Aman Brah Rough Draft
Period 4
The poems “Conjoined” by Judith Minty and “A Valediction” by John Donne both discuss the nature of relationships. Both authors have opposing views and use figurative language to prove this. Judith Minty uses symbolism and similes to show how awkward and unnatural marriage is, and John Donne also uses similes and metaphors to show that love is a pure unbreakable bond and unfathomable to the “laity.”
Both authors use similes to show their respective views about relationships. In “A Valediction” John Donne speaks about two lovers and says “Our two souls therefore, which are one, though I must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion like gold to airy thinness beat.” When gold is stretched out, it does not break but just becomes thinner and thinner. Donne is saying that the love between those two is similar to gold. Even if they are separated the love will still be there and will not weaken or break. This is because their two souls are one and the love between them is not contingent upon position or distance. John Donne also uses similes to express his view of relationships when he says “If they be two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two.” Donne compares these two lovers to compasses because a compass always points north. Two compasses will be synchronized and both will point north. This might mean that both lovers are on the same page on an emotional level and psychological level making it all the more inconceivable to the “laity.”
On the other hand Judith Minty has an opposite view of marriage in her poem “Conjoined”. She says marriage is “An accident, like the two-headed calf-rooted in one body, fighting to suck at its mother’s teats.” Comparing marriage to a two-headed calf is saying a lot. Minty believes that marriage is an accident, something that shouldn’t have happened and in this case is very unnatural. Not only does she compare marriage to a two-headed calf but the calf is fighting. This shows that she believes that not only is marriage unnatural but the only things the two people do is fight with each other, however the two heads can’t get divorced like a married couple. Minty uses a simile once more when she says marriage is “like those other freaks, Chang and Eng, twins joined at the chest by skin and muscle, doomed to live, even make love, together for sixty years.” Here marriage is said to be a freak, a union of two people that are doomed to live. Her pessimism is obvious when she says that they are doomed to live even make love. She must strongly feel that marriage is not good for anyone and those who do get married will be doomed.
Other forms of figurative language are furthermore used to convey opinions about relationships. Metaphors are used by John Donne in his poem “A Valediction.” This can be seen when he says “So let us melt, and make no noise, no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move, twere profanation of our joys to tell the laity of our love.” Literally the two lovers aren’t going to melt but figuratively yes. Just as perhaps ice goes to water they too will melt into one fluid liquid that will essentially become all that is left of their love. Donne feels that the love of these two lovers is so pure that it’s not even worth mentioning to the laity, and that they would not even be able to comprehend what it means to be in such a love as theirs.
Judith Minty successfully uses symbolism to get her point across. For example she says “The onion in my cupboard, a monster; actually two joined under one transparent skin: each half-round, then flat and deformed where it pressed and grew against the other.” She cleverly symbolizes marriage as an onion and says that it is a monster. So according to her marriage is like a monster in which two perfectly normal “onions” grow deformed against each other in one skin. I think that this translates to two normal people becoming an odd couple that only detract from each other under the institution of marriage. Seeing an onion like the one she described would be unnatural just like the way she feels about marriage. She elaborates on the onion symbol by saying “Ah, but men don’t slice inions in the kitchen, seldom see what is invisible.” This might men don’t cry because when someone slices onions they tend to cry. Perhaps she is trying to say that men are less emotionally invested than women are in relationships.
Both authors have different views about the nature of relationships and use figurative language to prove this. Minty feels that love is unnatural and cause pain while Donne feels that some kinds of love is spiritual and inconceivable to the average person.
FINAL DRAFT
The poems “Conjoined” by Judith Minty and “A Valediction” by John Donne both discuss the nature of relationships. Both authors have opposing views and use figurative language to prove this. Judith Minty uses symbolism and similes to show how awkward and unnatural marriage is, and John Donne also uses similes and metaphors to show that love is a pure unbreakable bond and unfathomable to the “laity.”
Both authors use similes to show their respective views about relationships. In “A Valediction” John Donne speaks about two lovers and says “Our two souls therefore, which are one, though I must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion like gold to airy thinness beat.” When gold is stretched out, it does not break but just becomes thinner and thinner. Donne is saying that the love between those two is similar to gold. Even if they are separated the love will still be there and will not weaken or break. This is because their two souls are one and the love between them is not contingent upon position or distance. John Donne also uses similes to express his view of relationships when he says “If they be two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two.” Donne compares these two lovers to compasses because in this case the two compasses support each other. The fact that a compass is being used is also interesting because compasses are used to draw circles. Circles are archetypal objects that signify eternal love, complete love, and perhaps even the harmony between the two lovers. This might mean that both lovers are on the same page on an emotional level and psychological level making it all the more inconceivable to the “laity.”
On the other hand Judith Minty has an opposite view of marriage in her poem “Conjoined”. She says marriage is “An accident, like the two-headed calf-rooted in one body, fighting to suck at its mother’s teats.” Comparing marriage to a two-headed calf is saying a lot. Minty believes that marriage is an accident, something that shouldn’t have happened and in this case is very unnatural. Not only does she compare marriage to a two-headed calf but the calf is fighting. This shows that she believes that not only is marriage unnatural but the only things the two people do is fight with each other, however the two heads can’t get divorced like a married couple. Minty uses a simile once more when she says marriage is “like those other freaks, Chang and Eng, twins joined at the chest by skin and muscle, doomed to live, even make love, together for sixty years.” Here marriage is said to be a freak, a union of two people that are doomed to live. Her pessimism is obvious when she says that they are doomed to live even make love. She must strongly feel that marriage is not good for anyone and those who do get married will be doomed.
Other forms of figurative language are furthermore used to convey opinions about relationships. Metaphors are used by John Donne in his poem “A Valediction.” This can be seen when he says “So let us melt, and make no noise, no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move, twere profanation of our joys to tell the laity of our love.” Literally the two lovers aren’t going to melt but figuratively yes. Just as perhaps ice goes to water they too will melt into one fluid liquid that will essentially become all that is left of their love. Donne feels that the love of these two lovers is so pure that it’s not even worth mentioning to the laity, and that they would not even be able to comprehend what it means to be in such a love as theirs.
Judith Minty successfully uses symbolism to get her point across. For example she says “The onion in my cupboard, a monster; actually two joined under one transparent skin: each half-round, then flat and deformed where it pressed and grew against the other.” She cleverly symbolizes marriage as an onion and says that it is a monster. So according to her marriage is like a monster in which two perfectly normal “onions” grow deformed against each other in one skin. I think that this translates to two normal people becoming an odd couple that only detract from each other under the institution of marriage. Seeing an onion like the one she described would be unnatural just like the way she feels about marriage. She elaborates on the onion symbol by saying “Ah, but men don’t slice inions in the kitchen, seldom see what is invisible.” This might men don’t cry because when someone slices onions they tend to cry. Perhaps she is trying to say that men are less emotionally invested than women are in relationships.
Both authors have different views about the nature of relationships and use figurative language to prove this. Minty feels that love is unnatural and cause pain while Donne feels that some kinds of love is spiritual and inconceivable to the average person.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Thoughts About Neilson's Essay
I think that Jim Neilson’s essay about The Things They Carried was predominantly aimed at explaining how and why Tim O’ Brien wrote the book the way he did. Neilson quotes from Peter S. Prescott in Newsweek saying "Straightforward wars are built like novels. . . . Messy wars, like the one we fought in Vietnam, lend themselves more readily to fragmented narratives." Perhaps this is why O’ Brien decided to write the story as he does. He could not have gone through and written about his experiences from start to finish, point A to point B because there is too much to write about. Not everything is in order in the novel and just like the war itself, nothing seems to be in order either. Chaos and disorder prevails.
Neilson later goes on to say that “it is within this framework—the belief that the war escapes understanding and representation and even makes us liars—that O'Brien attempts to tell a true war story.” I think this is definitely the best insight that I got from Neilson’s essay because it really helped me understand where O’ Brien was coming from when he wrote the stories he did and acknowledged that true war stories don’t have to be fact to still be true.
Neilson does a good job of criticizing O’ Brien and this can especially be seen when he says “the board of directors of Dow Chemical are more blameworthy than people who switched channels at the mention of politics. O'Brien cannot make such seemingly obvious distinctions because, according to the logic of postmodernism, to do so is to endorse a naive and dangerous positivism. And so he is left with an assortment of equally plausible (and equally false) explanations.” I find this to be especially true. O’ Brien could have done a better job of taking stances on some issues that he presents. But instead he writes with great ambiguity; perhaps because the war itself and the other contentious issues of the time were ambiguous. I understand why he does it, but I would have liked to see more firm stances (I’m even ambiguous about his ambiguity). Amazing what postmodernism does, or does not do. But that’s about all for now.
Neilson later goes on to say that “it is within this framework—the belief that the war escapes understanding and representation and even makes us liars—that O'Brien attempts to tell a true war story.” I think this is definitely the best insight that I got from Neilson’s essay because it really helped me understand where O’ Brien was coming from when he wrote the stories he did and acknowledged that true war stories don’t have to be fact to still be true.
Neilson does a good job of criticizing O’ Brien and this can especially be seen when he says “the board of directors of Dow Chemical are more blameworthy than people who switched channels at the mention of politics. O'Brien cannot make such seemingly obvious distinctions because, according to the logic of postmodernism, to do so is to endorse a naive and dangerous positivism. And so he is left with an assortment of equally plausible (and equally false) explanations.” I find this to be especially true. O’ Brien could have done a better job of taking stances on some issues that he presents. But instead he writes with great ambiguity; perhaps because the war itself and the other contentious issues of the time were ambiguous. I understand why he does it, but I would have liked to see more firm stances (I’m even ambiguous about his ambiguity). Amazing what postmodernism does, or does not do. But that’s about all for now.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Things They Carried Blog
The Things They Carried is a very interesting book to say the least. So far it has been mostly a compilation of short stories that give us tremendous insight into the mind of Tim O’Brien. He tells us a story that he has never told anyone before, his true feelings about the war, his time in the war and much more. However, through this great range of stories there seems to be a couple predominant themes, the most prevalent being silence.
Silence comes up on more than one occasion throughout the stories. It plays a big part in the story ‘On The Rainy River.’ In this story O’Brien tells us how he stayed at man’s lodge named Elroy Berdahl. He tells us that his time there literally saved his life and that “What I remember more than anything is the man’s willful, almost ferocious silence. In all that time together, all those hours, he never asked the obvious questions: Why was I there? Why alone? Why so preoccupied? If Elroy was curious about any of this, he was careful never to put it into words” (O’ Brien 49). O’ Brien knows that Elroy knows that something is not right with him. That something is bothering him and is acting as a burden upon his shoulders. I think that is why Elroy decided to remain silent. Because he knows that O’ Brien is in a stressful situation right now and has some important decisions to make. So instead of pestering him with questions he probably already knows the answers to, he lets O’ Brien sort these issues out in his brain. This silence, more than anything, helped O’ Brien make the decisions he had to and is what inevitably saved his life.
In ‘How To Tell A True War Story’ silence is talked about again. One of the guys tells O’ Brien about a true story he heard once. It was about 6 guys going on a Listening Patrol in the mountains. They had to lie there in silence for a whole week, not saying a single word the whole time. After a while they started hearing noises, like orchestras, operas, and cocktail parties. So they report enemy movement and warrant an air strike. After the place was torched they started back again towards their camps and “‘Around dawn things finally got quit. Like you never heard quiet before. One of those real thick, real misty days—just clouds and fog, they’re off in this special zone—and the mountains are absolutely dead-flat silent. Like Brigadoon—pure vapor, you know? Everything’s all sucked up inside the fog. Not a single sound, except they still hear it’” (O’ Brien 75). Even after all that destruction of the would be noise and assurance that the noises are gone, they still hear it. The reader starts to wonder then if the noise was really even there. What was it that made those men go mad, was it the silence? Possibly. Later O’ Brien asks the man telling the story “’ what’s the moral?” “Forget it.” “No, go ahead.” For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day. “Hear that quiet, man?” he said. “That quiet—just listen. There’s your moral.”” (O’ Brien 77). So I guess there was no moral to that story, it was just a story for story’s sake.
There was also a theme of silence in the story where Rat Kiley tortures the baby buffalo. The buffalo was silent the whole time and did not make a peep once.
So silence plays more than one role throughout these stories and so far it is the most recurring theme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N8_u1FLu30&feature=channel
Not really related to the novel just thought it was funny.
Silence comes up on more than one occasion throughout the stories. It plays a big part in the story ‘On The Rainy River.’ In this story O’Brien tells us how he stayed at man’s lodge named Elroy Berdahl. He tells us that his time there literally saved his life and that “What I remember more than anything is the man’s willful, almost ferocious silence. In all that time together, all those hours, he never asked the obvious questions: Why was I there? Why alone? Why so preoccupied? If Elroy was curious about any of this, he was careful never to put it into words” (O’ Brien 49). O’ Brien knows that Elroy knows that something is not right with him. That something is bothering him and is acting as a burden upon his shoulders. I think that is why Elroy decided to remain silent. Because he knows that O’ Brien is in a stressful situation right now and has some important decisions to make. So instead of pestering him with questions he probably already knows the answers to, he lets O’ Brien sort these issues out in his brain. This silence, more than anything, helped O’ Brien make the decisions he had to and is what inevitably saved his life.
In ‘How To Tell A True War Story’ silence is talked about again. One of the guys tells O’ Brien about a true story he heard once. It was about 6 guys going on a Listening Patrol in the mountains. They had to lie there in silence for a whole week, not saying a single word the whole time. After a while they started hearing noises, like orchestras, operas, and cocktail parties. So they report enemy movement and warrant an air strike. After the place was torched they started back again towards their camps and “‘Around dawn things finally got quit. Like you never heard quiet before. One of those real thick, real misty days—just clouds and fog, they’re off in this special zone—and the mountains are absolutely dead-flat silent. Like Brigadoon—pure vapor, you know? Everything’s all sucked up inside the fog. Not a single sound, except they still hear it’” (O’ Brien 75). Even after all that destruction of the would be noise and assurance that the noises are gone, they still hear it. The reader starts to wonder then if the noise was really even there. What was it that made those men go mad, was it the silence? Possibly. Later O’ Brien asks the man telling the story “’ what’s the moral?” “Forget it.” “No, go ahead.” For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day. “Hear that quiet, man?” he said. “That quiet—just listen. There’s your moral.”” (O’ Brien 77). So I guess there was no moral to that story, it was just a story for story’s sake.
There was also a theme of silence in the story where Rat Kiley tortures the baby buffalo. The buffalo was silent the whole time and did not make a peep once.
So silence plays more than one role throughout these stories and so far it is the most recurring theme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N8_u1FLu30&feature=channel
Not really related to the novel just thought it was funny.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Msinredomtsop si tahw?
At last the question will be answered (or attempted at least), what is postmodernism? What the heck is this thing? Well one aspect of it, is that it’s a bunch of stories or meta-narratives that try to explain why certain things are the way they are. It gets away from the modernist notion that science will be able to solve everything, or that science will find the meaning of life. Postmodernism embraces the fact that there is no universal truth; no truth that EVERYONE can agree upon. This is true. There is no such thing as one belief that every single person can latch onto and make that their life’s purpose (well not yet at least… I’ll come up with it one day but as for now, I’m still workin on it. ) Postmodernism also really emphasizes that different cultures have different views about things and that a person is not limited to one belief system or way of life. You could be Jewish, that embraces Buddhism’s teachings, while believing in the Muslim version of heaven (72 virgins) and that makes you, you. Postmodernism stresses individuality not conformity or universality. “Postmodern people are inclined to see the world as a kind of carnival of cultures”, where one belief ends, the other begins in this sort of overlapping mosaic. Diversity is beautiful and being different is not a bad thing; once everyone begins to see things in that light, we will all be in a better place. It also stresses objectivity, but as we all have come to realize, this is a very difficult task. Almost everything that is done, ever, will be subjective. We should also consider the Other point of view(s). We should not be so narrow-minded and set in stone in our beliefs as to where we don’t even reflect on Other thoughts. Well that’s my (subjective) view of postmodernism, it might be off a bit, but I can’t find the right words to finish this sentence.
Oh well, goodbye Postmodernism.
Oh well, goodbye Postmodernism.
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