Araby

In Araby i can kind of relate to the tennager in the story because he represents innocents.  Well what about his innocents represents me, they ask?  When I say innocents i am speaking on his ignorance to the world.  He sees the world through his imagination, and through his imagination it guides around the desolate streets from which he is trapped to.  Without imagination, as a child growing up by yourself and with only a handful of freinds, it is extremly hard to cope with reality especially when everything around you is in turmoil and so pale.  The tennager in the story has feed his fantasy with these illustrations that have been left by this deceased preacher.  He takes the books and uses them as a manuscipt, sort of a blueprint to his own fantasy his own "illusion" about how things were suppose to be.  This is basically the fairy tale that he wants to believe that everything in his mind is pure and everybody is nice when they are not.

Before he even speaks to this girl he builds her up to be some sort of a goddess, and shareing devininty with God himself.  She pure in aspect to this kid.  Even when conversing with her for the first time he is left almost speechless when he actually comes into to contact with her.  So from this picture you can see that this kid has really buying into the preachers writings and has stuck to this alternative world of fantasy, and he plays the role well.  He plays it so well until the end.  He plays the role of the knight and the girl without even knowing is casted to be his queen.  The love struck youth even goes as far to speak in midevil terms during the middle of the story calling moments "enchanted" and using words like "chalice".  To me the kid is really acting in the wrong movie, because his surrouding never play off on his imagination.  For example when he gets to the market place the girl greets him as an obligation instead of actually caring as I put it.  This tears him apart because he expects everybody to be nice and over joyed.

When I see that he frustrated because of that you can obvioulsy tell that this child in my view knows nothing of the world and that his imagination even sometimes jades him from reality completly.  He is left torn apart and destrut about the whole affair.  He does not care about love anymore and he's more hopless than ever.  He starts to see the world for what it is and I feel sorry for him because his imagination is what keeps him alive.  I mean even the start of the story the setting is descirbed as a real dull environment, and I think that "love" is just a crying out for change, because he shuts his surroudings out of his mind.

Contradictions in my thoughts

Why should my creativity be shackled by my oppressor, which is my landlord.  You see my landlords are the ones who take my loans and distribute them amongst themselves.  They are the ones that read scriptures of Shakespeare and tell me that this is right and i am wrong like the slaves from the past.  Taking my place on this ship that sells to this wilderness that they deluded me from, telling me that the land would be called "Creativity" and when i got there i found out that the land was called Imprisonment, and big brother to shackles.  They tell to work the fields in your paper, but to do it in their way.  How can someone create art if the canvas is already there on the paper?  Creativity is a blessing but on this day it is but a memory in my eyes.  I too share sometimes formalist opinions.  How in the world can your critique creativity.  Shakespeare sometimes even wrote in lesser forms of language, a language that isn't proper which contradicts his whole background, which is England.  England, which is the highest degree of what, was proper and what was not.  So in a sense I feel as tho I am but a savage when i write.  I don't write what the completion of the paper is and neither do I savagely.  I am but a slave to what my mind illustrates to me.  So it’s like I have two masters.  The first being my mind and the second being my preceptor. 

Well i am against this religion of cannons that loves to fire upon me.  I respect the literature but I do not feel as thou i have to follow the patterns of a handful of men.  First off these writers never wrote in the same patterns as their predecessors, they had their own patterns that they made up and over time a group of civilians like the "puritans" ran with it and deemed as a religion.  They made these works into cannons by their there obsession with Shakespeare’s work, and told other poets first off, to be creativity but also that you have to follow this pattern or else your work will be deemed unfit for literature.  My friend, this is blasphemous in my eyes, because i am differing to another master and not worshiping the one who is not me? So is it that I myself is selfish or is it that I am just a "atheist" in the literary world? Wasn't it Bosch the won that was cynic?  Cynic meaning a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested point of view, also one of a sect of Greek philosophers, 4th century b.c. who advocated the doctrines that virtue is the only good, that the essence of virtue is self-control, and that surrender to any external influence is beneath human dignity.

Bosch concerned himself with executing the painting - "he must have" and that freed his imagination, and left him unguarded.  By the statement alone i have executed and won my own argument that you cannot control creative because you control me in a sense.  Check mate, like my favorite rapper said what you about to witness is my thoughts, right or wrong, just what I was feeling at the time.

Food for Thought

Here's a thought to ponder on, the all Seeing Eye.  Most would interpret this as some symbolic reference to the Illuminati.  I see it as a representation of being the "average American".  The eye is two eyes to me, which is our normal sight.  Now on the dollar bill this is but one eye, but physically we are blessed with two eyes when really we haven't quite enabled the third eye which is really our second pair of lens hence is the second eye.  Maybe it's an open joke, or maybe a blatant attempt at enlightenment.  Either way if you’re not totally sold on the idea then I’ve seized half the battle already into getting you to rebuttal against a new notion of an idea that is new.  Anyway thou it's just something that you as the reader should really think about and explore for yourself.  Remember every picture has several different perspectives on what the painter is really trying to display.

Barn Burning lecture (looking at it from my prospective)

Barn Burning is a very entertaining story to say the least.  It’s just funny how Ab acts in this short story.  I mean you have to look at him from two prospective; you have to look at it from the view point of Abs.  He is white trash obviously and he has trouble following authority.  He hates the fact that he is of the low class, he has a certain pride to him and shows throughout the story.  Ab is a white man in the low class during the aftermath of slavery and he feels inferior to these other whites that are rich and he is destruct over it.  From Abs point of view he illustrates the expression of pride.  Pride is his key weakness, because it's gets him into trouble.  One example of this is when he destroys Major De Spain’s rug by washing it with lye soap after purposely stepping on the rug with tracks of mud just because he is of higher class.  That is one way of looking at Ab the character, another way to look at him is taking it from most common readers prospective and just deem him a lowlife that just has serious anger issues and is too strung on his own color.  I say that because of his statement about Major De Spain saying, "his house was built off nigger sweat; maybe it isn't white enough to suit him".  This man obviously does not deserve anything that he cries about.  He enlisted in the military and ended up stealing horses and getting shot, so after reading this i was done with even feeling sympathy for a man that almost manipulates his own son to believing in his own practices that are clearly defiant against the law.

Colonel on the other hand shows a lot of promise and is very different from his father.  Colonel is struggling with his moral system along with his father’s way of doing things.  His father is a very vague and broken man.  His only way to express himself is to destroy barns by utterly burning them down.  He's quite the serial arsonist wouldn't you say.  Or maybe I should call him the Robin Hood of white trash.  I mean you got to hand o him the guy is very, very persistent with his work, even if it generates chaos.  Anyway back to Colonel, who is seen as the image of purity, he is the cry for help to me.  He wants to do the right thing but he is always challenged by his father to do the complete opposite of what his heart tells him.  Colonel knows right from wrong but he is confused to take his father’s side even thou he knows what he is doing is wrong or turn against his own blood and do the right and lawful thing.  In the end of the story we see that he chooses to break away from his father and his family and go off the only instinct that he knows, which is good.  He speaks up and tells Major de Spain what his father’s plans were and so ends the story.

"The Heresy of Paraphrase" (Novice take on this subject)

What I get from this piece is that you can't paraphrase poems because by their design.  In the book I get the since that the author is saying that paraphrasing a poem takes away from the beauty of the poem itself by fondling with the pattern.  Mr. Brooks also inquires that poems cannot be judged by the philosophies that were judging the poem on an overall meaning.  Basically stating that a poem cannot be translated but more so it is the statement of the writer, it is what the writer is saying. No art form can fully be interpreted and be critiqued and then distributed and packaged as ok this is the central theme of this writing.  As a writer myself when I write, sometimes i can have multiple meanings in a writing but they all draw back to the overall central theme which is blend between reality and imagination.  So if you ever tried to decipher my writings as just one blunt paraphrase then you would have a big headache on your hands because it's so much meaning in paper that you will never begin to understand if you use this technique as your only instrument to better understand a text.  This is what I got from "The Heresy of Paraphrase: