Comments on "Fences" by August Wilson

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

April 27, 2011

Comments on “Fences” by August Wilson

This play’s protagonist is Troy Maxson. His name is a combination of Mason-Dixon, the line between the north and the south. This play highlights the struggle in the fifties of black families to make their own identities in a world that refused to accept them as human beings. Troy worked as a garbage man and worked his way up to driver. This was both a good and bad thing. It was good because he was able to break through racial barriers and become more than a garbage man, but it was bad because he grew apart from his best friend, Bono. He and Bono were friends since they did time together. It was in prison that Troy learned to play baseball and was accepted into the Negro Leagues. Troy’s childhood was turbulent to say the least. His mother left when he was eight and he saw his father rape a friend of his when he was 14. He ran away at 14, and became a thief in order to survive. He was doing 15 years on a murder charge when he met Bono. As a father now, he carries this baggage with him into the marriage and mostly in matters concerning his son Cory. Cory is headed for a football scholarship. Troy can see himself in Cory. Troy believes that Cory will be heading for a lifetime of disappointment just like he was when he was placed in the Negro Leagues. His inability to see that things have changed now and that the world is different for Cory destroys his relationship with his son. Troy tells Cory to go back to the A&P and work his way up there. Troy believes that working hard is the only path available to black men and he will not stand by and watch his son lay his future in the hands of the white man. He believes Cory must work with his hands and not just play out his dream. Troy goes behind Cory’s back and tells the coach that he will not support recruitment and therefore Cory feels betrayed and bitter. Troy has another son Lyons. He is from a woman that Troy knew before Rose. Lyons grew up while Troy was in prison. Troy feels a lot of guilt about not being a father to him, so he gives this boy money nearly every week. He does not push this boy like he pushes Cory because this boy is not as much like him. This boy wants to be a performer. Troy has an affair with Alberta. His best friend Bono knows what is going on because he saw Troy buy Alberta a drink and he saw the way Troy was looking at her. Bono being the best friend he is, laid his friendship on the line and told Troy straight up that he needed to tell Rose about the affair. Troy denied the affair to Bono at first, but then did tell Rose about it. When he explained the affair to Rose, he used a baseball analogy. I’m not really sure why Rose did not at least scream back at him for using that stupid baseball analogy again that he used for everything. I think she should have said that life is not a game of baseball and he needed to get over himself. Life did not take him down the road of professional ball for whatever reason, so shut-up about the baseball. I was very tired of his constant king of the hill attitude and I cannot believe Rose did not have more of an argument when he started talking about how his affair with Alberta was like him “stealing second”. That analogy just makes me sick. I guess he was having some sort of mid-life crisis that lasted his entire life. He compared his marriage and life with her as being on “first base” and she was safe, but he just thought he might be able to… basically have an affair, get a thrill and not get caught all the while, bringing all that mess back home to her. He is such a selfish man. Just when Rose thought the affair was as bad as it could get, Troy comes home and says hey how about raising our love child? Rose feels that the right thing to do since Alberta died in childbirth is to raise the innocent child and cut Troy off sexually, emotionally and every other way humanly possible. This is basically how they finish their life. Troy the big dog dies while swinging a bat at a rope in the back yard. Cory joins the military and is enjoys coming home to his father’s funeral with a considerable amount of success under his belt. He at first refused to go to his father’s funeral because he was still mad at his father, but Rose and the love child Raynell put a stop to all that hatred. Raynell sings a song that the big dog used to sing about a dog named Blue which eases the spirit of forgiveness. Also, I think when Cory sees how much of herself Rose has sacrificed in raising Raynell as her own, he feels that his small amount of self sacrifice amounts to very little. In the end, Troy was unwilling to accept that the world had changed enough to allow his son to fulfill dreams that he could never get to come true. This allowed Troy to shape himself into a bitter, resentful, lonely, tired, old man swinging at a rope in the back yard at all the things he would never become.

Week Fourteen Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Week Fourteen Blog

Comments on “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry.

Donna Stevens

April 20, 2011

In this play, Walter Lee is coming into his “manhood.” Walter’s family has been poor all their lives and now with a check coming in the mail that brings the opportunity of success in Walter’s eyes; he is wild with excitement. Walter believes that money is the key to happiness. He believes that if he has the opportunity to invest in something like the white people do, then his family can live better and he will feel more like a manly provider. He is willing to use his wife to beg his mother for the money. He is shameless in his pursuit of the money. When he finally received the money, he gave it to a man who skipped town with it. He is left to feel defeated and impotent again in the presence of his wife, son, sister and mother. When the home owners association offers to give the family a substantial amount of money not to move into the house his mother bought with what was left of the money that Walter did not throw away, Walter decides to snatch it up. Walter again dreams of becoming a man with the aid of money. As his mother makes him tell his son what he is about to do, Walter realizes how childish, selfish, and unmanly he is acting. His mother reveals to him through the eyes of his boy how he valued money over family. In the end, Walter chose his family over money. With this decision, he grew into his “manhood” as his mother said at the end of the play. Walter became a man in his own right because he learned to value family over money and he defined success as having a family that is happy instead of having an abundance of things. This play is a realistic drama because it is a racial drama that takes place in 1950’s America. The family is confronted by racism when the mother knowingly buys a house in a white neighborhood. The mother is daring to dream and feels entitled to live in a white neighborhood because her husband died for that money. She said earlier in the play that the money represented “what someone thought her husband was worth”, therefore she would not buy in a neighborhood that would disgrace the memory of him. If this play were set in modern times, the racial effect would not be nearly as severe. The neighbors would stare and probably grumble, but it is highly unlikely that they would raise enough money to buy the house back.

This story is mostly about Walter and how he defines success. He once thought that being rich would make him a successful leader in his home and a respected man of the community. However, he learned the definition of success is learning to be content with what you have and learning to treasure your loved ones more than silver and gold. Walter’s foils were his buddies that he met and planned to start the liquor store with. It was in those scenes that one could see the desperation reveal itself in Walter’s eyes. He was willing to risk it all even money that his dad died to give him to be successful with money. Walter’s son was also a huge foil for him. Early in the play, Ruth refused to give Travis money for a cause at school because they “did not have it.” Walter protested and was foiled as the insecure father who over compensated for his insecurity with a dollar given to Travis which resulted in him having to ask Ruth for bus fare. Walter did not want Travis to know how poor they were because the reality would reveal him as a poor provider. In this play, the raisin was Walter and he grew in the sunlight of his hardships into a man who his family and more importantly he could be proud of.

Week Thirteen Blog

Week Thirteen Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

April 13, 2011

Comments on “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell

The setting of this play is the kitchen of Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s home. The atmosphere is inside a home that was childless, quiet, sad and lonely. The atmosphere changes to back up Mrs. Wright’s motive for murder. Mrs. Hale, the neighbor and Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife were in the kitchen while the investigation was going on. The reason the women stayed in the kitchen was to get a better read on Mrs. Wright. These women knew if they spent enough time in the kitchen where Mrs. Wright spent the majority of her life, they could better understand what happened and why. Minnie Foster Wright was a person who sang like a bird in the church choir, seemed happy and wore ribbons in her hair. After she married Mr. Wright, he quieted her just as he probably quieted the bird. John Wright seemed like a rigid, unhappy man who lacked self confidence so he had to put Mrs. Wright under him in an emotional way in order to make him feel superior. I think he was probably not very successful so he needed to assert his authority upon his wife. The significance of the bird cage being handled in a rough way was to infer that Mr. Wright roughly opened the cage and strangled the bird, so Mrs. Wright strangled him in retaliation for the bird and for being his doormat. I think he probably did strangle the bird and she took this out on him, but is all very circumstantial. The two women do not reveal their evidence because it is very much a women’s observation and again, very circumstantial. It would not prove or disprove anything and the bottom line is that she did it. The men think she did it and so do the women. However, the women have a strong opinion on her motive, but nothing more than that. The men are not capable of understanding why she would kill over that bird, so it is not worth it to tell them. The men constantly say the women are worried about fruit. The men don’t understand how much of Mrs. Wright’s life went into those jars. The jars represented all that she was as a woman. They were her life’s work and just as important as the sheriff’s or the attorney’s. Glaspell only wants us to hear from the women in order to set the motive for the murder. The last line “we call it knot” was condescending toward the men because, just as they will never understand why Mrs. Wright killed her husband, they will never understand the world in which they are currently passing judgment. The titles Trifle or “A Jury of Her Peers” are equally sarcastic. What a man calls little trifles is what a woman pours her life into. If her jury were made up of men, they cannot possibly understand her motive; they would simply say she was being emotional about little things that don’t matter.

Comments on “Naked Lunch” by Michael Hollinger

I think I identify more with Lucy than with Vernon. Lucy has made up her mind to separate herself from everything in their former relationship that made her feel uncomfortable. She is not communicating with him during lunch. He is doing all the talking about his self-important things. She is staring at and picking into her corn. She is just passing time and not really caring about what he is saying. I think possibly she is reaffirming to herself why she dumped him in the first place and that was that he needs constant affirmation and control. He cooked the dinner and it was about him wanting sex and to talk about how important he is and how well his life is going. She was there to satisfy her curiosity about whether breaking up with him was the right thing to do. When he shoved the steak into her mouth like he probably shoved every story and every other particle of his important existence down her throat in the past, this affirmed to her that ridding herself of him was in fact the right thing to do. She knows he is bad for her. The steak was just a metaphor for him. She has given up on him. Steak probably reminds her of him, so she is experimenting with giving it up and is finally giving up on him and his shoveling. The play’s central conflict is that their lives are going in different directions and because Vernon is such a pig, he cannot see that his controlling nature is driving Lucy away. The central conflict is resolved when he shoves the steak into her mouth. She decides he will never change and she is doing right by breaking up with him, therefore their lack of communication within their relationship will not be an issue any longer.

Week Twelve Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Week 12 Blog

Donna Stevens

April 5, 2011

Comments on “Memorandum” by Billie Bolton

This poem is more like a memo than a poem because of its technical form. The issues that she wishes to take on with her ex-boyfriend are listed in outline format. The speaker’s diction and choice of details reveal in her personality that she does not feel like she has anything in common with the people he hangs out with. She gives the impression that she is not like the “white trash airhead” or the “redneck redhead.” She seems to be rebelling against the very thing(s) that she was once attracted to. Her style is that she starts every outlined point with “Anything about” and her tone seems to be very agitated. She seems to be telling him to shut-up about mostly everything. The mood of the poem is really funny. I enjoyed her frank sarcasm.

Comments on “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman

This poem is about an athlete that died young. The author points out that he died young enough that he did not tarnish his record by getting old and living longer than his glory days. This athlete will always be remembered as young, strong and successful. The poem talks about a town that once cheered him by lifting him up over their shoulders and carrying him through the town. Now, this town morns him and it is much quieter as it remembers its famous athlete. Even though this young athlete will not see the glory of a long life, he will always be remembered as a successful athlete.

Comments on “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe

In the first stanza, the Lord is spoken of ridding the people of bad feelings toward each other like hatred and wrath. He has loosed his judgment on the people and his truth goes on. The second stanza talks about how people in war have prayed and read their Bibles at night seeking God’s wisdom on their lives and how they gain strength to march on. The third stanza talks about how Jesus will crush satan’s head with his heel in the last days and how God will deal with this person’s enemies and how God will use grace to deal with this person. The forth stanza is about the rapture and how God will sweep up his children. In the last stanza, the speaker talks about how each of us can receive salvation. Christ has been compared to a lily with a glory that will transfigure one’s soul and take this soul to Heaven to live with him forever.

Comments on “Thinking about Bill, Dead of AIDS” by Miller Williams

This poem speaks of the sad reality of loving someone who has AIDS. On the one hand, the speaker loved this person very much and wanted more than anything to comfort them in their time of death. However, the speaker and his associates stood at the door and looked in with a smile at times hoping to reassure the patient and not to get AIDS. The speaker speaks several times about how little they knew about AIDS. The speaker says that he kissed the patient and would have liked to have spent more time close like that but because of the fear of contracting it he held off. The problem was that he was so afraid of contracting AIDS that he probably did offend the patient. However, as he said he did not know exactly what he could do without contracting so he kept his distance.

Comments on “It is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams

This is a simple note saying that the speaker ate someone else’s breakfast. The tone of the poem is a slightly sarcastic and selfish tone. The mood is one of sarcasm. I thought the line “Forgive me/they were delicious” was especially sarcastic. The title is also sarcastic. The structure of the poem is more like a post it note. It runs on and on with no punctuation at all. The setting of the poem is probably the kitchen. The poem is in blank verse. It is written in dramatic monologue in three quatrains. I think this poem could be described as a lyric because it is a brief poem that describes personal emotions like the fact that he ate a delicious cold plum that someone else had set aside for breakfast.

Week Eleven Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

Week Eleven Blog

Comments on “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes

In this poem, Langston Hughes uses the symbol of human veins to portray the roots of our society. We have veins and like rivers and roots, they run deep. As a society, we have made our homes by rivers. Likewise as a people we cannot survive without our veins which carry life throughout our bodies. His poem has a racial connotation for which he is famous for. The connotation is in the singing of the “Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans”. This reference to Lincoln gives way to a slavery image. In the opening line, “I’ve known rivers” he is saying that he has known people. He has known people of many races and many different backgrounds. Ultimately though, people are all the same because we all have physical characteristics that make us human. Veins like rivers run through society from the “Euphrates…Congo…Nile (and the)…Mississippi) and they link us together as a society. In the last line, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” means that his soul has grown deeply rooted in his place in society.

Comments on “Dusting” by Julia Alvarez

This poem is about a daughter wanting to be something more than the housewife that her mother is. In the line “My name was swallowed in the towel” she says that her mother in a sense was erased from the world by becoming a lowly housewife. In the daughter’s mind, her mother was an insignificant nobody who did menial tasks and by her very existence she exuded “loser”. The daughter tried hard to make her “mark” in the house, but the mother continuously erased her efforts. In the line “the pine grew luminous”, she compares her life with the pine. The work her mother does with the pine, makes it “luminous” but it is erasing her as a person. She does not want to become like her mother. In fact, in line 17 and 18, she says “But I refused with every mark to be like her, anononymous”.

Comments on “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe

This is a love poem. In this poem, Marlowe uses a pastoral setting to lure his potential mate to come live with him. He uses this setting because it is more relaxing than a city setting and the pastoral was more ideal at that time in history. He tells his love they will “sit upon the rocks” and he will comfort her with “a gown made of the finest wool” which I personally find offensive, and “Fair lined slippers for the cold”. He may have a chance with the slippers, but certainly not the gown nor the rock. I don’t find this poem to be particularly persuasive. I think that if he had gold for the buckles on the shoes then, maybe he could afford a more comfortable gown, better place to sit and a warmer house. I think this man really knows nothing about women. I think the equivalent of the shepherd’s argument in the twenty-first century would be: I’ll give you the best land, car, clothes, and view from your enormous mansion if you will just come live with me. I think he would appear painfully desperate in any century.

Comments on “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh

This poem is the reply to “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. In this reply poem, Sir Walter Raleigh turns down Christopher Marlowe’s request for love theoretically of course. In this poem, Raleigh brings down to earth the lovely ideas Marlowe presented. He says that all things fade and that Marlowe’s love just was not enough. In this poem, the reality that all things fade even love is presented and explored. In Raleigh’s poem, line 5 he states “Time drives the flocks from field to fold” means that ultimately one must return to their inner truth and that youth and “folly” will not last. Ultimately, we must be true to ourselves. In Raleigh’s response, he cannot live a lie and nothing will make the person in Raleigh’s poem love the person in Marlowe’s.

Comments on “Sometimes the Words Are So Close” by Julia Alvarez

This is a beautiful poem about a woman who can only become her authentic self when she writes poetry. She expresses her true self through poetry. In the line “I once was in as many drafts as you”, she means that she tried many things to fit into society and to make friends. Ultimately, she found her true purpose in life as a poet. She inspires others to “take heart from me” if you are “yearning to be free”. By this, she means that if you too feel trapped and out of place maybe you could try expressing your thoughts and feelings with writing. She becomes simpler when she writes so that anyone can understand her thoughts as in the line “the real text a child could understand”.

Works Cited

Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Boston; Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”1134, Hughes, ‘Dusting”1200 Alvarez, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” 1233, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” 1339 Raleigh, “Sometimes The Words Are So Close” 1203 Alvarez