The Tempest

The word tempest means a storm. The wikipedia explaniation of the play is a comedy, but lately it is being stated as a romance. I agree with both. The love story is the overall and constnet setting of the play, but the comedy is interwoven throughout the entire play. Before reading this play I didn't have any idea that Shakespeare wrote comedy. I thought that he only wrote very sad and love stories. This is because I had only really payed attention to the play called Romeo and Juliet, and this was only because there was a movie made of it that had Lenarod DiCaprio in it. He used to be the in thing. Getting back to the Tempest, I found it very interesting that words that were written about four hundred years ago are still funny today. I guess that times haven't changed that much, no matter what my parents and grandparents say. HA! HA! The parts of the play that are funny are things that are related to everyday events that we encounter now in these "modern" times. These events have changed throughout time, but the deeper meaning is still the same. This leads me to the point that the word modern really has no meaning. If something that was written four hundred years ago still makes sense today and can still be related to life in today's society then it cannot be a modern time that we are living in today. When these plays and poems that are written many years ago start to not make sense or are totally unrelateable to life, that is when we can call today modern.

Class Poems

The poems that were presented in class were all very interesting. I liked how each and everyone had it's own style and sound. Every poem sounds very different, not just by the words, but by how the different words are stressed and how they are combined. The part of the poems that I really was taken back by was that almost all of the poets that my classmates talked about were depressed. I had no idea that so many people who have made such an impact on literature were so unhappy. Depression is a serious medical condition that is cused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. There is help today wiht modern medicine, but at the time that many of these poems were written there was not any sort of treatment.

I was also interested in the fact that Dayle's poet was in to a cult type of thing. Cult is a cohesive group of people dedicated to a belief or religion that the community or culture around them doesn't think of as part of the mainstream according to Wikipedia. I find it very interesting that this poet who was not considered a very rational person could be published in literature and many people don't even blink an eye when they read his poems. On the other hand there are many people that will not let their kids read Harry Potter becuase of the Wizardry involved. JK Rowling is a perfectly normal person who has kids of her own, but some people who consider her writing to be evil. The big misunderstanding is that she doesn't mean them to be evil, she just wants to get kids to read and to enjoy them for entertainment.

Change

Ovid's Metamorhposis veiw on death was something that I wanted to write about because I have recently lost one of my very best friends. Her name was Sara Vigen and she got into a car accident on May 5, and passed away. I was haveing a really hard time dealing with everything that was going on in school and in my personal life now that she is gone. I was begining to act very resentful of people and of my religion. I was not headed in the write direction. When Mr. Sexson stared to talk about how Ovid's Metamorphoses describes death I realized that I agree completely. Nothing ever dies, it only changes. This line really helped me get through a tough time and I will remember this through out my entire life. A metamorphoses is a change which is exactly what I believe happens when someone dies. I don't believe in reincarnation, the belief that something is made flesh again, but a metamorphoses. An example of this would be the fact that if you write something down it will live forever in literature and in memories. The poem, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day, says in its last couplet, "so long as men have eyes and eyes can read, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee." That says almost the same thing as nothing ever dies it only changes. The only thing is that you have to write it down. Sara was a great person who loved poetry, and she has changed into memories and Literature, she had not died.

Control

This blog goes along with my posting of the poem that I was assigned to me and that was My Last Duchess. I wrote at the bottom the my prestentation that I compare this poem to people today because of the fact that at the job there is a controll that is not there in the home. At home a person really doesn't really have the controll that they wish they had, you can say that you can control your family, but in real life there is no such thing as control over your family.

My family is the perfect example of this sense of control. When I was growing up we went of a vacation every summer. We would either go to Disney Land, or to a Lake, or some place like that. At that time my two sisters and myself were all small and listened to everything my parents said. Their word was the LAW. A few years passed by and we were growing up, we didn't listen to what my Mom and Dad told us to do. They had lost total controll of their family and they things they said and the way that they act. We suddenly stopped going on vacation each summer, and the excuse was that my parents were just to busy with work to take any time off.

I see myself falling into this controll pattern. After getting involved with this poem I realized that I am like Alfonso. I am like him because I like to control the things around me. An example of this is my major. I majored in Neuroscience, and Chemistry, and in these sciences there is a sense of control that I have because there is a exact way that things need to be done, and the instructions are very black and white. This class has been very difficult for me because there is no real write and wrong way to do something, and the instructions are all gray. I feel like I have lost control and this is not something that I like. I am glad that I have taken this class because it made me realize that I need spots of gray in my black and white world.

My Last Duchess

My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue written by a British poet and playwright by the name of Robert Browning. He is one of the most famous Victorian poets. A Victorian poet is one who wrote literature in the time when Queen Victorian ruled which was from 1837-1901. While growing up Robert Browning attended many privet schools, but ended up hating school, and finished his schooling through a personal tutor. His College career only lasted one year, and then he decided to grow up. Marriage was next for this poet, and his wife was Elizabeth Barrett who was also a Victorian poet. Elizabeth was so famous that she influenced many people, one of which was Emily Dickinson. Together Robert and Elizabeth had one son whom they called Robert Wiedmann Barrett Browning. Elizabeth died a few years later. Robert Browning was not famous during the time that Elizabeth was alive, he was just known and being Elizabeth Barrett’s husband. Finally he started to make some money off of his poetry and now is known all over the literature world as himself, not just Elizabeth Barrett’s husband. He is mostly known for two things, Men and Women, and Dramatis Personae.
This specific dramatic monologue, My Last Duchess, first appears in his Dramatic Lyrics along with his most famous poem of all, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” The beginning of My Last Duchess starts with a person talking to a silent listener. The word Ferrara precedes the monologue which indicates that Alfonso II the fifth Duke of Ferrara is probably the narrator. In Real life Alfonso II was married to Lucrezia de Medici who in their terms was from “new money.” He hated this because in his mind his family had been around and respected for hundreds of years, “old money,” so obviously he was better than her. Alfonso II only married her because she came with a huge dowry. Lucerzia died very mysteriously, and many people thought it was a murder. Alfonso II then remarried to a well known lady who was from an “old money” family. The silent listener in the monologue is thought to be this new bride’s uncle’s chief of entourage who was in charge of arranging the marriage.
The narrator in the monologue mentions first a personal belonging, the painting on the wall. He then goes on to talk about the women in the painting who was his last wife that is dead now. He also makes it very clear who painted it for him, Fra’ Pandolf (fictional character). Just by how the monologue starts we realize that this man is a very self praising person talking only about his belongings and the things he can control. The narrator goes on to talk about that little sparkle in her eye and the slight flush look that she has in the painting. The feeling the speaker gives off seems to be very angry when he says that it was not her husband who gave her this glow or sparkle, but it was everyone she passed on a daily basis. Obviously she was made to smile to easily, because she would smile at even the lowest of pheasants. This is not acceptable, because, didn’t she know that who he was? He has a name that is nine hundred years old, and she treated him the same as she treated the pheasants. Finally he told her to stop, but she kept doing it, because she probably didn’t even know what she was doing. He got so mad, at the fact that he couldn’t control her and her actions that he gave a command and all the smiling stopped, which means that he had her killed so that he would never be treated on the same level as the lowly pheasants again. Alfonso II told the listener this story, either to warn the listener of how his new wife should act, or to brag about how much control and power he had. The very end of the monologue he draws attention to another personal belonging, a sculpture, which shows that he is wrapped up in all things that he can own or control.

This monologue is so true today as it was in the Victorian Era. I compare the subject of control that Alfonso II had over the people around him to the workplace. Today many working families do not go on vacations. They say that they just can’t leave their job for a period of time, or that they are so busy they just can’t spare an extra moment. I think that the real reason for the lack of vacationing is that people do not want to go on vacation with their families because they can’t control how their families will act or how they will talk, but in the work place these people usually do have control over how their part of the job is run. They have more control in the workplace than they do at home, so they really don’t like going home to a house where they don’t have control.

Retellings by the English 123 Class

I really liked all of the stories that everyone wrote and presented. I thought that everyone put tons of effort and time into their stories. Listening to the different presentations they all were pretty obvious what other story they were trying to play off of and what they were going for with each of them. The one that wasn't very clear to me was the story that Patrick wrote. During class I really didn't get it, but when I went home and thought about it I really started to like it. The way that I understand his story is that the city is the wolf and the main person in the story is Little Red Riding Hood. I thought this was a really cool way to look at things because I kind of feel the same way. I am going to be moveing to Phoenix Arizona next spring to attend PA School. I have lived in Montana my entire life, and most of that in Belt Montana where everyone knows everyone else. The population of Belt is about 800-1000 people, this doesn't even compare to Phoenix. Bozeman is the largest place that I have ever lived in and even this doesn't compare to Phoenix. I feel that I related with Patrick's story because when I have to move out of my safe little corner of the world I will be intimidated by the level of the City and the rate at which it functions at, just like the main person in his story.

This is a picture of a part of Belt, MT that I found on the internet.

The Soldier and the Nurse

Last November a young nursing student named Jill was working at a hospital in Billings, Montana. She was going to graduate in just one short month. Everything was going her way, and her life was falling into the frame that she had always imagined. The one thing that she didn’t have was a boyfriend, or husband. Her father really made this an issue. When she would talk to him on the phone, he would always ask if she had met anyone yet, or if she would like to be set up with someone when she came home to visit. This thought about a serious life change had never crossed Jill’s mind. She only thought about graduating and eventually joining the army so she could help the injured solders who had gone down in battle.

The month flew by and Jill finally graduated. She passed her national board exam with flying colors; she was a very smart young lady. There were job offers given to her from all around Montana, but Jill passed them all up so that she could join the army. Her father really didn’t like this turn her life was taking because, now there is no way she will find a husband to settle down with. Even thought Jill’s father didn’t like her choice she went ahead with it, and came out of basic training feeling great about her self. With the United States in a war against terrorism Jill’s skills were in great demand. She was quickly sent off to Iraq to work in a field hospital.
Jill had been working there for close to three months, and it was starting to wear her down. She was working 20 hours a day, with no time for her self. One morning the sky was very overcast and even though the clock said 11:00 in the morning it felt more like 11:00 at night. With the weather acting so strange there was no question that something bad was going to happen. The weather was right, a huge battle broke out just ten miles from the field hospital that Jill was stationed at. Solders were coming in by the hundreds with injuries, and there was total chaos in the hospital. Jill was running around trying to be in three places at once, and then she saw a solder being carried in on a stretcher. She only caught a glimpse of him, and then he was gone. This pandemonium in the hospital went on for the rest of the day and into the night. Finally the solders stopped coming in and Jill could catch her breath.
While on a break Jill remembered the feeling that she got when that solder on the stretcher was carted passed her, and just thinking about him gave her the same feeling again. She suddenly knew that she needed to find out who this man was. Jill searched the entire hospital until she found him. His name was Duane and he had such a horrific injury to his face that it was wrapped in gauze and his face could not be seen. She was just staring at him, and that same feeling came back to her. She couldn’t figure out if it was fear or just butterflies. Suddenly he opened his mouth and barked orders at her to get him some water. He went on and on with all sorts of orders for her, he was not a nice man. After she had spoken to him, Jill decided that it was fear that she felt when Duane was around.
The weeks passed, and Jill found her self paying attention only to Duane and not to anyone else, he had consumed her every thought. Finally her time served in Iraq was coming to an end. She was given her release papers and had decided to go home to her father in Geraldine, Montana. The day that Jill was supposed to leave the field hospital, Duane gave her one last order, and that was to come live with him in Boston at his house and take care of him. Because Jill was still filled with fear when she was around him she could only say yes. She called her father and told him what she was going to do, and they flew to Boston to start Duane’s recovery.
The house that they drove up to was huge, and had a great big lawn and garden surrounding it. Duane still had his face all bandaged up, so Jill had never seen his real face. The days went on and Duane was very bitter and short to Jill. She couldn’t understand why she had come to Boston with such a mean man that she didn’t even know. One morning Duane was playing fetch with his dog, and the moment Jill was in sight Duane instantly got mean and snapped at the dog. Jill went to the dog to comforted him, then she went to scold Duane, but the next thing that she knew they were kissing. It was the best thing she had ever felt. She felt totally free. After the kiss Duane started to relax around Jill and treat her with respect and gratitude. A week passed and they were falling in love. Jill couldn’t believe it; she was falling in love with a man that she had never seen his face before.
One more month went by, and Duane asked Jill to marry her. She instantly said yes, but then hesitated and said “but I have never seen your face before.” She didn’t know if she could love someone with such a bad injury on their face. Duane was heart broken, but he said that there is only one way to find out, and he took off the bandages. Jill’s mouth dropped wide open, and then she ran into his arms yelling “I Love You.” Duane had terrible scars all over his face, but Jill didn’t care. They got married and lived a very long life together. At the wedding Jill’s father had made the comment that, “Wow, a beauty can really love a beast!”