Life Lessons in Literature Class

The School of Athens 1509 Raphael 

      One of my favorite lectures was learning about poetry. Professor began with this quote from the movie “Dead Poets Society,” “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” This quote gives me reason to get as much poetry, beauty, romance and love into my life. This is the goal for human happiness. I always loved reading poetry, but mostly the poems that rhymed. Not anymore. I actually think I like the poems more now that do not rhyme. We learned to read slowly, because poetry involves all the senses. You want to hear, taste, and feel the words. Poetry speaks to human emotion. Poetry recited in “Brave New Voices,” brought me to tears. This made me look at rap in a whole new way. I am so thankful for this experience. I look forward to trying to write poetry, and I will definitely be reading it more often. I also have a poetry slam in the Bowery on my list of things to do, as soon as possible.

Plato and Aristotle

       


       The quote, “Literature is a product of its time period” by J. Mignano Brady, helped me to understand literature in a completely different way. I look at the pieces now as they relate to a part of history, along with the culture they were written in. You know exactly what people were dealing with during incredible periods of time. After studying, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper” from the Victorian era, Kate Chopin’s, “The Storm,” written during the Realism period, and “A&P by, John Updike, in the Post Modern era, etc., I feel close to the authors as if I have read their journals. Going forward, whenever I read anything, the first thing I will be doing is to take note as to when the piece was written, and what was going on socially during that time period.

Pithagoras, Ptolomeus, Zoroaster and Raphael

       During the studying of “Streetcar Named Desire” the theme of illusion versus reality was analyzed. Ideas such as social acceptance and how others see us was discussed. The lecture turned to how each one of us creates an illusion in life. I realized how in my own personal life,with my mother being ill, I needed to believe in a fantasy, and not confront reality at this time. We discussed how we create the world we live in. Another profound idea. Life lessons in literature class.    

Thank you Professor Brady

Woman Writing 1934 Pablo Picasso

       I have always loved reading literature, and was looking forward to English 102. I knew that the class would force me to do something that I loved, and had put aside, because of other responsibilities. I also wanted to be able to write with confidence. After taking this class, one thing I am sure of, is that I will never put reading, thinking and writing about literature aside again. From the first day of class, Professor Brady, conveyed the reason why we read literature, to be a part of humankind. Her lectures were profound. They were about life and the human condition. Although I am open and friendly, I have never quite felt connected to many people around me. I’m not good at chit-chat, and have always wanted to talk, listen and think about things that were of interest to me. With the range of literature that Professor Brady presented, I feel fulfilled in life. I have made many friends in her class. I have joined the ranks of feminists along with, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, and Kate Chopin, who have helped me to understand my feelings of oppression, and given me the courage to stand up for myself. John Updike has supported my rebellious nature. Antigone, Sophocle’s character has reassured me to not be timid, and boldly stand up for wrongs in the world. Tennessee Williams, through his play, “Streetcar Named Desire” has made me rethink the human condition, and how, and why we deal with illusion, and reality. Julia Alvarez has spoken to me about racism. The list of friends goes on. Thank you Professor Brady for introducing me to people who have something to say. As far as my writing, Professor Brady has dragged me behind a horse drawn carriage through cobblestone streets, kicking, and screaming inside, writing, writing, writing, forcing me to think, and get words out. I stand up, dust myself off, and realize, I am now a writer, a good one, confident. Thank you again, Professor Brady. I leave this class a better human being, connected, through literature.

The Importance of Living in the Present (Pub 5)

The Dance 1909 Henri Matisse

We know from the first line of  “My Father’s Song,” “Wanting to say things, I miss my father tonight,” (Ortiz 1), that the feelings felt by the speaker will be positive ones. In that line he conveys that he wants to tell us about his father. He continues the poem with memories of his physical being, and then precedes an experience he remembers with the line, “…the tremble of emotion
in something he has just said
to his son, his song,” (Ortiz 2-3). The word “song” in that line, as well as in the title, is a metaphor for his father’s nature. In that line he tells you that his father was emotional, while speaking to him, during the experience he is about to unfold in the poem. Many times before he has planted corn with his father in the fields, but on this one occasion his father points out how they have unearthed newborn mice while digging. His father picks them up to move them to safety, but before he does, he tells his son to touch them. This shows how his father wants him to experience the new life, respect it, and become sensitive to it, as he, himself is. The speaker uses the word “gently” to describe how his father holds them. He also uses the words “softness, tiny, and warm” in the poem. With the words he chooses, the poem becomes a soft song of emotional sweetness, his father’s song. He ends it with, “I remember the very softness
of cool and warm sand and tiny alive mice
and my father saying things,” (Ortiz 12-13). What his father is saying is in the body of the poem, the experience told, how precious life is. Unfortunately, the theme of relationship between father and son takes on a different tone in the poem “Those Winter Sundays.”

The speaker in this poem looks back to his younger days and realizes the sacrifices his father made, which weren’t acknowledged by him while he was young. He writes, “Sundays too my father got up early and put his cloths on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached with labor…” (Hayden 1-4), which tells the reader that even though his father worked a laborious job all week, he sacrificed his one day off. The line, “No one ever thanked him,” (Hayden 5) clearly indicates the tone of regret. With the lines, “Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well,” (Hayden 10-12) the speaker gives himself blame for not speaking to him adequately, and appreciating him. The poem ends on a sad note with the line, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden 13-14). The father and son relationship in this poem was not a good one and the acts of love shown by the father were of duty. Although, the speaker is looking back, and acknowledging his fathers love, it is too late for their relationship. The song “Cats and the Cradle” also carries the theme of missed opportunities between father and son.

          
 “Cats and the Cradle” is about a little boy growing up, and the father promising him that he will play with him, but that time never comes because of life’s responsibilities. The recurring chorus, “When you comin' home dad? I don't know when, but we'll get together then son. You know we'll have a good time then,” (Chapin 10-12), changes midway to  “When you comin' home son…” as the boy gets older and he starts to borrow the car, and no longer is waiting for his dad to come home. The line throughout the song "I'm gonna be like you dad. You know I'm gonna be like you," (6-7) is repeated until the end of the song when the father asks to see his grown son, and because of his son’s responsibilities he doesn’t have time and Harry Chapin sings, “He'd grown up just like me. My boy was just like me,” (44-45).

         
  The theme of missed important opportunities for fathers and sons, which can never be revisited, is shared in the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” and the song “Cats and the Cradle.” Although, the viewpoint in “Those Winter Sundays,” is from a son, and his regret of not appreciating his father, and in “Cats and the Cradle,” the viewpoint is from a father, and his regret of time not spent with his son, they still share the theme. These two pieces also share the theme of relationships between fathers and sons with “My Father’s Song,” which does not carry the tone of regret. These three poems remind me to take heed to the thought of living in the present, and to make sure I am not going to be looking back, regretting time not spent with, and appreciating important people in my life.

            

Egalitarianism - Freedom

The White Slave 1913 Abastenia St. Leger Eberle

      Throughout the history of the world, oppression has existed for the reason of dominance, to control others, deeming them inferior for the oppressor’s benefit of economic, social, and political superiority. There is no egocentric reason for the oppressor to give up whatever hierarchy they have achieved, unless opposition to the oppression is great, and forces egalitarianism. This is what is meant by Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” If it were not for the civil rights movement continuing to fight against racial oppression, African Americans would not have freedom in employment, education and political offices. Not only is freedom from oppression ever given voluntarily, the fight for freedom stretches over decades, with much perseverance and sacrifice of the oppressed, as seen in the movie “Iron Jawed Angels.”

      If it were not for the commitment and continuance of fighting of suffragist activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns where Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton left off, American women would not have the right to vote in every state in 1920. The two young woman form the National Woman’s Party (NWP) a more aggressive approach to have the 19th amendment passed at the Federal Government level. A senators’ wife joins the party, and her husband takes her “allowance” away and threatens to take her children as well. Alice Paul chooses selflessly, not to continue a romantic relationship, sacrificing, to stay focused and continue the fight for woman’s oppression in our Patriarchal Society. The NWP continue to picket the Whitehouse during WWI, and it is visually shocking how these women are treated just for wanting to vote in a government that they support. Stones are thrown at them and they are violently hauled off to jail, beaten, and handcuffed with their arms above their heads. The women go on a hunger strike and are force fed so that President Woodrow Wilson does not have a “stinking corpse” on his doorstep during a reelection year. The woman from the NWP demanded freedom from oppression by organizing, marching, picketing and boycotting. Charlotte Perkins Gilman demanded freedom from oppression when she wrote, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

      Gillman wrote of patriarchal oppression in her story of a woman who is patronized by her husband in the Victorian era. The woman longs for societal independence and to express her self by writing. Women of that era were confined to a life of domesticity, which made them anxious and depressed. The woman keeps a journal hidden and writes, “ Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” Her husband and her brother are physicians who confine her to a room to rest without stimulus, only yellow wallpaper to look at, which drives her to insanity. In real life Gillman had a nervous condition and was almost driven to insanity by a physician who treated her with “The Rest Cure.” When her piece was published she gave it to her physician, which led to changes in his treatment. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was part of the early women’s movement fighting oppression; not waiting for freedom to be given by her oppressors, because she knew it would never come. She divorced her husband and went on to write “Women and Economics” and “Man-Made World.”

Ilusions When We Need Them

The Persistence of Memory 1931 Salvador Dali

 My mother faints in my arms and I call an ambulance. Her life is saved with open-heart surgery, valve replacement, bypass and pacemaker, but the life she had is no longer. For three months I work, go to school, live at the hospital, rehabilitation facility and now I am glued to her side. She cannot be left alone for a minute. I move in with her, to feed her, medicate her, supply her oxygen, and take care of things she never imagined I would take of. I am diligent, optimistic and will do whatever it takes for my mother’s health to return, but I am getting worn. I pray for my sister to return from Paris to share responsibility. She finally arrives, but with different ideas, of long-term nursing homes and reverse-mortgages. She tells me that I am wrong to believe that my mother will get better and that our efforts will be futile. I don’t want to believe my sister. How can I go on if I lose hope? I’m in denial, just as Stella is, in Tennesse Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, when she says “I couldn’t go on believing her story and live with Stanley” (556). She is denying the rape, of course a horrible injustice of her sister Blanche, by her husband Stanley. She does this so that she can go on living the life she imagined, ignoring reality for her own survival. Eunice confirms this by telling her “Don’t ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going,” (557). Psychologically, denial can be a beneficial tool, maybe not for the long term but definitely for the short term.

In Philosophical Psychology, Jorg Friedrichs, writes in his article, Useful Lies: The Twisted Rationality of Denial, “At least in principle, denial is not irrational. When in denial, people follow what they feel to be in their best interest by minimizing real or perceived harm, thereby maximizing subjective and/or intersubjective wellbeing. Acknowledging a problem may lead to negative psychic and social effects such as fear, shame, and embarrassment.” The interesting thing is that my sister has used this tool,  “denial” most of her life. If you knew her, you would say she has a very similar character to Blanche DuBois. And I have always been a realist, not tolerant of pretense, just like Stanley Kowalski. But while in class, discussing and deciphering this play, my professor gives a personal example of her and her sister, and the way they each dealt with her father’s premature death. A rock hits me in the head with the realization that this is exactly my situation. A student in class also enlightens me with his interpretation of how illusions can create optimism. It occurs to me, that I have switched roles with my sister. I am Blanche, at the point of emotional breakdown and she is suddenly Stanley, raping me of my illusions.

Shout it Out and Bring Forth Change!

     To the Sochi Olympics, America has sent a delegation including openly gay athletes where any expression of gay rights is illegal. In the past the Olympics has been the vehicle in which brave athletes have expressed unjust treatment of human rights issues to the world. People debate whether the Olympics is an appropriate forum. Even though nations have different social standards, is it not enough that we gather together in our differences, without “shouting it out?” It’s possible that the Olympics are the exact place to facilitate change for a better world, since ancient Olympic games began in Greece, the beginning of civilization.

      Only a few hundred years after the first Olympic games were played, Sophocles, the Greek playwright, wrote Antigone. He created a character who gives the ultimate sacrifice, her life, to right the unjust treatment of a human rights issue, her brother, Polyneices’ burial. Antigone could secretly preform the religious burial of her brother’s body, but she argues with Ismene, her sister “Oh, oh, no! shout it out. I will hate you still worse for silence-should you not proclaim it, to everyone,” (Antigone, 99-101). By “shouting it out,” Antigone draws attention to the unjust proclamation of Creon, that Polyneices’ body not be buried. She declares “I shall be a criminal-but a religious one,” (Antigone, 84-85). Through her selfless dedication to her moral conscience as opposed to obedience to civil law, she changes the thought of the society she lives in, not an easy feat for a young woman living in a time of gender inequality.

     Sophocles’ character of Antigone is passionate, courageous, and rebellious. It is those qualities that are needed to make significant changes towards human rights in the world. I think that Sophocles would have thought that the Olympics are the perfect venue to “shout it out!”

Symbolism and Motifs in A Streetcar Named Desire

The Night Cafe 1888 Vincent van Gogh

Tennessee Williams was a brilliant playwright who combined literature with visual artistry. Taking symbolism and motifs from his palette, he created a work of art, with layers of complex feelings and emotions for the human condition in his masterpiece entitled A Streetcar Named Desire. He used light and dark to represent the theme of reality versus illusion, as well as color to further define the characters and emotionality of the play. Through conflicts in sexuality Williams brought awareness to the complexity of life. The recurring demise of characters through their sexuality is apparent from the beginning of the play. Possibly from experiences within his own life, Williams used symbols and motifs to explore and raise awareness of tragedies and conflicts in human and social interaction.

Tennessee Williams used light and dark as symbols of reality and illusion, a theme throughout the play, which Blanche Dubious struggles with. Upon Blanche’s first arrival to visit her sister, Stella gives Blanche a compliment on her looks and Blanche exclaims, “God love you for a liar! Daylight never exposed so total a ruin,” (12). She says this because she would rather be lied to about her looks than hear the truth that she may not look her best. The daylight, or any light is her enemy, exposing the truth. During the poker night, Blanche tells Mitch, “I bought this adorable little colored paper lantern at a Chinese shop on Bourbon. Put it over the light bulb! Will you, please? I can't stand a naked light bulb…” (54). What she is really asking Mitch when she asks him to affix the Chinese paper lantern is to cover the harsh reality of the light bulb. The light is a motif reinforcing the theme of reality versus illusion. She is afraid the bright light will show the reality of her aging face, with the lantern dimming the light bulb, simultaneously, reality is dimmed and she creates an illusion of youth, which helps her to exist. Blanche relies on her looks to feel good about herself it is her highest priority.

Blanche believes how others perceive her is the way she really is. She explains, “I never was hard or sell-sufficient enough. When people are soft--soft people have got to shimmer and glow--they've got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a--paper lantern over the light.... It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and attractive. And I--I'm fading now! I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick,”(82). All her life Blanche has presented an illusion about herself to others. The illusion is who she is. When youth was on her side, it was easy, but now she is aging and she fears she doesn’t have much longer before the illusion is gone. Later in the play when Mitch demands to see her in the light without the paper lantern she exclaims, “I don't want realism. I want magic,” (127). But at this point he confronts her with all of the realities she has been hiding, stripping her of her illusions. Not only is she hiding from the light’s exposure to her physical looks, she is hiding from it exposure of her past. She is hiding in the darkness from the realities of her life, which she does not want to face. In reality, Blanche feels shame for her past, filled with infidelities, and the loss of her position at the school. She is in despair, having lost her home, having no money and no future. Her illusions are her survival. Without fantasy Blanche cannot live in a world of reality and retreats further and further into the darkness of her own mind. After Stella has Blanche committed to an institution, in the last scene Stanley strips away her illusions for the last time. “He crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it toward her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself,” (152). The lantern had created a darkness filled with illusions. When Stanley tears the lantern off the light bulb, the bright light sheds the reality of her aging, without a home or money, and without love. Similar to the symbolism of light and dark, is the symbolic meaning of colors in the play.

Color is used throughout the play symbolically to express personality of the characters. When Stanley’s character is introduced in the play in scene one he is throwing a“red-stained” package of meat at Stella. Red is symbolic of his coarseness and raw uncivilized animalistic sexuality. Again, red is used when Blanche wears the satin robe in scene two to symbolize sexuality while she is flirtatious with Stanley. When Blanche is first introduced to Mitch, so he can remember her name, she tells him, “…Blanche means white…” (54). White is symbolic of pureness and virgin like qualities, which Blanche wants others to believe, she has. Blanche is often wearing white through out the play to symbolize how she wants to appear to others. When Stanley is telling Stella of Blanche’s promiscuity after losing Belle Reve he says, “This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily white fingers! She moved to the Flamingo!” (107). Stanley is sarcastic when he refers to her fingers being lily white, because she presents herself as pure, meanwhile he has found out that she was having sex with many men in the hotel he names the“Flamingo.” Again, in the end of the play color is used as a symbol when Blanche discusses the color of her jacket, while dressing to be unknowingly taken away to the institution, “You're both mistaken. It's Della Robbia blue. The blue of the robe in the old Madonna pictures…” (147). Williams ends the play with Blanche wearing the symbolic color of purity that Christ’s mother is often depicted wearing in paintings. Colors are not only used as symbols of character traits, they are symbolic of emotion.

Symbolic meaning of color is used to represent the emotionality of the play. Williams wrote, “There is a picture of Van Gogh’s of a billiard-parlor at night. The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of childhood’s spectrum,” (41). Williams set up scene three, the poker night, to mimic the colors of van Gogh’s famous painting, “The Night Café, recreating an intense evening, with the use of primary colors. Primary colors of the childhood spectrum, which he refers to, are red, green, yellow and blue, raw color, not softened into lighter or darker hues to produce feelings of mellowness, but color to provoke intense feelings of emotions on edge. Williams set the stage with colors used in the painting, with the yellow of the linoleum in the kitchen, the vivid green in the glass shade and the blue, and red in the men’s shirts. He wrote, “…and they are men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors,” (41). He used primary colors symbolically, to represent the ugliness of life, raw and realistic, which play out in this scene, with cursing, drinking and the awful blows that Stanley gives to his pregnant wife, Stella. Conflicts in sexuality are addressed with Stella’s sexual desire for Stanley, allowing her submissiveness in a dysfunctional, abusive relationship to continue.

Sexuality contributes to the conflicts that the characters face. When Blanche arrives in New Orleans to visit her sister she says, “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at--Elysian Fields,” (3). Her first lines tell of the recurring theme of doom attached to sexuality and desire for love. When Blanch tells Mitch of her first husband’s suicide she says, “It was because--on the dance-floor--unable to stop myself--I'd suddenly said--"I saw! I know! You disgust me..."(103). Williams addressed the feelings of humiliation and shame attached to homosexuality in the nineteen forties with Blanche Dubois’s young husband, Allan Grey, who commits suicide after his wife accidently sees him with his lover. Blanche confesses her guilt to Mitch for having caused this horrific tragedy. Williams also brought out the homophobic attitude in America with Stella’s line, “This beautiful and talented young man was a degenerate,” (110), referring to Allan’s sexual orientation. Blanche explains to Mitch, “Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan--intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with.... even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy,”(128). This reality revealed of Blanche’s promiscuity leads to her only hope out of her desperate situation, to fail.

Tennessee Williams’ use of symbols and motifs throughout his masterpiece, The Streetcar Named Desire added another dimension to assist the audience in their understanding of the play. Whether underlying messages were from his own life or just ideas to give more thought to, have been reasons for people to interpret the play over time in many ways. Possibly that was his idea, as in visual art, the interpretation is personal. With the aide of symbols and motifs, he artistically presented material, especially of the time he wrote the play, and even of today, that brought awareness to social conscience and the complexity of the human condition, which cannot be understood without much thought.