Plays and Poems

After reading Glaspell's Trifles, I must say that I believe reading plays and poetry are highly similar, disregarding plays that actually are poems. The author formats the lines in such a way that a special feeling comes across and uses punctuation to help speed the lines along or slow them down. In Trifles, I often encountered little dashes that caused me to take a break or read something in a hushed or nervous tone. One line reads, "And then she- laughed." Personally, I flew through the lines leading up to that one because no pause was elicited. Then I suddenly stopped because this line forces you to. There's a creepy feeling lingering in the poem and the laugh creates an almost maniacal feel to go with it. It almost catches you I guess. You're rushing through the lines and suddenly you stop because a character is laughing in what seems to be a serious situation. And then I realize the author did it on purpose. Like a poet, the playwright wants certain things to be noticed about his or her work, they want special feelings to be emitted. They want something to sound sorrowful or happy. They want pauses or rushing depending upon the scenario being portrayed. To use an example Gardner already called upon: "To be or not to be." Rushing through that line would lose the contemplative feel. It would change the overall feeling of the play. Thus, I believe, despite the visual nature of a play, reading plays and poetry are quite similar. I think it would be a fair statement to say that you could call upon your skills at reading poetry to help you with reading plays.

Cinderella is an Untrue Story

I think "True Stories" and "Cinderella" are very similar and interconnected. "True Stories," in my opinion, meant that the story you hear or read is not the true one. It is one that is manipulated to sound wonderful and to have a happy ending, but there is plenty untold. There are hardships that get you to that happy ending, if you even make it that far.
"Cinderella" is one of those untrue stories. She goes against her evil stepmother for a night and she meets prince charming. However, as Sexton writes, "Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after" (100-101). The true story is probably more along the lines of: they broke up a couple of months after getting married because Cinderella was nothing more than an object to the prince. If anyone has seen the musical Into the Woods, you'll understand what I'm talking about. No marriage is perfect and there's plenty that needs to be told about that of Cinderella's and her prince charming. As Sexton sarcastically remarks, they lived "like two dolls in a museum case" (102). If only.

For anyone curious as to the scene in Into the Woods I'm talking about, here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ5-9Ho3n_I  Be warned of some plot spoilers though (especially with the movie coming out in a couple of months).

Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk- Song

I immediately connected with Christina Rossetti's Song. I took it to mean that there are some things that should never be forgotten, but that shouldn't consume your thoughts. For instance in the first stanza she writes, "And if thou wilt, remember, / And if thou wilt, forget." The person may be dead but their life need not be dwelt upon. There are other things for people to do in their lives besides contemplating a death of a loved one, no matter how sad that death may be, so remember that person and keep them in your heart, but move on. Besides, to sound really pessimistic, they are already dead; no amount of mourning is ever going to bring that person back. That is in fact another reason why the dead person tells her dearest not to mourn; since she is dead, she will never receive that affection.
I believe this can be seen in the later lines as well: "Haply I may remember, / And haply may forget." Since she is dead and mourning is useless, the dearest should forget her and move on. However, they should remember enough to keep the memory of the person alive. In other words, the dearest should remember enough to not forget the dead, but forget enough to not continually mourn over her needlessly. In essence, I took this as a more in depth version of the saying "Don't cry over spilled milk." It's in the past and it can't be changed, so there's no use worrying about it.

Dover Beach and Life

Matthew's Arnold's Dover Beach was not an easy, convenient read; it took me a good number of tries to figure it out. It starts out with a beautiful description of the Strait of Dover, then turns into a what seems to be a struggle. It seems to change subjects almost instantly which doesn't make it any easier to comprehend. The small little biography of Arnold in the back of the anthology wasn't much help either. (It's only three sentences long. I actually counted). Thus, I started to tear it apart.
I started with the end, since that's where the struggle and frustration of the poem seemed to be, and worked my way forwards, piecing it together from there. I came up with a message that, after my analysis now seems rather blatant: life really isn't all that glorious. On lines thirty through thirty thirty three, Arnold writes, "For the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light." I interpreted this to mean what I wrote previously: the world may seem nice, but it's really not. I think that's why Arnold started out with a soothing description of the Strait of Dover. He makes it seem lovely and wonderful, prepared to tear it down in the following stanzas. Not to mention, his last lines: "And we are here as on darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night." I believe most of us are confused. We don't know why we're here or why life just has to be so frustratingly hard at times; it's definitely not beautiful as it may visually appear to be.
How did you all interpret the poem? Did you see it the same way or as something completely different?

Feminism Critique Critique

I had trouble reading the feminist criticism of "The Dead," the problem being that I don't fully understand feminism. I understand feminism in the sense that women and men are not equal in society, because they truly aren't, and that feminists strive to lessen that inequality, but the way feminists go about it have always dumbfounded me. Honestly, I feel like feminism is sometimes just a way for women (and sometimes men) to complain about petty things. Sometimes, they make something people probably wouldn't normally deem sexist, sexist. I believe they do it just to call attention to themselves sometimes. For instance, on page 179 of "The Dead" French criticism is defined by how feminists interpret language and they continue to say that language is male dominated. Honestly though, who cares? It was a language created a long time ago by a male dominated society. Why wouldn't they make higher valued words masculine? However, by blatantly coming out and saying that they're masculine nouns and thus a masculine language that should require female language counterpart, feminists are giving them more power. It's like surrounding a celebrity who just got busted for drugs with article after article and tons of publicity. With all the attention they're getting, they're just getting more power. Without the attention, they would just pass through the wind and no one would really think of anything of it because it wouldn't matter without they hype.
Enough about that though, before this post gets annoyingly long and turns into my complete critique of feminism. On page 196, Margot Norris talks about the scene where Gabriel turns Gretta into a painting and a symbol. If I understood the paragraph correctly, Norris says that men become so in love with their perfect version of a woman that they can't stand to be with a real one. From my previous paragraph critiquing feminism you may already be able to tell why this bothered me so much: he made a real life women into a painting in his head and didn't just pull a fictional woman from thin air. Gabriel thought Gretta was so interesting on the stairs that he decided to make her a painting in his head. In my opinion that's not male over female; that's flattering. If a man told me he thought I was pretty and interesting enough to make a picture out of, I would be ecstatic. That's a great compliment, but Norris takes it as more of an insult. Even with her explaining that she compared it to the Pygmalion myth, I still don't understand it. As said earlier, Gabriel turned Gretta, a real life woman, into a picture in his head because she thought he was beautiful and interesting, but the myth was an artist just forming a sculpture from his head with no regard to real women. These are complete opposites, the latter being more an insult to women while the former is really a compliment. Therefore, I don't understand the basis of the comparison. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm half asleep or because I've gotten myself so worked up over feminism in my previous paragraph, but I just can't wrap my head around such a comparison. It just doesn't make sense to me and makes it harder for me to understand the rest of Norris' paper because my mind just won't stop jumping back to that comparison. So what do you all think? Do you think the comparison makes sense? If you do, would care to explain it to me?

Defining the Genre

On page 140, Rabinowitz wrote, "... it is possible to define genre not only in the traditional way, as a group of texts that share textual features, but also as a group of texts that appear to invite similar interpretive strategies." When I first read this line I was baffled as I had never thought of genres in such a way before, but when I read it again (as I started to write this post actually) I realized it makes genres more complex and confuses them.
One of the key parts of defining the genre in the line above is "invite similar interpretive strategies." I think, in order to fulfill that definition, the reader would first have to set standards and define similar. Two interpretations may have the exact same view of the characters, but a different interpretation of the entire plot. There needs to be some measure of how similar two interpretations need to be. Therefore, whoever is comparing the two interpretations has to have some sort of system for the interpreters. The interpreters need to have some sort of interpretation of all the characters, or just the main characters, or one particular motif, or the overlaying plot. However, that also messes with the interpretation because the interpreters are being forced to write about certain things and not necessarily just what their interpretation encompasses. Nonetheless, in order for similar to be defined there needs to be some sort of measuring system. (There can't be one interpretation that talks solely about the characters and, in the case of "The Dead," the snow motif while another talks about the plot and specifically the stair scene with Gabriel and Gretta. That would make it near impossible to determine if they're similar even if they touch upon other topics in their specific interpretation).
Even if interpretations are so carefully written that they can be compared properly to define similar, as said before, that still limits the interpretation because the interpreter is being told what to write. If he or she is told to discuss the snow motif, but wants to discuss the stair scene with Gabriel and Gretta then their interpretation is bound to be skewed. The snow motif could have gone right over their heads (as it did mine) or the interpreter could just have a very frustrated interpretation of the motif because they're writing about something they don't want to be writing about. Thus the interpretation becomes a bit void. (It would be like asking a high school student what they thought of a specific passage when they're going to write exactly what the teacher wants to hear so they can get the grade).
The person determining if two interpretations are similar or not could possibly wait until two interpretations discuss the exact same thing or piece meal interpretations together so he or she could compare those equally, but what about the rest of what the interpreter was saying? Does that get cast aside and considered useless? Even if the scraps of the interpretation are kept, part of the interpretation is reading it as a whole. The interpreter wrote about what he or she did because it really stood out to them, perhaps more so then the piece stolen by the mysterious comparing person. Taking bits and pieces that interest the one comparing, the ones that fit his or her needs, would take away from the rest of the interpretation and not necessarily reflect what the interpreter was really feeling or getting at.
All in all, I think defining genres in how they're interpreted doesn't quite work out the way Rabinowitz had hoped. Although it is a cool concept and a new way of looking at genre, it has too many loose ends that will only restrict the interpreter if tied. Personally, I think the genre should be left at "groups of texts that share textual features."
By the way, as a note to my readers, I am most certainly sure that I over thought that.

The Novella of "The Dead"

I'm going to ever so briefly mention that I loved the Pride and Prejudice reference on page thirty three. I am quite a big fan of that book and couldn't help but grin like an idiot as I read over the reference to Mr. Darcy.
On to "The Dead" itself though. I loved how, even a little over a hundred years later, I felt like I was part of this 1900's Dublin world. The historical context is everywhere and reveals exactly what the society is like. It stresses gender roles, the importance of religion, the impending threat of England, and just how much pride the Irish have. "The Dead" even uses specific references to people, important happenings (like the Pope banning women from choirs), and specific locations in Dublin. It pulls you in and doesn't miss a beat, making sure that even readers of future generations would understand his context.
I also loved how it made me sympathize with Gabriel. One differing opinion about the English threat and everyone seemed to treat him poorly, like he was suddenly of a lower standard. On page thirty three Miss Ivors calls him a "West Briton," one who isn't as nationalist as everyone else, and Gabriel freaks out as if being called a "West Briton" was the worst fate imaginable. Seeing Gabriel as a reflection of Joyce makes this term pretty accurate and all the more scary. As stated in the introduction, Joyce was clearly in favor of the English taking over Ireland. If he had straight out told people about his differing opinion, people would have reacted poorly. Gabriel was called a "West Briton" just on the assumption of being in favor of an English takeover because he wrote reviews for a conservative newspaper. Joyce would have probably been ripped to shreds. The same can be seen today. Abraham Lincoln was shot because he tried emancipating the slaves. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot trying to lessen the gap of inequality between whites and blacks. This just made me feel bad for Gabriel, like he had to keep everything inside because there was no other choice. If he didn't he would have been killed.
So what do you guys think? Do you think Joyce did a good job placing you into the world of 1900's Dublin? Did you take pity on Gabriel's character?

Reading the Book Through Once

I'm just going to come out and say it: most of what Gardner talked about in the second chapter of Reading and Writing about Literature I already knew. Annotating text and asking critical questions has been drilled into my head, particularly from my AP Language class my junior year of high school. If I didn't get into the hang of it, I probably would have failed every test my teacher had ever given me (his tests were absolutely ridiculous). But, that being said, I personally think Gardner missed a key step when it comes to annotating and critical reading: you should read the whole work through once before commenting and asking questions.
Reading a work for the first time and scribbling away in the margins and asking critical questions can take away from the book and make it lose its magic. You become so busy with thinking that you lose sense of enjoying. Sometimes the annotations can actually be what makes you love a book because it gives the book a new sense of meaning, but I still think you should read through it once. Often times it's good to just read through the book once to get a feel for the story and really understand what's happening. You learn all the details of the character's life and you're fully encompassed in the plot. Often times something you may comment upon in the text is something that'll be cleared up by just reading a little further. One time I sent my friend a short story I had written to get her opinion on it and the first thing she said to me was that there was no sense of time. It bothered her to no end and she complained that, as a writer, I should know better, but I told her to keep going and she did. When she finally got to the end she understood why. I had set up the story so the character was in a dream. Screwing up the sense of time was my way of hinting at that. If she had calmed down and read the whole thing through she would have seen that. I think that's what a lot of people who annotate a book the first time through do. They would notice the change in time and comment on it, wondering why I did that and what significance it could hold. They would continue to ponder and maybe even eventually figure out that the story itself was a dream. To me, that takes away from the magic of the story. It's as if the reader is purposefully ruining the plot for themselves. (Have you guys ever watched a TV show where you're so into it that you come up with some crazy theory for the ending? If you're right, you kind of shrug your shoulders like you knew it was going to happen; it's nothing special. But, if you're wrong, then you feel disappointed because the ending you created wasn't used. It's kind of like that to me). Even if the reader doesn't come up with their own ending, but does comment upon the lost sense of time, it seems like a waste to me. What's the point of commenting upon something that you'll soon find out in a couple of pages? Just enjoy the book and the magic behind it and then, after finishing it and getting to know the full story, comment upon the things that interested you and you want to know more about because then you know you're not wasting your time on something that's already answered in the book itself. Gardner even hinted at this herself on page seven: "Rather, if a text is not immediately accessible to you, it is because you need to read more actively...." Not all text requires multiple readings to gather a meaning, so trying to actively find one on your first go around seems rather wasteful.
What do you guys think? Do you think you should read a book through once before annotations to get a feel for it or do you think annotating it the first time through helps you understand better, even if what you're annotating is nearby in the text?

EDIT: I'm sorry this post sounded more like a ramble instead of a response. I was really passionate about this one and just let myself go.

The Difficulty of Communication

As I read more of Gleick and The Information, I stumbled upon the quote: "Not withstanding the incessant chatter about communication that we hear daily, it has not improved; actually it has become more difficult" (399). Personally, I've always agreed with this statement. We live in a world where we can't even have a conversation with someone without having a phone out, at the ready. But then I really began to think about the quote. It doesn't just pertain to talking; it pertains to everything.
As said in the previous chapter, a simple term like "Babel," leads to a lot of results on Wikipedia alone. Looking up "Babel" on Google leads to almost eleven million results. Granted some of them are repeats, but that's still a lot. In fact, it's too much. Someone online could have the best story ever written entitled Babel, but it's so underfunded that it could be one of the last  hits on Google. Thus, the Internet will have limited the author's communication. This blog is another good example. I have followers because I have to have followers (thank you to those that are reading), but chances are no one else will ever find this blog. Ever. There are too many blog websites and too many people on each one. My ideas will never be communicated outside of this class. That's the general problem. Everyone can be heard, but no one can be heard. So many people are talking at once that it's only those with the loudest voice that can be heard.
The problem with communication nowadays, what makes it so difficult, is the fact that there's so much we need to sort through to find that one thing we're actually looking for. Sometimes it's just a quick Google search, but other times can be hours worth of research. The vast pool of information is what leads professors to say things like, "Your articles need to be credible." There's just so much nonsense out there that really shouldn't be there, that blocks the way to the useful information and clogs up our line of communication.

Repetition is an Information Key

I must admit that James Gleick's The Information is not the most exciting book in the world. As I get further and further into it, I find my mind wandering off more and more, causing me to have to reread the same passage over and over again. It doesn't help that the book isn't an easy read. There are some confusing passages that need to be worked out by reading them multiple times; it just doesn't come across as smoothly as Manguel's A History of Reading. That being said, through my multiple readings, I stumbled upon a rather interesting bit that I most likely would have passed up normally.
On page twenty five when discussing the African drums, Gleick says the language is redundant since many beats mean the same thing. In order to say something simple, the drummers have to add clarification after clarification to make sure the meaning is clear; the moon becomes "the moon looks down at the earth." But I think this stresses the importance of repetition in any form of communication; the more redundant something is, the easier it is for us to understand. As Gleick says, "It provides second chances." The best example I can think of is a romantic song. The singer spends three minutes or so telling his or her lover he loves them in every way possible, describing everything imaginable. It's so much more complicated than just saying, "I love you," but after those three minutes, the singer knows with absolute certainty that his or her lover knows he loves them. I guess it just never dawned on me how important repetition was in transmitting information and I'm interested to listen to myself speak and see what I write to see how much of that repetition slips in to my everyday life.

Reading Isn't So Simple

Manguel discussed reading in a way I had never thought of before: it's complicated. Our eyes take the words in through a series of connections in our brain. It's not as simple as our eyes see the words and our brain automatically understands. Manguel describes this system: "... I first apprehend the system in an apparently erratic manner, through fickle eyes, and then reconstruct the code of signs through a connecting chain of processing neurons in my brain- a chain that varies according to the nature of the text I'm reading- and imbue that text with something- emotion, physical sentience, intuition, knowledge, soul- that depends on who I am and how I became who I am" (38). It's pretty crazy that our brains put that much effort into something that we take for granted, that we do in our everyday life without even batting an eye.
Going even further, Manguel starts to talk about how silent reading started. Personally, I had never thought about it. I just assumed people always read silently unless they were rehearsing a play or doing some other public event where reading aloud was required. The fact that everyone read aloud is mind blowing and chaotic. Could you imagine if everyone in Manhattan started reading aloud? There would be no end to the noise between the advertisements on billboards, ads on buses, writing on a guy's t-shirt, newspapers, magazines, a Facebook post on a computer or phone. But people back then thought reading in silence was insane: "According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great read a letter from his mother in silence in the fourth century BC, to the bewilderment of his soldiers" (43). It's hard to believe that those people were missing out on the power of their own interpretation of literature for so long, being forced to listen to other's translations. It's almost manipulative, but interesting. We've come so far in such little time with the way we read and even write. Between how our brains decipher words on a page and how reading has evolved, I'm starting to think it's more of an art form than the hobby it's often referred to as today.

The Need to Read

I always thought reading was a dying past time; people just don't pick up a book, sit down and read. I'm a victim of the same crime. It's been years since I've read a book outside of academics. Between work and school, it's hard to find time and when I do, I'd rather spend it doing something else. But Gardener in Reading and Writing about Literature suggested that we read lots more than we are inclined to think. There's the bumper sticker on the car in front of me or the subtitles scrolling across whatever foreign show I'm currently watching. On average I read plenty more than I think I do, which is interesting. Our society isn't as keen on books as it once was, but we're far from being illiterate. Because of all the reading we do from advertisements, magazines, or bumper stickers, we may read even more so than we did in the past. Our whole society functions on our ability to do so. It shows just how important the ability to read in our current society is. Without it, we would be lost. Something as simple as reading the directions for putting a bookcase together wouldn't even be possible. This is what Manguel hints at in A History of Reading. Reading is key to the function of our society and I never realized it before. I always took it for granted as every other aspect of daily life.
Gardener does differentiate between what we read everyday and literature however. Even though as a society we probably read more than we did fifty or sixty years ago, we don't read literature. Our time spent reading is limited to trivial things such as advertisements or a junk piece of mail; we just don't read literature anymore and it stresses its importance. In a society where literature is being cast aside, literature is becoming all the more important. The ability to analyze it and gain its full meaning is essential and literature has so much to offer from an interesting new take on a common idea to an imaginative journey in a dangerous, far away land. The literature becomes a part of you and who you are and it feels like Gardner is encouraging me to pick up a novel and get into the habit of reading once again.