i enjoy sitting in the dark by myself.

Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
(1874-1963)

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.



I have been one acquainted with the night also.
The night is the best time for thinking. And this poem by Frost, is all about thinking and being within yourself. Its not about actually walking passed the limits of the city. Its about being so inside of yourself that you continue to walk and wander and think and discuss with yourself. Its about understand who you are, and where you are going, and what it is that you believe in and why it is that you have come to believe it. And this poem kind of reminds me of this summer when I would talk to this friend of mine. And it would be late at night, because he was us an insomniac and was always awake and ready to discuss things. And he would always want to discuss what you believe an how you come to believe it, and how to make sense out of your life… he is kind of deep. But anyway, we would talk about these things and not really come to an answer but because we were discussing them, we came to an understanding. I think I just made myself sound really smart, discussing the meaning of life and all, but it really isn’t that much.

ohhh sorry mrs. pfan.... my bad.

Yeah I know I know, I'm a slacker.
I haven't blogged in ages.
and I think I am so far behind that writing them now will do me no good.
Therefore, In this one blog I am going to write about the end of The Awakening.

Okay.
The end of the Awakening. Edna dies...in the ocean... surprise surprise. Stupid ocean....how fitting?
Anyway.
She drowns the ocean. Earlier when she swims out, she finds it empowering to do something that no women has done before, and to go beyond her comfort zone. So I find it fitting that she drowns while doing something she finds empowering. The way she decided to change her life and live basically as a creole man, was empowering to her. What she couldn't understand or comprehend was that she could not keep up both this new lifestyle and her old. Trying to keep up both, and not knowing what she wanted led to her mental downfall. So then when she was swimming, something also empowering, she swam passed her limits, and couldn't handle it, and drowned. The main thing that I was discussing with myself in my head as I was reading was, Is it a suicide? or was it accidental. I can't decide if she swam out on purpose with the intention of swimming until she drown or if she swam out for the feeling of the empowerment and got caught up and swam too far and drown... OR did she swim out with the intention of empowerment, and then decide in the middle of it to let herself swim further and drown. or i guess she could have gone out for empowerment and then realized she was out too far, and then decided not to turn around.. but that is similar to the third one. I am leaning towards the third one.

suppression.

A Work of Artifice

Marge Piercy
(b. 1936)

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.


When I read the first line of this poem, I will not lie, I laughed for quite a while. I have this long running joke with Aly Hughes about bonsai trees. Then I decided to read it for real, and I was like… dayummmm this is not funny. The author uses the tree to exemplify suppression. In particular is is about the suppression of girls in Asian countries. When this was written feet binding was a common practice to keep women from having their feet grow because small feet were considered attractive. This poem is about not conforming exactly but living up to the level that society has set for you. Women are taught from a young age what they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to look like. This poem is about starting when girls are young to suppress any thoughts other than what society wants them to think. Not only is it about suppressing those thoughts, but about replacing them with thoughts that societies pressures are right and they are happy living life like that. Now, don’t respond to this response to tell me that it is not only women who face these pressures. Men also face them. But this poem is about women, and I am a woman. Therefore I wrote it from a woman’s perspective. The End.

i totally swam in the ocean and i was sooo empowering

Enda has been trying to learn how to swim the entire summer. One day she gets the courage to just try and swim as far as as she can. She is swimming as far as she can and must swim further than any woman has swam before. Symbolism much? This scene is a metaphor for the entire novel itself. Edna wants to break out the the role that women are supposed to play. when she swims out she thinks that she has gone so far, but in reality she hasnt. In the rest of her life she is breaking out of her comfort zone, but to others she isn't doing that much.