F. Scott Fitzgerald

The story of “Babylon Revisited” gives me the same feeling I had while reading “The Hills Like While Elephants”.  In both stories, I find myself suspicious of the true intentions of the male character.  Both claim to be doing the right thing, but both have some strange underlying reservation for their own wishes.

I went into detail of my interpretation of Charlie in my second essay of the year.  I wrote about how the old Taylor (Swift) might be dead, but that the party animal that was Charlie is definitely not.  Although Charlie seems to have his life together for the first time in a long time (if not for the first time in his life), he is in danger of slipping into his old habits.  He is like one of the million people who make a resolution to go to the gym for their New Years Resolution and although they are in the gym for all of January and maybe February, they are found at the bakery every morning in March.

                    

Charlie explains “Of course, it’s within human possibilities I might go wrong at any time.  But if we wait much longer I’ll lose Honoria’s childhood and my chance for a home,”

He walked around and “he passed a lighted door from which issued music, and stopped with the sense of familiarity; it was Bricktop’s, where he had parted with so many hours and so much money.  A few doors farther on he found another ancient rendezvous and incautiously put his head inside. Immediately an eager orchestra burst into sound, a pair of professional dancers leaped to their feet and a maître d’hôtel swooped toward him crying, ‘Crowd just arriving sir!”  But he withdrew quickly,”

 

These are two of the most revealing quotes in this story.  The first is nothing but a guilt-trip that Charlie hands to his sister-in-law.  Luckily, she doesn’t take it and throws the dig at her away.  This made me like Marion’s character, she didn’t play games, she told the situation like it was.  No beating around the bush for her, she didn’t let Charlie sway her with these weak arguments.

The second quote shows just how much influence his past life still has on him.  Charlie, although he removes himself from the situation, still goes into the buildings where he used to party like a maniac.  He is too tempted to be able to completely take care of his daughter.  Sorry Charlie, but you just aren’t ready yet.

 

Ernest Hemingway

“The Hills Like White Elephants” has one of the most frustrating first reads of all time.  The writing lacks a clear distinction between who is talking when and all of the lines blur together, definitely not a good text to be reading at the last minute before class.  It takes at least three re-reads before moving on to the next paragraph with clarity about what is being said.

Anyways, about the actual story, it wasn’t my favorite.  The writing was nice, but the characters bothered me.  The guy was so subtly persuasive in the most annoying way that just made me want to scream at the girl to run away and make her own decision without his manipulative voice in her ear.  The guy somehow makes it so it sounds like he wants his girl to make her own decision, but he ends every claim of this with an assurance that having an abortion is no big deal.

“You don’t have to be afraid.  I’ve known lots of people that have done it”

“if you don’t want to you don’t have to.  I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to.  But I know it’s perfectly simple”

Although the man keeps insisting that he just wants her to feel okay, he also keeps dropping hints that he wants her to go through with the procedure.  He never says what he would do if she decided to keep the baby.  He just claims that he loves her and wants her to only do what she is comfortable with…at least as long as he convinces her that the abortion is the right choice.  I just wish the girl would be able to think for herself, whatever choice she wants to make for her.  We’ve heard his opinion and now she should make her own, even if it is the same decision, but I want to hear her think for herself.

Robert Frost poems

Mending Wall:

The neighbor in this story who insists on keeping the wall up at first glance seems like a rude person.  Why can’t they trust their neighbor, how hard can that really be?  But, if we really think about it, I see this person as someone who has been hurt in the past.  Maybe their previous neighbor knocked over one of his pine trees or damaged his property in some way.  That gives him validation in his argument and why he would be afraid to not have his property blocked off.  But also, we think of how the other neighbor must feel with this seemingly unnecessary barrier between them.  This neighbor must feel like his neighbor doesn’t like him or has some issue with him, even though that is not true.  It is simply this person has been hurt in the past and is afraid to trust again.  This made me think of a song that I wrote called “Afraid” (see link to lyric video).  I wrote it about feeling so heartbroken in the past that you automatically assume that this new person that you fancy is just another heartbreaker.  I wanted the lyrics to show how someone feels when they are afraid to take a chance with someone.  I wrote this about someone who hasn’t even interacted with the person they fancy but already assume that it has ended in heartbreak even though nothing has even happened yet.  This is like the neighbor who insists on the wall because of being hurt in the past.  And because of this attitude, his neighbor gets the wrong message.  Only time can heal a broken heart and understanding that everyone is fighting a battle you can’t see is important to think about.

John Dos Passos

Besides being a brutally honest piece of writing, “The Body of an American” tells the elaborate story of someone who has no name.  Actually, it is the story of every unnamed American who has died in battle.  The power of the writing comes from the mundane description of the life of one of these humans.  The stories are all the same from beginning to end yet they are the stories of so many that died.

This discussion of the unidentified soldier brings to mind Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece where they have the tomb of the unknown soldier (Μνημείο του Αγνώστου Στρατιώτη–> Mnimío tou Agnóstou Stratióti) that is guarded by the Greek National Guard 24/7, 365 days a year.  While it is one of the biggest tourist spots in Athens, it hits home for me because of my Greek Ancestry.

To me, these types of memorials hold even more significance than war memorials that have names listed on them.  The tomb of the unknown soldier represents those that lost their lives for their country and got nothing in return.  The John Does of the world deserve to be remembered even if we don’t know their names.

E. E. Cummings

I was slightly concerned that there was a problem with the printer that printed my textbook when I first looked at E. E. Cummings poems.  They all have this strange look to the text where it looks incomplete at first glance.  But with close reading I see how the breaks in the text influence the reading of it and the strength of the words on the page.  There was no poem that I liked over all of the rest, but here are some of my favorite lines from the various writings:

[Buffalo Bill’s]

“how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death”

It is always a powerful statement to have a speaker talk to death as if death were a character or a person.  Also, the contrast between a blue-eyed boy and death, sounding like such opposites, is chilling.  It sounds like a line from a scary movie that I will never see because I have the horror tolerance of a two-year-old.

[i like my body when it is with your]

“I like my body when it is with your

body.  It is so quite new a thing.”

“eyes big love-crumbs”

I like the first excerpt because the sharp and simple wording goes with what the words are saying.  The words sound nervous just like how I hear the speaker talking of their significant other.  The sentences are choppy and sound like they are a struggle to get out. The words sound like what they are saying.

The second excerpt I really only included in hear because I think it sounds adorable.  I know there is nothing academic or analytic about this, but I like it, sue me.

[my sweet old etcetera]

“war could and what

is more did tell you just

what everybody was fighting”

The words sound just like the chaos that war is and what war brings.

[I sing of Olaf glad and big]

“I sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war”

These lines make me want to become best friends with Olaf.  His warm heart makes him sound so friendly.  And the fact that his heart recoils at war makes it as though it is his instinct to remove himself from violence.  He was born with the aversion.

Booker T. Washington VS W.E.B Du Bois: On Slavery

First up is Booker T. Washington’s piece titled “Up from Slavery.”  This is an uplifting look at Washington’s experience living in post-slavery America.  He describes hardships, but focuses on how he overcame them to be a well-educated young man.  At face-value, it is a beautiful story filled with positivity and inspiration.  However, Washington seems to make this story unauthentic in how easy he makes it sound.  He is telling a story that is fresh out of the ending of slavery, and his only mentions of trouble are a few reports of racism that are not very detailed.  It is one thing to write about overcoming the odds, but when you make the odds too simple and too easy, it undercuts the story.

On the other hand, W.E.B Du Bois has a more realistic tough love take on slavery and what it did to African Americans even after emancipation.  He explains that there are two parts to the difficulties of African Americans in America.  The first is the fact that the color of their skin makes them a target for racism (the veil).  The second part is the identity crisis.  They are American but that is only because they were born here as a result of slavery.  There is a dark cloud that surrounds this identity because their lineage in America was from enslavement by white people.

“Souls Belated”

In my first reading of “Souls Belated” the ending was the most confusing thing ever.  Then I read it about ten more times and the meaning has only complicated itself.  The author’s resolution seems to be the opposite of what the reader would guess as the solution.  In this story, we have two opposing sides.  We have Lydia, a recent divorcee who doesn’t want to be tied down again in a marriage.  She wants to bask in the light of her new found freedom and take her time with her relationships.  Then we have Gannett, Lydia’s new man, who wants to marry her.  He is very persistent in telling Lydia that this is what they need to do.  He even suggests they go to Paris ASAP and get married tomorrow.  This, reasonably, freaks out Lydia and she begins to doubt their relationship.  She wonders if she has held him back in life and then decides that the only resolution is to set him free of her.  She gets up early before he does and puts on her traveling ensemble and with her suitcase packed, she heads out the door.  She gets on the boat that is about to leave and then jumps back off at the last second all while Gannett watches from the upstairs window.  When he sees her returning back to him, he starts looking up trains to Paris.

My guess as a reader reading this the first time was that Lydia was going to break things off with Gannett.  She makes it clear that she does not want to marry because society tells her to.  She wants to have the freedom to live her life the way she wants to.  But then she returns back to Gannett in the end.  Did she just crumble under the oppression of societal norms?  This was not the ending I expected.  I wonder if the author is just trying to highlight how powerful societal norms are.  How influential it is on a person to follow the crowd instead of swim against it.  Lydia attempts to rebel and gets a divorce, but then before she knows it she is locked back up into it.

My Antonia Books 1-3

I am writing this entry after I’ve finished the whole book but in coming back to the introduction of the book, I still find it insightful of the character of Jim.  He gives the narrator all of these writings about the girl, Antonia, whom he obviously loved and these are the writings that the narrator is basing the story off of.  More importantly, the title that Jim gives, after frowning at the simple title of “Antonia”, is “My Antonia”.  He gives himself authority over her in that title.  In the story, we know that they don’t have a fairytale ending where they get together in the end.  And throughout the novel she hardly shows interest in him.  Yet he still choses to call the story “My Antonia”.

This feeling that Jim shows of Antonia reminds me of this Taylor Swift lyric from her song called “Delicate”.  The lyrics read “Sometimes when I look into. your eyes, I pretend you’re mine, all the damn time”.  The song itself is about wondering if the person that you like would mind or care if you wrote a story (in this case a song) about them.  These lyrics ran through my mind when I first started reading this story and at first I thought it was going to be a sweet gesture.  We know already that they don’t end up together because the narrator refers to Jim rekindling a friendship with her.  But perhaps they had dated and things hadn’t worked out (SPOLER ALERT! like in the Nicholas Sparks novel “Dear John”) and this was his perspective of the story.  But the novel has close to no representation of Antonia ever actually “being Jim’s”.  But the fact that he still chose to call this story “My Antonia” shows just how much influence Antonia had over Jim.  I write about this all the time.  Whether it is in my journal or in a song, I am (usually) telling the story of my relations with a person from my perspective.  And it sometimes has no care about how that person related to me.  It is just the story from one point of view.  And this message can be really powerful because it displays the almost unbiased emotions of a person.  That is what I think is special about the character of Jim.  He is unapologetically writing out his story.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton