blog 1...forever ago that is just now being moved to my actual blog

I dig the poem Design by Robert Frost and as such am choosing to comment on the amount of similes in it. First, however, it merits to say that the speaker of the poem is some person unnamed to the audience. The rhetorical situation is of this nameless person observing a white spider on a flowered mint plant eating a moth. What, to me, makes this poem so original and aesthetically pleasing is the ways Frost describes the rhetorical situation . He uses such similes as "like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-" when referring to the spider holding the moth. He again describes the moth in another simile "dead wings carried like a paper kite." Both of these similes describe the moth to be very frail as we all know a moths wings to be, but, they more instill a feeling a vulnerability in the moth. The imagery in this poem is also significant. Using the color white is notable because white generally is a symbol (or extended metaphor) for purity. This could be an attempt by Frost to make all objects (the flower, moth, spider) innocent to the destruction they each brought. All things were simply that of chance or, as the title designates, design. Design could be interpreted a number of ways. I like to think of it as the design of mother nature (as i adhere to no religious beliefs) but by reading Frost it would be acceptable, and probably much more correct, to think of it as a divine intelligent design. All that said i most appreciate this poem because of the beautiful and somewhat odd images Frost brings forth when describing the moth and spider (characters of death and blight, ingredients of a witches broth, design of darkness etc.) I believe the overall theme of this poem is many things happen that no one has control over. Sometimes you (better yet the spider) are in the right place at the right time and sometimes you (moth) are completely unaware that you stumbled upon the wrongest of situations in the most inopportune moment. Frost also poses the question in the last two lines of the poem "What but design of darkness to appall?-/If design govern in a thing so small." I believe he is questioning design (divine intervention) if he or she had this in mind when the path of the white spider climbed upon the rarity of a white heal-all flower.
Alexandria

Tangled up in who?

As a forewarning, i absolutely cherish Dylan in all that he is. So i am fairly biased on the subject. Tangled up in blue is one of Dylan's most popular songs (behind Mr. Tamborine Man and Blowin in the wind that is.) It is a song about a lover that he is away from and thinking about. It is also a song about a muse. This woman is one of the many muses that are frequent in Dylan's work. This particular song may be about Sara- his first wife. Though, that is a slight stretch as Sara was not married when she and Dylan met and her hair was coal black. It is not uncommon for the speaker of the poem/song to warble to a very real person in Dylan's work. He commonly changed faces names and situations. If you asked him why i am sure he would tell you "what do you mean why? why do you do the things you do?" Anyway the content of the poem is very easy to understand after reading it a few times through. First paragraph is describing the speaker laying in bed thinking about his muse. The second stanza is about the lovers goodbye. In the third stanza the speaker is talking about his life after the goodbye. The fourth and fifth about seeing her again and the sixth is about his brief stint with her and her lover/husband? The turn occurs at the bottom of the sixth stanza where he leaves her again and the seventh stanza is a depiction of his wandering life in search of her. This poem rhymes i promise. You have to hear it to be convinced i am sure. It mainly has internal rhyme when you read it because he sings it in a very different cadence (one that would break lines awkwardly and make the poem super long.) Many symbols are present in this poem that appear in much of his work. Shoes are a huge symbol for Dylan. Birds are also very frequent, as is the color blue. Shoes in this poem symbolize the walks of life the speaker has been through and yet he never forgets this one woman. "I was standing on the side of the road rain fallin on my shoes" is a classic dylan quote in that it mingles sadness with a necessity to "keep on keepin on." This song in the first song on his album Blood on the Tracks which he produced not even a month after he and Sara were divorced. Reexamine the last stanza. Think about a speaker who is pissed about a failed marriage not because of what people think but because he loves and hates this woman so vehemently. The last stanza of this poem is more about the loving her. Look up another song called Idiot wind from the same album and i think you may understand the vehement hatred.

catastrophe- who done it?

The film catastrophe and the play catastrophe are different on many spoken and unspoken levels. In the movie the Directors Assistant is never frustrated with her "boss" to an observers eyes. She does not seem exasperated or even hesitate to do what the director demands of her. However, in the play it indicates that she looks at the Director "At a loss. Irritably." The context of "light" also varies from the visual play to the script. In the visual version when the director asks for a light he is asking for a flashlight so that he can see what he has written or is writing in his journal. In the script he is asking the assistant to light his cigar, which apparently, keeps going out. I way understand why the assistant would be frustrated but i think Pinter left out her frustration for a reason. The movie has an eerie feel because of this womans willingness to move a human body as if it were not alive. In the play it is alluded that she does not like what she is doing and is a little miffed. "A subsides in the armchair, springs to her feet no sooner seated, takes out a rag, wipes vigorously back and seat of her chair, discards rag, sits again." This could be taken as an act of disgust, as if she were not comfortable in this room. Not only is content different but the staging is different also. In the script it indicates that after the director steps off of the stage you do not see him again while in the movie he is in each scene through to the end. I believe the script indicates that the entire play would be viewed as having its focus on the man standing on the stool, though, not on his face. The most important difference, i think, is at the end of the play. The motions are much the same between the script and movie but the protagonist is supposed to raise his head before the lights go out the second time and look blankly until the lights dim. In the movie you do not see the lights dimming off of his face and he raises his head too late in my mind. This is a result of the differences of where the Director is. If the movie kept him out of all scenes after he left the stage the only focus would be on the mans face. Since the movie pans to him while he says "terrific he'll have them on their feet" we miss the oportunity for the protagonist to raise his head. Staging is always difficult from scrip to movie, however. And if this post does not post on my actual page i messed up again. I don't even own a computer, and am lost in all the buttons, so if it does post to the main blog will somebody please help me? Technology and i have always been strangers. :)

A Coin

The creative technique for this short story written by Hemon is macabre images and grotesque textual content. That doesn't necessarily seem like a technique but none could argue that the story is not shockingly gruesome and gory. I believe what the story is really getting at is focused around the symbolism of the last paragraph when the narrator is talking about the feeling you get when you run from point a to point b without getting your head, arms, legs, or chest blown to bits. "When you get to point B the adrenaline rush is so strong that you feel too alive. You see everything clearly, but you can't comprehend anything...the feeling is always the same but i've never had it before...You pick yourself up and walk back into your besieged life, happy to be...(you) put your hand in your pocket where you may or may not find a worthless coin..." The point a to point b symbolism is much like flipping a coin. Heads or tails- a or b. Your life is in the hands of chance. Will you live? And if you do live did the snipers just decide to not shoot at you today because of the particular clothes you are wearing? Did they miss? Or was someone else simply more interesting? Maybe the story is an allegory (ha that rhymes) relating to life's brevity or longevity. Everything can be taken from you at any one moment. The camera man Kevin is like the apathetic citizen to me. He uses his camera, his "third eye," to take himself out of the realness of the situation. He only faces things with his camera. That's why the narrator likes him. But that is also why he leaves her. I like the ambiguity this story offers. If i were to relate it to something less surreal i would have to pair it with the baddest bad of America. Every slum, ghetto, dirty street in America would have to be thrown into one scene and every bad thing that had ever happened on those streets or places would have to be replaying all at once. To me this story represents things as extreme as that. The really deep dark and twistyness of life. I think the snipers could potentially be symbols for the power heads of America. They get to choose everyones fate. And everyones fate still likes to chance. This story was an awesome read but i really can't fathom the true meaning of most of its content. What were the letters purpose?

Metaphorically Speaking

Sweet success! I have finally created the bloggy thingy ha! The short story Greasy Lake is packed with delicious metaphors. Everything seems to be something it is actually not. Even the title, greasy lake, is a metaphor because the lake that once used to be so clean is now murky and turbid. "We wanted to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze" is an excellent metaphor that encapsulates the possibilities of being young and, dare i say it, stupid to that which is real. "The first lusty rockette kick of his steel toed boot" is a metaphor that symbolizes the sexuality and testosterone of 19 year old boys. "Digby vaulted the kissing bumpers" is yet another one. "he was a stunt man and this was Hollywood" is my personal favorite metaphor in the story. I can see the whole movie slowing down in order for the stunt man to barely miss being clobbered by the crowbar and mock crumpling- fake blood all over his face and ear. The various and different gradients of metaphorical language enrich this short story and make it deeper. The three 19-year-old men/boys are described, in many different variations of the phrase, as bad. They are cool cats prowling the town. Underage drinking, smoking pot, sounds like a night in athens! Dead bodies, raping, destroying are all however very unlike our typical college experience. The metaphors make these boys seem much more relatable to us, experimental maybe, OU students. It allows the story to come alive and the reader or audience to be a part of it.