Explication of "To Daughter Leaving Home"

In Linda Pastan's poem To a Daughter Leaving Home  a mother watches her eight year old child successfully ride a bike for the first time. The little girl begins out wobbly  on her two wheeled bike but eventually she is able to ride for an extended stretch of time.  Her parent awaits the moment when she must aid her daughter and she keeps up but eventually recognizes that her child is able to bike on her own. This instance is both a moment of sudden realization and a metaphor for the future to this narrator.  The unassisted bike ride makes the speaker realize that their daughter is able to exist on her own without constant help by her parent. The mother us shocked by this and thinks "my own mouth rounding / in surprise when you pulled / ahead down the curved / path of the park" (6-10). The speaker is concerned that the farther the bike goes the "smaller, more breakable" (16) the daughter becomes. The final line finds this scene to be a metaphor. It states: "hair flapping / behind you like a / handkerchief waving goodbye." (20-24). The notion that on a bike the child is able to exist on her own without constant help by her parent is also applicable to the child's life as she grows older. The title of the poem To a Daughter Leaving Home serves to label this poem as the metaphor for a parent's fear when their child moves away. The poem is written in run-on lines and creates the feel of a scene being shown or a story being taught. The first seven lines are chock full of assonance featuring the letter  "o" which provides the story with a singsongy childlike feel but this ends at line eight with assonance of "surprise" and "pulled" along with consonance of "p" and "d." This switch mirrors the change of action in that once the speaker was "loping along" next to her daughter but now her child has "pulled / ahead down the curved / path of the park" (9-10). The final part of the poem utilizes repetition to convey action. The daughter is "pumping" her pedals while "screaming with laughter while her hair is "flapping" and inadvertently "waving / goodbye" (18-24). The ing repetition gives the girl great action while it seems the mother is frozen by her sobering realization and motionless while her daughter moves forward.

Explication of "Woman Work"

Maya Angelou's poem entitled Woman Work is a piece exploring the grievances and escapism experienced by female laborer and mother. The narrator creates a list of necessary tasks and thus Angelou produces an anaphora, repeating the phrase "I've got" and "The..." (1-14). The purpose of this stanza is to communicate to the reader how exhausted, exhasperated and overworked this woman is. The final four lines also prove that she is an impoverished slave in that she lived in a hut, cuts sugar cane and picks cotton. The rhyme scheme of this particular refrain is seven consecutive couplets. This creates a singsong feel and serves to emphasize the monotony of her daily tasks.
The poem moves in a different direction in the following the opening the new rhyme scheme is ABCB. The second stanza evokes the soft and soothing effect of nature. Rain can "cool [her] brow again," (18) and give her respite. The second stanza  is less mellow in that the narrator asks "Storm blow me from here...'Til I can rest again" (19-22). This speaker is desperate for an escape and wishes to be blown by nature's "fiercest wind" (20) so as to "float across the sky" (21). Only an aggressive force, like the wind, can allow her to someday be free of the metaphorical chains she's held by. The third stanza describes the feeling of snow and the way it falls "gently" and "kisses" her allowing "rest tonight" (26).  She repeats "rest" so as to further emphasize her desperation. The closing of the poem is a listing of various aspects of nature and an assertion by the narrator that it is "all that I can call my own" (30). This woman is tired of subjecting herself to a miserable life of exhaustion and doing everything for everyone else. She cleans, cooks, works and tends to children and the sick. All this woman possesses is what nature freely gives her, for her life is in the hands of everybody else. She works tirelessly for their benefit and simply desires rest.

Chinua Achebe’s “Dead Men’s Path” explication

Chinua Achebe’s short story “Dead Men’s Path,” follows Michael Obi’s experience as headmaster of Ndume Central School. Achebe explores a variety of themes and ideas in this piece such as ambitious intentions versus actuality, modernism versus tradition, literal life versus spirituality, vainness’ tendency to be problematic and finally missionaries versus native people.

The exposition of the piece describes a scene featuring Michael and his wife Nancy. The two discuss his new job. Nancy appears vain and selfish with actions such as acting out magazine articles. She is described as being “infected by…passion for ‘modern methods.’” Michael shares this obsession with modern life and can be inferred as representing white European ideals. Obi is described as “energetic” and possesses “enthusiasm” regarding his job. His ambitions are vast and focused on reforming the “narrow views of [the] older and often less educated” (10 Modern Africa as the Crossroads of Culture) villagers.

Michael Obi sets off to make over the Ndume School and creates beautiful flower beds that contrasted and “marked out the carefully tended school compound from the rank neighborhood bushes.” Obi hopes to beautify and make modern Ndume but a village pathway interferes with its grounds. The pathway extends from a shrine to a cemetery and Michael is “[amazed]” (11 Modern…) that the village people are permitted by the school to continue this passing through practice. He is concerned with keeping up appearances and fears the judgment of the Government Education Officer.

The village’s priest visits Michael after he creates a barrier limiting the path. The priest claims that “the whole life of the village depends on” the path for a spiritual connection to life and death. Mr. Obi explains that “The whole purpose of the school is to eradicate just such beliefs as that…Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas” (12 Modern…). Obi paints himself as extremely ignorant to the culture of this village and the clash of missionary versus natives is present in his desire to reform their way of life. His regulations interfere with their religion.

Two days pass following this interaction and a young woman of the village dies during childbirth. Obi awakes the next day to see his flowers “trampled to death” and a building “pulled down.” The irony present is that the woman’s death is blamed on his blockade and thus his attempts at beautifying Ndume have been thoroughly destroyed. Later that day a white Supervisor visits and chastises Obi for creating conflict with his “misguided zeal” (12 Modern…).

Ultimately, Obi’s ambitions lead to his demise. This was due to a blatant ignorance regarding the spirituality of the villagers. Michael Obi’s craving to make Ndume modern results in the death of a villager and thus the downfall of his school. It can be inferred that Chinua Achebe created this piece out of frustration with missionaries’ disrespect for Native African’s way of life.  

Explication of "My Mistress' Eyes"

Shakespeare, a writer known for his use of sonnet, decides to parody this love-obsessed style in My mistress' eyes. Shakespeare reforms the quintessential Petrarchan subject of love by opening his poem with "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." Instead of revering this mistress Shakespeare stakes the claim that her eyes don't shine anywhere as brilliantly as the sun. He continues his onslaught of her appearance with statements that her lips are "coral" not red and "her breasts are dun." A commonly accepted sign of beauty in Elizabethan times were gold threads spun into fanciful hairnets and Shakespeare references this and perverts it in this line "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head." Shakespeare goes so far as to call himself out on the hopelessly romantic tendency of poetry. In The Taming of the Shrew it is said "Such war of white and red within her cheeks!" (4.5.32) and in My mistress' eyes it's stated "I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks."
The poem experiences a shift with the line "I love to hear her speak" but is instantly qualified with "music hath a far more pleasing sound." It appears that despite the speaker's distaste for her outer looks they appears to be thawing in regards to cold remarks of unkindness. The closing of the poem reveals the narrator's true feelings for the mistress. They state "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare." Here, Shakespeare is claiming that despite her vastly average appearance and lack of goddess-like qualities this woman still evokes a "love as rare." This rare love is "As any she belied with false compare," or as real as every woman who has been misrepresented by fairly ridiculous comparisons.

Early Appearances of Themes in "The Dubliners"

After reading "The Sisters," I can identify two themes that may be present throughout the entirety of James Joyce's "The Dubliners." The first and most prevalent theme is death, particularly how death affects those that are still living. This is best seen in Father Flynn's death and how the narrator and Flynn's sisters react to his passing. It appears that dying has paralyzed these characters. The narrator describes Flynn's decline as "paralysis" (1) and this unnamed protagonist partakes in inaction himself such as not entering Flynn's shop, refusing to eat, having an inability to pray and not conversing.

A second theme I notice is relationship and how they differ from person to person. This is most prevalent in the relations between Father Flynn, the speaker and Eliza. The narrator appears to have a close bond with Father Flynn and describes how he educated him in "how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church" (5). Mr. Cotter calls this relationship "bad for children," (2) due to the age gap but our protagonist disagrees. Although later the narrator has a negative dream about this religious figure. Our narrator seems to feel bad about Flynn's death but he is hesitant to show it. Eliza is mostly the opposite of this and is able to articulate her grief. Eliza, a sister of Flynn, is said to have cared for him, like the narrator, and she identifies his mental decline and laments his death. The narrator seems not to have realized Glynn's insanity and thinks "I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death" (5), instead of mourning his loss.

Explication of "My Number" and "I had heard it's a fight."

Both "My Number" by Billy Collins and "I had heard it's a fight" by Edwin Denby depict narratives where the speaker is facing the moment before death.
Collins' piece follows a man who is preoccupied with the coming of death. The narrator lists many places and actives that the Grim Reaper could be doing, this repetition proving his obsessive worry, and the poem ends with the metaphorical Grim Reaper arriving at his home. It seems this individual was expecting death in that he asks the Reaper if he had "trouble with the directions?" but still tries to ward off his advances with the final line "as I start talking my way out of this," or cheating death.
Deby's piece focuses on the is the precise moment that you start to feel yourself die. Dying is immediately compared to a "fight" but then narrator's experience was a "sweet thrill" that warned him of the "hell" that was to come. After having this run in with death the speaker reveals that he is an alcoholic who became sober after the sobering experience. He suddenly reverts back to "schoolkid" days where he views the intoxicating liquid as "bad," and refuses it from then on.
Both poems share a metaphorical view of death and both writers personify it. Collins states that he travels about causing morbid ends while Denby claims "it" physically "touched me." Both pieces are mostly light-hearted in tone seen in the colloquial language present and a sense that one can easily barter with death.

How HOD mirrors the Age of Imperialism

Unfortunately, my computer was being particularly belligerent so I decided to compare Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness to, not Apocalypse Now the film, by to the Age of Imperialism. My focus being the 1900s movement of some nations to gain resources by colonizing other nations. The two share various parallels. Firstly, the novella and particular period of time have narrative elements in common. Conrad's piece follows the horrors of early 20th century imperialism in nations such as Africa and the protagonist of this story is a white man that works under the imperialists. Similarly in the Imperialistic Era it was Caucasian patriarchy that ruled over government, society and media so the overarching narrative of the time is the perspective of white men.

Conrad's piece may seem to admonish imperialism, in that Marlow is disapproving and traumatized by it but he still actively participates in it and looks up to it's perpetrators. Marlow has extreme respect, even reverence, for a man (Kurtz) that favors a slogan of "Exterminate all the brutes!" Marlow claims to not see wrong in the natives and finds the assumed cannibals on his ship to be reasonable and hard-working. Marlow is a mirror to the guilty-yet-complacent whites of the Age of Imperialism in that they are witness to or aware of the atrocities being done to the natives yet they are held back by promises of riches or racist attitudes. The public wants to see good in the heroes of their nation, like Marlow desires in Kurtz, and will apologize or ignore anything that is contrary to their forged truth. This brings us back to the white male narrative which takes its roots in author Conrad and the oppressive system that is white supremacy. Conrad writes as a white man having witnessed the tragedy of imperialism but despite his identifying the horror that was this situation he still refuses to see the victims of this (the natives) as human. This is best seen in Marlow's diction surrounding the laborers in that he sees them as subhuman and only human-shaped. The Age of Imperialism came during and served to fuel discriminatory attitudes in the white culture. The common terminology for natives were savages, also utilized in the novella, and imperialists saw them as uncivilized beings in a resource-rich environment which they could easily exploit. Clearly this is mirrored in Heart of Darkess in that the leaders of the Company treat the natives like workhorses and regularly commit violence unto them, with faux justifications in that they need to be taught and are not fully human.

Explication of "My Son the Man"

Sharon Olds’ “My Son the Man,” is the poetic narrative of a parent watching the maturation of his or her son. The narrator talks about the growth of their son as being like “the way Houdini would expand his body while people were putting him in chains.” This allusion to the famous escape artist implies that the boy is escaping from childhood and the placement of chains is akin to parental attachments holding him back. The speaker recalls a time when the child was very young and they could dress him in his pajamas and easily pick him up. As children become adults they no longer require the constant help of their guardians, and Olds evokes this with the image of the dressing and playing because as her boy grows, as previously mentioned, she can no longer do these things with him. Olds’ character recognizes this change in the line “I cannot imagine him no longer a child, and I know I must get ready, get over my fear of men now my son is going to be one.” This speaker watches their child grow and fears the time when adulthood will take him away from them but in stating “I know I must get ready, get over my fear,” they recognize the necessity of accepting this determined fate. 

The Houdini allusion is again utilized in the final 10 lines when the narrator claims “This was not what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson, snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains, and appeared in my arms.” The emergence of Houdini from his Hudson river escape is compared to the birth of this boy. The closing line tells of the relationship the two share and the way the boy views his growing older. Olds writes “Now he looks at me the way Houdini studied a box to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled,” and claims that the son character see his parent as chains that hold him back and he has expectations to escape them soon. The boy, like Houdini, will “[smile] and let himself be manacled,” and thus he is happy to be bound by his parent’s chains. 

Congo Free State Info

What the world now knows as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was once the Congo Free State and was controlled by Leopold II, a Belgian monarch. Leopold feigned having philanthropic work to do and created his corporate colony in 1885. King Leopold was head of the Association Internationale Africaine and this Congolese area became his private property at the Conference of Berlin. Shortly after, Leopold began his rubber-collecting expedition. Rubber was a cash crop at the time with the surge of usage in tires and other items. He and his team, the Force Publique exploited the Native people so as to produce huge quotas of rubber. The treatment of these local people was extremely brutal and lead to an estimated death toll of nearly half of TCFS. The Force Publique was known for it's horrendous behaviors regarding the Natives where it was routine to torture, flog, rape and/or mutilate the working villagers they oversaw. This genocide can clearly be blamed on the abuses faced by villagers who didn't adhere to the nearly impossible rubber standards of Leopold, as well as starvation, a reduction of births and an increase in disease.

The atrocities that took place in the Congo Free State were what lead to it's demise. Competition with other rubber-harvesting companies, the demands of the public and The British Congo Reform Association all succeeded in ending Leopold's reign. Belgium's parliament annexed the Congo Free State in 1908.

Works Cited: http://cobweb.sfasu.edu/sbradley/Classes/homepages/Congo_Free_State/

Close reading of "The Metamorphosis"

I have chosen to do a close reading of the pages 47-48 in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, beginning with the lines “We have to try to get ride of it” to “…the sister had placed her hand around the father’s neck.” I focus on these lines specifically because I believe that they reflect the true metamorphosis that has taken place in Kafka’s novella.

The scene takes place after the lodgers have announced their departure, done out of fear of Gregor. Grete proposes that the family dispose of Gregor, referring to him as “it.” This pronoun choice is indicative of her dehumanized attitude towards her brother. I find that her resent for having to care for him and the new obligations she has inherited since his recent incapacity are what leads to this anger, seen when “she burst into a violent fit of weeping.” I find this sudden tearing-up s to be a parallel to the start of the piece when Grete was crying due to Winston’s inability to open his door. The weeping at the start is out of fear and worry and the weeping done now as she pounds on the dining table is entrenched in murderous hate.

This selection of The Metamorphosis, shows the finality of the character developments that occurred in this Kafka novella. Firstly, as described before, Grete has transformed into an incensed leader of the family where she proposes plans and answers the questions posed by her family. The father has remained the patriarch of the family, sure to have his voice heard by his repetition of  “If he understood us,” but has the humility to ask his daughter “what are we supposed to do?” His wife is relatively static and her maternal inclinations remain intact with the wiping of tears from her daughter’s face, she is still the care-taker and follower of the family. Gregor is a character most affected by his environment and seeing his family take on the roles of bread-winner he has lost his place in the family. The loss of financial status doesn’t affect his emotional place in that he is still the unloved interloper. Gregor remains his selfless self, able to be exploited by his family members. Grete finds he is so deeply selfless that he “would long since have realized that it’s impossible for people to live side by side with an animal like [himself], and would have gone away of his own free will.”

Explication of "America"

I chose Claude McKay's poem entitled America for its imagery and political inclinations. McKay, a Jamaican immigrant of the Harlem Renaissance, utilizes metaphor to depict his difficult relationship with American society. 

The nation is described as both animal and edifice. According to McKay, America "feeds [him] bread of bitterness, / And sinks into [his] throat her tiger’s tooth." She also is like "a king in state" and building with encompassing "walls." All of these comparisons serve to outline McKay's attitude towards his country of residence. The oppression that McKay experiences is "Stealing [his] breath of life" and also "tests [his] youth." Despite the anger he possesses over the "hate" in America, McKay claims that it is "Giving [him] strength erect against her." This strength stems from his hope for the future of the United States. The speaker states "I gaze into the days ahead, / And see her might and granite wonders there, / Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, / Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand." McKay writes that despite the dark times that America is undergoing he sees the light at the end of the tunnel or the "granite wonders" and "priceless treasures" that are metaphors for future progress towards racial equality. McKay is hopeful enough to see the potential of American society and governance for he makes statements such as "Her vigor flows like tides into my blood" and "Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood." The "vigor" and "bigness" of the US, according to the speaker, is what will allow the nation to move away from discrimination and oppression.

The detailed imagery was what initially caught my eye with this poem and I knew with the title of America that the poem would be politically charged, which is something I'm interested in. Like McKay I can't be cynical when it comes to the future of my nation for I am invested in politics and would like to pursue a job in government. My hope to bring about social change and better this nation is what has inspired me to pick this poem.