A Christmas Carol

A theme that I noticed in the Charles Dickens’ a Christmas Carol and in real life is that people decide to make changes when they have encountered something terrible. In Christmas Carol, Scrooge decides to be a happier person and change this ways after being scared to death by three ghosts. Each ghost comes with something more frightening than the one before. The Ghost of Christmas Past that showed him what made him this way, the beginning of this greed. Then the second ghost of Christmas Present shows him because of his greed, how that affected his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and his son Tiny Tim.  Scrooge at this point is upset and I would like to think a little mad at himself. He asks the ghost if Tiny Tim, who in the current time is very ill, will live and the ghost tells him no he will not if Scrooge does not change his way. There is a prime example of how Scrooge is guilt tripped into wanting to make a change. If Scrooge could be greedy and still have Tiny Tim live then his greed self would stay the same: GREEDY. However, forces does not work in that way, so that is why Scrooge is faced with a question does he want to help the family by changing his ways or will he remain greedy and let Tiny Tim die. Moving on the final ghost of Christmas to Come, shows a future without Scrooge and this part of the story I can understand how some people would be happy with his death. Not saying it’s ever right to be joyous over anyone’s death. Scrooge at this point fully comes in terms with the fact that he is a horrible person.

I guess the saying is true “it’s better late than never” and for Scrooge, he was able to be saved by the three ghost and Marley. This theme is something that stands true in real life, many people who have survived cancer are more likely to start a foundation than if they have never suffered. We also have those people who like to make deals with God for example a person finds out he has HIV, if he believe in God will strike a deal with God, that if he is cured he will donate to charity. After he is visited by the Ghosts he is filled with love, joy, compassion, and he even spends Christmas day with his nephew. He gives his clerk a turkey and from the end of the story we can assume that he becomes a man that is loved by the people of the town. This I say is great example of change that is bought by fear, guilt, and force. However, I also believe this story is a great story which teaches a great lesson. Which is a person can change if his emotions are evoked and if the person is really moved to. This brings me to another point which is that no one can change a person, maybe that is the reason Dickens used ghosts instead of actually humans. For example a woman will not ever change a man to be who she wants him to be, this is different than having an effect on a man and making him a better person or making him see that he can be a better person. Changes like that start on the inside and work its way out. A person needs to really want to change, and only then will he change. Scrooge was bought to realize certain facts and through those facts he wanted to change his person. However in his case he got a little more help than the typical person would. He had the help of the ghost and the foretelling of a future.

All in all nothing is ever to late, people can change, there is always hope. That is the essence captured in the story as well as in the holiday season!

Evening Solace-Elizabeth Bronte

Charlotte Bronte’s Evening of Solace is a poem that expresses complex human thoughts in words. The title of the poem is the best moment in the day in which a person can come in terms with oneself.  In this specific poem I believe Bronte is trying to reveal to the reader that solitude will bring forth revelations. The poems uses words that draws the idea of loneliness not necessarily in a positive light or a negative .The diction of being solo is spread all over the poem which create a sense of comfort, reflecting the title.

The very beginning of the poem establishes the sense of solitude,

“The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;--
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

the heart holds many, many secrets and secrets are something that you keep to yourself if in fact you want it to be a secret because we all know if you tell a single soul it’s no longer a secret no matter how much they swear up and down, right and left to keep their big mouth shut. That through being alone can one really keep the hidden treasures hidden or the thoughts, hopes, idea, pleasure locked up. These truths from the heart are special as the poem says and that through sharing the uniqueness is lost. When I read this it makes me think “Wow, maybe this is what Steve Jobs felt when he first took calligraphy and realized that he wanted to make things that are aesthetic.”  Additionally through solitude things really come together and build meaning.

“But there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.”

It’s not enough to have ideas, thoughts, dreams, hopes, and everything else when one cannot connect the thoughts and see the bigger pictures. From the lines above she points out to the reader that being alone help “gather” the feelings, the feelings are able to be imprinted in the heart and be a part of the person. That in a sense goes with the idea that to be able to love another one has to love themselves first. Love that comes from loving oneself first is a great and more powerful type of love. Yet those who are always so hung up on wanting to be a part of a crowd will not come to realize. The person who takes time alone will realize such a truth.

                Charlotte Bronte’s poem on the surface basically is trying to tell the reader that being alone is not something that is negative. Upon more readings of the poem I come to realize that loneliness used constructively, such as a time of reflection, will help the person make sense of things. That was my main point using the two quotations above. However, there is more, solitude creates the foundation for human’s thirst for more. More in the sense that it could be anything knowledge, material things, anything there is no limit because the mind is limitless.  The ending of the poem spark that idea

                                “By lonely hour and darkened room,

                                To solemn thoughts that soar to heave

                                Seeking a life and world to come.”

if solitude can help you realize certain things then it will also make a person seek for the answer for things which might have never crossed their mind if they didn’t take a moment to reflect. Solitude sparks the process of thought and once that process starts it can grow exponentially and simple thoughts can be evolved into more complex ideas. That is the picture that I think Bronte is trying to paint that thoughts “seeking a life and a world to come” that it’s in our hearts and soul as human beings to want to know more, see more, taste more, experience more and do so much more.  And perhaps not everyone comes to realize this that thought is a gift, which everyone opens at a different time.

            This poem Evening Solace plays with the idea of solitude and  how it can reveal, help thoughts grow and make the reader seek for more. 

The World is too Much with Us

First time I read the title I thought: awh what did we do now?  After getting though the poem I realized that humans just f everything up generally.  I agree with what Wordsworth is saying because at first I think people are blinded by their own glory that they do not see the truth. The line that hits me hard is

                “we lay waste our powers”

that as intelligent beings we are so ignorant and egotistical. In the sense that we are not able to see the smaller things like nature and its importance but rather we have given our hearts away to things that are obsolete and materialistic. This idea has been something that I have been working on personally and also it was revealed to me that in the end we are all going to die. Those material things cannot be bought to the grave and that is why it is more important and beneficial to focus on emotion and experience. This goes for money as well, and people who feel like they are entitled to hoard and be disgustingly greedy are people that need help and pity.

Anyways Wordsworth is saying that we don’t appreciate nature and all that it has to offer to us such as the beautiful song of the wind, the ever flowing life of the sea, the fact that nature and us are one but those are things we fail to recognize. That is why we are so quick to destroy it. What is interesting is that Wordsworth is ishing on us in his poem poetic way he says

                “I’d rather be A Pagan”

a pagan to him is someone that knows how to cherish nature and understands the deeper meaning and sees the bigger picture. He makes a good argument with the lines following that explains his argument better to the reader. I would have to agree. However, I love God and have full faith in him and that is why I feel that I can accomplish what the Pagan have accomplished while still being true to myself. 

Midterm

The Romantic poets wrote about emotions, the beauty of nature, God, imagination, the human soul, the paradoxes of life and the many horrors that face society as a response to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.  William Wordsworth in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a poem that encompasses some of the Romantic ideals. William Wordsworth in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads gives a detailed explanation of his poems and the reasons for which he writes them. This helps the reader understand Wordsworth’s style and also the values that Romantic poets held as a whole.

Wordsworth poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Tree” on the surface writes about a person who could be Wordsworth or a stranger, who is taking a walk through a hilly meadow of daffodils, alone. The loneliness is a simile

“I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,”

the words give the reader a picture for the word loneliness and therefore a better understanding. Later he is on his couch and he is thinking of the events of the day and he remembers the crowd of daffodils,

                     “And then my heart with pleasure fills,

                      And dances with the daffodils.”

he also recalls the pleasure and joy that, that moment created for him.

This is the primary analysis which is very simple idea of what is on the surface. According to the Preface the poems that Wordsworth chooses to write the poem in a simple language without fluffing it up with complicated diction or various rhetorical devices.

“The principal object , then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far, as was possible in a selection of language really used by men,”

The reason that Wordsworth does this is so that the readers can better relate to his poems and fully understand the messages the poems are trying to convey to them. The reader would not be boggled down by extra baggage.

The secondary analysis is a deeper interpretation of the poem. This is below the surface and there could be many different approaches depending on the reader. The analysis reminds me of Sigmund Freud’s iceberg that there could be huge chunks of ice or knowledge. In Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” the deeper analysis from which the poem conveyed to me was that the person in the book is not along but rather surrounded by life. The very existence of nature small like these daffodils or large like mountains, all hold the common essence of life the same essence that is in human beings. The reason for saying this is because Wordsworth compares the man to the cloud and then he personifies the daffodils,

        “I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

                     That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

                     When all at once I saw a crowd,

                    A host, of golden daffodils;…

                     Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

                     Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”

he gives the man character traits of nature and then nature character traits of humans. Therefore this leads me to believe that if that is possible then nature and humans are connected no through physical likeness but rather through a more metaphysical commonality. This idea is also explained in laymen terms in his preface “He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other.” Human and nature co-exist and of the same. 

                    Further addressing the secondary analysis is also the theme of pleasure through simple, uncomplicated things

                    “In vacant or in pensive mood,                               

                     They flash upon that inward eye

                     Which is the bliss of solitude;

                     And then my heart with pleasure fills,

                     And dances with the daffodils.”

the last stanza of the poem holds all the meat for the second analysis. When the man is sitting alone and reflecting on the events that happen during the day he realized how much pleasure he received from being alone in nature. I think sayings like “enjoy the small things” were invented for situations described in the poem. The idea of small things or simple things makes sense because like Wordsworth explained in the Preface he wants to bring his language near to the real language of man. That is why complex algorithms helpful in a functional way and do not evoke feelings from humans. Complexity sometimes can become very systematic and mundane. With this thought Wordsworth explains to the reader of his poems that Poets are different from man of science

                    “The Man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.”

in that men of science enjoy knowledge all for themselves, not saying that they are selfish but rather they enjoy being alone. Poets on the other hand enjoy sharing knowledge with the masses, not because they wants to be credited but rather because the emotions they want to share are real. 

                    Moving onto the third analysis which I like to think of as the ocean the iceberg is floating on because it is vast. These analyses tend to follow a process of inductive reason going from something specific like a nice scenic picture of nature to some deep broad human truths. The human truth that Wordsworth wants us to take away is that emotions are made real by poetry.  Real in the sense that people can relate to it and that in a way hopefully their soul would be touched and moved. Real in the sense that it’s not the tangible real but more of a realness in understanding. An example that comes to my mind personally is always the question of love and how can you tell if you are in love. I have no real answer for that but through poetry and its ability to evoke emotions humans can slowly come to understand the concept of love and associate it those feelings with the word. Now bringing it back to Wordsworth poem and his preface he uses words like emotion and pleasure. I think he is trying to tell the reader that the human heart is one that seeks, and strives for happiness or pure heavy emotions. This line in the Preface has really resonated with me

                    “Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge---it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

this is an eloquent way of saying that through poetry humans kind find the truth, the truth that is forever in their hearts. Wordsworth uses the language very beautifully and he explains it without polluting the water or melting the iceberg. He does not smother his poetry nor does he dilute it. 

                    Like Wordsworth’s Poetry and Preface, humanity growths through simplicity.