Randall Jarrell - Poetry

Randall Jarrell was an excellent language teacher who once stated, “If I were a rich man, I would pay money for the privilege of being able to teach.” He served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1942 to 1946 and while serving, he wrote and published a volume of poems. His writings seem to reflect his experience in the military as well as the classroom.
In his poem “Losses,” Jarrell writes about war and death that war brings. He also states that death that comes by way of war is like any other death. He also talks about being in an airplane and coming to death by way of plane crash and how it wouldn’t be an accident, but a mistake. He gives a few details as to the air planes, and the medals they receive, their maps, and the cities they destroy. He is showing how death by war has a lesser importance because these types of deaths are looked at as being casualties.
The poem “The Death of the Ball Turrett Gunner” made no sense to me. I do not know what his intent was with it. They only thing I can make of it is it refers to death again. However, “The Girl in the Library” shows how a girl is in a library and has fallen asleep. The narrator shows her depth of sleep and what she may be dreaming about. The writer sees the sleeping girl as making an excuse for herself stating that she isn’t really asleep and she is really just sitting there studying. I think overall he is saying that her time in the library is insignificant. I am not sure why he thinks this way, unless he feels as a woman, her real place in life doesn’t focus on getting an education, but that she should be focusing on something more because her dreams of a real education is just a ridiculous thought. I think this poem is mainly a focus on how woman shouldn’t dream too much, because as a female, her dreams should only be just dreams because some things are just an impossible concept for women.

Sylvia Plath - Poetry

Sylvia Plath was an unusual poetry writer. Her views of life and suicide are evident in almost all of her writings. Death apparently stayed on her mind constantly as her writings were full of horror, isolation and entrapment. By the time she was seventeen, she had published her first short story and poem. She received a scholarship and entered into Smith College where she graduated with honors, but while in college she had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized and underwent psychiatric therapy. She later when to Cambridge University and received her MA degree and in 1956, she married the British poet Ted Hughes. On February 11, 1963, she committed suicide.
In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bee Meeting,” she tells of a group of people meeting up for some reason. She first questions if they are there to meet her. The writer is paranoid to the way she is dressed because she worries that she isn’t dressed right and fears that the bees are going to get to her and hurt her. She is worried and scared about everything around her with the voices of the people changing, bean flowers, and she thinks the bees are trying to make her one of them. She fears this consumption. She attempts standing very still so the bees will think she is cow-parsley so they will leave her alone. It is obvious that the writer is expressing her fears through this poem. She even makes mention of the queen being up against the virgin bees who plan to eliminate her. I think with this part of the poem, she is referring to herself and the way she sees how the world is around her.
In Lady Lazarus, the writer is first stating that she is doing something she has attempted before and it is evident she is once again referring to dying. She talks about a cat having nine lives and that this is her third so apparently she is talking about suicide. She also states the first time was an accident, but the second wasn’t. She sees dying as a theatrical art and she does it well and her attempts at dying give her a charge. All of her writings are quite depressing and Plath seems to have enjoyed being depressed. I wonder if she ever wrote anything uplifting. If a person read enough of her writings, I could see the reader getting depressed. She is not my favorite writer and to be honest, I could do without ever reading anything else written by her again.

Sonny’s Blues – James Baldwin

This is one of those realistic stories that I really enjoyed. It was a story I could relate to and feel the emotion that the writer was trying to depict. James Baldwin is noted as being one of the most important American black writers of the 20th century. He was born and raised in Harlem, NY and it shows in his story of “Sonny’s Blues” which takes place in Harlem. The narrator who is unnamed is an algebra teacher who has a brother, Sonny, that is a heroin addict. The narrator is married and has a daughter while Sonny has neither. This shows the extreme difference of the two brothers.
One day, the narrator sees in a newspaper that Sonny has been arrested for selling heroin. This troubles him, but he tries to ignore it, but while the narrator was finishing up a school day at work, he sees and recognizes one of Sonny’s drug buddies waiting on him. The narrator realizes he is high, but in frustration, he walks and talks with him. This man is telling the narrator of what will happen to Sonny with jail and rehab, but that he will eventually be out again. The narrator is anger, frustrated and confused. While Sonny is in rehab, the narrator loses his daughter to polio and he writes his brother to tell him of it. After Sonny is released, he comes to live with his brother temporarily. The narrator gets his wife’s parents to let Sonny come stay with them while he goes back to school and practice his piano playing, but soon, Sonny is skipping school and is hanging out in jazz bars and Sonny’s brother is constantly suspicious of his brother doing drugs again. Sonny asks his brother to come watch him play in one of the clubs and he agrees to. At first, Sonny has difficulty playing, but eventually Sonny becomes a part of the music and he ends up playing beautifully. Then for the first time in years, they briefly have a bonding moment and all is well.
This story uses flashback to give meaning to a few of the circumstances the narrator is involved in. The mood changes from time to time, but only slightly in variation. I think that this story is a reflection of the writers life and the experiences he had and seen in his life. In this area of location, drugs are a prominent aspect of life for many as well as the varied lives of the people. Some succeed while others do not.

A Raisin in the Sun

This 1961 movie’s primary focus was on Walter Lee Younger. He was a 35 year old man who is searching for his place in life as a black man. Walter, his wife, Ruth and son, Travis, live with his Mama in her apartment that she has lived in for over 40 years. He lives by his Mama’s rules because she is considered the head of the family. Walter’s struggles begin with his need to be able to financial support his family and to be the family head. A few months prior, Walter’s father passed away and they are waiting for a $10,000 insurance check that is coming in the mail to Mama. Walter and his friends want to open a liquor store with the money and Mama refuses to allow it to be used for that. Walter has himself under so much pressure that he is going out drinking a lot. At one point he finds out that is wife, Ruth, is pregnant and due to their rocky marriage, she contemplates having an abortion and even makes a payment on it and schedules it. When Walter finds out about Ruth’s pregnancy, he shows no care or emotion to stop her. This becomes a real determining factor for Mama when she goes and takes part of the money to make a down payment on a house. Everyone is happy but Walter. But Mama realizes that and gives the rest of the money to Walter for him to put back some for his sister’s education and to put the rest in a checking account and be “head of the house.” After they find out that the house Mama has bought is in a white neighborhood, they are little uneasy until they see it. But Karl Linder from the homeowners association comes and offers to pay them to not move into a white neighborhood, but they refuse his offer. Walter’s sister Beneatha is in college to be a doctor and she is a liberated black women who is eager to find her own way in life. She dates a Nigerian man named Joseph Asagai who asks her to marry him and go to Nigeria. Beneatha is a free spirited woman and it doesn’t seem likely that she will actually do this, but anything is possible. The money Mama gave Walter, he actually gave all of it to one of his friends for the liquor store license, but the guy runs off with it and the whole family is devastated. At this point they seem to have been losing faith but in the end, they still go ahead and move into the new house. This is when Walter finally finds himself and becomes a man.
I really enjoyed this movie. I actually read this play a few semesters ago and greatly enjoyed it. I was impressed with the movie because even though there were a few acts from the play that were not in the movie, the parts of the play that was in the movie were quite accurate. That really impressed me. Many times you go and see a Hollywood movie that is based on a book and the differences make the movie very disappointing, but this wasn’t the case with the 1961 version. I am curious as to how the new version would be. I have watched a couple of trailers on it and some parts seem similar while others appear to be very different.

Powerhouse - Eudora Welty

This was a very odd story to me. I really did not understand the point of it nor did I find it interesting at all. It was boring and really had no meaning. It told of Powerhouse who was black man and was singing to mostly white people who have no interest in him. He was singing lyrics with no real meaning and they just rolled around with no direction. He does sing and tell of his wife being dead. The only emotion he makes while making that statement seems to be in fun and he is degrading and talking ugly about his own wife in her death which seems strange. They must not have been close and maybe not even together anymore. Powerhouse does mention a few times about the name at the bottom of the telegram he received telling of his wife’s death. He doesn’t know the name and ask if anyone else knows the name. Uranus Knockwood was the name and he seemed more concerned about the name than what the telegram actually said.
It is once again apparent that this story was written to show difference in black and whites and to show injustice to blacks. I see that there is suppose to be an emphasis on the music and the soul that is felt through music that blacks felt that the whites didn't. However, if I had written this, or been involved in its writing, I would have focused more on the story’s plot and theme and focused less on inserting lyrics in the writing.
Eudora Welty seemed to be an educated woman and while reading her biography, I thought I would have read something with a little more feeling that would have related to more people. She must have also had a great love for music. The musical lyrics would have just been better and easier to follow if they had all been put together and not scattered with in a story line. I hope that if I have to read anything more by Welty within this class, I hope it something with more depth and structure.

Richard Wright - Native Son

I absolutely loved this story. I just hated knowing it was only a piece of the real thing. I had never heard of this story before, but now I would like to read it all. The writer, Richard Wright, graduated as valedictorian and this was during a time when education to blacks was limited. He was from the south but moved north to escape as much of the segregation as he could. He became involved with the Communist Party, but did not follow the party line in his writings. He mainly wrote of his life experiences as a black man that dealt with issues such as racism, segregation, poverty, and the justice system.
In his story of Native Son, Bigger Thomas is a black man who has gone on a job interview to become a chauffeur for a white family. In his interview, he is very nervous because with him being black and in the home of a white man was uncommon and undone. He wouldn’t even look Mr. Dalton in the eye as he interviewed him. It is apparent that Bigger may have been the main one out of all the characters who actually revealed prejudice thoughts rather than the white people which I found ironic. Mr. Dalton’s daughter, Mary, finds Bigger interesting and upon their first meeting, she is pushy and makes Bigger feel very uncomfortable. Bigger’s first day on the job, he is told to take Mary to the university that evening. Instead of going to the university, she has Bigger to pick up her boyfriend, Jan and ask Bigger to take them to the black section of town. They are part of the Communist Party and they just want to see and experience how blacks live. Bigger is uncomfortable with this, but takes them anyway. As they go into a restaurant, the black people stare and make comments to and about Bigger. Jan orders food and beer for their table. Bigger being embarrassed has a difficult time eating but as Mary ask if they have anything harder than beer, Bigger informs her she can get anything she wants. She orders a fifth of rum. As they drink, they all end up feeling the effects of the alcohol. They drive around (while drinking) and this is when I begin to wonder if something was going to happen to give the story a theme giving reference to not drink and drive, but it had a different twist. As the alcohol had it effects, Jan and Mary try to get Bigger to get involved with them and the Communist Party. They all ask and answer questions, but Bigger never agrees to get involved. As the evening winds down, Jan and Mary are drunk and after they drop off Jan, Bigger has to get Mary home and after they arrive, Bigger ends up having to help Mary get to her room. As he gets her to her bed, his own alcohol consumption clouds his thinking and he begins to fondle and kiss on Mary who is passed out. This is when he sees the blind Mrs. Dalton standing in the door way. In his fear, he takes a pillow and covers Mary’s face trying to keep her quiet because he knows if he is caught in Mary’s room, he would be in deep trouble with him being a black man in a white woman’s bedroom. After Mrs. Dalton leaves without detecting Bigger is there, Bigger removes the pillow and realizes he just smothered Mary to death accidentally.
The end of our reading was tragic, but it also left me hanging. I know this was just a portion of the whole story, but the way the story ended, left me with so many unanswered question. I am anxious to read this entire story now.

John Steinbeck - Flight

Flight is a story about a 19 year old boy named Pepe. Pepe is a very lazy boy, yet gentle and affectionate. Pepe carried a knife that he kept sharp and free of rust and he carried with him always because it had been his fathers. Mama Torres sends Pepe to Monterey to get medicine and salt and then he is to stay at Mrs. Rodriguez’s house for the night. By sending him on this journey, it would make him a man.
Before morning, Pepe returned back home which startled his Mama. She asked him did he have the medicine and he said yes, but he then revealed to her that he had been drinking wine and had killed someone with his knife. Mama assures him that he is indeed a man and prepares him to get ready to go away. Mama awakens Pepe’s brother and sister for him to help. Mama helped him with supplies and a rifle with only 10 cartridges. The horse was saddled and sent him on his journey to escape the punishment he would receive if he was caught for murder. In a matter of a moment his life had just been changed forever.
Pepe followed a path and went over high mountains and down steep cliffs. During his travel, he constantly looked suspiciously back every minute or so. As a single eagle flew over, without warning, his horse fell on its side and then he heard the rifle crash echo and Pepe found himself laying half stunned beside his horse. Then he heard another shot, ran, and found cover. He shortly realized that he had been hit in the hand. He gathered a handful of spider web and pressed it into the cut and stopped the bleeding. As his journey continued, he began to have trouble with his hand and it got red and swollen. As the intensity grew, he eventually found himself loosing use of his hand and arm and the pain in his armpit was excruciating. The wound drew strength from his body as he looked at the black line that ran up from his wrist to his armpit. He picked up a sharp blade of stone and scraped the wound and squeezed the green juice out. The pain was heavy as he laid in a desolate, waterless canyon. He managed to dig out an area and fell asleep. After he awoke, he took his sleeve and soaked up the water and sucked it out. He tongue parched and swollen, he still managed to stand on his feet. He then heard a crash of a bullet and eventually he was hit and he rolled over and over and when his body stopped against a bush, an avalanche slid down and covered his head and he was dead.
He was slowly dying, but at the end he was quickly put out of his misery. Pepe’s life quickly changed in a moment after his mother sent him out for medicine and salt. Just because someone called him names, he chose to take that person’s life. He should have thought before he quickly chose to kill. He actually brought his misery on himself. How did someone so quickly go from being a gently affectionate person to a murderer? I enjoyed this story, but it seemed to have a lot of wasted time. Not much of the story was about the plot. There just seemed to be a lot of description about his surroundings without any real significance. As it ended, it just ended without any real destination being made. I almost felt like I was left hanging.

Ernest Hemingway - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

Ernest Hemingway definitely has a way of capturing a reader’s attention. The beginning of the story was a little hard to follow and a couple of times and I had to go back and reread some, but once it began to flow, I became intrigued. Francis Macomber was a man with a few issue within himself. He was insecure about himself, though he was a man of wealth and seemed to have everything at the tip of his fingers. The whole need for the hunt was his need to somehow prove himself courageous and worthy to himself and his wife. She was a very cold hearted person who was only out for herself and she didn’t really care who knew it. She used her husband’s fear against him and would manipulate him for her own pleasure to toy with him.
As Macomber went on this hunt for a lion with the hired hunter Wilson, he found himself facing something he could not get the courage up to shoot and that was the lion. When face to face with it, he bolted and made a fool of himself. His wife, of course, rubbed it in and even kissed Wilson in front of him. She eventually slept with Wilson and when her husband, Macomber asked her about it, she didn’t even deny it. She just told him that she knew he wouldn’t leave her. She expected him to just put up with whatever she dished out because she knew he’d take it just to have her. However, when the day came when he faced his fears and shot the buffalo, he finally found himself and a great sense of courage. When one of the buffalo that he had injured came charging toward him, he stood up to it shooting at it several times. His wife took a gun that was sitting in the motor car with her and shoots and kills her own husband. After she had seen his courage, I feel she thought that if he had the courage to stand up to a charging buffalo, then he had the courage to stand up to her. The fear had turned from Macomber on to her. As the story ends, after Macomber’s wife has shot and killed him, Wilson starts mocking her because he knew her intent but ridicules her that it was an accident. Just like the title says, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” says it all. His happiness was definitely short thanks to his wife.
This story is true to how life can really be. We all strive to be strong and courageous in some way or another just to find ourselves failing many times with someone there to always give us a hard time. Then just as we have mastered it, our life is over.

Langston Hughes - Poetry & On the Road

Langston Hughes was a very successful black writer who was the first black American to support himself as a professional writer and produced more than 60 books. In grammar school he was chosen as class poet and while in high school, he published 2 poems in national magazines.
In his poetry writings, my favorite was “Theme for English B.” I found it quite interesting how he was instructed (by a white instructor) to write something true to him (as a black man). He first shows the complexity in the assignment first by their differences in color, age and where he is originally from. However, he also shows their commonness. Both of them like to eat, sleep, drink, be in love, work, read, learn, and understand life. Even though the instructor is white and the writer is black, they are both still a part of one another since they are both American, it’s just the white man is somewhat more free. What a powerful statement.
I also like “Harlem” because it is something that may have intended to a black person’s dreams, but to me, it is something we can all relate to. We all have dreams that dry up like a raisin in the sun, or fester and run like a sore, or stink like rotten meat, or crust over, or sag, or even explode. During this time, blacks had been given freedoms, but segregation still dampened their lives. Most of their dreams were dreams just dreamt and not lived. Wouldn’t Hughes be proud today to see the dreams being lived by the African American community today?
Hughes story of “On the Road” was a different type of story. It depicted a black homeless man walking in the snow who was hungry, cold and tired. He is rejected by shelters and a white Reverend. He tries to break into the white church, but the white police beat him in the head and he falls into an unconscious state of hallucinations. He thinks he has knocked the church down and he knocks a pillar off his shoulder and takes a stroll with Christ with whom he converses with. There is a lot of symbolization in this story. He brings his conversation with Christ down to a personal level showing how Christ would not be prejudice against him and He would talk to him like he is somebody. He makes a point to say that he has knocked Christ off of the cross and how pleased Christ must be to finally be down off the cross. Most Baptist churches will not allow Christ on the cross to be a representation for their church because they see it as Christ is no longer on the cross. He was buried and risen on the third day and lives today. I think this is what Hughes is trying to show. Hughes also shows himself as being just as worthy as any white man to carry that pillar (the representation of the cross) just like anyone else, despite skin color. Hughes realizes this account really didn’t happen and that he is really in jail. He goes back to make a statement about wondering where Christ has gone and if he has gone to Kansas. I think he is showing that since he actually woke up in jail, he is wondering if Christ really was with him or was he really gone.

William Faulkner - The Evening Sun

William Faulkner received a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 which was well deserved. His story “The Evening Sun” was a story of suspense that was written in a way that kept my attention.
This story told of a Negro woman named Nancy who has been cooking for a white family of the narrator Quentin, who typically did the wash for white people but she was coming to cook for them because their regular cook Dilsey was sick. During this time, the Negro women would gather the white people’s wash and carry it on their heads like a turban. Many of the Negro women’s husbands would help fetch the wash for them, but not Nancy’s husband Jesus. Jesus was not happy with Nancy and had left her, but Nancy felt her was lingering around so he could kill her.
Mr. Stovall who was a cashier to the bank and a deacon in the Baptist church had Nancy arrested. She publicly asked him “When you going to pay me, white man? It’s been three times now.” While in jail, Nancy tries to kill herself, but after hanging herself, she is found and cut down. Later it is shown that she is pregnant. While in the kitchen of Quentin’s family, Nancy’s husband Jesus is there and Nancy tells him that her that “It never come off your vine though” revealing that she is pregnant with someone else’s baby. Nancy had been messing around with Mr. Stovall and the baby was that of a white man and this is why Jesus left Nancy. In Nancy’s fear, she thinks that Jesus is actually lurking around somewhere wanting to kill her. This fear began to consume her and debilitate her. Quentin’s father walks her home after Nancy reveals her fear to him, but Quentin’s mother is jealous and shows no worth in Nancy’s life.
At the end of the story, Nancy’s fear of going home alone causes her to talk Quentin and his sister Caddy and his brother Jason to come home with her. They notice that her fear is eating her alive and they all want to go home. Their father shows up and takes the children home leaving Nancy alone with the front door open. As they look back after passing through the ditch, Nancy’s door is still open but they do not see her and that is how it ends.
I do not like how it ended, but it was a great story. I was disappointed to not know what happened to Nancy, but either way I would say that either her husband did get her or she took off in a psychotic state because she was no longer stable.
This story dealt with a lot of different conflicts. Nancy own personal conflict with having an affair with a white man and then carrying his baby during that time. There was also conflict with her husband and her fear of his return. Another conflict involved Quentin’s father and mother that were caused by his father walking Nancy home and his mother’s jealousy. One thing I found interesting that the setting’s time frame was during an era that the white people, especially adults, were held superior to blacks and children, but the characters named were the blacks and the children. The white adults were not named.

Willa Cather - A Wagner Matinee & Paul's Case

Willa Cather seemed a little unusual to me. While reading her biography, the first thing I wondered if she had been a homosexual. During her time, I would say that homosexuality was unheard of so the outward expression would not be allowed, so I would say a homosexual would be quite repressed in their feelings and emotions. That seemed evident to me in her writings.
In her first story of “A Wagner Matinee,” the first thing I noticed was the main character was a boy. I then wondered if she lived out her fantasies in her stories as the boy she desired to be. With this story, we see a young man who had been raised by his Aunt Georgiana on a farm in Nebraska. Once an adult, he left the farm for the city. One day after he received a letter from his Aunt Georgiana saying she was coming to the city, he (the narrator) becomes a little anxious not knowing what to expect. His Aunt Georgiana had been a great pianist and a music teacher in her younger day and she had loved and appreciated music. As she arrived in town, the narrator took her to a Symphony Orchestra. At first she seem dull to everything, but as the orchestra began, she became consumed by the music. The music brought the music in her soul back to life; she was revived!
“Paul’s Case” was a different kind of story compared to the first. The first story of “A Wagner Matinee” seemed to be about being revived to life again, and “Paul’s Case” is about spiraling downhill in life and character. Paul is a difficult child at school, but he does work a job, but this job causes him to have desires for a life that he didn’t have. This desire caused him to lie, steal, and run away. I would say much of his difficult character stemmed from the loss of his mother and the stiff structure of a home that his father tried to uphold. After stealing $1,000.00, he takes off to New York to temporarily live a “fake” life. When the money runs out and he feels his life closing in on him, he takes his own life. This may appear to be a coward’s way out, but from my own experiences in life, when a person truly gets to that point in life, they are at the bottom. It may not appear that way to those on the outside looking in, but with the person willing to take their own life, they are at the bottom of everything they are and everything they have. It’s a very sad place to be; to feel hopeless and completely alone. I wonder if that was an explored thought for the writer?

Zora Neale Hurston - How it Feels to be Colored Me & The Gilded Six-Bits

Zora Neale Hurston is a writer I thoroughly appreciate. Her life was one that I wished everyone could live. To live a life for 13 years and not realize that race was an issue in the real world is amazing and that being black was not a problem for her at all was great. I know living in a town that was predominantly black for the first 13 years of her life was the main contributing factor but I really enjoyed the innocence of her early life. Even after her mother died and her father sent her to lives with relatives, the problems and difficulties she endured during this time she handled quite well. In her adult life, she had a successful life for the most part. It was a little disappointing to read that at the end of her life, she was penniless and living in a welfare home in Florida. However, after reading about her overall life, I would say that even though her last days looked difficult and gloomy, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn for her, her last days were still quite fulfilling and satisfying to her. She just seemed to have that ability to shine, no matter where she was.
In her story “How It Feels to be Colored Me” is a true account of the way I pictured her to be. She even states at one point that, “At certain times I have no race, I am me.” I even liked how she described the jazz orchestra by saying, “It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies.” The details she uses in this story as well as the other story gives her readers the ability to see things almost the same way as she was envisioning them herself.
“The Gilded Six-Bits” was another great story. The love and excitement she portrayed in this couple was very pleasing and exhilarating. As I read the story and that no good Slemmons was introduced, I had a feeling he was there to cause trouble and he did! At this point I became very disappointed, but in the end, victory reared itself as the young lovers regained their marriage and survived heartache.
Of all our stories this week, the author I enjoyed most was Zora Neale Hurston.