Hey Hey Hey Whitman

Walt Whitman is one of my favorites. I love poetry, and free verse is my favorite. I completely disagree with Robert Frost, as I believe that one can express more in free verse and create a more meaningful poem. When we talked about “The Wound-Dresser” in class, I looked towards Megan in a fit of glee. It was amazing that I restrained myself to only a few comments on the poem, because I probably could have talked the entire time. I mean, look at the amazing imagery that this man creates. He writes of how the soldiers’ “priceless blood reddens the grass the ground” (ln. 28) and the “refuge pail,/ Soon fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filled again.” (ln. 32-33). I can almost visualize what he saw while he volunteered in the hospital. I, like many other people, have never been in or seen the devastations of war first hand, but back then people were surrounded by it. This poem paints a picture of the horrors of war, in that it is not just a representation of glory and honor, but of the injured and dying as well.
One of the most disturbing images that I found in the poem was in the third section when he was writing about the different operations that had to be done to each soldier. When he talks about how he had to “cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,” (ln.54), I was kind of grossed out. I do love the use of the word offensive here, though, because it can be applied in several different ways. The first, of course, is that the wound itself is offensive in smell. One could also take it to mean that the wound isn’t just offending the sensory organs, but the fact that is offensive that this person should have to suffer so much. If I think about it a lot, it makes me a little sick to my stomach, so off to the next section!
Ah, death. How bad of a situation does it have to be for some one to wish “come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!/ In mercy come quickly.” (ln. 44-45). I don’t think that death is beautiful, but I’ve also never been in the types of situations that these soldiers were in. They must have been suffering an awful lot to wish for death, but this is something that I feel people have to experience in some form to understand, although I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
Speaking of death, I love how the last image that Whitman leaves the reader with is that of a “soldier’s dying kiss resting on these bearded lips.” (ln. 65). What an awesome way to end a poem. It is almost like the story of the soldier is passed onto Whitman to tell through the kiss. It shows the suffering of the soldier and the duty of Whitman to explain the sorrow of the soldier to those not familiar with the atrocities of warfare.

Fanny the Feminist

I believe that her Fanny Fern’s writings are the product of a disgruntled woman, and really, there’s no argument to that. Her own brother rejected her writings and encouraged others to do the same. She wrote “Aunt Hetty on Matrimony” in 1851, the same year that she left her husband Samuel P. Farrington, who she found “jealous, tyrannical, and repulsive”. This woman had every right to be disgruntled. And that’s why she’s a feminist.
People rarely question things when they don’t know that they could be different or don’t think that they have an option. Why would a housewife living with a leech-like husband think that other women have it any better? She’s probably to busy making dinner and cleaning up after the children and husband to talk to her fellow peers. Not to mention the vibe that I get from that time era makes me think that one wouldn’t converse openly about one’s private home life. I really have no basis for this; it’s just what it seems like. Anyway, Ms. Fern had it a bit different. From her biography, we know that she was married, had three kids, and then Husband #1 kicked the bucket. Apparently she tried to support herself by writing afterwards but couldn’t. Enter Husband #2. I think that Fanny’s feelings about Husband #2 are summed up when she writes “O, girls! set your affections on cats, poodles, parrots or lap-dogs; but let matrimony alone. It’s the hardest way on earth of getting a living”(Baym 1795). The sheer selfishness of the husband described is enough to drive anyone up the walls, yet so many women put up with it because they saw no other option. Well, Ms. Fanny Fern didn’t see it that way.
After leaving Husband #2 (gasp!), Fanny tried to crank out a living by writing. And as hard as this must have been back in the 1850’s, Fanny must have thought it was better than answering to a hungry husband. Plus, the parasitic relationship gave her something to write about. Having been married once before Husband #2 (thus making him husband #2), she got to see marital life from two different views. I like to think that she at least cared a little bit for Husband #1, seeing as she didn’t leave him. Imagine going from a person that you probably like at least a little to an atrocious mongrel. That makes for some good storytime right there. And the best part? Other women could relate. I don’t know how many women wrote regular articles in newspapers at that time about their horrible husbands, but I don’t think it was a lot.
In any case, Ms. Fanny wasn’t going to take that kind of nonsense. She left a repulsive man, became a single mother in the 1850’s, and \became independent and paved the way for women in a man’s line of work. She became self-sufficient, and even made Husband #3 sign a pre-nup. Ms. Fanny realized that she didn’t have to be trapped, and she looked for options that other women wouldn’t dare take. And for that, Ms. Fern, you earn the title of feminist, and a couple gold stars too.

Emerson and Inner Knowledge

Ralph Waldo Emerson seems to think that for a person to be truly knowledgeable, they have to look internally first. In his speech to that one college…hmmm….Harvard? yes, that sounds right, I guess I’ve heard of that one before.... he quotes Epictetus, saying that “All things have two handles. Beware of the wrong one.” If you’ve ever encountered this Epictetus dude, you’ll know that he’s a philosopher, and these philosophers like to ponder things. One of their favorite things to think about was what good was and where it came from. Well, old Mr. Epictetus here thought that pure good came from within oneself. I think that it’s safe to say that Emerson agrees with this. When Emerson talks about the degenerate state, he says that “when the victim of society, [man] tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking” (Baym 1139). The worst thing that can happen in Emerson’s mind is when a man becomes a parrot of other men and cannot speak for himself. Thoughts come from the inside, and when you just use other people’s thoughts, you’re not using that internal good that Epictetus talked about. Shame shame.
But don’t just think that you can go get on with your bad self just because you’ve got the good inside of you. Emerson thinks that we need to humble ourselves before God and nature. Emerson says that “Ever the wind blows, ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar must stand wistful and admiring before this great spectacle. He must settle its value in his mind” (Baym 1139). When you’ve torn yourself away from Emerson’s amazing anaphora and cute little rhymes, you see that he understands that there are powerful forces internal and externally that shape a person. We all know that he loves nature (see his book Nature), and he connects this closely with God. Emerson writes “What is nature to [the American scholar]? There is never a beginning, there is never an end to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always a circular power returning into itself” (Baym 1139). He then connects nature to knowledge, saying, “So much of nature as [the schoolboy] is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim” (Baym). Oh snap, Ralphie. I guess this means to understand the good in oneself to achieve knowledge, one has to look to nature first. Then nature will help you understand yourself.


Cool.

Nature and Irving's Work

Think of England. It’s a place that surely has it’s beauty, but it’s not very large. The types of landscape that one sees there is nothing compared to the vast landscape of America, which is exponential bigger than England. Many of the settlers that came here came from cities, and were presented with the vast amount of nature that America had to offer since it was so huge. These landscapes of America are very evident in the works of Washington Irving, who describes them in his works “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”. In Sleepy Hollow, Irving paints a picture of a drowsy little town near a “little valley…one of the quietest places in the world” with a small brook “gliding” through it. Irving uses his amazing writing abilities to go into extensive detail about the landscape and create a drowsy feeling. In the movie that I have seen based upon this story, the woods are old, dark and creepy, which is the vibe that I get from this reading.

In “Rip Van Winkle”, Irving talks of the town that Van Winkle lives in as a place where “the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape”. When Irving explains the part where Van Winkle goes out squirrel hunting, he writes that through “an opening in the trees, [Van Winkle] could overlook all the lower county for many a mile of rich woodland”. This picture brings to mind a beautiful scene. I had already had an advantage when reading this and creating a mental picture, however, because the Wishbone episode depicted the landscape very well. However, for the people who haven’t seen the Wishbone episode, this phrasing and description is amazing; it provides a since of beauty that can make one feel emotions that can’t be described, as anyone who has seen a beautiful scene like this can attest. He goes on to look at the “deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun”. This is where the story moves on from lovely and beautiful into kind of creepy. This is right before he meets the straggler with the keg, so we know something eerie is about to happen since the landscape is creepier now.

These stories take place in a very close area to each other. In “Sleepy Hollow”, Irving mentions the Hudson River, which runs through present-day New York. The story of “Rip Van Winkle”, takes place in the Catskill Mountains, which also run through New York, and the Hudson is mentioned as well whenever Van Winkle is squirrel hunting. This probably accounts for why the landscapes in each of the stories are so similar, since they take place in almost the same place. It also makes since that Irving would write about this area because it is near where he grew up, so he would know a lot about the landscape and the people living there.

Slave Life in Douglass's Narative

One of the most disturbing things that struck me when I was reading Frederick Douglass’s Narrative was the way that the slave women were taken advantage of. This seems to be relatively common occurrence during Frederick Douglass’s time, but it is through his narrative that we get a first hand experience of his feelings on the matter. Almost all of the slave narratives before Douglass’s were ghostwritten because it was illegal to teach a slave how to read and write, and once a slave was free, there was hardly any time for learning such matters due to the need to support one’s self as well as one’s family. That’s what makes Douglass’s case so unique- he wrote it himself, without a middle man. I’m sure it was proofread and adjusted as need be, but to be of one’s own pen and literary technique is profound at this time.

It is interesting to me that although Frederick Douglass was half white and half black, he was only seen as black. I understand that the laws at the time stated that if a person’s ancestry was only one eighth black, they were still considered entirely black, but this seems strange and foreign to be. It is simply people seeing only what they want to see so they can elevate themselves to a higher standing. But in any case, to see how Frederick Douglas came to be is what disturbs me. Slaves were treated like animals and given so few rights that they seemed so separated from the white race, yet these slave owners saw them as objects of sex. The proof is in the children, as Douglass states that “the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father” (Baym 2073). He is a product of this, and instead of living a free life like his siblings, he was a slave. He addresses this point when he talks about why a master must sell his children, because the master must “stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but a few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back” (Baym 2073). In this statement, Frederick not only talks about the problems that occur from masters sleeping with their slaves, he also illustrates that these people are actually brothers, and they are harming their own flesh and blood.

Douglass also talks about when he first saw a slave being beat by the master. He says that the slave was a female that had been visiting a slave from another plantation during the night. Douglass discusses that when she was called upon by the master and she wasn’t there, he decided to beat her. Douglass writes, “Had [the master] been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue” (Baym 2074). Douglass had just stated in the previous paragraph the woman’s “graceful proportions” and “personal appearance”, so it is implied that the master was jealous because he was sleeping with the girl. So what did he do? He beat her.

These types of stories were common during this time, but the children that were products of this were ignored and made slaves instead of recognized as people, and the stories could not be shared because the slaves would be punished if they told anyone and they could not write them down to share with other people. Therefore, Frederick Douglass was instrumental in sharing these stories with people that would otherwise have never known, which in turn drummed up support for the end of slavery and its evils.

Thoughts on Palin's Rally and the Federalist Papers

As I waited for the debate in the arena at the Sarah Palin rally (because it was free) and tried to read the Federalist Papers amidst a bunch of middle-aged white guys in patriotic button-downs and their wives in accompanying hockey mom/pit bull/lipstick t-shirts, I realized that a lot of what I was reading was being played out in front of me. The Federalist Papers as written by Alexander Hamilton are arguments in support of the new constitution, but they also talk about different parties and the differences in opinions between them. Hamilton writes, “To judge the conduct of opposing parties, we shall be lead to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions and increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations, and by the bitterness of their invectives” (Baym 667). The Federalist Papers supported the new constitution as something that would ensure of the rights of the new Americans, but it also had to balance the role of the government in the situation. The country had just defeated a domineering monarchy, and the last thing the people wanted was another form of this in place. I imagine that the opposing parties that Hamilton is talking about are those for and against the new constitution, and those against it probably saw it as imposing on their lives like the monarchy did. Hamilton battles this by saying that “nothing could be more ill judged than that intolerant spirit, which has, at all times, characterized political parties” (Baym 667). The intolerant spirit seems to be the people against the constitution, and Hamilton recognizes this as a pretty normal thing, which it is. I have yet to see an entire country unite down to the last person on a single issue.

Although we have come a long way from the beginnings of our country and the birth of our rights, the interpretation of these rights is and will always be a matter of debate. The parties now interpret them differently, and both probably far from what our founding fathers thought. So as I sat next to the guy that screamed out “the liberals!” when the announcer on the screen asked who was at fault for the economy, I realized that this is our right, argued for and protected by our founding fathers through these papers. And as much as I may disagree with someone, it is their right to express their opinion as much as it is my right to go and cancel their vote out.

Mary Rowlandson's Tale

Mary Rowlandson’s account of how she was captured by the Native Americans shows the horrific aspects of living in America during such a tumultuous time. Many of the passages we have read about the New World are of hope, such as Columbus’ depiction of a beautiful and fertile land in America or Cotton Mather’s telling of the lives of William Bradford and John Winthrop, who were considered “American Saints” for the sacrifices they made in the colonies. There have been a few of the works that have been a bit troubling, such as the accounts on the way that the Native Americans were treated, but they were all written by Europeans, save for a few that were written by converted Native Americans. This account, unlike the ones of the Native Americans (whose are no less important than the European settlers) shows the firsthand account of being a victim in the war between the Native Americans and the Europeans.

The horrific events that occur in Mary Rowlandson’s tale show true struggle. She mentions how her husband was taken captive and threatened to be killed, how her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew were killed, and how she was taken captive with her small child. They had both been wounded, and the child eventually dies while they are at a Native American Camp. When she goes to try to see her other child at a Native American camp nearby, she is forced away while her child cries. She rarely got to see her son as well. After this whole ordeal, she bought back, but as she said in the beginning, her house has been burned. She talks of seeing the “extreme vanity of the world: One hour I have been in health, and wealthy, wanting nothing. But the next hour in sickness and wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction” (Baym 266).

The accounts of the Europeans settlers being victims were probably read more so than the accounts of the attacks on the Native Americans, because of two reasons. First, no civilization really wants to accept the fact that they have done wrong. It is easier to blame someone else than yourself. The Europeans were more likely to focus on the accounts of other Europeans being attacked as justification for fighting the Native Americans instead of realizing that it was the Europeans that provoked the attacks through the harsh treatment of the Native Americans. Second, the tales of the Europeans being victims makes it real and tangible to the readers, because they are people that they can identify with. They can feel the fear of having their home burned and family killed because they could have been settlers just like the people living there. It would have been harder for them to identify with the Native Americans because they were not of that culture and probably viewed them as savages, especially after the accounts of the Native American attacks on people such as Mary Rowlandson.