Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 29) He spoke for change and chance…The memory of Nanny was still powerful and strong.

Joe’s and Nanny’s beliefs are contradicting which makes Janie a little hesitant. Nanny always talked about stability and the fact that you can’t change anything or leave anything to chance which is why she set Janie up with Logan she was left to chance of getting a stuck with a poor husband. However as we can see Joe believes quite the opposite. Since Janie loves and admires her grandmother, even though she may not agree with her opinions, it seems as though it is still important to her to hold Nanny’s values true to herself.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 27&28) Jody/Joe

Jody is the nickname Janie gives Joe. Joe is a sharp dressed, smooth talking man from Georgia who flirts with Janie, and she flirts back. They carry out a friendship and over the course of 2 weeks they meet every day at the water pump and he dazzles Janie with news about a new town that is ran by black people. Jody begins to bring back the dream that Janie once had as a young girl, she falls in love with him.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 25) Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

When we are young we are ambitious and have wild dreams. Janie’s probably involved marrying the man she wanted to and one that she actually loved. Here however, Janie realizes that marriage did not make love and that she was never going to fulfill her childhood dream now because she is married to Logan. Therefore she gives up her dream and becomes a woman who acts and does things accordingly (pg 1).

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 24) Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you. She scuffled up from her knees and fell heavily across the bed. A month later she was died.

Nanny cared for Janie so deeply that she devoted her life to making sure Janie was well off after she died. Her whole life revolved around making Janie happy and taking the best of care for her. Generally, no matter how generous the people, devoting your last and final wish before you die is going to be selfish, but not for Nanny. Even on her death bead all she asks is for God to continue to take care of her since she is leaving and that she did all she can do to ensure Janie has a good life.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 21) …with three cakes and big platters of fried rabbit and chicken.

This again shows the type of life style they are living and they are mostly middle-lower class based on the food they are eating. This also shows how Janie was trying to be satisfied by the wedding in some way but she wasn’t. She kept trying to adopt her Nanny’s way of thinking and just wait until after the wedding to fall in love but she struggled with the idea, leaving her extra unsatisfied by both the marriage and the food.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 20) Ah’m a cracked plate

This shows that while Nanny has many bumps and bruises and “cracks” that she is still holding together. Again reiterating the idea that with time brings old age and with time brings hardships that try and break us, but Nanny managed to stay strong.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

On pages 18 and 19 Nanny tells us that she was raped, resulting in her daughter, and her daughter was raped which resulted in Janie. This reinforces the idea of the types of lifestyles these colored folks lived and the hardships they had to endure and accept as a part of life. This is the reason Nanny wants to help Janie find a good man because she really has no say in the matter. Whichever man wants Janie will most likely get her, so Nanny wants her to jump at the opportunity of getting a decent husband so she doesn’t wind up like her and her mother.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 16) You know, honey, us colored folks is branches with out roots

taking my interpretation of the meaning of a tree this line means that the colored people are on this earth and living with no purpose other then to just be there. They are used and treated more as tools then people. Not having any roots can also mean that they have no dreams.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Trees

My theory behind the symbolism of the tree is this. The trunk is life its self. The people are the branches and the roots are peoples purposes in life, or the reason they are there. If somewhere in the future leaves come up I can only imagine, since they are coming off the branches that they are the children of these people, or the problems that the people have.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 14) The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree.

There is a motif of trees so far in the book. Since trees are full of life (branches, roots and leaves) I feel as though the pear tree is a symbol of the beautiful life Janie wishes to have. And since Nanny is trying to force Logan Killicks into Janie’s life, he is ruining or violating he dream of achieving the pear tree.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Brother Logan Killicks

A killick is any anchor, esp. a small one. This reinforces the idea that he would make a good husband, because he would anchor her down and provide stability. However since it is generally a small anchor, this implies the idea that if they do get together and get married, they wont stay married for very long and he wont be able to anchor her down for too long.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 13) Brother Logan Killicks. He’s a good man, too.

Nanny (Janie’s Grandmother) says this after she saw Janie kissing Johnny Taylor. Nanny believes that relationships aren’t really supposed to be about love, but that they are supposed to be about practicality in a sense. Logan is a good man who could provide her with a shelter and be a good husband, therefore she says Janie needs to be with a boy like him. It is hard for Janie to adopt this way of thinking and she is very skeptical.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Mis’ Washburn and Janie and her grandmother’s relationship

Mis’ Washburn was a white woman who allowed Janie and her grandmother to live in her back yard. She also dressed Janie in nice clothes and really cared for her and let her play with the other children in the house. This really surprised me because I would never have thought that a white woman would be so kind to a couple of colored folks during the day and age that this novel was based.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 8) Ah was wid dem white chillin so much till Ah didn't know Ah wuzn't white till Ah was round six years old.

This part was hilarious! It also made it seem as though growing up Janie had looked past any judgment she got for being a black girl with a bunch of white children and so it didn’t even phase her. And since she didn’t face the judgment it was no big deal. But then she looked in the picture and it was finally a realization of how different she was which ultimately made her walls that fought against judgment fall and she became susceptible to all different sorts of judgment.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 7) Time makes everything old.

Time I believe is also going to be a reoccurring theme in this novel. It appears several times already such as on page one His dreams mocked to death by time and on page 7 they say fresh young darkness. This relates time and age and the fact that time only makes you older and closer to death. Time also represents the good and bad changes that happen over time.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 7) He'd tell 'em so too, if he was here. If he wasn't gone.

This verifies the idea that Tea Cake was gone, and that his absence is the reason Janie has come back to the Everglades. She doesn’t actually tell us what happened to him though. He may be gone or dead or she may have done away with him (…fielding… =/). Her tone implies something big happened between them and which leads us to believe we will most likely find out later.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 3) Tea Cake

From the looks of it, Tea Cake is man that Janie was with when she ran off. But since she is back now, walking with out Tea Cake, we can imagine that he is out of the picture. A Tea Cake sounds like a little snack to go with your tea not any big meal. I have a feeling that this is implying that Tea Cake was only a little part of Janie’s life, just something to have for a little while. He wasn’t the “big meal” or a long term partner for her.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 1) Their eyes flung wide open with judgment. (&) But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human…They sat in judgment.

Judgment has appeared twice in the first page and since this is a feminist novel, I can only imagine that this is going to be a reoccurring theme throughout the novel. The people are sitting on their porches watching a woman (Janie) walk by and are staring at her in judgment. This leads us to believe she is either an outsider or she has done something to displease the townspeople. When it says the sun and the bossman were gone you get the impression that they are not going to sit in judgment anymore and that they are going to start talking and gossiping, either with the woman or just about her.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

(PG 1) The dream is the truth.

This implies the idea that women have no dreams. Women really weren’t well off during these times so there really was no point in dreaming for anything because from experience they have learned that dreams don’t come true and they had to accept that. The only “dream” they could have is their reality, which is the truth.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Dialectical Journal 1

(PG 1) Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget.

These lines reinforce the idea that women of these times (between the 1900s and 1920s) were treated poorly. It’s bad enough how white women were treated, but black women were treated even worse. They were beaten, raped and worked to death (depending on the situation.) Because of all these hardships they have to forget about all the terrible things that happen in their lives and only remember the good things, or the things they don’t want to forget. It probably helped them stay alive and gave them reason to live.

What the Thunder Said

In this final section of the poem Elliot goes back to the idea throughout the rest of the poem, excluding section four, Death By Water, that there is a lack of water in the “wasteland.” He talks about what it would be like with water and no rock, or if there was, like god intended it to be, rock and water together. But no mater the possibilities and wishful thinking he reassures us that there is no water. However, lines 423-425 read I sat upon the shore, Fishing, with the arid plain behind me. “Fishing” is also used in section 3, The Fire Sermon, however the idea of fishing completely contradicts the fact that there is no water. Although, instead of fishing for fish or food, this may just be an act of hope. He may believe if he sits there and fishes long enough for water that it will come. He then says Shall I at least set my lands in order? Once he finally gets the water he wonders how he is going to use it to regenerate the lands. The poem ends with the three-time repetition of Shantih shantih shantih. In simplistic terms, shantih means peace, which you can and should connect to the idea of rain and how peaceful the sound of rain is. By putting this at the end of his poem, this brings out the idea that “the wasteland” is finally going to get water, which means the poem has a happy ending.

On another note, the title of this section is What the Thunder Said. Generally when you think of thunder you also think of lightning, clouds and rain. Although the title isn’t a question, Elliot ended the poem to what would have been the answer to this if it were a question. If it had said What did the Thunder Say? It would have been answered in the last lines, Shantih shantih shantih: Rain. Therefore the title of this section provides a foreshadow to the ending of the poem.

Death by Water

This section of the poem doesn’t really fit in. Previously throughout the poem Elliot has gone through great lengths to show the idea that there is lack of water and here there is actually so much water that it kills someone. Water here is actually a life giving force, this means that it was actually to much life force that killed the person. This plays into the idea that the people in this poem are the walking dead and that they are living, but lifeless, so when the dead person was touched with too much life he died. The dead man who is lying dead in the sea is Phlebas the Phoenician. I believe this refers back to the drowned Phoenician in the first section of the poem The Burial of the Dead.

The Fire Sermon

T.S. Elliot’s, The Wasteland, is composed of 5 different parts. Part three, The Fire Sermon, revolves around the idea of lust, instead of love. Love is a true emotion that lasts a lifetime and lust is something that can require no true feelings, which also plays into the idea that everything in this poem is “living dead.” The first three lines of this section are an ideal example of this:

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

A river is supposed to contain life and spirits and is often times a representation of the calm beauty of nature. However, in line three it states, the nymphs are departed, which means there are no more spirits within the river. Spirits are, at times, associated with nature and since there is a lack of spirits in the river there is also a lack of nature. There are no fish or wildlife living in the river and everything that falls into the river, the last fingers of leaf (dry and dead) Clutch and sink into the wet bank, is already dead. The use of the word brown is symbolic here as well and plays into the idea that the nature in this poem is dead. Generally there is grass and trees that grow in to soil but instead there is nothing but brown land. The fact that the wind crosses the brown land, unheard, implies the idea that it is really bad and most likely, rock hard soil. Generally when wind blows over dirt it blows some up off the ground, but here the wind doesn’t make a sound when passing over the dirt.

Not only is the river and the land dead, the people are walking dead as well. They really have no purpose in life therefore they really don’t care enough to love and quite possibly don’t contain the emotions and ability to love. Having emotion and purpose in the world is what makes life worth living, but since the people in this poem don’t contain this their lives consist of walking around like they have nothing to look forward to in life, as if they were dead.

Summary, Part 2 of The Wasteland

This section is about a woman sitting in a room looking at a painting. The painting is depicting the rape of Philomela. Then it moves into the second section, there is dialogue, most likely toward the narrator. She talks about how her nerves are bad and that she wants the person to stay with her. In section three the speaker is talking to another person (I am guessing a woman) in what we can guess is a bar, because at the end of this section she says good bye and calls people by their names at the bar. This implies that she is most likely a regular at the bar since she knows everyone, which reinforces the idea of the wasteland. The woman got money to go get new teeth but instead she most likely went out and bought drugs to stop an unwanted pregnancy. She is 31 and has already has 5 kids, because during this time wives are captive in their own body and marriage and they really didn’t get to choose anything for themselves. This woman looks miserable and dead. The last line is an allusion to hamlet, Ophilia says this line before she goes and kills herself, because of a failed relationship.

Home Burial

Robert Frost’s "Home Burial" is a narrative poem that speaks about life’s tragedies. The theme of "Home Burial” centers around the death of a child. The couple in this poem had a baby who died. The mother grieves openly and it seems as though she hasn’t really been able to recover from the loss of her child. When parents loose a child they are usually able to gradually, not move on, but come to terms with it and are able to continue living their life. Unfortunately the mother in this poem cannot do this. It is hard to say whether or not the husband is able to move on because he, like most men, have a hard time getting their emotions across, or even showing them at all. Many men cope with their emotions by staying busy and working and in this man’s case he got harsh and semi violent with his wife. "Home Burial" demonstrates how one tragedy can cause another to occur.

The baby is buried in the family graveyard, which is visible from an upstairs window of their house. Day after day when the wife goes up and down the stairs she looks out the window and sees the grave and basically re opens the wound everyday. He husband asks her what she is looking at and when he realizes he, once again, doesn’t really show the emotion she was looking for, causing the wife to become angry and bitter. She can’t understand why her husband doesn’t show his grief for their lost child and it makes her doubt him. He takes a stand in line 41 “Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time” and begs her not to leave and go grieve with he friends because he doesn’t think they need that burden.

The husband’s in ability to show his emotions and the wife’s inability to understand why he can’t, tears them apart, which plays back into the unfortunate line of events that is one tragedy creates another. There are three main tragedies that play into the idea of a burial. First there is the child that dies and is then buried. The couple’s marriage could not survive such an emotional loss. Therefore the marriage becomes buried. When the marriage became buried the home became its own burial spot for this family’s life.

“Home Burial” is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Many times when I read a poem and it doesn’t rhyme I find it hard to accept the fact that it is indeed a poem. I have to remember that there are different aspects of poetry that don’t only have to do with rhyming, such as certain structures and stanzas in a poem. Because of the way it was written it seemed as though Frost wanted to tell this more as a dialogue or a story instead of a poem, however he did follow the “guidelines and rules” of poetry.

The Wasteland

During the spring months the ground is thawing and plants are beginning to grow and get green again and everyone is starting to get out and about and enjoy the weather. The season then fades into summer, which is full of sunshine, flowers, picnics, happiness and adventures. Spring and summer are generally people’s favorite time of the year. Then generally when it becomes winter-time, people start to hunker in and the winter months can usually be solemn and depressing. In literature winter generally symbolizes death and sorrow. However these generalizations are not true in all situations.

T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland starts off by discussing the seasons, which challenge what we know to be true about them.

April is described as the cruelest month, which is ironic because it is the beginning of springtime so it is supposed to be symbolic of the beginning of life and beauty and things growing. That idea of what springtime is supposed to be, contradicts the title of the poem and the description of April being cruel. I think they use the word cruel because they live in a “wasteland” which means that nothing new and beautiful can grow, whether it is symbolically or literally. When we think of a wasteland we think of dead things and a place where things that have wasted away, which if I had to pick a season that I would have guessed that this poem would be about would be winter. However he actually describes winter as keeping them warm and covering earth with forgetful snow. I think what is meant by that line is once the snow covers the ground it also covers up all the bad things man has done to God’s planet with a blanket of forgiveness (blanket of snow). Then once April rolls around and the snow melts we are faced with all of Man’s wrong in the world ,which is what makes it cruel. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee with a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade… These lines reinforce the idea of the wasteland, and the fact that there probably isn’t a lot of rain for things to grow (whether this is literally or symbolically), which is why it states they were surprised to see it, it must not happen often.

These misconstructions make the poem unique and they give the poem deeper meaning, which, of course, make the poem stronger and more noteworthy as a whole.

Explication of Death, be not proud

What is death? This question has many answers but the one most suiting for this poem is death as the irreversible cessation of organismic functioning and human death is the irreversible loss of personhood.

There are two major themes in this poem: Fear of death, and having courage in the face of death. Throughout the poem the speaker does what ever he can to make death seem less intimidating and scary. He says that it is just a short sleep and that we will never truly die. According to the speaker, after we die, or go to sleep, we will be awaken for all eternity, which plays into the idea of heaven and hell, and once you have reached one of the places after death you are to be woken again. By using these ideas it gives the speaker a little less sense of fear and a little more confidence when talking to Death.

In order to deal with his fear of death the speaker creates a “death” character to him to speak to. Donne boldly addresses death and speaks to him in dismissive terms. In the opening four lines, however, Donne offers no evidence to support his initial assertion that Death should not be proud; evidence isn’t really given until line 5, and even in lines 5–8 we get very little supporting evidence. Not until the sestet do we get a list of reasons: Death is the slave of "Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men"; Death dwells with unsavory people ("Poison, War, and Sickness"). The speaker continuously grows more confident throughout the poem, which takes real guts when standing up to death.

Being scared of death and at the same time being able to face it and stand up to takes immense strength, which is what the speaker displays in this poem. Looking back on how I defined human death “irreversible loss of personhood,” we can see just how extreme death really is and how brave one would have to be to be able to face the thing that is going to take away one’s personhood and life.

Death, be not proud. Questions

1) The author uses extended metaphors, the poem as a whole is an extended metaphor about death and sleep, and personifications, such as death, be not proud or mighty and dreadful, death itself cannot be any of these things.

2) Death shouldn’t be proud because it is a scary thing and people really don’t want to die. However the speaker compares death to sleep, which is supposed to ease ones mind about dieing, because sleep is peaceful, not scary. He also says we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, though shalt die, which means that even though you are dead you will actually “live” forever.

3) The man is trying to make death sound peaceful instead of scary. He tells us things such as death just being a short sleep and actually impersonates a death figure for him to talk to to make death less frightening for him.

4) The author mainly uses the Italian sonnet, however in the last couple lines he switches to the English or Shakespearean sonnet form. The switch between the two form breaks the rhyme scheme that was happening through the whole poem, which adds to the complexity of the poem and makes the last lines stand out and carry a lot of meaning.

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

Vs.

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, 


I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. 


I'm strong to the finich 


Cause I eats me spinach.

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

The title of the poem is very descriptive, “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape.” Ashbery’s use of the title depicts images of equipment farmers’ use and the plants they raise on a farm. At first, you might think that this is a sestina poem about farm life. When you read the title, however, you have no idea that the subject of the poem is the cartoon- character, Popeye, and his friends. Instead, the title might have been “Popeye and His Friends Go to the Country for a Visit.” This would have been a more literal title for the poem, and just one area where Ashbery uses descriptive language in the poem.

The poem, written as a sestina, seems to be about a visit to the country for Popeye and his character friends. Ashbery uses the pattern of the sestina to present the occurrences of that day. Following the sestina form, the poet must have six words repeated at the ends of each line. The first stanza determines the words and how to order the words in the remaining five stanzas. In this poem, the order for the words in the first stanza is: A. thunder, B. apartment, C. country, D. pleasant, E. scratched, and F. spinach. Each of these words hold meaning in the poem.

Thunder is meant to represent the power that spinach gives Popeye. Spinach is what gives Popeye his power, power to fight for his woman and family. Although Popeye is made out to be a big strong man, the idea of the apartment puts him in a role of more of a family made, who might be a little softer. Country is a place where Popeye grew up, farmed spinach and is raising his family. (Popeye is also enlisted in the navy in all of his cartoons, which represents him fighting for his country). The word Scratched quite possibly refers to how Popeye’s life isn’t perfect and that there have been a few bumps and bruises (or scratches) along the way.

One of the big themes in this poem is jealousy. Popeye’s father, Poopdeck Pappy, is jealous of the life his son is living, which is a strange concept all in itself because parents are supposed to be proud of their children and their accomplishments. Pappy is jealous that Popeye has a loving family because Popeye’s mother has been out of the picture for quite some time it appears and he is just tired of being lonely. Another instance of jealousy is the Sea Hags jealousy of Popeye’s strength.

Ashbery uses the very difficult poetic form of the sestina to bring comic relief to the cartoon-character Popeye and his friends. The use of image and language enhance the poem. The subject of the poem is from popular culture. By being a cartoon character, the reader has the capability of imagining the poem as if it happened in a cartoon. His use of the six end-words makes for a good laugh when reading. You even find unexpected uses for certain words. All-in-all, this is a very, puzzling, yet well written poem.