Postmodernism

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is somehow similar to Winterson’s Oranges are not the only fruit due to the fact that they are both telling story. The darkness of heart is exposed when the unknown narrator in Heart of Darkness accounting Marlow’s story. We can find out that Jeanette’s differences only when she is accounting her story.

If they both use post-modernism structure to retelling their story (their story becomes fragments), but how come Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is found harder than Jeanette’s Oranges?

I think the reason for that is because the language that Conrad employs is harder that Winterson’s and further, Winterson’s story is about herself, like what we refer to Oranges is Winterson’s autobiographical. Because of that, something can be ‘expected’ in Oranges, for example, Winterson will grow up from a little girl, but then Jeanette has to leave her home when she refuses to deny the fact that she is homosexual. The Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, is harder since we are now in the modern world and colonization is no longer exists. People cannot experience what is going on during that period causes Conrad’s works even harder than Winterson’s Oranges.

Another point that I want to focus on is the end of these two works. They both leave the conclusion for their readers since their stories are still going on, therefore, the story can only be wrote until ‘the end’.

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Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market has been read as a relatively straight forward children literature. All of it is about sisterly love and virtue. This can be explained why readers choose to read it as a children literature. First of all, the language that Rossetti uses. Instead of using more sophisticated language in her works, she chooses to use the language which is easier to read and understanding. Second, she uses color to vague our focus. It is easier to read as children literature since children’s worlds are relatively brighter than adults’ due to their naive. Thirdly, the sacrifice of Lizzie can be linked to Rossetti’s background as a more “spiritual” Anglicanism. Further, this poetry fulfills Virginia Woolf’s point of view in A Room of One’s Own, a good literature can exist with only women. Hence, readers intend to say it is a children literature.

The points of views above are all based on personal experiment due to the fact that this is how we think. Readers choose to read it as a children literature because they are not homosexual. They would not have ideal how sisterly love can become true love. So, they suggest that Goblin Market is just a straight forward children literature. Also, Goblin Market is composed during 19^th century, where the language becomes unstable. Sexuality, gender and identity are common topic in that period. Thus, this poetry can be read as a simple children literature but is also can be considered as a sexual literature (Queer Theory).

 

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard versus V

     V by Tony Harrison responds to Thomas Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. In Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, Gray is utilizing a pyramid as his symbol. He is applying a particular case to normal people, from describing the people in the grave to how people is going to tend up with.

     On the other hand, Harrison is talking about his background, his cultural and the fact that he is educated in V. Although the things that Harrison discusses sound general, they cannot be grouped together at that time because a working class is barely educated, and so, this causes Harrison is neither “us” nor “them”. Harrison is the bottom of V.  Thus, V is commented upon Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard by adding the symbol of V to the bottom of pyramid.

     In brief, V is parallel to Elegy written in a Country Churchyard because of the symbol that Tony chooses to use as his tittle. The message that Harrison wants to convey is unity can lead to versus but similarity, versus can result in unity.

 

Epic Mechnism

Recently, we had been reading many poetries which are associated with God, Son, archangels, sylphs and faeries which were John Milton’s Paradise Lost, John Dryden’s MacFlecknoe and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. No matter which mechanism (epic or heroic mock) they use, all of them used their language to manipulate people. In the Paradise Lost, Satan was depicted even powerful than God; in Macflecknoe, Shadwell was compared with the shit and in the Rape of the Lock, Alexandra Pope suggested that Belinda might finally belong to him. This tells us that we should never trust a poem and we should read it from multiple aspects to fully understand the poem. Although sometimes we will easily get emotional when we are manipulated by the writer, we will forgive him and once again impressed by him after we understood what he really means in the poem. For example, in the Rape of the Lock, it can be said that Belinda is belonged to Pope at the end because he is the one who process Belinda at the end and ironically, Belinda spends so much time in the toilet to dress up herself, but then she belonged to someone who she doesn’t actually meet at the end. This is the trick of the poem but also the interesting part of the poem. Further, in the Rape of the Lock, I strongly disagree with Pope is a misogynist. This is not because this poetry is originally intend to reconcile a rift that had developed between two prominent Catholic families, so that it should not be a poem which discrimination against women to expand the war between these two families. Further, he keeps mention how beautiful, mature and pure Belinda is throughout this poem, hence, Pope should not be a misogynist. I especially like the way that Pope ends up. He says Belinda’s beautiful and pure is everlasting, like the star at night, bright up the sky. It does not matter that she lost her lock and her identity, since she desires better.

 

 

Paradise Lost

At the very beginning, I have fallen since I believe that Satan is a hero. Satan is so powerful and determined but what makes him even more attractive is that he never gives up when he fell into hell from heaven. He says:

“The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

He tries to make everything better through his mind. This make me admire him more since sometimes, when we are in trouble, we are always advised to think positive. However, Satan is not as good as what I had expected because he is so evil that he uses language to manipulate me. He leads me to Hell so that I suffer as much as he does or even more. Thus, Satan is no longer my hero and now my hero is God because he loves me so much even though I made Satan my hero at the very beginning.

 

peacock

Peacocks use their beautiful feathers to attract peahens. A peacock can be signified as a prostitute, who would dress up seductively to seduce men. On the other hand, men can be indicated as a peahen. There are many reasons for a girl to become a prostitute. One of the reasons is because some girls are lost and their way of thinking had been affected by their surroundings. However, the main reason for girls to become prostitute is because they are curious about men. They like the excitement of seducing man and would learn all kinds of ways to do so. An example has been shown in the Fantomia, or Love in a Maze by Eliza Haywood, in which a girl chooses to become a prostitute as she is curious about men. Overall, the action that was conducted by the girl is a very dangerous and silly action to do so as she might fall in love with her virtual identity and also, the most important one, she cannot change the fact that she is a woman. She would have responsible for her baby.

 

The Disappointment by Aphra Behn

     There are many ways to explain the meaning of the tittle. From the lecture, the disappointment can be defined as the sexual dysfunction that causes woman’s imperfect enjoyment. However, in my point of view, it means her disappointment with the culture and society.  At the end of the poem, Behn just shows her disappointment to Lysander. She says

Whose soft bewitching influence,

Had Damn’d [Lysander] to the Hell of Impotence. (Behn 140)

She is giving up elaborating her feeling because she knows her audience (men) would not understand it. Women are silent in the communication is caused by the culture in that period, which suggested that she is not only disappointed to Lysander’s impotence, but also disappointed with the culture, in which women are silent and objectified.

     Further, Lady Mary points out that how women are objectified in The Lover: A Balled. She says: “we harder like trees, and like river grow cold” before women lose their virgin. Women are saved and they feel save when they are transformed to object illustrated that how women are treated in that period. Women are not only objectified, they are also to be ignored since they do not have a change to talk and express their emotion. Besides, women’s low social position can also be found when Lady Irwin says she is vapor in her poetry. Hence, Behn is disappointed to the culture, in which women are objectified and they have to remain silent.