As I Lay Blogging: Jewel

Jewel seems to be a character that Faulkner has written with special attention, carefully weaving a shroud of mystery and uncertainty around him. He achieves this partly by only giving Jewel one narrative section in the entire novel. It also seems that most of the characters either speak about him with a sort of disdain, or a sort of awe, that almost branches into fear, or a mixture of both.
The main theme in Jewel's character is his overt isolation from the rest of the family. This is very strongly communicated in the language used by the other characters who observe him, for example Darl's observance of his powerful, indifferent strides early on in the novel. His seperation is also distinctly marked by the fact that his father is not Anse Bundren, Addie's husband, but rather Reverend Whitfield. Though this difference is unknown to most of the other characters, it could be looked at as the underlying cause of his seperation from the rest of the family. He also seems to have been Addie's favorite son. In Jewel's only passage of narration, he criticizes Cash for constructing the coffin right in Addie's view. This shows that his is loyal to his mother, and critical and bitter of those Anse and his sons. Indeed, he seems to treat them all with a callously indifferent manner.
Jewel's horse is the main representation of his defiance of the will of the rest of the family. He went behind Anse's back to earn the money to purchase it, and when he did, it was Anse who became upset with him. Addie, on the other hand, was brought to tears, and offered to buy him the saddle. Addie's tears seem to represent the special connection between Jewel and her, a connection that neither of them share with any of the otehr characters.
The horse continues to be a symbol of defiance and indifference as the story progresses. During the Bundren family's journey, Jewel rides the horse apart from the rest of the family, who are all with the mule-drawn wagon. When he recieves commands from Anse, he ignores him. He does not recognize him as a father/authority figure, and therefore does not recognize any of Anse's sons as his brothers or his equals.

Plog: 'Red Fox'

In Red Fox, Margaret Atwood uses the analogy of a starving fox to comment on means of survival, and how human nature can turn itself around completely for the sake thereof. In terms of human nature, Atwood addresses the connotations that this has for relationships bewteen parents and children.
Throughout the first four stanzas, the poem remains relatively concrete, following the speaker's description of a fox crossing a frozen pond in winter. The speaker observes how desperate and hungry the fox appears, "Its winter and slim pickings", she says, "I can see the ribs, the sly trickster eyes, filled with longing and desperation, the skinny feet adept at lies". It is notable that this could almost be the description of a person, particularly with the word 'feet' used, rather than 'paws'.
In the fifth stanza, which is longer than the others, the poem becomes less literal and more abstract, as Atwood expouses on human nature. She admits there are mothers who are "squeezing their breasts dry, pawning their bodies", and "shedding their teeth for their children", but she also reminds us that "Hansel and Gretel were dumped in the forest becuase their parents were starving", and "to survive, we'd all turn thief". She is pointing out that human nature will always turn seeming selfless people into thieves, when their survival is at stake. The last two stanzas bring the poem back to the fox, and we see that the fox is a symbol for just such a person.

Plog: Blackberry-Picking

In Blackberry-Picking, Seamus Heaney describes, with a whistful tone, his memories of picking blackberries in late summer, presumably in his youth. He uses an array of pastoral imagery with strong sensory connotations to communicate longingly his memories of that time. The poem is written in two stanzas, the first of which has a tone of fondness and longing for a time long gone. The second, which is much shorter than the first, brings a pang of regret and almost bitterness into the tone, as Heaney describes the yearly crop of blackberries going bad. "It wasn't fair", he writes, "That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot". "Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not". This demonstrates his sadness at this yearly occurence. He has the same hope every year, but every year the berries still rot. This seems to imply Heaney's childlike innocence and idealism in the context of the poem.
The description in the first stanza of the berries themselves demonstrates Heaney's sensual connection to them; indeed it as almost visceral: "You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet/like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it/Leaving stains upon the tongue and a lust for/Picking". This passage, especially the word 'lust', communicates Heaney's relationship and associated feelings with the berries. Here he focuses on one very simple thing, eating and picking blackberries, and transforms it into a world of sense experience in itself.

Plog 2: Mid-Term Break

In Mid-Term Break, Seamus Heaney describes he and some of his family members' reactions to the death of a young sibling. As the poem progresses, he gradually reveals more and more about what has happened, building a sort of tension throughout.
He begins by stating that he "sat all morning in the college sick bay counting bells knelling classes to a close". This reveals that he his anxious about something, something that would prevent him from going to class. He is too anxious to do anything but count the tolling of the bells.
When he arrives home, he states that he saw his father crying. This image immediately tells the reader that something very horrible has happened; a father is generally a figure associated with masculinity and strength, and something that would make such a figure cry must be very tragic. Heaney continues, saying that he was "embarrassed by old men standing up to shake my hand". This shows that Heaney is caught off guard by the sudden role reversal; normally he would be the one to respectfully shake an old man's hand. Once again, this indicates that something very terrible has happened. Heaney also uses the phrase "away at school", which suggests a sort of disconnection from his family that may add to his sadness. The title of the poem is also significant in this way. Mid-term Break for college students would generally be a time associated with vacation and family, but for Heaney it has been, almost ironically, associated with the death of a young sibling. Heaney also describes his brother's body, saying that "he lay in the four-foot box as in his cot". This seems to compare death to sleep, suggesting that the young boy appears peaceful. Heaney finishes the poem with a one-line stanza: "A four-foot box, a foot for every year". This reveals the last peice of information about what has happened, and is meant to shock the reader, and impress the horror of the event.

Compulsory Plog: The Good-Morrow

In "The Good-Morrow", John Donne employs a wide variety of analogies and extended
to metaphors to convey his feelings about love. He uses these to create a mood of
infatuation with both the object of his love, and love itself. This is very evident in the first
stanza, in which Donne uses the metaphor of immaturity to describe his life before love. He states that he was "sucked on country pleasures, childishly". This childhood seems to resolve into the maturity of adulthood with love. He also uses an illusion to the Seven Sleepers to set up another analogy, which he builds upon at the beginning of the second stanza, in which he describes the discovery of love as a "good-morrow" to he and his lovers' "waking souls". This implies that all of their lives before meeting one another were sleep, broken only by love. He then goes on to liken love to the work of "sea discoverers" and those who pursue maps. He seems to imply that he does not need those things, because love in itself is enough of a fantastic discovery. In the final stanza, Donne compares his and his lovers' faces to hemispheres, which almost seems to refer back to his other geographical references of the poem, such as the one about maps.

Hedda Blogs: 5

More thoughts about Brack. He seems to be the only character who is relatively unaffected by the events of the play. He just sort of dips into the lives of the other characters, causes a lot of trouble, and then leaves. The only remarkable thing is that his enjoyment of the drama he creates is cut short by Hedda's suicide. And he really only seems disappointed by that, and maybe a little exasperated that she ruined his fun.

Hedda blogs: 4

I wonder what Hedda's intentions actually were when she fired at the judge in the beginning of act two. She wasn't actually trying to kill him. When he is alarmed, she non-chalantly asks "Oh dear, I didn't hit you did I?" as if it would not have mattered very much if she had. It seems that she was just doing it out of boredom. Or perhaps, she was trying to make a demonstration of her power to the judge, to show him that she could not be manipulated. But she was, in the end, and the source of her power was turned on her.