Free Sample Essay on Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
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(start of cover page) "The Power of Language and the Sound of Silence in Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Final Paper, English 455: The Modern American Novel
Boston University English Department
Boston, Massachusetts
Professor John T. Matthews
T. Steven Minton
April 15, 1991
(end of cover page)
Zora Neale Hurston in her novel
Their Eyes Were Watching God, (1937) emphasizes not only the power of language, but also its limitations. Hurston explores the centrality of language to human nature and to her own black culture. Encounters with characters who use the power of language to vastly different ends bring into focus protagonist Janie Crawford�s phases of development. Although language is a key theme in the novel, Janie reaches her deepest insights about herself in moments of silence. Her most intense experiences of yearning remain essentially incommunicable. In these moments the richly poetic authorial diction supercedes the exuberant but limited black vernacular that forms Janie's means of speech.
While Janie is keenly aware of the power and the danger of speech, she also realizes that when separated from authentic experience, language has its limits: "Course, talkin' don�t amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do nuthin' else."1 From the novel�s opening, Hurston makes us notice the potential of language to both release and to oppress human beings. When �the Negroes� finish their day of stifling labor, "It was time to hear things and talk." All day they toiled like mules for their masters, but at home on their mighty porches "They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed notions through their mouths. They sat in judgment."2 The gossipy women who chatter about other people's doings reveal the less savory powers of language. Lacking direct experience of life, they can only drag others through the dirt.
Through the wisdom she has gained, Janie rises above their bothersome intrusions. She knows that "An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done 'heard' 'bout you just what they hope done happened."3 This practice of gratuitous talking can sometimes be joyous, as with the gabblers of Eatonville, who sit back on porches all day, engaged in "a contest of hyperbole and carried on for no other reason."4 But even this approach to speech can be pernicious; the men cruelly ridicule Matt Bonner's old mule, without regard for the man's feelings.
Joe Starks represents the use of language to gain personal power, through intimidation. Joe takes over the town of Eatonville, determined to become a "big voice." Unlike the good-for-nothing porch gabblers, who are "all talk," Joe "puts his money where his mouth is." He builds up the town, and appoints himself leader. He discourages Janie's self-liberation, by treating her as a mere toy, meant for personal display.
Janie's deepest longings, for all that a louse like Joe will not provide, cannot adequately be expressed through language. Even when she first met Joe, she realized that "he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for the horizon."6 By tracing this nature imagery to its first appearance in the novel, we can realize how Hurston uses it to express Janie's non-verbal longings. Janie's dawning awareness of her sexuality ...
...was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell...She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage!7
This descriptive passage is more than unabashedly sexual; it alludes to the non-verbal expression found in music: "a flute song," "the alto chant of the visiting bees." Yet this strange music "had nothing to do with ears," it is an "inaudible voice." Throughout the novel this nature imagery recurs; its appearance marks stages in Janie's growth. Janie is on a search "on the horizon"8, and also for the man who represents the bee to her pollen. Her first quest solely is for experience, to transcend the stifling world where people are nothing but mules for a master.
The second quest, her heart's desire, is to find love and ecstasy. Logan Kerricks can provide neither. Besides being physically repugnant, he uses Janie as if she were a mule. She runs to her grandmother to confess her dissatisfaction, but Nanny just cannot understand Janie's far-reaching dreams. Although Logan speaks ill to Janie and works her too hard, Nanny cannot see, for "...there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought."9 Janie realizes her predicament, and thus becomes a woman, through the wordless lessons given by nature. She knew things nobody ever told her, for instance, the words of trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, "Ah hope you fall on soft ground," because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
The inherited world of language cannot teach Janie the deepest truths about herself. Nanny's desire that Janie become as the white people, even at the expense of love, cannot bring her happiness. Janie is not satisfied with the accepted role of suppliant wife who tends a decent home. Her fervid desire to break free impels her to latch onto her first chance to escape. So she lies to herself, saying that with Joe "From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom. Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made to fit them."11
Shortly before this passage, she realized Joe was not "A bee for her bloom," but she imagines so anyway. Words help to fabricate an acceptable lie, the kind we create to make life bearable. We can interpret Janie's life with Joe as an index of both the folly and the power of speech. Janie knows that the men who hang around the porches gabbling all day, making up fanciful stories and pranking each other, are "just talkin' consolate yo'self by word of mouth."12 The townspeople simply scorn these loafers, while their attitude toward Joe's speech is a mixture of respect and resentment. Hicks says, "What Ah don't lak 'bout de man is, he talks tuh unlettered folks wid books in his jaws...showin' off his learnin''."13
Joe manipulates his powers of persuasion and intimidation, based upon the crafty use of language, to become as oppressive as the white men who despise his race. In the same fashion, Joe oppresses Janie. Janie holds her frustration within; although her tongue remains her only weapon, she knows it does little good to use it. Finally, she learns its power. She asserts herself in conversation against Joe, claiming that God confides in women too, that men don't know as much as they think about her gender. Joe tries to suppress her, but pushes Janie too far. He incites her to deliver a devastating blow, when she makes a crack about his lack of male potency. The silence which ensues in their relationship is terrible: "something stood like an oxen's foot on her tongue." 14
Though silence becomes an oppressive force and contributes to the dissolution of their relationship, it remains the only realm where Janie can reach an understanding of self. When Joe slaps her face after she makes a bad meal, she looks deep into the silence of herself to see the truth. She no longer can sport the illusion that Joe deserves her "blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man."15 She cannot use language to express her feelings to a man who does not care. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous other emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving them up for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.16
Tea Cake fulfills the longings that Janie could never verbally express. Her experiential journey to the horizons was really to find loving people, not the material things which Logan and Joe provided. In Tea Cake, Janie finally finds the man who represents her inexpressible sexual longings, hearkening back to her pubescent nature visions:
He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom - a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be a crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step that he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.17
Janie at last finds the visceral and fleshly embodiment of her inexpressible and abstract yearnings. Tea Cake symbolizes more than blissful sexuality, however; he stands for music, joy, and exuberance. From the generosity of his heart, he teaches Janie things her other lovers would not have considered: how to play checkers, how to shoot a gun, how to think of herself as beautiful and dignified. He speaks to Janie with respect and love, without condescension or manipulation. In the Everglades, Janie learns to enjoy the chatter of the men on the porches, and even to join if she pleases. Here Hurston focuses on the pleasure, not the grotesqueries of language: "...the men loved to hear themselves, they would 'woof' and 'boogerboo' around the games to the limit. No matter how rough it was, people seldom got mad, because everything was done for a laugh."18
In the courtroom scene, Janie remains silent while the lawyers argue if she was guilty of killing Tea Cake with a shotgun, or if it was an act of mercy done to ease the pain of his terminal illness. The reasons for Janie's silence in this scene are a centerpiece of literary debate about the novel. Some scholars claim that the suppression of Janie's voice undermines her search for identity, while others insist that the third person narrator actually conveys Janie's mature realization that language is not always efficacious, that women should discretely choose when to speak.19 This writer maintains the latter position; I have tried to demonstrate in this essay that Janie's moments of greatest illumination and insight come when her voice is silent.
In Janie's moments of quietude, when she recognizes the disparities between her shining dreams and the harsh reality of life, the poetic voice of the narrator takes over. In her first erotic awakening, in realizing the deficiencies of her mates, and in finally discovering her ideal lover, Hurston's authorial voice captures the luminous epiphanies that Janie's own voice cannot express. Janie sees that by telling her story to an empathetic friend like Phoeby, her friend can grasp these visions, if not in words then in feeling, for "Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."20 Having experienced fully what life has to offer ("Yuh got tuh go there tuh know there") 21, Janie can fold in that limitless horizon, and bring it all back to herself: "She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it around the waste of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much life in the meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."22
Endnotes
1 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Perennial Library, 1990), pp.183
2 Ibid., pp. 1
3 Ibid., pp. 5
4 Ibid., pp. 59
5 Ibid., pp. 27
6 Ibid., pp. 28
7 Ibid., pp. 11
8 Ibid., pp. 1
9 Ibid., pp. 23
10 Ibid., pp. 24
11 Ibid., pp. 31
12 Ibid., pp. 36
13 Ibid., pp. 46
14 Ibid., pp. 80
15 Ibid., pp. 68
16 Ibid., pp. 68
17 Ibid., pp. 85
18 Ibid., pp. 128
19 Ibid., pp. xi, xii
20 Ibid., pp. 6
21 Ibid., pp. 183
22 Ibid., pp. 184
· Points to Ponder:
Note how the essay makes a concise and well-observed study of the power of silence in Janie's life; how the essay balances the theme of emergence of her voice with the importance of silence; and the author's compelling view of her refusal/inability to speak at the trial. (These comments are from Professor John T. Matthews of the Boston University English department, author of
The Play of Faulkner's Language, not the author tooting his own horn). The author's conclusion not only sums up, but also goes beyond what has come before in the essay. Realize that all details drawn from the book, and the original conclusions arrived at by the author, integrally relate to the thesis. The author uses a proper academic format for the paper: title page, pages numbering, and endnotes.
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Model Essay Test
Question: Explain how author Richard Wright in his novel
Native Son(1940) utilizes the literary modes of naturalism (which shows how larger societal forces impact individual lives) and modernism (which stresses formal experimentalism and the role of subjectivity). Contrast Wright's narrative methods and his social message with naturalist authors like Dreiser and Wharton, with specific examples from the text of Native Son.
Richard Wright's Native Son is a powerful example of literary naturalism, while the novel also embodies qualities of literary modernism. Like the novels of Theodore Dreiser and Edith Wharton, Wright uses the naturalistic mode of storytelling to show how outside forces influence individual's lives. Wright demonstrates how America's pervasive and hostile white culture (circa 1940) feeds the black culture messages of desire, yet holds off any satisfaction.
The character Bigger Thomas becomes a representative modern man, burning in the personal hell of his cultural disenfranchisement, yearning for an expression of selfhood in a society that tramples the black race. Wright's portrayal of Bigger serves as a paradigm for the modern urban condition, thus being naturalist, while it also utilizes the modernistic approaches of subjectivity and layering of narrative voices to convey its effect. Everything is filtered through the perceptions of Bigger; characters and scenes are shown as he would perceive them. Wright sacrifices literal realism for a psychologically realistic vision of what it means to be a modern black male.
At all turns, Bigger gets bombarded with messages of what he wants, but cannot have: on billboards, in magazines, on the cinema screen, in a thousand details of cultural life. The discrepancy between what the white world has and what he desires drives Bigger to fury. It is a pain for which there is no cure. Any efforts of people to reach out, to offer human compassion and connection, only increase his violent reaction. He hates his family, because he can do nothing for them. Fear of himself, dread of committing a robbery, makes him attack Gus. Jan and Mary try to know him, but Bigger has no inner categories by which to react. He can only hate them, since their sympathy speaks to the distance between the white world and the one he must inhabit.
While showing the pressure of cultural forces, throughout the novel Wright locates the narrative within the psyche of Bigger. In this manner, Native Son is both naturalist and modernist. Bigger's murder of Mary Dalton is the first time in his life he feels a sense of personal power. He imagines that he controls his own destiny, but his deed sets off a chain of outside forces that engulf him, along with the entire city of Chicago.
Wright's portrayal of the death of Mary Dalton indicates the impact of both instinct and cultural impressions upon Bigger's actions. While placing Mary on the bed, he hovers over her in desire, drawn by lustful instincts. But Bigger's sense of dread derives from the cultural taboo against miscegenation. As ever, the white culture says, "You want it, but you can't have it." Mrs. Dalton�s haunting white form, and the white cat that appears when Bigger puts Mary's body in furnace, represent the white world that has imposed this taboo. Mrs. Dalton and the cat are a tangible presence, symbolizing how deeply the conscience of this white world has been hammered into Bigger's psyche. Bigger gains exaltation and self-possession from this heinous deed, because he believes he has upset the social order that has imposed the strictures that bind him. Bigger's tragedy is that he entirely blames white society for his actions, refusing, indeed incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions.
The mistake of the State's Attorney Buckley is that he fails to see that Bigger's deed was a reaction to the rules men like him impose. The newspaper accounts of Bigger�s murder demonstrate how white culture is ignorant that the solutions it proposes are the very causes of such ghastly murders. The papers call Bigger an "ape," a "beast," and all sorts of other animalistic comparisons. The first account states that all public places must now be segregated, that education must be limited since "Negroes are organically incapable" of higher learning, and that education would only lead to crimes like Bigger's (by making black people want more). These are the oppressive details of societal life which produce monsters like Bigger Thomas. But the white establishment refuses to see; indeed a key metaphor throughout the book is blindness.
Wright makes Bigger a stereotype, keeping with the naturalistic tradition of Dreiser, Wharton, and (in a radicalized form) Gertrude Stein. This is the author's goal: to expose the stereotype, to show us how naming people makes us what we are. Bigger is a representative individual, one who reacts to the collective aspects of society. Dreiser's
Sister Carrie and Wharton's
The House of Mirth use the literary mode of naturalism to show how a society based upon status, power, and material acquisition affects individuals who strive to rise within it. These novels take place within society; Native Son shows what ensues with those members of society who stand outside our capitalist and materialistic culture. Wright certainly is polemical, but he is not sanctimonious or high-flown like Dreiser. The author wants to demonstrate the effects of the modern world on Bigger's psyche, even at the expense of taking liberties with realism. Wright admits in his introduction that so many people probably would not be allowed in Bigger's cell. But they are there because they each represent aspects of what Bigger reacts to in the world. The preacher's otherworldliness, his denial of this life, will not do. Bigger wants satisfaction NOW! The sympathy of his mother, as I said before, only increases his sense of alienation. Bigger comes to see that Jan does not blame him, that a white man can also be a human being. This too increases Bigger's alienation, for he sees that he has hurt an actual flesh and blood person by killing Mary Dalton.
Mrs. Dalton represents the uselessness of philanthropy to problems like Bigger's; it is condescension, it asserts who is the giver and who is the taker. Furthermore, Mr. Dalton is an emblem of white corruption: he rents to blacks at exorbitant rates, and only within the "Black Belt." Finally, Bigger's little brother Buddy has learned nothing; his anger at the whites will only continue the carnage.
The lawyers Max and Buckley represent two polarities; each show the insolubility of this social dilemma. After Max finishes his communist diatribe in the courtroom, Bigger feels as if he wasn't even worth the trouble. For one thing, Bigger couldn't understand the words. Moreover, he cannot imagine how he could be connected to anything, much less be the symbol for imminent social change Max pretended him to be. Max's speech shows that the ideology of communism is estranged from the very people from whom it would draw its support, the culturally disenfranchised.
Buckley is also fiercely moral in his indictment of Bigger's savagery, but he falls squarely on the side of the white status quo. Buckley denounces Max's "dangerous communism" that would topple "our sacred institutions" -- in other words, the continuation of racism and segregation. Buckley's language definitely is racist; he urges that we not resort to "jungle law," that we remember how "civilization rose from darkness" (to paraphrase), phrases which invoke images of both the jungles and the people of Africa.
Both Max and Buckley speak voices the readers may share: outrage at social oppression and indignation over a savage murder. Alas, their social solutions both are limited. Native Son remains a searing indictment of a modern socio-political dilemma: oppression exists, producing violent reaction, which in turn produces more oppression. Wright works in the naturalistic tradition to pinpoint the sociological causes of this situation, but he brings his message home with a relentless psychological verisimilitude gained from literary modernism.
· Points to Ponder:
Determine why the student writer's professor gave this essay test an "A+," and wrote that it is a "wonderfully detailed, impassioned, tough minded distinction." Note how the author "spills all the beans" in the first paragraph, then spends the rest of his time defending and elaborating upon this sharply focused thesis. The author states a major premise, argues and illustrates with examples from the text, utilizes the powers of persuasion, and defines his terms with precision.
Model Poems:
Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'stNor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
· Points to Ponder:
Does Shakespeare employ hyperbole in this paean to his lover? Or do you believe the Bard's audacious claim that art, love, and the imagination have primacy over the forces of nature? What claims do you want your poems to have against this eternal and indomitable realm? How does the message of this poem relate to novelist Jack Kerouac's vision of "the common dark of all our deaths" (Visions of Cody, composed 1952, published 1972), or to the statement of filmmaker Orson Welles that all human art must eventually vanish into "the universal ash" (F For Fake, 1973)? What forces drive you as a writer to continue writing, in the face of such ultimate futility?
Sonnet 130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snows be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rareAs any she belied with false compare.
· Points to Ponder:
Realize how in this sonnet Shakespeare spoofs both the mere mortality of his mistress and the hyperbolic flights of fancy of his fellow poets. Shakespeare wrote these poems in the sonnet form, which Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines as "a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of fourteen lines that are typically five foot iambs rhyming according to a prescribed scheme." Webster's goes on to define iambs as "a metrical foot consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable or of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable." And what, you may ask, is a foot? In poetry, it is "the basic unit of verse meter consisting of any of various fixed combinations or groups of stressed and unstressed long or short syllables."
According to The Yale Shakespeare, edited by Wilbur L. Cross and Tucker Brooke (1993), Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374) popularized the sonnet form. Petrarch's themes were "love and beauty, a hopeless love thwarted by destiny and death" (pp. 1490). His structure of the octave and the sestet was too difficult for most English poets to emulate, so Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518-1547) developed a sonnet consisting of three quatrains with a concluding couplet. Cross and Brooke define a quatrain as "a unit or group of four lines of verse," and a couplet as "two successive lines of verse" which rhyme.
Surrey's sonnet format was borrowed by the Bard from Stratford-upon-Avon, so it has become popularly known as "the Shakespearean sonnet." Shakespearean wrote his sonnets in the meter known as iambic pentameter. Webster defines pentameter as "a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet." Armed with this knowledge, and with these great examples, I invite you to sit down and create your own sonnets.
Who was William Shakespeare anyway, "shaking his spear at ignorance"? Why is the relation of Sir Francis Bacon's The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies to the works of Shakespeare a subject that's either forbidden or scoffed at in the halls of academe? Settle the centuries old controversy for yourself...if you dare.
"Song" by John Donne (1633) Go and catch a falling star Get with child a mandrake root 1Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot,Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Til age snow white hairs on thee.
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
1 According to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, edited by Alexander W. Allison (1983) "The large, forked root of the mandrake, roughly resembling a human body, was often credited with human attributes. As a medicine, it was supposed to produce contraception."
Points to Ponder
· Compare and contrast Donne's perception of Woman with the image emerging from Shakespeare's sonnets. Which seems to you the more favorable portrayal of womankind, and which is truer to your life's experience?
· Analyze the structure of "Song" in terms of its rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-a (i.e. a="star", "are"; b="root", "foot"; c="singing", "stinging" etc.), and its syllable pattern: lines of 7-7-7-7-8-8-2-2-8 syllables.
· Christopher Ricks, literary critic and erudite professor of English at Boston University (and formerly Cambridge University) wrote in a letter to this author that "many poets...are underrating the price paid for their abandonment of pattern, prediction, regularity, decorum - all those good old things which I was brought up on. C. S. Lewis, writing about rhythm and metre, compared it to waves breaking differently upon the shore or strand, with the conviction that it was the unchangingness of the shore which allowed us to register the variety and uniqueness of the waves." Apply the insights of Professor Ricks and C.S. Lewis to your analysis of Donne's metrical format.
· Try writing poems with the strict metrical control of Donne or Shakespeare, and also become aware of the "free verse" experimentalism of poets like Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Allen Ginsberg and his "harmonic breath units" ("Howl" and "Wichita Vortex Sutra"), and Jack Kerouac's "spontaneous bop prosody" (Mexico City Blues). Explore these different approaches, and decide which one works best for your goals as a writer.
The River-Merchant's Wife: a Letter by Ezra Pound (translated from Li Po, great Chinese poet of the T'ang Dynasty circa 700-762) While my hair was still cut straight across my foreheadI played about the front gate, pulling flowers.You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.And we went on living in the village of Chokan:Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fo-Sa.
(C) 1926 New Directions Publishing Corp.
Points to Ponder:
· As a poet you would do well to emulate Pound's ability to tell a great story. The poet encapsulates the longings and conflicts of a woman's life in only 29 lines. The narrator goes from childlike innocence ("Two small people, without dislike or suspicion") to painful experience ("The paired butterflies are already yellow with August.../They hurt me. I grow older.") We are left with a sense of desolate uncertainty: has her lover been swallowed "by the river of swirling eddies", or will he some day meet her "As far as Cho-fu-Sa"? What can you do as a poet to convey a similarly keen sense of narrative and character in your poems?
· Starting in 1912, Pound became fascinated by the Japanese poetic form called haiku, which Jack Kerouac has defined as having been "invented and developed over hundreds of years in Japan to be a complete poem in seventeen syllables and to pack a whole vision of life in three short lines." (Quoted from The Portable Kerouac, edited by Ann Charters, 1995, pp. 469). Kerouac cites this example from Japanese poet Basho (1644-1694): A day of quiet gladness, Mount Fuji is veiled In misty rain.
(pp. 470, Charters)
· The haiku deeply influenced Pound's literary movement called Imagism, in which the poet considers images solely in their pictorial or visual sense, and precludes the impressions of any other senses or any "merely metaphorical figure." Another influence of haiku integral to Pound's aesthetic was the superimposition of one idea atop another, as in his little poem "In a Station of the Metro":
The apparition of these faces in a crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
· Now explore "The River Merchant's Wife" again, noticing how the haiku and the principles of Imagism influenced Pound's translation of Li Po. Become a literary detective, and compare and contrast Pound's Imagism to French poet Arthur Rimbaud "alchemy of language", which aimed at a "systematic derangement of all the senses." Rimbaud writes that "I invented the color of vowels! - A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. - I regulated the form and movement of every consonant, and with instinctive rhythms I prided myself on inventing a poetic language accessible some day to all the senses."
· Study Pound's poem for its persuasive use of narrative voice, and for the incredible economy of language of Pound's translation. Try adapting Pound's letter format for use in your own poems.
· Analyze the line "The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead" as an example of anthropomorphism. Pound conveys how human perception creates an image of reality by projecting its biases onto the phenomena of nature. Is the sound of the monkeys in the trees inherently sorrowful about, or does she hear it that way due of her sense of grief and loss?
· "I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/ Forever and forever and forever. " Is this line an allusion to Genesis 3: 19 of the Bible ("For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."), and therefore a masterful blending of the literatures of east and west?
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Law School Essay One
Law School Essay Two
Law School Essay
Write about uniqueness of character, abilities, experiences (background), and diversity and how potential student would contribute to the diversity of the entering class.
As the bus entered the heavily guarded military instillation, I gazed upon the sign that read "All the Way." When the bus stopped, several angry Drill Instructors boarded and began introducing us to a very colorful vocabulary, usually reserved for drunken Sailors. They instructed us to gather our belongings, get off the bus and assemble in a circular formation. As I searched for the strength to get up, I found myself moving, while several Drill Instructors yelled at us for our clumsy attempt to dismount the bus and fall into formation. I wondered if I had made the right choice. However, I have come to realize that my military experiences have tremendously enhanced my self-worth. From those first eight weeks of Basic Training to the day I walked out with an honorable discharge, I gained an enormous amount of skill and confidence. I grew as a person, and I learned life skills: discipline, tenacity, leadership, and problem solving abilities, all of which will enhance my potential as a law student.
In the military, training makes the difference between failure and success. So whether one's specialty is exiting aircraft at 1,300 feet, enforcing law and order around the fort, or taking medical X-rays, people need training in order to develop discipline and confidence. As the Army becomes more technologically advanced, so does the guidance individuals receive. In my case, the Army provided me with high-tech instruction in the field of electronics communication repair. At the tender age of 18,I was responsible for operating and maintaining million-dollar telecommunications equipment. This often involved being located in remote areas away from other support units, while working under adverse conditions. However, electronic equipment or theories of electricity weren't the only things I learned about. The experience provided me with invaluable skills that will prove critical in the legal profession. For example, I was required to analyze intricate electronics circuitry, find problems and then fix them appropriately. I also had to interact with co-workers, supervisors, and engineers while I was trying to solve these difficult technical problems. As a result, I learned the importance of articulating my thoughts in a coherent and logical fashion while under duress. Being forced to independently solve complicated problems in a short period of time strengthened my discipline and tenacity, qualities that will be essential in Law School.
Moreover, the military also gave me the opportunity to travel abroad. Living in countries such as Korea, Spain, and Germany and immersing myself in their cultures has given me perspective on the differences between the United States and other countries. Each place I have lived has been unique in some way, from the different languages to the variations in cultural practices. Dealing with individuals with different backgrounds has helped me develop a good rapport with people.
From my travels, I also learned that there can be more than one solution to a problem. Indeed, having a variety of perspectives makes it easier to come up with approaches to different problems. My travel experience has strengthened my interpersonal skills, as well as my integrity and determination.
Perhaps most importantly, my military training provided me with the courage, strength and dedication to succeed even after I left military service. I believed that I could accomplish anything, as long as I put my mind to it. This belief led me to pursue a career in the manufacturing industry, where I worked for several manufacturing companies, and eventually convinced me I could succeed in an academic environment. In each of my jobs, I benefited from my hard work ethic by advancing to senior technician levels and eventually securing leadership positions within my department. For six years I enjoyed a variety of challenges and opportunities, whether it was troubleshooting computer equipment, collaborating with electronics engineers, or operating industrial machinery.
However, I longed to be in a more intellectual environment, where I might be allowed to see things from a different perspective. I had always been more interested in mathematics and science than liberal arts subjects. So when I decided to go back to school, I eventually ended up taken courses in philosophy, and the social sciences. Understanding philosophical and political rhetoric proved to be quite difficult because I had to analyze abstract theories and assumptions about retribution, and nature of politics. Nevertheless, I managed to persevere and even make the Dean's honor roll on a few occasions. My work and academic experiences have undoubtedly built upon the skills I developed in the Army.
Through my experiences in the military, I did find some satisfaction. However, I found greater happiness in helping others, whether it was using military resources to aid a community during times of crisis, or participating in local food or blood drives. For me, there is nothing more gratifying than helping people in times of need. I always have been a firm believer that people have a responsibility to give something back to their community. While military has provided me with invaluable skills, the desire to help others stems from my traditional Hispanic upbringing. My parents always stressed the importance of maintaining and supporting the family structure. Ever since I can remember, my mother and father always wanted their children to respect and help one another. However, these ideals did not stop with our own family. My Mother told me that everyone on this earth belongs to one big family, and that it is our duty to respect and help another. She stated that while our lives may be going well, there is always somebody who needs our help. This is why, for the past year and half, I have become involved in a local mentor program that provides guidance and support for children with disadvantaged backgrounds. As a mentor, my responsibilities include working with the local youth to improve decision making capabilities, build conflict resolution abilities, improve school performance, and build the desire to continue their education. Hopefully, as a lawyer I will be able to help some individuals through legal crises while still being able to pay the rent.
The sign at the military installation that reads "All The Way" has had a tremendous impact on me. What began as a simple twist of fate has inspired me to face new challenges and given me the determination to succeed in all my endeavors. Law School will be a welcome challenge, one which I plan to face with my arsenal of experience, passion, dedication, leadership and discipline. I believe that these characteristics make me a confident, accomplished and promising candidate who would be an asset to the incoming class, and ultimately to the legal profession. I am convinced that I have the necessary skills to go "All the Way" at your institution.
Law School Essay
Many college students know exactly what field to enter after graduation and have been preparing for that field over the course of their entire college career. However, I had difficulty discovering a career field rewarding enough to devote my entire life to, a career field worthy of education. While I had always considered pursuing the law and majored in public policy as an undergraduate, I was never passionate about it. I didn't have clear goals, and it seemed to me as if my degree and my circumstances were pushing me into studying the law; I needed to rediscover why I fell in love with the law in the first place.
As a college senior, I took the LSAT because all of my classmates were taking it. I did not prepare, and I really did not want to attend law school after college; thankfully, my low LSAT score guaranteed this. I needed to understand more about life before I could give myself to a career. After being in school for about two decades, I felt completely out of touch with reality and did not think I would ever find career direction by attending more schooling. With these thoughts in mind, I determined I needed real-world experience to help me find the direction I so desperately sought.
I accepted an investor relations position in New York that tested both my intelligence and my work ethic. The first few months moved at a hectic pace as I attempted to acquire knowledge of my new pursuit and to control the responsibilities assigned to me. However, I quickly adjusted and maintained a schedule of seventy-hour workweeks. Because of my hard work and growing expertise, my colleagues began to acknowledge me as an important member of the organization and my opinion became respected and sought out. This respect provided me with a great deal of confidence, and I began to realize that I had unlimited potential. I had finally regained the attitude necessary for success, and my recent LSAT score is a testament of this self-awakening.
While I may not have taken the direct route to law school, I took the course that suited me well. I needed to find goals that would drive me through all-nighters and exam periods. Over the course of the past few years, I have transformed from an inexperienced college graduate to a respected professional. My departure from classroom study has helped me grow into a more confident, independent individual who has developed the ability to set goals and focus on the path to achieving them. I believe I am now prepared to make the most of my future educational experiences, and I hope for the opportunity to do this at ______.
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