Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (revised)

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is primarily a parable about greed. In the story, the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is shown, by the specters of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, where his life and his decisions have led him and where they will soon be leading him: dead and alone; despised and mocked. Charles Dickens makes a very strong statement about the prevalence of greed in society using Ebenezer Scrooge as first, a warning, and then an example for us to follow.

As mentioned before, this story is about greed, on e of the seven deadly sins, and Dickens seems determined to expose it to our eyes which have a tendency to be blind to things we do not wish to see. Ebenezer Scrooge is the essence of greed, selfishness, coldness, and self-centeredness. He is the type of person who will go not one bit beyond their list of duties. He does his job because that is what he is there to do, as should everybody else. This is gathered from the following text:



Oh! But he was a tight- fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.



At this rather insulting description of Scrooge, we are very much inclined to despise Scrooge for the duration of the story. This fist impression is worsened when we watch Scrooge in action, for example, as he all but bullies his poor clerk, is quite ruse to his exceptionally kind and jovial nephew, and is most uncharitable to the men who come in begging donations for the less fortunate. Little does Scrooge know that his greed and selfishness will come to haunt him later, and in this case, very soon.

Within in the first ghost visit, a marked change occurs in Scrooge and by the end of the third visit, Scrooge changes completely, becoming a beautiful example of how a person should be, not just around Christmas time, but every day of the year. This is exactly what Scrooge does: " I will live in the Present, Past, and Future..... The Spirits of all three shall strive within me." From then on every one notices the change of heart in Scrooge and believes "that he [knew] how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge."

The statement Dickens is making about greed is that it has no right to have any sort of place in society. We are far better off without it as we see in Scrooge's case. Greed is a poison to the holder (it is after all, one of the seven DEADLY sins). It slowly deteriorates your social connections and then it begins to eat away the greedy one. For instance, Scrooge had enough money to keep himself well dressed, warm, and well fed but instead he should to be cheap, cold, and feed himself gruel. He lived in a wretch form of simple. He was gradually killing himself with cheapness and neglect. That was not the only thing that was going to kill him; however, the lack of positive human companionship would also kill him. Without someone to look forward to seeing and them seeing us, life truly does start to lose its meaning, and even appeal. If you go around hating the world as much as you claim it hates you, like Scrooge did, you'll soon find that you'll die a sad death all alone and it will no longer be any concern of yours, but it will be your own fault.

The suggestion in this story is to be giving and to celebrate Christmas every day in every way, not just around Christmas time. Dickens suggests that this makes us whole inside. It should make us happier and even complete.

The Harlot's House Analysis

In the poem “The Harlot’s House,” by Oscar Wilde, essentially the speaker is walking around town at night with his Love and he  happens upon a harlot’s house where is almost entranced by what he sees; the harlot’s dancing, laughing, and attempting to sing with their “guests.” His own Love leaves his side and enters the whore-house. There is a change in the mood of the scene as his Love leaves him and the dawn creeps down the same street. The poem draws huge contrasts between two different ways of life, or relationships, and this is emphasized by the inclusion of night and day which usually have connotations that are associated to the morality of the two different ways of feeling for people.  Each “character” in the poem can be read on several levels. For example, the harlots’ guests and the speaker’s Love could represent actual people or the emotional-psychological complex that arises from the existence of harlots and the men who promote their business.

                Of course these are not blind assumptions. These claims come from the text itself. More specifically from the lines:

Like wire-pulled automatons,

Slim silhouetted skeletons

Went sidling through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,

And danced a stately saraband;

Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed

A phantom lover to her breast,

Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette

Came out, and smoked its cigarette

Upon the steps like   a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,

"The dead are dancing with the dead,

The dust is whirling with the dust."

But she--she heard the violin,

And left my side, and entered in:

Love passed into the house of lust.

Literally read, this section of the poem can be about an experience the speaker had one night while walking with his love. The speaker explains that he and his Love happen upon a harlot’s house. He hears music from within. Against the shades he sees the harlots and their dance partners dancing, as seen in the lines “Like wire-pulled automatons, / Slim silhouetted skeletons/ Went sidling through the slow quadrille…” “Automatons” appears to be how the speaker views harlots. “Slim silhouetted skeletons” is how he views the men who are enjoying themselves there. It is obvious that the speaker disapproves of these "phantoms" and “puppets” as e continually dehumanizes them. His attitude displays his thoughts to be highly condescending.  The speaker verifies this when he turns to his Love and says “the dead are dancing with the dead.” Even though the speaker tries to discount the brothel, his Love enters anyway and is no more what he, the speaker, thought his love was.

                Beyond a primary understanding of the poem lay deeper meaning that are a bit stronger and resonate more with today’s societal vices. One of these deeper meanings could be that the author represents the differences between out emotional or psychological states regarding love, life, and relationships through each character in and around the brothel scene. All throughout the poem, the harlots are called automatons, clockwork puppets, or mechanical. This can easily be understood as a representation of the harlots’ emotional condition. They are robotic. “Escorting” “gentlemen” is their trade, their job. Being used for another man’s physical gratification cannot be a highly desirable profession. In fact, it cannot be desirable at all, even though it is easy money. Money is exactly why these women degrade themselves and their dignity by selling their “wares.” For some women, prostitution becomes a monetary necessity. So, when they are copulating or what have you, it is hard to imagine that they feel anything for their “employers.” If they feel anything at all, it is probably a heavier purse. The men are called even worse. The speaker repeatedly calls them ghostly, phantoms, not live. How could they be alive? They are devoid of a living human’s morals or compassion. Men like this subject women like the harlots to where they are in life- in the gutter with the rats and roaches of society. By promoting such an unhealthy business, they cannot be truly human- perhaps selfish or a little sociopathic in their not caring or how those women are treated. There is no love in a brothel, only lust. The speaker says this to his Love and still his Love leaves him and enters into Lust. This can represent how lust is often masked by love at first but it is always unmasked sooner or later.

                This poem, section of the poem, if read on another in depth level takes a stand on prostitution itself versus the way you and I live (assuming we are not prostitutes). The author calls the prostitutes all but robotic many times. This is how he is trying to say that prostitution is robotic, or unfeeling. From the outside looking in, those women seem to be functional people but they are empty inside. Prostitution is not a very good lifestyle. The author calls the male participants dead, ghostly, and phantoms. This alludes to the type of men who support this practice. They too are not among the rest of normal society. They cannot partake in a normal human life experience, or want more than their society-dictated share of it, and so they turn to the people who are also not on the same moral standing with the rest of society. The author also shows that Love can be like a pair of rose-colored glasses. It covers up less palatable truths.

In each understanding of the poem, the brothel scene comes to an end when the speaker's Love enters the brothel and the dawn creeps down the street. On a literal level, the coming f the dawn and the shutting down of the brothel shows that the night is for the things we wish to hide from society and the day is when they ids and moral beings are free to roam. In bother of the deeper meanings, the coming of the dawn shows that the light creeping down the street is like a knowing now that the speaker sees his Love for what it is. That one action sheds light on the whole situation and the brothel is not so fascinating anymore.

Overall, this poem on each of the three levels is very anti-prostitution and points out that it needs to be remedied. The author could b suggesting that the way to fix this is look at things for what they are. It is possible that his is suggesting to recognize lust and not to lust but love.

"The World Is Too Much With Us" Analysis

William Wordsworth’s poem “The World Is Too Much With Us” is a rather simple poem. This does not mean, however, that a deeper meaning cannot be found in a deeper understanding and reading of the poem. The second level of understanding, so to speak, is very similar to the literal reading. The implications to be understood from a more critical analysis of “The World Is Too Much With Us” reveals the depth of Wordsworth’s message.

Without reading between the lines, it is clear that Wordsworth is upset with the contemporary society and how materialistic it has become. This can be seen in the lines “Getting and spending, we lay waste to our powers” and “We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.” Here, Wordsworth is speaking of how people want more and more and thus give away their hearts to not the One he thinks they should, but to the gods and goddesses of consumerism. Wordsworth says “For this, for everything, we are out of tune.” He means that materialism takes us away from achieving a sense of harmony with nature because we take time away from appreciating it by shopping or only being concerned with getting things. Wordsworth is so upset, he says that he wishes he were raised a Pagan so all he could see, all he could know, was the wonder and majesty of nature. This, he says, would make him happier, to see “Proteus rising from the sea” and to “hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

The main idea that Wordsworth was trying to present to his readers was that the materialistic mindset threw society out of harmony with nature, or the universe. It wasn’t right or normal. He called it a “sordid boon.” Sordid, by definition can mean morally ignoble. So, throughout this simple poem on the topic of the sins of society, deeper meanings are planted by the context of the poem. Wordsworth says “we lay waste to our powers,” powers meaning our ability to see, feel, sense, be, imagine, and even appreciate. Instead of partaking what Wordsworth believes to be the right thing to do, we waste our time on possessions that will not be with us in people’s memories or in our pocket books when we’ve passed on. He suggests that we should spend more time respecting nature because nature is no longer important to anyone: “It moves us not.” He also says that “Little we see in nature that is ours.” The reason people have left nature at the wayside is that you cannot possess nature. It belongs to no one, to everyone. You cannot buy the earth, the sea, the trees, or the flowers or the sky. Because of this, it had no dollar value which is what people at that time and even now put all their focus on. This age of Materialism and Industrialism is what puts everyone out of tune, “For this, for everything, we are out of tune.” People no longer see nature for what they should see it as. The environment suffered because of the industrial Revolution but no one really stopped it because “the ends justified the means.” This, I believe is the root of his anger. In his anger, Wordsworth makes a slightly defamatory exclamation: “Great God! I’d rather be/ A pagan…” in this line, Wordsworth declares he would rather have been raised a pagan. He says that being a pagan is better than knowing a life where God, or spirituality, has been eradicated, discounted, disrespected, or even laughed at. This statement is very emphatic especially for his time.

The most outstanding problem suggested in this poem is, unsurprisingly, materialism and its vices coupled with God’s apparent fall from favor. With the socio-economic movement called the Industrial Revolution came a psychological to accompany it: Materialism. Goods were being made faster and cheaper and more affordable. Now that more people could have more, that’s exactly what they wanted. As a slightly indirect consequence, people slowly turned away from God and spirituality in general. Praying didn’t put food on the table nor did it pay the rent. Work, entrepreneurship, and business did. Before long, spirituality went out the door. People didn’t have time for it or they blamed God for their troubles. Ironically, it wasn’t God society clung to in tough times, it was material things. The Bible tells us to relinquish our earthly possessions and to follow Christ by serving others. Well, people are selfish and serving others before oneself seems like a silly thing to do.

This was important to me because of the irony of the situation. I am in no way a firm believer. I do, however, defend God in this case. Society’s problems were self inflicted and they blame God. I cannot help but feel that seeing it in that way is utterly imbecilic. Moreover, contrary to my current status of believing, I tend to agree with Wordsworth. I, too, would rather have been raised a pagan so I could see the magnificence of nature and not the dollar value stamped across it by society. The more I learned about society and all its evils, some of which are necessities, the more I wish I didn’t know because sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Midterm- Analysis of Rime of the Ancient Mariner

          For the Romantic poet Samuel T. Coleridge, the role of imagination is very important in his works. For example, his poems “Kubla Khan” and more specifically, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” are extremely imaginative. Although they are extremely imaginative, they are still grounded in reality, which is where the human imagination is rooted. Heavy symbolism is also very prevalent in his poetry. In fact, in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the symbolism is rather allegorical. A deeper meaning can be extracted from beneath the surface. Because of the extensive symbolism and the real-world grounded imagination, readers can come to a profound understanding of the human condition, or, rather, the human experience.  

As mentioned before, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” can be read in more than one way. To discover the deeper meanings of the poem, it is necessary to work through the literal reading of the poem. On a literal level, the poem begins with a wizened old mariner stopping a guest in a way to a wedding. As we find out, as much as the mariner is compelled to tell his tale, the detained wedding guest is very much compelled to listen to the story, “Yet he cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that Ancient man.” Here, we see that the wedding guest is enthralled by the story and cannot get up to leave.

 The mariner begins to relate his adventure which begins in the south. Ice and mist are all around the ship. After a while, an Albatross comes along and becomes a good omen for the ship and her crew. This assumption is drawn from the lines “The ice did split with a thunder fit; the helmsman steer’d us through!” The bird is a good omen because it leads the ship through the ice and fog without harm. Without warrant, the mariner shoots down the Albatross with his crossbow. At first, his men are angry with him for killing the albatross. They change their minds when the fog lifts. They condone the killing until the wind that had come up when the Albatross was around stops in the absence of the Albatross. They are stuck with no water in blistering sun. The mariner describes how the sea seemed to rot and there are water snakes all around the ship.

 Soon, the universe takes vengeance upon the mariner and all 200 men in his crew die, leaving him alone for seven days and seven nights. Only then does the mariner appreciate the beauty to be found in the water snakes, which, for the record, should be feared more than a harmless seabird. Then the spell begins to break. Spirits inhabit the sailors’ bodies and the mariner is lead back to his home port. His ship begins to sink in a whirlpool as a hermit and a pilot and his son come up to the boat. They rescue the mariner. Once on land, the mariner begs the hermit to shrieve him of his misdeeds so the hermit lets the mariner tell him his story.

Then “the penance of life falls on him.” His penance is to tell his story so as to warn others and to teach them, from his own example, not to make the same mistake he did- not respecting God’s creation. Now that the Mariner has told his story, he feels at ease. The wedding guest, however, “went on like one that hath been stunned.” He had gained knowledge from the mariner’s story and he was a ‘sadder and wiser man” when “he rose the morrow morn.” Quite understandably, the wedding guest was not the same person after he had listened to the mariner.

            The second level of meaning is derived from interpreting some of the elements in the poem in another light. If we allow the albatross to represent mystery- or the magic that life holds like when we are children- the haze to represent innocence, the lifting of the haze as maturity, and the mariner as experience, we can develop a deeper meaning which holds an important life lesson. When we begin our lives, we are innocent. As we go along in life, we want to know. We don’t want to be kept in the dark. What do we do about it? We kill mystery. We kill it with our questioning and curiosity. By doing so, we also kill the magic that life holds. When it is all gone, the fog lifts to show that there is nothing there. We are left with clarity because we now know something we didn’t know before.

After that, life is kind of disappointing. That driving force that keeps us dreaming, like the wind for the mariner’s ship, is gone. We stagnate. Inherently, we are much like the philosophe as described in the lecture “What is Romanticism?” the lecture says that the philosophe congratulates himself in exposing life for what it really is but “ after all the destruction, after the ancient idols fell, and after the dust had cleared, there remained nothing…” (Is this quote not reminiscent of the haze lifting after the albatross is shot down?) When there is something to appreciate or believe in, life is a little easier to deal with. We find it easier to keep going. We aren’t so disappointed.

Experiences such as maturing become part of who we are. They shape how we think and deal with things that happen to us. We cannot forget those kinds of experiences, try as we might. It is our job then, to teach by example how to go through life so that others do not make the same mistakes and do not have to go through any terrible occurrences like we did.

            A third level of interpretation can be made from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” This level may also be the bigger picture that Coleridge was trying to create for us to learn from. On this next level of understanding, it is likely that the Mariner represents Coleridge. The story is just a life lesson which is, as one of the side notes indicates, to respect and love all of God’s creations. The penance that the mariner must serve for life, could be Coleridge’s idea of the function of a poet; to relate information and to restore beauty into our world which is supported by the line, “In stepped the Romantics who sought to restore the organic quality of the past” from the Romanticism lecture. The wedding guests are his readers. The inclusion of the many spirits in the poem also follows the characteristics of a Romantic. “The Romantics returned God to nature- the age revived the unseen world, the supernatural, the mysterious.”

 In summary, Coleridge could be trying to say that he functions as a means of repairing the damage done to us by experience and the knowledge gained during the course of our lives. He also is sending us a warning and giving us a lesson, all too often we learn the hard way, without the experience. This is Coleridge’s underlying message; which is found in all three levels of interpretation: we must respect God’s creation.  If we do not do this, vengeance will be exacted upon us. In other words, if we commit a misdeed, karma will come back to bite us in the end.

Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads Analysis

                I chose the following quote from Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads for its curiousness: “The principal object, then proposed in the Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate not describe then throughout, as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should ne resented to the mind I an unusual aspect; and, further and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously , the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.” In other words, Wordsworth was warning his readers that in his poems, he took ordinary moments and enhanced them with his own imagination and suggested the in a new light. These moments then become “eternal truths” in human nature, especially in regards to how “we associate ideas in a state of excitement.”

                I said I chose this quote for its curiousness and it is indeed curious. Wordsworth, it seems, thought he was breaking new ground with this “project” of his. He was not. Poetry is commonly a huge exaggeration of emotions, ideas, time, places, people, and facts. Later in the Preface, Wordsworth states that, “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”  It is an expression in metered rhyme of what regular words cannot express so well. To take an incident and make it more than it really is, as mentioned before, is not a novel concept in the field of poetry, or even for human nature.  Wordsworth’s aim definitely ties in with the common belief held by many Romantic Poets that they, in their own way, were changing the world, one stanza at a time.

To me, this beginning section of the Preface almost comical. The tone of the Preface is very serious and matter of fact but the diction and syntax are very flowery. Then the ideas discussed in the Preface also seem a bit silly because at first Wordsworth explains to the Reader that he did not want to partake in this project at all but he was pressured by his friends and so then he decided to do it even though he didn’t want to. If we translate the language into modern, common language, the entire “project” seems, at least to me, a bit ridiculous. It is not much of a project. It has been done before and by many of Wordsworth’s colleagues, to use poetry to make a point. Romantic poetry especially was almost a intellectual-political movement. Nevertheless, this quote offers more insight into the Romantic Poetic mindset.

                The Poets and Wordsworth both used the imagination to transform the mundane into the magnificent. The Romantic Poets believed very much that the imagination was transformative and by using it to enhance the things that “men” live through, the Poets could teach a lesson or perhaps save the intellectual world from the clutches of the Enlightenment. Usually they did this by presenting a common event in a light much different from the conventional take so as to highlight its flaws, curiosities, and perfections. The lessons that the Romantic Poets hoped to teach were, as Wordsworth indicates in his Preface, “primary laws of our nature,” or simple facts regarding human nature that we may or may not realized the full profoundness of until it was explained to us by an “Author.”

                Human nature is very complex and has many facets; therefore it cannot be described by one instance or in way. This is probably why Wordsworth chose a particular topic to explore and explain. The topic he chose to emphasize was “the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.” As mentioned before, poetry can be an exaggeration of emotions ideas and things. This in addition to Wordsworth’s admission that he made these instances more than they really were, to make a point, nevertheless, is augmented his choice to pick instances in which the human nature is in a state of excitement. It is not uncommon for the human mind to embellish events into something much more that it really is. It is in our very nature. (Perhaps this is because life is so utterly unexciting that we must make things up in order to “feel” and “live”, almost like many Romantic Poets resorted to drugs and alcohol or inspiration or solace from their depression?)  

Keats' Odes: Pain and Beauty

              Each of the five poems by John Keats, “Bards of Passion and Mirth,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to Melancholy,” “Ode to Autumn,” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” all come back to their common theme: the binary nature of the human soul. As a Romantic poet Keats’ works seem to agree with the idea that the human experience is characterized by pain. Moreover, Keats links beauty and pain together, a concept that seems contradictory. He does this by his implications that there we can transport ourselves from pain and into beauty and even nature. This begs the question: Can we really leave pain through the imagination or through the appreciation of beauty? For example, if we long for something we will never obtain, can we escape that tragedy through the imagination? Is longing an inevitable condition of the human experience? The answers vary, especially in relation to time and what part of our lives we are in.

                As seen in the works of Wordsworth and Blake in addition to Keats poems, we are led to believe that the human soul is double sided. There is pain and there is joy. There is passion and hatred and then there is apathy. There is good and evil, right and wrong. From “Bards of Passion and Mirth,” the concept that the soul itself is a contradiction is best shown in lines 31 through 34 when Keats mentions the contrasting experiences we mortals face on a daily basis:

                                Of their sorrows and delights;

                                Of their passions and their spites;

                                Of their glory and their shame;

                                What doth strengthen and what maim.

This emphasizes that sorrow, for example, draws upon delight to define the separation between the two just as delight does sorrow. Keats upholds the belief that to understand one, the presence of its opponent is required.  In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the greatest contrast drawn in relation to the human soul is Time. Life passes quickly with Time.  Keats says to the urn, “Thou shalt remain,” which means that the Grecian urn will stay and pass through each generation. Also, the urn depicts moments in life that are frozen in time. Although the human soul changes and transforms, that which is seen on the Grecian urn never will. It is stuck. In “Ode to Melancholy,” Keats mentions the passing of moods: “But when the melancholy fit shall fall.” This implies that sadness comes and goes, prior to the “fit” the soul or being was in a state of something else. This idea is upheld in “Ode to Autumn,” too. Keats speaks reverently of autumn but autumn, as beautiful as it is has a sad side to it. Autumn is the slowing of the nights, the cooling of the air, the aging of the year, and the withering of life because at the end of autumn is winter, which, for many people is associated with death and the End. “Ode to a Nightingale,” supports this theme, too. The idea gleaned from this particular ode is ironic. In the Poem, the speaker is pained by his overwhelming joy at the nightingale’s song. This is the essence of the human soul; it is a state of utter irony. This main idea was a common focus for the Romantics. It also relates to the idea of thesis and antithesis joining to become a synthesis, or in other words, the quintessence of experiences and emotions.

                Another trademark Romantic idea was that life is characterized by pain. I feel that his is, in many cases, true. We can be defined by our pain and we can be defined by how we handle it. All of life is a test. It is hard. It is a struggle and we are put on earth to see how we fair- that is one way of looking at it. The other way is to see life as a state of suffering before the final reward. Either way, life is about pain. Pain is natural. It is good for us. It keeps us grounded.

                In Keats’ works, I think that pain and beauty are so closely linked is because Keats believed that we could escape pain if we could delve ourselves in to the appreciation of beauty or nature. It is possible to “escape” pain through appreciation of beauty or through the imagination. However, this is nothing more than the utilization of another object to distract us from a harsh reality. Oftentimes, we are miserable, we are told to do something rather than nothing. This keeps us from brooding. We can use our imagination to get away from what is happening. This can seem silly, if not immature, to pretend like something is not really happening, but sometimes it is necessary.

 The initial link between beauty and pain is due to the fact that beauty can bring pain. A lover pining after a ‘beauty” is in a kind of pain: heartsickness. We can be pained by beauty.  The knowing that beauty doesn’t last, that beauty dies, is a painful thought. In, “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” the scene of the two lovers expresses the pain of passing beauty and love in a round-a-bout way.

Bold Lover, never never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal-yet do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

This is unlike in life where we can love and love will dissipate, and beauty can bloom and then will wither. Keats moves us out of the pain of knowing that there will never be change or growth and lightens the mood by pointing out that the beauty and happiness found in the urn is permanently preserved. Keats offers advice about how to take away the pain of a moment and transform it into another emotion in “Ode to Melancholy.”  “…glut thy sorrow on a morning rose/ Or on the wealth of globed peonies…” Here, Keats suggests that we move the magnitude of our emotions from sadness to the appreciation of something beautiful. “Ode to Autumn” has a similar lesson. Autumn, as mentioned before, has a withering, “winnowing,” dying beauty. After harvest, the “stubble plain” and trees are left bare, the cider press only oozes, the swallows are gathering to leave the skies silent.” In this instance, beauty and pain are linked in that beauty can cause pain. Autumn is a very pretty season but it has a forlorn undertone.  “Ode to a Nightingale” best represents the pain of beauty. Keats begins this idea by saying that in life, in reality, there are many troubles and woes and this nightingale’s song is a way of escape. If he could use alcohol to be with the nightingale, to be a part of that experience, which knows nothing of the human woes, he would find it much preferable to living in the human reality. He is so happy listening to the nightingale that he could die. Keats is then saddened by the knowledge that nightingale will continue to sing his beautiful song, “Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain,” even when he is dead and can no longer enjoy the song. For him, the beauty will not last. Then he says to us that in death, there is no more pain.

                                Now more than ever it seems rich to die,

                                To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

                                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                                In such an ecstasy!

                Pain and beauty can also be linked by how they both relate to longing for something that we cannot have. As in the case of the Grecian Urn, the two lovers can never have their joy but it is a comfort, in a way that they will always be beautiful and always in love. It is still a disappointment, though, to always have something out of reach. It is part of life though; it is inevitable. If we let longing be synonymous with pain, it is absolutely natural and an expected art of life. A common lesson that we see is that even if you have everything n the world, there will always be something lacking. You will always want something more. I do not think that the Romantics wanted us to circumvent the human state. And argument for that might be that they explained a lot of issues that people have and lessons that people sometimes learn the hard way but I think that the Romantics wanted us to go through the full range of emotions so that we were able to fully know what it means to feel, to live, to be.

                Another thread that runs through all five of these poems is age (and the progression of life). From “Bards” we understand that wisdom is something that comes with age and when we die we are endowed with divine wisdom. From “Urn” we learn that age is ephemeral. The urn will teach the coming generations that will age and pass like the previous generations, and this follows the idea that with age comes wisdom and even sadness.  In “Melancholy,” again, life is fleeting, death comes fast enough and we should not quicken its pace: “For shade to shade will come too drowsily/And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.” Here, Keats is telling us not to give in to a fit of melancholy and end it all but to refocus our energy into something better. From “Autumn,” we are told that in youth, or Spring, there is a beauty in it but old age, Autumn, has its own beauty, even though it is a fading and tragic beauty. Finally, in “Nightingale,” we see that although there is joy in being young and sadness in aging and dying, on “the other side” of dying is eternal joy.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the Powers of the Imagination

The poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel T. Coleridge, is a good example of the imagination’s ability to transport the poet, and his readers, to an entirely new and unreal place that only exists where reality doesn’t exist.  In this poem, the reader is transported to the mariner’s experience on the sea. Coleridge does this through his symbolism so that on the literal and allegorical level, the reader may experience a profound understanding of the human condition.

                The symbolism, which was very important to Coleridge in his works, is very Christian in content. For example, the entirety of the poem contains many references to God and spirits, and saints. In one instance, there is a direct reference to a Christian spirit: “As if it had been a Christian soul.” This line refers to the Albatross, the great sea bird which is a major focal point in the story line of the poem. The fact that there is so much symbolism in the poem implies that there is another level of meaning to be understood from the poem rather than just the literal interpretation one can make from the text. Furthermore, the relationship between the symbolism and its Christian basis most likely comes from the moral of the story which is, as a margin-note indicates, “And to teach by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.” This idea is derived from Christian’s call to be stewards of creation.

                The Albatross, a harmless but great sea bird in this poem can represent the beauty of innocence or plain innocence itself which is s often killed by human folly. The bird on the literal understanding of the poem is a good omen for the ship and her mates. This is understood form the lines “And a good south wind sprung up behind; and the Albatross did follow.”  This is easily taken to mean that the bird was good luck or good karma because although the fog and mist were heavy upon the ship and her surroundings, the ship was lead through the ice maze unharmed: “The ice did split with a thunder-fit; the helmsman steer’d us through!” This can be related to how an innocent person leads their life, blindly so, by believing in luck and goodness. Just like in the poem, when innocence is destroyed and a “knowing” is formed, life becomes harder. This idea parallels Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. A real life example is when we grow up and we find out that the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa are all a ruse, a scam, a lie, and life loses the mystery and magic that it had before.

                The different spirits mentioned in the poem might represent karma. The “blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint” represents the good karma that comes to the ancient mariner after he prays when he loses all 200 of his sailors and when he recognizes the beauty to be appreciated in the water snakes, who give more reason to kill than a peaceful Albatross. The Spirit of the South Pole is karma in its essence. This can be determined from the note, “The lonesome Spirit from the South pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop but still requireth vengeance.” Although the Spirit was helping the ancient mariner and his ship, the spirit also required more revenge on the ancient mariner for his misdeed. The “Spirit nine fathoms deed” represents bad karma, the karma that followed the mariner after he killed the Albatross with his cross-bow.

                On a literal level, the mariner’s difficult experiences are self inflicted. E has no one to blame but himself. No one shot down the Albatross but him, therefore, it is only right he be punished and must live with the guilt for the rest of his life. Nothing warranted the mariner’s actions. The Albatross did not have to die. The mariner should have left well enough alone. Nowhere in the poem does even Coleridge give an explanation as to why the Albatross was shot. Moreover, when the mariner’s men die and his ship sinks “like lead,” and the curse forces him to travel from land to land, he loses his job, his identity, his life. This is part of a bigger them of life, reciprocity.  He took the life of the Albatross so the universe takes away his “life” and he is forced to live on land.

                I find the mariner’s action, killing the Albatross, to be very human of him. As humans, we destroy innocence, or ignorance, everyday with our curiosity. We destroy the beauty and magic of the world in our quest to seek the answers and understand   all that happens and why it happens. As a consequence of our, yes, selfish desire to know, we must live with the knowledge that the world is a bleak and unexciting place when we know everything In the case of the mariner, because he did not take care of the wonder of creation that God has bestowed upon us, he was taught a harsh lesson and his persisting guilt forces him to tell those whom he meets of his trials and tribulations forever so that no one else may make that mistake.

                The message Coleridge tries to impart to us, strictly based on the text is that when we do a great wrong, try as we might to avoid and forget it, we can’t. It becomes part of who we are and follows us for eternity. If you take a step further, the message also means that we will wake up the “morrow morn” much like the detained wedding guest, “a sadder and wiser man” when we destroy our own innocence.

                This certainly is quite a wild story and is obviously a journey through the imagination. The imagination, however, is not so totally novel that it is free of the same themes present in our daily lives. This poem comes from the sometimes opium influenced creativity of Samuel Coleridge but the message it carries is not an imaginary idea but a conventional moral found in every Bible. Although it was the Romantics’ belief that the imagination as a means of escape from one’s surroundings, trading the details of the current surroundings for new and different one’s of a different place, and it encourages the total rejection of convention, dealing with time and space, it is not free. We imagine things what we know, just in a more chaotic manner. This poem, as wild and transformative as it and the story are, they are still confined with expectations ingrained in us by society.

Kubla Khan and the Imagination

During the Romantic Era, the imagination was one of several focal points common to all Romantic writers. But just what is the imagination, exactly? To some, it is our ability to create in our minds what does not exist. It allows us the see what cannot be seen only conceived in the mind’s eye. For the Romantic writers, the definition that best served their purposes was that the imagination “enables humans to reconcile differences and opposites in the world of appearances.” Samuel T. Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”

Samuel T. Coleridge’s well known poem, “Kubla Khan” is a prime example of how important the imagination was the Romantic writers and to their work. The entire poem is based on a vision Coleridge had during an opium trance. After he awoke from his drugged state, he began to write down what he had seen. He was interrupted and forgot the vision before he could write all of it down. The poem is a reflection of the vision, and of his desire to remember the supposed two to three hundred lines of poetry he meant to write down. This is readily seen in the following lines:

                A damsel with a dulcimer

                In a vision I once saw:

                It was an Abyssinian maid.

                And on her dulcimer she played,

                Singing of Mount Abora.

                Could I revive within me

                Her symphony and song,

                To such deep delight ‘twould win me

                That with music loud and long,

                I would build that dome within the air!

The lines, “A damsel with a dulcimer/ In a vision I once saw” refer directly to Coleridge’s opium-influenced dream. The song of Mount Abora, “And on her dulcimer she played/ Singing of Mount Abora” also refer to the vision whereas “Could I revive within me/ her symphony and song” imply Coleridge’s desire to remember the vision so that “[he] [c]ould build that dome within the air.”

                It is in the fifth and final stanza of the poem in which Coleridge changes his haunting and dreamlike tone to wistful longing and makes clear his intentions. For the Romantic writers, the imagination brought together the real and unreal, as part of the synthesis of thesis and antithesis, to create what cannot be seen. By writing down what he saw in his hallucination, Coleridge would have solidified the pleasure dome of ice caves. This would have created a physical, geographical location for us to experience in our own minds. Had he been able to remember the topographical details, he could have shared this “miraculous” place with us, his readers.

                This idea that the imagination creates for us what cannot exist is the main idea of Coleridge’s message. As one of the “fathers’’ of Romanticism, Coleridge emphasized this belief that imagination was as important if not more important than reason, what had previously been so highly valued in the Enlightenment period. The Romantic idea was to lead with feelings and senses rather than reason; to live through the imagination rather than reality. In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge pushes this belief to the extremes much like any other Romantic writers did with their ideas. Living and thinking in the extremes was characteristic of Romanticism. As a way to reach an extreme’s fullest potential, many writers used alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs to reach the heights of an emotion not readily attainable in a sober state. This is why “Kubla Khan” is so full of fantastical ideas. The lines

                                And all who heard should see theme there

                                And all should cry: “Beware! Beware!

                                His flashing eyes, his floating hair

                                Weave a circle around him thrice

                                And close your eyes in holy dread:

                                For he on honeydew hath fed,

                                And drunk the milk of Paradise!”

I feel also relate to Coleridge’s drug use. These lines can loosely interpreted as Coleridge’s vision would have been so great and strange that people might have seen him as a wizard or a person of dark magic. They also might have thought he was crazy, not unlike many people think that Lewis Carroll, another opium addict, was crazy, too. This comes from the mention of weaving of a circle around him and the flashing eyes and floating hair. The implication of drug use might come from “For on honeydew he hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise!” Paradise could mean the “high” from the opium.

                In summary, Coleridge’s point, besides lamenting over his failing to remember this miraculous vision, is to stress the role and significance of the imagination for an individual and the consequences it holds for society. If we can share all of what our imagination has to offer with society, society can benefit. It can expose the world to another alternate universe where chaos is order and order does not exist, nothing is what we expect and the impossible is more than just conceivable, it is achievable.

Assignment 2

In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake suggests contrasting ideas that result from innocence and experience, the elimination of innocence. Poems from Songs of Innocence such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Divine Image have counter parts from Songs of Experience, The Chimney Sweep and The Divine Image, respectively. Each pair of poems presents a different view of one topic.

In The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Innocence, Blake explains that the lot of the little chimney sweeper was a hard one, “So your chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep…” It was very hard work but religion promised happiness and rest in the ever-after, “And the Angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy/ He’d have God for his father, and never want joy.” This line follows the general Christian belief that even if life is full of hardship now, the afterlife with God will make up for it. Even Karl Marx called religion the “opium of the people.” It inspired people to keep hustling and bustling through their humdrum lives. This is clearly shown through the line, “So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.” This line represents the idea that many people believed to be true; that God would provide if not now, then in the afterlife.

In the Chimney Sweep from Songs of Experience, Blake shows the reality of the situation. No matter how long, hard, or religiously you pray, it does not make life actually better. Your faith may sustain you and give you hope but it is more of a psychological trick of the mind not unlike the placebo effect. In this poem, even though the chimney sweep kept happy despite his hard life, his parents subjected him to an even hard life of ashes and soot. This is implied in the lines, “And because I’m happy and dance and sing/ They think they have done me no injury.” The parents of the little chimney sweep do not recognize the hardship being placed upon their child because he still dances and sings. They go to Church “And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King/ Who make up a heaven of our misery.” This implies that the heaven that these people are supposed to believe in comes from the misery in which they live.

The Divine Image from Songs of Innocence starts off by explaining that when things aren’t going the way we would like, we pray. We pray for Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, among other things. These things are God. Blake says, “For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love/ Is God, our father dear…” In short, these virtues are the essence of God. These things are Man, too, “And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love/ Is man, his child and care…” These virtues are found in mankind because the belief is that we are created in God’s image and likeness. Here, Blake may be alluding specifically to God made Man, Jesus. Then Blake says that these four virtues are in the human makeup, too, when he says, “For Mercy has a human heart…” This can be interpreted two ways, either that mercy is a human creation or that while mercy is an inherent part of what it means to be “humane” it also is subject to the mentality a person carries. Then Blake says, “Pity has a human face.” We find ourselves pitying other when we look into the faces of those less fortunate that we, and if we have mercy in our hearts. Blake furthers this analogy with, “And Love, the human form divine.” Here, Blake could be referring to our calling to love others; to show it to those miserable cretins who lack love in their lives. He finishes this particular analogy with, “And Peace, the human dress.” This can be loosely interpreted as peace can be equated to our appearance, or body language. If we present ourselves in an open manner and in a positive light, peace will follow. God is the origin of these virtues that we can find in mankind, no matter whom or where we are because, “In heathen, turk, or jew, /Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell/ There God is dwelling, too.” This comes right from the Christian belief that God‘s spirit is in each and every one of us.

The Divine Image from Songs of Experience is a much shorter poem than its counterpart but is no less profound. Those vices, Cruelty, Jealousy, Terror, and Secrecy, which contrast with Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, are also part of the human makeup. This new way of looking at the topic begins when Blake says, “Cruelty has a human heart.” Just as mercy dwells in the heart, so does, its antithesis, cruelty. Blake also says, “And Jealousy a human face.” We experience jealousy when we look into the face of someone more fortunate than we. Blake furthers the analog with “Terror the Human Form Divine.” This can be translated as the terror you feel in your heart (which is prone to drop into your stomach in the face of sheer dread) can be symbolized in one person, (i.e. For German Jews in the 1930s, Hitler was a terror). Although peace can be derived from openness in dress, dress also can hides which is indicated in the line, “And Secrecy the Human Dress.” It is what we fail to show that keeps us from one another. Blake also associates strong imagery with these four ideas and all allude to an inferno. These words are ones such as “fiery Forge,” “forged Iron,” “Furnace seal’d,” and “hungry Gorge.”

Innocence can sometimes be synonymous with ignorance. When you don’t know any better, things are easy; simple. Experience opens our eyes. It widens the tunnel we see our lives through. It broadens our horizons. Experience can eradicate innocence. If we allow innocence to be synonymous with purity, experience defiles us. It soils our clean and clear cut view of the world and the people whom we share it with.

As children, we are relatively innocent. We act out of selfish cause-and-effect logic. We never mean to harm anyone. Decisions are black and white. As far as moral complexities are concerned, one thing is good the other is bad. Life is easy.

On the contrary, as we grow up and experience more of life, we lose our innocence. We are able to see the far reaching effects of our actions and other’s actions and how they affect us. Lines cross, become blurry, or simply disappear. We become aware of the vast expanse of gray between the black and white of a situation. Moral complexities are very present and leave you with complexes. Nothing is really as it seems.

Response to Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

In Auguries of Innocence, by William Blake, Blake tries to persuade his audience that less complicated, natural arts, beings, and objects, hold more worth than those things man adorns with great esteem, or importance. For example, Blake claims that "the poor man's farthing is worth more/ than all the gold on Afric's shore...when gold and gems adorn the plow/ to peaceful arts shall envy bow." He also implies that human imposition on nature is a moral wrong. "A horse misused upon the road/ calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare/ a fibre from the brain does tear."

To remedy these "wrongs," Blake suggests we leave nature be; we should revert back to a state of being, appreciation, and feeling, rather than thinking, questioning, and doing. Blake implies the moral consequences associated with his suggestion at his mention of the doom of the ever-looming judgment day: "kill not the butterfly/ for the last judgment day draweth nigh."

In the larger scheme of the poem, we see that every couplet is a paradox. In fact, the entire poem is a series of paradoxal images and ideas that come together to create a picture of the human condition. This idea of theses and antitheses coming together into a synthesis comes from the Hegelianistic school of thought, which is one of Blake's main influences (http://www.rlwclarke.net/Courses/LITS2002/2001-2002/LN02Blake.htm). This idea is highlighted in lines 51-61 through Blake's examples of the prince and beggar being equally unimportant to a miser, a truth told to hurt is worse than a lie, which is a principal moral wrong, and most importantly, through the example of the presence of joy and woe. The general idea that Blake seeks to convey is that joy and pain are fundamental parts of the human experience his claim also implicates that you cannot have one without the other; one defines the other.

Personally, I can only qualify Blake's claim that every instance of life is a balance of pain and joy. It is true that every being of the human race has felt some degree of joy, be it contentment or ecstasy, just as every being has known some kind of pain; be it a loss, great or small, or true misery. Not every occurrence in life is an absolute joy or an absolute pain. In fact, where an event falls on a scale between joy and pain is highly subjective. For the Pollyannas in the world, every cloud has a bright silver lining. For the Eeyores, a cloud is a cloud and is often indicative of rain.

In my own life, I can choose what will ruin my day and what will not. I can also choose what will make my day and what will not. The effects of the paradoxes in life are all about attitude. This is why I only qualify Blake’s claim. The degrees of each instance in life are so subjective, that it is nearly impossible to defend it.  In the religious world, some beliefs state that all life is pain and suffering. Therefore, we must do good deeds, love one another, forgive one another, take care of our bodies, our souls, our minds, and our lands so that one day we will be unified with that which we have come to call joy, either in Heaven with a Christian God or in Nirvana with the Buddha. Also, something that is a "joy' to me may be a "pain" to someone else. If this series of events continues where I am happy and another person is not, then pain is not a part of my experience and joy is not a part of the unfortunate person’s experience.

As children, we are taught that certain things are bad or painful and others are good and joyful. What if someone grew up under a rock? What then? They would not know the difference between joy and pain, would they? So, for them, pain and joy would not be a fundamental part of life. They would experience things and respond with primal instincts, not so much with sophisticated emotions, such as joy or woe.

Life is a paradox. Life is also a choice of how you respond to the paradoxes of being human. You can love someone and you can hate loving someone. A loss can send you into a spiraling abyss with n promise of return or you can pick yourself up and move on. What makes life and its extreme contradictions manageable is our ability to find our own balance for ourselves between joy and woe.