Sylvia Plath

Oh no, not Sylvia Plath! The single most depressing and mentally ill poet I have ever read. In “The Bee Meeting” she painfully exudes lack of confidence in herself as a person and a poet. She is afraid of everyone, paranoid almost, feeling naked and alone, an outsider to a foreign world. I can’t decide if she is comparing herself to the old queen bee, about to be replaced, or is she is merely an observer. At the end, she gives the impression of death, her own. Who knows.

In “Daddy”, Plath attempts to end her grief over her father’s death by alternately comparing him to God and the devil, describing their relationship as that of Nazi and Jew, called him a vampire, a bastard, etc. She loved him so much, thought he was almost a god, in fact, that she had to “exorcise” him from her life in this poem by symbolically killing him. Just a little bit weird for me, but then we know that Ms. Plath was tragically unique.

"Sonny's Blues"

Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” covered drug addiction in an interesting way. We forget that drugs are not a new problem. It was interesting to see how the narrator took the news of his brother’s arrest and incarceration. It was as though he couldn’t bear to think of it, didn’t want to get involved- maybe he felt guilty. When he sees Sonny again, old memories and emotions come back, and he remembers his mother asking him to take care of Sonny, to look after him, because his father lost a brother who was much like Sonny. The narrator doesn’t think that Sonny has taken a very responsible way of life, being a musician- he doesn’t understand that Sonny expresses himself that way, just as he found his way through teaching. Their failure to understand each other is one of their biggest problems. As Sonny struggles to stay “clean”, his brother accompanies him to a club to hear him play, where he sees Sonny finally shine in the limelight as the talent that he is. He has accepted Sonny for what he is, and will take him as he is.

Randall Jarrell

These poems were just a little depressing weren’t they? I get the sense that Mr. Jarrell did not have much hope in mankind, or in his own future. But then, he only lived what, fifty years, so perhaps he was born with a built-in sense of life-is-temporary-and-meaningless type of complex. Of the selections given, I would have to pick out “Losses” as the one I “liked” the most. In it the narrator, maybe Jarrell, maybe not, describes his experience in war and how he thinks of death. It feels like he is trying to make sense of it, not just the dying, but the dying for reasons he didn’t particularly understand. Men died in training, men died due to accidents, died because of hazards unforeseen; men barely out of training were called into replace those freshly killed, only to die as well, their bodies soon to “lay among the people [they] had killed and never seen”. Those who made it were given medals; those who didn’t were described as “losses” or “casualties”, never dead. It was hard to reconcile with death if it was never called death I suppose.

A Raisin in the Sun

I greatly enjoyed the movie “A Raisin in the Sun”. Nothing against Diddy, but I watched the original with Sidney Poitier, as it is the version I have seen the most bits and pieces of. I don’t know why I never bothered to sit down and actually see it all the way through- it is such a wonderful, rich story. I must confess that as much as I like Sidney Poitier, I didn’t care for Walter Lee, his character. I understand that Walter was a walking, talking example of frustrated manhood, unable to provide for his family, unable to live out his life’s dreams, never realizing the potential he thought he possessed. But Walter took it further than that- when the insurance check came, he let the hopes and dreams of his family take second seat to those that he saw for himself. He wanted to “be a man”, and to him that meant money. To his father, being a man meant taking care of your family and teaching them right from wrong. To Walter, being a man meant making money any way you could, being a “big shot”, making deals. He wasn’t interested in his family’s wishes. He ignored his wife, he didn’t support his sister in her goal to be a doctor, and he spoke disrespectfully to his mother and all who didn’t agree with his plans.

Some of the most interesting things for me were when Mama spoke about the plant, and how it couldn’t grow without sun; when she told everyone she bought the house, we physically see the exhausted Ruth stretch out towards the ceiling, smiling, thinking of how nice it would be to have a house, just like a plant reaching out towards the sun. When Walter was pleading his case for the liquor store, he said that even when people couldn’t pay their rent, they would always have money for liquor, and later we see him in the bar drinking, when Ruth didn’t have fifty cents to give her son. He spoke of what he knew. When the friend ran off with money, Walter and Mama cry and mourn, not just over the money, but because losing the money is like losing the father all over again; the money was their last link to his memory, it was his last gift to them. I liked what Asagai had to say to Beneatha about her being dependent- they were all dependent on the death of the father for that money. No matter what kind of deal Walter fell into, he could never be a “man” until he stood up and did something for himself. He finally did that at the end when he spoke up for his family, and I like to think of them all living as happily as they could, given the times, and that Beneatha became a doctor and went to Nigeria.

Powerhouse

Eudora Welty’s “Powerhouse” certainly seemed to walk a fine line between fascination with the characters and outright racism. Or maybe, it was less racism than a snapshot of what she was seeing, or interpreting from the time. Either way, I find little to take away from this story aside from the incredible detail that went into the character’s appearances and the settings, and or course, the ending of the story. They are all lushly drawn, larger-than-life characters; Powerhouse in particular is aptly named from his description and abilities.
The realities of real life seem to have followed Powerhouse, as he has received a telegram advising him of his wife’s death. He can’t understand why she has jumped to her death, doesn’t know why another man who he knows has signed the message. The more he talks, the more he feels guilty, then upset. His bandmates encourage him to confront the man, until they all realize without saying so that Powerhouse’s wife is probably not dead, but instead has run off with the man. They go back to work, do not mention it again, afraid to mention it again. The band plays and Powerhouse sings, “Somebody loves me, I wonder who!”, and we are left thinking that his words mean more than just words in a song.

Bigger

I don’t know quite what to write about Wright’s “Native Son”. The excerpt we read showed us a young man who was unsure of himself, afraid of the “white world” and the feelings of insecurity it called up. To Bigger, whites were not to be trusted, at least not fully. He did not like Mary and Jan’s attempts to win him over with their Communist talk; he felt that whites who had once put down blacks “held him up now to look at him and be amused”. To be sure, their alcohol-fueled antics did little to convince him of their sincerity. He was angered by their treatment of him. When he had to take a drunken Mary up to her room, he let the closeness and the excitement of forbidden fruit get to his head- he stole a kiss before her mother could come into the room, revealing his mixed emotions. His terror at being caught by the blind woman led to desperate actions, more primitive response than quick thinking. A pillow to smother her sounds accidentally smothered her to death, and Bigger became the stereotype that his employers, and victim, fought so hard to erase.

Steinbeck

John Steinbeck’s “Flight” was a very colorful and altogether very dark story. It was incredibly descriptive, and it painted a picture that is hard to get out of the mind. I can easily see Pepe, fighting nature and man for his life in those hills. I thought it was interesting how his mother thought him lazy, and that she worried that his knife would get him into trouble. The line, “A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed” really stood out. Pepe grew up in one evening, due to an argument that turned into what we can only assume was murder. His youth and laziness disappeared in a flash, his immaturity displayed in the bad decision to use a weapon.
As he “grew” into his “manhood”, or what he and his mother assumed it to be, he took on the tools of his new role- his father’s rifle, coat, and of course, his father’s knife. Riding off on the family horse, he leaves forever, running off before being caught for his crime. Unfortunately for him, his new “manhood” has not adequately prepared him for the rigors of the outdoors, and one by one, he loses the objects that he took with him, the horse, the coat, the gun and the knife. He becomes more primitive, with no food, no water, living like an animal in the wild, being hunted by an unseen foe. With his enemy near, his injuries seriously infected and his body suffering from thirst, he realizes that the end is near- Pepe says his prayers and stands atop the ridge, placing himself in the clear view of the enemy. Pepe was shot, fell down the mountain, and was covered up by a mountainslide. I think in his own way, he accepted his fate “as a man”.