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ENG45C, Leda and the Swan by W.B Yeats, Tradition and the Individual…

- - - - Both poem portrays the emergence of Black culture through art. While "The Weary Blues" is about music, "The Nude Young Dancer" celebrates dance.
        
        The Nude Young Dancer by Langston Hughes
        
        Black beauty and creativity:
        
        "Night-dark girl of the swaying hips"
        
        "Great forest has hung its perfume"
        
        Positive descriptions of young dancers in a sensual manner
      - Both poems addresses the establishment of a new Black identity. One poem approaches this idea through a historical lens of an established lineage, while the other addresses the emerging new culture of Harlem through music.
        
        The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
        
        Repositions Blacks as a long-standing lineage and establishes their identity separate from America's history of slavery
        
        References the Black community in the "Euphrates," "Congo," "Nile," "Mississippi," and "New Orleans"
      - Poem depicts the Harlem nightclub where a Black blues musician is playing
        
        "With his ebony hands on each ivory key"
        
        Poem depicts the new Black identity established during the Harlem Renaissance after years of oppression
        
        Expresses a sadness and a "melancholy tone" that can be inferred to be from social struggles, poverty, and or racism
  - - - Both poems can be characterized by violence and political upheavals. In "Easter, 1916", Yeats references the violence from the death of rebellion figures that led to the an even greater political movement. For "The Second Coming." Yeats also describes violence through his dark, descriptive language and collapse of society.
        
        The Second Coming by W.B Yeats
        
        Societal collapse: "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"
        
        Describes a chaotic world: "blood-dimmed tide is loosed", "innocence is drowned", "darkness drops again"
        
        Inspired by post WWI sentiments: destroyed sense of optimism about conditions and improvement; focus on destruction and decline
      - Poem references Easter Rising: Irish rebellion against British rule
        
        "MacDonagh and MacBride and Connolly and Pearse" were assassinated Irish rebels; event elicited a movement for Irish home rule
        
        Memorializes the rebels and recognizes revolutionary change: "Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born."
        
        Questions the worth of sacrifice for political change with the paradox of "terrible beauty" and "Too long a sacrifice"
  - - - Achebe and Hughes both compared promises made and how they were unfulfilled. In Things Fall Apart, colonizers claimed to bring civilization, peace, and happiness. However, they disrupted the customs already in place and violently enforced their policies when refused. In parallel, Hughes expressed American ideals of freedom and opportunities, but the reality was a society heavily influenced by discrimination.
        
        Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
        
        Both poems by Langston Hughes references the unfulfilled American dream. "Let America Be America Again" expresses this by contrasting ideals of equality to the reality of discrimination. "Harlem [2]" refers to the same "deferred dream," but reflects the disappointment through unsettling vivid images.
        
        Harlem [2] by Langston Hughes
        
        In reference to an American "dream deferred":
        
        "fester like a sore"
        
        "stink like rotten meat"
        
        "sags like a heavy load"
        
        The American Dream: "opportunity is real", "equality is in the air we breathe", "never kings connive nor tyrants scheme"
        
        Reality for the marginalized: "'I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars", "I am the worker sold to the machine"
        
        Social context: 1938: Jim Crow era, where racial discrimination was institutionalized and acceptable -- change needed
        
        Plea / Call to Action: "Let America be America Again" was repeated to emphasize how America needs to live up to their ideals of freedom and equality for all
      - These two works explore the collapse of a society. In Achebe's novel, the Igbo society was threatened by colonizers enforcing their way of life. The perspective and focus was through the lens of Okonkwo, a traditional and pivotal man in the clan. In Faulkner's book, he discusses the decay of the Old South after the Civil War by following the Compsons, a formerly proud and white family. Both works unraveled a previously stable world: the Igbo and the Southern aristocracy. Additionally, The Sound and the Fury and Things Fall Apart also explores the oppressed gender roles in their respective societies. Caddy and Miss Quentin had their lives controlled and limited by men and societal values of purity, On the other hand, Okonkwo's wives were serving and subordinate to him.
        
        The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
        
        Both works are set in a post Civil War South. However, in contrast to the collapse of the Southern aristocracy in The Sound and the Fury, Their Eyes Were Watching God depicts the emergence of new Black communities. In addition, the two works explore oppressed gender roles through Caddy and Janie, who both escaped the overbearing men in their lives.
        
        Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
        
        Both stories demonstrate the strong influence of gender roles in society. For Okonkwo's clans, men dominate public life, farming, and leadership. Women are then expected to be domestic and obedient to the men. Janie experiences similar oppression in her first two marriages, where the men dominated and controlled her life through physical labor, appearance, speech, etc.
        
        Seitting in Eatonville, Florida: a thriving, all-Black community
        
        Janie was oppressed in past marriages and slowly discovers her voice through the book
        
        1st marriage: Logan Killicks: expects her to plow fields and work tirelessly so Janie leaves
        
        2nd marriage: forces her to be silent, well-behaved, and chooses how she dresses
        
        Janie takes coontrol when "tore off the kerchief” and chose a 3rd marriage based on equality
        
        Nanny past as a former slave shaped her views and desires for Janie to have a life of wealth and a high social status, not love
        
        South Gothic: story focuses on the decay of the Compson family after the civil war, and how the idyllic South rested heavily on repression, racism, and patriarchy.
        
        Decay of the family: land has to be sold to pay debts and the children are psychologically in collapse
        
        Benjy: has an intellectual disability and constantly revisits the past
        
        Quentin: existential crisis that led to his suicide
        
        Jason: corrupt, has no values, greedy, and hateful
        
        The Gibsons are dehumanized as they perform all housework without fair compensation and are treated with much inferiority by the Compsons, highlighting the continuity of white supremacy in the south
        
        Gender Roles and patriarchy
        
        Obsession and expectation for Caddy and women to be pure and innocent
        
        Caddy became illegitimately pregnant, escaped a forced marriage, and left home
        
        Jason attempts to maintain control on Miss Quentin by financially restricting her, monitoring her actions, and threatening her
      - Colonialism: dismantled Igbo society by forcefully introducing Christianity, foreign laws, and systems
        
        Introduction of Christianity divided the village as some gave in, like Okonkwo's son, Nwoye
        
        "[Nwoye] went back to the church and told Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write" (152)
        
        "Mr. Brown's mission grew from strength and strength" (182)
        
        Violent oppression from colonizers: "They were not given water to drink, and they could not go urinate or go into the bush when they were pressed. At night, messengers came in to taunt them and knock their shaven heads together" (195)
        
        Unfulfilled promises from colonizers: "We have brought a peaceful administration to you and your people so that you may be happy" (194)
        
        Cultural hierarchy normalized the dominance of men in society: "Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children." (13)
- - - - In both works, there is this psychological mystery revolving a subject observed: who is this man of the crowd vs why does Bartleby refuse to do work? Although they use different methods, the narrators both attempt to understand these characters in these urban contexts. The man of the crowd is followed by the narrator through the entire night, where he eventually gives up after realizing the futility of it. Similarly, the lawyer doesn't fire Bartleby and is intrigued by his resistance, even visiting him in prison where he dies. In the end, both narrators never had their curiosities fully satiated.
        
        Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
        
        Setting: Wall Street, New York -- urbanization and corporate capitalism
        
        Mystery with Bartleby's thinking
        
        "I prefer not to" was a repeated saying in expression on his refusal to do assigned work by the narrator
        
        Narrator (and audience) confused by his refusal: “I sat awhile on perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties" (25)"
        
        Friction between his role as an employer in the corporate role and his
        
        Narrator was fixated on Bartleby (unexpected reaction towards a non-compliant employee): "the narrator finds that there “was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed [him], but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted [him]” (27)
        
        In all three works of James, Poe, and Melville there are many sharing elements.
        
        First-Person: Unreliable narration
        
        Gothic literature
        
        Sense of mytsery
      - In both stories, there is an overarching mystery. Poe presents a mystery on the identity and purpose of the "man of the crowd" and James presents a question revolving the ghost's reality at Bly. Both narrators also show obsessiveness with the characters in their respective stories. In "Man of the Crowd", the narrator stalks the unknown man, and in Turn of the Screw, the narrator is obsessed with the children's purity.
        
        Turn of the Screw by Henry James
        
        Gothic: Isolated on an isolated country estate called Bly
        
        Mystery surrounding perception and reality
        
        Narrator had an unusual obsession with the children's purity and ghosts
        
        Her perspective of Miles: "What I then and there took him to my heart for was something divine that I have never found to the same degree in any child—his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love" (21)
        
        Narrator balances her identity as a caregiver, protector, moral guardian, and employee
        
        Story revolves around ghosts and the narrator's theory of the ghosts corrupting the children in her care
        
        Mystery on the reality of the ghosts, for other characters cannot see them
        
        Mrs. Grose in response to the governess seeing ghosts: "Where on earth do you see anything?" (102)
      - There is a futile characteristic in both stories. In Waiting for Godot, the characters are waiting for Godot's appearance, and in both days they wait, he doesn't show up. In "Man of the Crowd", the narrator gives up in the end because he cannot learn more about him, despite all his efforts. The main characters both fail at their goals to meet or know whomever they wish.
        
        Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
        
        Characters are waiting for Godot throughout novel, but who is Godot? There is also no definite answer to why they are waiting for Godot.
        
        Setting: alienated in a deserted area with only a tree
        
        The characters are forgetful, and rely on each other and passersby to confirm their identity and existence
        
        VLADIMIR: “You’re sure you saw us?”
        BOY: “Yes sir.”
        VLADIMIR: “You don’t know us?”
        BOY: “No sir.”
        
        Barren setting depicted in the movie adaptation
      - "He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd" (515)
        
        Narrator follows unknown man from place to place with no concrete reason
        
        "Man of the Crowd" conveys loneliness and alienation as he chases to be part of different crowds, but not really belonging
        
        Urban environment: "Two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past the door" (507)
        
        Unknown man's identity is strongly attached to the urban crowds, but individual identity is stripped as crowds of people stripped down to simply "tides"
  - - - Mrs. Dalloway and Prufrock revals indecision through their respective texts via their stream of consciousness. Prufrock battles between action and inaction as he decides to confess or not. Mrs. Dalloway second-guesses her life choices as she repeatedly revisits her pasts and contemplates on her choices. They are also both influenced by societal pressures. While Prufrock is pressured by social judgments on his external appearance, Dalloway is pressured in her social role to be a perfect hostess.
        
        Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
        
        Her identity became dominated by her social role as a wife: "She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown...this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (11).
        
        She second-guesses her choice in marrying Richard, her past with Peter and Sally, and life's meanings
        
        “She could not be certain whether she had made the right choice in marrying Richard.”
        
        Internal vs External Conflict: high society's expectation to hold exceptional parties and gatherings contrasts her internal exhaustion and hesitancy
        
        "Her parties were a triumph… yet to her it was all too much, this being Mrs. Dalloway.”
        
        Fragmented identity: "She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on (8).”
        
        Both works also display the conflict between public emotion and private identity in a high society setting. For Mrs. Dalloway, her external persona is a refined hostess, but internally she feels detached, aged, and regretful of the past. Similarly, Gabriel Conroy also presents himself as a refined intellectual at the party, as he gives speeches and converses, but internally he discovers that he is emotionally detached when he learns about Gretta's past lover. Both characters have a distant between their internal and external sleves.
        
        The Dead by James Joyce
        
        Sense of intellectual superiority as he prepares for his dinner speech: "He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of the hearers" (3)
        
        At the end, Gabriel realizes his emotional shallowness as he hears about Gretta's old passionate relationship
        
        "A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror." (32)
        
        His intellectual presentation of himself, where he holds himself higher than the other party attendees, contrasts with self-consciousness and detachment (elaborated by theother bullet points)
        
        Highly sensitive when Mrs. Ivors called him a "West Briton"
        
        Deeply bothered him, shows internal conflict about his national and cultural identity.
        
        Free Indirect Style: reveals internal thoughts and conflicts
        
        The Dead: Portrayed the perspective of Gabriel: how he was worried over his speech, interaction with Mrs. Ivors, and realizations
        
        Mrs. Dalloway: shifts focalization between characters; revealed Mrs. Dalloway's internal thoughts and past
      - Private vs Public Self: "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"
        
        Urban Setting: "sawdust restaurants", "yellow smoke that slides along the street", "black the soot that falls from chimneys"
        
        Internally he yearns for connection with others, but is self-conscious of his aging and thinning hair
        
        "They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!'"
        
        Allusion example: the epigraph is from Dante's Inferno; "I am Lazarus"
        
        He is wracked with indecision and overthinks on his actions: "Do I dare?..."Do I Dare..."Do I dare disturb the universe"
        
        He is debating whether to confess to a woman and possibly face rejection
- - - - Both poems by Yeats reveals an inner desire to escape to an idealized world. In "The Lake of Innisfree," the narrator wishes to flee to live by Innisfree in a secluded cabin. Similarly, the narrator of "Sailing to Byzantium" wishes to flee to a mystical, eternal realm of art and soul.
        
        Sailing to Byzantium by W.B Yeats
        
        Narrator is dissatisfied with reality and agonizes over aging and death
        
        "There is no country for old men"
        
        "Whatever is begotten, born, and dies"
        
        Fantasizes about "holy city of Byzantium" and living eternally as art
        
        "the artifice of eternity"
        
        Once out of nature I shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing, but such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold"
        
        Imagery of the aging and failing body of human and animals:
        
        "A tattered coat upon a stick"
        
        "Those dying generations...salmon-falls, the mackerel crowded seas, fish, flesh, or fowl"
      - The two poems are very revealing on inner thoughts and emotions. Yeats expresses the desire to escape the city and be surrounded by nature. On the other hand, H.D., depicts Eurydice's anger and resentment towards Orpheus. Although different sentiments and themes, there is an overarching similarity in how the poems reveals internal desires and emotions.
        
        Eurydice by H.D.
        
        Narrator (Eurydice) is resentful towards Orpheus
        
        Repeated "Why did you turn?"
        
        She alone has to face Orpheus's consequences: "everything is lost" "black upon black and worse than black"
        
        Poem contrasts to the original, male-centric story, and presents Eurydice's perspective on Orpheus and her peace in the afterlife
        
        "I could have slept among the live flowers at last"
        
        Orpheus is not a hero, he is "arrogant" and "ruthless
        
        Greek Myth: Orpheus attempts to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld but fails to do do, resulting in Eurydice being lost forever
        
        Understanding of original myth is helpful when reading
      - Narrator's ideal location is to be surrounded by nature and peace
        
        His reality of living in an urban setting contrasts the vision Yeats sets in the poem: "While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements of grey"
        
        "Grey" juxtaposes the "purple glow" and greenery of his visions
        
        "Dropping from veils of the morning to where the cricket sings"
        
        "I hear lake water lapping with low sounds"
        
        The Lake Isle of Innisfree refers to a real small, uninhabited island in Ireland
  - - - Both poems do not only describe elements in nature, but also contrasts typical ideas of beauty to the unconventional kind. The "Sea Rose" reveals the beauty of a resilient rose, and "Spring and All" highlights the beauty of a barren land right before spring takes bloom
        
        Sea Rose by H.D.
        
        "Rose, harsh rose, marred with stint petals"
        
        "You are flung an the sand, you are lifted"
        
        "More precious than a wet rose
        
        Contrasts between a harsh-looking resilient rose to a "perfect" rose, highlighting unconventional beauty
        
        Vivid imagery of an unconventional rose and highlighting its beauty
      - Image of spring but focused on wintery beginnings; juxtaposes the typical, colorful idea of spring while highlighting the beauty of the season
        
        Wintery spring image: "blue molted clouds driven from the northeast-a cold wind" and "dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines"
        
        Beauty in the "stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf" and beginning of "profound change" in the environment as spring "awakens"
    - - The poem entails the suggestions of "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste." There is no explanation, vague language, fluff, and is highly up to the reader's interpretations.
        
        A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste by Ezra Pound
        
        Direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective
        
        To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
        
        As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome
        
        "Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something" (202)
      - Simplistic, stripped down, and depicts an image
        
        Entire poem:
        "The apparition of these faces in the crowd
        Peatls on a wet, black bough"
    - - The poems have allusions to greek mythology: Oread the mountain nymph and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Both also portray women as powerful forces. Oread is powerful in her control of nature, and Eurydice asserts her independence in the afterlife and confront Orpheus.
      - Very brief poem that presents a powerful image of the sea crashing into land and forest
        
        "Whirl up sea"
        
        "Whirl your pointed pines"
        
        Greek Myth: Oread: a nymph associated with mountains
      - "Oread" and "Leda and the Swan" are both poems referencing to greek mythology.