Breath

I experimented with writing poetry for my Intro to Poetry class this semester.  I needed to imitate a specific poetic device, and I chose the way that E. E. Cummings uses long and short lines create dynamics in his poems, and irregular line breaks to cause a jarring effect on the reader.  I chose to also use almost no punctuation, as he does in many of his poems, to create a kind of breathless, run on feeling.  I'll post more explanation and reflection later, but here's the poem. 

Breath

By Jessica Varvil

just

give me

a moment

to catch my

i need to do everything

i can to make sure that nothing is left

too much has been put off now it needs to be done and i don’t have time

crushes and pulls me from every direction what needs to be should have been still may be

time though i don’t know

why i thought there would be check it again

my heart is racing

is that bad

my sister would always

ask me that when we were young

and i would lie and laugh but theres nothing

funny in thinking you’re dying

like i do when i can feel

my lungs pressed in from every side

and struggle to draw it in when i know that

the battle is inside my mind not my body but that doesn’t

make it better just harder

finally a deep long rattling that fills lungs with hope and air but is a desperate war for control

over my own mind and body i wish i’d prepared more maybe if i’d done

more i wouldn’t feel this way now but i didn’t and i can’t

but i can now i can win against it 

i just need to

it’s gone

i have to work again to 

get it back i need it to be calm and 

to finish everything check another item off

the list of never-ending tasks that make up a life

and make the difference between success and failure to

achieve anything to look back and regret every wasted moment and

wonder if your life meant anything at all of if it would have if you had just

been able to finish more do more be more for everyone would they love you more

I took a deep breath.

Where I'm From

We read the original Where I'm From poem in English. Here is my imitation.

I am from the rose-thorn gate to a fantasy land,

From Harry Potter and Green Eggs and Ham.

I am from that secret meadow at the end of the trail

And bunk beds towering high above the floor.

I am from the stone that served as a royal throne

Whose severe features coldly surveyed its subjects.

My baby sister and I at the beach.

I am from Dolly and Minnie Mouse,

From Chase and Claire.

I am from beach kids and athletes,

And from reading a book a day,

From "As you wish" and "inconceivable!"

I am from  "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil."

I am from Vikings and carpenters,

From mac 'n' cheese and 'tuna nooda',

From traveling West in search of new horizons,

And from building your house with your own two hands,

From hiding from flashing lightning, the harbinger of tornadoes.

I am from those moments when the whole world consists of only those beside you.

Death of a Salesman

SPOILER ALERTS FOR DEATH OF A SALESMAN AND THE GREAT GATSBY

I recently caught up on yet another honors paper that I neglected to do while I was swamped with homework after my concussion.  I decided to read (and sparknote) the play "Death of a Salesman".  Reading this play, I had much the same reaction that I did to the Great Gatsby.  For the record, I did like the Great Gatsby, I just was not as enamored with the book as I was led to believe that I would be. In the Great Gatsby, I find myself trying to root on a good over an evil, in the form of Daisy and Gatsby.  When this good ultimately fails, I find myself wanting some sense of emotional closure.  It's not a happy book, but I suppose that it was never meant to be.  The Great Gatsby reflects the 20's in more ways than the style of the times.  The book itself is glamorous on the outside, full of colorful language and exciting details that enthrall the reader.  However, when one gets to the end of the book, they see that the glitter on the exterior was a hollow shell, and the real message of the book is one of the hopelessness of ideals.  Death of a Salesman is essentially the same message, but with a darker passage.  Willy the salesman has tried to fulfill his ideal and hope of being a successful business man and provider for his family, but his mind fractures under the pressure and he goes insane before committing suicide.  All said and done, junior English class has had a remarkably dark feel over the past year.  That, or I have just had a more cynical approach to most of the topics presented.

As a Lutheran, one of the principle things that one is taught to separate is law and gospel, that which condemns and that which saves.  Looking back, I realize that this year has been almost all law, condemning the American Dream, vice, and other naive fantasies, but almost nothing that has a theme of hope.  The early works of T. S. Eliot are much the same, attacking the shallow, vain exterior of life and trying to expose an emptiness within.  Many people say that Eliot lost his edge after converting to Christianity, and that his later works reflect that.  I think that quite the opposite is true.  Eliot, already cynical concerning the shallowness of materialism, found that, instead of a vacuum beneath the shell, there was something deeper.  That breaking through to something deeper, not just a void of nothingness, is what keeps one from despairing in the face of what would seem to be a cruel, vain world of shallow interests.  Keeping that in mind, I tend to be less depressed by books like these.

Though that was a long rabbit trail away from what I was meaning to post, I hope that it was at least a bit sensible.  Here is my paper on Death of a Salesman, as I posit that a warped expectation of himself and others, formed by the American dream, led Willy to commit suicide. (I apologize for the formatting, I have not quite worked everything out)

Death of a Salesman shows how the American dream fractured the mind of one man to the point of despair.  Using this man as an example of what ideals can do to one’s psyche, Americans should learn not to put all of their faith into reaching an ideal such as the American dream, for it is impossible.  A warped expectation of himself and other, formed by the idea of the American dream, destroyed Willy’s life.

Over the course of Willy’s life, he strove to succeed in business the only way that he knew possible - by being well liked.  “Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.”  Willy wanted to be that epitome of a provider for his family, the wealthy, well-liked, well-groomed salesman who makes something of himself.  Unfortunately, this idea of being “well-liked” is comparatively shallow when compared to actual love.

Willy’s wife, Linda, continually sees through Willy’s lies and self-delusion, but still stands by him steadfastly.  She cares for him and for her family even Willy isn’t a good father.  Unfortunately, Willy is forever striving for being “well-liked” and being helped ahead into his business.  This is why Willy has his affair with the woman, who doesn’t love him, but likes him and pushes him forward in business.  He is enamored with the fact that “she picked him”.  The family component of the American dream is overridden by Willy’s dreams of success and wealth.

Throughout the play, various instances hint that Willy’s true passions lie not in being a salesman, but in working with his own hands.  You can see this in his lament at the loss of space in his neighborhood when he says “The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard. They should’ve had a law against apartment houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swing between them?”.  Even then he wishes he was not a part of the urban life that he had chosen.

Willy also wishes that he had gone to Alaska with his brother Ben, saying to his wife, “God! Why didn’t I go to Alaska with my brother Ben that time! Ben! That man was a genius, that man was success incarnate! What a mistake! He begged me to go.”  Ben found fortune working with his hands when he found a diamond mine, although Willy fails to see that this is a stroke of luck and not a product of Ben’s work.

Even when Willy is talking to his delusion of his dead brother, he tries to convince Ben that he goes hunting saying, “Oh, sure, there’s snakes and rabbits and—that’s why I moved out here. Why, Biff can fell any one of these trees in no time! Boys! Go right over to where they’re building the apartment house and get some sand. We’re gonna rebuild the entire front stoop right now! Watch this, Ben!”  At one time in America, Ben would have been considered the ideal of a pioneer, just what a man should be, but now the paradigm had shifted to a new ideal, the salesman.  Willy even stops his son Biff, who is much like Willy, from going out west and working on a farm.

Happy takes after Willy too, but in the way that he lies to others about his status.  Willy is constantly inflating his commission to his wife, even though she knows it is a lie, and even turns down Charlie’s offer of a steady job because of his own pride.  Willy even lies to his boss in a desperate attempt to retain his job saying, “In 1928 I had a big year. I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions”.

The ideal that Willy was so desperately trying to live up to forced him to lie to others and to himself until he eventually could not tell the difference between his lies and reality.  He fantasizes about his dead brother, who had abandoned him like his father, and tries to live in a past that he imagines as so much better.  Willy cannot cope with the fact that he has failed at every turn to live up to the standard that he has set himself.  Though the American dream professes truth, Willy is so obsessed with his image that he lives in a world of lies and deceit.  At the end of the play, Biff realizes this and says “I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been. We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years.”

All of these factors led to Willy not being able to handle the state of reality and ultimately despairing and committing suicide.  If a society places all of it’s hope in being able to achieve success based on how hard they work and material good, it will always end up coming to despair.  Humans cannot achieve true happiness from gaining possessions and being “well-liked”, as Willy so desperately wanted to be.  In Death of a Salesman, the American dream proves to be a shallow, unreachable ideal that the ordinary “dime a dozen” man can never fulfil.  This perverted sense of an unreachable standard is what ultimately kills Willy.

Sirens of Titan

Now, I know that most people go into English and dread having to read anything by Kurt Vonnegut, which is perfectly understandable, but I have found that I actually appreciate his books very much.  When assigned an honors paper on Slaughterhouse Five, I chose to read another book by Vonnegut, rather than avoiding him.  I'm not sure if blogs are supposed to have a common theme, but my view is that they can be about whatever the heck I want to write about, especially since I'm pretty sure that no one else will ever be reading this unless I happen to become famous.  If that happens, people will be able to write biographies about me and put in that I once had a poorly organized, spontaneous blog when I was sixteen.  That being said, here is my view of how Sirens of Titan showed Kurt Vonnegut's internal struggle to find meaning in life.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the fascinating, controversial writers of modern history.  His works strike poignantly at many of the questions that every person asks themselves at one point or another.  As one can see by looking at Kurt Vonnegut’s life, he struggled with the basic questions of life, such as why he should continue to go on living.  In Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut shows several characters who struggle with the same questions, and through them shows what he believed to be the ways that people deal with them.

The character of Boaz has the closest thing to a redemption story as anyone in the book.  When the reader first meets Boaz, he is a commander of the Martian army, torturing his fellow soldiers through the antennae in their heads.  Once he crash lands on Mercury, however, he has a change of heart.  While on Mercury, he befriends small creatures called harmoniums that live on sounds.  He finds great joy in playing music for them and making them happy.  One of the saddest passages is from Boaz’s point of view when he forgets to keep watch on the harmoniums, and hundreds of them die because they absorb too much music.

Boaz finds that life needs some sort of purpose, and this purpose he finds through the harmoniums.  When Unk, who is actually Malachi Constant, tries to convince Boaz to come back to Earth with him, Boaz refuses saying, “I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.”  The sense of belonging is enough to keep Boaz on Mercury for the rest of his life.

A recurring item in Vonnegut’s books is the planet Tralfamadore.  In Siren’s of Titan, one is introduced to the character of Salo, a robot from Tralfamadore with a mission.  He was sent from Tralfamadore with a message to another civilization on the other side of the universe, but his ship broke down on the journey, stranding him on the moon Titan.  He was sworn never to open the message, and he waits patiently for thousands of years as a replacement part for his ship is sent all the way from Tralfamadore.

A consequence of these Tralfamadorians is the manipulation of Earth.  Vonnegut states that almost all of the great events or feats in Earth’s history were manipulated by the Tralfamadorians to send brief, encouraging messages to Salo on Titan.  The time-traveler Rumford asks Salo to open the message for him just before he disappears into space.  Salo, against his programming, decides to open the message and read it.  The message contains only a single dot, which, in his language, means “greetings”.

Salo, angry that his entire life has now proved to be seemingly pointless, decides to disassemble himself.  The quote, “When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everyone. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much” shows that Vonnegut doesn’t think very highly of how life ends up working out.  Having seen a war, Vonnegut has seen the very worst side of humanity.  Ending up old and alone, Vonnegut even tried and failed to take his own life, obviously ascribing to the thought that nothing could help anyone.

Malachi Constant is the main character of Siren’s of Titan.  Much like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, Malachi has very little choice of what is to happen throughout his life.  “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”  These accidents lead Malachi to Mars, where he fathers a child, is brainwashed into an army, unknowingly kill his best and only friend, and is sent away to Mercury by Rumford.  Malachi has almost no choice in any of these matters, though he tries his hardest to avoid every prophecy spoken to him.

After he is sent off of Earth as a scapegoat for Rumford’s religion, Malachi ends up on Titan with his son and the woman who he was mated with on Mars.  There, they all struggle with how to continue living without the usual motivations of a society.  Their son, Chrono, decides to live with the giant blue birds that live on Titan.  Though Malachi and Beatrice, the mother of his child, initially cannot stand each other, they gradually grow to cherish each other.  Once Beatrice dies, Malachi puts the disassembled Salo back together to take him to Earth.

Unfortunately, once on Earth, Malachi dies of hypothermia.  Salo, trying to ease Malachi’s passing, hypnotizes him and makes him believe that he has been reunited at last with his best friend that he killed on Mars.  The quote “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” sums up the way Malachi chose to keep living.  Even though his life had been manipulated by others, he chose to love until his dying day.

The choices of these three characters shows the struggle that Vonnegut had within himself.  As mentioned previously, Vonnegut had at one time chosen to end his own life, but that is not the only way that he chose.  When he was a younger man, he raised his nieces after his sister died, an act of selfless love.  Perhaps the thought that kept Vonnegut alive to die a natural death was one of love and home, the same things that sustained Malachi and Boaz.  For, if there is one thing that could help someone while they’re “having a perfectly lousy time of it”, it would be love.