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COMPULSORY READINGS
A Refusal to mourn by Dylan Thomas Never until the mankind making Bird beast and flower Fathering and all humbling darkness Tells with silence the last light breaking And the still hour Is come of the sea tumbling in harness And I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead And the synagogue of the ear of corn Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound Or sow my salt seed In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn The majesty and burning of the child's death. I shall not murder The mankind of her going with a grave truth Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath With any further Elegy of innocence and youth. Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, Robed in the long friends, The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water Of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other. Jamás hasta que la humanidad hacedora de la bestia, el pájaro y la flor, del procrear y toda la oscuridad humillante, diga con el silencio la última luz rompiente y la hora tranquila haya venido desde el mar brincando en su montura, y yo deba penetrar de nuevo en el redondo Zion de la burbuja de agua y en la sinagoga de la espiga dejaré que la sombra de un sonido rece o sembraré mi simiente de sal en un mínimo valle de cilicio, por lamentar
la majestad y el arder de esta muerte de niña. No asesinaré la humanidad de su partida con una verdad grave ni blasfemaré por las estaciones del aliento con alguna tardía elegía de inocencia y juventud. Honda, con los primeros muertos yace la hija de Londres ataviada por los amigos perdurables los granos sin edad, las venas oscuras de su madre, secreta junto al agua sin quejas del Támesis jinete. Tras la primera muerte ya no hay otra.
Type Poem
Rhyme abc‐abc
Theme The death, by fire, of a child(young girl) and its wider
significance
Present
participles
functining as
adjectives:
Fathering, humbling, tumbling...
Metaphors My salt seed, valley of sackcloth, a grave truth , robed in the
long firends, the dard veins of the mother, the mankind of
her(London’s daughter) going...
Synesthesia The shadow of a sound, my salt seed...
Notes The unmourning water is refered to the river Thames.
The poem is a big paradox, he says that is not going to mourn
but does it.
my salt seed combines the two processes or events central to the poem: death (and mourning) and rebirth (and engendering). ‘Salt’ connotes tears shed in grief, ‘seed’ suggests the creation of life. valley of sackcloth suggests the ‘valley of tears’ (or life) one leaves when one dies and the cloth or garment worn by mourners or penitents. a grave truth takes an adjective, grave, usually associated with certain collocations or dead metaphors (‘a grave responsibility’, ‘a grave mistake’) and literalizes the adjective: in the context of the poem, a word like grave inevitably evokes/invokes a tomb, burial, coffin – thus, literally, death.
Ashtray From our superior vantage point, we can clearly see into a sort of dugout, possibly a shell crater, a "nest" of soldiers. They lie heaped together, wearing the camouflage "battle dress" intended for "winter warfare." They are in hideously contorted positions, all dead. We can make out at least eight bodies. These uniforms were designed to be used in guerilla warfare on the country's only snow-covered mountain peak. The fact that these poor soldiers are wearing them here, on the plain, gives further proof, if proof were necessary, either of the childishness and hopeless impracticality of this inscrutable people, our opponents, or of the sad corruption of their leaders. Central theme The effects of war, armed aggression of war and its human consequences, the shape suggest division: Items listed on the left (western,industrialized, modern) and events described on the right (Non‐western, rural backward) Co‐text The absence of specific context makes it easier for the reader to relate the poem to other wars, places and people. Based on Vietnam War Metaphors Words in the left (object from her desktop) Simile Like fish scales Style It tries to imitate a news bulletin gooseneck lamp: the lamp connects to the full moon and the light shed by both. The moon sheds „little‟ or „poor‟ light, suggesting the lamp also gives off dim illumination. In English, the expression „to shed light‟ has a literal and a figurative sense, meaning both to shed physical light in darkened surroundings and also „to clarify or illuminate‟ a situation or mystery. typewriter: the typewriter rows of keys anticipate the image of “those small, peculiarly shaped terraces”, connecting a contemporary (and urban?) object to a timeless (“What endless labor…”) and rural activity. pile of mss.: if we assume manuscripts to be white in colour, then this would connect to the image of the “white, calcareous, and shaly” soil. The last adjective – shaly – refers to “soft finely stratified rock […] consisting of consolidated mud or clay” ( Concise Oxford Dictionary ) and also reinforces the image of sheets of paper piled on top of one another. typed sheets: again, this reaches out to the image of “a large rectangular „field‟ […]. It is dark‐ speckled”, which recalls a sheet of paper covered in typed words resembling “dark‐speckled” marks. envelopes: the visual parallel is somewhat less obvious here, though references to „communications‟, „industrialization‟ and „sign‐boards‟ suggest a continued attempt to connect the practice of written communication to the environment (= entorno ) or world represented in the right‐hand text. ( Suggestion: you may not agree with this reading and see no connection at all between the left‐hand words and right‐hand envelopes. If this is your position, ask yourself, “what effect does this sudden break in connection between words and text produce? how should we interpret it?”).
ink‐bottle: the “mysterious, oddly shaped, black structure” for me echoes the shape of the ink‐ bottle I imagine the speaker to have on his/her desk or at least within his/her field of vision as h/she writes the “12 o‟clock news”. The blackness of the ink picks up the „little light‟ and „poor visibility‟ of the first paragraph. Here we are told that the moonlight is „feeble‟. The absence of proper illumination seems to suggest an inability to understand or relate to the events the speaker is describing. typewriter eraser: again, the imagistic or visual connections here are elusive. On the other hand, the presence of an eraser seems to anticipate the „erasure‟ of the life of the unicyclist‐courier. Note how indirectly the death of the cyclist is conveyed: “he appears to be – rather, to have been – a unicyclist courier, who may have met his end […]. Alive, he would have been …”. Death is expressed through the past, modal and conditional forms of the verb, rather than the simple present or a declarative statement. Note also that the typewriter eraser belongs to the left‐hand margin, the space most closely associated with the western speaker of the poem. Is the speaker suggesting that the west is responsible for the death of the cyclist yet, through the use of the conditional tense, refusing to accept responsibility? Is this a critique of western‐style (especially American) reporting which aims to be as „balanced‟ or „impartial‟ as possible? ashtray: perhaps the most striking equivalence between left‐ and right‐hand texts. The “„nest‟ of soldiers” lying “heaped together” and “in hideously contorted positions, all dead” vividly mirrors the image of an ashtray full of half‐smoked cigarettes or cigarette butts (= colillas ). Is the speaker saying that the dead war victims have no more significance for the west than cigarettes in an ashtray? Or is there another (implicit) attempt to implicate the west in the horrors of the war that it is perpetrating on “the elusive natives”? Note that the poem ends here with an unequivocal image of death, a theme which has only been suggested in previous „paragraphs‟. It‟s almost as if “12 O‟Clock News” has been building up to this final moment to give us the message: war kills. ( Suggestion: look for other examples suggesting death, e.g. the moon in the first paragraph “could be dead;” the reference to the landslide (= corrimiento de tierra ) in the second paragraph which appears to have produced “no casualties”; or the reference to the cemetery in the third paragraph). NOTES This poem seems to be about armed aggression or war and its human consequences. The shape of the poem itself suggests division and conflict: the items listed on the left are western, industrialized, modern, while the scenes and events described on the right are non‐western, rural, backward (according to the speaker). However, on closer reading this „binary opposition‟ is subverted by the seeming connections between the two halves of the poem indicated in the previous answer. The them/us binary suggested by the imperialist, condescending tone of the speaker (“this people”, “the elusive natives”, “From our superior vantage position”, etc.) and the visually separate texts, is undermined by the poem‟s strategy to make connections between its left and right hand. Is the poem, through its integrating strategy, suggesting that art (the attempt to give shape to experience) can redeem us from atrocities such as war? Text: even though there are no explicit references to a particular time, place or characters, Bishop‟s poem does allow us to locate ourselves: the title – “12 O‟Clock News” – invites us to situate ourselves in front of the TV or the radio listening to a news bulletin. This is not an event that could take place, for instance, in the desert or the Arctic Circle or in a swimming pool or an operating theatre (= sala de cirujía ). Bishop connects us to 20th century technology and casts the reader as the recipient/consumer of a particular product, probably from within his/her own home: the news bulletin and, within that, the war dispatch. This is a very familiar experience – think of news coverage of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. In fact, the absence of a specific
of being courted and despised; deep from raw throats a senseless order floats all over town. A rooster gloats over our beds from rusty irons sheds and fences made from old bedsteads, over our churches where the tin rooster perches, over our little wooden northern houses, making sallies from all the muddy alleys, marking out maps like Rand McNally's: glass-headed pins, oil-golds and copper greens, anthracite blues, alizarins, each one an active displacement in perspective; each screaming, "This is where I live!" Each screaming "Get up! Stop dreaming!" Roosters, what are you projecting? You, whom the Greeks elected to shoot at on a post, who struggled when sacrificed, you whom they labeled "Very combative..." what right have you to give commands and tell us how to live, cry "Here!" and "Here!" and wake us here where are unwanted love, conceit and war? The crown of red set on your little head is charged with all your fighting blood Yes, that excrescence makes a most virile presence, plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence Now in mid-air by two they fight each other. Down comes a first flame-feather, and one is flying, with raging heroism defying even the sensation of dying. And one has fallen but still above the town his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down; and what he sung
no matter. He is flung on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung with his dead wives with open, bloody eyes, while those metallic feathers oxidize. St. Peter's sin was worse than that of Magdalen whose sin was of the flesh alone; of spirit, Peter's, falling, beneath the flares, among the "servants and officers." Old holy sculpture could set it all together in one small scene, past and future: Christ stands amazed, Peter, two fingers raised to surprised lips, both as if dazed. But in between a little cock is seen carved on a dim column in the travertine, explained by gallus canit; flet Petrus underneath it, There is inescapable hope, the pivot; yes, and there Peter's tears run down our chanticleer's sides and gem his spurs. Tear-encrusted thick as a medieval relic he waits. Poor Peter, heart-sick, still cannot guess those cock-a-doodles yet might bless, his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness, a new weathervane on basilica and barn, and that outside the Lateran there would always be a bronze cock on a porphyry pillar so the people and the Pope might see that event the Prince of the Apostles long since had been forgiven, and to convince all the assembly that "Deny deny deny" is not all the roosters cry. In the morning a low light is floating in the backyard, and gilding
Synesthesia Gliding the tiny floating/ swallow’s belly/ and lines of pink cloud in the sky (marries visual to the tactile) NOTES Male culture is certainly represented as brutal, warlike and treacherous. However, this stereotypical masculinity gives way to a more nuanced ( =matizado ) portrayal of the masculine: the rooster image is ultimately linked to the theme of repentance (“ gallus canit;/flet Petrus ” stanza 32 ) and forgiveness (“his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness” stanza 35 ). Also, a more feminized morning takes over from the harshly masculine dawn, or appears to take over… The last line is ambiguous – are we among „enemies‟ or „friends‟? This ambiguity seems to be announced in the move away from the rigid masculine stereotype the roosters initially represent and the introduction of a gentler, alternative masculinity symbolized by a weeping and repentant Peter and a forgiving Christ.
- Cock‟ is a synonym for rooster but is also slang for penis.
- (Gun‐metal) blue, green‐gold (medals), (crown of) red, metallic… all these colours are associated with a distinctly masculine hierarchy, military or otherwise (gun‐metal, medals, crown). The „red‟ further connotes blood, violence, death. The colours are male by association in the poem since they are linked exclusively to the hyper‐masculine roosters.
- The roosters have „wives‟ or hens who initially are „rustling‟ and „admiring‟ and then eventually challenge the male birds ( stanzas 18 + 19 ); also, the speaker tells us that Magdalen‟s „sin‟ is more acceptable than Peter‟s. It is in the final five stanzas that we find a substantial challenge to the male order. The illumination begins to change in stanza 40 (“a low light is floating”) and „gild[s] the tiny/floating swallow‟s belly/and lines of pink cloud in the sky” (stanza 42). The latter stanza combines the pink cloud with the „floating belly‟ of the minuscule swallow, creating a distinctly feminized image (small, soft, pink) which ***** synesthetically marries the visual to the tactile. *Synesthesia: the evocation of one sense in terms of another, e.g. a smooth sound, a warm colour.
- For the speaker, Peter‟s sin is one “of spirit” – of denial and treachery. That the speaker considers it worse that Magdalen‟s sin “of the flesh alone” suggests an attempt to reclaim women‟s bodies a) for women and perhaps also to rescue them b) from patriarchal moral standards.
- On one level, Peter‟s story ends in stanza 39: “„Deny deny deny‟/is not all the roosters cry”. In other words, the roosters should not only be associated with treachery and denial. They also evoke (as revealed in the preceding stanzas) repentance and forgiveness. Within the body of the poem, Peter‟s story stands in the middle of, and provides a bridge between the representation of a stark, brutal masculinity and a scenario in which the feminine seems to prevail through the quiet, pink morning. Peter – and by association, the roosters – seems to reach out to a less Manichean (= manicheista ) and more positive potential masculinity. The final line of the poem, however, ends on an ambiguous note.
“IN THE WAITING ROOM BY ELIZABETH
BISHOP”
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918. I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world. into cold, blue-black space. But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. Why should you be one, too? I scarcely dared to look to see what it was I was. I gave a sidelong glance --I couldn't look any higher-- at shadowy gray knees, trousers and skirts and boots and different pairs of hands lying under the lamps. I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen. Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone? What similarities boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts held us all together or made us all just one? How I didn't know any word for it how "unlikely"... How had I come to be here, like them, and overhear a cry of pain that could have got loud and worse but hadn't? The waiting room was bright and too hot. It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another. Then I was back in it. The War was on. Outside, in Worcester, Massachusetts, were night and slush and cold, and it was still the fifth of February, 1918.
‐ Sammy: Pecola’s older brother
‐ Maureen: New girl at school with fair beauty.
Plot summary:
Plot SummaryClaudia MacTeer recounts the events of the year that lead up to
her best friend's, Pecola Breedlove's, rape and the death of herbaby. The year
is 1941, and Claudia remembers that no marigolds bloomed that year. She
thought at the time that it was because of Pecola's rape by her father, Cholly
Breedlove, that no marigolds bloomed.Her memories go back to the fall of
1940 (one year before the marigolds did not bloom). Claudia and her older
sister, Frieda, live in a home that takes in borders. Mr. Henry moves in and
flatters the young girls by telling them they look like Ginger Rogers and Greta
Garbo. Soon after that, a young girl named Pecola moves in with them, as
ordered by the county. She will live there until the county can find a better
home for her, as her father, Cholly, burnt down her old home. Pecola and the
two girls become friends and go through many experiences together, including
Pecola getting her first period.Pecola's family background is then described.
Her parents, Pauline and Cholly Breedlove, have a bad marriage. Her mother is
alwaysworking hard and nagging Cholly, while Cholly is always coming home
drunk and beating Pauline. They yell and fight, and Pecola and her brother,
Sammy, each look for an escape in their own ways. Sammy will frequently run
away to get away from his family. Pecola meanwhile, prays that her eyes will
turn into a beautiful blue color. She thinks that if her eyes were blue, things
would be different - they would be pretty, and more than that, she would be
pretty. Pecola becomes obsessed in her quest for blue eyes.Winter arrives and
Claudia tells of a new girl, named Maureen Peal, who comes to their school.
Maureen is revered for her "white" looks. She has long hair, green eyes, light
skin, and nice clothes. She is very popular with teachers and other classmates.
However, Claudia is disgusted with her. Claudia is very turned off from the part
of her culture that seems to favor "white" things, or things that resemble white
people. Pecola, on the other hand, is obsessed with white ways, and wants to
look white herself. She wishes she had blonde hair and blue eyes, and is
frequently found admiring Shirley Temple's picture on the cups in Claudia's
house.The next section describes Geraldine, her son Junior, and their blue-
eyed black cat. Junior has Pecola come over one day. He meanly throws the cat
on Pecola and it scratches her. Pecola goes to leave Junior's house, but he does
not let her. The cat rubs against her leg and she is taken with its beautiful blue
eyes. Junior then takes the cat and starts swinging it around. Pecola goes to
save the cat by grabbing Junior, but Junior throws the cat and it lands against
the window. Geraldine walks in and Junior blames the cat's death on poor
Pecola.Spring arrives and Claudia tells of how Mr. Henry touched Frieda's
breasts and then was beaten by their father. The two girls go to visit Pecola in
her new house, a downstairs apartment. Above, there are three prostitutes,
Marie, China, and Poland, whom Pecola often visits and talks with.Pauline
Breedlove's younger years are described. It explains how she would often go to
the movies, and because of this eventually became fascinated with Hollywood
ideals of beauty. She saw famous movie stars like Jean Harlow as true
representations of beauty, and anything straying from that was not deemed
beautiful. She even thought her own daughter, Pecola, was ugly. This is why
Pauline treated the daughter of the people she worked for, the Fishers, like she
was her own daughter. She had blonde curls and blue eyes, and Pauline
became absorbed with their white lifestyle. It was the closest she could get to
having it herself.Cholly Breedlove's background is then explained. He is
abandoned by his mother and father and is raised by his great Aunt Jimmy,
who later dies. Cholly has his first sexual experience with Darlene. They are
caught in the woods by two white men and Cholly is humiliated. He thinks
Darlene might be pregnant so he runs away to Macon, Georgia to try and find
his real father. He finds him, but discovers that his father is a drunk and a
gambler who wants nothing to do with Cholly. Cholly runs to Kentucky where
he meets and marries Pauline. They eventually have two children, Sammy and
Pecola.The rape of Pecola by her father is then described. Cholly comes home
drunk one afternoon and sees Pecola in the kitchen washing dishes. She
reminds him for a moment of his wife, Pauline, and in a fit of confusion and
love, he rapes his daughter. He leaves her on the kitchen floor feeling ashamed
and alone.The character of Elihue Micah Whitcomb (Soaphead Church) is
introduced. He is a psychic healer of sorts, who hates people. He comes from a
racially mixed family; he is part white and part Chinese, which accounts for his
attitude of superiority over others. Pecola visits him one day, and asks him to
make her wish come true of having blue eyes. He tricks her into poisoning an
old, sick dog that he hates. He tells Pecola that if the dog behaves strangely,
then that was a sign from God that her eyes would turn blue the next day.
After Pecola feeds the dog the strange meat (which had poison on it), she sees
that the dog chokes, falls down and dies. Horrified, she runs out of the
house.Summer comes and Claudia tells of how she and Frieda learned from
rumors and gossip that Pecola was pregnant by her father. Claudia feels so
badly for Pecola that she decides to not sell the marigold seeds she was
planning on selling for money for a bicycle. Instead, she and Frieda bury the
seeds and say that if the marigolds bloom, then everything would be fine. And
if not, then things would be bad.Pecola is left to talk to her only friend, an
imaginary friend about the new blue eyes that she thinks she now has. She is
only concerned that they are the bluest eyes in the world. She has driven
herself into a state of madness over these blue eyes, and she is all alone.
Claudia says that she saw Pecola after the babywas born and then died. Pecola
walks up and down the street flapping her arms, as if she was a bird that could
not fly. Pauline stillworks for white folks, Sammy ran away, and Cholly died in a
workhouse. Claudia finally says that the marigolds did not bloom because
some soil is just not meant for certain flowers.
HEART OF DARKNESS
Theme - The brutal exploitation of a region of Africa by a
European powers
- The untrustworthiness of appearences
- The moral/spiritual journey
- The lack of humanity towards other humans
Type Prose fiction novella, a narrator behind a narrator
Fictional narrative write in firs person
Language Is negative, revealing the narrator’s fear and mistrust
of the phisical and human enviroment. Marlow
condems the white man’s colonial enterprise,
comparing it to something devil-like
Simil As though a vel had been rent
Metaphor The seed of commonwealths
The thames Is refered as the old river
Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together
with a note saying that the wood is for them but that they should
approach cautiously. Shortly after the steamer has taken on the
firewood, it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship
is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the
safety of the forest. The African helmsman is killed before Marlow
frightens the natives away with the ship’s steam whistle. Not long after,
Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtz’s Inner Station, expecting to
find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as
they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine and informs
them that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims that
Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral
judgments as normal people. Apparently, Kurtz has established himself
as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in the
surrounding territory in search of ivory. The collection of severed heads
adorning the fence posts around the station attests to his “methods.”
The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a
large group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds
them. Kurtz speaks to them, and the natives disappear into the woods.
The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard the steamer. A
beautiful native woman, apparently Kurtz’s mistress, appears on the
shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is
somehow involved with Kurtz and has caused trouble before through
her influence over him. The Russian reveals to Marlow, after swearing
him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to
make them believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and
leave him to his plans. The Russian then leaves by canoe, fearing the
displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in the night, and Marlow
goes out in search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the
native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to return to the ship.
They set off down the river the next morning, but Kurtz’s health is
failing fast.
Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts
Marlow with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent
pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message
that says, “Exterminate all the brutes!” The steamer breaks down, and
they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—“The
horror! The horror!”—in the presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow
falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he returns to Europe
and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his fiancée). She is still in mourning,
even though it has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and she praises
him as a paragon of virtue and achievement. She asks what his last
words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her illusions
with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name.
