Week 7

                                                     

Howl

Today we will watch Into the Wild, discuss its contents–scenes, images, plot elements, characters and themes.  Some questions:  what has Christopher McCandless's runaway journey into the "wild" to teach us about right living?  He, after all, was in pursuit of  Truth.  What does he discover? What themes does the film's director, Sean Penn, weave throughout?


At the following URL is a recent (2013) article by the author Jon Krakauer on the McCandless story.
 http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-chris-mccandless-died?src=mp

The World Is Too Much With Us                 by William Wordsworth 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.–Great God!  I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus* rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton^ blow his wreathed horn.

*In Greek mythology, a sea god who could change his shape at will.

^Another ancient Greek sea god, represented as having the torso of a man and the tail of a fish.

----------------Notes on the Persona, one of Carl Jung's Five Basic Archetypes--------

In dictionaries the word persona is defined as (1) person, and (2) the characters of a drama, novel, etc.  It is related to the familiar words personality, personal, personify, personate, and impersonate, each suggestive of the individual identity, and the ways in which that identity is manifest or portrayed–distinctive appearance, behavior, attitudes, voice, etc.  In Carl Jung's writings, the Persona–the social face or mask– is an aspect of the totality of Self.  It, along with the Shadow, Anima and Animus, coexist in the greater whole.  The Shadow/Unconscious Dark elements of Self stand in contrast to the Ego/Conscious Light elements and bear a compensatory relationship to each other.  Shadow elements are associated with animal nature, the instincts, that which is wild and uncivilized within us, but which is a source of primal energy, creativity and spontaneity.  Anima and animus are aspects of the Soul Image, an archetypal image of the opposite sex which may appear in dreams and fantasies and which is often projected onto others, particularly in the experience of falling in love.  The study of archetypes and symbols encourages understanding of  how opposites may be transcended or bridged, with the resultant experience being one of wholeness, consciousness and the unconscious melded.  The psychic reality is an essential aspect of Jung's thought, and includes even what is strictly "illusory."  Inner and outer worlds are perceived in images and the contents of psychic processes and experiences at times personified, as in the figures of gods and goddesses.

The ancient goddess figure called Aphrodite/Venus personified feminine beauty, the bloom of spring, love, and uninhibited, unself-conscious sexuality.  Only the virgin goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia were said to be immune from her power (Huffington The God of Greece).  She has a heavenly and earthly aspect, a light and a dark side, to which our instinctual desire for love may have acquainted us.  She is not to be toyed with.  The arrows of her son Cupid (Eros) will magically transform some, and fatally poison others.

                                                   Venus at Her Mirror

In the Morning                      by Steve Kowit (1938-  )

In the morning

holding her mirror,

the young woman

touches

her tender

lip with

her finger &

then with 

the tip of 

her tongue

licks it &

smiles

& admires her

eyes.

Cosmetics Do No Good           by Steve Kowit (1938-  )

Cosmetics do no good:

no shadow, rouge, mascara, lipstick–

nothing helps.

However artfully I comb my hair,

embellishing my throat & wrists with jewels,

it is no use–there is no

semblance of the beautiful young girl

I was

& long for still.

My loveliness is past,

and no one could be more aware than I am

that coquettishness at this age

only renders me ridiculous.

I know it.  Nonetheless,

I primp myself before the glass

like an infatuated schoolgirl

fussing over every detail,

practicing whatever subtlety

may please him.

I cannot help myself.

The God of Passion has his will of me

& I am tossed about 

between humiliation & desire,

rectitude & lust,

disintegration & renewal, ruin & salvation.

Week 6

                                                    Redwoods, Jedediah Smith State Park


The groves were God's first temples. ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn" 


Hello, class.

Today we have plenty to catch up on. First, a short quiz on "The Walrus and the Carpenter."  Then, with any luck, we'll get to "A White Heron" and other assigned stories  and poems, such as "Tintern Abbey. "  And last, we'll begin the film Into the Wild.  It is based on the true story of a young man, just graduated from college, with honors, who runs away from home and family and other obligations to explore the "wild" in search of a more authentic life/self, against all he considers false in humanity and society.

Response 4  (350 words minimum, due week 7 or 8):  Discuss what you find most compelling in recent story, poem or film presented thus far.  Refer to specific scenes and images and the ideas and feelings they elicit.  You may convey freely your personal associations and /or memories of like experiences in the development. Handout with questions included for film option.

At the following URL is an excellent essay by one well known American best writer on the human-animal relationship in historical and cultural perspective.  Animals, Lewis Lapham writes, elude our attempts to define them, even as we push so many to the brink in our "conquest" of the natural world:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-lapham/the-conquest-of-nature_b_2859691.html


In the short video found at the following URL, you can see the power of imagination exemplified in William Blake's lines beginning "To see a world in a grain of sand" magnified by application of modern technology :  https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_hidden_miracles_of_the_natural_world

from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance       

       There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

        Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

Week 5

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

The following free verse poem is by Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse during the American Civil War.  In it he sees beyond the immediate violent conflict between North and South in tender recognition of the "divine" humanity of all involved, and the healing inevitably to come.  Notice his long, free verse lines, stretching out from among the shorter and providing an expansive, heightened sense of feeling:

Reconciliation

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

A White Heron

Welcome back to class.  I hope you are all doing well.  

     Today we pick up where we left off last week, reviewing the narrative work of Guy de Maupassant.  Then we'll read part or all of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and take a quiz!  Then we can get to Charles Bukowski and Sarah Orne Jewett ("The White Heron"), writers from very different eras who yet tell stories about the travails of growing up that in certain respects are similar.  We will discuss the similarities and differences in class, but here I will indicate some of the similarities in theme that I have noted:

• A narrator/protagonist who feels himself in opposition to family and/or others and thus feels isolated or alone and vulnerable to some degree
• A narrator/protagonist who struggles to find and assert himself and in so many ways feel strong
• A narrator/protagonist who discovers where his powers lie and then exercises them
• A narrator/protagonist who considers the consequences of actions, and regards with sympathy and/or antipathy the weak, meek, and humble
• A narrator/protagonist who seeks understanding, even wisdom, through reflection, reading and writing
• A narrator/protagonist who shows awareness of the social mask and who hides certain aspects of his character
• A narrator/protagonist who invites readers to see the challenges of growing up by relating key memories and experiences from that journey

--------------

Next week:   bring something to recite (not by memory) for class, which should be fun, and good practice!  Here is a link to student performance videos:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/theater/hamlet-student-instagram-videos.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Next week :  Read the two stories "Misery" and "Joy" by the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov    and "The Found Boat," by Alice Munro, a recent winner of the Nobel Prize in literature and considered one of the greatest living writers.

 http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/achekhov/bl-achek-misery.htm

http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1103/

If we have time next week or the next we will look at autobiographical excerpts by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), a Native American writer who recorded her memories of Sioux life in South Dakota, including the influence of her mother, the natural world around them, the legends and rituals of her tribe, and her meeting with white missionaries.  In addition, "The Navaho Night Chant," a piece still performed today by the Navaho, offers a look into the way that poetry and chanting come together in a ritual of healing and transformation intended to return its participants to a renewed sense of vitality and wholeness.

                                                      Tintern Abbey (12th Century)

I have also a selection of poems I'd like to address, time permitting.  They will serve to underscore the narrative themes in the prose pieces we are reading, provide review of earlier themes and concepts,  and will move us along to the next works.  One is "Tintern Abbey," a romantic poem in blank verse by William Wordsworth:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html   At the following link you may read background and see in photos the beauty of the abbey:  http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html  Another is Alfred Lord Tennyson's rhymed narrative (ballad) of "The Lady of Shallot," based on the medieval tales of King Arthur. And yet others:  Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale."  

Posted below is the description of essay 3, which is due week 6 or 7:  

 Essay #3, due week 6: Compose a 600-700 word (minimum length) essay that introduces the text(s) by title and author and proceeds to support a thesis point or claim about the text(s). You may address poetry and/or prose selections. If you have two or more selections, they must be addressed under a comprehensive thesis, the essay unified by the thesis, with each serving to illustrate, develop and support your thesis. Include some description of the formal structure of the poem and/or prose elements, for example, stanza form, line length and rhyme pattern, use of repetition or anaphora, use of narrative structure, setting, plot, character,  conspicuous sound devices, imagery, figurative elements (such as metaphor, simile, symbol, personification).  Remember, narrative always involves the perspective or point of view of the narrator (first person or third person typically, as well as plot, setting, character development, tone or mood, and central thematic concerns. Lyric poems may have little in the way of narrative or story, though they always have a speaker and the speaker provides perspective, along with whatever other voices may be presented in the poem.  Provide support and evidence for your claims in the form of textual summary and direct quotation, formatted in the MLA style, with line citations. Avoid using quotation unnecessarily or dropping quotations in without commentary. Integrate short quotations into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted. Title your essay (do not use the poetry or prose story title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present). Double‐space the lines.