Harrison Bergeron

The film 2081 differs from it’s written counterpart, Harrison Bergeron, in much more than name. The entire tone of the story is changed. Harrison Bergeron, while detailing a serious situation, is a satire, and is amusing to read. 2081, however, is obviously not meant to be comedic. The movie comes across as the type of thing the written with the idea that, after watching, the viewer would think, “Man, that was deep!” Harrison Bergeron, on the other hand, is a piece people can openly laugh at. It’s still just as deep as the film version, but the reader may not notice it until a while after reading.

The characters are also vastly changed, personality wise. George is much more cynical about his situation in 2081, and Hazel seems to be, if possible, even less intelligent than in Harrison Bergeron. In the text version, Hazel is almost a sympathetic character. She watches her son die, and cries, but doesn’t realize why she’s sad. She wants her husband to remove his handicaps, because she wants him to be happy. She doesn’t care if by doing so, he’ll be “above” her. Hazel seems to be filled with emotions, but is too stupid to realize what they are. Her stupidity is what makes the point, and is prevalent in the film, but her smothered emotions are what make her a more human character, which deepens the message.

Harrison underwent a massive change for the film. He aged significantly, appearing as a young man rather than an older boy, and his clown attire (ie: the red nose) has disappeared. He (and his ballerina) do not have the ability to fly in the film, helping to make the piece much more “what if?” and much less sci-fi. The biggest change, however, is to his personality. In Harrison Bergeron, Harrison proclaims himself Emperor. He doesn’t give a pep talk about tyranny, or try to sway anyone to his side, like he does in the film. Harrison of Harrison Bergeron wants to become the ruler, for his own selfish reasons. Harrison of 2081 wants to send a message, start a chain reaction, and ultimately save mankind.

The theme also undergoes a shift in the making of the film. In Harrison Bergeron, the story is about people. People that crave for equality, in order to feel better about themselves, and jealously oppose the thought of anyone being better than them. It’s about the human ability to be cruel to other humans and the primal need for power. In 2081, the story is about government, and how it affects people. While the government is the “villain” in the text version, humanity itself also carries the blame for being so complacent. In the film, the blame is taken off humanity and placed solely on the government. The whole thing seems to come across as a sort of, “beware of communism, or dictatorship” warning.

1 comment May 1, 2010

Sonny’s Blues vs Langston Hughes (Ultimate Fighting Championship)

Megan Wright

Jack Sheehan

English Composition II

April 28, 2010

In “Sonny’s Blues,”  James Baldwin presents a version of Harlem that differs greatly from the vision portrayed by Langston Hughes. In most of Hughes’ poems, Harlem is portrayed as a place of, not necessarily hopelessness, but of accepted hardship. Every person in Harlem plays a certain role, and they are trapped in that role. This may or may not be a bad thing, but either way, there isn’t much they can do about it, so they’ve stopped bewailing their fate. A good example of this is “My People,” in which Hughes provides a list of people of all types, many with less than glamorous jobs, and reveals that despite the situations they’re in, they are still able to laugh and be happy. This is because they’re used to their situation, and have decided not to dwell on the bad.
In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin shows a different perspective, where Harlem is seen as a desolate place where many people realize their bad luck and mourn for it. This can be seen when Sonny’s brother is describing the housing project where he lives. He moved into the project because he wanted his kids to grow up in a better area than he did, but over a short amount of time the project became worn down, and he realizes they’re just as bad as the area where he grew up. This shows that, despite his efforts to move up in the world, he is trapped in this bad environment, because he is in Harlem. However, this doesn’t stop him from trying. Sonny’s brother knows his bad luck, like the people in Hughes’ poems, but unlike them he wishes to escape. In the end, he is able to make a break through, reconnecting with his brother and finding a new perspective on life. This change in how he sees Harlem and his life differs greatly from the views of the subjects of Hughes’ work.
However, there are many similarities between the two writers’ views as well. The relationships between people are similar, such as the speech Sonny’s mother gives his brother in comparison to “Mother to Son.” Also, the theme of jazz is prevalent in both works. Jazz is a major component of “Sonny’s Blues,” while in Hughes’ work, while it is sometimes mentioned (such as in “Weary Blues”) it is almost always there in tone and rhythm. Both of these qualities are pinnacle in describing the essence of Harlem. While Baldwin may present a more hopeful version of Harlem, both writers are trying to portray Harlem realistically, painting a picture of the bleak atmosphere with words.

1 comment April 28, 2010

Song of Myself

When I first read Song of Myself, I didn’t understand it at all. Not even a little bit. Going off the title, I went into the poem expecting it to be about Walt Whitman himself. For a while I kept thinking that, and that left me more confused than ever, because he was describing himself in some pretty weird ways. I think I actively realized that the poem wasn’t about Whitman when he described the woman watching the men bathing (the supposed allusion to Isis). I just couldn’t wrap my head around that scene being descriptive of anyone.
I understood the voice a little better with the movie. The movie helped me realize what Whitman’s message was, and what he was trying to accomplish with this poem. I don’t know much about Whitman, not being an avid reader of poetry myself, and was unaware that his time of prominence was during the age of civil war in America. Without that knowledge, it would have been incredibly difficult for me to put the pieces together, even with the mentions of slavery, and realize that Whitman was urging his readers to embrace one another in equality and trying to prevent the war.
I think the part I initially disliked the most of Song of Myself was the repetition. I love repetition, I think it’s a wonderful writing technique. However, seeing two full pages of the same sentence type was a little overwhelming and, I thought, unnecessary. After watching the movie though, I was able to understand why he used so much repetition, and I saw that by doing so he was really strengthening his point.
Since watching the film and learning a bit more about Whitman, I’d have to say my opinion of Song of Myself has drastically improved. Reading through it the first time, my initial impression was that this was “painful poetry”. That is, poetry that is a pain in the butt to read and that I don’t really want to deal with. Now that I understand the piece better, and I know why he’s mentioning atoms so much and speaking of equality, I can value the writing much more and appreciate it.

Add a comment April 16, 2010

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Two elements of sound that help strengthen the meaning of Frost’s poem are rhyme and euphony. The rhyme is the most prevalent, with masculine end rhymes following the pattern of aaba, bbcb, ccdc, then dddd. This rhyme scheme gives the poem a musical quality. It also lessens the impact of each line, making the poem flow softly, like the snow. The poem’s rhymes play a large part in establishing the mood of the piece.
Euphony also plays a key part in the establishment of the piece’s mood though. The ‘s’ sound is littered throughout the poem, appearing at least once in every line. The constant present of that sound brings to mind the sound of the wind, blowing through a deserted, peaceful area. The speaker of the poem has established that he’s alone by the woods (excluding his horse), and by hinting at the sound of the wind, Frost is reaffirming that solitude. The wind is the only sound the speaker can hear, and by conveying that to the reader through euphony, Frost is strengthening the sense of the mood.

1 comment March 30, 2010

Aftermath – Paraphrase

After summer, when the grass has been mowed and the baby birds have left the nest, the leaves on the trees begin to fall as the plants die. Winter comes and goes, and then we’re mowing the grass again.
Our grass isn’t beautiful, but ordinary grass found in meadows and marshes that grows every year and is filled with weeds. In the night, when all is silent, the poppies drop their seeds to begin the process of regrowth.

Longfellow uses agricultural terms, as well as terms with lesser known second meanings to provide meaning in “Aftermath”. Most people assume aftermath as a time after an event. Dead bodies strewn across a field would be the aftermath of a battle, for instance. Longfellow, however, uses the term in reference to crops and the second growth of a plant in a season. The grass getting mowed, and then re-growing, is the aftermath seen in the poem. The last line is ‘In the silence and the gloom.’ This line, using the more well-known definition of gloom, brings forth feelings of unease and melancholy. However, gloom can also mean darkness. Using this definition, the line changes from being foreboding to simply describing a peaceful night.
Aftermath and gloom are both usually seen as negative words. Upon first reading the poem, this may be confusing because the tone isn’t entirely negative. Once the meaning of the words is established, the reader realizes that the poem is very simple, just talking about nature and the growth of plant life in a very laid back, peaceful fashion.

1 comment March 22, 2010

Sonny’s Blues

Sonny
Brother/Narrator
Sonny’s old friend
Grace (and 2 brothers)
Mother
Father
Father’s brother
Creole
the “little black man”/ drummer
Isabel
Isabel’s parents
3 sisters and brother (Bible singers)

mid 20’s, Harlem Renaissance

Harlem, New York; beat up housing project, Greenwich Village, nightclub (in Greenwich)

Harlem Renaissance movement, World War I (during flashbacks, war is over is present time)

Family issues, Sonny’s “crowd” and their influence (as well as lack of) on Sonny’s behavior, the people Sonny treated as his new family (but weren’t there when he got out of jail), Sonny’s friends and admirers at the nightclub and how their treatment of him has such an effect on him, Sonny being smothered by Harlem, Isabel’s family viewing Sonny as an untouchable outsider that they’re incapable of bringing into their family, the close bond the band mates have with one another just through their music

Narrator’s struggle with being a good brother, if he’s doing the right thing, if he’s being true to himself; Sonny’s struggle to find himself and his place in the world; Sonny’s changing views on drugs; Sonny using music as an escape and as a means of expression; Their mother’s worries over the fate of her sons and of the past repeating itself

Add a comment February 17, 2010

Hills Like White Elephants

Megan Wright

Jack Sheehan

English Composition II

2/08/10

     “Hills Like White Elephants” left me confused on several levels. What struck me as odd the most was the amateur writing style. The entire story was almost entirely dialogue. At one point, Jig is instructing the waitress to put water in her drink, and the very next sentence she’s commenting on the drink’s taste. No where in between is it mentioned that the waitress left, prepared the drink, or even served it to Jig. The whole story is rather choppy. Also, there are several errors in the text. ‘Side’ is misspelled as ‘siode’, and in one instance ‘you’ is spelled ‘yon’. One line reads, “‘Four reales.’ ‘We want two Anis del Toro.'” The two sentences are quoted separately, even though they’re spoken by the same character in the same line. If this story had been written by an amateur writer, I probably wouldn’t think much of it. However, the beginning of the text states that it was written by Ernest Hemingway, a Nobel Literature Prize winning author.

     My first thought was that the story was written by Hemingway at all, and that the whole thing was a hoax. (Part of some grand master scheme of Mr. Sheehan’s, perhaps?) However, the website itself struck me as odd; it looked very unprofessional. I went to the homepage and investigated the other short stories listed there. After comparing their version of “The Tell-Tale Heart” with the one in my book, I decided that it was very likely that the author of the site hand typed each story. I based this on the choice to change the italicized words in “The Tell-Tale Heart” into bolded ones. Most sites wouldn’t needlessly change formatting like that. So, I’m guessing this site is an unofficial, personally made website, which would account for the errors in the text. (and thus freeing poor Mr. Sheehan from my conspiracy theories)

     I can’t prove my error theory without another copy of the story to compare it to, but for now I’m willing to put it down as a mystery solved. The errors weren’t the only thing that bugged me though. The story itself seemed plotless, dull, and lifeless. I’m not 100% sure, but for me this story could only be about two things. 1.) A man convincing his girlfriend to get an abortion or 2) Secret agents assigned to some vague mystery mission. I didn’t have much evidence for theory two, sadly, so I opted for theory one. I based this on the comments about an operation, their hotel nights together, and his assurances that things will go back to normal when she goes through with “it”. I thought that the part of their conversation concerning them owning the world might have implied that their relationship was a secret, as he keeps telling her they can’t have everything. I think this makes sense seeing as how they frequent hotels together often and how she comments on the lack of time they spend together, saying that all they do is “look at things and try new drinks.”

     I wasn’t thrilled by the amount of dialogue, and lack of explanation, but I’m guessing this is meant to leave the story mysterious and prompt the reader to dig deeper into it. Not really something I’d expect from a famous author, but I’ve read worse. Overall, I’d say is was an okay story.

1 comment February 8, 2010

The Tell-Tale Heart

Megan Wright

Jack Sheehan

English Composition II

February 1, 2010

     I was a little iffy about “The Tell-Tale Heart” at first, because it was in first person. When I see something (fiction) written in first person, I usually assume it’s written by  either an amateur or a bad writer. However, most of the Poe stories I’ve come across seem to be written in this fashion, so I suppose that just goes to prove me wrong. In the case of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, I don’t really think it would have worked in any other point of view. The charm of the story is that the reader is inside the mind of a madman, and gets to see firsthand how his thought process works.

     Despite his madness, it was very easy to follow his train of thought. The only time his madness eluded me was near the end, “I swung the chair…and grated it upon the boards…and still the men chatted, pleasantly, and smiled.” If the men were figments of his imagination, it would kind of defeat the purpose of the story. He ends up confessing to them of his crime because of his own psychotic delusions. But it’s difficult to believe that they would just sit there placidly while the narrator was swinging chairs about. This left only two scenarios: Either the narrator imagined that he was swinging the chair, or he imagined that the men too no notice of him. I’m guessing it’s the former, since the men likely would have restrained him if he had started to exhibit signs of violence. Nonetheless, that’s only my guess. I imagine Poe wanted to leave some things obscure, to help secure the idea that the narrator is completely insane. Naturally, an insane person’s thoughts would probably be fairly unreliable and hazy.

     Another thing I was curious about was the relationship between the narrator and his victim. The victim is only ever described as, “the old man,” and no mention as to why the two are living together is made. It seems unlikely to me that the old man was the narrator’s father, because then the narrator would likely have been used to the eye, having seen it his whole life. Another scenario is that the two are grandfather and grandson. A grandfather would seem to be more likely (in this time period at least) to be estranged from his grandson than a father would his own son. That would explain why he wasn’t used to seeing the old man’s eye. Personally, I thought it most likely that the narrator was a sort of live-in servant or attendant to the old man.Unfortunetly,  have no evidence to support this theory. The only basis I have are my own feelings and intuitions.

     In general though, I thought that Poe wanted to try to get inside the mind of a madman. It’s reasonable to say that this is an impossible task, unless the author is mad himself. Whether this story is accurate to a deranged man’s thinkings or not, I think Poe did a wonderful job of displaying a thought process he knew nothing about, and that “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a really enjoyable read.

1 comment February 1, 2010

Elements of Plot and The Short Story

Megan Wright

John Sheehan

English Composition II

January 24, 2010

     I thought that the “Elements of Plot” section of Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing was well thought out, accurate, and straight to the point. “Godfather Death” was an interesting story and was filled with many good examples to illustrate the plot terms provided.

    I was a little less thrilled with “The Short Story”, found in the same text. While the section was informative and provided explanations of key elements of the short story, I disagreed with the definition provided for a short story. The definition reads that a short story is, “…a form more realistic than the tale and of modern origin…” I would never think to describe a short story as something modern. Short stories have been around for ages. For instance, I believe Sherlock Holmes, which consists of 4 novels and 56 short stories, was created in 1887. That’s hardly ancient, but you can’t really describe something that’s been around since before the 18th century as modern either.

     I mention this simply because of how often it’s mentioned that short stories are a modern thing. The only time I agree with this is when it’s stated that, “…in passing from the fable and the tale to the short story, fiction has made a triumphant progess…because short stories are modern…” Short stories can be considered modern when comparing them to fables and tales, but only because those have been around since BCE times. But, putting comparisons aside, I think that, rather than a modern invention, the short story is actually a dying art. Nowadays, short stories are rarely read outside of the classroom, and even then, selections seem to be limited. In Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, the example of a short story provided is “A & P” by John Updike. I had already read this story in highschool, and it was not from this same text that  I read it from. This goes to show that either “A & P” is an incredibly popular short story, life is extremely coincidental, or that there isn’t a large amount of well written short stories out there at all. I’m inclined to believe the latter

     Besides the mishap of claiming a short story to be something entirely modern, I thought the section did a decent job of breaking down the structure of a typical short story and explaining it.

Add a comment January 24, 2010

Story of an Hour

Megan Wright

Jack Sheehan

English Composition II

January 23, 2010    

     I thought “Story of an Hour” was a very suprising tale. A few paragraphs in, my first impression was that the story was going to be cliché and badly written. I had based this off of the beginning of the third paragraph, where it’s stated that, “She [Josephine] did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment…” Reading that I couldn’t help but think that this was going to be one of those stories where the main character is “special” and feels more deeply than everyone else in the world and loves more strongly than anyone else could ever love. Many stories seem to follow the same main character clichés, and I was immediately disappointed in the writer.

      However, that thought quickly changed. When Josephine started reveling about her husband’s death, I’ll admit I was surprised, but not terribly. My first impression discarded, I formed a second one. The story was still a cliché, but now it was a typical “trick the reader into thinking she’s sad, only to reveal her husband abused her and her tears were of relief” kind of story. So far, I wasn’t very impressed with Kate Chopin’s originality as an author. Then, all of sudden, it’s revealed that the husband was a kind guy that loved her to pieces and she was, in a sense, kind of evil. She was tired of being married, and I suppose his death was more convenient than a divorce. This development took me by complete surprise and changed by opinion of the author yet again. I started to think that this story wasn’t so bad and stereotypical, and that Chopin really knew what she was doing.

      After that last development, I realized I liked the story. The descriptions in the beginning, which I had originally thought boring and unnecessary, actually worked to add to the reader’s intended surprise. Everything is pictured so peacefully, one assumes this is to complement Josephine’s character and contrast her grief. I would never have suspected her of being so mean and cold-hearted. I was a little undecided about the ending though. I liked that she died; I thought that was another unexpected twist and a good ending. However, I thought some things about it were a bit odd. One line in particular stuck out to me. After Josephine sees that her husband is alive its stated that, “He stood amazed at…Richards’ quick motion t screen him from the view of his wife.” I didn’t quite understand that course of action. My first thought was that Richards was trying to keep her from seeing her husband to save her the extreme shock of seeing him alive. But on further reflection, I thought that was kind of weird.

      Its not stated whether Josephine cries out because she sees her husband, or because of her heart disease. I had assumed she had cried out because she seen her husband and was shocked, but then why would Richard bother shielding her husband from view? She’s obviously already seen him. This also would contradict the last sentence, “…she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills.” If she had seen him, then her heart failure would have been triggered by shock and disappointment, not joy. Unless the author is trying to state that, deep down, she really did love her husband and was overjoyed to see him alive.

    My second thought, which makes more sense to me, is that she never seen her husband at all and that her heart decided to give out just as he walked in the door was pure coincidence. While I think it would have made more sense for her heart to fail while she was in her room, because that seemed to be when her emotions were at a climax, I think it’s reasonable to say that the failure could still happen even though she’d had a few minutes to calm down. I also had another though that Richards had lied about Brently dieing in some sort of conspiracy against Josephine. I based this on the sentence mentioned earlier about him trying to hide Brently from Josephine, and also on the beginning of the story, where it states that he was the one to first find out about Brently’s death. This theory seems extremely far-fetched to me though, and after thinking about it, it really doesn’t make any sense. The reader is given no reason to believe that Richards would fabricate the story of Brently’s death.

     Though, I didn’t understand why Brenty’s name was mentioned in the accident report. Not only was he alive, but he wasn’t even involved in the accident. I’m guessing that Chopin intended for the reader to believe that the whole story arose because someone with the same name as Brently was involved in the accident.  Overall I did like the story, but some events were a bit unclear to me.

1 comment January 23, 2010