What I Know Not That I Didn't Know Before

What I Know Now That
I Didn’t Know Before

In this class I have learned many things; I have also had many things that I thought I knew switched around on me. For example I didn’t know that there were different versions of the Disney fairytales, I had no idea of all of the different schemes and sounds that a poem can follow, and I didn’t know that Shakespeare would interest me. One of the major lessons that I have learned is that the only thing that is ever boring is the person saying that something is boring, and this is because they don’t get it.
Retellings are everywhere, every story that I have read is a retelling of something else that has already been told in the past. While growing up I only knew the Disney versions of the fairytales. I was what a psychoanalytic study would call sheltered. When I started reading the very first stories of the Cinderella cluster I didn’t really like them, because they were not the Disney version that left me feeling all warm and cuddly inside. These different retellings of Cinderella were violent, and grotesque. When we talked in class our discussion about the different versions I realized that the Disney story was not doing me justice, it was just telling me what I wanted to hear. Bruno Betteleheim talked about how Charles Perrault’s version of Little Red Ridding Hood did not do justice. He said this because at the end of the story there was a moral, and according to Betteleheim there is no moral of a story, because the moral of the story is the story itself. While reading and watching the Disney versions I always put a moral to the story, and know when I read all of the retellings and also reread the Disney versions I know not to put a moral on the end of the story because, the moral of the story is the story.
Fairytales are for young kids; at least that is what I used to think. After taking this class I have learned that fairytales are not just for young kids, but that they are for teenagers and adults too. Most of the stories that we have read were about a teenager going through a life change, which was most often puberty. They all have an initiation, separation, and a transformation in their story line. For example in Beauty and the Beast, Bell meats the beast, then she is held at the castle, and finally she is released but at that point there has been a transformation and she ends up staying at the castle with the beast. This is true in real life too, school is the initiation step, college is the separation step, and the transformation is when you are done with college you get a real job and actually want to grow up. I personally think that people go through three puberties in life and each has an initiation, a separation, and a transformation in them. The three puberties that a person will go through in life are one in the teenage years, two after college, and three growing old. For this reason I think that fairytales are made for everyone, not just kids, but teenagers and adults too.
The poetry section of the class was great for me because I really had no idea of all of the different sounds, and rhythms that a poem could have. I also didn’t know that a poem didn’t have to rhyme. I was very lucky to be assigned the poem called My Last Duchess, because it is a dramatic monologue. I didn’t know what a dramatic monologue was, but I have learned that it is a poem where a narrator is talking to a silent listener. This poem really captured my attention because it was so much like a real story that had happened in real life. The poem along with the real story didn’t actually say that Alfonso killed his passed wife, but there were many hints saying that he did. The poem says words like “sitting there as if she were alive,” and “half-flush that dies along her throat.” This last line almost tells the reader how he killed her. My Last Duchess really related to me because I feel that I am kind of like the narrator in the poem, in the way that I like to control things that are going on around me. This is the exact reason that I picked my major of Neuroscience and Chemistry. In these sciences there are write and wrong answers, and there are exact ways in which experiments are to be done. In poetry each and every poem can be interpreted differently by different people. The only one who knows the exact write answer is the poet themselves. Everyone else that is reading or interpreting the poems can’t loose.
The Shakespeare unit that we have finished up with was the one that I was least excited about. I thought that Shakespeare was dumb and boring. The reason that I had this mind set was not because I didn’t like Shakespeare, but it was because I didn’t’ understand it. In high school I just skimmed the surface of the Shakespeare that was required of me to read, and I never really got involved with it. For example I thought that Shakespeare only wrote romances, because the only play that I really paid any attention to was Romeo and Juliet, and this was because there was a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in it. Reading the Tempest and Hamlet I realized that most of the plays do have a romance in them, but that is not the major story going on in the play. The Tempest was a comedy, and I was surprised to find out that something that was written 400 years ago was funny today. The reason for this is that many of the things that I found funny are things that still relate to life today. For example Miranda in the Tempest is a very innocent and naive young girl; I related this to my friend Jill who is also naive. For example, before Jill came to college, she had never put gas in her own car before which is like Miranda never having seen a man her own age before. I think that by relating what Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago to modern day events is how Shakespeare intended the plays to be read and remembered. This thinking came from the couplet that he wrote at the very end of the poem Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day and that is “so long as men can breathe and eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” In the poem and in the plays he is talking about different things, but the meaning that I have learned is that if you write it down it will live forever.
The major things that I have learned in this class are to live every day and every moment. You have to do something; don’t just let things happen to you. Every story is a retelling of another story, and life is just another retelling. Everyone is living a story; the only thing that will help is to know many other stories to help guide us through story we are living.