The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

    In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a man lives in a state of indecisiveness. Not sure whether or not to go to a party, he's very conscious of his surroundings while contemplating. He refers to a cat on a windowsill as 'yellow fog'. The fog could allude to the idea that he doesn't really have a clear idea of what he wants. The importance of the color yellow could mean different things. One being that it completely contrasts with the idea of fog so that you can truly understand that the man is really unsure. The second, is that yellow could mean he's being a coward for the reasoning behind not going to the party. The cat symbolizes the man who looks into the party from the outside. The cat who slips from the window and then cowardly "curled once around the house" to the safety of himself.

    The man in this poem you can tell is very timid and cautious of women. He claims things like he has 'known the eyes already' or 'known the arms already' - 'all of them'. So you can tell that he's more of a stand-off-ish kind of man who seems to observe more than actually act on any of them. The older man is self conscious about his appearance because he knows that he's balding and is very thin. He even claims he's more like Polonius than Hamlet in the ways that he's less charismatic and resolute. Even though he's afraid of women and making a fool of himself, he still wants to find someone to love and to love him back. This makes him troubled.

    "I grow old... I grow old..." He realizes that time is passing and he's running out of time. He alludes to Homer's Odyssey in the final last lines by believing that he'll never be able to make up his mind about going to the party, or going after any woman in general. "I do not think that they will sing to me..." 'sea girls' sang to hypnotize the sailors, and keep them there until they died. She, in a way, made up the sailors mind. The man doesn't believe he's going to make up his mind or have any woman help make it for him. He'll be indecisive until the day he dies.

Not My Best Side - Life

     Not one speaker in the poem is common in the traditional sense of their name. Looking at the main idea of the poem and connecting it to the meaning in life is that living in a long-established way of how things are done is boring and expected. It'd be much better to be unpredictable and live the way you want to, then live it in a way that you're supposed to. Living the way you're expected takes out the excitement and joy in life. Being spontaneous is much more fun.

Not My Best Side ..... aka this writing.

      In the three-part poem of Not My Best Side by U.A Fanthorpe there is one evident idea in all three parts. The different perspectives of the piece all have something in common, and the title is an indicator.  The Dragon, Maiden, and the Knight aren’t typical characters like they are accustomed to being. None of them are very conventional.
      The first perspective, seen in the eyes of the Dragon, is an obvious example of how he’s not a traditional dragon. The Dragon’s upset because he thought he was given bad publicity in the photo. The one who painted it left off his feet, which he questioned what two feet actually are to a monster.  A dragon shouldn’t ask philosophical questions. He wasn’t impressed with his conqueror or his victim, and he actually thought he was the one tied to the string and held onto by the lady. The Dragon wants to be taken seriously as a warrior, but feels that he’s not. Ordinary dragons don’t have feelings, and shouldn’t be worrying about the things this one is. He’s untraditional.
      The second perspective, seen in the eyes of the Maiden, proves that she’s seriously crazy…or delusional. A maiden customarily is supposed to wait for her rescuer, go willingly into his arms, and then later marry him. The fact she questioned being rescued by someone of her own kind because she claims she’s actually ‘likes’ the dragon is ridiculous. She’s very superficial when it comes to making her decision. She finds the dragon attractive because she can see who he is, but she questions the knight because she can’t actually see his face.  She’s a very untraditional maiden.
      The third perspective, seen in the eyes of the Knight, proves that he’s arrogant, arrogant enough to talk to a dragon before he kills it. A knight is generally an honorable man set out to do his job and aware of what could go wrong. This Knight boasts about his equipment, armor, and horse. Feeling invincible, he questions both the maiden and the dragon if they want to be killed/rescued even though it’s rhetorical. The knight believes that the dragon helps the spear and horse building industries because it’s what’s needed to fight. Without the Knight killing the dragon, he’s afraid it’d endanger those jobs - an interesting and unneeded worry for the moment when he’s in reach of the dragon. He seriously doesn’t take the dragon seriously, as a normal knight would have.
      “Don't you want to carry out the roles that sociology and myth have designed for you?” It’s extremely ironic that the Knight asks the Maiden and Dragon this question. The Dragon just wanted to be taken seriously, and the Maiden couldn’t decide whether or not she wanted to be rescued because she liked the dragon (who ironically enough thought she was ugly).  It’s witty that it’s the Knight asking the question when he’s not even carrying out a role that’s traditional. Not one speaker in this poem is common in the traditional sense of their name. None of them showed their best side.

Lying In A Hammock

1.    A lonely man, lying in a hammock, slowly watches the day go by him as he regretfully realizes he’s wasted his life. He’s very aware of his surrounds as if he’s not really needed to be aware of anything else. You can tell that he’s sad and somewhat of an outcast.
2.    He’s lonely and depressed. He’s discontent knowing that he’s wasted his life as he slowly watched it go by.
3.    You can tell he’s alone because there’s an empty house, and the only sounds are cowbells. There are droppings of last year’s horses that haven’t been picked up, which may hint that there’s not really anyone there to clean it up. He’s sad because there’s no one around, which could mean he maybe wanted a family sometime in his life. 
4.    He’s lying in a hammock, at William Duffy’s Farm which hints at the fact that he’s at someone else’s farm, not his own. He’s also in Pine Island, Minnesota.
5.    The poem is filled with many earthly colors like bronze, green, and the colors of the sunlight shown in between the trees. It must be mid-summer because the horse droppings are ‘blazing’. Blazing is a scorching term, not only a warm sunshine feel like you could get in the spring.
6.    The succession goes from a nature-mellow feel to lonely and emptiness, where it concludes at the speaker feeling regret. The time of the poem moves slowly from midday to darkness showing how his feeling slowly turn into gloom.

LitTerms 9/27

Cacophony:  Noun: A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds

Example:

Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carol

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

Carroll used lots of cacophony all through the poem Jabberwocky to create suspense and make the boy killing the Jabberwocky even more heroic. Most of the cacophonies Carroll used were not real words but they still made the poem seem unpleasant.


Caesura: Noun: A break between words within a metrical foot / pause near the middle of a line or any interruption or break.

Example:

"Hwæt! We Gardena || in gear-dagum
þeodcyninga, || þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas || ellen fremedon."


In Beowulf it’s marked in print by an extra space between the words.

Beowulf Journals

Ln. 2651. "...I would rather my body were robed in the same burning blaze as my gold-giver's body than go back home bearing arms..." Wiglaf, the only one to stay with Beowulf told the other men how pathetic they were. Even though it was his first time fighting he still understood the concept of never leaving your lord and if his lord died, he'd die there fighting too.

Ln. 2682. "...It was never his fortune to be helped in combat by the cutting edge of weapons made by iron..." It's ironic that he had told his men earlier that he would 'rather not use a weapon if I knew any other way to grapple with the dragon and make good my boast as I did against Grendel'. Swords made by men never worked.

Ln. 2706. "...Beowulf dealt it a deadly wound..." Wiglaf let Beowulf kill the dragon, but Beowulf should have let Wiglaf kill the dragon because it would have been good for Wiglaf to have some fame. Beowulf should have finally let another warrior do something other than watch.

Ln. 2729. "...Now is the time when I would have wanted to bestow this armor on my own son..." failure to create a successor - there's no one under him in his blood line, no heir to take over his throne when he dies.

Ln. 2749. "my going will be easier for having seen the treasure..." Beowulf is greedy, just like the dragon, and just like Hrothgar told him to not be.

Ln. 2997. "...that I have been allowed to leave my people so well endowed on the day I die..." Yes, on the die he died they are all rich, but that doesn't mean he left them well. They're all in trouble.

Ln. 2804. "...it will loom on the horizon..." Grendel (besides his head) and his mother corpses lie deep in the water where hell consumed them, and Beowulf wants a barrow to be placed on the horizon where the light touches it (heaven).

Ln. 2844. "...bought and paid for by Beowulf's death..." It's ironic that Beowulf died trying to kill a dragon that guarded treasure that could pay for his wyrgild...

Ln. 2890. "...a warrior will sooner die than live a life of shame..." Dying would be easier than living a life of shame knowing you were to cowardly to stand by the man who led you. Everyone was to know of their fear.

Ln. 2911. "Now war is looming over our nation, soon it will be known to Franks and Frisians, far and wide, that the king is gone..." Wiglaf is very smart, and is able to predict that the worse is still to come. Beowulf didn't prepare them.

Beowulf Journals

Ln. 2332. "...unaccustomed anxiety and gloom confused his brain..." like what Grendel and Grendel's mother did to Hrothgar. Beowulf now needs to be KING not warrior like Hrothgar had done.

Ln. 2342. "...he was destined to face the end of his days in this mortal world; as was the dragon..." Foreshadow to them BOTH dying.

Ln. 2345. "...was too proud to line up with a large army against the sky-plague. He had scant regard for the dragon as a threat..." He wanted to face this battle alone because he believed he was powerful enough to do it. He no longer only believed that he was invincible, but also that other creates had no power that matched his. He completely degraded what the dragon was capable of.

Ln. 2406. "...the one who had started all this strife and was now added as a thirteenth to their number..." The slave has to pay for what he did - finish what he started. It's ironic that he stole the gold cup to be free, but was then taken by Beowulf to be a warrior against the dragon. Stealing the cup was a bad idea.

Ln. 2419. "...He was sad at heart, unsettled yet ready, sensing his death. His fate hovered near, unknowable but certain..." Wyrd. Foreshadow. He's too selfish to not die.

Ln. 2497. "...always there at the front of the line; and I shall fight like that for as long as I live, as long as this sword shall last..." The front is the most important part of the line - they get all the action.

Ln. 2513. "...as king of the people I will pursue this fight for the glory of winning..." HE HAS LITERALLY LEARNED NOTHING. Static character. He doesn't fight the dragon to protect his people - just for the glory of having to say he had done it.

Ln. 2540. "...trusted in his strength entirely..." In his other two fights he believed in his strength, fate, and God. He now only believes in himself which shows how being too successful got to his head. Maybe because he no longer believed that God was helping him is part of the reason he died? His pride is his downfall.

Ln. 2572. "...for a shorter time than he had meant it to: that final day was the first time when Beowulf fought and fate denied him glory in battle..." FINALLY. Wyrd.

Ln. 2586-2599. "...failed when he unsheathed it, as it never should have..." the sword failed - being at the front of the line was now useless. He now needed help, but his hand-picked men broke ranks and ran for their lives. Beowulf is not a great king. The 50 years he ruled he didn't teach them anything, how to be a good warrior - he didn't set them up to succeed after he died. People were afraid of Beowulf, but what happens when he's not around anymore? Beowulf is the Grendel of the land of the Geats. He needed help.