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.