid, but bot gory or scary.  You just get an overall sense that something might be wrong.  That the children might be unnatural or advance might throw off the reader.  The Author plays with the sense of development, but the children ask questions about death that any child would ask, only with bigger concepts.  The reason we find it off putting because they use terms and concepts that they should know and are asked to be show these concepts, like sex.  In it’s most basic form, it is the fear of big words in a way.

Howl

I saw the best of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking of an angry fix, angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the Machinery of the night.  Some of them bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw dreams of Arkansas and angels.  Other drank drugs and remains in unshaved rooms in their underwear, burning the things that made food possible for them.  Some of them made connections in white padded rooms, while other waited for Moloch to collect a sacrifice.

                Howl by Allen Ginsberg comes off as critique of his whole generation, while also understanding it.  He sounds disappointed by what has happened to it, but understands how they got to that point.  It is like you and your friend has an addiction to the same drug, but you are able to pull yourself out of it, but you see that your friends are still following self-destruction.  You are disappointed, but you understand why they can’t stop.  It also feels like a collection of experiences and actions that Ginsberg has gone through. “Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness” seems like when the generation became decadent in comparison to lines like “Burning their money in wastebaskets.  It also sounds like they were trying to disconnect from the system.  “Who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow towards lonesome farms.”  While part one sounds like a description of the hipster/beatnik generation, the second part deals with Moloch, who is an ancient Semitic God.  He is usually involved with child sacrifice, but most of the time he is used as a presentation of something that requires a costly sacrifice.  By using Moloch as a god figure, is Ginsberg saying that for his generation to receive the perception and outlook they have acquired, they had to sacrifice their own personal future and placement in society?  The last section deals with Ginsberg and his friendship with Carl Solmen, who he meets in a mental hospital.  Solomen and Ginsbergs both entered of their own free will and start to talk about their experiences.  Ginsberg felt sympathy for Solomen, who related his experiences to him, such as throwing potato salad at lecturers on Dadaism.

(Sidenote: I also found this video that I think is amusing, which is a ......companion piece, I don't really know what to call it, a howl for the modern age?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UowVsL3dXjM

Harrison and Equality

     In the future everyone is equal and they don’t have a choice.  It is against the law to have any advantages over anyone.  There are even agents of The United States Handicapper General that disable everyone.  If you are too smart, they put limiters on your mind.  If you think something too advance, then they destroy it.  The limits also extend to the physical.  If you are too beautiful, you have to put on a mask that makes you ugly.  Too big or strong, 300 pound weights for you!  For George and Hazel things are….average.  But they had a child called Harrison.  Harrison was seven feet and was more advance then everyone else, but that means he had more disabilities then everyone else.  He was recently taken away and Hazel was crying about it.  But because of the handicaps could not remember what she was crying about.  They were watching ballerinas on the television.  Because of the handicaps they could not perform to their greatest ability.  You could tell the one that is the most beautiful because she had the heaviest weights and a horrible mask.  Hazel thinks it would be a joy to hear all those sounds that the Agents send into people’s head to destroy their thoughts.  She thinks she would make a good Hanicape general.  Hazel even looked like the General, Diana Moon Glampers.  Just then George start to think of his abnormal son in a positive manner, but the 21 gun salute that was in his head stopped that.  In a news builitin their son was brought up on the screen, saying that he broke oout of jail and was warned not to try to reason with him.  Then Harrison showed up at the studio, tearing the hinges off the door.  His footsteps sounding like a earthquake.  George reconized that it was his son, bit the sound of an automobile in his head caused a pain that closed his eyes.  When they were open again, the picture of Harrison was replaced by the geniue article.  Harrison tore off his restraits and he declared himself Emperor.  He asked for a mate and the beautiful Ballerina stood up.  He removed her restrains and they dance.  But Diana Moon Glampers came through some doors and shot both of them dead.

Things taken to a logical extreme as a joke or a social commentary are most of the time funny.  But if it is applied in real life, then it becomes horrible, because logical extremes don’t take into account emotions or innovations.  Logical extremes give no compromise, no middle ground and human beings usually have middle ground.  Equality is wonderful, without equality I wouldn’t be able to write this paper or be in college.  But our differences make us who we are.  Completion betters humanity as a whole.  If we all had the exact same abilities, then we wouldn’t move forward as a race.  We would in a way become stale.  But even the world of the Handicappers is not equal.  Someone would have to be smarter or stronger then everyone else to enforce the system.  If not then the system probably could not be enforced.  But then again I could be wrong.  George and Hazel birthed Harrison under these conditions and he had super strength and was a genius.  He might have been the next step in human evolution, but everyone had to be equal and for that he got a shotgun shell to him, all in the name of equality.  But I wonder why he automatically made himself Emperor and if he didn’t do that would he still be 

Poor Francis....

     Francis Macomber and his wife Margot are on a hunting trip in Africa, with their Guide Wilson.  They have been on one hunt on this trip and things have not gone well for Francis, mainly because faced with a lion, ran instead of shot.  While the people who were at the camp thought he did well, the gun bearers, Margot and Wilson knew the truth.  After wards Margot started to notice certain things about Wilson, his sandy hair, his cold blue eyes.   Francis was a very fit, well-built man.  While they were having drinks Francis thanks Wilson for the lion, but Margot looks away in shame towards Wilson.  “You have a very red face, Mr. Wilson she said.  Drink Wilson says but she says I don’t think so, Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.  Its red today, Francis said trying to joke.  NO my face is red today says Margot.  Soon Margot ran off to cry.  Francis expected this and Wilson found it to be an annoyance.  Wilson considered Francis to be a boy and Margot to be a predator.  She came back and was refresh and new.  Margot wanted to come on the next trip, but Wilson was against it.  Wilson knew about American Women and their effect on men, so she saw her as trouble.  But in the end she got her way.  In the afternoon they went to hunt Impala and Francis proved himself to be a great shot.  He wanted to make sure that his wife forgot the lion business, because they were hunting buffalo.  But Wilson thought to himself that he should be more worried about how being a coward affected himself, not his wife.  But there was another lion near the camp, so there was another chance.  Francis came close, even shot the lion couple of times, but in the end ran, with his wife seeing the whole thing again.  When they got back in the cat Margot lend over into the front seat and kissed Wilson.  Francis has been through this before, but Wilson thought that it was their business and he was a 3^rd party.  The night Margot went to Wilson’s tent and Francis confronted her about it when she got back.  He said “you think I will take anything” and she said “I know you will”.  They were at a stalemate, she was beautiful and he was rich.  Wilson had been through this before and thought nothing of it.  In the morning they went off to hunt three buffalo.  The chased them on foot and in the car.  Francis took out the biggest one, while both he and Wilson took out the other two.  The chase had awakened something in Francis and now he had the courage to stand up to his wife, maybe even leave her!  One of the Gun Bears spoke to Wilson, telling him that the first buffalo was still alive and limped off into the Bush.  So they decided to go after it and finish it off.  They were close to it when it decided to charge.  Francis took several shots most of them hitting the horn, until he got it in the head.  But at the same time Francis felt a white hot blinding flash explode in his head.  It was the last thing he ever felt; because his wife had accidently shot him while trying to help.  Wilson said to her, without a tone in his voice, “That was a pretty thing to do, He would have left you too”  “why didn’t you poison him? That’s what they do in England” all she did was cried and said stop it.

                Yeah So I really don’t like Margot, Francis wife.  Because of her Francis died. (I was like the hunter, starting like Francis at the end of the story.  He was starting to come into his own and standing up to his wife and then BLAM, end of character development. (Well I should have expected that since the story was named The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, but I was hoping for a metaphysical death.)  Also I think the title references his life after he discovers himself, not before.  After his transformation, Wilson was his guide.  Francis asked him questions like “Do you have feelings of happiness about what’s going to happen?” in regards to the hunt.  As for the wife, she take an interesting turn when Macomber changes in regards to the hunt.  At first she was excited to see it, but after Macomber develops she is sicken by it.  I think she was looking Wilsion in the previous hunts, not the actual action.  Wilson himself I don’t really find fault with, he just trying to do his job, he doesn’t expect to see these people again, so he has no need to make an attachment to them.  But at the same time he is proud to see Macomber grow into what he considers to be a man.  I think he considers most American men to be like children, mainly because they don’t normal grow up around danger and since his clients are mostly rich, they haven’t been through much struggle.  But I do find it curious with many cultures that the right into manhood involves conflict or death.  The only peaceful passage into manhood I can think of off the top of my head is a Bar mitzvah and the only painful thing I can think of happening there is the boy falling out of the chair.  Why does the rite of manhood have to involve someone getting hurt or a creature dying when it is displayed in our culture?  Good Job boy you just ended a creature’s life for no apparent reason other than to prove to me a concept of manhood, Great Job.  I mean there are other means to show you’re a “man” like joining the armed forces (you won’t automatically kill someone in the armed forces, but it is still indirectly involved with violence).  The other way you can look at is that the hunt is a metaphor of him finally taking a stand against his wife, no matter what the consequences.  There is also the question whether not the wife committed murder, but I believe that she didn’t that it was an accident.  I’m pretty sure that is the only positive thing I can say about the wife.

A good man is hard to find.

The Grandmother was hoping to go to East Tennessee, not Florida and she wanted to change her only son, Bailey, mind.  She tries to scare him by showing him an article about the recent breakout of a criminal called “The Misfit” implying that he is heading towards Florida.  She says that she would never take her kids near a state that has a madman heading towards it.  Bailey just ignored her and kept reading his paper.  She then tries to appeal to the mother, saying that the kids were to Florida before, but not East Tennessee.  Her motives to wanting to go to East Tennessee didn’t lie with the happiness of the family, but that she had friends up there.  Bailey’s son, John Wesley asked why don’t she just stay home if she doesn’t want to go, with his sister saying, She has to go everywhere we go.  Next morning, Grandmother was the first one in the car with the Cat hidden a valise.  She didn’t want to leave the cat alone, afraid that it might kill itself.  She dressed fancy for the trip, because if she had died in a crash, at least the passersby will be able to identify her as a lady.  Like some mothers, she constantly gave advice to her son while driving, about patrolmen and other things. John wanted to drive through Georgia fast so that they won’t have to look at much.  The grandmother tasks about respect for their home state and parents, then points out a pickaninny standing in the door of a shack.  She tells them a story about a little nigger boy who ate a watermelon under a misunderstanding.  They stopped at a place to eat and the children misbehaved.  The grandmother talked to the owner of the dinner about the way things are and how they used to be.  She blames Europe.   After leaving, the grandmother wanted to visit an old house, but Bailey didn’t want to, so she got the children to get on her side and eventually he gave in.  They went down a dirt road and had a accident.  Everyone turned out to be ok.  Soon they waited in a ditch for help, when a car pulled up.  Three men got out of the car with guns, one of them shirtless with a black hat.  The grandmother identifies him as The Misfit out loud.  He said she wish she had not done that.  Slowly one by one the family was taken out ot the woods to be shoot until the grandmother was left.  She keeps trying to save her own life, until she mistakes the Misfit for her son (because he is now wearing his shirt).  She reaches up to touch his face and he recoils and shoots her in the chest

     Ok, so I will admit I didn’t see the story ending that way.  If this story was dated sometime after 1970s, then as soon as they mentioned The Misfit, I would have expected him to show up at some time.  Instead I just expected the grandmother to get her comeuppance or the family learning some sort of lesson.  Since it was written in 1955 I was expecting something like Leave it to Beaver.  I guess it is because the experience I have from the 1950s is about the Civil rights Movement or it’s television programs.  I wasn’t expecting the whole family to get killed one by one.  But this story brings up several subversions about respecting your elders and Christianity.  Just because one get older, does not mean that the get wiser.  It is a problem in churches, especially southern churches that has the ideal that just because someone has been in the church for a long time it means that they know better or should be given more respect because of it.  The grandmother expects respect because of who she is, but she doesn’t give respect to the wishes of her child, manipulating her Grandchildren into what will indirectly lead to their deaths.  If she just went along with her son’s wishes, they would be alive.  On the other hand she couldn’t have known that they would have meet The Misfit, but when they did she had the choice not to identify him, but she did.  If she respected her son’s wishes and left the cat at home like a smart person, then the crash wouldn’t have happened.  I’m also interested in a point that The Misfit brings up.  He was made that he wasn’t there when Jesus raised Lazurus from the dead.  He wanted proof that Jesus did this and was mad at Jesus for not leaving proof of his existence.  While I can understand his anger about the ambiguity of Christianity because of this (He refuses to see a man that he dosen’t know if he exists as his savior)  If there was facts that Jesus did what he did, then Christianity wound run on faith and it would be a spiritual belief.  Oh and I also like that this was written by a Christian too, who decided to explore certain aspects about her belief 

Theme and Harlem

So you have to write a paper that will come out of you, so that it will be true.  But the truth for one person might be different than another person, especially if the races between the people are different.  Your perspective changes when you are the minority in your class room.  People might expect things from you that you refuse to live up to.  But when you are 22, your identity might still be forming.  Hughes likes to eat, sleep, drink and be in love and he would also like a pipe for Christmas or records.  But just because he is colored, dos not put him in the position not to like something just because he is black.  Because the paper must come out of him, will the paper also be black, or will it be white, so that it can connect with the teacher, who is also white?  Maybe the teacher does not want to be a part of a black man in college.  But they learn from each other and one is more free then the other.

What happens when a dream is not fulfilled?  Not a dream likes “I’m going to conquer the sea
 or anything like that.  But a concert dream?  Can it be easily forgotten or does it become a weight.  It can’t just pop off like a hair.  It can be like sugar, dried up meat, or rotten meat or does it explode? Either way it is going to leave a mark.

Harlem and Theme for English B deal with different subject matter.  “Theme” has to deal with what is considered truth between the races.. While someone could say that since both races can go to school together their truths about school should be the same since they are equal now.  But that might not be true.  If both went for tutoring, would both receive equal treatment from the teacher?  Since both students live in different environments, how does each one perceive there environment?  Can we all really perceive what another man perceives as truth and do we want to, especially if that other person’s truth might limit us.   Harlem deals with dreams and what happens when we can’t live up to them.  We all dream of something, whether it is a family or a certain job, when we can’t gain that dream, it will affect us, especially when we get older.  Oh we can say that we are fine settling for our number two job or dream, but it weighs on us.  Thoughts sometimes goes through our head such as “what could I have done differently “ or “ if it wasn’t for (blank) then I would have my dream.  It could become like dead weight or cause us to lash out and self-destruction.  Actually some people might prefer self-destruction over not have their dream or drag someone else down with them if they are after the same dream.  All the ways that Hughes describes the dream deferred is physical, from drying up to stinking like rotten meat.  These are all things that are difficult to hide, so is he trying to say that you can’t side the effects of a deferred dream and indirectly a broken person?

What is Afirca to a man who was never raised there?  Your ancestors come from there, but besides that how does it relate to you?  Is Africa noisy or is that just the sound of nature?  Are the men Strong and Bronze or regal black?  If one went back to Africa, he or she would have to adapt to it’s ways.  Are the jungle boys and girls like us, just searching for love.  The Imagery is beautiful, but could we deal with the customs, the reality?

When I was younger there was a movement to go back to Africa by the Black culture.  Whether or not it was a call to visit or move back I can’t remember.  Now I could said that when I was a kid I thought the movement was stupid, but I was obsessed over power rangers at the time so that would have been a lie.  But I do think the movement was stupid.  Now I’m not against exploring one’s background, but doing something just because it was a cultural movement is stupid.  If you had a genuine interest in Africa, then go visit, but if your interest is fueled by everyone else doing it then that is bad.  Our culture has changed so much from our time in Africa.  We have mostly adopted the Christan God, as a group know very little about our “homeland” and would probably take a long time to adapt if we could.  We call ourselves African-Americas, but it really just a title.  Cullen consider the Gods of Africa to be Heathens and he has no need for them.  But then Cullen identifies God as not black (“Wishing He I served were Black”)  So what does that say about him?

I Marvel

(Instead of a summary of the poem, I’m just going to repeat instead)    I Doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind and did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is Baited by the fickle fruit, declare If Merely a brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair.  Inscrutable His ways are and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand.  Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black and bid him sing!

If man asked God why he did so many things and I covered them all then I would have a really long blog!  But I’ll just cover this poem instead.  The main question Countee asks is what is God’s reasoning behind his choices and brings to light one of the most innocent questions usually asked by kids about God, If God is good then why does he let bad things happen.  Now one could argue about free will and choice, but that would be getting off topic of the work at hand.  The first half of the poem is asking questions, the one I find interesting is the one involving Tantalus, one of the many characters in Greek mythology.  Tantalus was invited to eat at the Gods table, but he stole ambrosia and nectar to bring to his people (and probably for himself) The thing about ambrosia and nectar is that it made humans like the gods.  The gods did not like this so they put him in the underworld.  I find interesting the Countee puts the reference to Tantlus, who wanted to be immortal, after the line “Why flesh that mirrors Him must die someday”.  Questioning why we must die and why we are punished for trying to attain immortality has a nice duality to it.  He then come to the conclusion that most people just go to, that we can’t understand his ways and that he is always right.

The love song

T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one man’s response to death or someone talking to someone else who is dying for the intro.  The translation of the intro is someone talking to someone else that is about to enter the abyss, since they aren’t coming back.  As for the poem it’s self, it seems to be about a man longing for a relationship.  (Which is about half the guys in college?)  There a line that is repeated through the “stream of consciousness” poem that says “In the room the women come and go, Talking about Michelangelo”.  It seems that the narrator is in his apartment complex, a setting that seems familiar to him.  The narrator describes what is outside, which is a fog that seems to cover all over the city.  Many thought go thorug his head, such as how to prepare his face to meet other faces.  He has a lot of time, time for decisions not to be made, time for visions of what could have been if he had tried.  His insecurities feed into his indecision, asking himself “Do I Dare? Do I Dare?”  He worries about his thinning hair and his attire.  He knows the body of the women that pass by, but can’t approach them.  In the end he is his own worst enemy, he will destroy himself before he even has a chance.

     The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is the thought process of every insecure guy ever born.  But it specifically is the thought process of a middle age man that can’t build up the courage to talk to  women.  Since it is stream of consciousness, the poem comes off as jumbled, but focused on a main topic.  He over thinks every possible interaction that he could possibly have.  Instead of talking to women he plans things, lines 122 and 123 give that feeling.  “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach” Even an action that doesn’t concern women is concerning to him.  He is afraid of his own word “It’s impossible to say what I mean”. Line 84 says “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker” makes the reader aware that the narrator is aware of his own short comings, he admits that he is afraid.  In a way this is a very introverted man.  If it wasn’t for the fact that his hair was described as thinning, then the reader could have mistaken the narrator for a teenage boy who is trying to find his way.  You have to wonder if it has always been like this for him or did some event happen to him to turn him to this personality?

The Wasteland

T.S Elliot's The Wasteland is surreal to say the least.  I can't really make a summary of it, but i'll try my best.  The Wasteland is split up into five sections, The burial of the dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death By water and What the Thunder said.  Each section, eventhoguh it deals with different things, seems to be connected.  Burial of the dead speaks of clairvoyantes and memories of mountains and childhood.  While The Fire Sermon details an encounter between a man and a woman that may or may not be concensual.  These stories seem to detail memories of events.  They seem to be foggy and you only remember certain details, but you sure do remember the feelings.   The Game of chess seems to be linked to The Fire Sermon.

I wil admit this is not the most confusing piece of media i have experience, but it probally in the top ten.  All the sections seems to be connect.  I get the feeling they happen in the same state or atleast nearby each other.  They all speak of an unreal city, which I assume is the setting.  The ambiguity of it brings about some questions such as what was the purpose or was there even suppose to be one.

Huck chapters 23-30

The show that the King and the Duke put on was defiantly not for children.  The Duke took care of the door until the theater couldn’t hold any more men..  He then went to the stage through the back and started to work up the crowd about how this was going to be a great tragedy.  At the point that the crowd couldn’t take anymore, the king came out on all fours, painted with stripes and naked.  The crowd laughed and howled and the Duke dropped the curtain.  He said that they will only be performing for two more nights due to prior engagements.  The crowd, not taking this news well, asked, Is that all?  They were about to cause an riot until one big man got up and said, We don’t want to be the laughing stock of the town, so we should sell up the show so that everyone else will be fooled too, so we are not the only ones that are fools.  So the second night went ok, but the third night the townspeople were ready with rotten food to throw.  The Duke got a man to watch the door for a minute, while he and Huck started to speed walk to the raft after they got out of the theater.  They discovered that the king wasn’t in the town at all and all of them escaped by the raft with everything going according to plan.  They took in 465 dollars for the three nights.  After The Duke and King fell asleep, Jim started to question how the King and Duke acts, that they were rapscallions.  Huck said that most royalty is like that.

So after sleeping The Duke and The Kings tried to come up with some plan.  They dressed up Jim in some of the costume left over from King Lear, and put a sign up in front of his wigwam calling him a sick Arab.  Soon the group bought some new cloths and started to head for a town, deciding to start a a plan once they get there.  They saw a steamboat floating above the city and decided to take a boat to it.  A young man rode with them, which the King decided to ask for information.  Comes to find out that a rich man named Peter Wilks died and that his brothers William and Harvey were being waited for in the town.  The king asked the man all the information that he could about the town until he drained all information.  Then Huck and the crew came ashore and flagged down another Boat towards the village, where when they got there the King introduced himself and the Duke as William and Harvey.  They were informed of Peter’s death and started to mourn.  They also meet the three nieces of Peter, one which was named Mary-Jane.  Everyone was fooled by them, except for the doctor, who didn’t believe the Kings English accent.  After a while the money peter left behind was found and the king hid it under his bed, but Huck started to feel bad about deceiving the Nieces, especially Mary-Jane, so he took the money and hid it in the coffin.  Soon after wards Huck tells Mary-Jane the Truth and the real brothers show up.  Since the village people can’t tell the difference, they decide to use the body to decide through identification.  But while on the way to the body, Jim surprised the party and they were able to escape.  Then The King and The Duke start to fight amongst themselves, until they got drunk.

Human beings, on individual levels, have the capacity to do very good things, but we as a group tend to be very horrible.  Case in point with Huckleberry Finn, If only one person got fooled, he wouldn’t spend effort in getting the whole town to be tricked too just so he wouldn’t be the only fool.  But since a large group of people were fooled, they decided to fool the rest of the town out of their money so that they won’t be the only fools.  They didn’t care that they were indirectly taking money from their fellow neighbors, they just cared that they didn’t look like fools, which was really selfish.  The Village shouldn’t focus all of their anger at Huck’s crew as much as they should towards the first group that saw the show.  If they didn’t lie and just told the truth about the show, then they would not have loosed so much money.  Instead of trying to help their fellow man, they dragged them down with them.  This is something called the crab effect, which is basically a story about a Crab trying to escape from a pot, but his fellow crabs drag him back down repeatedly.  We see the crab effect sometimes in our culture, even sometimes towards college.  Sometimes people will make comments like “oh you think you are better than me because you are going to college?” or they discourage you from going all together.  It might be because they don’t want you to succeeded, that they don’t want you to advance in what your goal is.  This effect is not only limited to college.  Instead of being happy for a friend who won a new car, someone might say “oh why does he get a new car and I don’t” and they might decide to damage the car in some way.  I think that it is a sad condition.  Now my feelings towards The Duke and The King officially changed after they decided to impersonate the brothers of a dead man.  At first their tricks were not on a personal level.  They trick a whole town through a play and the trick worked because a few people in town didn’t want their pride and image hurt.  But through impersonating the Peter Wilks’s brothers, they are playing of a small group of people’s grief, especially the three nieces.  It was at this point that I came to the realization that they could have done this in the past.  How many other people’s lives they have ruined in the past?  They try to rationalize their own actions to themselves by say that the Girl’s will be alright because they will have their house, but that doesn’t justify what they tried to do.  Actually getting to know the victims enforces the fact to the reader that what they are doing is harmful.  Their last victims were a crowd.  It is hard to identify with a crowd because they are a mass.  But an individual is easier to identify with.  An Individual you can find out their history, get to know their personality and see the effect that your actions have.  A crowd usually express one emotion, don’t really have much of a personality and the actions of a crowd usually doesn’t have an effect on an individual level, except for the target of the mob.

The War Prayer

     A community is getting ready to send it’s young men off into a war.  This war is named “The Philippine-American War” Every day the men walk down the street in their new uniforms, with their loved ones cheering them on.  The community has been overunned with patriotism.  The pastors in the churches across the community invoked the God of Battle through their speeches.  The People against the war wanted to speak up and say their peace, but feared for their physical well being.  Then Sunday came soon.  Everyone was in the church, especially the young soldiers with dreams of retreating foes and flashing sabers.  They would be sent off to the front the next day.  The people who had no family to send off to war were envious of the one who did.  Then the Pastor started to read a chapter from the Old Testament to start out the prayer.  No one in the audience can recall a prayer like this one, but during this prayer an old, pale stranger walked in and starts to go towards the pastor.  Soon the pastor finished his prayer and was surprised by the stranger.  The pastor was gently pushed aside and the stranger said that he was a servant of the Lord and your prayers have been heard.  But he warned that the prayer had a message that the community was not aware of.  The community had prayed indirectly for the suffering of complete strangers, their enemies’ families in the war.  After the stranger stopped talking, he left.  He was considered to be a Lunatic.

            The War Prayer talks about something that most people seem to either ignore or forget the enemies’ family.  We tend to dehumanize the people that are against us so that we don’t think about the fact that someone’s son or daughter is not coming home.  War has never been glamorous in reality.  Of course we have the whole “Fighting for ideals and country” thing, but I think in the field it is about survival and human beings on an individual and whole level will try to do their best to survive.  We tend to forget the enemy is human.  But it is not the solider on the fields fault when they pull the trigger.   They are fighting to survive, not for some idea.  It is not a bullet enters a body and a nice little hole is created and you fall down and die.  No, people get blown apart and die slowly sometimes, while their fellow solders either have to watch or leave them behind.  Then there is the why they are fighting.  The soldier probably doesn’t hate the enemy personally, but they are thrown into a fever pitch because their country is at war with their enemy.  The soldier, in a way, is kind of like the bullet they fire.  They are pointed towards their target and sent their way.  A difference is that a solider has a life, a choice, and someone who will miss them when they are gone. So no one really wins in a war.  A country or a group can win, but a person not so much.  Something is always destroyed,  it could be the enemy, someone’s home or sense of security in their world

           

Huck Finn, Chapters 19-22

     Huck and Jim has just escaped the feud between the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords.  Huck had just seen the dead bodies of Buck and his cousin floating in the river and he wanted to get the image out of his head as quickly as possible.  With the raft floating down the river, Jim and Huck decide to relax, steal food and survive.  They noticed that the shore would go black after midnight because everyone would put out their candles.  They would use the sparks from the candles to tell time so during that time they came to shore and tied up their raft.  Huck explored to find some berries when he saw two men being chased by dogs.  He helped them avoid the dogs and soon introduced himself.  One of the men was around 70, had a bald head, some grey whiskers and dressed badly.  The other man was around 30 and dressed as bad as the other man.  The 30 year old was selling medicine that took the tartar off of teeth, but also took the enamel off too.  He over stayed his welcome and decided to slip out, but ran into the old man begging for help.  The old man was running a revival that didn’t go too well.  Soon after talking for a while, The young man pronounces himself as a Duke, and the old man says that he is a King!  Huck doesn’t believe them, but decides to keep quiet.  After traveling with them a bit, the Duke comes up with the idea of him and the kings doing the swordfight from Richard III and the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juilet.  But to rise funds The King trick some locale town’s people into giving him around 80 dollars.  After that Huck runs into a incident that involves a drunk names Boggs and a man called Sheburns.  After several Threats made towards Sheburns, Boggs is shot down by him.  One man rallies up the town people to lynch Sheburns, but they back down after he calls them all cowards (and the people in the south cowards in general). After that the The Dukes plan started.  The audience laughed and the duke was mad about that.  Afterwards,  The duke decided that the audience wanted low humor, so he decided to not admitte women and children to bring in a bigger crowd.

            Sometimes you have to look at Huck and wonder How have you not been permanently messed up by all the things you been through? First he sees two men try to murder a man in a boat, then he sees the dead body of his friend, and now he has seen a man shot in the streets.  But he seems to be handling himself well, for now.  I do find the whole Lynching situation interesting.  They heard Sheburns say to Boggs you have till one o clock to stop messing with him, so they probably knew what the going to happen.  It does make you wonder if Boggs was a good man when he was not drunk.  Sheburns calling the mob out about lynch (and the practice of Lynch and Mob actions in general) very amusing, It is very easy to go along with a terrible action when it is in a group.  He calls them all cowards for not having the balls to do something alone.  If the fear of dying first from the shotgun Sheburns was carrying at the timewas not there, would the crowd ignored his words and went through with it?  With the actions of the group, it is hard to lay the blame and the guilt on one person.  I also love the fact that the Duke feels like he needs to dumb down the show to get a bigger audience.  This is always a sad principle that always seems to be true.  Instead of trying to get people to think, the performer decides just to lower himself.  You can also make this comparison to the SOLs.  (Standards of Learning).  They were noticing that fewer and fewer kids were passing them each year, so instead of just keeping the same test, they decided to dumb it down just to pass more kids.  In the long run, that doesn’t help the future generation, which makes them dumber.  They should let them rise to the occasion, not lower their standards.

Two Alters

The Two Altars is two stories set in two different time periods, one in 1776 and one in 1850.  Both stories is about liberty, with set during the Revolutionary war and the other one after.  The first story is about what you would give for liberty.  It starts with Dick and Grace getting woodchips, but like most children that task has been turned into a game.  The wood chips have been made into a mound to hold a flagstaff.  Dick then ties a red handkerchief to the staff.  Dick wants to throw his cap for liberty and he wants Grace to do the same with her bonnet.  She throws it up, and then it blows away.  Grace begins to cry, but Dick says it is alright because it is for liberty.  He then set off after it while Grace goes home with the heavy basket in tow.  She came into the house with tears, while her Aunt Mehetabel’s questioned her about her bonnet and the whereabouts of Dick.  Grace tells her about throwing up her Bonnet for Liberty, the same kind of liberty that her father is fighting for.  Dick returns with the bonnet.  After the setting of the table and Tea, they receive a letter from the battlefield.  It explains what the soldiers have had to give up for the fighting and that they are holding on.  Soon after that soldiers come in and request for supplies. Everyone gives something and are proud to help out.  The second story is about a freed slave named George.  He has a wife, children and a job.  They have started to save up money and were getting mighty rich,  The were going to buy their son, Henry, a new Sunday Cap and daughter Mary a Muslin-de Laine dress.  All was good and fine, while they were enjoying dinner.  But they the door burst open and soldiers came in.  They were here for George, to take him back to Mr.B of Georgia, even though he had been free for ten years.  The family was in tears and George was sent back to be a slave.

The Comparison between these two stories is liberty.  One has liberty being fought for and liberty (and freedom) being taken away.  What would happen if the people in the first story knew about the events in the second story?  Would they have sympathy for George or would they just see him as a slave?  Dick thought that his father was a slave to a foreign power (that being England).  He was a slave in a sense to taxes, but he still had more freedom then George had as a slave.  The mother describes the United States as a beacon of hope, but is it the same in the second story.  George family was just like Dick’s family, only that he was a ex-slave.  I think the question really is for the story is this,  Is this the country that Dick’s Father was fighting for  a country where a man can be taken away from his family because of some technicality of law.  The people did not support George; they supported their government and the suit.  That to me is really sad.

Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau does not like government, specifically the government of the United States, his home.  He disagrees with what his government is doing with it’s army waging a war with Mexico.  The power of this nation, he believes, comes from the individuals that operate in the government, not the government itself.  The government actually imposes on the people instead of helps them.  The line “Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.” shows the government as a machine of mismanagement.  Thoreau also brings into question the effectiveness of majority rules in regards to justice.  Majority rules works more on the will of the strongest then the will of justice.  But also what good is justice if you just vote, instead of taking action yourself to stop the injustice.  Most people would ask then why don’t you just reform the government?   Thoreau’s answer would be that one of the main obstacles against reform would be people who disagree with the government but support it anyway.  So in a way it is indifference that is the biggest obstacle.  Thoreau’s decided to go against the government and was put into jail.  When he got out, his neighbors and friends, instead of going against the government with him or resisting, was indifferent.

Indifference is something that’s always been a problem in most countries.  While voting is good and all, it pales in comparison to direct action.  Our government says that its for the people, but creates laws that punish us for not supporting it with money.  Why should people pay for a government that goes against its wishes?  The government which acts like a machine, turns the men who serve it into machines, because they ignore their consciences.  But great men serve their government with their consciences and also resist the government. But resisting might lead to jail. I find Thoreau trip to jail interesting, because it is good to make a comparison to the jails that the government uses for white collar crimes.  In Thoreau’s jail cell he had a window, a hospitable, smart cell mate and was not abused at all.  What would have happened if he instead of refusing to pay a tax blew up a courthouse, would he have gotten the same treatment?  He had time to think and notice the sounds of his village.  (Personally I think he took his jail visit very well.)  But besides the jail visit, he does bring up a good point.  Why is the majority more just then the minority?  A small group of people can accomplish as much as a large group of people if they work together properly.  The Supreme Court works with less then 20 people, but they have changed so many things with just discussion.  So why is it that some major decisions in our government to left to the mass, who most of us have found out in the past, aren’t just, can be easily swayed and can’t all communicate with each other very well..  We say that how the people speak, but it is the Electoral College that selects the president.  But the Electoral College is swayed by the popular vote and if the voter of the district does not go with the popular vote, then their chances of maintaining their position is jeopardy.  While Martian Luther King one man who only concern was getting equal rights for Blacks in America, was able to change the nation with his words without worrying about disagreeing with someone, because he knew his cause was just.

stanton

Elizabeth Candy Stanton is fighting for equal rights for women.  She has decided to do this through the power of her words not her actions.  One of these groups of words is her speech to several people at different locations.  The speech was about woman’s rights, not only in America, but the world.  Woman has long in the history of the world had been considered inferior to men, but Stanton asks why this has to be.  They have the same facilities as man, with arms, legs, and intellect.  While woman’s rights have improved in England, because they can vote and hold some offices, the condition of women in U.S is less then that without the ability to either vote or hold office.  A comparison can be made of the intellect, but it would be considered unfair until women are allowed to be in college for a century, so they have the same advantage as men.  It is unfair that would have to pay for an institution they themselves can’t go to.  The judgment of who is the emotional sex is called into question.  While Eve was tempted by the Snake through knowledge, it was Adams emotional connect to Eve that lead to him biting the apple.  Man’s claim to physical supiority can also be called into question.  Just because women (back then) were usually smaller then men, doesn’t mean they were weak.  Men like John Quincy Adams were small but had more courage then the tallest man.’

            I agree with most of Stanton’s ideas about woman’s right.  I grew up with a mom who held down two jobs, one of them being a Prison Guard, and a sister who was in the Airforce.  So the whole idea of women being weaker in any way sort of just skipped me. (I’ll still hold open a door for a woman though.)  But do wonder if it was dangerous for her to preach woman’s rights in comparison to the civil rights movement in the 1940/50s?

I also like how she covers some of her bases and deals with obliviously stupid questions.  She said that her goal is not to have women wear dresses or do what is considered Woman’s Work (I just consider it work)  She wants the relationship between men and women to be equal.  She doesn’t want henpecked husbands or unhappy spouses.  She wants the duties to be shared.  Unlike Emerson and his universal truth, I think this is an idea that can be applied to the real world.

Life of a Slave girl

Linda is a slave owned by Dr. Flint’s daughter ( or Dr. Flint).  She was raised with certain principles and ideals by her grandmother, who is a freed slave.  But Dr. Flint wants to break those principle and morals not out of any kind of malice for the grandmother, but because of his hormones and ideas of ownership. So of course Linda is disgusted by this idea and refuses his advantages at every turn to maintain her innocence.  At first it is a normal routine for her, but then she tells Mrs. Flint about her husband’s attempts at affairs.  Linda knows that the wife will not sympathize with her, but only be a object of her hate and jealousy.  After this things get worse for her.  Her master strikes her and she is forbidden to marry her love, a free black slave.  Without the ability to marry her love and feeling all her hope is lost, she turns to a kind white man named Mr.Sands and shares his bed.  Dr Flint is furious about this and she goes to live with her grandmother because she is expecting child.  After a few years and another child, Dr Flint has become meaner and still has not given up on forcing some sort of control over Linda.  It is at this point Linda is sent to Dr Flint’s son’s plantation.  After working at the Plantation, Linda finds out that her children shall be sent to the plantation.  She then decides to run away to give her children a chance because she knew that they were being sent because of her.

            I never really had any romantic ideas about Slavery and the south.  There was no (as far as I’m concern) slave eventually falling in love with master after a little while.  It was about survival and trying not to get punished.  So reading this was not very surprising.  I also know that not all white people treated their slaves badly.  So there is an interesting observation that I made.  Now many people sympathize with Linda situation, including her grandmother and the Great Aunt of Mr. Flint (the son of Dr. Flint).  Now the Aunt and Grandmother seem to get along because the Aunt bought the grandmothers freedom.  So I wonder if the pervious generation has more respect for the slaves then the current generation.  It could be possible that the older generation appreciates the slaves more because of the struggle to get them or they remember life without them.  The current generation grew up with them so they became mainly spoiled and this lead to mistreatment.  I also have to question the attachment that Dr.Flint has towards Linda.  It’s obvious that he doesn’t care for her, but obsesses over her because he can’t have her.  Now normal this would lead to a person’s own destruction, but it doesn’t for him because he wants to keep up appearances for everyone else.  I was hoping that Linda would do thing extreme to him, but since she is a slave she can’t physically hurt him.

Whitman

Whitman would seem like the polar opposite of Emerson.  Emerson supported the individual while Whitman supported the group.  But actually Emerson supported Whitman because the poet was expressing his opinion and being an inspiration.  Whitman in the poem sees his soul as a part of everyone else’s soul, and that they come from the same soil.  That the parents of his parents are the same and that the schools are waiting for their original owner but never forgotten.  With houses full of scents and him smelling his own.

            Ok. So I have really no way to actually decipher this.  While I understand that he sees everyone connected, everything after that is lost on me.  I think by saying that “ My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air” he means that we are all American and that what connects us as a mass.  This line is also supported by 3^rd line”For Every atom that belonging to me as good belongs to you.  He is also trying to maintain the individual while in the mass.  I think the rest is his description of the United States or at least his home.

Emerson!

The Individual is important.  That sentence could sum up Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance, but he does go into detail.  What is inside us, our souls and thoughts is essential and should be expressed before another person expresses it.  Ignore the mass of voices that rally against you and follow yourself.  Emerson see youth as universally good, since it is unaffected by outside influences it can express its own opinion.  But as soon as a boy becomes a man he is trapped by consciousness and swayed by the masses.  Emerson calls for a movement back to youth so that we can be unbiased.  He wants people to live their lives for themselves, not others.  Attaching oneself to a community of opinion, Emersom believes, will make that man speak only half or quarter truths.  Another thing that holds us back is memory or the past.  Men are scared of contradicting ourselves or being misunderstood. But Emerson brings up the point that many great men such as Jesus and Plato were misunderstood.  In the end, Emerson believes that the actual truth and self-reliance is top priority.

I understand Emerson’s sentiments, about having a world where people spoke the truth without influence from other people or public sway.  A world like this would make things less complicated, which in turn might bring us closer to nature.  I like the employment of this thought in terms of culture and how something’s are not accepted because of public opinion or towards the government.  If government officials were able to truly operate outside of public opinion, that they could be fully effective in working for the public good, instead of worrying about its opinion.  While it’s hard to find the negative in “absolute truth”, it can have a down said.  With everyone expressing their own unique truth, the question arises, “Are they all equal or is one above the other?”  Also not all thoughts are Good, but then agains what’s good changes from person to person.  While Emerson’s….philosophy is good, it is more complex as it is apply in the real world

Major Molineux

Robin came looking for his kinsman, Major Molineux, in Massachusetts Bay.  But Robin failed to realize a bit of important information that might have helped his journey later on.  The Governors of Massachusetts Bay had all been driven out of power in some way.  Two of them were thrown in jail because of the populous. One was driven any by musket fire.  Another one, according to one historian, was argued to death by The House of Representatives.  The other two had the luck before the revolution to have peaceful terms.  Robin had just turned 18 and he was country-raised.  He wore a three pointed hat and well worn gear, except for his stocking, which were mad by his mom and sister. He had just gotten off the ferry and started to walk the streets until he realized that he did not know which way to go.  Robin’s wallet was light.  He processed down a street that became wider and had houses that seemed respectable to him.  One of the first people that he happened upon was a barber and a old man with a long dark coat and a shiny cane.  Robin stopped the man and asked loudly about the whereabouts of Major Molineux’ house.  The old man, surprisingly, in a angry tone, said that he did not know the man and because of his perceived disrespect Robin could be sent to the stocks in the morning.  Robin thought that this was just bad luck, but as the night wore on, anytime he asked about his kinsman he would get strange reactions.  He asked for his kinsman in a bar where he noticed a disfigured man talking in the corner.  After he asked ( and almost caught the ire of everyone in the bar)  the disfigured man sneered at him.  Soon after that and other incidents (Including a run in with a seductive housekeeper) robbing was told by the disfigured man that he would be able to meet his kinsman in front of a church.  The youth meet another man while waiting.  Robin explained to this man that the reason he wanted to meet Major Molineux is because he was rich and he was to help him gain a start in this world.  Then the men hear a ruckus coming down the street.  It was a parade of the town’s folk, followed by a cart, whiched contained his Kinsman, Tarred and Feathered.  After seeing this sight Robin wished to leave that night, but the man who stayed with him said no, not tonight that he should stay in town before deciding what to do.

            This story seemed like a ghost story at first and with out the information about the previous Governors being driven out of town, instead of killed; I would have kept thinking it was a ghost story until the end.  The protagonist, Robin, could be an audience stand in or a youth arriving in the big city.  Like the audience, he only knows little about the city.  The only things that I think keeps him from being a full audience surrogate is that the audience has advantage of knowing about the previous governors of the city.  I like how the city dwellers hint at the fact that the Major may not want to be found by the boy.  Everyone either acts hostile towards him or laugh him off.  At first the city seems inviting, with it’s nice streets and houses.  But the more he tries to find his kin, the more the city seems to turn darker.  Later on the streets are called strange and desolate.  After waiting in front of the church he (like any of us who has waited for someone outside) started to notice the townscape more.  It’s at this point that it seems the story is trying to give a respite from the strangeness in the story.  The streets near the church are described as Familiar with a beautiful strangeness and that they are beautiful under the moon.  This is before the crowd comes thorough and reveals the horrible truth to Robin.  It’s at this point, at the end of the story, that robin has a choice, and he can either stay in the city to try to find his own way from scratch or return home.

Romanticism

Romanticism was the reaction to the logical Age of Enlightenment.  With the industrial age coming, people started to react with their emotions, which was expressed with art, literate etc.  Its main focus was the search of aesthetic experience through feelings such as horror and awe.  Nature, which at the time was more intimidating then it was now, was also a source.  In the face of industrialism, people were trying to reach back to medievalism.  The heroes were usually emotional or loners.  Romanticism, even though it had similar themes, was different when it came to different countries.  In Russia, Romanticism is associated with writers such as Konstantin Batyushkov and Alexander Pushkin.  Such topics as metaphysical discontent or nature and love, was dealt with.  Romanticisms effect on America was basically a support of it’s revolution ideals.  It did not accept religious intellect or rationalism.  Because of it’s focus on the individual, it became oppose to Calvinism, which believe in predestination. It also led to bring New England Transcendentalism to the fore front at the time.  Transcendentalism had less restricts then other religions at the time.  Romanticism tried to bring down the barrio involving the arts between the rich and the poor. The artists and the writers wanted it to be experienced by everyone.  It also helped the movement of nationalism.  People started to look back at old folktales of their own countries.  Romanticism also helped countries that did not have national identities to find them.

            Romanticism, I believe, was a sort of escapism.  People might have tried of finding that the truth was not up to their expectations.  Also with the beginnings or industrialism and factories, with people working in less then safe conditions, not dealing with reality was a blessing.  With the revolution over and everyone in America being able to settle down, it’s understandable that everyone started to think about themselves.  I find the individualism aspect of Romanticism funny because I remember a quote in class that said that once man start thinking only about themselves, government would start to break down.  I wonder if the person who said that quote was still alive when Romanticism came around?  I also find the correlation between nationalism and Romanticism interesting.  Without expression of feelings nationalism wouldn’t be able to exist and Romanticism helps fuel it..  Also Romanticism works with nationalism because it is flexible.  The truth is (usually) not very flexible and The Age of Enlightenment lends itself towards realism.  Romanticism was one of the first step toward being introspective towards art, I believe, because it questions truth and perception.

The Federalists

The Federalists are for the formation of the government of the United States to be formed into three separate branches.  Theses branches are suppose to be able to operate separately from one another for the people.  It is intended for the branches to not have the ability ( or limit it) to influence of appointing of members to other branches.  But what is intended is not as what can be realistically pulled off.  So that why they admit to themselves that there might be small deviations from the principle.  They must make sure that said leaders of said branches can’t be influenced by the other leaders and their agendas.  But they do admit that not all branches might have equal defenses.  Even though the branches might be flawed, they try their best to protect the people too.

            In comparison to The Anti-Federalist papers, the federalist papers seem more professional.  They don’t use scare tactics to get their point across and they admit up front that their own plan has flaws.  The federalists at least try to come up with a soulution to their problem, instead of just stating them.  Like the anti-federalist, they seem to be concerned about the protection of liberty and freedoms.  They also seem largely concern that one branch might over power the other

Anti-Federalist

The Anti Federalist are against the constitution because they believe that the United States is too big for one republic.  They are scared that the formation of a supreme court will trample on the powers and free will of the smaller state courts.  They list in the constitution that the government will be given the power of taxiing to support itself, instead of letting the states indivually find ways to raise money to support the government.  They can ask permission from congress to emit money, but it has to be for the support of the United States.  The Anti-Federalist sees this power as possible good, but horrible if the republic goes bad.  The example of power corrupting people is used.  They believe that if I you give people power like the supreme court has, then they will seek more power afterwards until they control everything.  Infighting among representatives from states is also a concern for them.  The fighting might cause the public good to slip.

            As much as I would like not to agree with the Anti Federalist, (They seem to me to be trying to work off of peoples fears.)  They do bring up some good points.  One of these points that I support is that of the infighting between representatives.  Even though they represent states, the yare still people with their own personal view.  These views will most likely effect their judgment to various degrees, it can’t be helped.  Things like lobbyers and interest groups were the very thing that the anti-federalist were trying to avoid.  They didn’t want you person or group to have all the power and return to the times of the King in England.