Blog Post #3 Topic #3

             Insanity is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the unsoundness of mind or the lack of ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility.”  This definition leaves out who determines if someone is insane; a psychiatrist certainly has the credentials to determine if someone is mentally unstable due to their extensive knowledge of the psyche. However, people are condemned as insane by the public if their actions or words do not comply with the social norms of the time. Often, actions that are contrary to public opinion are harshly criticized, leading to cyber-bullying, riots, and actual mental instability of the person who promoted change.

            In the 20^th and 21^st century, the feminist movement has made great advances for the equality of women. In 1920, women finally obtained the right to vote and until 2016, women were not allowed to serve in combat for the US. Due to the patriarchal ideologies of our ancestors, women were seen as intellectually and physically inferior to men. Women who challenge this ideal are still seen as “insane” by some men that believe they are superior, leading to the fact that Blanche’s insanity is justified.

            Blanche came to visit her sister and husband in New Orleans after her husband commits suicide because Blanche is disgusted by the fact that he is homosexual. Blanche is extremely insecure and is always asking Stella about her appearance because her mind is filled with thoughts that her appearance wasn’t enough to keep her husband’s attention and that her disgust drove him to commit suicide. Blanche’s anxiety and grief lead to alcoholism and dangerous arguments with Stella’s husband.

            The play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” is ironic in the way the characters perceive insanity. Blanche turns to alcoholism and the company of strangers because of her grief. The other characters in the play do not show any compassion to Blanche or any actions to help her stop drinking. Instead, she is left to her downward spiral until she is sent off to a mental institution because Stanley believes she is insane. If Stanley was to lose Stella, his job, his house, and his reputation, he probably would not be sent to a mental institution because he is just drinking to get over his grief. Furthermore, no one comes to examine her medically, but Stanley is a man so he must be right in his assumptions about Blanche’s mental health. In addition, Stanley is threatened by Blanche because of her class status, leading to dangerous arguments between both characters. When she loses the Southern estate, Belle Reve, due to her distress form her husband’s death, Stanley is outraged. Stanley was hoping that he would inherit the estate after both Stella and Blanche passed away or deemed physically unfit to take care of the property. Stanley is a social climber and he was enraged that a woman was ranked higher than him. He raped Blanche to assert his dominance physically because he could not do so in social status. Blanche was born into that social class so she shouldn’t be Stanley’s target due to his insecurity about his own social standing. Her reaction to rape cannot be perceived as insane because humans process actions in different ways. Blanche never expected her sister’s husband to rape her when she came to New Orleans to seek comfort, not to be sent to a mental institution.

WC:582

             

Blog post #2 topic #2

In Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” the author creates a imagist poem based at a Metro Station, viewing people pass by through possible rain, calling them apparitions and comparing them to petals on a “wet, black bough.” He follows the Imagist Manifesto through the use of free verse, diction, and  rhythm, all vital rules for Imagist poetry.

Pound’s uses of free verse allows space for ambiguity. The imagist manifesto suggests that a poet should not be contained, rather they should be free to challenge and take risks, because poetry cannot be defined to one set format. Pound was very interested in Chinese and Japanese poetry and therefore followed a similar to  format to a haiku, yet Pound flips it and does his own rendition of it, further exemplifying this idea of free verse writing. Instead of four lines, Pound uses two. Although the poem is in free verse, it also must have rhythm.

Pound argues that the Imagist poet must also “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” With this in mind, Pound seems to use a rhythm that is long and flows within each lines. The repetitive use of the sound in the line “wet, black bough” compliments it’s previous line which is longer and uses “apparition,” “faces,” and “crowd” to keep a consistent flow throughout the poem.

Another rule of the Imagist Manifesto is that a poet should “use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something.” Anything that isn’t adding to the poem is only taking away. Therefore, Pound’s diction is all purposely chosen, for each word does not only have one meaning. An “apparition” is not only a ghost, but humans that are blurred do to the wet window, or the  “wet, black bough.” Pound accomplishes painting an image with minimal words, selecting each word purposely to add on to the poem and furthermore creating a new form of poetry, focused on minimal language, with a power impact.

blog post #2

Blog post #2

“A Rose for Emily” is a story written by William Faulkner in 1930. The story opens with the scene of the funeral of Emily Grierson, who is the last member of a once great family. Then it proceeds to a series of narrator's memories of Emily's old-fashioned and unusual behavior throughout the years, regarding her father and husband. The story is set in the South after the Civil War, Emily’s family life remains powerful since they refuse to pay taxes to Jefferson and Emily was able to purchased arsenic without offering real explanations. However, the prestige of the family casts controls on Emily’s life. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town . . .” Emily was never allowed to date anyone with a lower hierarchy by her father, and even after her father is dead, she was also criticized by the townspeople when she was in a relationship with Homer Barron. The superior power of Emily has become a duty and obligation to Emily. Similarly, George Orwell also depicts the power dynamics that have fallen to be a duty and obligation in the story “Shooting an Elephant”.

In “Shooting an Elephant”，the narrator is the police officer of Moulmein, a town in the British colony of Burma. Although he is a military occupier, he wrote: “I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I got out of it the better.” One day, an elephant appeared in the town. It ravaged the bazaar and killed an Indian man. As the ruler of the town, the narrator was forced to kill the elephant with a rifle under the great “expectations” of the local people, despite that he did not want to kill it at all. He described that he was often “an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so”, which makes the killing of the elephant “the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me”. In that situation, his superior power actually destroyed his freedom to follow his will and moral belief. As an anti-imperialist writer, George Orwell used the elephant’s death as a metaphor to symbolize the slow decline of British imperialism in Burma and how they eventually died off by describing the elephant was laying “powerless to move and yet powerless to die.”

In “A Rose for Emily” and “Shooting an Elephant”, although the power dynamics of Southern whites and that of Englishman seemed to be superior compared to the other people in the setting, their power has become a duty and an obligation. The power was conflicted by a new social trend and indicated that the more civilized one would take place of the old-fashioned one someday.

Blog Post 2

In the short stories, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, the power dynamics of the elite or superior group can be seen. The Southern Whites and the English Officers demonstrated their power in different ways so the outcomes of their power reflects this.

“A Rose for Emily” took place in Post-Civil War South, a time where the South was going through great changes, but even with these changes, the power over black people was still a present issue. In the story, there was only one black character, Tobe, the combined gardener and cook for Emily. Slavery had been abolished in 1865, but by the end of the story’s timeline in 1894, the residues of slavery were still present. Tobe had very small roles in the story, and the little we know of him comes from commentary from the town. He was silent not only in the story, but in his every day life. One line says, “He talked to no one, probably, not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.” He was basically a prop in the story, and a slave without the title. Slaves were to do all that their masters command them, and usually only spoke when they were told to speak. Given the way Tobe acts in the story, it shows how even after the abolition of slavery, black people were still treated as slaves.

“Shooting an Elephant” was set in Lower Burma during the 1930s. This was a time when the English were still colonizing the area, and had complete power over the Burmese. For the past couple of years, the Burmese had lead rebellion fights against the British, and their dislike of the them only grew. This can be seen in the power dynamic between Orwell and the Burmese in the story. Orwell struggles to maintain his authority over the people, and wants to not look like a fool. Thus, he tries to make himself look superior by using his gun as a way to show his power. However, he only does this because the Burmese were prompting him to do it. He did not want to do it, but he chose to give in and shoot the elephant. Despite the British colonizing the Burmese, the Burmese are the ones controlling Orwell, a British officer. This power dynamic shows how the Burmese were starting to win in their fight against the British, and their control over their land is increasing. Orwell had these fears and he described them in, “The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill.” He did not want to lose that power so he did what he could to avoid it, even if it meant doing something crazy.

Blog 2: Topic #1

The lust for power drives many forces to become demeaning and vulgar. In Faulkner’s
A Rose for Emily” and Orwell’s” Shooting and Elephant” we are able to witness the influence of power and hierarchy in the historical significant situations the characters are placed in.

            Both authors undermine colored individuals to establish white power. At the time of the stories’ plots in the early 1900’s segregation and imperialism were at climactic points in their respective areas. Orwell points out the indefinite and unimportant identity of Emily’s servant, an African American man. He has no direct role in the plot as he is his “without information.” His sole identity as a “doddering negro” was to go to the market for Emily, a white, articulates the dearth of respect he has as a human being, common for a segregated, post-civil war southern society. Faulkner, likewise, undermines the Burma coolie that gets killed by the elephant as insignificant as he leaves his body as if it was an object that was mangled. The white officer shows no respect for the dead man and compares him to a “skinless rabbit”. This imperialistic attitude in Faulkner paints way for the officer to depreciate the “dark Dravidian” of Burma and establish white hierarchy.

Orwell displays an unveiled need of supremacy from an English imperialist over the Burma Indians, while Faulkner focuses on the indirect authority of the townspeople as white southerners over the colored servant. Orwell is in a fixed situation where he kills an elephant in the name of up keeping the hierarchy of his position as a white officer. He is fearful the crowd will “laugh” at him undermining his authority. If he failed to take any action it would emphasize the “white man’s futility in the east.” Therefore in order to “avoid looking like a fool” the narrator feels obligated to the “yellow faces” and to do as the pleased. The narrators actions are driven as a result of maintaining this hierarchical position as an imperialist over the darker colored natives. He would not have committed such a drastic “murder” if it had not been a necessary part of the “mask [he]… grows to fit.” In contrast, Orwell shows the power dynamic being more concealed. This post-civil war era represents a concealing discrimination against the African Americans. After being freed they are not given direct belittling treatment yet the servant still is under the white as he works for Emily and is responsible to run her errands by going to the “marke.” There is no talk of outright disrespect of the “negro” but again he is seen without title and any sense of authority or priority as after Emily’s death he “disappears.” Orwell showcases this hidden post-civil war segregation of power  through the representation of the black man but Faulkner verbalizes this authority of the colonial white man.

Orwell and Faulkner point out the atmosphere undermining colored individuals in the event of segregation and imperialism that is occurring in the south and in Burma respectively. Yet Faulkner focuses more on a racial imperialistic attitude throughout to establish white power whereas Orwell primarily focuses on concealing this division between the two colors of individuals.

WC:530

Blog Post #2 Topic #2 Amy Joo

In a short poem called “In a Station of the Metro,” Ezra Pound conforms to the Imagist manifesto by using the direct and unornamented language and by organizing the lines in a free verse.

With the use of the direct and unornamented language, Pound displays the setting of the poem and the objects he sees there. Thus, we can see that the poem will be about the narrator’s perspectives on a station of the Metro just through the title itself, and looking at the first line, we can directly picture a crowd of people using the transportation. The first word, “the apparition” (Pound) means the act of appearing. Solely the faces in the crowd, instead of the whole bodies, are in the process of being seen. Because the narrator is illustrating a big crowd of moving faces and stations of the Metro are the places where we get onto the Metro, we conclude that the narrator is in a moving object as well, most likely in a Metro. Thus, inside the Metro that is currently passing a station, the narrator sees a crowd of people busily walking towards or out of trains through the window. This is because generally the only part of the people we can easily notice out of windows is the face. Also, in the next sentence, he describes the petals on the bough. Just like the illustration of the faces from the perspective of the narrator looking at the station from a train window, only thing he can see is a quarter of a tree. The petals which are located at the similar height of a person are the “faces” of the trees, thereby proving that the narrator can see only a certain part of everything in the station and clarifying that the writing is based on his reflection upon what he sees through the Metro window. Thus, Pound’s concise language, carefully displaying the Imagist manifesto, allowed us to easily imagine the setting and the objects the main character witnesses.

Pound writes in free verse, instead of following certain rhymes and rhythms, in order to unornamentedly display the condition of the station of the Metro. With the shift in the line, Pound moves onto another object he sees from the window on the train. Pound depicts this in free verse in order to merely differentiate the objects that he notices in the station. In spite of focusing on ornamented language such as rhyming the poem with fixed forms and of implementing rhythms, he cuts the lines into two in order to feature a contrast between the two different types of “faces” the narrator sees from the outside of the train. He sees the passing faces of the people at the station and those of the trees. Therefore, the shift was deliberately used to represent a division in the objects rather than to show rhyme or rhythm in the poem, and his unique reason showed his conforming belief to the Imagist manifesto.

When we analyze the poem as a whole, we can imagine the busily moving big crowd of people and the wet petals.  The two combined objects also show that the poem is based on a morning on weekdays. A big number of people are constantly appearing, and the petals on the branches are still wet. Therefore, the people are most likely employees who work from 9 AM to 5 PM, and the water on the petals are dews formed in the early morning. By directly listing out what he sees in a station of the Metro, Pound clearly conforms to the Imagist manifesto. As the audience, we can depict the objects he sees in the station and imagine the place where he is seeing these objects from clearly due to his concise language and the use of free verse.

Word Count: 672