Oedipus the King

Oedipus the King was a really interesting play. It left me with a lot of questions. How could a mother want her own baby killed just because of a prophecy? Why are these people so open to these prophecies? Why do they believe so easily? What is wrong with the gods, are they just mean?

 It amazes me how Oedipus’s life could possibly suck so much. His entire life was an awful tragedy. He was supposed to be murdered at an extremely young age, but instead he was given to a family that wasn’t even his. This family lied to his face and refused to tell him that they were not his true parents. He heard a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this, he moved away from the people he thought were his parents. In his travels, he ended up killing his real father, the King of Thebes. When he arrived in Thebes, he became a hero and then became the King himself. He then married his real mother and fathering her children, all the while having no idea of what he was actually doing.

 This play is full of ironic twists. The reader is given insight and clues as to what has really happened in Oedipus’s life, but Oedipus is clueless until the whole story is laid out before his eyes. It is very ironic that the Queen believed that her son was dead and that the prophecy could never come true, but she had no clue that he was actually alive and that the prophecy was being played out.

 I didn’t really see any big differences between the text and the movie. The plot was the same, and the characters matched up for the most part. The only real difference I saw was the language. The movie incorporated a more modern language version of the text, making the entire thing easier to understand.

 Oedipus the King was OK. The plot was pretty interesting, especially around the end. The way in which it is played out though, was pretty boring. I think that the major theme of this play is that you can not conquer fate itself. 

“Song for a Dark Girl”

Song for a Dark Girl is a powerful, heart-breaking poem. The theme is the isolation or solitude of the black culture. The story, or song, is about a black girl in the south who was beaten and hung from a tree. Langston also says that she is his lover, so there is obviously a strong relationship between the two. We can tell that it broke his heart because he says; “(Break the heart of me)”, twice in this poem.

There are many racial inequalities expressed in this poem. The most obvious is the fact that a black girl is beaten and naked, hanging from a tree in the Deep South. It is obvious that white people hanged her. We see more distinction between race in this quote; “I asked the white Lord Jesus what was the use of prayer.” Langston has lost hope in this part. Jesus is presented as white, and Langston doesn’t believe that a white Jesus could understand the struggles that black people have.

This poem also has many lyrical qualities. “Way Down South in Dixie,” is repeated at the beginning of every stanza. This creates repetition, which is a characteristic of songs. Things in parenthesis, “(Break the heart of me)” and “(Bruised body high in the air)”, are often seen in songs. The parenthesis represent that another person or background singer is singing those lines. There is also a rhyme scheme that is very lyrical, and it makes the poem flow like a song. The most obvious lyrical quality is the title “Song for a Dark Girl.” We know this poem is supposed to be a song simply because of the title.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own Society” is a poem about isolation. In a way, you could even say it was about Emily herself.

“The Soul selects her own Society-/Then-shuts the Door-”

• “The Soul” is the subject of the poem. It is personified here by being called her, and by selecting.
• The Society that the Soul picks is one that is shut off from the world. We can tell this by the quote “Then -shuts the door-“
• Soul, Society, and Door are all capitalized, so they’re obviously important.
• dashes surround “shuts the Door” the fact that the soul is isolated and shut off from the world is important.

“To her divine Majority-/Present no more-”

• The soul, or Emily, will not present herself to the majority of people anymore.
• In this part, we see even more isolation.
• Majority is probably capitalized because it represents people.

“Unmoved-she notes the Chariots -pausing-/At her low Gate”

• Here, she is unmoved. So she hasn’t come out of her secluded place, or opened her door.
• The chariots represent people. They are pausing at her window, or gate, trying to see what she is doing out of curiosity.

“Unmoved-an Emperor be kneeling/Upon her mat”

• Here again, she is unmoved and is still secluded.
• I’m not sure what the Emperor is supposed to represent, but she isn’t letting him in, which is why he is still upon her mat.

“I’ve known her-from an ample nation-/Choose One-”

• These lines don’t really make sense to me. Maybe it’s Emily referring to her past self that was not so secluded. 

“Then-close the Valves of her attention-/Like Stone-”

• She closes her attention to all things. 
• A simile is used, saying her attention is closed off like stone. Stone is heavy and hard to move, and so is the barrier on the attention of her soul. Total seclusion.

Shakespeare Poetry

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought” (Sonnet 30)

To understand this poem, I read it twice, and the second time I read it more carefully. I looked up words that I didn’t know, and I used a little paraphrasing.

When Shakespeare remembers his past, he becomes sorrowful thinking about missed opportunities. But, when he thinks of his dear friend who this poem is written to, “all losses are restored and sorrows end.”

Who is this poem written to? Just a friend or a lover?
Why is Shakespeare’s past so full of sorrow? What opportunities did he miss?

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (sonnet 73)

I read this poem twice and thought about it a lot in order to sort of understand it.

He is talking about he time when fall turns into winter and the leaves die. I think he might be referring to death, because he mentions a deathbed.

This poem really confused me. I really did not understand the meaning of this poem, and honestly I still do not get it. I can not tell what the heck Shakespeare is talking about. The older diction that uses really confuses me. I hate poetry, and I’ve never really liked Shakespeare at all.

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Sonnet 130)

Shakespeare insults the other poets of the time. They were romantic, but their descriptions of beauty were very unrealistic. Shakespeare was saying that his wife, or lover, was not perfect, but he loved her regardless.

Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean-Well Lighted Place”

Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” has an underlying theme that life is nothingness. The story often presents that life contains no meaning and that man is just an insignificant speck in an expansive sea of nothingness. This is highlighted by the older waiter and the old deaf man, so it’s as if life is nothingness to the older characters, but the younger characters, such as the young waiter, still have hope that life has meaning. The old man that is sitting at the café doesn’t want to go home, not even after closing. This is because his lonely home is a constant reminder that his life is meaningless. Another example of the theme of nothingness is when the older waiter says “It was nothing and man was nothing too.” In this part, he directly says that man is nothing. This waiter also inserts the Spanish word for nothing, “Nada”, into the Lord’s Prayer a total of 17 times, which indicates that religion is also nothingness. Instead of saying, “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” the old waiter says, “Our nada who art in nada,” which knocks out God and the idea of Heaven in one breath. The café is the only representation of something opposite of nothingness: cleanliness and good lighting suggest clarity whereas nothingness is dark and confusing. The café is so different from the nothingness that it provides a refuge from despair for the lonely. Although life and man are nothing, light, cleanliness, and order can keep despair under control. 

“The Tell-Tale Heart”

In Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” the unnamed narrator claims to us that he is nervous, but that he is not a mad man and he confesses a murder. During the story the narrator experiences several emotions. First of all, he is very defensive. He is convinced that he is not crazy, and the details of his story back his claim. I believe that the narrator was not criminally insane. First of all, he did not kill for greed, revenge, or anger. He simply killed because he the man had a pale blue eye that bothered him. The old man couldn’t help the fact that his eye was pale blue; for all we know it could have been a medical condition. This makes him sound like he is insane, but other parts of his story prove otherwise. The narrator also observed the man while he was sleeping for seven days straight. This makes me believe that the murder was not a moment of insanity, but rather a planned out plot to kill. After our narrator kills the old man, he feels a sense of pleasure with himself. He says that he “smiled gaily” after the murder, he was happy after this horrible deed. This tells me that he’s not crazy. He wanted to murder this man, and so he did. To conceal the body, the narrator disassembled it and put it underneath the floorboards. The fact that he disassembled the body also leads me to believe that he was not insane. He felt no remorse over the death of this man. If the murder was an act of insanity, he would have become nervous immediately after he stopped hearing the man’s heart beating, but he didn’t. Even at the end, the narrator was not insane, like he said, he was simply nervous. It’s understandable; the cops were in the very room that the murder took place in. They wouldn’t leave, making the tension and nervousness that the narrator felt heightens. Finally he started to feel guilt. The man’s heart beating in his head was a representation of this guilt, and it drove him to confess his horrible deed. In his final moments, the narrator was not insane, he was just nervous. 

“A&P” by John Updike

Although “A&P” seems simple at first, it really has a deeper theme of conformity and rebellion. The main character, Sammy, has a high sense of confidence. He believes that he is above the “sheep” and “house slaves” that browse the A&P. He also believes that he is above his fellow A&P workers because he is still young and has a chance to make a better life for himself. In a sense, the A&P is a representation of conformity the corporate system: an employee, Stokesle, is trying to move up in the system, and the manager, Lengel, hides all day “behind a door marked MANAGER.” Sammy is so confident in his youth and ability to get out of the corporate system, but all of his confidence is taken away when three young girls in nothing but swimsuits walk into the store. With their rebellion to the system of the store, everything is disrupted. They walk the wrong way and distract the men. Sammy is very distracted by one girl who he calls “Queenie.” When they are checking out, the manager comes out and chastises them for breaking the rules of the system. Sammy disapproves of the accusations and decides to rebel against the system in order to stand up for and impress the beautiful girls. In doing this, he quits his job and walks out of the store. The girls are already gone, and so is all of his confidence. Sammy rebelled against the A&P conformity for lust, but he is now left with nothing. Where will he go now?