Swimming to good country people

The first story about the Ned (the swimmer) had a real "Days of Wine and Roses" feel to it. I think it's quite obvious that Ned is a social alcoholic that hangs out with a bunch of other alcoholic or borderline alcoholic socialites. There are all these parties that he is aware of but always denies going (probably to drink) he doesn't remember asking for money, selling his house, or anything else he is accused of doing by his mistress, and one other neighbor (most likely because he's not completely sober when he is telling this story)...Ned not the author. As far as developing the story I thought that Cheever did an excellent job capturing the pool party, barbecue suburban lifestyle that many addicts had in the 50's and 60's. Social drug and alcohol abuse was all the thing back then.

As far as "Good Country People" goes. didn't really like it. Saw the end coming a mile away, never trust a bible salesmen. kind of creepy he keeps peoples phony appendages, who knows what he does with them. and was told in that slow, obvious, yet somewhat ominous way. Both stories share the "things aren't what they appear" vibe that is still popular in books, movies, and t.v. today. I think Joy should have moved away with her phony leg and been a teacher or something. she's to old to be living at home.

Hurtston and her women

Hurston tries to portray women accurately for the time period but tries to show the reader something more. Janie, the main character, does’t seem to follow the status quo of how a southern Negro woman was expected to act. Her grandmother, who raised her, was a slave and came from a time before Women’s suffrage and civil rights. When Janie first becomes aware of her body and hormones, her Grandmother wants to marry her off in the hopes that she’ll have a better life. The sad thing is there are still families like this today; third class families that would like to see their daughters married off to Doctors or lawyers and stay housewives.
Janie gets married Logan Killicks an older Negro gentlemen, but one with sixty acres of land. Janie gets upset at the thought of having to marry someone she a) does’t love, b) is older, and c) kind of creeps her out. Her grandmother says to Janie, “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as ah can see.” Janie marries Killicks and moves with him to his spot of land. While Killicks doesn’t treat Janie poorly by hitting her, or making her do everything, he treats her almost more like an equal, or at least like a mule. There is a scene where he asks her basically, “if I chop the wood up could you take it in?” he then tells her that his first wife would chop the wood if it had to be done. So the reader can see that her first husband treats her more like a fellow worker than a feminine woman.
Janie Leaves Killicks for Joe Starks and he promises her that he wants to treat her like a lady. They move to Eatonville, and after the town gets started and Joe becomes Mayor, he starts to treat Janie different, using money as a way to show love, and eventually that to fades. By Joe’s deathbed Janie tells him that all she wanted to do was be his wife but that wasn’t enough; she tells him that there was no room in the relationship for her and his ego.
Then Tea Cake comes along and treats her like a beautiful feminine woman and the whole town is surprised by her actions of independence and her new role as a woman. Tea Cake treats Janie like a woman and has an actual relationship with her. They eventually run off together and everyone in town feels like he’s taking advantage of Janie and that Janie is going to get hurt and come back with nothing. She kind of does, but through her relationship with Tea Cake she experiences what “for better or worse, richer or poorer, and in sickness and in health” means.
I think Hurston is trying to convey that yes there is obviously a difference between men and women, but women can be just as strong and are just as mortal as men can be. She shows that it is important to understand the differences and to try and see women as human beings instead of property, workers, or slaves.

Moore and Stevens

While I don't share the anger and frustration that Elise feels, I too was a bit confused at...let's say the "wording"...yeah the "wording" of the assignment. I think i got what we have to do though...i hope.

I'm going to talk about Steven's poem "The Idea and Order at Key West" and Moore's poem "What are Years?" The first thing that I noticed right away was that Stevens ends all of his stanzas with punctuation while Moore uses the stanza as a "unit of poetry" and will have stanzas lead in to one another. Because Stevens is more straight foreward I liked him better.

Both of the poets use the idea of singing in one of their poems. In "The Idea and Order at Key West" the "sound effects" Steven uses a lot are singing and mention of the sea. The reader gets the image of the ocean and the sounds it makes. The first line is, "She sang beyond the genius of the sea." so if one was to think that the singing of the sea is what we normal imagine the sea sounding like on a windy day one can image this "she" is singing/sounding much better than that.
Stevens uses other sound words such as "fluttering", "cry, caused constantly a cry" Stevens goes so far as to eventually rhyme, when he states, "Since what she sang was uttered word for word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred the grinding water and the gasping wind; but it was she and not the sea we heard." I think it's one of my favorite "sound" sections of the poem. Another cool example is when he uses an alliteration and says, "the sunken coral water-walled," you can actually kind of hear the gurggling of water. My other unrelated favorite part was lines 38-40, "And when she sang, the sea, whatever self it had, became the self that was her song, for she was the maker."

In Moore's poem "What Are Years?" he almost focus' on the silence by stating, "dumbly calling, deafly listening" which is impossible because dumb is not being able to speak and deaf in not being able to listen. However he uses other words like "stirs" and the rhyme, "the sea in a chasm, struggling to be free and unable to be," this is one of the only rhymes in the poem other than, "So he who strongly feels, behaves. The very bird, grown taller as he sings, steels his form straight up. Though he is captive, his mighty singing says,"

So I hope this complied if it didn't...my bad

Good talk we'll see ya out there

T.S. Eliot

Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” is unlike most of the other modernist works that we have read because He doesn’t have a lot of technology discussions. I mean he does write this poem in a new form but it reads fragmented and impersonal because it is hard to understand what he is trying to talk about with all of the fragments and references to religious stories and Shakespeare.

In High school I remember having to read The Screwtape Letters and I remember it being from the perspective of Uncle Screwtape who ended up being Satan. So in this story I’m at least aware of Eliot’s passion for religious writing. Each of the sections reads like a different story. The fourth story is the shortest and by far the simplest and easiest to read, it basically talks about Phlebas who drowns and decays in a whirlpool, it talks about his identity and how he was once hadsome and as tall as the reader.

Eliot seems to really embrace the modernist movement in what he talks about and how he forms his stanzas all fragmented, but he speaks in so much reference and footnotes that it is hard to follow the points that he is trying to get across. He doesn't make it obvious that he is trying to talk about the decay and/or change of religion.

Washington and Du Bois Bois Bois

First of all I didn't really agree with what Washington had to say in his address. The whole "Cast down your bucket where you are..." thing...kinda weird. I understand what he's saying but it seems like he's cool with the treatment of negroes in this time. He says, "...in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized." and, "...you will find that they (fellow negros) will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. It seems like he's telling the whites to "lay back and relax, we got er' from here." Granted slavery is over but still even today racism is still running strong and I don't really see how it should be up to the negroes to help boost the Southern economy.

Du Bois Bois basically calls Washington on what he says and acknowledges that his whole address was economic. Du Bois is official though..I mean he has lists....ooooo. He shows that Washington wanted blacks to give up political power, forget about civil rights, and higher education. The third one i don't really agree with but he can have his opinion. However Du Bois is speaking around Jim Crowe Times and that could very easily be affecting what he is writing.

The Art of Belated Souls

Henry James equals confusing person. He is kind of long winded at times and hard to understand. I think he summarizes best in his article “The Art of Fiction” when states, “Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.” And later on he says, “The only reason for the existence of a novel that it does attempt to represent life.

I think it is interesting that the story, “Belated souls” was written by a female and if the only reason for a novel according to James is to represent life I think Edith Wharton did it. She makes you feel awkward and scandalous right along with her characters. I actually wished the story would have been longer and had a bit more character development.

For example I would have liked to know how Lydia’s husband felt from his perspective and known more about Gannett’s background. However, what Wharton does is bring the reader in at the middle of the story, which represents life perfectly because how many of us know each other’s life story besides perhaps our family and close personal friends, and even then we all still have secrets. Lydia’s “predicament” is a more romantic version of things we see on Jerry Springer these days.

The story portrays the classic soap opera story of an affair and a women’s struggle to feel independent, and not assimilate into the social, upper-class circle of gossiping women. I think what James is saying about discussion and suggestion being fertilizing when it’s frank and sincere is that society has to recognize these life representations to better understand life. Like Walt Whitman was all about being philosophical and trying to answer the big questions in life, fiction is still a way of representing life. Most fiction is based on some fact.

James discusses this in his own awkward way. First he relates a picture to reality in that a painter is inspired by reality and so history also represents life. If we understand history so we don’t repeat it then we can still see the representation of life in works of fiction in order to understand it.

A lot of what I’ve just said probably makes sense and sounded a lot better in my head and if that’s the case then I’m embodying Henry James an