Midterm Flashcards
When I heard the learn’d Astronomer
Walt Whitman
-First hand experience is always better than second-hand
-Science can only take us so far…
-Creates a sense of wonder
-In order to convey those ideas, stylistically… he had the first three lines drone on, each line longer than the other
Sound Effects: Melodious sounds of nature vs the dry sounds of the crowd
The Dalliance of the Eagles
Walt Whitman
In this passage Walt Whitman describes the mating ritual between two eagles. Implicitly, the poem alludes to his common theme of his works; individualism versus a sense of community. Just like “The Twain yet one,” the eagles come together in a beautiful act of nature yet remain separate as they each fly away from each other towards the sky. Climbing and pursing on their own.
Individualism: Although the two eagles are together, we are all alone in this world
“The Twain yet one”
Bivouac on a Mountain Side
Walt Whitman
This poem is written in free verse, a style often used by Whitman. The details of the poem are described in such a way that if this poem was a camera shot, it would be a sweeping upward motion, up to eternal space. There is an implicit connection that can be made between the war and nature, given the eternal space and scale of the mountain that is being camped upon. One can read this poem as alluding to our difficulties as humans are insignificant, and that human struggles may or may not serve any purpose.
- Written in free verse
- The last line conveys a sense of insignificance of human beings, and the war itself, in regards to nature
- If this poem was a camera shot, it would be sweeping upward. Going up into eternal space
- Our difficulties are insignificant yet we serve a purpose
- Human struggles may or may not serve any purpose
Vigil Strange I kept on the Field one Night
Whitman depicts a night where a soldier sees the death of his son, another soldier, and finds himself torn between compassion and sadness. The poem embodies both romanticism and realism. While the narrator is lost in a mix of emotions the poem implicitly alludes to the intense maturation process that took place during the American civil war. For both the soldier in this poem, and perhaps the entire country as well.
The father buries his son with the flag, the way a dad would tuck in his son
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Whitman implicitly alludes to individualism yet a sense of community through a sense of time, even to the reading of this poem. He tries to reinforce the meaning: we are all together, even though we are individuals. We, over time and space, can reach a communion, while maintaining ourselves as individuals. The ferry boat trip is representative of life. Getting on alludes to birth, getting off is death.
-Sections 4-6, he says: not only are we physically close, we have the same feelings: hope and doubt. Everything you feel I felt… drawing closer to us, the reader, even more
Caesura
Pause in poetry
Used by Whitman
Paratactic
Often used by Whitman
-Like a kid looking around a noticing everything
Whitman wants to convey that sense of freshness in life and wonder.
The Brain–is Wider than the Sky
Emily Dickinson
Written in ABCB rhyme scheme, Dickinson simplifies a rather complex concept with her writing style. Implicitly, the poem argues that thought is greater than experience, because we can take it all in. The difference between syllable and sound is that syllable is given human structure as part of a word, while sound is raw, unformed.
God then takes its form from that of the human mind.
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers
Emily Dickinson
Dickinson describes the dead resting in their Alabaster Chambers, unaffected by the outside world. Implicitly she alludes to the useless trials and tribulations men face. That those who lay in their graves, on a weak, satin foundation of a stone roof. These men of great power still parrish: “Diadems drop and Doges surrender.” The world still goes on.
I heard a Fly buzz
Dickinson describes the final moments of the narrator, laid on their deathbed with a priest and family. A fly enters the room and imposes the peaceful death. In terms of style, the dashes are used to help isolate key words, similar to the isolated feeling of death. Implicitly the poem refers to the grimness in that a life of a human can be so significant and grand. Yet only a fly meets one at their deathbed. This tells a disconcerting truth, that death is trivial event, leading to no afterlife.
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
In this poem, Dickinson’s speaker is communicating from beyond the grave, describing her journey with Death. Her writing style is read in a way that seems mundane-like, as the short lines inherently cause us to give pause between them. This reflects the eternal and slow process that is death.
There’s a Certain Slant of Light
Emily Dickinson
To some, there’s a certain existential horror that comes to her with the slant of light in the afternoon
Huck Finn, hears the sound of a spinning wheel, whaling along “for I wish I was dead, for it was the loneliest sound in the world”
It depresses her like the heaviness of the cathedral tunes
None can teach it, Any
Perhaps no one can truly explain it or understand the feeling. The emphasis on “any” gives to the seriousness of the matter
Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church
Emily Dickinson
In this passage, dickinson questions organized religion. She says that one doesn’t have to go to church to worship god, all you have to do is look around.
She sounds smug or condescending.
“Im going to heaven all along”
“I just wear my wings” … well good for you Emily
I Like a Look of Agony
Emily Dickinson
She likes the notion of someone in agony because one cannot face it. She’s so tired of seeing falseness and superficialness. She would rather see people suffer.
Wild Nights–Wild Nights!
The wilder the weather outside, the more i would love being inside with ‘this person’
Could be a longing for God or for someone
A Bird Came Down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
- Nature has a healthy fear of us
- She seems to humanize the bird in a sense,
- She describes nature with distinctly human accessories, velvet and beads
- She’s not describing the bird, it’s her own sense or construct of the bird
- Perception of an object causes. Precise the Object’s loss.
- She says that we can’t get close to nature
I Know that He Exists
Emily Dickinson
She says that god does exists, but she is commenting on the nature of his omnibenevolence, for the good nature of god soon leads to the deaths of many every day
I Died for Beauty–but was Scarce
Emily Dickinson
We all have to take pride in what we are or what we stand for, for we don’t accomplish much before we die
The moss: time takes away all recognition, it covers the name
I Never Saw a Moor
Emily Dickinson
Poem of faith
Seems less smug or less cute as the last one
Dickinson says in the poem that despite the fact that she can’t talk to God or see heaven, she knows they exist. She does this through analogies with the flower and the sea.
Apparently with no Surprise
Has an off rhyme:
- Flower, then power, second line: unmoved, then god - The line falls flat - Perhaps the word “god” falls flat there because Dickinson believes that god does not embody these qualities. That its a god she doesn’t quite like.
- It comes off as grim and bitter poem
- Flower represents beauty, an individual’s life or all of our lives
All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Perhaps it shows his common speech in which Twain approaches his work, to envelop the reader further in the story
The book is not written in natural speech.
Perhaps it’s written in a way that captures the power imagination of the child’s perspective, however not from his vocabulary.
Nature also serves to me a common theme in this story, alluding to the closeness of nature and its effect on oneself. This Notion is reflected further in the descriptions of his father. Such as being described as fish belly white.
“I lay there in the grass in the cool shade thinkin’ about things”
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain; Chapter 8
This had more of an immediate to the reader. Add analysis
“It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was when they all come riding in, two and two, and gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable”
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain; Page 468
Very folksy imagery
Naive and innocent
Similar nature to the poem of “A Child Went Forth”
He is awestruck by this shabby flea circus
He is the only one worried about the “supposed” drunk on the horse at the circus.
Going down the Mississippi on a raft. He sees a light on in one of the houses. Maybe some can’t sleep, works an odd shift, or “someone is sitting up with a sick person.”
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
He recognizes there is a lot of suffering in the word
Perhaps this is an attestment to his small case of down syndrome?
The folksy language of Mark Twain
Conveys a vivid imagery
Implicitly says that those without a strong education have a vivid way of speaking, and that they should be heard.
Implicitly subverts social hierarchy . Twain’s revisions were all towards moving against conventional language.
Is Huck Finn a racist?
He is taught by the widow douglas by the bible and strict racism
Yet, his nature to oppose following petrified religion gives huck a sense that he is not a racist in nature, but instead a product of his environment.
When saying Jim is a good guy, he says “he’s white inside”
He thinks he’s doing something wrong in freeing Jim from Jail. Going against what he’s taught because it’s morally right.
He’s doing it because he feels loyalty friend. Where a sound heart encountered a poisoned conscious, and the heart won.
“He had a dream that shot him”
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain;
Says a lot about Tom, that he lives in a dreamworld
“Now they fall down and worship it.”
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain;
People wanted money before the civil war but now people went crazy over it. Mark Twain makes implicit commentary to class distinctions and social hierarchy with his characters. Significantly Huck Finn. Here is this boy, speaking in an ungrammatical way, capable of many great things
Huck moving down the river
Searching for a father figure
Jim: shows compassion, gives him guidance
A runaway slave. Someone who is lower on the social class hierarchy
He’s looking for a place where he can have a sense of community
Everytime he’s on the shore he must use an alias
There are a lot of of failed father figures in this novel
“The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain;
To be a moral person, you have to have an imagination enough to put yourself in someone else’s shoes or if a bad thing was happening to someone you care about
Tom doesn’t have this : no capacity for self awareness.
He fantasizes a great deal, but it comes from his books. He takes it from a book and imposes it on reality on ways that don’t work very well.
Tom’s fantasies often include wealth and power
“Tom Sawyer’s gang”
A bit egocentric of a gang name
Solipsism
There is no way you can know for certain that the rest of us are here
we could all just be figments of our imagination
Huck Finns father was fish-belly white
The notion that living close to nature makes you a better person, Twain uses very romantic writing
Huck says that his father is fish-belly white
His father is described in terms of animals and nature however he is not a desirable man at all… nature doesn’t make him a better person
When huck kills a hog, he symbolically kills his father
“there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering”
Huck Finn – Twain
Connection to the way that light shines in the afternoon (dickenson)
That is the most loneliest sound in the world
He is the only one worried about the “supposed” drunk on the horse at the circus. Huck is a different breed
Analyze H Finn ending
Maybe he wanted the ending to be frustrating
Showing how society would handle outsiders during that the time
People want to make structure in a life that is meaningless
Will do anything to avoid the emptiness and meaningless
Huck here’s the spinning wheel the loneliest sound in the world… then Tom enters
You can make a thesis to reveal each each time diversion
Theres structure, keeping score
Carrington’s thesis is this is why the ending works. We’re all aware the life in meaningless boredom, substituted by meaningless violence
Editha implicit analysis
By Howells
Because we’re inside Ethitha’s head from the writing perspective, we are drawn to analyze her persona
It shows us that each of us on our own, we are a limited vessel. We cannot be sure that our vision is right above others.
Every man believes in his heart their right.
Editha
By William Dean Howells
She wants the glory of being the lover and wife of a war hero
She wants him to be the knight in shining armour, worthy of him
She is reminiscent of Tom from Huck Finn
Romanticises honor falsely for self gratification
She thinks she cares about george yet she actually objectifies them.
There is an opportunity for her to grow in the aftermath, yet she doesn’t
She just had to hear the word “vulgar” for her to label George’s mother
Daisy Miller
Henry James
“Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed.
He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just
this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such
things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain
laxity of deportment.”
Daisy Miller ; Henry James
He thinks she’s low class and snobby A stuffy way of analyzing by her
Pretty American-Flirt
Daisy Miller ; Henry James
The words “Pretty American-Flirt” is repeated over and over
Immediately Winterbourne continues to categorizer her
He looks at her by class, he’s not spontaneous. He’s living life at an arm’s length
“Winterbourne stopped, with a sort of horror, and, it must be added,
with a sort of relief. It was as if a sudden illumination had been
flashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy’s behavior, and the riddle had
become easy to read.”
Daisy Miller ; Henry James
Winterbourne concludes his assumptions towards Daisy’s promiscuous behavior to be true as he sees her with another man in the Coliseum. And with the horror of seeing her with another, he is also relieved for it her nature had perplexed him. Now he is sure of her personality and can safely categorize her into a type. James then goes on to identify Daisy as a signorina following this encounter, as Winterbourne’s views have changed.
This reveals the notion that Winterbourne is living life at an arm’s distance, or “stiff” like Daisy describes him when they met.
“She was a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to respect. He stood there, looking at her–
looking at her companion and not reflecting that though he saw them vaguely, he himself must have been more brightly visible.”
Daisy Miller ; Henry James
Upon realizing that Daisy in fact promiscuous, Winterbourne is relieved that he can categorize her and no longer worry for his respectful courtship. This scene is literally described as Winterbourne in the light and more visible as Daisy notices him, but figuratively: He becomes more visible to the reader. He is showing himself in this moment to be all that he is.
“I believe that it makes very little difference whether you are engaged or not!”
Daisy Miller ; Henry James
Earlier in the story Winterbourne and Daisy had flirted with the idea of what others were saying about her. Some believed Daisy was engaged yet she kept truth unknown. Upon seeing Daisy with another man at the Coliseum, Winterbourne insults her, say that even if she was engaged, it makes no difference–she will still go out or flirt with other men.
“I don’t care,” said Daisy in a little strange tone, “whether I have Roman
fever or not!”
Daisy Miller ; Henry James
Said by Daisy
Winterborn has caused the change. Before she said she’s never been sick and never intends to be… Winterborn says he doesn’t care whether she’s engaged and she’s hurt.
This reveals the possibility that she loves Winterborn.
“It avails not time nor place–distance avails not”
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry; Mark Twain
Significance: It doesn’t matter that we are reading this 150 years later, he’s still with us
- Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd”
- Significance: That humans are an individuals, but apart of the group
