but what can we do?

1943

They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium
Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round

of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died
in the third wave at Tarawa. Every morning of the war

our Brock-Hall Dairy delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons
to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter,

frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,
Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,

or the right engine faltered into Channel silt, or troops marched
—what could we do?—with frostbitten feet as white as milk.

—Donald Hall


So. This poem is epic. I really like how every two lines have both a line about home and a line about war. They relate war to everyday life, but show that life at home is never going to prepare them for war. At the beginning they think that they are being prepared for it. At the end they realize that they will never be able to do anything for home. All the can do is wait and watch and hope for the best. They use everyday work to show that they will always be trying to do something to help. oh hey. Conrad. you have to immerse yourself in your work to not let the reality get to you.
score:
Me: 1
FW: 0

to the beach.

So. Edna is not a mother woman. Adèle is a mother woman. Yet they are still best friends. Personally I think the reason they are friends is because they each want what the other has. Adèle wishes she was more like Edna. Edna has a different point of view on everything because she wasnt raised in the creole society. I think Adèle is almost jealous of it. Edna is jealous of the feeling that Adèle has for her children. She almost feels guilty because she doesn't feel the same way. yay best friends

Edna, you know she got made fun of for that as a child

So basically. Edna is the coolest. First her name is Edna, you know she got made fun of for that as a child. That just makes her a better character. In the first four chapters/ little paragraphs, all we basically find out is that Edna is the main character and she is not a creole. She is married to a creole, but only because he fell in love with her and she is just settling. She has no concept of the creole culture. Scratch that, she does have the concept, of it. She knows how she is supposed to feel and act towards her children, husband and society, but because she was not raised in this environment she doesnt know how to react and respond to it. Adèle Ratignolle is introduced to the story. She is used the absolute perfect creole woman, who takes care of her children and husband and has no other worries in the world.

Ps. im likin' this book.

beginning again

Beginning Again

“If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well,” he muttered.
Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God—

And still
it stands,
the question
not how begin
again, but rather

Why?

So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.

—Franz Wright

What
the
hell?
I have no idea what this poem is trying to tell me. He says ceasing to speak for a year will help him get well. But what is wrong with him? Is he sick? Mentally? Or does he actually have an illness? Then he starts talking about performing brain surgery on himself. Why? Because he feels like he has to do everything himself with no help? That he is on his own for everything? Or is it because he has to reinvent himself? A room with no mirror, so that he cannot do the surgery well, but the room is made of mirrors so that he has to look at himself. It makes me think that he doesn’t like himself and doesn’t want to look at himself, so the mirrors are a bad thing. He asks why he should begin again. Why should he reinvent himself? I don’t think he comes to a conclusion. The last part is what throws me. I have no idea who Li Po is, or what mountain he is talking about. I just don’t get it. This poem just makes me ask questions. I can decide what I want it to mean, but the last part I don’t even know what to decide it means. Therefore after the question why, I give up trying to figure out what it means to me.

of course his last words were about me. i mean.. look at me

The very end of the story, Marlow is back in Europe and his hardened but the darkness. He is not taken over by the darkness, and dark himself, but it still has effected him. He no longer has the European mindset that everything he does he is helping or that his way is the most superior. He no longer has an idealistic view about everything that happens. He is annoyed with people that think that everything is perfect or that what they are doing is perfect. He doesn’t know why people can’t see things the way that he does now. These people have never really met anyone who thinks like Marlow does because not many people come back from the darkness. Marlow goes to see the Intended and she is also of the European mindset and is still in mourning over Kurtz. Marlow just tells her what she wants to hear about Kurtz’s final words because he doesn’t want to deal with her and her thought process. Marlow explains that the darkness of the room and the shadows are creeping in on her. She will be no longer innocent soon enough.

the horror.

In the first section of reading in the third section of the story, Marlow is on his way back out from the Inner station and back to Europe with Kurtz. Kurtz is still very ill but he does not want to go back to Europe. He likes it in the jungle because he is worshipped as a god. The natives treat him as a god because he speaks to them with authority. His voice, which is talked about throughout the story- Kurtz is a voice- is what makes him look like he is something to worship. He thinks he is in control of the darkness but the darkness is in control of him. He is now even keeping the heads of the ‘rebels’ and putting them on posts to remind himself that he is superior to the natives. When he is dying his final words are ‘The horror, the horror.’ This could be a realization that his life was horrible and all of the horrible things he has done he is now sorry for. And that he has broken away from the darkness in this time before death and has realized what he has done wrong. It also could be that he is sorry that he is dying and cannot stay with the natives that love him and worship him so much. Either way he is still dying and the horror is some sort of realization.

the darkness isn'y just black. its a gradient.

In the second section of part two, we finally get to the heart of the darkness. The darkness has not consumed Marlow, but they are at the Inner Station.

This section flashes forward to a time when Marlow has already met Kurtz. It is really confusing because it makes you think that he is meeting him and that Kurtz is already very corrupt by the darkness, and that the has dark thoughts and intentions now. But the point of it is to show that Marlow knows now after the fact that his first impression was not exactly what Kurtz truly was.

When Marlow does meet Kurtz he realizes that he is a ‘voice.’ His main power is his ability to speak and be heard. Even the Russian is enthralled by him, because when Kurtz speaks you listen. The natives treat him like a god. It is not because his ideas or anything is so grand. It is just his physical presence he has that commands attention.

Good intentions, wrong idea

In the fist section of part two of Heart of Darkness, Marlow is on his way in to the Inner Station. He is actually on the boat now and is physically on his way down the river.

While he is sleeping on deck, he overhears his uncle and the Manager talking about how they wish that Kurtz was dead. They think that all Kurtz wants to do is rise up through the ranks and take over the business and make money. Marlow knows now that this man is powerful and that people that have been consumed by the darkness don’t like his view on what they, as Europeans should be doing there.

Kurtz’s plan is to help the natives become more civilized. He has good intentions with his plans. This scares the people who are already in the darkness because they just want to make money and do not view the natives as people. And if they aren’t even people, they don’t need to be civilized.