Midterm Part 3

Part 3 – What is Stranger than Metamorphosing into a Grendel?

            One’s “interior world” is inferior to the outside world’s influences. This is clearly exemplified through Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”. In the stranger the protagonist, Meursault does not follow his society’s “normal” conventions and morals. Meursault feels indifferent towards everything in the world. He does not care what he does or who he is with as long as he is able to be happy and do what he wants. As the story progresses he starts to believe that he is not the only one who is indifferent, the world is indifferent as well. However, other people in the society do not think that way which is proven through events leading up to Meursault’s trail and his trial as well.

Meursault is affected greatly by nature, one of the “outside world’s influences”, for example when it becomes too hot, he quickly become impatient and agitated which is shown in chapter 6 when he is on the beach with Raymond and also when he returns to the beach where he shot one of the Arabs five times. When he shot the Arab, his thoughts were simple, “you could either shoot or not shoot.” As the story went on, Meursault was called to trial for his murder, yet Meursault still remained uncaring as he entered his trial maintaining his “inner world” ideals trying to exert himself upon the world as best as he could.

During Meursault’s trial, the outside world’s influences crush his “interior world”. When he talks to his lawyer, the lawyer portrays a sense of disgust towards Meursault showing that his lawyer cared about how Meursault responded rather than being indifferent as Meursault is. As he went on with his trial, he noticed the testimonies that the people he had made contact with gave were different than what he had thought happened, from when he offered a cigarette to the caretaker when his mother had died to him shooting the Arab.  They had given meaning to his otherwise meaningless actions, actions he did not really think too much about but just did. In the end, he has an outburst, breaking his indifferent disposition proving that the outside world’s influences are stronger and much more superior to Meursault’s.   

Midterm Part 2

Part 2 – Open Response

            One cannot pass judgment on a character based on one single act that the character has done. One act alone can make any character seem as if he is evil for example one could have a single slip of morals or be put in a desperate situation that requires them to do what is necessary. Basing an assumption on one single act alone is not enough to make a decision on whether or not a character is evil, one must fully understand the character and then they will understand why he did what he did. This can be proven by using William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as an example.

In Act III scene iv of “Hamlet”, Hamlet enters the Queen’s chamber to talk to his mother, however the Queen was not alone. Polonius remained hidden behind the curtains in the room to eavesdrop on Hamlet so he would be able to determine the cause of Hamlet’s “insanity”. Hamlet, realizing that someone was eavesdropping but not knowing who it was, stabbed the hidden character who was revealed to be Polonius. If one was only aware of what had occurred in only in this scene, one can make the assumption that Hamlet is an evil and immoral character. However, that assumption would be false. From the beginning of the play, Hamlet has been portrayed as mentally unstable due to his knowledge that Claudius, the current king, killed his father, the former king. In a fit of rage, Hamlet plots to expose Claudius’s actions. When he entered the Queen’s room, he suspected that it was Claudius behind the curtains not Polonius, thus causing Hamlet to stab through the curtains.

Granted, Hamlet should not have been trying to seek revenge in such a violent way, but that does not mean he is evil and immoral. He was seeking revenge because Claudius killed his father to take the throne and no one realized it. He wanted to seek justice for his fallen father. With the knowledge of this, a sense of sympathy is created towards the character Hamlet and his actions of killing Polonius is seen as wrong but not as evil. To understand a character’s actions one must first understand a character’s situation.

Midterm Part 1

Part 1- Poetry

            William Blake is one of the most renowned Romantic poets. Despite its name, Romantic poetry is not all about romance and love; instead it focuses more on the fundamentals of how people thought of themselves and the world. Blake also input his own spiritual and religious ideas into much of his poetry. Take Blake’s poem, “Little Lamb”, for example. In this poem he shows an innocent child who questions the lambs’ existence. He asks the lamb “dost thou know who made thee?” several times throughout the poem. The narrator, a child, then says, “Little lamb, I’ll tell thee”, showing that this child is aware of the creation of the lamb. He then goes on to tell the lamb that it was a person who “called himself a Lamb” and then “became a little child”. From this statement, he had just compared himself to the lamb, a symbol of purity and innocence and indirectly to Jesus. Blake’s ideals in Romantic Poetry are to add a symbol to compare to and to input religious aspects as well.

John Keats is another Romantic poet whose poem, “Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art” is similar to William Blake’s poem, “Little Lamb”. In Keats’ poem, he is envious of the life the star lives yet at the same time he is also aware of how lonely it is to live like a star. The star in Keats’ poem acts as a symbol in which he is comparing himself too, thus satisfying one stipulation of Blake’s ideals of a Romantic poem. Keats’ also speaks of the star as if it were a deity, almost a God, spinning off of Blake’s input of religion into a Romantic poem. Overall, Keats’ poem, “Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art”, embodies much of Blake’s Romantic poem’s ideals.

Revised Clocks and Lovers Prompt

Clocks and Lovers by W.H. Auden

In the poem “Clocks and Lovers” by W. H. Auden, there is a clear and concise difference in the attitude of the clock and that of the lovers. The poem initially starts off with a narrator, whom we assume is the lover, professing his love for another. This gives the presumption that this is going to be a beautiful poem, especially when the lover states that “love has no ending.” Additionally, Auden’s choice of diction when using the phrases, “brimming river” and “salmon sing”, portrays the attitude of the lover to be optimistic. However, as the poem continues, several clocks decide to rebut the words of the lover.

When the clocks speak there is an evident shift in the tone and mood of the poem. It becomes more serious and macabre. The “whirring and chiming” of the clocks provides the image of a slow yet steady paced movement. Also when the clocks says, “In headaches and in worry/ vaguely life leaks away”, it can be taken in two ways. The clocks can be literally talking about life or it can be talking about love however Auden seems to hint towards the idea that they are talking about love since he previously mentioned the idea of “love being eternal.” Since this is the clocks rebuttal against the lover, the clocks seem to be saying that love cannot be eternal because time is the only thing that can be eternal. Lines 23-24, “O let not Time deceive you,/ You cannot conquer Time” support the idea that time is the one that is eternal rather than love. The ideas that Auden provides allows one to conclude that the attitude of the clocks are more “realistic” than the lover. The clocks see things “clearly” and are wiser since they can be considered older than the lovers by way of allusion to Father Time.

The two attitudes, the optimistic one of the lovers and the “realistic” one of the clocks, are clearly depicted and differ in a manner supported by the imagery Auden provides. For example, the lover’s idea that “love has no ending” and the he will “love [her] till China and Africa meet” are clearly optimistic and the clocks’ idea, “O plunge your hands in the water,/ plunge them up to the wrist” shows a realist idea of “waking up” from a dream. The reason for such a drastic contrast is not only to add to the beauty of the poem but to add to the meaning of the poem as well. It shows that love clouds the mind into believing the impossible, the impossible being “endless” love because in the end time will time will remain while something like love will diminish either due to a death or over time.

AP English Prompt Richard II

           In the passage from Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Queen decides to eavesdrop on a conversation between two commoners, a servant and a gardener, in an attempt to learn more about the state of the King. Aided by the multitude of figurative language, which serves as a means to dramatize the situation, used by the commoners, the Queen will learn much about the state and of the King from eavesdropping from the shadows in which she hides.

The servants begin their conversation by talking about what they have to do to take care of the garden but then they slowly begin to transition into talking about the state using the garden as an extended metaphor. One of the servants orders the other to “cut the heads of too fast growing sprays that look too lofty for [their] commonwealth. The other responds by questioning why they have to “in the compass of a pale keep law and form and due proportion, showing… [their] firm estate” when it is “swarming with caterpillars.” That was the other servant’s way of asking why they were required to maintain order in their garden, rather within their social class, when the higher-ups became disordered. As the Queen listens in on the conversation, she learns that the King may soon be deposed and possibly “taken care of” just as “the weeds which his broad spreading leaves did shelter”, his allies the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy and Green, all of whom the country views as leeches that do nothing but suck up the nutrients of their country, by a man who goes by the name of Bolingbroke.

            The figurative language used by the commoners successfully dramatized the King’s dire situation. For example, “He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring/Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf”, shows the use of using the seasons to describe the rise and fall of the King. Since spring is usually the birth, this means that the King had a disordered rise to power and now he will meet his fall from power with the fall of leaf, which is synonymous to autumn, a time a death. Also the use of the extended metaphor of a garden to represent the state adds to the dramatization of the King’s situation because as the King is clearly in a difficult spot, the imagery of weeds, insects and chaos in the garden adds the effect that nothing is going well. The use of the extensive figurative language by the commoners emphasizes the King’s dismal situation.