I’ve always loved English courses. Ever since elementary school, I loved to read and write, and then in High School, when I found out English could involve more than just reading and writing, but literary analysis as well, I was a bit resistant at first, but eventually learned to enjoy this aspect of English classes as well. Now, looking back on this first semester of my College experience, and my experience in English 203 in particular, I feel as if I’ve gone through this process of learning about analysis all over again, this time with “meta” analysis. Continue reading “Dissecting from a Distance: Final Reflection Blog Post”
Extra Credit Blog Post 2: Stream Of Consciousness in song
In our discussion of the book Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, we talked at length about a type of narrative structure/technique known as stream of consciousness. This technique is when we are given a look into a character’s mind and hear their thoughts as they’re occurring. In Mrs. Dalloway, this takes place through a third person perspective, with an outside narrator telling readers the thoughts of the character the story is following at the time, but this is not the only way stream of consciousness can be used. In the song “Climbing Uphill” from the musical The Last Five Years, Stream of Consciousness is used in a first person perspective both to give the audience insight into the character’s thoughts, feelings, and insecurities during the song, but also as a way to inject humor into it. The song “Climbing Uphill”(Link here) is sung by and about a character named Kathy, an aspiring actress who’s trying and currently failing to make it big, and becomes fed up with the typical audition process along the way. This brings out some major insecurities in Kathy, from feeling insecure in her relationship with a young successful author named Jamie, to feeling like her own career will never be equal to that of her boyfriend. The use of stream of consciousness become particularly apparent roughly half way into the song, around the one minute and forty second mark, when we hear Kathy start her audition song and then immediately switch to an inner monologue of all the thoughts going through her head one after the other. This technique is particularly effective as it both eliminates what would be an otherwise repetitive verse of a song Kathy has already sung in this musical, and gives the audience a glimpse into the Kathy’s innermost thoughts, feelings, and insecurities, as well as providing a bit of humor from some of her unfiltered thoughts. In fact, to this day when I think of the stream of consciousness technique, this is the first example that comes to mind. My hope is after listening to the song and seeing the context, it will be your go-to example as well.
Extra Credit Blog Post: Wonders of the Younger
During our time discussing Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories, we’ve talked at length about the sort of whimsy and magic that makes Wonderland special, and while it took me a few days to make the connection, soon after we finished the Alice unit, I realized that one of my favorite songs, Wonders of the Younger by the Plain White Tee’s, heavily draws up this theme of childhood whimsy and wonder. I will attempt to insert the youtube link to this song here, but I’m not great with technology, so I apologize if the link is for whatever reason unavailable. What I find particularly interesting about Wonders of the Younger as it relates to Wonderland, is that both seem to view childhood as a special time of your life where the line between fantasy and reality is blurred to the point of non existence. Alice, as a child is able to visit Wonderland, a world characterized by its fantasy elements, like talking animals and food that can make you change size, and comprehend this and adapt with only mild confusion, because her youth helps her to accept the fantastical elements of Wonderland as fact much easier than a grown adult would. Whereas, in Wonders of the Younger, much of the song is about fictional, make-believe things that are described as if they’re real, because as a child, they are. An example of this is the line “Werewolves and Vampires are out for the kill, if none of them get you the Boogieman will.” In this line alone, three fictional fantasy characters are described as if they were indisputably real, because as stated earlier, to a child, they are. The way both the Alice stories and Wonders of the Younger, play with the idea of children’s ability to wholeheartedly accept and believe in the fantastical, otherwise known as their sense of wonder, is indicative of what seems to be a universal feeling of youth as inherently special.
Tommy Castronova second blog post
The passage I’ve chosen from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is as follows:
“‘I’m sure I’m not Ada,’ she said, ‘for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn’t signify: let’s try Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome—no, that’s all wrong, I’m certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! I’ll try and say “How doth the little—“’ and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do:—
‘How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
‘How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!’
‘I’m sure those are not the right words,’ said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, ‘I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I’ve made up my mind about it; if I’m Mabel, I’ll stay down here! It’ll be no use their putting their heads down and saying “Come up again, dear!” I shall only look up and say “Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else”—but, oh dear!’ cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, ‘I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!’
This passage raises a rather interesting question, particularly toward the end. Can our concept of identity possibly stay the same from social situations to isolation? Or, perhaps more simply, does our concept of identity change when we’re totally alone?
To understand this question, we must first examine what Carroll does to evoke this question from the passage. This question mostly comes to be from the ending of the passage, where Alice laments about how tired she is of being alone. It seems that a part of her confusion as to who she is (as she’s constantly trying to figure out whether she is herself, or someone else, in the case of this passage, Mabel) comes from her own feelings of isolation in Wonderland. Even as she is surrounded by bizarre and often whimsical creatures, she still feels totally alone, as she reveals to us in this passage. It seems to be this feeling of being alone that makes her unsure of her identity. What I find particularly interesting about this is that, despite how unsure Alice is in her own identity, she seems quite sure in her feelings and desires. She is so overwhelmed with loneliness that she bursts into tears as she announces to the world how deeply she wishes someone from her home would appear in Wonderland alongside her.
The passage seems to toy with this question almost before it even arises. In the beginning of the passage, Alice lists off friends of hers by defining characteristics that she sees as their identifying characteristics. To Alice, the core of Mabel’s identity is her stupidity, but if Mabel was in isolation, and had nobody around to point out how intellectually inferior she is, would stupidity still be key to her identity? Additionally if Ada, the first girl Alice mentions, decided to change her hair style so that it no longer “goes in such long ringlets” would she, to Alice at least, cease to be Ada? The passage seems to toy with the idea of social versus individual identity before the passage even raises the big questions of “Is Alice feeling lonely because she’s questioning who she is, or is she questioning who she is because she’s finally alone?” and “Has Alice’s identity changed now that she’s away from the constant influence of her society?”
While the passage doesn’t seem to say for certain how this question should be answered, it does give us some hints as to how Alice tries to answer it. To Alice at least, people in her society are defined by one or two simple traits that sets them apart from others, and that’s it. But in the world of wonderland, everyone is so drastically different with such extreme personalities that their identities cannot be boiled down to one or two traits that deviate from the norm, as almost all the traits of every character in wonderland deviate from what’s thought to be normal in Alice’s society.
In short, the passage I’ve selected both introduces and toys with the question of whether or not our individual identity is the same identity we have in social settings.
Thorough’s abstract reflection on Solitude
Disclaimer: I apologize but I am technologically inept and couldn’t figure out how to comment on digital thorough for the life of me.
Quite possibly one of the most fascinating bits of Walden that fits our criteria for moving up a level of abstraction occurs in Solitude, passage 5b, where Thorough begins by reflecting on the experience of having been asked by many men if he feels lonely all by himself in the woods, as they most certainly believe they would. Continue reading “Thorough’s abstract reflection on Solitude”