Summary of a Critical Response

Percy Bysshe Shelley

                The article “Shelley” residing in my copy of Frankenstein was written in 1817, and published November 10^th, 1832.  Its author, Percy Bysshe, begins the article trying to understand the psychology behind Mary Shelley’s thought process.  Bysshe expresses deep interest in the origin of the blatantly weird motivation Shelley found to write “Frankenstein”.    The article continues down a path of emotion analysis of how the reader of Frankenstein will react personally.  Bysshe describes the monster as shockingly compassionate and peaceful, but human like in the sense it could flip like a switch and be sheer evil.  The continual theme of one incident after another, never catching a break is discussed in the article to support why the author Bysshe thinks you will feel a certain way. 

Mary Shelley's Biography

Photo Credit:

http://www.coolashelltheatre.com/podcasts/a-halloween-treat-the-creature-podcast-adapted-from-mary-shelleys-frankenstein-by-trevor-allen/

Response

                I found Bysshe’s article to be an analysis of Frankenstein, one I agree with.  I feel my deep desire to know what was going through Chunk Palahniuk’s head when he wrote “Fight Club” to be right up the ally of Bysshe’s desire to analysis Shelley’s motivation to write “Frankenstein”.  I find the theme of never catching a break in Frankenstein most true, I feel like I can’t turn the page without another conflict arising.  Even though the suspense is at times hard to cope with, it adds to the motivation that keeps you ripping through the pages.  I also agree with the ideology behind the monster.  I think it is first perceived as an animal that knows no wrong, but as the story progresses becomes more human when it displays human traits of revenge.

Blog Post #6- Reflections on Revision

Writing has been a daunting task all through grade school, and more so at the college level.  I think its safe to say for every new teacher requesting some form of writing throughout my academic career thus far has taught a different form of pre-writing.  These processes such as: outlines, four squares, webs, ect usually amount to sheer frustration.  Often times, once introduced to my topic, I spend a great deal of my time figuring out what my thesis is.  Once I have my thesis I like to jump into writing.  I may not know what transition words or topic sentences I will use for each paragraph, but I do have an understanding of what I am trying to accomplish.  Last semester in English 101, we had mandatory pre-writing to turn in for a grade.  I felt it was quite a barrier for my writing process and ended up finishing my essay first and BSing my way though an outline after the fact. 

Revison Steps

When it comes to my current draft, I'm by no means happy with the grade I achieved.  Although, it is a rough draft, which I consider to be my form of per-writing.  I have a rough structure to my essay, most of everything that needs to be there is, and because I'm now equipped with feedback, I can take my rough draft / per-writing and forge it into the higher grade I desire.  Specifically, I'm going to make it more clear who my message is intended for as the reader.  The essay makes perfect sense in my head, because when I read it I'm most likely implying I already know what I'm talking about or the idea I put on paper is associated with what I have in my head. It's hard to isolate what I have in my head from what is on paper.  I need to work on reading exactly what I have on paper and what sense it makes despite what I was trying to transpire from my head to paper.  There are a few minor grammar and spelling mistakes I will be sure to address.  Finally I will possibly try to reconstruct some of my ideas so they are more clear.

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Close Reading of a Passage

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.  I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.  For this I had deprived myself of rest and health.  I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.  Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

 http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/05/despair-guilt-and-remorse-in.html

                This excerpt proved vital to me thus far into the book.  So far the two major controlling ideas are: Victor reanimating a dead body, and his guilt for the adverse affects of playing God.  The concept of thinking something will make you happy for longer than you anticipate such as the car you drive, size of your house, or paycheck was a major theme of my English 101 class, and is somewhat relatable to the psychology of Victor in Frankenstein.   My English 101 class read a book “Discovering PopularCulture” that discussed the American Dream and overall happiness.  Many authors depicted what Americans’ defined happiness as, and why they were wrong to think something material would make them happy for as long as they think.   I find this relatable to Victor because of how he went about his creation.  He deprived himself sleep and health because he was so sure that the product of his hard work would yield success far out weighing any trials he would endure in the process of creating the monster.  Like many Americans who swear on a new car being that thing they so badly need to feel truly happy and remain in a fantasizing state that blocks out the reality of potential consequences, Victor remains so engulfed in his work he fails to forecast any negative outcome that may be the verdict of his action.  Victor defined his health and happiness’s around the construction of his creation, and now that it has been constructed and so many things are going so terribly wrong he spends his days now wishing it away.  I believe the overwhelming guilt and sorrow for his actions leading to the death of two loved ones will play out to influence the rest of the story as a new controlling idea.

Essay 2

Atrox

            The seriousness of the tone does not leisurely progress, for it too fears.  The world’s surety of tomorrow is gone, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre” (line 1).  The vocabulary bank lacks words to continue a rhyme scheme that depicts the atrocity of “The Second Coming”.  All that starts must come to an end; it’s the prophecy of the wicked end.  The world is victim to what we created.  Your Second Coming is here, a new age awaits you and the “rough beast” (line 21) is here to rule.  Yeats calls to elements of literature several times to evoke the otherwise impossible message of the spiraling world he is clinging too.

            A vivid picture is the product of the first stanza.  Objects are used to create meaningful and enticing realization such as a falcon that has ventured so far down its flight plan it no longer tamed by its falconer, as it should be.  The event of a falconer losing their falcon is by all means tragic, but tragic for them personally, the world remains stable despite one falconer’s gaping heart (line 2).  However, when such a personal tragedy is used to describe everyone, everything, the world; we all feel the anguish of that falconer loosing what defines them.  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (lines 7-8), the once majestic falconer has been brought down to nothing without his falcon, those who lacked the willpower to master such a feat as forming a pact with a wild predator have never been so optimistic at this great expense.

            Do you dare place hope in the uncertain?  A new age is rapidly approaching; not concerned about a fair landing zone.  Is it Armageddon?  Is there anything else that can be lost besides mere hope in such a crisis?  You want The Second Coming so bad you can see it, is it real?  “Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight” (lines 11-14).   It’s here, what you wanted so terribly bad, but now you don’t want it.  Your faith has been extinguished by the “rough beast” (line 21).  Yeats begs your imagination with personification in the second stanza when he gives a naturally innocent thing cruel human domineer, “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun” (line 15).  The sun makes an appearance everyday making life possible, yet Yeats gives it a human trait of “pitiless”.            

             Just as Yeats turned on the sun; in the third and final stanza he signifies through his hopeless voice that the last twenty centuries of potential progress made was in vein, “vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle” (line 20).  Yates equipped with imagery replicates his final hellish realization that during this progress a beast harnessing the Armageddon for the last twenty century’s of progress had been brewing.  The stanza has a voice about it like someone falling to their death finds everything to make shocking sense all at once.  Even though it’s a blunt few seconds before they indent the Earth with their life, so many things all come together to make regrettable sense. 

            William Butler Yeats embarked on potentially the scariest time of the world.  Nothing was guaranteed, not even the next moment.  The pain of losing centuries of logic, democracy, and discrepancy has not returned to the magnitude he so vividly describes with his bold tone, imagery, and personification.  The whole ordeal expressed in the poem might not be something describable in traditional communication, perhaps he resorted to these literary elements to provide body language you associate with his words to understand in depth what he was proclaiming that he was unable to summon with his petrified body. 

 

Works Cited

            Yates, William Butler “The Second Coming”. Poetry Foundation. 1989. 14 September 2011. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=the+second+coming

-I'm not sure if I got the works cited/internal citations correct. I'm open to all criticism.

The Second Coming

A Second Coming Analysis

After reading the collection of poems, I remained most interested in “A Second Coming”.   Poetry is hard for me to enjoy.  Several times it was briefly covered throughout grade school; all resulting in perplexing headaches.  The only thing I proved to myself I had retained was noticing specific words or phrases capitalized in the middle of a text that would not otherwise be capitalized.  In the second stanza of the poem “The Second Coming” is as previously stated capitalized; indicating a reference to significance, name or title, ect.  I’m by no means a speculator of theology, however; I do recall associating the phrase The Second Coming to Jesus returning to Earth, beyond that, I will have  to ask Google.

I feel the first stanza really paints a vivid picture that depicts how someone who just experienced the absolute anguish of the First World War feels.  I imagine based on the first stanza the world was an unsure place that felt like it was out of synch; nothing was as it should be.  It’s as if the author witnessed the Earth’s crust split open and watched Hell’s contents ransack the world.  The joy in the world the author lived for was extinguished by this event and replaced by the worst possible opposite.

The rest of the poem is tough for me to breakdown and depict.  I don’t see any bright light at the end of this tunnel so to speak.  I think William Yeats was foreshadowing the religious belief of Armageddon.  I find it harder to relate to him.  I certainly believe the world at that time conveyed to people living during the event of the World War the end was near, a sense of desperation and dire need of a higher power to fix the injustice and restore the world to its previous state.

Photo Credit: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwM_eKr0G-1ac4HXlLos8JDGMbJ4CVnE3f_bIFaYPgfdLLw5ArNS9-bBAA0UPVKWyfhme_fXx-CKeVlv_43qAhJBqAGzaa7_flDBsA-ybtIm_hxheOX1EHVk0xGyqIXgJEd3YDIQEuamA/s1600/armageddon.jpeg

Summary Vs. Analysis

Throughout my education; early as fourth grade I have been frequently asked to summarize something.  This was a task of completely reading the content to be summarized, then in my own words, briefly highlighting the important events, places, or ideas that were described vividly and in depth by the author.  Not until recently in my education have I been asked to analyze something.  Focus on something specific in the literature and break it down to form a better understanding of how it is a key player in the overall integrity, and produce a valid argument.  I view it as a mechanical processes, much like the troubleshooting in involved in a dirt bike for example.  You have a task at hand that you are trying to isolate and direct your full attention to addressing that specific task.  Once you have your task, you begin disassembling the surrounding parts in a methodical manner to expose the piece you need to address.  Now you have  briefly gone through every piece, and worked with the intended one extensively; begin placing each piece back together like a puzzle until they are all in the right position or sequence that makes them work together.  As a result of this process, you now have a understanding of the process as a whole, but also a more in depth isolated understanding of a deeper issue.  Once you have gone through these trials, you can formulate a course of action.  In a dirt bike's case; what you have now is evidence of what the underlying problem is.  This evidence is the backbone for your argument.  Many times after pulling apart a bike I would take my problem backed with the evidence obtained to an online forum to have a discussion based argument of what the issue really is.  The evidence I have equipped myself with gave me a better understanding of the process, but still leaves an argument. It becomes an argument when two apposing sides have taken in my information and have concurring ideas.  Often, this is the best way to find a solution to a problem. The argument engages people in my issue and a plethora of information is exchanged between the opposition.  The final product began as my dissection of a problem, and ended as an argument that highlighted the significance of the part in question and how it is affecting the rest of the bike negatively or positively as a whole.  I hope this is a sensible comparison between the troubleshooting of a dirt bike and the analysis of a literary piece  that will be easy for you to relate to.  The specific piece, once fully analyzed, dirt bike or literature, should yield you a detailed understanding of the roll it plays, why its located in the body where it is, and present you with an argument.   

Here is a cool, and very straight forward website that explains what it takes to analyze literature.

 Image source: http://s389.photobucket.com/albums/oo336/mx4god/?action=view&current=2003YamahaYZ250FRebuild001.jpg
 

Good Readers and Good Writers

After reading the Nabokov Good Readers attachment I think it’s safe to say the lack of appreciation I have for what really lies in a good piece of literature is quite evident.  He mentions having an open mind to ideas and concepts found in a book, and how starting closed minded will only drive you away from the intended ideas.  The idea of painting your own image of what your reading versus collecting the image the author is trying to paint for you came to mind when I began reading.  I feel very guilty of this, the detail lacking image I often come up with is sure to make any masterpiece  a black and white doodle.  When I look back to every book I have disliked, I always started the book without actually physically touching it.  I closed my mind to any new ideas or approaches that might only be visible to someone with an open artistic approach.  Not wanting to read a book will always result in a dissatisfying and surely partial understanding, missing a vivid detail of a painting so to speak.  I certainly believe the bit about having to reread to really open up to what an author has in store.  I have started many books without finishing them, after reading this I see it fit to accredit it to my inability to collect everything I need to put a painting together in my mind. 

Image Source: http://www.world-literature.tk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/book-small.jpg

I think it’s ironic that I was able to pull the idea out of his article and see how it relates to me, yet most readings I start never to understand nor relate.  I never put any thought into what might make a good reader until now.  What I believe makes a good reader is no longer valid.  Before this article I would say being a strong reader is most important; even though I didn’t and probably still don’t understand fully what a strong reader is.  It’s quite a complex title to say someone is or isn’t a strong reader, many details from Nabokov’s writing indicate to me being a strong reader is a process that may or may or may not be achieved by reading the text once.  Rereading is a necessary processes for even the most artistic and open minded readers, another processes I have yet to submit to. 

I also find this link interesting.  I think it shares some ideas with Nabokov, while also differing in what really makes a "strong reader".