Coming Together

After finishing my most recent novel last week, I began Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood over the weekend. I have anticipated this novel all year. Since reading the Handmaid's Tale I have read Ms. Atwood's poetry and placed many of her novels on my "to-read" list. With the community reads event quickly approaching, I moved this novel to the beginning of my list and immersed myself in the beautiful literature that Margaret Atwood produces.

The beginning of the book begins with a suicide. It opened with the main character experiencing the death of her sister, Laura. There was little thought from the character about losing a loved one or what her sister's intentions were in this suspicious scenario. Instead, both the character's thoughts and Atwood's selection of detail revolve around the unnamed main character's reputation and suspicions. The only information the reader is given about this character is her ties to her deceased sister. Despite this being our only link to the character, they purposely avoid the subject, focusing on the character's extravagant lifestyle. She references her husband to warn him to write a "statement of grief". 

Margaret Atwood does something unique with the format of her writing. The book opens with a narrative focused on this unnamed character. In the second chapter, the form changes to that of a  newspaper. It is a report on Laura's death, referencing her famous sister. The report itself focuses on Laura's sister without using her name. The main character is referred to as "Mrs. Richard E Griffen", using her husband's name instead of giving her a name. This character overwhelmingly holds the attention of the reader, but Atwood does everything in her power to keep the reader from knowing the identity of the focus of her novel.

The chapter following this introduces the "blind assassin". The chapter is labeled "The Blind Assassin: The hard-boiled egg. It is the dramatic telling of a story within a story that takes place outside of our galaxy. There is a battle for land that is claimed to be sacred by five different tribes. Each claims the land that an ancient battle took place and killed all that were in it. There is a pile of stones, but no lasting memory of what took place or what was before. No tribe knows the origin of the stones or who won the war, but each takes responsibility for holding it sacred and continuing traditions to honor who died there. The story continues in other forms of writing from there, each from different viewpoints and forms of media.

This story telling is a way of not revealing details too quickly. The reader becomes immersed in the feelings of a story and the author is able to withhold detail without boring the reader. The connections are difficult to find, but become clearer as the story continues. The main character is dealing with grief and finding solace inside herself to cope. She cannot focus on the death of her sister or how to grieve because she is forced to focus on her appearance and hide her true feelings. Even the reader is left in the dark of her own identity.

Gatsby: A Character Study

Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby is a man that carries mystery and poise as he moves from one asdaventure to the next. He is above the ordinary, but not quite unreachable. Rumors circle about him and no one is quite sure of his standing in relation to the rest of the world. He is respected and praised for the man he has built himself to be, but there is no way to pin the work that he has done as no one has a clear picture of the beginning. Gatsby presents himself as a man of prestige and value, but has built this life simply to impress a woman who has already lived a fulfilled life without him.
Gatsby is a rich, educated man that spends his days throwing lavish parties and having more guests than he has the oppurtunity to meet. He presents his accomplishments to hundreds of strangers every night on the offchance that one particualr woman will venture out of her small. comfortable corner of the world to come see him, a man she has forgotten existed. Gatsby displays his success for the world rather than focusing on bettering himself and propelling himself forward.
Gatsby is stunted by his love for Daisy. He uses the feelings he has created for her as an excuse to not move forward in life. He ignores advances from women at his parties and denies oppurtunities to keep himself safe in order to save himself for Daisy. He wants to stay near her and be available when she inevitabley calls upon him.This thinking grounds Gatsby directly where he is, keeping him from doing the things that will propell him into his future.
 This stagnant behavior adds to the rumors surrounding Gatsby's name. The question of why Gatsby chose to stay in West Egg and continue to live in this area even once he has outgrown his surrounding breeds rumors and lies about Gatsby's intentions. There must be something grounding him to this specific shore and it is impossible to tell what without the use of fiction.
Gatsby has made a man out of himself without the help of others. He abandons his parents in an act of rebellion and refuses to return home to ask for favors. He becomes a decorated soldier without taking orders from a general and builds a career from nothing but the clothes on his back. He becomes a wealthy man with money to give and spend, but all of this success leaves Gatsby depressed and lonely as he is still chasing and brooding in his biggest failure, the loss of the woman he fell in love with. All of his accomplishments amount to nothing when placed next to his true desires in life, the affection of the woman he gave himself to and devoted his life to. She has married a man she approves of and loves and moved from Gatsby to pursue a life of comfort, while Gatsby lives lavishly and lonely without Daisy to accompany him.
The best moments of Gatsby's life are spent ruining Daisy's. He disrupts her family, including the small child she has birthed and raised. He attempts to displace her from the comfortable lifestyle she has always known to move her into his life and home. He expects her to drop everything to give herself to him. Daisy has built her own life based around Tom and the family she wanted to create with him. Her instability is what appeals to Gatsby. The act of moving her from everything she has known excites Gatsby and propels his pursuit in her. Daisy must lose everything in order to grant Gatsby happiness.

A Burden

New Year 

By Rachel Coye

Listen to the after-work shovels and snow brushes
on my quiet winter street. Nasal congestion. Loose boots.
The whole country is outraged and outspoken and you should be too

because if you’re not, then you’re not doing your part.
People are having a hard time. At work, patients cry
almost every day. I make sure they have tissues;

I get them a glass of water. I say, That’s terrible or That’s hard.
It is hard to be at the hospital, to live in a room that’s not yours
and have people coming to check your blood pressure all the time.

You get bad news, you have medical bills, no sleep. Your pain
exists on a scale from 0 to 10. When I saw the sac on the ultrasound screen,
I whispered, There’s nothing in there. A tiny hollow space. I have a bad habit

of saying I’m sorry when I mean to say something else and when
I cried in front of the nurse I said, I’m sorry, but
I meant to say something that I still don’t have words for.

It’s a soft pain, looking at a toilet full of blood, taking Tylenol
and calling in to work for a personal day. It’s not a special pain,
but I’ve just never felt it before. Tomorrow, I will get up

and do all the things that I’ve been meaning to do. I will put a bra
on. The houses on this street were all built by a man who
died five years after finishing this one. He didn’t have a good reputation.

I am a homeowner, it’s part of the American Dream.
This is not the worst thing that’s ever happened. The nurse
put the Kleenex box in front of me and said, It sucks, it sucks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Illness and disease break down our body and spirit. This sickness isolates us and creates an experience that almost negates the will to continue on. A disease acts as it should in dibilitating the weak and taking over thoughts, actions and function. (ADD MORE) The speaker in New Year by Rachel Coye finds strength to continue into the new year and overcome her illness by remembering her past and her patients
The first half of this poem deatils the speaker's involvement in other's life. It narrates the pain and hardships that her patients must endure from an outside perspective. It focuses on her response to their suffering or the narrative she must create between herself and her patients to understand what they are going through and make their suffering heard. She exists to comfort these people through their illnesses.
The fourth stanza includes a shift from the person helping others to the person requiring assistance. The narrative changes from "That's terrible" to being the person apologizing. The speaker changes from narrating the repetitiveness of a hospital to discussing the disbelief of a tumor growing inside her with little transition between the two. This highlights how large of a change this is to the speaker. Her entire life changes from the boring, repetition that accompanies a day job into a patient fighting for life and battling the end. This quick, almost nonexistant transition emphasizes just how impactful this event was on their life. The focus of the poem also shifts after this stanza to discussing the speaker's life living with the described disease as the patient rather than the carer.
The timeline in this poem is unclear. The speaker spends four stanzas discussing their life as a nurse, healing others and comforting their pain, then three speaking about her battle with this pain and by the end of the poem, we see the beginnings of a recovery. The speaker is growing stronger and setting goals to mark progress and success. This represents the speaker's lifetime. A large portion of it is spent in her career, making a difference in other's lives, until the unthinkable consumes their life. The focus shift represents just how much of the speaker's life is dedicated to battling this disease. The last glimpse into this character's life is spent positively hoping for positive change and healng.
The first stanzas about her patients give light to how much the speaker has given to the sick. She has dedicated her life to caring for them and comforting them through the worst moments in their life. Her patients translate into strength when she finally much face the same fate as these patients. She recognizes how many times they have been hurting and needed her and uses this as a jumping off point to pull herself out of the disease that is taking over. She uses her hospital experience to grow from her illness rather than be consumed by it.
The juxtaposition between the speaker's disease-ridden life and her average, worry-free one is jarring, but effective in allowing the reader to feel proud of the speaker's success. In a few short lines the speaker has grown from blood-stained toilets to being capable of dressing themselves in clothes they want to wear and living in the home they dreamed of inhabiting.
This poem is about overcoming adversity and the power of others in this struggle. It is difficult to survive in this world without the help from others. The speaker's experience in this field gives them the power to overcome their own disease and struggles. Understanding the pain that will come with their illness and knowing that it is surivable is enough to motivate them to want to continue and recover.

Nitpicking

A Fable

BY MATTHEW PRIOR

In Aesop’s tales an honest wretch we find,
Whose years and comforts equally declined;
He in two wives had two domestic ills,
For different age they had, and different wills;
One plucked his black hairs out, and one his gray,
The man for quietness did both obey,
Till all his parish saw his head quite bare,
And thought he wanted brains as well as hair.

The Moral

The parties, henpecked William, are thy wives,
The hairs they pluck are thy prerogatives;
Tories thy person hate, the Whigs thy power,
Though much thou yieldest, still they tug for more,
Till this poor man and thou alike are shown,
He without hair, and thou without a crown.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Prior hides his political views in a beautiful poem focused on conformity. This poem is broken into two sections, one metaphorical and one explaining and analyzing this metaphor, separated by two words, "The Moral". The contrast between the metaphorical and the literal appeals to many different types of people. There is a universality in this poem that includes all readers.  He was not writing for the rich, intelligent class or the poor, illiterate, but rather anyone that could understand even a line of this poem. It was designed to give a message and the expansion on this first stanza produces the desired effect.
The first stanza is a metaphorical response to the way the king has treated his thrown. The author believes that, like a man with two wives, the king is trying to please everyone while only diminishing his own ideals and thoughts. He gives up himself to appease the two people that he is devoted to. The idea of  "wives" implies that these people have power over the man. They are part of the decision-making process in anything that the character does, even his own characteristics. He is trying to please both of these two sides at his own expense. The wives feel as if this man is indebted to them, owing them pieces of himself to please them. In this fight for control, the man who is supposed to be bringing these two sides together ends with nothing.
In the second stanza, Prior does some of the work for his readers by providing an analysis of his own poem. He interprets the meaning and explains his own intentions. He reveals how separated the two parties of his government are and what it is doing to both his king and his country. These groups are taking the pieces of the government that they can get a hold of, each taking different pieces and ideas for their own. This creates a divide and leaves the king without the power he once had. The "hair" of the first stanza represents laws and shifts in power throughout the years. Prior compares it with "a crown" in the last line, but this is a metaphor for the king's power and control over his own country in the wake of these selfish parties.
The format of this poem produces an interesting viewpoint of politics in the 17th century. Prior's deliberate choice in writing the second stanza emphasizes the importance of this political issue to the author. He includes an explanation of his poetry in simple terms to reach as many people as possible. He wants the information contained within his poetry to mean something to those who may not be able to think metaphorically or process this information without the insight that the author provides. Prior wanted to reach the largest audience possible by making his work accessible to anyone who could read English. He separates these two stanza's with the words "The Moral" because the second stanza isn't simply a summary of the stanza before it, but a way of thinking. It is something a person can align themselves with, create ideas based on and build their own viewpoint off of. It is the "moral" because it is not a matter of opinion to prior, but a truth that, once accepted, will create a better, more well-rounded person. Prior believes this is the right way of thinking and accepts less than this opinion as an insult.