Love's Austere and Lonely Offices

Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” describes a son’s feelings as he remembers his father. It is evident that the speaker of the poem and his father were not close, and that little communication passed between the two, but the speaker realizes, upon remembering the winter Sunday mornings of his youth, that his father’s love was communicated through his actions. The poem mourns the idea that the son, who did not notice his father’s expressions of love, never returned them.

The poem begins with a line that sets the tone of the poem and establishes the subject. The father is developed here as well, portrayed as the one who is up working in the quiet of a cold early morning. His efforts and sacrifice are shown through a description of his hands, which are now aching and cracked from outdoor labor. The father’s sacrifice is important to the overall message of the poem. Then we learn that the father’s caring actions went unnoticed, as the first stanza comes to a close with the line, “no one ever thanked him.” Here, a shift from father to son occurs, and a sense of regret becomes apparent.

Hayden utilizes the sound of hard c’s to tie the stanza together. The consonant sound is repeated in the words clothes, blueblack, cold, cracked, ached, weekday, banked, and thanked. The sounds are very subtle, but each repetition brings a recollection of the images that came before. One could almost argue that the repetition of this sound is purposefully meant to resemble the cracking and popping of wood as a fire starts. Using phrases such as “weekday weather,” and “banked fires blaze,” Hayden utilizes alliteration to give the poem a sense of flow and style.

The consonant sounds continue into the second stanza when the speaker hears the “cold splintering, breaking.” Once the cold is slowly fading away, and warmth envelopes the house, the speaker wakes and performs the same tasks his father performed in the beginning lines of the poem. The similarity in the actions of the two characters connects father and son. The second stanza also ends with a powerful line in which the speaker introduces “chronic anger” into the calm and warm house. No further detail is given about the nature of the unrest that seems to trouble the speaker, but the reader can be certain that anger was a constant inhabitant of the house.

The last stanza shows that the son’s indifference to his father was ungrateful. No detail is given specifically about the indifference felt by the speaker, but the speaker acknowledges that his father tended to the son by driving out the cold and polishing the son’s shoes. These actions describe a caring and loving father. In the final two lines of the poem, the speaker acknowledges his ignorance to his father’s love. The speaker has discovered “love’s austere and lonely offices” looking back on those Sunday mornings. The nature of his father’s love has become apparent to him.

It is clear that as a child, the speaker doubted his father’s love. In his youth, he assumed that love was always expresses in certain ways, but once the speaker has grown significantly, he realizes that love can be expressed in many ways. Upon pondering his Sunday morning experiences, the speaker understands that his father expressed his love silently and indirectly through his actions. While the poem is sad and mournful, the speaker seems to resolve his feelings, now that he has realized what he did not before. (595)

Tender is the Night

I have chosen to read and write about Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The good experience I had reading The Great Gatsby is the main reason for my choosing of Tender is the Night. Last year, I discovered that I enjoyed Fitzgerald's writing style and language, which makes Tender is the Night and obvious choice.

I have not read past the first few pages just yet, but I plan on learning more about Rosemary soon. Also, still being in the beginning of the novel, I have not had any ideas hit me concerning my essay yet.

A Doll to Play With...

In A Doll's House, Nora, Torvald's wife, is portrayed in a few different ways.  This change in Nora is what drives the play, making the audience realize what is wrong with the relationship between her and her husband.  At the time the play was written, the way in which Nora and Torvald conducted their relationship would appear normal, but the play shows the audience why the relationship is in fact not normal at all.  Their relationship is not based on love or respect for each other.  Instead, Torvald sees Nora as a pet--as a doll he can play with, or a child he can lecture.  He does not respect her opinion and constantly criticizes her intelligence and competence.  

In the play, Nora starts out as a doll and a plaything.  She pretends to be less intelligent than she actually is.  She plays along with the role Torvald has given her.  She rejoices over trivial joys, such as macaroons, or other seemingly meaningless things.  She acts like a small child to fool Torvald in a sense.  She thinks she is happy, and feels that everything is normal, but this soon changes.  

Nora begins to realize by the end of the play, that she has not been happy pretending to be something she is not.  She begins to feel dissatisfied with her extreme dependence on Torvald.  She is sick of being treated like a doll.  Once she puts away her mask, she is able to see how unhappy she truly is.  She realizes what she must do to regain her self and her own independence.  She realizes that Torvald doesn't love her in the way that she thought he did, and that she too doesn't love him how she would like to.  

At the end of the play, audiences are given the opportunity to interpret Nora's motives in playing dumb throughout the play.  I believe that her motives lie in the fact that she did not want Torvald to ever suspect her of her forgery.  She was also locked into this role by Torvald, who forced her to act this way because of the way he treated her.  The play sends a powerful message about how relationships of the time were conducted, and probably spurred a great deal of thought about women and relationships at the time (388). 

The Role of Fate

Oedipus was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Upon learning of this prophecy, his father tried to kill him, in an attempt to avoid fate. Oedipus himself tried to avoid his fate unsuccessfully. Many characters in Greek mythology have attempted to do the same, including the gods themselves, but invariably, they have all failed miserably.

The subject of fate is one that intrigues and disturbs many. No one likes the idea that their lives have already been predetermined. There is no clear definition of fate. Does it obstruct free will? What is fate? Does fate control every step in ones life, or just the end results of ones actions?

I believe that fate is not a force that controls every action of an individual. I do not believe that fate is controlled by the gods. In Greek mythology, the gods are just as flawed as humans; the only difference is that they are more powerful. The gods are not exempt from the clutches of fate.

Fate determines where one's life will lead--where his actions will take him. No matter how hard one tries to avoid fate, they will fail. Oedipus tries to avoid his fate, but in the end, his predicted fate becomes a reality. There are many ways by which he could have led his life--many different paths he could have taken, but in the end, the all lead to the same place. Oedipus's tragic flaw is that he believes he is above fate. He believes that he will be able to determine his own path and disregard what the oracle predicted. However, I am forced to wonder whether or not this character flaw was a determining factor in his fate. Had he been born with a humbler sense of his personal power in terms of his own future, would his fate not have been so sad? The fact that Oedipus somehow presumed that he would be able to determine his own fate illustrates a certain arrogance--hubris. Disregarding the fact that his intentions were noble, in that he was attempting to avoid murdering his fathering and having sex with his mother, they were still arrogantly presumptive in the eyes of the gods. (370)

Salvation

Ilych lived his life properly

Heart of Darkness & Waiting for the Barbarians

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians are extremely similar in their themes, messages, and main characters. While the two novels are different and unique, they are also suprisingly similar. They parallel each other quite perfectly.

The Africans in Heart of Darkness serve as an inferior race, a sort of enemy, or foil to the Europeans. They are "savage" animals who are uncivilized and unsophisticated. The Africans represent a common goal--one that unifies the European race within Heart of Darkness. But are they truly uncivilized and unsophisticated? Are they truly an enemy? To assume so would be to assume that the European ideal is the only correct ideal, and that all other civilizations whose communal conduct do not lie in accordance with this ideal are barbaric. In actuality, however, the Europeans' conduct while in Africa, illustrated by Marlow's observations, is inhumane and uncivilized. The Africans are the ones that are civilized. The Europeans mask their savagery and their imperialism by claiming that they were attempting to civilize other nations, when in reality this "white advantage" is merely a mask concealing the European imperialist intentions. Just like the Africans in Heart of Darkness, the barbarians in Waiting for the Barbarians serve a similar purpose. They become the victims of the Empire. They also act as a force that effectively unifies the Empire. The Barbarians represent the common goal of the empire--the ferocious enemy. But, once again, are they truly an enemy? Is this Barbarian population, composed of unthreatening families and citizens, truly a threat that must be dealt with? No it is not. Just as the Europeans used their imperialist motives and their hopes to civilize the savage African population as a means of unifying its people, the Empire needed an enemy to band against, so they chose one that seemed probable--one that its citizens would unify themselves against.

The Magistrate and Marlow are also very similar. In the beginning of both novels, each makes observations of cruelty and injustice committed by their own races. Each believes and knows that what is being done is wrong. In both novels, we see the crimes against "inferior" races take place through the eyes of one of these two men. The reader sees the perspectives and opinions of both the Marlow and the Magistrate, which are emphasized and placed above all other observations in both novels.

Each novel brings to the reader's attention, the themes of racism and the hunger for power, as well as the importance of individual opinion. Through the slight implications of the insanity of both Kurtz and Colonel Joll, the reader learns that perhaps with too much power comes a drunkness of power. (451)

Waiting for the Barbarians

After reading the first seventy four pages of Waiting for the Barbarians, I am still waiting for the answers to the many questions I have concerning the events of the novel. This extremely interesting and intriguing novel has me wondering constantly about the barbarian girl, the Magistrate's mysterious dream, and especially the relationship between these two people. First, I will talk about the curious relationship the Magistrate and the girl seem to have. What is it that drove the Magistrate to take in the girl, bathe and sleep beside her every night, but never to indulge in a physical relationship that characterized many of the Magistrate's relationships, including the one with "The Star" at the inn. And then, when he has only a few days left with the girl before she will return to her home, he does finally "enter" her, but he adds that he does not care if he does so again, and notices that he seems to lose touch with the girl halfway through the act. What was it about the girl whom the Magistrate called ugly that captivated his mind? Second, I want to address the recurring dream the Magistrate experiences. What does the dream represent? What is its importance? Amusingly, when I read the last of the Magistrate's recountings of his dreams, I accidently combined the dream with the conversation he has with the barbarian girl in real life when he is done reflecting on his dream. For a few seconds, I believed that it was the girl in the dream giving the Magistrate the responses that were actually being given by the barbarian girl. Now, I believe that the girl in the dream might some way symbolize or represent the barbarian girl. Third, I will mention the barbarian girl and her decision to go home. Why did she choose to go home? What was she experiencing during the events described in parts two and three of the novel. While we know all about the Magistrate's thoughts and feeling about the girl, I feel that I was not given specific insights into the girl's mind. I do not know what she has been thinking. Where will she go now? What will happen to her? Will we ever find out why the Magistrate was so captivated with the "blind" barbarian girl he found begging on the street?

I am eagerly awaiting the next time I pick up Coetzee's novel and continue reading. I am hoping to find to answers to my questions as I read. I am eagerly awaiting a satisfactory conclusion to the events that have transpired in the novel thus far. (437)