Lucas’ Blog

The Importance of Being Earnest, by the famous Oscar Wilde, is a parody of Victorian upper-class families. It humorously approaches the issues of being sincere, trivial, hard-working, worthy, stylish, the values of marriage, education etc., and also the role each one has to perform in society. Being a parody it criticizes the supeficiality of a group of people living “in an age of surfaces” (Lady Bracknell, Act III), in which having style is somehow more important than being sincere, as pointed out by Gwendolen when she says that “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing” (Act III). What is more, having the name Earnest is considered more important than portraying the qualities of the name itself.

Oscar Wilde was one that broke gender roles himself, being publicly confirmed as a homossexual he was taken to trials because of this. In this play, he uses the characters of Gwendolen and Cecily to exemplify how women can break gender roles. In a shallow society in which girls are taken for granted, being considered too pure, nice and sweet even to hear what is true (Jack, Act I), these two girls do not obey some social rules. Gwendolen, for instance, does not wait for her mother’s permission to get engaged with her beloved Jack (Act I). Cecily, in turn, goes against what should be expected from an eighteen-year-old girl when she says: “I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about”. Since she is well educated, what one would expect from her is the desire of having a sensible man by her side, which is quite the opposite as it is seen above. It can go beyond in the analisys if taken into account the fact that Cecily expresses her will on what kind of man she would like to “catch”.

In the society these girls live in “[a]n engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be” (Lady Bracknell, Act I). Nevertheless, Cecily and Gwendolen are forward, not expecting people to make choices for their lives. Once they decide to marry Algernon and Jack respectively, they go for it, even if it may raise problems with their families.

After they both discover the farce their fiancées-to-be have created, their attitude are as if they have total control over the situation, as seen in the dialog below between the two of them:

Gwendolen: The fact that they did not follow us at once into the house, as anyone else would have done, seems to me to show that they have some sense of shame left.

Cecily: They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

This forwardness is strange for girls of a society they are part of since what would be expected would be nothing more than silence or a silent revolt. In the end, they get what they want, which is marrying their men.

Lying occurs frequently in this novel. Curiously, some lies, like those Huck tells to save Jim, seem to be “good” lies, while others, like the cons of the duke and the dauphin, seem to be “bad.” What is the difference? Are both “wrong”? Why does so much lying go on in Huckleberry Finn?

WRITE A COMPOSITION EXPOSING YOUR IDEAS ON THE TOPIC.

Blue Roses

In the play we have just studied we get to know a family whose members are all trying to escape from a harsh reality creating ways to build up their own worlds, be it in a long ago finished past or in a kind of “parallel” reality in their present days.  Amanda, the mother, is clearly stucked to her past, a time when she was all glorious and young, full of life and gentleman callers after her. Her son, Tom, finds hard the fact that he has to face reality and work to support his family, though what he wants is a life of adventures. He is then, frustrated with the situation he has to live in. The youngest one, Laura, is a fragile yet beautiful young lady, whose mental situation seems to resemble the physical one. Whenever Laura is nervous she either reaches her glass ornaments or the vitrola, playing old songs from her father’s time, what shows that she is static, held up to the past.

Laura is presented as a fragile, beautiful, delicate, cold and who is crippled which is a problem that her mother seems to have tried to hide all their lives, as we can see in the extract below from scene 2:

Laura: [in a tone of frightened apology]: I’m cripled!

Amanda: Nonsense! Laura, I’ve told you never, never to use that word.

Due to this problem, Laura seems to be too fragile and just cannot do things and handle stress. This is clear when we see the discussion between her and her mother after the latter finds out that her daughter has been deceiving her about the typewriting classes. She quit the classes because she felt sick and vomited in front of everyone. She feels guilt because she cannot be the girl her mother wants her to be. At this moment (Scene 2) her mother realizes that Laura will not be able to sustain herself and her family, then she decides that Laura has to marry. She does not want her daughter to become a spinster, which was a social problem of the time (1930). This is when Amanda asks Laura if she has never liked some boy. The answer is positive. Laura describes a high-school hero called Jim who used to call her “Blue Roses”. This nickname, though apparentlybeautiful was not motivated by beauty. Jim started calling Laura this way after she fell sick due to a pleurosis attack. He asked her what the problem was and she said pleurosis, he misunderstands and eversince starts calling her “Blue Roses”.

Blue roses are ones whose pigmentation presents to be violet. Although they are very beautiful they are not found in nature. If we try to relate blue roses to the character of Laura we will be able to find some similarities. Roses are, by nature, fragile and have to be handled very carefully, otherwise their petals will be torn. They are to be wondered and cared in their original place, since once they are taken the life that sustains them is cut. Another aspect is the color. Since blue is not found in nature it could be classified as something exotic, rare. On the other hand blue can mean something melancholic and distant. This is really similar to Laura. She is a unique character, certainly stucked to her high-school life when she was sickly weak and shy, then different, exotic, rare. By the time she grows up and older, she seems to be always distant in her melancholic world.

Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_color_blue_symbolize

MacBeth is a tragedy that explores human weakness facing temptations such as power. This is easily noticeable when after having received the prophecy from the “Weird Sisters” MacBeth starts to elucubrate the image of him being the king. The very image of those women being so “withered, and so wild in their attire” (Act I, Scene III, Line 41) was not enough to avoid so wicked an act. On the contrary, MacBeth turned into curiosity and interest requesting more than they were willing to say. The mentioning of titles made him interested in their message. Here an evil seed finds a fertile soil which is his mind and where everything start.

As it is known there was not a reason for him to be jealous and evil, since he is recognized by his social group as a hero. However, being so no longer fulfils what MacBeth desires. He has received a prophecy of becoming the king of Scotland and he knows that in order to get there something evil has to be performed. This “horrid image” unfixes his hair and makes his “seated heart knocks at his ribs” (Act I, Scene III, Lines 149-150). MacBeth is a moral character who knows what is doing. At the end of Act I Scene IV MacBeth seems to have resolved the conflict of murdering the king. He asks the stars to not light his “black and deep desires” (Lines 58-59).

Rightafter in the play Lady Macbeth appears reading a letter from her husband reporting the last happenings. We get to see that she is really interested in the matter of becoming the queen of Scotland. She is aware of her husband’s “human kindness” (Act I, Scene V, Line 16) and in the same way, wants to get rid of any humanity and kindness. Meanwhile MacBeth wants his black and deep desires to be hidden, she wants to be full of the “direst cruelty” (Act I, Scene V, Line 47).

Later on, when the king is hosted in MacBeth’s castle, we see MacBeth’s conflict in murdering his highness and his wife persuading him to do so. He knows that this act would be nothing but “vaulting ambition” (Act I, Scene VII, Line 27). Lady MacBeth shows a “perfect” plan for the act and actually finally persuades him into doing. She is creepy and asks him “What cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Duncan?”. This is weird and evil, however she is naive and does not have the real conscience of what they are doing. Her naivete is seen when after killing the king she states that “A little water clears us of this deed”. It is just not what happens after being in the throne when she starts to have bad dreams and sleepwalk.

Since the beginning, even though he tried to get back in some moments (“We will proceed no further in this business” Act I, Scene VII, Line 34) , MacBeth always knew what he was doing and the results it could bring upon him. Nevertheless, he insisted in being evil what makes him a convict murderer and places the guilty of the crime much on him than on his wife.

As soon as I lay my eyes on this title what comes to my mind is the problem of prejudice in the Wizarding World. People face this situation in their everyday life and it is not only related to race, but also to economic status. Draco Malfoy is always making jokes of Ron Weasley’s family financial situation. Ron is not comfortable with it and they even fight phisically once.

The question of being of a “pure race” is something that has motivated a war in this world. Being or not a pure blood is a matter of dividing people into castes: mudblood, muggleborn, pure blood, blood traitor or even a squib. The Magic world is one where people should be in a higher situation of life since they have a better understanding of everything, given by the deeper knowledge they have of things.

Although they have this deeper knowledge of life, we see that they are still humans, with the same feelings. We see Severus Snape, a professor at Hogwarts, who isn’t nice at all to Harry throughout all the book because of the old fights he had with Harry’s father. A pitty. He chose being this way. This is a problem too, people’s choices. There are the ones who chose to be good and have a lightier view of life, seeing everything with good eyes and deciding to treat the others with respect, although the strangeness they might feel. Unfortunately there are the others, who don’t get on well with the strangers, the others, the ‘outsiders’ of their horizons.

After all what we can conclude is that life isn’t perfect in any world, since in all worlds we try to reach there’s someone who’s bad. Let’s take advantage of the luck we have from someone, be it good or not, much or not much. We should learn from our protagonists the astuteness of using our fates in a good way.

We just got to know a character that has been inspiring children all over the world, someone who in despite of all difficulties faced does not act like a victim but decides to live and see what life has prepared and given in a sudden surprise.

Harry Potter lived up to his eleventh birth as an orphan, being mistreated and left behind a cousin who is a terrible and spoiled child. But suddenly everything changes and he finds out that there is a completely different world existing side by side to the one he knows and what is the best, he’s an important figure in this world, that is the Magic one.

JK Rowling writes in a way that we come to see that what the Magic people are is just what good normal people are in the world we know. Of course, not all of them, but the good ones. While, the people we know from the Muggle world is not good and kind and friendly at all (althoug after some periods, we come to see other characters that are different). The Weasleys for example are so nice and receptive with Harry that he wishes to be part of that family.

Comment on Margaret Avison’s poem, by Lucas Rigonato.

From the title we the readers may make an inference that the poet, Avison, is using someone else’s words, theories and thoughts to discuss about or even “counter”. Malthus, as we’ve been presented in the introduction given by our teacher, was a scholastic from the 19th Century who stated that in future the amount of food and people would increase in different scales. I.e. the amount of people in the world would grow and the increasing of food wouldn’t follow it. This, of course, would cause hunger, misery and death. In this poem we will see then, how Margaret Avison disagrees with Malthus’ ideas and theories.

None us in this so
burdened earth has known
how to live, let alone
who is too many.

Since we know that the poet is going to question Malthus’s opinions, in this first stanza we can see that she starts bringing the sense of humanity to the reader. I think she wants to make us aware of our situation over the earth. We are too many nowadays and we are all the same, so none have rights in deciding who is to live and to die. This, of course, taking Malthus’s ideas into consideration. We human beings have never been tought how to live. Actually from what we can assure, people started to multiply and grow all over the earth, and no master or ‘higher being’ has there to teach and guide us. And if there’s not been such a higher ‘one’ teaching, guiding and deciding who is to live and to die, nor should a person, a mere man do that.

Presence, each day
Afresh , you give a
Purifying signal to
Sting us alive.

Although we didn’t have someone there to master us in living as I’ve just pointed out, the poet here evokes a figure that is surely divine and we are able to assure that by the use of a capital letter in the word Presence. The use of the words “each day afresh” reminds me of an intertextuality that is the bread that God made fall over the Jewish people when they were in the desert and in need of suply. It was new everyday and couldn’t be kept to more than just one day. This presence is said to keep humans living and maybe believing, if not in Him, in something, and we see that when the poet says that the Presence, by “a purifying signal” sting us alive. I think that this is not a comfortable situation, since we have to be stang.

Vast territories and seashores
still bear these thronging
strangers. May none die
without somebody caring.

In the introductory paragraph I briefly recalled what Malthus theorised about the increasing growth of humanity on the earth. He said that there wouldn’t be enough suply for everyone. Yet, here she says that the “territories” and “seashores”, which are “vast”, still “bear” those people, that is, they are growing and growing in number, but still earth is bearing them. This huge growth is more likely to be seen in the poor countries, normally from the south, where there aren’t good policies in preventing this unplanned fact. The use of the word “strangers” may be a reference to the way Malthus spoke about those people, and here we can see a little irony in Avison’s words, making us strange and defamiliarize what he said. She changes it in the following sentence, making a kind of prayer which is: “none die without somebody caring”. People are to be respected and cared as something valluable for that is what we are.

To know even one other is
Costly. And being known.
Alive, among so many
more now? a concern…

In this world of so many where everyone should be vallued and not forgotten, it is hard to know one another, it costs something from us. What a paradox, right? She’s just said that people need someone caring about them and/or taking care of them, but now she shows that it isn’t that simple for this to happen, what is something that we do have to think about, “a concern”. How can we help each other? How should we do that with so many living in our days?

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens
to congeal the quandary. Yet
Presence abides untouched
in the churn of Quantity.

So, do we have a solution to that problem? I don’t think she would be that bold in finding and forcing one. She just shows us what happens to men when being submitted to situations of hunger and misery, they get desperate. This problem doesn’t seem to be easy to be solved, actually there is the threatening of congealing the situation. Then, she mentions again the divine Presence that remains there to touch the ones that don’t really look for it, but in fact need it.

Comment on Archibald Lampman’s Poem, by Lucas Rigonato.

Since we’ve being presented to this ‘Impressionist writer’, famous for his pictures painted in forms of sonnets (“lyric poems comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length”), as soon as we get in contact with the title of his works we automatically create images in our minds. I mean, you see the title A Thunderstorm and unconsciously you make up inside your head the picture of one, whether you’ve seen it or not. If you’re not able to create such a painting in your mind, Archibald Lampman helps you to do that through the lines of his poem. He also does it in a way that we can sense movement, although they are described like a snapshot. It requires the use of our imagination.

Yet it is not just a random description of the images he’s seen, but the words and lines are meticulously chosen and put in the right place in order to set a scheme of rhymes and rhythm, to form what is called Iambic Parameter. The pure form of the Iambic Pentameter is consisted of lines having five main stressed syllables followed by unstressed ones, giving rhythm to the sonnet. In this poem the rhyme scheme is: abbaaccadeffde; and the scantion of the first two lines is as it follows:

ˇ

Now, let us try to see line by line the landscape Lampman intended to describe with his poem. And I daresay that unless we build in our minds the image of every single word he writes we won’t get the full sensation of it. We somehow have to be in the poet’s sight, attempting to see what he saw.

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

We can already see those beautiful little birds flying over the sky. Up to now it doesn’t matter if there are lots of them or just few ones, we only see them flying freely as it is to be. I suppose this is a good image the poet wanted to show us.

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

Now through the metaphor the poet used we see those birds flying like withered leaves, which implies that they, the leaves, are old and weak, then caught by the gust, in a serene flight. Sometimes , when the wind is strong we see leaves flying and we may have the feeling that they will never come down again, or that it will happen far distant from the place we are. That’s how I see those “birds flying serenely high like gust-caught leaves”.

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

While those birds or leaves are there in the sky, we now have sounds. From the title you may already know what those are: a muttering that tells us the coming of a thunderstorm. The muttering preceeds the real phenomena, when the sky is getting prepared for the great show. Now I might fall into the mistake of being too Brazilian, but I add my previous experiences to this analysis. We can remember that when the weather is about to be rainy, the smell is different, it’s possible to feel the rain through it, thus I think that here we see the sense of smell being explored.

The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,

I personally see those leaves hanging not on the trees, but in the sky, as if the wind that is around took them and made them fly, as I described in the second line. It is surely a metaphor that the poet has used, but is it only a metaphor? Since it’s about to rain it’s logically  windy, and since the leaves are withered it wouldn’t be hard to those get to fly into the sky. The poet now starts to talk about the twilight and the normal would be a mixture of red and pinky tones, but it isn’t normal, it is ‘weird’, and since a thunderstorm is coming, we can imagine a darker mingle of colors.

The hurrying centres of the storm unite

There, in that grey and dark sky, the storm starts to happen. In this verse we see the clouds gathering together, heavy and full of energy, about to explode.

And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

This is fast. Although we’ve just seen that they are uniting, here they’ve already happened. It’s as if in one point, (not a moment, but a place), they’re gathering, in another, after thousandths, they’re already in action. It’s a magic moment when we see the flash lights, and you must know that they come before the noise of the thunders, since light is faster than sound. After a few seconds comes the great noise.

Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,

Due to reasons we can’t know, the lights follow their own pattern in getting to the earth. They draw unique and fantastic hinges in the sky. We, mere mortals, are able only to see and marvel ourselves with the nature spectacle.

Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height,

Drawings similar to towers are formed, which implies the sense of a huge thunderstorm. The poet starts to talk about something that is coming from the “heaven’s height” and now we will see what is it.

With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,

We already know that it is a sound, and that it gets together to the sound of elm-trees being swept  and swayed by the wind, the sounds are like roars as the poet says.

And pelted waters, on the vanished plain

The sound is also similar to waters being pelted on a field that is plain. Here we have an image full of noise. The rain has started and it’s noisy. Because of that rain, the field in front of the poet is vanished, as he can’t perfectly see what is going on out there. Here he might be being attacked by the rain, then, the sense of touch is seen. I myself would like to be there, although I’d be a little bit afraid of such nature power.

Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash

Now we do have the sound of the lights. As I said before, they take a little while to come to our ears. And kind of show the power and force nature has. In such situation if we haven’t been aware of the lights we may now have a big surprise and get really scared. This is the climax of a thunderstorm, when its power has come to our bodies.

That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,

That noise is spread really abroad, in a great extension of space.

Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,

Now we see the result of such great power. It puts fields and gardens out of array. We can imagine the mess and disorder the thunderstorm may has resulted in, and not only around but in a great extension, as the previous line showed.

Column on column comes the drenching rain.

We finally have a calmer and morbid image. After the explosion what comes into action is the rain. And the poets describes it well using the words “columns” of rain, which will drench the earth.

As pointed out, the poem is divided into two parts. In the first one (lines 1-7), the storm is shown through a higher perspective, as if seen what it’s happening in the sky. In the second one (lines 8-14) are shown the effects of the storm when it hits the earth. This poem requires from the readers a Referential Reading as most of Archibald Lampman’s poems. Referential because there’s reference to the real world in a clear manner, using pronouns and nouns.

“But their spirits sank and they all felt that the adventure was far more dangerous than they had thought”

It’s hard to describe how uncomfortable we feel when being obliged to face new experiences. They are normally frightening since we’re not able to see what is beyond our limits, then we tend to foresee only problems and darkness. To Mr. Baggins it wasn’t different. And Tolkien surely didn’t write about Bilbo’s feeling of the journey he was going to take part into in such deep concerns. Therefore, the influence of the writer in this post is evident.

At the beginning Bilbo is the spoiled kind, living comfortably and with nothing to be worried about, just enjoying his six meals a day, having in hand everything he could need, including money. But Gandalf appears and forces him to an adventure he didn’t look or ask for. It’s interesting how Gandalf insists in stating that Bilbo isn’t just a hobbit, but that more can be expected from him, although he isn’t sure of what that “more” is.

It’s seen on the 5th chapter that Bilbo isn’t important only in this book, but also in the great and famous story of the quest of The Ring. He finds it and keeps it with him, what will result, as some people might know, in more dangerous and harder adventures, however to other characters. Bilbo starts to be more than just a simple “burglar” and a “spoiled childish kind” when we see that he is able to escape from the creature Gollum and the Orcs in the mountain. Yet I daresay that he’s not a perfect hero. This statement might rise critics, but actually up to now he didn’t really deserve the honor and recognition he’s received. His actions were possible only because of the help of The Ring, which is said to be a magic one, and which he decided not to mention.

Nevertheless something that has to be said about Bilbo is that he is good; it can be seen when he escapes from the mountain and can’t go on as he’s not sure of his friends’s safety – Gandalf and the 13 dwarves. Then he comes back and fortunately meet them, using the magical Ring to hide himself from a dwarf that is guarding the way, which causes a great praise from the troop.

Although I said that he didn’t deserve the honor he’s received up to now, I share with Gandalf’s feeling about Bilbo. As a matter of fact I think that quests show a hidden side of ourselves, and they can be either bad or good ones. Bilbo is showing a good side of him and we’re glad of that, hoping that it continues the same, as we somehow see ourselves in Bilbo and his adventure.

The theme Magic is not only color and life in Narnia. Actually in this story “color and life” are not reality, but the longings of every creature and person, the shadow of an old past which remains through memories and hope. The Witch’s kingdom transformed Narnia into a cold and depressing place where it is always winter.

Yet the Aslan’s arrival at Narnia completely changes the set. The magic of the Witch starts to decrease and winter is going away. We see that hope is back to the heart of creatures and people. Peter miraculously grows and now we begin to see the figure of a king in his attitudes. Edmund is rescued from the White Witch but it does not resolve the biggest problem of all, the demanding for his death.

There is in Narnia a law stating that the blood of every traitor belongs to the Witch. Then, Edmund has to be sacrificed, however the Great Lion decides to pay the price in his place. Then we see a horrible description of someone being cowardly killed. Susan and Lucy watch the whole scene and Lewis describe their feeling like this:

“if you have cried till you have no more tears left in you, you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again”

This is not beautiful, but is the result of Narnia’s Magic. Someone being killed and the suffering that it causes in others, a real suffering. Everyone who has experienced such moment would understand what he says about the girls. This is how I see the Violence in Narnia’s magic: suffering and pain.