Wise Blood

The humor in Wise Blood is so funny! I loved the dark sense of humor that Hazel Motes had. He made the book worth reading for sure. I think that is a part of American Literature that is often put on the back burner, just because everyone is so concerned with the message behind the reading that no one looks into the humor. Fantastic book!

Some of the similies that I did want to note, just because it was an assignment, are:

**It was like a large speard raveling and the separate threads disappeared down the dark street. (Page 55)

**You act like you think you got wiser blood than anyone else. (Page 59)

**She hit him across the legs with the stick, but he was like part of a tree. (Page 63)

**His face under the cap was like a thin picked eagle's. (Page 69)

**He had on the same kind of uniform as Enoch and he looked like a dried-up spider stuck there. (Page 97)

I took a peek at Cheryl's website and looked at the picture Hide and Seek. Whoever drew that is brilliant and out of his mind at the same time. It was so crazy. I literally sat at my computer and stared. I walked back and forth from my screen about twenty times and was totally taken by it. What a crazy image, and an even crazier feeling that I was left with after I viewed it. I felt like I should go and draw something to make people feel that breath-taken/empty/captivated feeling that I had. I got nothin' so far....

The Commonplace......

COMMONPLACE**

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
-William Wordsworth

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.
-Sir Philip Sidney

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.
- William Wordsworth

"Mankind will discover they have to turn to a poet for belief."
-Matthew Arnold

"Reality is the cliche from which we escape by metaphor"

-Wallace Stevens

COMMONPLACE**

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
-William Wordsworth

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.
-Sir Philip Sidney

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.
- William Wordsworth

A Fun Blog To Read....

I think that everyone should read Emily Rader's Blog about America and how is is a blind bull! I found it very true as well as entertaining! Get on it guys!

The Wizard of Oz: All Grown Up!

Most people hear the words 'The Wizard of Oz' and the first thing that comes to mind is red sparkling shoes and a yellow brick road. As they should, that is what this movie was created for after all. Am I right? Kind of. Frank L. Baum wrote this American Classic with no intentions of it coming into one of the greatest American Classics of all time, but since it became just that, he rode the success of it.

Dorothy is one of the cetral figures in American history. She is the damsel in distress that we see in most stories of American Literature. She is swept away from her home by a devastating tornado and is forces to battle the top dogs (The Wicked Witch of the West), in attempt to reach the Wizard who can get her home. She encounters different speedbumps and accumulates companions who help her along her journey to get home.

All of this plays out to the simple fact that home was always in Dorothy's heart....just like all of the other missing pieces were to the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man. It is a classic theme in American Literature....through the bad and uneasy times, good usually prevails and a message is learned. That is what we see as adults....kids still see the ruby slippers and yellow brick road!

The House was Quite and the World was Calm...

The poem that I have been reading, understanding, and memorizing for this course is Wallace Steven's poem, "The House was Quiet and the World was Calm". Like any poem, it has what's on the surface and what we as students analyze it as. I find this poem to be extremely interesting.

I find myself in this poem. There is a person reading a book on a hot summer night and has trapped, or 'been carried away with' this book they are reading. All of a sudden this individual finds that they are so deep into the reading that they are in reality. They have become the book. The interesting part is so true. When we read, and we do find ourselves acting like the certain character, as tend to want other things and read ahead. Stevens gets this point across when he says the reader 'leaned' .....he wanted whas was going on to be true....but it reality it was not.

This is a poem about how captivated we get in the world of words.

Just a quick note!

On Flirting...

I used to think that my generation was one of the first ones to test the waters of flirting, and now I know that I could not be further from the truth. Flirting began back in the days of Daisy Miller, or wait, back in the days of dancing. We see how young men and women used to "dance around the boundaries of desire" way way back, and it is another theme in this American Literature class.

Jorge Simal wrote an essay titled "On Flirtation". Though we didn't read it all in class (I definitely will later), he made some points that just tied right in with Daisy and Citizen Kane. He made the point that flirting is the power to refuse and conceide at the same time. Now is that America or what? He also said something along the lines of deriving from marriage and abduction, but am but sure if he was talking about marriage and abduction in terms of flirting. Whatever the case, we see this little action popping up all over our texts.

We get 'carried away' with this thing called flirting. And now that I see it actually is something that authors love to write about, I will now correct my friends whenever I catch them in the act!

Citizen Kane Continued.....

In 1941, Orson Wells came out with what was to be one of the greatest American films of all time, “Citizen Kane”. It is often talked about as one of the most innovating films in the history of this great nation. But why is it so highly talked about as being American? I thought about the first day of literature when I wrote a million words on the board describing what an American was, and it made perfect sense as to why this film is so “American”.

This is a nation of the young and a place where we experience new things every day. I see young all over Citizen Kane. Charles Foster Kane is a young man himself, who takes over the National Inquire and gives it a new look. Things such as this happen all of the time. He does different things and flirts with disaster at some points, but Charles Kane showed that risk taking was going on in this nation of youth, and that keeps repeating itself now.

Greed is something that we as Americans are greatly known for. I see why we are the way we are when I watch this movie. Kane was so greedy. He wanted everything. The perfect job, all the money in the world, the perfect wife, and when she was not doing the trick for him he went else where. It is all about greed in this movie and it is people like this who paved the way for the United States of America.

However, though greed shows a little negative side in all of us, the fact that our nation is one of freedom sheds light on the positive side of things. Charles Foster Kane was, once he reached adulthood, able to do whatever he set his mind to. Though he had decisions made for him when he was little, which we all do, he was able to go his own way eventually. This is what most Americans do now, and it is a great thing.

On a last note, in the movie, Charles Foster Kane dies and reveals that he was not as happy as we all thought he was. Regret is one of the most popular things that show up in the American way of life. Regret is a small word that means a lot to many people.

Citizen Kane #1

I have never seen the movie Citizen Kane before, and to tell you the truth I was not impressed. Actually, that is a lie. I was very ingriqued by the movie. Since I did not watch it in it's entirety, I will have to continue this blog as well as my essay as soon as I do finish the movie, but until then I thought I would talk about it as far as my knowledge goes.

Charles Kane is a very high man in the world at this present time. He is the owner of the National Inquire and is the hot shot of the town! Pretty much, Kane is the big man on campus and he calls all the shots. I think that this is typical American Literature, and we see how this nation developed. Kane paved the way for high business men who took advantage of many women, using his powers to get whatever he wants, and in the end dies unhappy because he didn't get the chance to live a normal life.

We see that type of stuff all the time this day in age! I will elaborate a little more when I know for sure what I am talking about!

Miss Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller walks along a sidewalk by a local lake. She is accompanied by not only one, but two young men on each arm. Her lovely blonde hair is flowing in the wind while she smirks at the third man walking past her and her ‘friends’. There is no doubt that she is beautiful, and along with her two companions, she knows it.
The young American man on her right is infatuated with the girl he is walking with. He wants her and looks as though he would drop anything to be her one and only love. She sees him differently, however. Her body language states that he is her back up. Her go to guy if every other man leaves her. He is only around because he is captivated with this young woman and she fully takes advantage of the fact that he is hanging on to that thread of the fact that she could be his some day.
On her left rides a sultry Italian man. He is her love, as it is seen in her eyes. This man is hers, in a sense. And because of her beauty and charm, it is okay with him that he is not her only want. She wants more. She has captivated this young Italian in a way no one else has, so it seems. Everyone is lovesick over Miss Daisy Miller.
These two men are infatuated with the young, flirtatious Daisy, and every outsider agrees. It is seen to all that this young woman is a flirt and tease. An object of desire is she, that everyone would like to have, but cannot. This situation is what is so interesting and appealing to men, and appalling to those who look in from the outside. However, we all are sure to look in on the state of affairs.
This is my painting of Daisy Miller. And if there really was a work of art that told her story, one would have no problem distinguishing the lines that were read in the book. This flirt who would stop at nothing to have attention, even with people telling her what she is doing is indecent. After all, like ‘American Gothic”, we are fascinated with the unordinary things of the world.

A Little Food for Thought.....

D.H. Lawrence was quoted as saying "Trust the Tale, not the Teller". I sat for a while and thought to myself, 'how are we not to trust the one who told'? It then came to me that what he was getting at is that every individual in this world will read that tale and it will be something totally different to each person. I think that this is one of the major themes in this class. We are all to read something that then make something of that text, and not every person is going to walk into class each day with the same exact ideas and same exact reading of literature. How we interpret things is a huge theme of literary criticism as well as American Literature.

That brings me to my next thought, and that is simply how far do we read into each text we are assigned? Through all of the historical, psychological, and fairy tale ideas, I think that each person can read as far into something as they need to. It goes back to the different ways people interpret readings. Those are a couple of very interesting thoughts that were brought up in class on September 5th.

An example of the way that different people interpret things is little book we read called Daisy Miller. This book could be taken in so many different directions. I found it to be quite humerous. I thought that Daisy Miller might have been the Paris Hilton of her day. Very flirtatious, yet stupid and vain at the same time! I think that if there was a picture of Daisy Miller in a magazine, she would have been quite comparable to one of Miss Hilton! That is my interpretation of her, and I am sure that some would agree with me and some would not. That is just the beauty of words on a page. They are what we make them!