Romance

Romance, who loves to nod and sing With drowsy head and folded wing Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been—most familiar bird— Taught me my alphabet to say, To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child—with a most knowing eye. Of late, eternal condor years So shake the very Heaven on high With tumult as they thunder by, I have no time for idle cares Through gazing on the unquiet sky; And when an hour with calmer wings Its down upon my spirit flings, That little time with lyre and rhyme To while away—forbidden things— My heart would feel to be a crime Unless it trembled with the strings. Edgar Allen Poe's "Romance" contains vivid imagery that is illustrated through the first few lines which reflect some of Poe's famous horror tendencies that is characteristic of his work. However, "Romance" is very insightful and reflective at life--it constantly assesses its past as in the first verse Poe directs the reader towards an awareness about youth and childhood years.Moreover, the first verse illustrates how the child develops into an adult as he gradually matures--"While in the wild wood I did lie,/ A child-with a most knowing eye." This therefore illustrates how the child gains that insight that is only suggestive of higher-order thinking in an adult's mind. In the second stanza of the poem, the child has now officially entered adulthood. He seems displeased and the poem sets of a bitter tone to reflect the child's attitude--"I have no time for idle cares/ Through grazing on the unquiet sky." By suggesting that the child has no time for recreational activities or matters of 'unimportance' such as thoughtlessly viewing the sky that nearly seems disturbing to the adult suggests that the child has become aware of the pessimism that defines adulthood since usually children live in an encased protective mental barrier that prevents them from viewing reality from the lens of an adult's acumen and insight. Thus the child realizes how reality is harsh and disappointing in the world as he begins to realize that the forces around him are acting against him and indifferent to his needs. The threatening "late, eternal Condor years" also suggests that the child after transitioning into his adulthood is now entering into the later years of his life and fast approaching death, rather than leaning more towards the youth and excitement hallmark of more young, vibrant years. Other latent imagery hidden within "Romance" is visible when Poe describes "lyre and rhyme/ To while away--forbidden things!" These last two lines reflect the condition of Poe's heart which seems to be in an unstable condition. By using crime as an adjective, Poe illustrates the guilty nature of his heart that seems to be pulling at him through the description of strings. Moreover, there is also a sense of fright for his heart "trembles" suggesting that he is afraid of something that most likely has to do with age. The poem structure also adds to "Romance" as it uses rhyming couplets in its introductions while alternating rhyme schemes during the rest of the poem. The shift in rhyme structure and the use of hyphens are meant to contrast the imagery and the effects of realism that is associated with maturation from childhood to adulthood as well as the reflective and agitated feelings that often accompany the uncertainties that face us while developing throughout our later years in pastime. In all, Poe is shifting from the theme of romance and reality that often obfuscated as one struggles to make sense of emerging into adulthood from childhood. The first stanza illustrates how like the bird, "paroquet" there is a romance which characterizes his writing style in his youth whereas in the second stanza the speaker is unable to view the beautiful that becomes "forbidden things". Yet there are times when the author reflects and feels satisfaction and happiness which illustrates how despite one's inability to go back into gleeful, childhood times one can take pleasure in relishing his past--"And when an hour with calmer wings/ Its down upon my spirit flings/ That little time with lyre and rhyme/ To while away-forbidden things."

Grendel and Pluto's Allegory of the Cave

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave talks about how there humans are chained by their necks and shackled around their limbs so that they are trapped deep inside the cave of a physical world. These people have been fettered since they were born so their entire reality is simply whatever they can see in front of them since the chains around their necks prevent them from moving their heads. When they see straight the only thing they see in front of them are the shadows that are casted against the background of a fire that roars behind them. These shadows become their reality. However, one day a prisoner is unshackled and suddenly he is taken from outside the cave: all at once he is enlightened due to his exposure. Yet he is blinded at first since he is unable to look at the sun. First he looks at the shadows, then the reflection, and finally the sun itself, but when he is led back to the cave he is blinded once again because he is unable to see anything since his eyes have adjusted to the reality outside of the cave. He is mocked by his fellow peers when he is unable to see the shadows in front of him even though he knows that those aren’t really shadows and when he tries to explain he is ridiculed. Grendel’s journey in chapter two resembles the Allegory of the Cave since he leaves the “cave of ignorance” and enters the “world of sunlight.” This can be illustrated as Grendel “discovered the sunken door… came up, for the first time, to moonlight.” As he leaves his mother and the underground cave, he adventures up from the pool of “fire-snakes” and is exposed to the moonlight though later on, however, he “came out again, inevitably” and faced the sunlight. From there he begins to experiment with his new world and gain a profound sense of knowledge when he realizes the new parallels of reality that differed from those that he knows in his mother’s cave. Grendel views life in his mother’s cave as “the indifferent, burning eyes of the strangers…” yet when he is in the human world his encounters with the bull, the tree, and men he discovers how his mother is unable to hear in addition to how the bull “fought by instinct…blind mechanism ages old.” This illustrates how Grendel has arrived at his disgust for the unthinking or those who are inexpressible. Yet he also realizes how those who are thinking are dangerous—“suddenly I knew I was dealing with no dull mechanical bull but with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things I’d ever met…” When, however, he returns to his mother’s den is life is completely altered just like the prisoner from the Allegory of the Cave, suddenly there is no turning back. In addition to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave the zodiac symbol for chapter two of Grendel is Taurus the bull who illustrates the philosophy of Solipsism that explains how the only thing that anyone can be certain of is one’s self and self-perceptions. This reflects exactly what Grendel experiences after he has been enlightened by the outside world past his mother’s cave—“The world is all pointless accident…I exist, nothing else.”

Grendel

In Beowulf, Grendel is represented as the blood-hungry antagonist who is responsible for havoc in Heorot. He’s defeated by the epic hero Beowulf in a clash that results in brute force and strength. His death is lauded by everyone, but when reading Grendel, the reader is forced to empathize with Grendel from another perspective. Although Grendel is responsible for all the deaths of the thanes in Heorot for twelve years, one cannot help but understand Grendel’s wrath and anger for Grendel. Grendel is continually frustrated at the world and full of rage due to the lack of answers for the world’s mysteries. He views the dull-witted ram as a direct example of stupid creatures that exist but are unable to think, simply operating like mechanical creatures and existing with a mind like a blank slate, filled with no thoughts or emotions. Yet, Grendel contrasts himself with the ram and emphasizes how he’s thinking, how he’s filled with complicated emotions. Moreover, Grendel is also derisive in tone towards the calf who he’s afraid will kill him by the blow of his head, but Grendel then realizes that the ram is unable to injure him not because he’s struck too low, but because “he would always strike too low: he fought by instinct, blind mechanism ages old. He’d have fought the same way against a n earthquake or an eagle. (21)”Yet Grendel is not self-conceited—“Not that I fool myself with thoughts that I’m more noble (14)—he knows the foul deeds that he’s committed, the numerous murders his hands are stained with, but he’s also similar in many aspects to Frankenstein’s creation. Both Grendel and Frankenstein are born putrefied, unholy, desecrated. They are offered no chance of redemption while their fates are sealed by nature’s grasp. Fate is outside of the control of both creatures and thus they accept their roles. Yet the difference that lies between Grendel and Frankenstein is the characteristic indifference to mindless natural forces in one and the romanticism of heightened sensations that results from nature in the other. Grendel views the world as mindless, since he views it as unthinking, but also empty—“”the meaningless objectness of the world, the universal bruteness …the world is all a pointless accident (28)”he yells to the sky but it pays him no attention and he realizes that the Earth will not respond to him. Yet the Creation views nature as a comforting force for he flees to the Alps in order to escape and find refuge from humankind. Another apparent difference in how Grendel is a carnivore whereas Frankenstein’s Creation is a vegetarian even though both are responsible for the deaths of several persons, Grendel actually eats the blood and flesh of humankind perhaps this is due to the fact that he realizes humanity is hazardous because he was dealing “with thinking creatures, pattern makers, the most dangerous things I’d ever met. (27)” This represents how both the Creation and Grendel viewed humanity as a threat because of their ability to reason for themselves and as a result, kill forms of dangers that were embodied in Grendel and the Creation.

Eliot and Anderson

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock and Winesburg, Ohio both illustrate the themes of isolation, alienation, and miscommunication. Both pieces of literature also feature a sense of fragmentation in the structure of their work in addition to conveying the expressionist, dreamlike modernist feelings at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, there is a direct relationship between teller and listener in both of these pieces. Winesburg is composes of 22 short stories with “The Book of Grotesques” serving as its introduction. Each story ties to the others as the reader learns of the struggles that a specific character in each story must overcome. Winesburg is considered a piece of Modernist literature because although everything in the novel occurs in one setting, the characters each have their own markedly different stories. A sense of fragmentation though paradoxically connects all of the grotesques in the novel because each is stuck in a static, isolationist state that parallels the short, split sections of the novel so that each character is forced to tell his or her individual story. Likewise, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock can also be divided into several sections that convey the speaker’s difficulty in voicing his feelings and expressions. Line 60 to 61 state, “Then how should I begin/ To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?” These phrases illustrate the thick-end of the handle, the unused and remaining portion that the speaker is unable to verbalize and communicate. Such difficulty of expression also mirrors in “Paper Pills” of Winesburg, Ohio as Dr. Reefy writes his thoughts on slips of paper that are never heard by the tall, dark girl who dies. However, this evokes another parallel between both works, for both are addressing women and seem to be searching for some sort of understanding in the women. Yet both pieces also refer to abandonment—In Winesburg, Ohio the twisted apples are unpicked and fallen on the ground, but they are the sweetest and most sensational. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock there is a sense of abandonment, but also attachment for what one can’t return to. In lines 120 through 124 it is written, “I grow old…/I grow old…/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled./ Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?/ I shall wear white flannel trousers…” In these lines, the speaker tone conveys a sense of nostalgia because he longs to return back to youth even though he is realistically are that he cannot return. By rolling the bottom of his trousers, he reverts back to a youthful ‘trend.’ When the speaker asks if he ought to eat the peach, he questions his innocence his youth because of the connotation of fruit not only with fertility but of young age, ripe and lively. In lines 127 and 128 it reads, “Combing the white hair of the waves blown black/ When the wind blows the water white and black,” the speaker characterizes his old age, by personifying the waves to illustrate the gradual peppering of his hair and the neutral, monochromatic colors of white and black to illustrate how old he is. These colors are then juxtaposed with the mermaids in the second to last line, “By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown.” The red and brown colors are associated with the connotations of youth and animation, while mermaids are evoked because they are also active and young. Through these inferences, it is likely that the speaker feels a sense of abandonment because he is no longer young. Likewise there is also a sense of abandonment in modern society that reveres following World War I. Although Anderson, himself, grew up in a small rural town, he alludes to the modernizing America that was arising. As a result, a major theme in Winesburg concerns forsaking dreams in order to face reality and development through growth, maturation, and relinquishing childlike naiveté.