Sunday, May 6, 2012
Blood Wedding #3
I don't know if the whole poetic, sing-songy aspects of the wedding in act II are meant to break the 4th wall that was introduced by realism. Maybe that really was part of a wedding in Spanish culture. Even so, for me as a reader, the poetry/songs/whatever it was that preceded the wedding brought about a rather surreal effect. People normally don't break out into song or stanzas in everyday life (at least I sincerely hope not), and I think Lorca is creating a rather dream-like atmosphere by making people do so. Perhaps Lorca is trying to illustrate the cloud of hysteria that can surround relationships/weddings between young people. I know that today's youth is very easily infatuated with people of their fancies, and that "love" can oftentimes fog up real desires or better judgements. This would be putting the people that are in "love" in a dream-like state that could be associated with Lorca's surrealism.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Blood Wedding #2
I thought that the mother was the most archetypical character out of the whole lot. She worries excessively about her son, doesn't stop talking about her dead relatives, and wants to see her kid married off to a nice lady. What more could one ask for in a mom, really? I think this kind of characterization surrounding the mother creates a strong sense in the reader of the deep bond the mother has with her family (at least that's what I got out of it).
The groom is pretty stereotypical as well. He is in love with his wife-to-be, so much in love that it makes him feel lost and want to cry. I think that this love blinds him to the fact that the bride may not be as bride-ly as she first appears in act 1 scene 3. When she meets the mother, the bride is a perfect woman. She is an obedient girl, which her father attests to, and she is seen rather than heard for the most part which may have been the norm in that time period. When the bride is alone with the maid, however, she breaks the stereotype. She doesn't seem happy at all to be married. In fact, she seems afraid, agitated, or what have you. These emotions would be more associated with men, I would think. I know that in our time and place marriage, to men, can be viewed as being tied down. Maybe the bride took on a male perspective and viewed it that way as well.
The groom is pretty stereotypical as well. He is in love with his wife-to-be, so much in love that it makes him feel lost and want to cry. I think that this love blinds him to the fact that the bride may not be as bride-ly as she first appears in act 1 scene 3. When she meets the mother, the bride is a perfect woman. She is an obedient girl, which her father attests to, and she is seen rather than heard for the most part which may have been the norm in that time period. When the bride is alone with the maid, however, she breaks the stereotype. She doesn't seem happy at all to be married. In fact, she seems afraid, agitated, or what have you. These emotions would be more associated with men, I would think. I know that in our time and place marriage, to men, can be viewed as being tied down. Maybe the bride took on a male perspective and viewed it that way as well.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Blood Wedding #1
The first symbol that is so very obvious in the play is the knife. The mother hates it so much because she hates death. Two of her family members are dead, so that makes a lot of sense. The knife creates tension between the groom and his mother, because the groom seems to want to avoid the subject of death all together while the mother won't quit talking about it. I think that both these characters' views towards death have something to do with the characters themselves being symbolic of things. They could embody different ideals, stereotypical whatevertheyare's, or something that I haven't figured out yet because I'm really not sure. The knife can be symbolic of death in two ways, I think. The more obvious hidden meaning behind the knife is death, but we also have that idea of separation that we discussed in class today. Death, brought about by the knife, severs the mother's family before the play with the father and brother and then at the end of the play when the groom dies, leaving the mother alone.
Another symbol I noticed was the machine that the neighbor lady talks about. At first, I didn't pay it much mind, but looking at it closer I saw that it must have some importance because it is THE machine, rather than a machine. Then again, Spanish translates so that there is a "the" in front of practically every noun that is talked about in a general sense. I looked back through the preceding pages and didn't really see this abnormality except for "the knife", which is also a symbol. Ergo, the machine is a symbol. Boom. I thought that the machine was a symbol (this may be a bit of a stretch) for logic. I know that Lorca disliked realism and logic, and at times the logical, mathematical human brain is compared to a machine. I saw the contrast between logic and surrealism when the neighbor says, "I think your son and I are better off where they are, asleep, resting, and not in danger of being left useless"(12). The machine, representing logic which Lorca deems useless, is the very thing that made the neighbor's son a poor little stub with no arms or legs. The fact that Lorca would bring up sleep is interesting because sleep and dreams are part of surrealism. I think Lorca is using the machine to show his preference for surrealism over realism and logic.
Another symbol I noticed was the machine that the neighbor lady talks about. At first, I didn't pay it much mind, but looking at it closer I saw that it must have some importance because it is THE machine, rather than a machine. Then again, Spanish translates so that there is a "the" in front of practically every noun that is talked about in a general sense. I looked back through the preceding pages and didn't really see this abnormality except for "the knife", which is also a symbol. Ergo, the machine is a symbol. Boom. I thought that the machine was a symbol (this may be a bit of a stretch) for logic. I know that Lorca disliked realism and logic, and at times the logical, mathematical human brain is compared to a machine. I saw the contrast between logic and surrealism when the neighbor says, "I think your son and I are better off where they are, asleep, resting, and not in danger of being left useless"(12). The machine, representing logic which Lorca deems useless, is the very thing that made the neighbor's son a poor little stub with no arms or legs. The fact that Lorca would bring up sleep is interesting because sleep and dreams are part of surrealism. I think Lorca is using the machine to show his preference for surrealism over realism and logic.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Wild Duck #3
I definitely think that Gina and Gregers carry most of the blame for the craziness that occured in acts 3 and 4. Gregers took it upon himself to pry into things that really weren't any of his business. It may have been his "moral obligation" to do so, but I believe that the entire play could have been avoided if Gregers had just kept his head down and minded his own business. As for Gina, she could have made it apparent that Hedvig may not be Hjalmar's daughter a lot earlier in her marriage. Props to her for being able to lie for 15 years, that girl must have a very different set of morals, but if she told the truth at the beginning, Hedvig would have been young and oblivious enough to have not taken her father's freak-out so personally. Maybe then she may not have killed herself.
The number one person that should be blamed for Hedvig's death, however, is Old Werle. He's the one that created the lie surrounding the Ekdal family in the first place. It was him that got Gina pregnant, and according to the customs of the time he should have just married her anyway. Instead, he set up a web of lies for poor Hjalmar by setting Gina up with him. He even ensured that his lie would last long-term by getting Hjalmar a job and supporting the Ekdal family with Old Ekdal's paycheck and later the grant in Hedvig's letter. The truth getting out about Hedvig being illigitimate would surely hurt Old Werle's reputation, which is probably why he put on the whole charade.
The number one person that should be blamed for Hedvig's death, however, is Old Werle. He's the one that created the lie surrounding the Ekdal family in the first place. It was him that got Gina pregnant, and according to the customs of the time he should have just married her anyway. Instead, he set up a web of lies for poor Hjalmar by setting Gina up with him. He even ensured that his lie would last long-term by getting Hjalmar a job and supporting the Ekdal family with Old Ekdal's paycheck and later the grant in Hedvig's letter. The truth getting out about Hedvig being illigitimate would surely hurt Old Werle's reputation, which is probably why he put on the whole charade.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Wild Duck #2
Sickness, illness, etc are used in The Wild Duck to show what happens to certain people if they choose not to reveal the truth. The first case of this "illness" can be seen at the end of act 3, right before Gregers gets the opportunity to get Hjalmar alone and perhaps tell him the truth about his child and marriage. Relling diagnoses him with "moralistic fever"(178). To me, this sounds like poor Gregers is ill because of a violation of his morals. It is within Gregers' moral standards to reveal the truth. Heck, it's his life mission. The conflict he faces between his morals and keeping his buddy happy are causing a battle within in own mind.
In Relling's mind, truth cas cause an illness if one is overexposed. This is why he deems Gregers, and later Hjalmar (and everyone else in the world), as ill. His cure for this illness is a life-lie, "the animating principle of life"(202). This kind of lie "keep[s] life going"(202). Relling believes that, sometimes, the truth can be too hard to bear. This is especially true with Hjalmar, who eventually snaps and indirectly kills his daughter. I think that Ibsen, through using illness and death as symbols, is trying to convey that knowing the truth is not always beneficial. Covering up the truth, much like Gina did for almost 15 years, kept Hjalmar sane because he was in the dark as far as the illegitimacy of his child is concerned.
In Relling's mind, truth cas cause an illness if one is overexposed. This is why he deems Gregers, and later Hjalmar (and everyone else in the world), as ill. His cure for this illness is a life-lie, "the animating principle of life"(202). This kind of lie "keep[s] life going"(202). Relling believes that, sometimes, the truth can be too hard to bear. This is especially true with Hjalmar, who eventually snaps and indirectly kills his daughter. I think that Ibsen, through using illness and death as symbols, is trying to convey that knowing the truth is not always beneficial. Covering up the truth, much like Gina did for almost 15 years, kept Hjalmar sane because he was in the dark as far as the illegitimacy of his child is concerned.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Wild Duck #1
Option 2:
Hjalmar Ekdal, one of the main characters in the play, is twisted up in a bed of lies created by other characters as well as himself. He percieves himself as hardworking, and yet he always makes an excuse as to why he can't complete his photography projects. He needs an afternoon nap, his father is being a crazy, or he has his invention to attend to. Overall, I would say that Hjalmar is like an IB student. He says he's hardworking, and he can get the job done when he wants to, but there is always an excuse as to why he can't get the job done. I also noticed that Hjalmar acts differently around a group of men (Relling, Molvik, and Gregers in act 3) than he does around his wife and child. In act two, he is very sweet with Hedvig and makes good conversation with his wife. However, when the boys are around, he turns to giving orders to Gina and Hedvig. This could also be the alcohol he was consuming clouding his judgement, but that's another thing to think about.
On the other side of the Ekdal family, we have Gina. One might call her the typical housewife of the time period. She is obedient towards her husband, keeps the house, and cares for her child. Gina also has a line of work, which may not have been uncharacteristic of a women of her status (I'm starting to think that the Ekdals are part of the lower middle class). I think it is very interesting that Gina re-touches photos while Hjalmar just takes them. I see this as Hjalmar seeing what is actually there (but maybe not the whole picture), and Gina skewing things just a little to make them look more presentable. We never know for a fact that Hedvig is an illegitimate child with Old Werle, but I think some of Gina's actions and attitudes point the readers in that direction. Her shock at Old Werle's entrance in act 3 and her displeasure with Gregers' arrival all point out that she knows what is really going on, she is just going to hide it like she hides the imperfections in pictures.
Hjalmar Ekdal, one of the main characters in the play, is twisted up in a bed of lies created by other characters as well as himself. He percieves himself as hardworking, and yet he always makes an excuse as to why he can't complete his photography projects. He needs an afternoon nap, his father is being a crazy, or he has his invention to attend to. Overall, I would say that Hjalmar is like an IB student. He says he's hardworking, and he can get the job done when he wants to, but there is always an excuse as to why he can't get the job done. I also noticed that Hjalmar acts differently around a group of men (Relling, Molvik, and Gregers in act 3) than he does around his wife and child. In act two, he is very sweet with Hedvig and makes good conversation with his wife. However, when the boys are around, he turns to giving orders to Gina and Hedvig. This could also be the alcohol he was consuming clouding his judgement, but that's another thing to think about.
On the other side of the Ekdal family, we have Gina. One might call her the typical housewife of the time period. She is obedient towards her husband, keeps the house, and cares for her child. Gina also has a line of work, which may not have been uncharacteristic of a women of her status (I'm starting to think that the Ekdals are part of the lower middle class). I think it is very interesting that Gina re-touches photos while Hjalmar just takes them. I see this as Hjalmar seeing what is actually there (but maybe not the whole picture), and Gina skewing things just a little to make them look more presentable. We never know for a fact that Hedvig is an illegitimate child with Old Werle, but I think some of Gina's actions and attitudes point the readers in that direction. Her shock at Old Werle's entrance in act 3 and her displeasure with Gregers' arrival all point out that she knows what is really going on, she is just going to hide it like she hides the imperfections in pictures.
Monday, April 9, 2012
We #3 (Oh my gosh it rhymes)
I finished the book and I just want to say, "wow, not what I expected. At all. What a bummer". So I just said that and now I'm going to do my journal.
As far as motifs go, nature is coming up a lot more than in the first third or half or so of the book. This clearly is part of D-503 falling deeper into his illness, because on the last two pages after D has been cured he mentions no nature to speak of. Although nature doesn't come up when D is well again, he still uses it to describe the more "ugly" things that take place in his life. While the One State is essentially burning to the ground, Zamyatin describes the frantic people with "open mouths, arms waving like branches. They must have been the source of all this howling, cawing, buzzing"(198). These people are lost, with no idea what to do. Their way of life is collapsing around them, so they are reverting to savagery. The animalistic language combined with the motif of nature here is bringing a sense of negativity (I could use a better word here, but I can't think of one) towards all these people's conditions. They, for the first time in their lives, are free! The problem is, however, that they think the way of the One State is the only way to live and that freedom brings savagery and unhappiness. This is where we get D's negative feelings towards them as expressed in the nature-ish words like branches, cawing, howling and buzzing.
Well, I kind of lumped motifs and language in with eachother on that one, so I'm going to do it again to be more thorough. There is a point in the book where nature actually, much to the people's dismay, finds its way in to the one state. The first time this happens is in D-503's 37th entry, when the brids come in from outside the green wall and it's electric cieling. Nature is, again, described by Zamyatin with harsh, almost ugly language. The birds produce "hoarse, gutteral drops of sound from above", and are described as "sharp, black, piercing, falling triangles"(191). The first part of the passage makes a lot of sense to me as far as language goes. Words like hoarse and gutteral are used to express the society's disgust with nature, as we have seen throughout basically the whole book. What I don't get is why the birds are also labeled as triangles. Something that comes from nature, something so free, unpredictable, and "ugly", should not be labeled as a geometric shape. Why? Because the One State loves math. I bet they even love geometry, even though a lot of people don't. Since geometry, and subsequently, such nice shapes as triangles, are part of the math that society is based on, then why label a "stupid", "ugly" bird with something so revered in society? This could be D's way of showing us he has a soul, and is blending the society he loves with the nature he knows belongs in his life and is coming to accept. Or it could be a translation issue. I don't know if there are any other Russian words for triangle, but I know that some other people in my group have other translations. It would be interesting to see what they have!
Setting is an entirely different ball game! The One State is pretty established as a setting, so there's not much to talk about there. I did find one of the little blurbs on the Integral kind of interesting, and it clued me in as to how the society works. The quote that I don't feel like properly integrating reads "everyone was already all assembled, everyone was in their places, all the honeycombs of the gigantic hive were filled. There were tiny, antlike people below, [...] standing at telegraphs, dynamos, transformers, altimeters, valves, arrows, motors, pumps, pipes"(172). It is shown here how complex the society is, and how everyone is working as part of a whole in order to achieve a greater purpose. The people are almost like robots, and Zamyatin makes it appear that way by saying that they're "assembled". Everyone is part of a machine, standing at their various parts and waiting to be activated. The Integral is part of a mission that will spead the views of the One State intergalactically, so it is natural that the thing doing so is made according to these values. The workers who run the integral are dehumanized, and deindividualized as they are lumped in as part of this greater being. I also found the comparison to the beehive to be interesting, although it seemed rather off as part of a paragraph about a machine. The people working the integral could also be a part of a beehive, all working towards a goal (or multiple goals, making honey, feeding the queen...), but here Zamyatin chooses to describe them using nature! Since the people are also described as antlike not two sentences before the bee reference, I think Zamyatin might be doing something by involving insects in his writing. Although insects are a part of nature, they aren't really that amazing or unpredictable or untamable. Ants can be squished under a boot, and bees follow a simple routine of, leave hive, get nectar, come back to hive, deposit nectar, repeat. Insects are mindless, predictable things that can easily be compared with the people of the One State who blindly follow the Benefactor and accept all the rules forced on to them because they don't know any better. Nature can be somewhat predictable, but only in its simplest form.
As far as motifs go, nature is coming up a lot more than in the first third or half or so of the book. This clearly is part of D-503 falling deeper into his illness, because on the last two pages after D has been cured he mentions no nature to speak of. Although nature doesn't come up when D is well again, he still uses it to describe the more "ugly" things that take place in his life. While the One State is essentially burning to the ground, Zamyatin describes the frantic people with "open mouths, arms waving like branches. They must have been the source of all this howling, cawing, buzzing"(198). These people are lost, with no idea what to do. Their way of life is collapsing around them, so they are reverting to savagery. The animalistic language combined with the motif of nature here is bringing a sense of negativity (I could use a better word here, but I can't think of one) towards all these people's conditions. They, for the first time in their lives, are free! The problem is, however, that they think the way of the One State is the only way to live and that freedom brings savagery and unhappiness. This is where we get D's negative feelings towards them as expressed in the nature-ish words like branches, cawing, howling and buzzing.
Well, I kind of lumped motifs and language in with eachother on that one, so I'm going to do it again to be more thorough. There is a point in the book where nature actually, much to the people's dismay, finds its way in to the one state. The first time this happens is in D-503's 37th entry, when the brids come in from outside the green wall and it's electric cieling. Nature is, again, described by Zamyatin with harsh, almost ugly language. The birds produce "hoarse, gutteral drops of sound from above", and are described as "sharp, black, piercing, falling triangles"(191). The first part of the passage makes a lot of sense to me as far as language goes. Words like hoarse and gutteral are used to express the society's disgust with nature, as we have seen throughout basically the whole book. What I don't get is why the birds are also labeled as triangles. Something that comes from nature, something so free, unpredictable, and "ugly", should not be labeled as a geometric shape. Why? Because the One State loves math. I bet they even love geometry, even though a lot of people don't. Since geometry, and subsequently, such nice shapes as triangles, are part of the math that society is based on, then why label a "stupid", "ugly" bird with something so revered in society? This could be D's way of showing us he has a soul, and is blending the society he loves with the nature he knows belongs in his life and is coming to accept. Or it could be a translation issue. I don't know if there are any other Russian words for triangle, but I know that some other people in my group have other translations. It would be interesting to see what they have!
Setting is an entirely different ball game! The One State is pretty established as a setting, so there's not much to talk about there. I did find one of the little blurbs on the Integral kind of interesting, and it clued me in as to how the society works. The quote that I don't feel like properly integrating reads "everyone was already all assembled, everyone was in their places, all the honeycombs of the gigantic hive were filled. There were tiny, antlike people below, [...] standing at telegraphs, dynamos, transformers, altimeters, valves, arrows, motors, pumps, pipes"(172). It is shown here how complex the society is, and how everyone is working as part of a whole in order to achieve a greater purpose. The people are almost like robots, and Zamyatin makes it appear that way by saying that they're "assembled". Everyone is part of a machine, standing at their various parts and waiting to be activated. The Integral is part of a mission that will spead the views of the One State intergalactically, so it is natural that the thing doing so is made according to these values. The workers who run the integral are dehumanized, and deindividualized as they are lumped in as part of this greater being. I also found the comparison to the beehive to be interesting, although it seemed rather off as part of a paragraph about a machine. The people working the integral could also be a part of a beehive, all working towards a goal (or multiple goals, making honey, feeding the queen...), but here Zamyatin chooses to describe them using nature! Since the people are also described as antlike not two sentences before the bee reference, I think Zamyatin might be doing something by involving insects in his writing. Although insects are a part of nature, they aren't really that amazing or unpredictable or untamable. Ants can be squished under a boot, and bees follow a simple routine of, leave hive, get nectar, come back to hive, deposit nectar, repeat. Insects are mindless, predictable things that can easily be compared with the people of the One State who blindly follow the Benefactor and accept all the rules forced on to them because they don't know any better. Nature can be somewhat predictable, but only in its simplest form.
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