Darcy vs. Wickham

It’s very surprising how much I can apply the events in this book to my life. Let’s take Mr. Wickham into our consideration. He obviously has a serious problem with Darcy, and I am very sure he will soon have another problem with him.

You see, men are always aggressive against those men who show some type of threat to them and their current lifestyle. To show an example of such behavior you might imagine the reaction of a student who plays soccer, has many friends and also does well academically would have if someone just like him arrived new at school. Only two possible outcomes are possible. They become best friends or worst enemies. This is about the same relationship Darcy and Mr. Wickham have, although there is a missing part to this relationship we still don’t know.

Elizabeth will become, or this I think, a central piece to the battle between Darcy and Mr. Wickham. The complication here is that Darcy likes Elizabeth, but now that Elizabeth met Mr. Wickham she likes him, and Wickham’s preference isn’t very clear. The rivalry between both of these men will be put into challenge by one woman. She may end up with one of them, or with none.

Mr. Darcy

What?

Ok that’s a question that jumped out in my head as I read Pride and Prejudice, almost everything I read is senseless. What surprises me the most is Darcy’s arrogance and his incoherence. At the beginning of the book he is clearly not interested in Elizabeth, then the tables turn and he is absolutely interested in her. But in this chapter he shows us how incoherent someone can be. He still likes Elizabeth, but this time he likes her “more than he liked”. Ok, WHAT?

Yes I am puzzled, but who wouldn’t. I will now use all men as an example to show how out of sync I think Darcy is. If you like a woman you will obviously want to be with her, the more time you are with them the more time you have to talk to them. And let’s face it, when you talk to the you are really trying to show them why they should be interested in you. So in what moment does it become convenient not to be with that girl? There are two possible ways to see Darcy’s reaction. One, he is overconfident and thinks he already has Elizabeth tied up. Or second, he is scared of screwing up which doesn’t sound correct.

Acting As You Must

Mr. Bingely and Darcy are out to find their woman. Like in modern days, you might say that both of them are looking to find a wife, but are they doing this for them or because the society is pressuring them to do so?

You see, in society there has always been a push to things, sort of an idea that you must do something not because you want to but because the society is pushing you to do so. For example we can see how Jane Bennet’s mother wants her to get wet so Mr. Bingely will ask her over. But these actions by Mrs. Bennet are actually showing that she feels pressure from society to get her daughters married.

This usually happens to all of us, who because of this social obligations, are forced to do things we really don’t want to. For instance think about when you walk in a room. There are many people in it, and all of them expect a lot about you. After all, they expect that you follow the rules laid out by them, the rules we have grown into. And just as Mrs. Bennet, we feel pressure to complete the standards set by our society.

Social Situation

In the novel by Jane Austen Pride and Perjudice we find a very similar social activity to the one in our school.

To understand the statement I have just said I must explain what people in our school go threw, the social califications you must underpass. First of all, every morning as you walk onto the amphitheater in lunch time you must be aware that all eyes are on you, waiting for a screw-up, for a small mistake tha will cost you youre life, or arleast your reputation. At the end of the day its all about that, reputation, as though you had your own criminal record for which you will be judged.

Just as in this novel, Mr. Darcy is checking out every detail in the Bennet girls, deciding if they are enough for him. Also Jane and Elizabeth Bennet discus about Bingely and Darcy, talking of their apearance ant their objectives.

In both environments you must be very careful, the slightest mixup can cost you more than what you think. That’s why people in the novel, and for that matter in this school, are very selective to whom they tell things to. If you trust the wrong person its all over for you.

The End

Everything that happened, all the events before are leading up to this final act. My expectations to Act 5 couldn’t be greater, first of all there is a lot going on before this act, and second it’s been a long struggle for Hamlet, so I want to see if it was all worth the fight.

The final fight has arrived. Laertes and Hamlet are in an epic but formal fight, the one that will not only decide their fate, but the one of Denmark too. Hamlet is doing all of this to finally obtain peace within himself, “Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting/ That would not let me sleep. Me thought I lay/ Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.” (Act 5, Sc ii, 4-6) for he wants to avenge his fathers death, and show to the world all the bad things his uncle has done.

It’s only at the end of the fight that Laertes confesses the plot against Hamlet that “The King, the king is to blame” (351). Right after this is said, Hamlets rage explodes towards his uncle Claudius. He killed his father, and has now poisoned his mother when wanting to kill him, no wonder he is now against him.

It’s reasonable to believe the end to Hamlet isn’t fair, and I actually think it isn’t. But this is an obvious assumption starting from the fact that this is a tragedy, meaning it will not end well. But the end made me think more, maybe Hamlet wanted to seek revenge, and he finds this, then dies, but at least he did what he wanted the most. So it might not be a complete failure that Hamlet died, for he at least did what he wanted to do.

Picture Vocabulary

Aberrations: A deviation from the proper or expected course.

Intractability: Difficult to manage or govern; stubborn.

Feigned: Not real; pretended, made-up; fictitious.

Ruse: action or plan which is intended to deceive someone.

Levity: Lightness of manner or speech, especially when inappropriate; frivolity.

Regrets

The characters in Hamlet all are going through a personal dilemma. But in Act 3 scene iii we can see a very preoccupied Claudius, he reveals that he killed his brother and his repentance for doing so. He shows his feelings to the audience, repeating many times how sorry he is for doing such a thing.

“It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, /A brother's murder” (Lines 41-42) We see how the king is classifying his status as a “curse”, showing his feelings towards what he has done. “My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent” (44). He regrets his actions to the extent of saying that his guilt is greater than his prize for being the King.

You might say that Claudius is balancing the pros and cons of having killed his brother, “Of those effects for which I did the murder, /My crown, mine own ambition and my queen” (58-59) though he is doing this late for he could have done it before he actually killed King Hamlet. But this of course is an assumption I make from outside, for one thing is to have an idea and another is to act upon that idea.

Hamlets Rage

Act III begins with a lovers fight. Ophelia and Hamlet have a bit of an argument that can’t be traced, since Hamlet begins to attack Ophelia with no reason. All this happening while Polonius and Claudius are spying them.

We see how he rapidly changes when speaking to Ophelia, he is first approaches her gently, “The fair Ophelia. - Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered” (Act 3, 1, 97-98) and then decides to mistreat her, “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so (inoculate) our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not (…) Get the to a nunnery”. (Act 3, 1, 127-131) Hamlets behavior, not only here, but in the scenes earlier in this play intrigue me. Why does he always doubt the intentions of other characters? He is always looking for an answer, his thoughts are clouded by his thirst for revenge and this is not healthy for his decision making.

It’s not hard to predict what will happen next since we are beginning to see the rivalries of different characters grow, and Hamlets thirst to avenge his father’s death expands. I’m starting to think that each character has its own idea of what is about to happen, so at the end of the day anything can happen.

The Last Tape

In Krapps Last Tape we can see a series of different reactions by Krapp to what the tape is saying. The tape brings him many memories, some of which he is happy to hear again and some that make him hesitate, that make him hurt.

At the beginning of the tape, before he even starts to listen to any of the tapes he seems very enthusiastic. He actually shows an expression that gives away his anticipation to just hear the tape. When he says “Spooool!” we see pleasure in his eyes, he is impatient to hear those memories, the thing he once said and now cherishes to live but must find comfort in hearing them. It’s possible to say that he is desperate to do this, when he finally finds the record and plays it, he aggressively throws everything on the table to the floor. We see his impatience and insanity, those records are like obstacles for him, he wants to hear the record and that record only.

When he is listening to the tape his facial expressions begin to change almost every second. There are moments when he is too shocked from his memories and from the thing he once said that he must stop the tape. He then resumes, and when necessary stops again, afraid to remember what came next or maybe just sad that it will never happen again. His eyes stare into empty space, into the darkness, into the past. He also has moments of joy, of very strange laughter, as though he remembered and felt joy of what he once did. He reacts to everything, every small detail with a unique facial expression. Each memory deserves a different reaction.

I have heard the saying “the eyes are the windows to the soul”, and in this case through Krapps eyes you can see his soul, his repentment, his sorrows, his delights, his past. The tape ends by saying, “Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.” (Becket) His life is near the end, and the only comfort he can now find is in his tapes, memories of what once happened, and of things he wishes he had done.

Hamlet Introduction

After watching the video introduction for Hamlet I began question several things about what I expect of it. I have read several plays by Shakespeare, which lets me understand a little more of what to expect of Hamlet, but I’m still not very sure about it.

I had always thought of Hamlet as a very depressing play, but from what the Introduction by Kenneth Branagh showed me it isn’t as depressing. But this introduction is very brief for me to take a guess of what Hamlet is going to be like. But at least I now believe it won’t be such a tragic play as I thought it would be, although that perspective may and most probably will change once we read it in class.

Questions

The Road continues, and it keeps bringing up something which I can’t stop thinking of. What I’m thinking about is all the questions the son has and asks to his father. All their dialogues are basically the son asking and the father answering.

“The boy lifted the gun from the case and held it. Can you shoot somebody with
it? he said.
You could.
Would it kill them?
No. But it might set them on fire.
Is that why you got it?
Yes.
Because there's nobody to signal to. Is there?
No.
I'd like to see it.
You mean shoot it?
Yes.
We can shoot it.
For real?
Sure.
In the dark?
Yes. In the dark.”

Here we see a perfect example of the question and answer routine the man and son have almost in every conversation. It is as though the father’s only goal to fulfill is to answer every question to his son, so that he will now everything necessary to survive when he is gone. It’s like if he was giving the boy a class, a lesson of how to survive, and the boy will naturally have questions about this.

The Janitor’s Tale

There was a man who worked so hard in school,
But he was not a man who followed rules.
He was always working he never stopped,
Not even if he was hit and then knocked.
But one day something changed his life around.
It all happened when in a room he found
A lost wallet with more than ninety bucks,
Something that he just felt that was good luck,
So he decided it was his to take
A hard decision he´d regret to make.
As he got to school the very next day,
There was very little to see and say.
The school was in a lot of commotion,
And the janitor hid al emotion.
It was then that a man saw him in there
And made a move that the silence would tear,
He asked the janitor if he had seen
The theft that had happened and was so clean,
He answered to the man, nervous, insecure,
He said that he was not completely sure.
But then an officer discovered him,
With ninety bucks hanging on his belts rim.
So then the janitor pleaded his case,
But not much could he do to hide his face.
This story ends when he is then fired,
And a lesson then learned and admired.

You Change

At first I had no doubt in my mind that I hadn’t understood a word this blog was saying. But interestingly enough I re-read the passage, maybe irony, since the blog stated just a bit about that in the beginning. It was then when I realized I had actually understood the post the first time, just that I thought it would be about something else.

So basically the writer is telling us all she learned and saw in The Great Gatsby the third time she read it.

I know this blog was intended for us to understand completely the idea of re-reading things, and how each time we read something it helps us understand it better. But this time there was a different idea too, I had heard it before, but this time it really made sense, “the works stays the same; it’s we who change”.

Just a couple seconds after I read this I remembered about something my father had told me (and repeats it almost once a week) about Ernest Hemingway’s book A Movable Feast. He says, and the book says, that no matter what, Paris never changes, it’s you who changes. I know that Paris is not a book, it’s a city (stating the obvious), but this is basically the same idea. You may have gone to Paris before, and when you come back it will be the same, but you won’t. Just as when you read The Great Gatsby, or any book, another time, you will be different, making the reading experience different.

Starting A Journey

The novel begins with no previous notice. The Road by Cormac McCarthy starts by telling you exactly what is going on, there is practically no introduction. In fact in the second paragraph already we know the objective of the characters in the book, “They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.”(McCarthy - pg2) This is told to us readers in the beginning; just as we are reading the first parts of the novel the author throws us this.

It’s not every day that we read a book as direct as this one. In my experience as a reader I have encountered very little books like this one. I usually see there is a brief introduction to the characters, maybe the setting, but in this case all we know is that they must leave.

In fact, the journey starts in the second page, “An hour later they were on the road”. (McCarthy – pg3). The book has just begun, and so has the journey. It’s as though the author is telling us that the novel is a journey, and just as the man and the boy are beginning a journey you are too. This method is very effective, because he starts the book with no introductions, starting straight away with their journey, just as we are when we read this book.

The Happy Ending

There are many fairy tales in which there is an ugly being, can be the man or the woman, and the other one must decide either to love him/her or not. And if he/she does they live happily ever after since the ugly character becomes pretty. The Wife of Baths Tale is almost exactly like one of these fairy tales.

A knight must find out what it is that women really want or he will be executed. He looks for the answer for a long time until an old lady tells him that if he marries her she will tell her the answer. She helps him correctly and the knight can live as he has said what women really want which is:

“"Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee

As wel over hir housbond as hir love,

And for to been in maistrie hym above.

This is youre mooste desir, thogh ye me kille.” (1038 – 1041)

After the knight marries the old ugly woman she asks him if he would like her to change. But as he learned before, what had saved his life, he let her wife decide since that was what she wanted most in the world as any other women. Thanks to this brilliant remark by the knight his wife then becomes very young and pretty.

This is very similar to that old fairy tale of the princes and the frog. In both cases one of them is ugly and makes the other unhappy until one day the princes or knight do a sacrifice, small one, and the ugly being becomes young and hansom. They all live a happy life afterwards.

Trickery

Pranks, sometimes you must do one, and you may have a laugh, but in other occasions the prank can backfire right into you. In The Millers Tale we can get a peak at both of those types of pranks. The very funny ones which make the victim look very badly, and the ones which don’t work as you thought they would and in some way it hurts you.

The first prank I am going to refer too is the one Nicholas played on the carpenter. He tells him that he has foreseen a terrible flood and that the only way they can save themselves is sleeping in tubs. The objective of his trick is to be able to spend a night with the carpenter’s wife called Alisoun. His plan is perfectly executed, the carpenter falls for the trick and sleeps on a tub hanging on the top of a house. (I leave this prank to continue another one, but they will both connect at the end)

This new trick is also performed by Nicholas, but this time it is against Absolon, a clerk who also has a crush for Alisoun. So this time Absolon goes to where Alisoun sleeps, and asks her for a kiss, but instead he, “But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers” (3734) Absolon sees this and decides to payback. He goes to pick up hot iron so when he went next time he would mark Nicholas. So he went back as he asked for another kiss, Nicholas ass appeared and it was marked.

When it was marked Nicholas screamed “Help! Water! Water! Help, for Goddess herte!”(3815). Precisely then the carpenter thought the fooled had come because of the scream and cut the tubs from the house for them to float but instead they fell to the floor. These are both pranks that appear in The Millers Tale. The first one went out very well for Nicholas, but the second one backfired on him.

What Is Torture?

The Knights tale. Right before reading his tale I began imagining how a knight’s tale would go in such a time. What I have as a mental picture of a knight is one with armor, a horse, and a quest which he must achieve to save his ideals, girl, kingdom, or the world. My expectations were pretty much like the ones I explained just moments ago.

But as I read I realized that this wasn’t the knight’s tale, but a story the Knight was telling. With this said I’d like to comment on the tale the character is telling.

His story is based, from what I understood, of three men of Greece, Theseus (governor of Athens), Arcite, and Palamoun (war prisoners). They are both incarcerated together and fall in love with a woman that they see every day named Emelye. I don’t know why but until this point the story seemed very familiar. I thought I may have heard this story before, and as I continued it began to look very familiar. The dilemma that the knight proposes, of who is happier, Arcite who is free but can’t see the women he loves, or Palamoun who can see her but is in jail.

"1347 Yow loveres axe I now this questioun:
1348 Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamoun?"

This rhetorical question made me think a lot. In my opinion the worse situation is Palamoun’s since he is tempted every day by just seeing Emelye. While Arcite isn’t tempted, though he is always thinking about her, but he mustn’t suffer the torture of seeing her every day and knowing you can’t have her. This question is very interesting, it states a moral dilemma that most of us have had to deal or will have to deal sometime in our life.

Migrations, A Start To Poetry

After reading the first part of the poem "Migrations" by Dorian Merina, I saw a great resemblence on the way the text was written and how the poem was phicically like. For instance take the following exerpt into consideration.

"into the waters of open sea


On the boats come the goods that cross the waters"(line 15-18)

We can see how when Merina mentions the "open sea" there is a wide gap between that line and the next one. As if though that gap was actualy representing the "open sea". The author is trying to make us flow with the poem, his way of not only writting but showing us in the poem what he means is a great way to keep the reader trapped on the text.