Post 21 - Myth in My Life

I lived in California during elementary school. In the small town in central California that I grew up, the Mormon church was the dominant religion. My best friends through elementary school were a part of a typical Mormon family. I was always playing at their house after school and on the weekends, and so naturally attended church with them. I appreciated the feeling of being around a normal, intact family. My mom was a single parent and not around very much because she was working to support our family. The acceptance and normalcy of my friends' home was a welcome change from what my home was like. Their lives revolved around the Mormon church. As a result, I began to be taught about the doctrine of the church and was eventually baptized. Once I became an adult, I started to really look at what the religion was about and the beliefs that they enforced. If you've ever taken a step back and really analyzed what religion is about, it can seem a little bit crazy. The only reason that I believed the myth of the Mormon religion is because I was taught at a very young, impressionable age that their religion was the truth.

Children do not have critical thinking skills to a point that they are able to separate truth from myth. You can see this all over the globe. For the most part, children believe and take on the religion of their childhood home. Children born of Christians are Christian, Muslim parents raise Muslim children, Buddhist parents raise Buddhist children, and so on. This tells me that the myth of religion is subject to a person's parentage and geography. Every person with faith believes that the other religions are not the right religion. That says something about the myth of religion.

Post 20 - Myth in Charles Martin, "Taken Up"

In Charles Martin's poem "Taken Up," the author is describing a group of people waiting on a hill, watching a disc-like flying ship with a "glowing wheel of lights." It descended down on the hill where the group of people were waiting, and they watched it land. Martin then wrote about an alien came out of the ship, "And those who watched them were confirmed in faith:" The poem then spoke of them speaking to the group of humans with "Light was their speech, spanning mind to mind." The aliens communicated telepathically with the group of humans and asked them if they wanted to leave Earth and exchange "amplitude for emptiness?"

The humans were then pulled up into the ship, bent back with their arms and legs hanging down slightly, like every ufo abduction you've ever seen in a hollywood movie. This was a fun poem to read and dealt with an unusual type of mythology from the typical God-like myth. Their are many people who believe in extraterresterial beings and ships from outer space. This is a popular myth in our current culture, so it was interesting to read and write about.

 

Post 19 - Emily Dickinson

I've really enjoyed reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She was obviously a very talented poet. She has so many quotable, meme-worthy, lines in her poems too. I've never really gotten into reading poetry before this class. Now, so many of the poems we've read have really made me appreciate the art and beauty of some poetry.

I always admired authors that can paint a picture with their words. The format of poetry allows for fewer words than a full short story or book. It's amazing that authors like Emily Dickinson are able to paint such a beautiful scene full of metaphors and symbols, and they do it with the use of so few words. I'm in awe of such carefully constructed writing. The more I read, the greater my new found love of poetry.
I also love that each poem, because of the poets meager use of words, can speak different things to different people. I'm finding that when I read a poem, and we have to interpret the meaning for class, my take on the poem, what it said to me, is very different from what others say the poem is supposed to be about.

The poem, "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain," spoke to me of that feeling I sometimes get in my head, when a thought or a problem goes round and round, and I can't figure it out. There are times when I feel like I'm going to go crazy with it. It does feel almost like a drum, beating a rhythm that is telling me that I have the thought or answer, but I just can't quite get to it. At the end of the poem Dickinson writes,

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down–
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing–then–"

 

That perfectly describes the feeling of finally reaching the thought that I knew was in my head all along. When I looked up online what this poem was supposed to be about, this is not the interpretation that I saw most people have. The general consensus is that it's about the obvious, funerals, or that it may be describing a person falling into madness. When I went back and reread the poem, I could see the other interpretation's point-of-view. I don't know if maybe I'm just not "getting it," so I see something that others don't, or if maybe I just have a different perspective than most people have. I don't know, and really I don't care. The point of reading poetry is to enjoy it and I'm doing that. If I get something completely different out of it than the author intended, that doesn't make me admire the beauty of the author's words any less.
I really like the poem, ""Faith" is a Fine Invention" it spoke of the clash between science and religion long before most. Her foresight was amazing. And that a poem with only 16 words, can say so much. She sometimes wrote of being surrounded by those with faith, when she couldn't do so herself.

Emily Dickinson was a complex person, as her writing shows. I am a new admirer of her work. I actually just asked for a book of her poetry for my birthday next week. I can't wait to read more of her writing! I also look forward to going back and reading some of the poems that we've read in class, when I'm in a different place in life, and seeing if I read something different in them at that point.



Post 18 - A Symbol in "Revelation"

One of the many symbols in Flannery O'Connor's short story "Revelation" was the book Human Development that  Mary Grace hurled at Mrs. Turpin. I think that this was symbolic of the new views in society that were confronting those that were stuck in an old pattern of thinking, like Mrs. Turpin. Mary Grace was a college student from the North and so, most likely, had learned a progressive way of thinking while away at school. Mrs. Turpin was portrayed by O'Connor as a typical southerner, full of racism, pride, religion, and certainty. The final clash in the doctor's office waiting room ended in Mary Grace's throwing of the book she was reading, Human Development, and hitting Mrs. Turpin in the head. This was symbolic of the development, or in other words progression, of society confronting those same southern views. This was the part of the story that I found to be the most entertaining. It also spoke the loudest to the theme of the story. Though Mrs. Turpin spoke of God and her religion throughout the story and it ended with her having a religious "revelation," I interpreted the story as more of a statement on the changes occurring in society, and the book Human Development hitting her upside the head was the ultimate symbol of that progression.

Post 17 - A Symbol for Me....

This is a more difficult topic than I thought. I'm very comfortable with who I am, and I feel that I know who I am, but when I started to think about what single thing to choose as a symbol to represent my life, I was faced with putting a lot more thought into it than I expected to. How do you assign a symbol to represent a person? There are many things in my life that show just a small part of who I am...There's my engagement ring as a symbol of the love and commitment in my relationship with my fiancée. My children symbolize what I am most proud of in life and what I have put the most of my time and energy towards. My backpack and laptop currently represents my academic life at this point. My many pairs of stiletto shoes represent my femininity. The random prints on some of the shirts that I wear to school give a small bit of my personality to the world. I really can't choose just one symbol to represent me. I'm way too complicated for that!!

Post 16 - A Symbol of Love

My dad wore a St. Christopher's Medallion on a gold chain around his neck all of the time. His mother gave it to him when he was shipped out during the Vietnam War and he never took it off. When he passed away last month, my mother kept it and has worn it since. I get really sad when I see it outside of her shirt, but I know that it really means a lot to her and helps her to feel close to him again. I really miss him!!

Post 15 - Psychological Criticism

Psychological criticism is defined in our literature book as:

"The practice of analyzing a literary work through investigating three major areas: the nature of literary genius, the psychological study of a particular artist, and the analysis of fictional characters. This methodology uses the analytical tools of psychology and psychoanalysis to understand the underlying motivations and meanings of a literary work."*

I would imagine that when an author is contemplating a literary work that she/he would consider a psychological analysis of the characters in the story or poem. This can be seen by the author writing the different character's speech and thoughts within a work. Each character would have a different psychological (and personal) perspective and that would be shown by the author writing what the characters are saying and thinking. Once a work is completed, a psychological criticism by the reader would be an attempt to analyze the psychological perspective that the author gave her/his characters.

Another method of doing a psychological criticism is to look at the life, quotes, and history of the author of a literary work. This would give insight into the story and characters of the writing. Either method of psychological criticism would give insight into the literary work being analyzed.

* Kennedy, X.J., & Gioia, D. (2013). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and writing (12th ed., p. 2073). Boston: Pearson.

Post 14 - Critical Perspective for Doc 2

I decided to write my Doc 2 on the sociological perspective of Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation." Considering the intensity of the societal changes that were building up and occurring during the early 1960s when O'Connor wrote "Revelation," I thought that this was the most interesting criticism for me to write. I enjoy sociology and history, so it was a natural choice for me to analyze the story with those topics in mind. I look forward to the opportunity to relate the hippie and civil rights movements to the characters in "Revelation." Flannery O'Connor did an excellent job in her portrayal of the changing society using the different characters in this story.

Post 13 - Dog Haiku

I really enjoyed the light-heartedness of "Dog Haiku" that we read. It perfectly captured what I would imagine a typical pet dog's day would go. I also read it out loud to my fiancée and if you read with a certain tone of voice and rhythm it sounds extremely dog-like. This was not a serious subject at all for a poem, but I could use a little funny lately so it suited my mood!!

Post 12 - My Wiki Article

I chose to write about "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor. I edited the plot summary, added a couple of sentences for the theme and wrote a paragraph about the symbolism of the names that Flannery O'Connor chose for the characters of the story. I also added a couple of resources to the bibliography of the Wiki article. I didn't want to add anything else because there are other people that are working on the same article. I hope that's enough to fulfill my assignment requirements. I'm now thinking about my doc2 and what I would like to write about for that assignment.

Post 11 - Women Writers

I've really enjoyed the women writers that we've read in our literature books so far. I especially liked "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor. The way that she was able to show across the full spectrum of the social classes and, at the same time, portray characters with attitudes that many of us have encountered in life decades later. Having an idea about the history of the time period gives depth to the story, but the characters themselves are timeless. Even though the facts and very racist attitudes may not be completely current, the personalities of her characters can still be seen in society today.

I also liked "The Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman because it used an excellent and interesting metaphor for the way that women were treated at that time. It also showed how desperate women were to be more free than the time period allowed. I would go crazy being treated like "the little woman" and I could sympathize with how the narrator was feeling. Great literature evokes thought and feelings in the reader and both of these writers did that for me.

Post 10 - Gender Criticism

As we read in this week's required reading, gender criticism really began with the start of the feminist movement. As the role of women began to change, those changes were reflected in literature that was written by women during that revolution of the part women played within society. Literature often reflects current society, so it makes sense that as the feminist movement progressed it would be portrayed in the literature of the time. The writings of the women authors during that movement would then have more freedom to write from their feminine perspective. With any change in society that would then be seen in the literature of that time period, it would be natural to also see that change in the criticism of that literature.