Love Poems?

The poetry of Anne Sexton is considered by some to be love poetry. I'm not quite sure how I feel about labeling the poems as love poems. While themes of love are prevalent in her work, the fairy tale endings of romantic love poetry just are not present. The author's individual experiences are certainly pointedly included in the work. 

In Sexton's work, it seems as if the author is connecting her poetry to her own life experience. Sexton's poem "Briar Rose" especially stood out to me. It seems that the princess got her prince in the end, but the experience and the end result were not what she was expecting. The insomnia experienced by the princess can be explained by many things, but her father may be the primary reason. She says, "It's not the prince at all, but my father; drunkenly bent over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me; like some sleeping jellyfish." (Sexton 112) As an author with a history of sexual abuse, this part of her version of the tale of sleeping beauty makes sense. While the princess in "Briar Rose" may wake up and get her prince like the princess in "Sleeping Beauty," this princess certainly does not emerge from her experiences undamaged.

I also really connected with Sexton's poem about Rumpelstiltskin. The fairy tale was always one of my favorites growing up. I really enjoy seeing fairy tales from my childhood told from different perspectives. Instead of seeing Rumpelstiltskin as an actual small man, she sees him as a doppelganger. This hidden part of an individual can often be the dark side of someone. In her introduction to the poem, Sexton writes:


"I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
No. I am not the law in your mind,
the grandfather of watchfulness.
I am the law of your members,
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware . . . Beware . . ."

We all must be afraid of the dark side of us coming out to play. Part of growing up is learning how to manage this darker side.

Telling the fairy tale from a different perspective enables Sexton to show this darker side of the story. Fractured fairy tales in general give a new perspective to the traditional fairy tale. Emma Donoghue is another writer who gives a unique perspective to old fairy tales. Her book Kissing The Witch takes the original fairy tales, focuses them on a random object from the story, and then tells the story from the perspective of usually the typical "villain." 


These different perspectives also give a different side of the usual love story. The princess may get her princess, but is she always happy? Not necessarily. She may be truly damaged by her experience. Or she could not be the real princess at all, but a talented imposter.


Let's learn more princess lessons from The Second City Network:

These two princesses have even more life lessons for young girls.

Gender Roles in Stephen King's The Shining

Stephen King's The Shining provides an interesting study of gender roles. The husband and wife, Jack and Wendy, each exhibit different problems with their own gender. Jack fails at being a traditional man, while Wendy shows us both a weak and strong woman. Danny's unique gift makes him an interesting character to look at as well.

Jack Torrance is a failed writer and schoolteacher. His alcoholism creates situations in which he ultimately will always fail. He has published works in the past, but since he began drinking heavily has failed to finish anything. His writer's block is keeping anything from being produced. His alcohol abuse led to him physically injuring a student, which ultimate led to his termination from the teaching position at a prep school. He failed at teaching students, as the student he injured was angry at him for the way he handled a school situation.

Jack also fails as a provider and a father. When he loses his job, Jack loses his way to provide for his family. Because he loses the teaching job, he is forced to move his family from their comfortable home and eventually into the hotel. Early in the story it is revealed that Jack has broken Danny's arm in the past. This abuse of his son occurs while under the influence, but alcohol is no excuse for injuring a child. Both of these failures, as well as his failures as schoolteacher reflect poorly on Jack as a man. His failures make him feel the need to constantly prove his manhood.

Wendy Torrance begins the story as a complex character. While she does not have the strength to leave her abusive husband, she stays as a way to protect her son. Her strength begins to show when she is actually in the hotel. She manages to knock Jack out and drag him into the freezer, locking him in. However, when she is being attacked, she hides behind the door and screams her lungs off, not actually using the knife she is holding. Not quite effective. Wendy, while having her weak moments, overall is a strong character, determined to get her and her son out of the hotel alive.

Danny's "shine" makes him extremely difficult for the hotel to manipulate. His special talents made him mature faster than most children his age. He loses his innocence too early for a normal child. His "shine" also makes it hard for him to interact with children his own age. He ends up spending a lot of time with his mother, especially after the move to Colorado.

All of the main characters in Stephen King's The Shining are gender messes. They aren't quite sure where they fit into their gender role or whether they should even subscribe to their assigned gender role. Wendy floats between being a strong mother and a weak woman. Jack fails entirely at being a "man" and gives himself over to alcoholism and the influence of the hotel.

And now I end with this:

All you need to know about The Shining in 30 seconds. With bunnies.

Poe's The Black Cat

Questions of morality, sanity and remorse echo throughout all of Edgar Allan Poe's work. The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and the narrator in "The Black Cat" demonstrate this struggle with morality and sanity.

How do we even know if we are sane? Are we sane if we aren't on any medication? In this day and age, maybe that is the key: being the only one not medicated to the gills. Or are we sane if we can acknowledge our own insane moments? Some say that the insane are the ones who always think they are truly sane. Sanity is a hard thing to get a concrete definition on. Every human has had moments of insanity, from being absolutely enraged and losing their mind to split second thoughts that cross the line. But who decides that line?

In the case of the narrator from "The Tell-Tale Heart," he truly thinks he is sane. He notes multiple times the care he takes when planning to kill the old man: "True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story." He insists on his sanity, and that while the disease did sharpen all of his senses, it did not make him insane. 

His main evidence that he is not sane is his planning and his calm attitude after the fact. Yes. The narrator does plan extensively for the moment when he will rid himself of the man's evil eye: "Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him." He continues to claim that he is not mad, and that his planning proves it. A madman would simply run in and commit the act, probably in a fit of rage. 

And yet, in the end, that is how the old man died. The narrator is in the room, with the lamp on the evil vulture eye, when he hears the old man's heart beating. The sound of this steady pounding is what drives him to the fit of rage, for "the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour!" Upon this realization, he leaps into the room and kills the old man.

The narrator's second piece of evidence to his sanity is his calmness after the murder. He hides the body in what appears to be a perfect hiding place, dismembered in the floors of the room where the old man died. Yet again, it is the heart of the man who destroys his sanity. While the police are sitting in the very room where the murder took place, the narrator hears the heartbeat again. Convinced the police can hear the growing noise, he turns himself in, revealing the hiding place of the body.

The narrator of "The Black Cat" is driven mad both by the love he has for his animal and rampant alcoholism. He and the cat were close companions for years, and yet one day the cat begins to ignore him - at least the narrator thinks he is. The man's alcoholism makes him believe that the cat is now ignoring him. In a fit of drunken rage, he slices out the cat's eye, leaving just the socket. Slowly the cat heals, but the narrator can tell that their relationship will never be the same.

After the narrator cuts out the cat's eye, the cat heals, but runs in terror every time the man approaches. With enough of his old soul left, the man first grieves the loss of his friend. Then his grief gives way to irritation until the perversity of his new soul eclipses his old one. He then hangs his cat, "with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence."

Clearly the man has no remorse for killing his cat. But is he truly himself? The alcohol in his system and his dependence on it transformed him into an entirely different person. So is he insane? Or is he someone else? The questions of insanity in both of these pieces are still relevant today. How do we know who we are or what our mental state is? What does being insane even mean?

Stories of Survival

Endurance at night.

When reading the story of the sinking of the whaleship Essex, I was instantly reminded of a story I read in middle school. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, a book by Alfred Lansing, tells the story of the entire expedition, from its beginnings in England to the loss of the ship. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the leader of the voyage, was an adventurer on one of his many trips to the antarctic. The race to get to the South Pole was in full swing when the Endurance cast off from England in 1914. 6 crew members navigated the Endurance to South American where they met the rest of the crew and began to prepare for the expedition to Antarctica.

The stranded Endurance.

In January of 1915, the Endurance became frozen in the pack ice surrounding the ship. The crew drifted with the pack throughout the winter, hoping that with spring, the ice would melt and the ship would be freed. Unfortunately, the pressure of the ice surrounding the ship damaged the hull significantly. On October 24, 1915, when the ice melted, water began pouring in to the ship. The crew removed all three small boats, the sled dogs, and the equipment and began to camp on the ice floes surrounding the ship. On November 21, 1915, Shackleton announced that the ship was going down, and the crew was stranded with the three small boats on a large, flat ice floe.

Moving one of the lifeboats.

After two months of camping on the floe, separated from Paulet Island by impassable pack ice, Shackleton decided to move camp to a larger floe, creating what is known as Patience Camp. The men had to use the sled dogs to drag 3 of the small boats, which was no small feat, across the ice onto the new floe. Shackleton and his men trusted the ice to flow in a direction leading them closer to a safe landing spot. Shackleton decided to risk the voyage across the ice when on April 9, 1916 their ice floe broke in half. After 5 days in the open water, they landed their small boats on Elephant Island. They had not stood on solid land in 497 days.

The crew by the Endurance.

Elephant Island was an inhospitable place. Shackleton ended up taking the strongest of the lifeboats on a dangerous journey to South Georgia. He chose 5 men to accompany him on the trip, leaving the rest of the crew behind on Elephant Island. The James Caird launched April 24, 1916, and landed on South Georgia on May 8, 1916. Shackleton and two of the men crossed South Georgia using only 50 feet of rope and a carpenter's adze, in order to reach the whaling station at Stromness. Immediately upon reaching the whaling station, he sent a ship to retrieve his men from the other side of the island and set to work trying to rescue the men on Elephant Island. Shackleton's first three attempts were blocked by the pack ice surrounding the island. Eventually he appealed to the Chilean government who loaned him the tugboat Yelcho. On August 30, 1916, the Yelcho reached Elephant Island. and all 27 men were evactuated.

The launching of the James Caird.

Shackleton

Shackleton's men endured more than most people can even imagine. The bitter cold led to frostbite. Some men on Elephant Island had toes, fingers, even feet amputated, while on the island. The sled dogs who started the expedition with the men ended up becoming food for the men throughout the journey, despite the crew becoming very attached to them. Sometimes they ended up going days without finding a new source of food. The only incoming food they had was penguins, seals, and the occasional sea leopard. The blubber of these animals was saved and used to fuel lamps as well as cook. While on Elephant Island, the men converted the two lifeboats left behind into a makeshift hut, living there for four months until they were rescued.

The crew by the hut on Elephant Island.

The crew of the Essex faced similar challenges. The lack of food and water supplies, combined with the harsh weather created a living environment that was almost unlivable: "Their physical torments had  reached a terrible crescendo.  It was almost as if they were being poisoned by the combined effects of thirst and hunger.  A glutinous and bitter saliva collected in their mouths that was "intolerable beyond expression."  Their hair falling out in clumps.  Their skin was so burned and covered with sores that a splash of seawater felt like acid burning on their flesh.  Strangest of all, as their eyes sunk into their skulls and their cheekbones projected, they all began to look alike, their identities obliterated by dehydration and starvation" (Philbrick 133).

It is not easy to imagine how any of these men survived. Was it on the part of the skill of their captains, whether it was Shackleton or Pollard and Chase? Or were they merely extremely lucky? Perhaps we will never know. In the case of Shackleton, I think his incredible skill at navigation and survival in harsh weather as well as his previous experience in the Antarctic helped the entire crew immensely. Captain Pollard and first mate Chase did not seem to be nearly as in control of such an impossible situation as Shackleton.

As a survivor of a situation with harsh odds, I find both of these survival stories fascinating. When I was seven, I was diagnosed with large cell lymphoma. My original diagnosis was Ewing's Sarcoma, a cancer that is nearly impossible to beat even with amputation, chemotherapy, and radiation. The cancer relapses frequently, making it almost impossible for the patient to get healthy. While I was in surgery getting a central line put in, lab technicians noticed the cells they were observing changing in a way that did not indicate Ewing's. I was rediagnosed with large cell lymphoma, a type of cancer only requiring a short round of chemo. I ended up on staying in the hospital for four months before my cancer was gone. Was it luck or the skill of my doctors that cured my cancer? An answer to my mom's prayers? Some combination of both perhaps. Beating the odds makes you appreciate life even more than you did before, because it can be gone in a second, whether it be cancer or a giant sperm whale that ends the journey.