Lovely Literature

Creepy. Creepy. Creepy.

First of all, I wonder where authors get ideas like these to write stories about old women who sleep with corpses. Nonetheless...that freaks me out. Second of all, I do not enjoy stories or movies that contain my name. Especially two-thirds of my name, such as this one and the Exorcism of Emily Rose. Thanks a lot William Faulkner.

Miss Emily is a very peculiar character. She goes in and out of society basically doing whatever she wants. Her father must be of some importance in the town because she is not required to pay taxes because of him. She will go for months shut up in her house with just the servant Tobe, and then all the sudden she decides to give china painting lessons. Miss Emily seems to have some sort of mental handicap that leads her into seclusion away from common societial practices.

Then comes Homer Barron who "wasn't a marrying man because he liked to drink with boys." I didn't actually catch that for a while, but I found it to be incredibly interesting. Miss Emily fell in love with him in some crazy way of hers and kept him in seclusion in her house. When she went to the druggist, she acquired arsenic. This and the fact that there was a rotten smell from her house for weeks leads the reader to believe she poisoned Homer and she has a thing for dead people [she kept her father in her house after he passed for quite a while too]. My guess is that Homer told Emily he would not marry her, so in her derranged way, she killed him so that he would be with her forever, in the physical sense at least. All I hope is that she literally only slept with him and not much more...

This story, while longer than the others, definitely caught my attention possibly the most. The storyline was very interesting because it speaks of how at least two of the characters are unhappy with their lives but not unhappy enough to change them. Yet again, the theme of settling persists.

"Interpreter of Maladies" speaks of the commonness of the broken family throughout cultures. This seems to be a part of the central conflict in which Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das are upset with their lives and they both live through a short fantasy until they snap back into reality. It seems to be fate playing games with the two, bringing them together to meet and realize that they are not exactly happy with their lives. Mrs. Das, 28, has been married for years with the exact same husband as she dated in highschool and college. She had children at a very young age, one not even by her husband, and she never had the chance to travel or even live her life. The same thing happened for Mr. Das, but since he is a more minor character, we are unaware of how he exactly feels about his relationship and his family outside of the fact that he is aloof and unaware of what is going on.

Mr. Kapasi on the other hand is very happy with learning new langauges. He is not as happy with his job though because he does not feel it has the meaning that he wants to have in his life. He has also been with his wife for quite some time and he is not happy with his marriage. When Mrs. Das comes along, he sees how unhappy he actually is, and she gives more meaning to his job than what he believes. She gives him a sort of false hope though because she leads him on until she sees that her son is in harm and then snaps back into reality. The significance of Mr. Kapasi's address flying away is that she never really had the intention of carrying anything on with him even though they both had the fleeting thought of "What if my life was different..."

Along with the other two stories in this unit, I believe this short story has a lot to do with settling. The main theme seems to go along the lines of a person settling for something they eventually love whether or not it is the best thing for them. The plot of the story is about a worker girl at a "farm" who is there to help the family along and be a nanny to the two children. The irony about the farm is that the meaning has changed from a working place to a place that is there merely for the name. The family does not own animals or grow crops in any way, so the farm is not a working farm. Mr. and Mrs. Peebles do not even cook food well enough to Edie's disappointment because they are very concerned with being thin. This marks the cultural shift in which Americans began to look for the glamourous, easy route in life rather than the hard working way. Edie, on the other hand, is from a true working farm family who does not know riches like the people she is working for.

The minor characters, such as Mrs. Peebles and Loretta Bird, help to advance the story along by adding tone and personality to the story. Mrs. Peebles shows how fickle society was becoming during this time period because when she found out that Edie had kissed Chris Watters, she was very cold toward her and would not speak of the "mistake." She seems to not be a very caring woman because she does not show much compassion toward her children as most mothers should, and she treats Edie less than she should be treated after a simple misjudgement. Loretta Bird is a comic relief character who comes off to be the town gossip. She seems to want everyone to wallow in her "pain and suffering" that she goes through with her seven children even though she is not even close to hardworking like Edie knows.

The repetition of the names in Edward and the beginning of consecutive lines give the poem a more of a story-like feel to it. Edward seems to be selfish because he speaks of how he has "killed" a hawk and a red-roan steed when he really killed his father. The selfish part comes in when he says he will leave his home and run away. The mother knows that he killed his father and she knew it was going to happen because she asks so many questions as if they were getting their story straight. I am not sure when this poem was written, but I am under the impression that Edward is of high authority, a prince maybe, and he is leaving his kingdom and his people behind. He is also very selfish because he says he will leave his wife and children to beg and starve. At the same time, the poem is very ambiguous because the only time the speaker comes out and actually says what Edward did was when he says he killed his father. There is no reasoning as to why he killed his father or even why he was lying before he said he killed his father. I know that the mother was in on the situation, but I don't understand why he leaves his mother the "curse of hell" then besides the fact that since she knew about it she is cursed. Edward seems like a spoiled brat rich prince who grew up to hate his father and try to overthrow him.

I knew this poem was familiar to me for a reason. Apparently it's the go-to poem for an a example of a villanelle.
This poem sounds as if the speaker is advocating fighting death by "not going gentle into that good night," with the night representing death. There is a lot of diction in this poem that represents rebelling or "raging" against death. Do not let death win--do not let death get the best of you! What an odd concept. I wonder if the speaker realizes that it is impossible for us to stop the process of death.
Then again, it is possible for us to live our lives to the fullest. I see this poem as saying seize the day because it will not always be here for us to seize. There is a lot of regret in this poem by people who did not live their lives to the fullest.
"Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
The "rage, rage.." lines are symbolic for not allowing the darkness to envelop us before we are ready. We cannot control when we die, but we can control what happens to us in the light before we do go into the eternal darkness. Carpe Diem.

This poem is rather intriguing to me. Why would someone write an elegy for someone who is not actually dead...? Unless that death would be metaphorical in that the person has shut them out of their life, but the speaker has not shut out his father in his life. His father seems to have the mentality that he is ready to go when he is ready to go, but the speaker is not ready to think about death. Even though he is not ready to go, the speaker is speaking about his father as if he is dead...kind of seems like a juxtaposition to me there.

"I think he wants to go,
a little bit-- an new desire
to travel building up, an itch"

Death is not presented in a bad way in this poem. Instead, it is the end of an old journey and the beginning of a new journey. The speaker is not ready to end the current journey he is on and he wants to experience more while his father is over his current journey and is ready to move on to another place. The speaker feels as if his father is so ready for this new journey that it is almost like he is dead. He is not living to live anymore but living to die. Then again...aren't we all living to die?

If you're interested for your musical entertainment, these songs Classifieds by The Academy Is... and Single White Female by Chely Wright immediately came to my mind while I was reading this poem.

This poem doesn't really seem to have much depth. It obviously comes from the personals and/or dating ads in the newspaper. Personally, I think the personals section always sounds somewhat desperate. I guess I just don't understand why people advertise to try and find someone to date...? Maybe since I've never been presented with the situation. Which I'm hoping it never has to come down to that...

The first line of the poem is repeated in the second, fourth, and final stanza at the end "Can someone make my simple wish come true?" and the final line of the first stanza "Do you live in North London? Is it you?" is repeated at the end of the third, fifth, and final stanzas, suggesting that the settting is in North London. The villanelle is appropriate for this subject because the set up is similar to what the classified/personal ads seem to look like. I don't understand the whole gay vegetarian and bisexual woman bit though. Maybe I am having an analysis road block...but I don't see much in this poem.