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ENGLISH 45C, ROLE OF LANGUAGE, Gabriel and Ms. Ivors' debate regarding…

- - - - Eliot's speaker is in distress -- this distress comes from "the eyes" that "fix" the speaker into "a formulated phrase." Perhaps this is a comment on creating language for others ("the eyes") to understand. When attempting to communicate with others, the speaker is confined to a "phrase," and does not find this means of communication enough to "spit out" all that they would like to say. The very nature of language as "formulated phrase" is what makes the speaker fail to communicate exactly what they hope to mean. The speaker cannot express their indecision when "pinned" by the decisive statements they must make to communicate with "the eyes."
  - - - Benjy, the cognititvely impaired narrator in this chapter of Faulkner's novel, attempts to communicate with schoolgirls. He is unable to use speech to speak to them -- instead, he scares them, describing how they begin walking faster and faster. Benjy is unable to use speech to express emotions to the reader -- he is unable to explain that the schoolgirls are scared, and instead recounts the bare facts of the story. Similarly, Benjy cannot communicate his emotions to the schoolgirls. Benjy being stuck behind a fence further symbolizes how Benjy is trapped in his mind, unable to use speech to express his emotions.
      - Both Melville and Faulkner use a physical barrier to represent miscommunication.
  - - - By telling the narrative through a limited point of view, James withholds information from the reader. It is impossible for the reader to discern the "objective reality" of the novel -- the reader does not know if the narrator is hallucinating or not. Withholding this information adds a sense of disorientation and drama to the novel, making it a gothic drama. The fact that the governess's narration is told through a text being read out loud further shows the limits of writing, referencing the novel's meta-textuality once more.
    - - "It was well said of a certain German book that 'er lasst sich nicht lesen' -- it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told." (506)
        
        Beginning with these lines, Poe clearly warns the reader that some secrets are so horrendous that they can never be revealed. Poe connects this specifically to language, quoting a German book, and emphasizing the secret as being "told." Language is futile in describing truly horrendous secrets.
        
        This connects to the impenetrable darkness of the lamp shadows -- some horrors are simply too terrible to ever come to light through language
        
        Both James and Poe use Gothic characteristics of horror, mystery, and darkness to build tension in their narratives. Both writers use an exceptionally unreliable narrator who paradoxically puts on the role of "detective" in the story. Readers question the validity of the perspective they are reading from, adding to the unsettling mystery of the Gothic detective genre.
  - - - "'Why do you refuse?' 'I would prefer not to.'" (8)
      - These two pieces of evidence, when read together, show how Melville undermines the effectiveness of language to communicate. With Bartleby not visible to the lawyer, the lawyer's "voice" is meant to connect the two. This implies that the lawyer assumes that speech will be an effective way of communicating with Bartleby. Clearly, this isn't the case -- although both characters can produce language, unlike the characters in Faulkner's story, the lawyer is never able to fully understand Bartleby through language. When the lawyer tries to understand why Bartleby says he prefers not to work, Bartleby simply repeats the phrase, "I would prefer not to." This inability to understand one another with language is reflected by the tall folding-screen that physically separates both characters. While voice is meant to bridge this divide, it fails, and both characters are isolated in their own physical and mental spaces.
    - - More can be found under urban sphere --> industrialization as a form of alienation
- - - - In this poem, Yeats' speaker contrasts the timeless artificiality of art to the cycles of nature. Language, and art-making as a whole, serves a means to preserve the speaker after they are "out of nature" so that they can "sing" (poetry = song) all that is past, or passing, or to come.
  - - - As Pound explains in "A Few Dont's By An Imagiste," poetry is the presentation of a thought or image at its most condensed form. "In a Station of the Metro" was originally 30 lines, and, over a year, Pound followed his Imagiste principles, shortening it to two.
        
        Imagism: an early 20th-century movement that prioritizes the clarity and simplicity of art. This movement was influenced by the introduction of Japanese art to the West, especially haikus. Below is a painting by Mary Cassatt, an artist influenced by the simplicity of Japanese printworks. Notice the solid colors and flat perspective typical of Japanese woodblock prints. Abstract art was also being born; Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky are two of the founding artists in the Abstraction Movement. Their emphasis on geometry and simple colors is similar to Cassatt's, and mirrors the minimalism of Pound's poetry.
        
        "It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works." (201)
        
        Being able to perfect a poem into a perfect "Image" is similar to the speaker's belief that language can be perfected to achieve immortality in Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium." Both Yeats and Pound distinguish perfect writing from bad writing -- Yeats speaks of "sensuous music" (music can be read as a form of poetry, considering its origins in song) that the masses tend to get distracted by, just as Pounds speaks of "voluminous works" that are not worth producing.
      - The emphasis on the spacing and placement of words within the poem emphasize the artificiality of Pound's work. While the oral presentation of the poem is important, the positioning of the poem on the page itself is of equal importance. This shows how language holds both its original meaning of oral communication as well as a new constructed meaning that comes with the act of writing language down.
  - - - While Yeats and Pound use the inorganic nature of language as a means to justify its perfect essence, James points to the imperfections of language to show its inorganic nature.
    - - Describing the governess as being in the "governess's plight" breaks the flow of the text. By saying "the governess was in the governess's plight," the narrator seems to be referencing a typical archetype for governesses. The governess plays a role that has already been laid out for her, simply due to the nature of the novel form: already a written character, the governess has no "free will," but is bound to the fate the author has created for her -- she is bound to the "governess's plight." This power imbalance is represented by the omniscient nature of the narrator's comment. This call to the predetermined fate of characters undermines the real-ness of the story, and reminds readers that James has control over what takes place in the novel.
- - - - In reaction to T.S. Eliot's publication of The Wasteland, Williams looks for an American idiom, accessible to all.
        
        Williams does this by creating a new basic poetry unit: the variable foot. Instead of measuring rhythm through the iamb, Williams proposes a new unit that focuses on the effectiveness and expressiveness of the poem's content instead of its purely mechanical counts.
        
        "To Elsie" serves as a symbol of suffering minorities in the United States.
        
        The structure of the poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" is an example of Williams' "variable foot." The poem does not follow a strict technical rhythm.
        
        "Spring and All"
    - - Langston Hughes' poems
        
        "The Weary Blues"
        
        Describing the "weariness" of blues and the repetition of the idea that the singer is "dead" takes the song sung in the poem literally. While the poem is probably criticizing the appropriation of Blues, it still serves to show the relationship of affirming racial identity through song and positioning poetry-making in the history of black speech by incorporating music lyrics and music-related content within the poem.
        
        "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
        
        The use of "lull" and "singing" to describe Hughes' origins tie song-making directly to Hughes' roots, potentially referencing the plantation songs that slaves sang to endure their suffering
        
        Influenced by Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" establishes the black (wo)man in the lineage of poetry-making.
        
        Both Woolf and Hughes sought to bring a voice to the under-represented.
        
        The repetition common in Hughes' poems mirror the repetition of a chorus in a song.
      - Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
        
        A significant portion of Hurston's text is written in African American Vernacular English.
        
        As an ethnographer and cultural relativist, Hurston wanted to capture the most accurate representation of African American experience. This was her justification for using AAVE.
      - Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
        
        Throughout the story, songs and oral tales serve as a pool of wisdom to empower the people of Umuofia.
        
        "So Okonkwo encouraged the boys to sit with him in his obi, and he told them stories of the land -- masculine stories of violence and bloodshed. Nwoye . . . still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell . . . of the tortoise and his wily ways" (53)
        
        "The drum sounded again and the flute blew. The egwugwu house was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Aru oyim de de de dei! filled the air as the spirits of the ancestors, just emerged from the earth, greeted themselves in their esoteric language" (88)
        
        Oral elements of language -- such as storytelling and singing -- make up the heart of Igbo culture
        
        To preserve his oral culture, Achebe formally incorporates traditional oral elements into his novel by repeating significant phrases throughout the text.
        
        "Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had." (16)
        
        "Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had." (18)
        
        Achebe writes Things Fall Apart in 1958. As can be seen on the tiny map, African states were going through a period of decolonization at about this time. Nigeria would gain independence in 1960. Achebe's text works towards the global re-affirmation of cultural sovereignty many colonized states were going through at the time. In other words, Achebe's work is well situated within the body of African post-colonialist literature.
      - James Joyce's "The Dead"
        
        When defending his choice to visit mainland Europe, Gabriel states, "it's partly to keep in touch with the languages," to which Ms. Ivors responds: "haven't you your own language to keep in touch with, Irish?" Gabriel responds, saying, "if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my llanguage." (164)
        
        Gabriel's conversation with Ms. Ivors relates directly to the conflicts regarding language. While Ms. Ivors, a strong Irish nationalist, advocates to learn Irish language, Gabriel disowns his past, surrendering to the cultural domination of Ireland by the European mainland
        
        Singing is used as a means of connecting the Irish middle class. Song lyrics are incorporated throughout the text, and music is the main dinner topic. Although song is ephemeral, it creates deeply emotional bonds between characters, such as Michael Furey and Gretta.
    - - William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916"
        
        Poetry's inorganic form is what allows it to be a means of resistance. Poetry lives beyond the typical boundaries of human death, allowing ideas to be preserved for long periods of time. Poetry lets Yeats document the Irish struggle for future generations to read. He can provide a space in art for those not often represented, such as the woman with an "ignorant good-will" or a man who was a "drunken, vainglorious lout." By generalizing characters to "man" and "woman," Yeats applies the poem not to specific people, but rather important and forgotten common people who fought for Irish independence. Yeats expresses similar ideas of art as inorganic in his poem "Sailing to Byzantium"
        
        "That woman's days were spent / In ignorant good-will, / . . . / This other man I had dreamed / A drunken, vainglorious lout." (17-18, 31-32)
  - - - Virgina Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway
        
        "Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English! thought Peter Walsh, standing in the corner. How they loved dressing up in gold and lace and doing homage!" (172)
        
        In Woolf's novel, readers are not confined to one perspective. Readers enter the minds of even the most minor characters, following their mundane thoughts. Woolf shares each character's thoughts to represent the nature of social life in the British upper class: everyone is constantly together, on display. Including minor characters' thoughts, however, was a new phenomenon. It provides democratic representation for everyone.
        
        This push to represent everyone was probably influenced by urbanization and the Realist movement. Urbanization brought people together and allowed for upward mobility -- instead of having to be born in a wealthy family, people now had the chance to make their way to the top of the social pyramid. This new equity could have influenced Woolf to write from every character's perspective.
        
        Realism is an artistic movement that focuses on representing all members of society -- even those at the bottom class. One example of a famous Realist painting is Gustave Courbet's The Stone Breakers. Just as Courbet represents those that are often overlooked, Woolf presents through her narration.
        
        Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"
        
        Lucky's speech in "Waiting for Godot" also incorporates stream of consciousness thinking, but does not use structured, logical sentences. Since the speech is read aloud to a crowd, this further alienates Lucky's thoughts from the conventional written word's sentence structures.
        
        "Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise flew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then sucked back. (For the windows were open.) Was it draughty, Ellie Henderson wondered? She was subject to chills." (168)
      - James Joyce's "The Dead"
        
        By using free indirect discourse, Joyce integrates all characters' idioms into the narration. This brings a sort of dignity to all characters represented, showing that they are all worthy of not merely having quoted speech in the text, but that their inner thoughts and ways of living can be equally represented in the narration itself.
    - - By vocalizing Eurydice's perspective, H.D. empowers a woman whose own point of view is often exchanged for Orpheus's. Eurydice's anger and power in the poem draw in sharp contrast with the submissive and weak character Eurydice is often portrayed to be. Instead of pitying Eurydice, H.D. proposes to affirm her power and independence through her retelling.
- - - - Caddy's dirty clothing foreshadows her sexual promiscuity. Her family obsesses over her sexual relations, attempting and failing to restrain her. Caddy's sexual power is what allows her to be independent from her family, horrifying Quentin and her mother, who are tied to Southern ideals of chastity and purity. Caddy's sexual power is dangerous. Family members blame their misery on Caddy's sexuality, and it brings so much distress to Quentin, it contributes to his reasons for committing suicide.
    - - "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare / (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) / Is it perfume from a dress / That makes me so digress?" (70-73)
        
        Exclaiming that what look like "bare arms" are actually covered in "light brown hair" imply that women's bodies are deceitful. When their bodies are brought to light, the speaker realizes that women are not as he expected. The speaker's intense indecision magnifies the tension of deceit.
        
        Is it within women's nature to be deceitful? Is it imprinted on their bodies? Or is Eliot calling out his speaker for assuming women to present their bodies in certain ways?
        
        Using parentheses emphasizes the deceit and secrecy of the hair that covers women's arms.
  - - - H.D. challenges the symbol of a rose as a sweet, romantic prop, describing it as "stunted" and "harsh," but resilient. The rose can be read as a symbol for women: although perceived as meek and designed to please, H.D. affirms that women have more independence and power than what may initially be perceived.
        
        In both "Sea Rose" and "Eurydice," H.D. re-interprets common symbols of female meekness (roses and Eurydice). H.D. argues that women are resilient, but often unjustly misinterpreted by society.
      - Georgia O'Keefe's paintings also portray the relationship between female sexuality and flowers.
    - - "At least I have the flowers of myself, / and my thoughts, no god / can take that; / I have the fervour of myself for a presence / and my own spirit for light;" (125-129)
        
        H.D. gives a voice to Eurydice's perspective. Unlike traditional renderings of Eurydice, as someone cast away to the underworld because of her lover's foolish glance, H.D. paints her as a powerful woman who can overcome the suffering her lover has condemned her to. Eurydice does not need anyone else in her life to let her thrive -- she can live proudly on her own, not letting anybody stop her from self-determination.
    - - Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
        
        Description of Janie's hair.
        
        Physical characteristics, especially her hair, are what empower Janie. There tends to be a correlation between how exposed Janie's hair is and how empowered she is. With Jody, Janie covers her hair, and tends to be quiet and sad. At the end and start of the novel, however, when Janie is finally alone, her hair swings freely, and she lives a life liberated from any constraints.
        
        Hair is just one of many feminine characteristics that empower Janie. Janie's sexuality is what gives her mobility in the book: her ability to attract men frees her from Logan, and then from Joe. Hurston suggests that sexuality is not something to be ashamed of. It is one of the few tools most women share that can be used as means of empowerment.
      - H.D.'s "Oread"
        
        The speaker's use of sexual language, such as "splash," "whirl," and "hurl" to "cover us" with fir, shows the sexual power of the nymph.
        
        Starting most of the poem's lines with verbs further shows the power of the sea to control the speaker.
- - - - Williams dedicates the poem to Elsie: an American woman victim of systemic violence. Elsie is powerless: she is "thrown up" and "so desolate" by the horrors of "disease" and "murder" that the government will have to intervene on her behalf. Women's agency is impeded upon by the horrors of misogyny, murder, and colonialism, and they can't seem to escape it other than being sent out to work in "some hard-pressed / house in the suburbs," not providing a satisfying solution to female suffering.
- - - - Characters put on "roles" for others to observe -- the narrator, using pseudo-scientific detective reasoning, parses out the passerby's different social statuses based on physical appearance. The narrator isolates the passerby by reinforcing their individuality. The narrator themselves observes them through a coffee-shop window. The new social distinctions that come with urban life are revealed in the narrator's approach to the people he observes.
        
        Similarly, women are expected to put on roles in Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
      - Writing the story from a first-person point of view inhibits the reader from ever experiencing what might be an "objective reality." The reader's claustrophobia disconnects them from any other character's thoughts. This formal isolation serves to emphasize the alienating nature and questionable truth of Poe's story.
    - - The gas lamp, a new invention found uniquely in cities, serves as a symbol for urbanization and industrialization.
        
        When lamps illuminate, they inevitably cast shadows -- in this case, "fitful" and "garish" shadows. This new urbanization, as symbolized with the lamp, creates new social classes that can elevate the upper-class by shining more light and attention on them. But new lower-class people are alienated, stuck in the shadows of the lamp.
  - - - Although the speaker can hear nature's sounds in their heart, they are stuck on the road -- while a road is meant to bring people places, the speaker is immobile. Yeats suggests that urban life is soulless; it alienates humans from their true home in their soul -- a soul that calls them to nature.
        
        In both poems, Yeats ties the goodness of the soul to industrialization. The modern world has destroyed our inherent good nature, leaving us alienated from nature -- either by filling the sea with blood or leaving us stuck on roads, only able to daydream of the lake isle we would like to be at.
  - - - Written after WWI, Yeats' poem is influenced by the mass death that took place due to the industrialization of warfare.
        
        Yeats argues that modernization has alienated everyone: the falcon can no longer be controlled, and "things fall apart." Old systems that kept the world together and tamed nature are now gone. Instead, the industrialization of warfare, and the mass death that has taken place, has led humans to control nature's tides with their violence: the tides are now "blood-dimmed." Mass death from industrialized warfare has infiltrated even nature's own cycles. The ocean is now filled with blood, showing both the volume of death and the supernatural elements of WWI. Industrialization has challenged old structures and alienated individuals and states to the point of apocalyptic violence.
        
        Poe and Yeats use apocalyptic images to convey the effects of industrialization.
- - - - Faulkner's novel is typical of Southern gothic writing. Written after Reconstruction, Faulkner casts a light on white Southerners' failure to integrate into the modernizing world.
      - Both Faulkner and Woolf utilize clocks as a confining factor for the characters in the story. Mrs. Dalloway and Quentin are both disturbed by the clock. While Dalloway accepts the passage of time and works within it, Quentin attempts to -- and fails -- to destroy his watch. His inability to accept the movement of time foreshadows his suicide, where he takes control of how much time he has left on Earth.
      - Quentin tries to escape the Compson family's suffering by moving North and attending Harvard. Quenting has the highest chance of being able to move on from the past. But his obsession with Southern moral codes of purity and conduct tie him to the past. As he realizes these moral codes are disregarded by those whom he tied them most closely to -- his father and sister -- Quentin commits suicide. He is unable to let go of the outdated moral codes and embrace modernity.
      - Repeatedly naming the children in the Compson family Quentin and Maury further shows how the youngest generation is unable to escape what they have inherited. The very nature of their character is determined by the people whom they are named after.
    - - Okonkwo works as hard as possible to control his chi and live his life in complete opposition to his father's. Okonkwo masters his will and gains respect, but his suicide -- an abomination in Igbo custom -- leaves him to inevitably fail in life, as did his father. Time is not linear and controllable. Instead, Okonkwo cannot escape his generational fate.
        
        This sense of "fate" and an uncontrollable, non-linear future is an idea reinforced with foreshadowing of almost all significant events in Things Fall Apart.
        
        From the very start, Okonkwo is described as an "ill-fated man" (18).
        
        Neither Quentin nor Okonkwo can preserve the past. Quentin cannot preserve Southern moral codes, and Okonkwo cannot preserve Igbo traditions. This leads both characters to committing suicide.
  - - - Stream of consciousness: style in which the reader follows characters' organic thoughts as they come to them. It attempts to mimic what most accurately takes place in humans' brains. This writing style was typical of the Modernist movement.
        
        Perhaps writing in the stream-of-consciousness style can serve as a solution to Prufrock's dilemma of being unable to formulate words to communicate with others. With stream-of-consciousness, instead of focusing on language that has been molded to communicate with others, authors focus on the organic, unfiltered thoughts of characters -- the thoughts Prufrock hopes to share.
  - - - To let America be what it used to be — something it never has been yet — presents a problem in the notion of linear time. Hughes suggests that the past, where America was “perfect,” was constructed in the present. By sandwiching the verb “has been” between two lines that use “be,” Hughes suggests that the present is what surrounds and supports this notion of the past. The present can be changed, and a land where "every man is free" can, in fact, be achieved.
        
        This inevitably optimistic future is present in many of Hughes' works.
- - - - Because of the novel's happy resolution, Hurston argues that the celebration of black, independent females will ultimately come to fruition. This argument that the underrepresented will ultimately come to power is reflected in much of Harlem Renaissance art.
        
        Langston Hughes' "Harlem [2]"
        
        "Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?" (9-11)
        
        The speaker asks what happens to a "dream deferred." Considering the context it was written in, this "dream" is probably tied to black equality. Hughes fills the poem with rhetorical questions, describing the deferred dream with grotesque language. At the end of the poem, Hughes seems to come to a resolution -- maybe the dream simply "sags / like a heavy load," powerless, with its weight growing on the dream's beholders. But then, Hughes asks if the dream will "explode" instead. This sudden shift back to rhetorical questions, as well as the italicizing of the question, give it a power that trumps the other resolutions the speaker comes to beforehand. Dreams deferred -- such as black equality -- only grow more and more important, until they explode, bringing attention and power to those with dreams deferred.
        
        Hughes and Hurston both spend a majority of their texts describing repression of black independence, but conclude their texts with an optimistic message on the empowerment of black people.
        
        Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"
        
        Godot's text alludes to Hughes' poem several times. Vladimir and Estragon are like the speaker in Harlem, as they too have their dream deferred, except Vladimir and Estragon don't know how to move past the deferred dream, unlike Hughes, who suggests that it "explodes."
        
        "We were grape harvesting . . . That's all dead and buried . . . My clothes dried in the sun." (44)
        
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        "There's the wound! Beginning to fester!" (55)
        
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        "Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?" (3)