What do IV.ii-iii add to the gender-roles motif. What does it mean to be a true man?

Among the motifs employed in Macbeth, one of the more predominant ones are gender roles. Scenes two and three in act four add much to the motif. In act four scene two, Lady MacDuff states that ”He loves us not; He wants the natural touch: for the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl” ( IV ii 8-14). This is actually empowering, as it is saying that even the meekest of women will fight against an oppressor in order to save her household and her family. However, this is used as an insult against MacDuff as his wife say’s that the lowliest woman has more allegiance to her family than he does, thus she is emasculating her husband. This is fueled by the anger she feels towards him when he abandons his family in order to plead for England’s help in aiding Scotland against MacBeth. Ironically, MacDuff goes on later in the scene to say that being a man is synonymous with fighting for what is right and honor, letting us show that MacDuff’s view on manliness differs from his wife’s.

Macduff later implores Malcolm upon deciding a course of action for Scotland:  “Let us rather hold fast the mortal sword and , like good men, bestride our downfall’n birthdom” ( IV iii 1-5). MacDuff is saying that any respectable man must help his country when it has fallen down and protect it from an enemies blow. Again, doing this would only be the responsibility of “good men.”

 

 

 

Analyzing A Dream Within A Dream

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe is a fairly comprehensive piece of literature that I’m still not sure if I should choose it for my essay. The poem itself draws me, but I may need some help analyzing the first stanza. I understand it was written after the death of his significant other, and I can almost taste the melancholy on my lips as I read the poem aloud. In the first stanza I believe it is about her as the poem opens with “Take this kiss upon the brow!/And, in parting from you now.” The speaker of the poem is parting with a woman as she is dying, and his sadness is so complete that it creates an almost dreamlike feel for him. The speaker of the poem seems to lose hope, and wonders that if hope has flown away “In a night, or in a day/In a vision, or in none/Is it therefore the less gone?”

The second stanza I feel I have a better grasp on, though there are multiple theories I have for it. The speaker is standing on a beach among the surf and is holding a handful of sand that is slowly slipping through his fingers. The speaker is powerless to stop the sand from falling from his hand, no matter how tight he grips: “O God! can I not grasp/Them with a tighter clasp?/O God! can I not save/One from the pitiless wave?” This could be a possible parallel to the fact that no matter how much control we try to exert over our lives and those around us we cannot stop the inevitable, such as death. The sand could also represent how everything the speaker has loved is slipping away from him, to add to the general feel of loss and defeat. The speaker could be saying that reality is nothing but pain, and the pain is so overbearing that he hopes that it is a dream that he will one day wake up from. There is another possibility that the speaker is connecting dreams to the sand falling from his hand. Dreams only take a second, yet they feel much longer, much like the sand from his hands is only seconds, but they symbolize something much more, all of the people and events in his life that are passing by. While we may feel dreams so vividly as though they are happening, while they are only figments of our imaginations, we feel as though we are clasping reality in our hands only to have it slip away at the last minute. We can try to exert control over our lives, but it will never work out the way we wish it to. Our dreams will always get washed away like the sand in the ocean.

 

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: The sand could be a singular dream, and the ocean an immense reality. Like a dream, everything in life, including us, is fleeting. A dream within a dream could be a form of denial, a barrier against the horrors of the world.

 

 

 

 

Symbol of Ulysses

In Lord Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses,” Ulysses is an aged king contemplating his former life of adventure and battle from his throne. Ulysses is no longer the mobile, able young man that he once was, and he is now left alone with his memories and battle scars. A problem that Ulysses has faced since his return home has been that his name, his reputation, has grown larger than himself. Nothing that he can do now will compare to his legend, thus it makes a shade of finality and uselessness to this stationary portion of his life. However, Ulysses is strong willed, and not inclined to let himself drift into old age and regret. That is what Ulysses symbolizes to me, a passion to continue contributing to the world even when one becomes old: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!” At a time, Ulysses shone brightly, and participated in many battles and quests. Because of this Ulysses knows how to shine, and sitting and simply waiting to rust does not suit him. Ulysses conquers the faults of his body and with sheer will power is able to become useful once again. Ulysses represents that we should never let age be an excuse for letting yourself become confined to your bed, and that as long as you are strong in mind you are still able to contribute to society. Ulysses knows that just breathing is not life:”As though to breath were life!” While you may be physically and literally alive, if you are not experiencing the wonders of the world and doing substantial work, you are not alive. To be truly alive you need to have adventures and live through different experiences, not simply have a pulse. He cannot be idle, but must go out and adventure once more. The ocean and all that it represents, mystery, danger and most of all wonder, beckons to Ulysses: “There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; there gloom the broad, dark seas.” Ulysses was not made to live idly, not doing anything, and he must adventure to live. That is why the adventure calls to him. Ulysses may be old, but he recognizes that honorable things may still be accomplished in the twilight years of ones life: “Death closes all; but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done.” Death is only the final stage of life, so anybody who lives must die, and Ulysses has accepted that. But it does not damper his spirit, and as long as there is still noble work to be done, Ulysses will never sit by: “Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old; old age hath yet his honor and his toil.” The purpose that had gripped Ulysses was to gain honor and go on expeditions, battling evil and helping his friends. This purpose still weighs heavily on Ulysses, and he still feels its hands clutching him. That is represented in this quote: “For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die,” or when Ulysses says that while his spirit may be graying, the desire to obtain knowledge of the new lands is ever present: “And this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star.” In finality, in this last quote, Ulysses says that while age may have stripped him of physical strength, much of his power, such as that of his mind, still remains. Though fate makes him weak, as it is every mans destiny to grow older, he is strong and will continue to strike and seek, never to give up: “Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to see, to find, and not to yield.”

“Fire and Ice” symbolism

In Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice,” fire represents desire and ice hatred. “Fire and Ice” is predicting the end of the world; fire and ice being the two vices in which the speaker discusses could possibly lead to the end of our existence. The speaker is able to generalize that the world will end in either desire or hatred and still be accurate as desire and hatred are expansive emotions, with many acts that can committed under them. One could say that any act of destruction or violence could be done under desire or hatred, so the two emotions are probable ends to the world.

Fire is a symbol for desire as the speaker agrees with those who say that fire will end the world by speaking: “From what I’ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire.” The speaker would agree that fire, or desire, will end the world due to his personal experience tasting desire. Desire is a probable end to the world, as many destructive acts that humans commit is due to their desire to obtain something they don’t own, such as land, resources, or even people. The speaker seems to have “tasted desire” at some point in his life, and is aware of the seductive ways of this veiling emotion. True desire steams, like a gas, and soon covers every inch of ones being until that person will do all in their power to obtain what it is they wish for so badly. Desire clouds the mind, and those who desire something so fiercely become blind to the means they use to ascertain it, no matter how drastic.

The second degradation that the speaker tells the reader of is ice, which represents hatred. The speaker says: “I think I know enough of hate/To say that for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice.” The speaker provides the reader with a clear connection between hatred and ice, saying that he is familiar enough with hate, or ice, to know that it could end the world as easily as desire, or fire. The speaker tells us that ice can provide great “destruction,” thus saying that hatred is a volatile and volcanic emotion that could possibly be the ruin of us. Hate is an emotion beyond the regular human beings spectrum of feelings. True hate is an evil thing, and takes years to master and temper correctly, it must fester over time and becomes deadly in doing so. This thick, tangible feeling is strong, fuelled by passion, and ones hatred of another could very easily end the world.

Desire and hatred are duel emotions of terror, and are both deadly in their own rights. Whether a jealous sovereign to commandeer another countries resources launches an invasion or a mad scientist unleashes a disease on the public to alleviate his hatred for the world that had rendered him an outcast, hatred or desire are two probable endings for this planet. While desire is the ending that the speaker predicts more favorably for our planet, he acknowledges hatred as an equally daunting threat to the well being of the world.

After Apple Picking Analysis

When I read “After Apple-Picking” for the first time, there was no apparent “greater meaning” to me that sleep or apple picking represented, but as I reread the poem they began to form as the symbols they are. Apple picking obviously represents something in the speakers life that he had stopped doing, and feels slightly nostalgic for it now that it is over. My first clue to this is simply the title, “After Apple-Picking,” so whatever apple picking may represent, it is over now. We are reading about the after effects of apple picking. Whenever the speaker goes to sleep now, he dreams of apples, “Magnified apples appear and disappear/Stem end and blossom end/And every fleck of russet showing clear.” To me apple picking represents the passage of time. I know Frost turned to nature often for symbolism, and I can think of nowhere where the passage of time is more marked than in natures seasons. When the speaker was young, he was strong and enjoyed his work, hence he enjoyed all of the fun and experiences he had as a young man. He got old, however, “But I am done with apple picking now/Essence of winter sleep is on the night/The scent of apples, I am drowsing off.” Once in a while he may get a whiff of his old life, and feel remorse that it is over, but ultimately he is done with apple picking and has resigned himself to “sleep.” Sleep, I feel, may be a symbol for death. However, this death is not something that the speaker is fearing, but almost something long awaited. While the speaker may have lover apple picking, he realized after a time that he had grown too old for it, and grew tired of it. “For I have had too much of apple picking: I am overtired/of the great harvest I once desired. The speaker no longer desires all of the wild experiences of his youth, and is happy with sleeping, as he is “overtired.”

“Harlem” begins with a simile: “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” This simile is referring to what are the possible fates of a dream deferred. The poem ends, however, with a metaphor: “Or does it explode?” The shift here is that of a simile to a metaphor. “Harlem” lists a number of possibilities of what can happen to a dream ignored, and as a simile is a more specific form of a metaphor, a metaphor has more options to it. Since the similes in the poem are all very specific, such as a raison drying in a sun, the metaphor at the end is open ended. There are many ways something can explode, and exploding in this context can either be positive or negative, while all of the similes carry strictly negative connotations. So while “Harlem” begins with specific negative examples, it shifts to the more ominous, ambiguous ending that a metaphor can offer.

In “The Writer” starts off with multiple nautical metaphors and similes, but these metaphors shift to symbolism by the end of the poem. The metaphors similes at the beginning of the poem compare the speakers daughters actions to those of a ship, specifically a cargo ship. The poem compares the noise of her typing to a chain being hauled over the wall of a ship, “Like a chain hauled over the gunwale,”  and that  she is “In her room at the prow of the house,” the prow being the front of her ship. However, in the second half of the poem, the daughter is compared to a starling that was trapped in her room two years prior which the speaker had to help free. While in the first half of the poem the number of times the daughter could be compared to a boat is but a few, when introducing the bird as symbolism the reader can compare it to the daughter an infinite amount of times. Since symbolism is so much more suggestive, you can compare any element of the young writer to the starling, such as comparing the window sill that the bird had to clear to escape the house to the house itself, with the daughter having to escape it successfully to be free, or the birds trajectory to the daughters life.

In the poem “Digging,”  the beginning is simile and it ends with symbolism. The simile in the beginning is “Between my finger and my thumb my squat pen rests, snug as a gun,” and this shifts to a symbol at the end of the poem, with the pen being a symbolic shovel. “Between my finger and my thumb my squat pen rests, I’ll dig with it.” The pen, being compared to a shovel, will dig through the paper as a spade would the dirt, thus even though the writer is not continuing the family tradition of farming, the writer is still digging and writing down the story of his family. The pen is figurative and literal, while the simile in the beginning is purely figurative, as the pen cannot be “snug as a gun.”

Message of The Writer

“The Writer” was a short and pleasant read for me, nothing that affected me to deeply but also it held my interest for the duration of the writing. I felt as though much of the poem was symbolism, and in this blog post of the message the poem presented to me, I will comment on much of the symbolism and not much of the literal, because I feel as the the literal aspects of the poem were simply a vice to convey the deeper sense of the figurative. Although I realize that much of the poem was the speakers daughter writing on a typewriter, I feel as though it did not matter as much. There was much symbolism in the writer, chiefly the comparisons being drawn between the speakers daughter and a starling, which is a bird, and many references to nautical concepts. The poem takes place during a brief instant where a father or mother stands on the threshold of their daughters room, listening to her typing her thoughts on a typewriter, and making a mental comparison to when a bird was caught in her room two years prior.  After being trapped, the parent opened a window for the bird to use as a means of escape. After many fruitless tries at closed windows and battering itself bloody, the bird eventually chooses the right window and flies through to freedom on the other side.

The first thing that I noticed as I read was the apparent “boat lingo” used in the writing. I was introduced to words such as “In her room at the prow of the house” or “Like a chain hauled over the gunwale.” The first example is a metaphor comparing saying her room is in the front part of her house, the prow being the foremost part of a ship. This is not a comparison used often so I noticed it immediately for its peculiarity. Once I was alerted to the ship theme, I found others quite easily, such as the simile used in the second stanza, which compares the sound of her typing on a typewriter to a chain being drawn over a gunwale, which is the side of a ship, and which I would imagine would make a loud rattling and clanking noise. The poem writes that in her life she carries a “great cargo, some of it heavy,” symbolizing a large part of her life experiences being difficult and ever present in her mind, thus she carries it like heavy cargo. Finally, as she moves foreword again in her typing, her writing is described as “strokes,” strokes obviously being the means to propel a ship foreword manually, just like her writing is pushing her thoughts foreword. Finally, the speaker wishes for their daughter to have a “lucky passage,” which is applicable not only to a boats passage but for the speakers daughter to have a lucky life and be successful in her ventures, chiefly her writing (I inferred this part).

The second thing that I noticed was the small story of the starling being trapped in the daughters room. I took this as symbolism for the daughter. She is trapped in the house and cannot escape, much like the bird trapped in the drapes. The speaker then will try to present a means of freedom and to open up the world to the daughter, much as the speaker freed the bird from the drapes and opened the window for it to fly out, the speaker will try to free the daughter, and the daughter may get tousled on the way, like the bird hitting itself against the closed windows, but she will eventually become her own person and leave safely. This is represented by the starling clearing the “sill of the world” and flying free. Sill here is used as the literal window sill for the bird to leave the house, but also the precipice of the world for the daughter, who will need to leave the house and make it on her own. As the speaker thinks wistfully of this previous incident, the speaker recounts how he/she had forgotten that everything was life or death. If the starling had stayed trapped in the house it would have surly perished, and if the starling hit against the window pane too hard it would die as well. If the daughter remained trapped in the house she would lose herself individually and spiritually and fizzle out, however if she failed too many times trying to escape she would die as well. But, if she flew a “smooth course for the right window,” like the starling who flew for the right window, she would flourish and be happy and free. The main message of the poem for me was that you must provide your child with the opportunity to leave your house where they will be trapped under your oppressive being if they stay, and that you should guide them in the right direction. If you do this, then your child will be happy and free and be able to become his/her own. In the poems conclusion, the speaker wishes his/her a safe journey like earlier, except this time harder than before as the speaker remembers the story of the bird and how dangerous his daughters path could be. Although it could be a dangerous path, the speaker will be happy to see his/her daughter soar on her own, represented in the line “How our spirits rose when, suddenly sure, it lifted off from a chair-back, beating a smooth course for the right window, and clearing the sill of the world.”

Imagery in “The Forge”

The imagery in “The Forge” helps to set an immediate atmosphere of a rugged, rustic environment. The poem is laid out in a way that gives the impression of walking through a door into the forge, and introducing the different elements of what goes into metal working. The first line, “All I know is a door into the dark,” makes me immediately picture a single door haloed against the dark wood of a forge at night. The forge master is so connected with his profession that all he knows in life is this one door that leads to his art. In the next few lines, the reader can almost hear the sounds of the forge as the lines describe each of the small noises that contribute to making the forge an orchestra of sound. Outside, it is quiet, and you can the serene scene of “old axles and iron hoops rusting.” Inside, however, the quiet is broken by the striking metallic ring of a hammer,, the sputtering noise of sparks fizzing throughout the air, and the sharp hiss of steam when a piping hot horseshoe is thrown into a tank of water to toughen it up.

Next the sights are explained in a beautiful medley of poetic lines. It describes the ever present, resolute presence of the anvil, somehow giving a sense of security, strength and determination to the forge. The anvil is “horned as a unicorn, at one end square,” giving a perfect image of the simultaneously spiked and cubical form of the anvil. It is here that the master of his art extended his being into shape and music, the music being the sounds of the forge and the shape being the finished product of iron.

Finally, the forge master himself is described vividly yet simplistically, the poem only calling out a few oddly specific examples of the masters person. He has “hairs in his nose” and dons a leather apron, giving him a gruff appearance. He is rarely deterred from his work, and although he may stop for a few moments he always loyally returns to the bellows and hammer.

The pace of this poem is very quick, and I can almost hear the banging of the hammer on iron as I read along, the blows in tandem to the words on paper. I could not quite place a particular rhyme scheme in this poem, and when I tried to write out the abcd method it was still nonsensical, maybe I’m just not comprehending the subject matter, but it confused me, although I did pick up on a fast tempo.

Sound Echoing The Sense

“Though oft of the ear the open vowels tire” 

In “An Essay on Criticism,” many of the times it admonishes a particular writing pattern, the line itself that is chastising is an example of what it is criticizing, and in this form is extenuates what is really wrong with the line by providing us a real life example. The text above is doing just this, the line is saying that open vowels tire the ear if in excesses in one line, and when you read it out loud, the repetition of open vowels do sound tedious to the ear.

“And ten low words oft creep in one dull line”

This is yet another example of the line doing exactly as it advises against. There are ten words in this line, and you notice it, as the line simply seems cramped and overcrowded, the number of words drawing away from attention that you would otherwise pay to the line. You begin to lose attention if the line is too long, and that is precisely what happened when reading the line above.

“Where’er you find ‘the cooling western breeze,’

In the next line, it ‘whispers through the trees’;

If crystal streams ‘with pleasing murmurs creep,’

The reader’s threatened (not in vain) with ‘sleep'”

The lines above advise readers not to be attracted to poems that are so generic that every rhyme is expected. It is a trite tactic to rhyme breeze with trees, and the effect of such a formulaic poem can lead some readers to sleep. Reading the lines above, although mocking, their message is boring and does threaten a readers, such as myself, with sleep. The sounds seem to lull one to sleep a couple lines in.

 “That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along”

Sometimes you the ending of a poem before you are finished with it, but you continue to read the dull story, thus the poem is akin to a wounded snake, not quite dead, but on its way, slowly dragging through the last of its lines. There are thirteen syllables in this lines, more than most of the lines in this poem, and you become aware that it really does drag its length along, until you are simply bored of hearing it, and wishing for it to end.

“Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows”

This line is expressing the soft strain on words when beautiful musicality works in tandem with well written words. When you are writing of soft matters, you soft strains, and the line above is filled with words that are soft on the lips, having an innocent, if not serene sound.

imagery and musicality (meter, assonance, rhyme, etc)

The imagery in the poem “Meeting At Night”  is quite  beautiful. When you are reading through the verses you feel as though you are there in the small boat on with waves lapping at it’s sides, crossing the fields and meeting an untold lover late into the night. You get your first taste of imagery within the first line, when the poem displays the setting as  “The gray sea and long black land; and the yellow half moon large and low.” The imagery helps to place you amidst  the poem, seeing, smelling, and hearing what the poem is describing. I can almost see the moon as it hangs low over the gray sea, to my side the land an opaque mass unable to penetrate.  As the poem continues it identifies the waves as “startled,” and that they “leap in fiery ringlets from their sleep.” The waves are being personified as a living force that is startled to be awakened from it’s sleep, and I can appreciate the beauty in this comparison. The sand that the boat lands on is “slushy,” giving it texture. The beach that you walk on is “warm” and “sea-scented,” giving a feeling as well as a smell to mere words. That is the beauty of imagery, the right words have the capability to unlock senses and emotions within you even though you are not directly experiencing them, and it is with this that your past happens become part of your reading experience. I can sense secrecy in this night meeting, as you “tap at the pan, the quick sharp scratch and blue spurt of a lighted match.” The words inspire  new feelings inside you, and the word ‘blue’ makes the color of the match spark within your mind. The urgency of this meeting is apparent as “a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,” obviously this meeting is long anticipated and there was some fear that it might not have transpired.

As for the musicality of the poem, there is much to be said. You are introduced to such rhymes as “leap” and “sleep,” “land” and “sand,” “scratch” and “match,” “appears” and “fears,” “beach” and “each,” and “low” and “prow.” I noticed that “leap and sleep” and “scratch and match” were rhymes that were placed consecutively after one another. The line above “leap” ended with “low,” and “plow,” which rhymed with “low,” is right after “sleep.” It was the same scenario with “scratch and match.” “Appears” is right above scratch, and then rhymes with “fears,” which is below “match.” In addition, the pattern continues with the fact that
“land,” which happens to be above “low,” rhymes with “sand,” which is below “prow,” and “beach,” above “appears,” rhymes with “each,” below “fears.” This is a very interesting pattern for the poem to go by.