Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night

The title itself of Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night shows a chief paradox of this poem. Thomas uses "good night" as a symbol for death. What is so good about dying? Other paradoxes appear such as "dark is right," "blinding sight," and"Curse, bless, me now." These paradoxes show the mixed message of the poem that still shows a truth to the poem. Although death is considered to be a bad thing, Thomas makes readers think that it may not be so bad by his calling it that good night. When an old man dies, it puts his soul to rest which is itself a good thing. However, it seems like the author wants one to die with a fight and some honor. The author is speaking to his dying father since Thomas writes, "And you, my father, there on the sad height.". He is saying although  death will bring comfort, his father should not give into the temptation of comfort and fight his own death with dignity. Thomas also compares the different kinds of men and their views on death. Wise men still fight their death because they have no proof of the benefits of death. Good men die with comfort knowing that they have affected others. Wild men are regretful at death of their reckless behavior.Grave men have expected it and are indifferent to death.

That Time of Year

The title, That Time of Year, feeds into the first metaphor of the poem of autumn. It is fairly certain that Shakespeare is talking about autumn when he writes, "When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang." However, the poem is not very light-hearted like some poems about fall. Shakespeare says "Bare ruined choirs" which implies some sort of a negative connotation to fall. The theme of death is not explicitly stated until the middle of the poem when Shakespeare directly says death. Shakespeare also compares death to twilight. The poem talks of the dark night taking over the dying autumn day. Additionally, Shakespeare compares death to a fire. The fire is killed by its own ashes that it produces. Shakespeare describes the ashes as the fire's youth. The fire is like a person's life. It burns bright in its youth with great energy. The fire is not capable of maintaining this energy forever, and is eventually put out by all the ashes it produced. This like how a person's life loses its energy and brightness slowly until they die (yeah that's kind of dark, I know). However, the poem ends  on a sort of good note when Shakespeare says that someone's love will live on much stronger than that person's life.

Crossing the Bar

Throughout Crossing the Bar, Alfred, Lord Tennyson uses many sea metaphors to talk about death. I assume the bar discussed in the poem is a sandbar. This sandbar symbolizes a division between two sides: the area of the bay and the expanse of the ocean. Crossing the sandbar is crossing over to another side like how the saying crossing to the other side is way of saying someone died. The unknown, uncharted expanse of the ocean symbolizes heaven which is unknown to living people. Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes, "And may there be no moaning of the bar." Alfred, Lord Tennyson is saying that he wants a peaceful death with no complaints. Later, Tennyson goes on to say that there should be no sadness when he leaves. This is a little more obvious since Tennyson does not want people to be upset when he dies. Tennyson even continues the sea metaphors when he talks about God by calling him "Pilot." The word Pilot is capitalized to show that he means God because we capitalize God.

The Lottery - foreshadowing

I think it is safe to say that The Lottery had a surprising ending. I got the feeling that the lottery was not a good thing when it says that the men smiled rather than laughed, but I did not know what was bad about it. I thought about the theme of this unit being death, but I thought  that surely they would not kill someone simply because they had an unlucky drawing. I was wrong. However, foreshadowing of the stoning is present in the story. At the beginning, the boys are collecting stones and protecting them from others, and these piles of stones are mentioned again saying that the men stood away from the piles. Old man Warner is adamant about keeping the lottery because he believe it will take them back to prehistoric times if they get rid of it. This is a little ironic because it is barbaric to kill someone like this. Old man Warner says, "Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.'" The true meaning of this saying is unknown to me. I believe there is a symbolic meaning to this saying. Maybe it means that the lottery was used as a pre-harvest ceremony. In any instance, the lottery was a big event that just became a tradition with little meaning to the current citizens.

A Rose for Emily - Point of View

The events of A Rose for Emily are a little hard to piece together because everything happens out of chronological order. This is probably due to the fact that the story is told in first person plural point of view. This point of view creates the effect that the story is told by the entire town. The events of the story happens in the order of the sporadic thoughts of the townspeople as the think of Miss Emily. From what I understand, Miss Emily has a family history of some sort of mental illness (old lady Wyatt). Miss Emily probably has some sort of mental illness as well because she denied her father even died, and she withdrew to her house when Homer disappeared. Additionally, Miss Emily most likely killed Homer with the arsenic then kept his dead body in her house in a locked room with the embroidered silverware and suit she bought for him. The room is described as: "A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal..." The word tomb gives away that there is a dead body in the room. One of the questions at the end says that Faulkner said that A Rose for Emily was a kind of "ghost story." This substantiated a thought I already had going. In the last sentence it says that they found an iron-gray hair on the pillow. The story says that her hair did not start turning that iron-gray color until sometime after Homer disappeared, and it says that the room where they found the body had not been opened in forty years. This makes me wonder: how could Miss Emily's iron-gray hair have gotten there if the room had not been opened in forty years and her hair was not the iron-gray color at the time she killed him?

The Glass Menagerie the end

I have rather mixed emotions about the ending of The Glass Menagerie. 

In the first half of scene seven, Laura and Jim converse pretty easily, just like how it was pretty easy to read this part of the scene. I am surprised Laura is able to step out of her own little world. Then Jim says the perfect thing that disrupts the secluded world of the apartment: "And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems..." Jim spends a majority of his time giving Laura a little pep talk. Amazingly, he seems to be making rapid progress with her. He even gets her to dance. One quick thought I had was whether or not this story is actually Tom's memory. How would Tom have any memory of Laura and Jim's conversation when he was not present? This makes me wonder whether this play may actually be Laura's memory since Laura is present in every scene although she is not a part of every dialogue. This is also a sense of mystery behind what Tom does throughout the story. Maybe, Laura's memory is just being narrated by Tom because he left for the realistic world.

I would have been happy if the play just ended with Laura and Jim kissing. But no, I guess that is too happy of an ending. Williams just had to make everything sad happen all at once. Jim is engaged and Tom abandons his  family to have his adventure. I am glad Tom is at least haunted by his memories of Laura. That's what he deserves. To add to my idea of the play being Laura's memory, the last thing we see of the play is Laura's blowing out the candles.

The Glass Menagerie scene 6 - dramatic irony

Scene six of The Glass Menagerie begins the second part of the play when the gentleman caller arrives. Oh the illusions continue! Amanda makes Laura wear "gay deceivers" because her chest is flat. Amanda just wants to create this illusion of Laura. Dramatic irony is created when Laura learns the gentleman caller's name. Tom had said before the scene started that he went to high school with Jim, and Laura asks Amanda whether Tom went to school with Jim. This is dramatic irony because the reader knows that this is the same Jim, but Amanda and Laura are unsure. Being the reclusive girl that Laura is, she refuses to go to dinner in fear of her world of illusion clashing with the realistic world. Jim immediately brings a realistic feel to the play. Jim dreams of becoming an executive and studying radio engineering. Jim wants to be successful like most everybody else. However, Tom dreams of leaving his family like their father did saying, "I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard!" Pardon my french, well actually Williams' french. I'm pretty sure no one dreams of becoming the bastard son of a bastard, so I think its fair to say Tom's dream is unrealistic.