REALLY!!!!!!

        So, I went to the Kirkwood Library this past weekend and picked up some books for other projects and such. While there, I saw that they had a whole SAT and AP section. I found two editions on the Princeton Review Cracking the AP English Literature and composition Exam. One of the books was from the year 2011 and the other was the 2013 edition. I picked them up because each one has two complete practice tests. When I got home, I starting flipping through the pages of each and found most of the information Mrs. Healey had already taught us (not much of a shocker there :). However there was one major problem; both books were the same, EXTACTLY WORD FOR WORD! Needless to same, I was not a happy camper. Even the sample questions and the practice tests were the same. I couldn't believe it. So for at least three years and probably more than that, this company has been reprinting the same information with a different cover.

       It may be a good review book but there is always room for improvement. If the test is different every year than the review books should be too.

Once More, The Round by Theodore Roethke

What's greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.

Now I adore my life
With the Bird, the abiding Leaf,
With the Fish, the questing Snail,
And the Eye altering All;
And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake;

And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.

I was so happy when I read this poem. Roethke had hard life and here it looks as if he finally found his peace. Here Roethke writes of his life without stress and tension. He starts of by wondering about the unknown and almost seeing the answers. They get clearer and clearer. The turn in the poem is on line five and it’s not only the turn of the poem, but it seems it is also the shift in Roethke’s life. “Now I adore my life.”

Roethke writes that he finds an eye that sees all. In the Hindu and Buddhist religions, there is a third eye. This is the spiritual eye. When the other two look out, this one looks inside one’s self. It is used to find yourself and peace. Roethke believes he has found his third eye. He no longer feels lost. His questions have been answered and he has found his inner harmony. He understands and accepts that the world changes and will always change but now he has the foundation to move with it.

The tone in this poem, changes slightly from stanza to stanza. The first four lines are filled with seeking, and yearning; chasing the knowledge that he can feel is just so close. The next six lines are joyous in the presence of finally finding solace. He learned what he needed. The last two lines sing of peace and closure. He accepts that the world will continue to move and dance but now he can dance too.

 

The Sloth by Theodore Roethke

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard-

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows

Roethke suffered great loss in his childhood. He lost both his father and uncle. He also lost the greenhouses his father owned. They were the one place he felt at home and at peace. As he grew older he began to feel more and more isolated from other people. He often felt he was missing, or left out of some big secret that made everything make sense.  He went through phases of deep manic depression. It is thought that he wrote “The Sloth” during one of these times, but because he was never diagnosed there is no way to be sure.

“The Sloth” deals with Roethke’s frustration at the slow pace humans move at. If he had been in a manic state he would have felt that everyone else truly was moving slower. In the poem the speaker asked the sloth a question but is never given an answer. The speaker is so maddened by the fact that the sloth won’t answer. He knows the sloth knows and that frustrates him even more because the sloth is such a lazy, slow moving creature.  

Roethke seemed to have felt as if something of himself was missing; as if he needed just one piece of information to make everything clear to him.  He was exasperated by the slowness of humanity but also the inability to find all the answers before too much time passes. There is an inner battle between wanting time to slow down to gain more knowledge but also wanting people to move faster. This concept is literally paralleled by the tension between the sloth and the speaker.

The tone of this poem seems very carefree and loose, but a closer look proves otherwise. The turn in the poem occurs in the last line. Without this line, the whole meaning of the poem would change. This is where Roethke lets himself into the role of the speaker. HE  knows the sloth knows, not the speaker. The poem becomes so much more personal after the last line is read.

 I find it almost heartbreaking. Roethke feels so left out, almost lost. He is so close to the answers only to be turned away by a lazy creature. I feel his life would have been so much less painful had he gotten the medical treatment he needed. But then I wonder, would he have been the amazing poet he was?

The Bat by Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face

 

Roethke wrote “The Bat” in an attempt to make others see that fearing the unknown is wrong. Roethke went through stages of mental health and because of this he was fired from not one but two different teaching positions. The doctors at the time couldn’t diagnosis him. The school’s feared his outbreaks instead of trying to get him help.

People today fear what they don’t understand. I think that is part of the reason this poem hold so much meaning. People will always fear the unknown. The only way to fix this problem is to educate ourselves. Knowledge is the key. Roethke used the image of the bat because some many do believe the stories of “blood sucking creatures”. The true is the bats are mostly harmless and even benefit humans by eating bugs such as mosquitoes.

  Roethke depicts the bat as whimsical, which isn’t a common portrayal of a bat. The end rhymes create a clear line between each statement. He assumed people that there is no need to fear the bat. Roethke created an abstract diction by choosing words like brushes, amiss, and crazy figure. This subconsciously furthers the notion of false or unclear knowledge verses the truth and fact. He didn’t want humans to fear the bat because it is similar to them, just like he didn’t want himself and other mentally ill people to be feared because they are slightly different. Some of the most gifted individuals in our history were once feared because they were “weird”, “odd” or “different”. These words shouldn’t be used as negative connotations of people things or object s we don’t understand

                I personally think, Roethke just wanted people to try to understand the things they fear. You might be shocked to discover the thing you feared is more like you than you thought.

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I instantly loved this poem from the first time I read it. I reminded me of my own dad, not that he drank a lot of whisky or that we trashed the kitchen, but of the tender memory. If a child is lucky and lives in a loving home, they will grow up with a few perfect memories. These are the types of memories that are crystal clear even years later.

This memory was probably made only a few years before Roethke’s father’s death. After reading this poem I got my ideas together and then started to research what others had thought of it. I was shocked to see how many people thought this was a poem about an abusive father. I simple can’t agree with that. I looked into Roethke’s history and found that his father was not abusive. He owned a greenhouse business and worked with his hands all day. The Great Depression had made men tough but not mean. Roethke’s father loved him. I actually found that Roethke’s relationship with his father was on better terms than the one with his mother, which would explain her frown. She was sad that didn’t have the type of relationship with her son that her husband had.

I think most people saw the words: whiskey, death, battered, beat time, and palm cake hard by dirt; and assumed this was an abusive dance but a closer look proved otherwise.  The boy clung like death. Like humans can never escape death, Roethke never wanted his father to leave or die. The choice of “slid” verses “fell”, make the second stanza a pleasant memory verses an abusive one. Many will miss this, but it defines the poem. The pans slid from the shelf. They didn’t fall or crash after being hit or thrown. They slid from the vibration of the two romping around the kitchen. Even the word “romping” brings images of playfulness. The fathers knuckle was battered and his palm caked with dirt because he worked all day in the dirt, providing for his family.

At the end of the poem, the boy is clinging to his father’s shirt never wanting this moment end. I see this night filled with laughter and love, with a child saying “no please, five more minutes” and the father giving in because this has been the best part if his week. I can’t see how people have read this and not seen the care and love in this relationship. As I said in the beginning, this is one of my favorite if not my favorite poem.

After thought!

I challenge everyone who reads this blog to read the poem one more time and think of your perfect memory. Leave a comment if you agree (or disagree) with what I’ve said or if you have a memory like this!

“Fire and Ice” By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice, 5
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

 

So this defiantly is not the longest poem but man does it pack a punch. I originally wasn’t going to write about this because it was so short but it kept popping into my head, especially with all the end of the world talk lately.

I have never really been real big on poetry. I enjoy it but I don’t go home after school a read it for fun. When I read The Road Not Taken and I realized how much I loved that poem, I looked up more of Frost’s poems. I read the Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and After Apple-Picking and Home Burial and although I liked them all, my mind kept being drawn back to Fire and Ice. The title itself invokes so much imagery.

I was taken away by the form of this poem. It seems so simple at first but at the same time is complex and clearly thought out. Each line ends with either a –ire, -ice, or –ate rhyme and contains either four or eight syllables. The lines are written in the seeming natural iambic, but this is not strictly followed through all of the lines. A strong enjambment in line seven is placed there by Frost to enforce a desired effect. (Which will be explained laterJ )

I simply love the say that Frost eludes the truth by putting forth an aphorism and leaving the question unanswered and the trust once again remains ambiguous. I think most of this poem’s effect comes from the contrast between the simple clipped accuracy of the vocabulary and the vague significance of the subject.

However, I have to say, the greatest asset to this poem, its greatest triumph is its form. Throughout its entirety the language remains simple, but the overwhelming, rising anticlimax of the final two lines is lost. These final lines draw their soft-kill power from the form: the rhymes, the juxtaposition of their short length and their hard-hitting punch. The final blow is the enjambment in line seven, which builds the necessary tension needed for the perfect letdown. Frost seamlessly pulls off an offhanded comment about the end of the world, which is one thing, but he accomplishes this feat masterfully by making it poetry.

“The Road Not Taken”  By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

I had never read this poem before now. Now that I have, I realize that many, like myself, have misunderstood it. Most, probably by not reading but simply seeing the title. This poem is not about taking the road less traveled. It is, however, as the title and the poem states, a tale of man who comes to a fork in the road and must choose one way or the other. Both are equally traveled and equally covered with leaves. The speaker chooses one and tells himself that one day he take the other, thought he knows that it is unlikely he ever will have the chance to do so. He states that someday in the future when he is telling this story to others he will say he took the road less traveled, which will add a slight twist and a little drama to this somewhat everyday story.

Forks in roads and paths in woods have been symbols and metaphors of life and lifeline since ancient times. They hold crises and decisions. The fork in this poem is identical on either size, symbolizing the nexus of fate and free will. Because each side is the same, we are free to choose but we don’t know what we are choosing between. Therefore our decision is determine by the culmination choice and chance. I personally love this poem because it does not advise. It doesn’t say “take the left” “take the right” “take the road less traveled”. Like life, the man must decide on his own and the reader never knows which he chooses.

  The title also lead me to think that in the future the man may even regret the decision he made. Not because of the outcome but because of what he may have loss by not taking the other road. This is one of those poems that every person should read and I believe every person will have a different view of it. Many views may be similar but each person has to relate the poem to their own lives and so each view will be, should be, slightly different.

Are We An Island?

          In British Literature last year, as a class we read “No man is an Island” by John Donne. While looking for classic short stories to read for these blogging assignments, I came across this piece and reread it. I realized that I had a whole new look on the meaning behind these words. I couldn’t find the short essay I had written about it last year, but I feel my thoughts on this topic have changed enough for me to write them out. So here I go

I wish the quote “no man is an island” could be accurate for this century, but I think it only accounts for half of our world. I think the world has more good but the bad is louder. The purely good at heart can never be “islands”, because they have God. Anyone who has a loving supportive family also can never be an “island”. Though, if you were to look at the media only, one could easily form the idea that every man is for himself. Newspapers, magazines, TV shows, movies, action news and music, they all shout the evil in the world. The good is hardly ever seen.  How are people supposed to learn how to do good for others if they never see it being done? There are thousands and thousands of amazing people achieving amazing accomplishments each day, but they don’t get put on the cover of the news or shown on the 6 o’clock news.

Personally, I see the quote “no man is an island” as meaning that no one needs or is left to stand alone, but sadly in today’s world people do have to stand alone. Just in the United States, there are so many problems. We boast about being so united, together. We are the United States but are we really. Do each of us really care about the people we pass on the streets or in the grocery store or even in the halls of our schools? I think today’s quote is “see no island, hear no island, speak no island”. How many people walk past a homeless person and see a cold hungry person down on their luck and in need of a helping hand, or do they just see an dirty man who needs a haircut? Do you hear a person being bullies by someone else and really hear what is happening? Can you hear the pain being inflicted on that person by a human being just like them? Are problems like these ever talked about enough and taken seriously by enough people? So many people in today’s world don’t even realize how much they don’t see and hear each day. The world could be so much better if more people were aware of the problems and took time to help improve them.

I do realize that there are many, many people in the world today fighting to make it a better place. I am just saying that to succeed in making the world better, more people need to be aware and to care about what is happening to others around the world. To ensure that no person is ever an island, everyone needs to think and care for others. If every person is caring and working to help others and not just themselves, then in the end everyone will be cared for. Then, and only then, will no one have to stand alone.

 

 

Minimalist or not Minimalist

                I read the short story “In The Place Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel.  I had been trying to figure out what I wanted to write about this story. I finally just decided to write about minimalist. The factors that make up the qualities of the minimalistic fiction piece are fairly straightforward yet deciding if a piece of writing is minimalist is not always easy. Minimalist stick to short words, short sentences and short paragraphs; in this circumstance it leads to a short story. These stories are usually filled with simple, easy to understand vocabulary, with equally simple sentence structures. There is little figurative language, meaning very small amounts of symbolism and allegories. More often than not, there is minimal description of the characters, major and minor, and minimal setting description. The imagery used is short and to the point and any background information is sparse. Only the absolutely necessary background information is shared. Brand names are usually used to quickly describe objects or characterize a person. In most minimalist stories, there is very little action and the stories are often written in the present tense. Most progress with a nihilistic tone and the stories often end with no resolution.

                “In The Place Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel is difficult to place in one category of writing; however , there are many qualities that her story contains that match the style of a minimalist.  For example, the first paragraph of the second section contains both short sentences with simple structures and easy vocabulary. This trend continues throughout the story. The story also provides very little background information. How did the friends meet? What is causing Al to die? Another clue that this story is minimalist is that there is very, very, very little action. The narrator is mostly sitting with Al and talking, she has some minor flashbacks but that’s about all the action seen. The story does have a nihilistic tone throughout the entire piece. The final hint that this is a minimalist story is that fact that there is no resolution.

                There are many different types of minimalist writers. Another minimalist writer is Ann Beattie. I have had a few people tell me she should be on my “to read list”. Her most recent work is titled Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life. Critics called it “narcissistic”, “self-indulgent” and “splendidly tricky”. An excerpt from this story showed short sentences with simple structure and vocabulary. It contained almost no figurative language and only small pieces of character description. Another critic said that "Nothing in Mrs. Nixon is perfectly clear, and that is the source of its power."

So I’m a little wary of writing in first person because I’ve always been told to never write anything for school in first person. It’s like the golden rule for teachers, but I have decided it’s time. This blog will be shorter than my others which could be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. So here it is, my first blog written in first person! Enjoy!

 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is often renowned for Hurston’s distinctive use of language, predominantly her mastery of rural Southern black dialect. She uses a remarkable narrative structure throughout the novel. She splits the presentation of the story between extraordinary literary narration and native dialogue. Her long passages of dialogue celebrate the traditionally rich black voices of Janie’s world. These voices are matchless in American literature and their distinctive vocabulary, grammar and tone mark their individuality.

Janie’s quest to find her voice parallels that of Hurston’s use of language. This novel deals greatly with find one’s voice. Jody suppresses Janie’ speech when he stops her from talking after he was named mayor. I believe her hatred for him comes from him silencing her individuality. On the other hand, Tea Cake welcomes her speech by talking with her and putting each of them on equal terms. Her love for him stems from his respect for her individuality. Tea Cake and Jody are similar in that they both have strong personalities and I believe both loved her but in different ways for different reasons. Tea Cake’s love for her build her up, gave her confidence and the foundation to find her true self, whereas Judy knocked her down, keeping her quiet and constantly in his shadow. She was never alone be her own person with Judy, Tea Cake picked her up and set her on level ground with himself.

Now that she has regained her self-worth, she discovers her ability to define herself through her speech and communication with others. She also finds that silence can be a source of empowerment and she learns to control her voice instead of others being in control. I think this concept is best seen when the both the narrator and Janie are silent, neither revealing why Janie isn’t upset with Tea Cake’s actions at the trail. Throughout this whole novel, Hurston lays a massive amount of emphasis on the control of language as a source of identity and empowerment.

Corruption of Power Through Unchecked Ambition

The play begins with a fleeting appearance of three witches and then jumps to a military camp, where King Duncan of Scotland is informed that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have conquered two separate invading armies. Following their battle with these enemy forces, Macbeth and Banquo come across the witches. The witches prophesize that Macbeth will become the thane of Cawdor and later the King of Scotland. The witches also foretell that Banquo will never be king himself but one day his heir will be and a line of Scottish kings will be created. The witches quickly vanish leaving the two men confused and skeptical. Then some of King Doncan’s men come to show gratitude to the generals for their victories and to inform Macbeth that he has been named to new thane of Cawdor after the last one betrayed the king and allied himself with the enemy.  Macbeth, now interested in the possible truth of the rest of the witches’ prophecy,  goes to King Duncan and they plan to have dinner together that night at Macbeth’s castle, Inverness. Macbeth writes to his wife, Lady Macbeth, and informs her of his good news.

Lady Macbeth is instantly driven by the desire for power. She craves the kingship for her husband and decides that he should murder Duncan to speed up the process. When Macbeth comes home, she convinces him that he must kill the king that night. They plan to get the chamberlains so drunk they won’t be able to remember that night, and then they can be blamed for the murder of the king. That night while Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him to death. The next morning when the King’s death is “discovered”, Macbeth kills the chamberlain; supposedly out of rage at their crime. Macbeth then easily assumes the throne. Doncan’s sons escape to England and Ireland, fearing their deaths could be next.

Macbeth soon remembers the witches’ prophecy about Banquo and he hires hit men to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. Banquo is murdered but Fleance is able to escape. Macbeth is furious because as long as Fleance is alive, Macbeth’s place on the throne is not secure. At a feast that night, Macbeth is visited by Banquo’s ghost. Macbeth babbles fearfully, which later leads to a greater increase in the nobles and subjects’ resistance against him and his rule. Lady Macbeth tries to do damage control, but Macbeth is so frightened that he goes to the witches’ cavern. They tell him to beware of Macduff, a Scottish nobleman who was against Macbeth’s ascension to the throne. However, Macbeth is also told that he cannot be harmed by any man born of a woman and he will be safe until the Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle. Macbeth is relieved and confident that he is secure.  When Macebth learns that Macduff has left for England to join Malcom, he orders Macduff’s castle to be seized and Lady Macduff and her children to be killed.

Macduff is tormented with grief and promises revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan’s son, and Macduff ride to Scotland with their army to challenge Macbeth’s forces. Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth has become hunted with the idea that she has bloodstains on her hands. Right before the arrival of Macbeth’s adversaries, he is informed that his wife, Lady Macbeth, has taken her own life. Macbeth is crushed and sinks into despair. He holds on the certainty in the witches’ prophecies that guaranteed his invincibility that is until he sees English army is shielded with boughs cut from the Birnam Wood. The Birnam Wood has come to the castle and the witches’ predictions are coming true again.

In the battle, Macbeth fights viciously but it’s not enough; he and his army are overcome. On the field Macbeth encounters Macduff, who declares that he is not “of woman born” but was ripped from his mother’s womb (cesarean section). Macbeth realizes he is doomed, but continues to fight until Macduff kills and beheads him.

One of the main themes of Macbeth is the destruction formed when ambition goes unrestricted by moral limitations. It is clearly expressed through the play’s two main characters.  Macbeth is a courageous general who would not normally commit evil deeds; however he deeply craves power and advancement. His wife convinces him to kill Duncan and against his better judgment and he does. Afterwards, he is trapped in guilt and paranoia. Throughout the play, he makes more and more choices in favor of his desire for power but each is farther for any type of moral constriction. At the end of the play, he has descended into an agitated, big-headed madness.    Lady Macbeth, in contrast, goes after her goals with more determination, but she is less adept to withstand the outcomes of her corrupt acts. She is one of Shakespeare’s most forcefully drawn female characters; she provokes her husband ruthlessly to kill Duncan and then urges his to be resilient in the murders aftermath but she is ultimately driven to her own death as a result of Macbeth’s constant bloodshed on her conscience.   In each circumstance, ambition – though helped by the damaging prophecies from the witches – is what motivates the couple toward more and more appalling atrocities. The lesson to be learned here is that once one decides to use violence to promote one’s search for power, it is nearly impossible to stop.                                       

The American Dream

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald gives a behind the scenes look into the lives of a small group of people living the 1920’s. Fitzgerald tells the story through a young man named Nick Carraway. Nick moves to New York in the summer of 1922. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island. This area is populated by the “new rich”, a group who have made their money too recently to have built social connections. These people are prone to to show garish displays of wealth. Nick’s neighbor is a man named Jay Gatsby. He is very mysterious and lives in a huge Gothic mansion, in which every Saturday he throws an extravagant party.

Unlike the other people of West Egg, Nick attended Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a more classy area of Long Island home to the conventional upper class. Nicks goes to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan and her husband, Tom, who was a classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Tom and Daisy introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful young woman.  They begin a romantic relationship. Soon Nick learns from Jordan that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson. She lives in the Valley of Ashes, which is an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this discovery Nick travels to New York with Tom and Myrtle, where Tom keeps an apartment there specifically for the affair.  While there at the apartment, Myrtle begins to taunt tom about Daisy. Tom losses it and breaks her nose.                                                                                                                                

Later into the summer, Nick is invited to one of Gatsby famous parties. When he meets Gatsby, Nick is surprised to see a charming young man with an English accent, who calls everyone “old sport”. Nick learns through Jordan that Gatsby knew Daisy in Louisville and fell deeply in love with her and still is in love with her. Nick is asked by Gatsby to arrange a meeting so he and Daisy can reconnect. After what started to be an awkward reunion, they reestablished their connection and their affair began.

After only a short time, Tom becomes increasingly suspicious of Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship. At a luncheon, Tom realizes that Gatsby loves Daisy. He is deeply outraged even though, he too is involved in an affair of his own.  He forces that whole group to take a drive into New York City. Tom confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza and then tells his wife that Gatsby is a criminal; his self-made fortune having come from  bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities.  Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby but then Tom forces Daisy to drive home with Gatsby, possibly attempting to prove that Gatsby can’t hurt him.

When Tom, Nick and Jordan drive through the valley of ashes on their way home, they discover that Gatsby’s car has hit and killed Myrtle. They rush back to Long Island and Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy had been driving when Myrtle was hit. Gatsby loves Daisy so much; he intends to take to blame. The next day Tom tells George, Myrtle’s husband, that Gatsby was driving the car. George concludes that whoever was driving the car must have been Daisy’s lover. He goes to Gatsby’s house and finds Gatsby in his pool. George fatally shoots Gatsby, and then turns the gun on himself.

Nick holds a small funeral for Gatsby. He then ends his relationship with Jordan and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people who surrounded Gatsby’s life and the repulsion he feels for the emptiness and decay of all morals in the lives of the wealthy. Nick reveals that just as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonestly, so has the American dream been corrupted by the pursuit of wealth. Even though Gatsby was able to transform his dream into reality, the era of dreaming, both Gatsby’s and the American dream, is over.

The American dream was all about discovery, individualism and the pursuit of happiness. However, in this novel, it is corrupted by easy money and the absence of social values. Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy was first ruined by their differing social classes. He then resorts to crime to make enough money to elevate his social standings to impress her.

Americans give meaning to America through their dreams. Similarly, Gatsby infuses Daisy with an idealized perfection that she neither possesses nor really reserves. Gatsby’s dream is dashed by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream is ruined but the unworthiness of its object, which would be the pleasure and money. Gatsby longs to re-create the past- his time with Daisy in Louisville- but just as the 1920s Americans fruitlessly seek an era in which their dreams still have value, he is incapable of doing so. When Gatsby’s dream collapses and he is killed, all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota where American values have not been lost.

A Feminine Perry Smith

            In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is about two men who murder a family in cold blood. Dick Hickock is a stubborn, bombastic, “real masculine type”, smooth talking petty criminal; whereas Perry Smith is sensitive, thoughtful, creative and high intelligent. These two opposing personalities create an image of the stereotypical male and female roles but with two men instead of a man and a woman.

The first scene of Perry is with a guitar and a set of road maps. The guitar appears to function as an image and symbol of femininity. It is later mentioned that Dick feels “totally masculine” when around Perry which is one of the key traits that attracts Dick to Perry. In another scene, the contents of the criminal’s car are examined. Perry’s main possession is the guitar and Dick’s is a twelve gauge pump-action shotgun. Perry is seen as artist, sensitive and intelligent and his possessions mirror this. Dick on the other hand is bombastic and very masculine type of person.  Even their names, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, farther contribute to their opposing gender roles. Dick Hickock's name  is quick on the tongue, has rough edges, and is filled with hard “k” sound and sharp “i”s. Perry Smith is a softer name. Perry’s feminism is most clearly seen in Dick’s constant addressing him as “sugar”, “honey” and “baby”. Perry never takes charge and always what Dick says, even if he does not agree. All of these examples are congruent with the stereotypical female image of that time.

There are many scenes in this novel that indicate that Perry had homosexual tendencies. Perry states that he was “attracted to” Dick because Dick was so “authentically tough” invulnerable and “totally masculine”. This was a huge contrast to Perry himself. Perry, though he had dates several girls, had never married and his behavior towards Dick seems to imply he is attracted to Dick in a more than friendly way. When Perry describes Dick, he uses words that suggest a physical attraction such as “smooth” and “smart”. He repeatedly uses these kinds of words, leading to the conclusion that he admires Dick in a physical or sexual way. At one point, Capote even encourages this idea of Perry’s femininity when he continuously references Perry’s feminine, quiet voice and is loopy and neat handwriting. At another time, Capote describes the detective’s reaction to Perry’s signature: “The ornateness of it, the mannered swoops and swirls, surprised him”. After the murder, when Dick and Perry traveled to Mexico, they stayed at a well-known gay resort. Even if Perry is not completely gay, he is defiantly conflicted. Earlier Mrs. Hickock had made a snap judgment of Perry, of his oily hair and perfume, which alienated him from her household. These traits marked Perry as different and symbolically divorced from the family and the middle-class values that they upheld so carefully.

Perry’s feminine side adds dimension to his character. He is not just a killer. He was smart, artistic and creative. He had a rough childhood and constantly viewed as different when he reached adulthood. If he had been accepted as an individual he may not have turned into a killer. Unlike Dick, he did have a softer side, he cared but no one cared for him. He was alienated by so many people he slowly got to the point where he snapped. His intention was not to kill the Clutters, they were just there when Perry lost it. Perry’s feminine side showed a glimpse of who he would have been, had he not been corrupted by being pushed to the outside by everyone he ever knew.

Perry’s feminine side, though unwelcome in that time, was a better person than Dick’s socially acceptable masculine personality. There were times when he was true to himself and times when he became lost. This is the perfect example of gender roles and the sex of a person. One does not have to parallel the other. If Perry had been free to express his gender role, the murder in cold blood may have never happened.