Taylor

Written By:Tom Stoppard (1993)

Henrik Ibsen’s play, “A Doll House”, tells of the collapse of the Helmer family and the life changing realization of Nora Helmer. Nora lived with her husband, Torvald, and they appeared to be very much in love. Torvald often paraded around with his wife and seemed to treat her more like a trophy than a loving wife. His motives concerning his wife were mainly for appearances, he forbade macaroons out of concern for her teeth. Torvald dressed Nora up, showed her off and even had her do a dance to impress everyone. He often made decisions for her, he decided what she would wear and when she was tired and swelled with pride whenever Nora praised him for a good call. 

There isn’t a single serious conversation between the Helmers, Torvold only addresses his wife like a pet or a child, with gentle praise or scolding when appropriate. As soon as Mr. Helmer thinks his wife has tarnished his reputation he casts her out and she realizes she has never been anything more than a doll to him. She had hoped for a miracle, that her husband would be willing to look past her mistake or that he would understand that she did it purely out of love for him and for her father, but after discovering Nora’s crime Torvald was insistent that she completely disassociate from him. 

To Be or Not to Be

Shakespeare’s Macbeth tells of a general’s rise to power, and in the scene of Banquo’s ghost we are given a clear picture of Macbeth’s mental state. In this scene lord and lady Macbeth are attending a banquet, the ghost of Banquo appears before Macbeth who is driven mad by guilt over having had his friend killed. During this scene Lady Macbeth acts calmly, attempting to reassure the guests and diffuse the situation. The difference between Macbeth and his lady is very clear here, she has a good deal of power over her husband. Lady Macbeth, having initiated the act of murder, seems to care only that her husband will give them away. The lady is less concerned about the cost of her family’s power in the early scenes, and it is far longer before she breaks down. 

As the story progresses Macbeth gains confidence and Lady Macbeth begins her descent into madness. The consequences of their actions weigh differently on both characters by the end of the play. Lady Macbeth tries to scrub the murder from her hands (”Out, dammed spot”) and dies shortly after. Macbeth hears of his wife’s suicide and delivers a quick soliloquy (”She should have died hereafter...”) before bravely plunging into a battle he knows can’t lose.

*post class*

By Tim O’ Brien

In this short story written by Tim O’ Brien the narrator gives instructions on how to tell a true war story, and how to tell whether the story you're being told is true. He gives several instructions, most of which are extremely vague, and he tells a few different versions of the truth.

The best way to judge a story’s truth, according to Tim, is determining how unreal it sounds. The crazier the story seems, the truer it probably is. What he seems to be saying is that sense doesn't matter during war. things happen and the way you experience it is the way you tell it. 

A war story’s reliability is judged by the way it makes the listener feel. If it churns the stomach and creates an aura of unease, the truth value doesn't matter. The story is true because it is felt. 

The narrator’s retellings are three different types of unsettling:

1. In his tale of the men in the mountains six men camp out for seven days. They observe the land and listen and they begin to hear voices. The longer they stay the worse it gets until it is unbearable. They arm themselves to the fullest and kill everything that could possibly have been alive in those mountains. Whether or not the voices were really there, this story was true. It was true for me because I read it late and heard voices all night that kept me from seeping.

2. He speaks about the punishment dealt by Rat Kiley to a baby buffalo. After the death of his friend, Kiley inflicts hundreds of nonfatal injuries onto an unfortunate animal. The buffalo doesn’t move,  it doesn’t make a sound and neither do the men bearing witness to Kiley's grievous actions. Reading this caused me great discomfort. It is true because in reading it I felt some of the pain in the buffalo and also in Rat Kiley.

By Taylor Cosgrove 

Somewhere, in a house painted blue, a man awakens.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. His eyes are heavy and sticky, his mouth numb and dry. He wills his arms to bend, but it’s several seconds before he’s recovered enough sensation rub the fuzz from his face. The man’s mind and body remain foggy for another eternity before he is finally able to stand. Slowly he makes his way toward the bedroom door wondering whether he is filled with blood or sand. The door opens and he stands facing and empty hallway, this time wondering where he is and how he got here.

Walking down the halls he passes rows of picture frames all filled with still-shots from somebody else’s life. His vision is still to blurry to make out any of the faces so he continues on through the house. The bathroom, guest room, sitting room, dining room, and kitchen are all in perfect order with no evidence of having ever been lived in. Thoroughly unsettled and slightly less groggy, the man makes the decision to check outside.

He opens the door and isn't at all surprised by what he sees. Perfect, identical homes, manicured lawns, trimmed hedges, shiny cars, blue skies. Not a soul outside, no children’s toys in sight, empty streets, vacant windows. Every porch is furnished with brand-new, pure white, wicker rocking chairs, the pools are full, clean and clear, everything looks pristine and untouched. Everything seems completely still. There isn’t a single sign of life for blocks and blocks. It is as though somebody pressed pause on the entire town, but the wind blows and the trees sway just enough to break the illusion.

The entire town seems to have been built, decorated, and maintained all while never having been lived in.

The man is tired, and judging by the position of the sun it is quite late in the day. This is all too much for him to handle in his impaired state, so he returns to the room he woke up in. He is on the bed, perfectly made without even a wrinkle on the spread, and asleep again within seconds of lying down.

He wakes up again with a clear mind. He remembers and he is terrified. He gets up from the bed and heads for the hallway, the trip is much smoother this time. Slowly, the man opens the door and walks down the now familiar hall. This was his home. His eyes go to the pictures on the wall. Rows and rows of images not from somebody else’s life, but from his own.

Pictures of himself and of his family. The family he killed. He remembers now.

He killed them all; his wife, his two daughters, and his only son. He did it, but why did he do it? He doesn’t know, he will never know. When he was arrested they altered his memories, they wanted him to suffer.

He is on the ground, face wet. He knows soon it will reset. He knows he will wake up again numb and confused. He knows his memories will rush back to him again the way they just did... because he is a murderer and he is serving a life sentence inside of his own head.

The world goes black.

Somewhere, in a house painted blue, a murderer awakens.

”The Shawl”  By Cynthia Ozick

The short story, “The Shawl”, tells the tale of a family of three being held in what can be assumed to be a Nazi concentration camp. The family consists of a mother, Rosa, and her two children, Stella and Magda. During the introduction it is revealed the Stella envies her infant sister for getting her mother’s milk and rations, and at times wishes her dead. The three are sickly and frail, malnourished and on the brink of death, and poor Magda’s precious life is also a huge burden on her guardians. 

Magda is described as being “Fat with air”, and walking on pencil legs. The picture above shows children in a prison camp during the Armenian Genocide suffering under similar conditions, the distended belly is caused by a disease called Kwashiokor. The main cause of the swollen appearance is retention of liquid waste due to extreme muscle atrophy. Magda and thousands of other children suffered from this disease during this time. 

Though the identity of Magda’s father isn’t explicitly revealed in the story, it can be assumed that he was a German soldier who impregnated Rosa. Ozic describes her as being “Aryan”, blonde haired and blue eyed, which links her to the Nazi guards, members of the Aryan race. 

By the end of the story, it seems that Stella has resolved to accelerate her sister’s inevitable death - having been born and hidden in the camp for fifteen months, it should have been impossible for her to survive as long as she did - Stella steals the Shawl that Magda has been hidden under since her birth, and nursing on since her mother went dry, and waits. The child goes looking for her precious blanket and is spotted my a guard, he picks her up and, before Rosa can save her, she is thrown full force into an electric fence. 

By W. Somerset Maughan

“The appointment in Samarra” is a short story about death. Maughan’s story consists of a single paragraph that tells of a servant’s encounter. The first sentence, “Death Speaks”, introduces death as the narrator. The story, as told by the servant, begins with a surprising encounter with death in the market place. Death gestures threateningly to the servant, who decides it is in his best interest to run for his life. The frightened servant asks to borrow a horse from a merchant so that he may flee to Samarra, far away from death’s current location. 

Later, the merchant has an encounter of his own with death. The two have a conversation, during which the merchant asks “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” Death responds to this by explaining that she wasn't making any threats, she was only surprised to see him so far from Samarra, where she had an appointment with him later that night. 

BY A. R. AMMONS

I found a

weed

that had a

mirror in it

and that

mirror

looked in at

a mirror

in

me that

had a

The poem “The Bull Moose” by Alden Nowlan is an allegory for man’s relationship with nature. It begins with a bull moose emerging from the forest after a long trek and finding himself in a “pole-fenced pasture”. The moose waits there, exhausted and unable to move, while the cows already on the field, after “scenting the musk of death”, move away.

The rest of the poem introduces the peoples’ reactions to the idle bull moose. They flock to the scene to mock and torment the animal, beginning with the children and their “alder switches” (I looked up the phrase “alder switch” and found that in this poem its likely to mean a limb broken off of an alder tree and used as a whip). A woman asks whether he “could have escaped from a fair”, in this line the moose is mistaken for another one of man’s domesticated animals. He has his jaws pried open with bottles as snickering young men  “tr[y] to pour beer down his throat”. The final recorded act is the placing of a crown of thistles onto the moose’s head, an act that mirrors the placement of a crown of thorns onto the head of Christ. This emphasizes mankind's tenancy to bring unnecessary pain and suffering to the innocent.

The once magnificent creature was poked, prodded, manipulated, photographed and utterly disrespected, until the wardens cleared the scene. The people retreated to their cars, satisfied and no longer interested in their new “pet”. At sunset, the Bull moose summoned what strength he had left and “like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns so that even the wardens backed away and raised their rifles.” In one final display of power, the moose let out a mighty roar and fell. 

The poem “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll has a unique dialect, easily interpreted through context. Though half of the words Carroll uses in this work seen like nonsense, one can decipher the approximate meaning; but interpretations vary. The clip above shows an reenactment done on The Muppet Show, which gives the poem a joking tone and emphasizes it’s ridiculousness. I spent a while debating between two videos to show, the other created a very unsettling tone, it was creepy, demonic, and actually terrifying. I chose to show the Muppet version purely because the other one scares me (watch it at your own risk). 

The dialect of “Jabberwocky” doesn’t come with an established diction, and depending on how it’s read, Carroll’s made up words could be silly, sinister, or anything, really; the reader is given some information and the interpretation is left to them. Carroll uses the word “galumphing” as an adjective, depicting the manner of the boy’s return. Depending on the tone, a “galumph” could be a skip, a limp, a lumber, a stomp, or even a crawl. Maybe he is swimming the galumph stroke, floating on the Jabberwock’s head. 

When the boy returns from slaying the beast he is greeted enthusiastically: “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” The type of enthusiasm sis hinted at by use of the word “beamish”; grinning with joy, optimism or anticipation, and despite the use of this lighthearted word the second video makes the scene seem ritualistic, prophesied, and the greeting is chant-like. 

It takes a few reads to fully understand Silvia Plath’s poem, “Metaphors”. Each line is a riddle and each riddle points to pregnancy. The first line introduces itself as “a riddle in nine syllables” and every line is nine syllables, without exception. The number nine clearly represents the nine months of pregnancy, and the lines to follow produce imagery. Line three describes “A melon strolling in two tendrils.” The reader can imagine a literal melon with legs, and in doing so they may also realize that this image is strikingly similar to that of a swollen bellied woman waddling about. 

The lines to follow offer more images of things like rising bread, a fat change purse or eating a basket of apples, and the poem is concluded with the phrase “Boarded the train there’s no getting off.” The idea of boarding a train with no escape is terrifying to most people, so why would the narrator associate it with pregnancy? 

The two poems,“The Tyger” and “The Lamb” , written by William Blake address the topic of the creator in two very different ways. 

“The Lamb” creates a safe and comfortable mood, and the Little Lamb is given a very gentle disposition. A question is asked of the Lamb in the first line “Who made thee?” What person could have created something so soft and kind? The Lamb responds first by saying that its creator goes by the same name, then assigns the title of “Lamb” to the narrator. It is finally revealed that the creator is God, and that God is the lamb. The Lamb’s God is assumed to be a loving creator, with empathy for his creations. 

“The Tyger” has a fearful, questioning tone. Who would dare make such a creature? The narrator asks the Tyger a series of questions about his creator, and among those questions is “Did he smile his work to see?” Was the creator proud of what he had made? The Tyger is asked question after question, but no response is given. The reader is left only with the line “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” This asks the Tyger whether he and the lamb could possibly have spawned from the same creator - whether a creator exists who could call himself a gentle lamb and at the same time claim the ferocious Tyger.