Death in "The Waste Land"

       In T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, he combined Buddhist, English, Greek, and Jewish works in a way that portrayed many forms of death. Eliot also seemed somewhat interested about life after death and things neither alive or dead; he used things such as hyacinths and drowning to symbolize death and resurrection. Eliot showed death through writing about abortion, and he referred to someone by his birth and death place, saying, "Trams and dusty trees./ Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew/ Undid me" (Eliot 268). Eliot used all of these descriptions of death to point back to the first stanza of the poem, so that he could explain why April is the cruellest month on the mountain that he should feel so freely upon.

       T. S. Eliot's uses experiences of life and death to show that something other than both of them could possibly exist. Eliot seems to show an understanding that death will happen and is inevitable. The time of death doesn't necessarily matter to him; he, rather, is more focused on what happens after death within an individual. He wrote, "Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,/ Your arms were full, and your hair wet, I could not// Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither/ Living nor dead, and I knew nothing," as well as, "Fear death by water" (Eliot 260-261). Both hyacinths and drowning are symbols of death leading to resurrection that Eliot uses in his poem. He doesn't explain what that resurrection is, but he argues within his poem that something other than life or death exists.

What does seduction have to do with death, resurrection, and modernism?

Palestine

       In Edward Said's essay, "States," he presents the changes of Palestinian identity from the time of 1948, when Israel was made a nation after War World II. Once Palestine didn't exist and Palestinians were forced to leave their homes, Palestinians lost their identity from a worldwide standpoint; other countries didn't recognize them as originating from "Palestine". Yet, when living in other countries, they didn't have the identities of the other citizens. They're recognized as "either 'the Arabs of Judea and Samaria,' or, in Israel, 'non-Jews.' Some are referred to as 'present absentees'" (Said 571). This has led to Palestinians connecting in many ways, much more than they would be if they lived back in their homeland. But, Said writes, "The further we get from the Palestine of our past, the more precarious our status, the more disrupted our being...When did we become 'a people'? When did we stop being one" (Said 591)? Said argues that this unstable status of Palestinian identity is found in all things and all people derived from Palestine, even down to the form of Palestinian fiction, which presents the instability and precariousness also found in Palestinians.

       Said presents the changes that he foresees in Palestinian identity in his essay, while these changes did happen to African Americans from the time of Frederick Douglass, in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, to the way that Du Bois speaks of the Negro American in The Souls of the American Negro: Of Our Spiritual Strivings. Said writes, "When I was born, we in Palestine felt ourselves to be part of a small community, presided over by the the majority community and one or another of the outside powers holding sway over the territory" (Said 577). During this time, Palestinians were close to their roots and their communities, but Said shows while making his father an example, that some Palestinians want to disconnect themselves from the memories of Palestine; he believes it will be a continual process, and the more amount of time that passes without a physical Palestine, the more Palestine identity loses a tangible meaning. This is similar to the black identity in America that changed from African Americans during the time of Frederick Douglass and a wish for freedom from slavery to the identity of the Negro American, who is not tied with Africa nor has a wish to be so. Instead, they want to find their identity within their race, history, and the meaning of being "American."

If Said's essay discusses the exile of Palestinians from Israel, doesn't the argument of the mentioned poem, "The Twenty Impossibles," not follow the arguments of the essay? What is the purpose of discussing the poem in the essay?

Freedom

       In W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois discusses freedom from prejudice and an America that conveys the equality and union that the nation was founded on. He explains that the African American population won't ever be able to see themselves or be seen by whites as equal in humanity or in conscience without schooling that equals to that of white Americans. Blacks long for freedom from intellectual bondage caused by prejudice and social bondage. He writes, "Freedom,...we still seek,--the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think...--all these we need, not singly but together,...each growing and aiding each,  and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people,...the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity the greater ideals of the American Republic" (Du Bois 1691). He ends by explaining that the test of the principles of the republic is the Negro Problem, and all within the nation must strive to act in accordance with the founding principles decided on by the nation's forefathers. 

       Du Bois addresses the issues of social unbalance between blacks and whites in America. He gives the example of the time he first realized that he was different from everyone else, not because he was lesser of a person but because his fellow peer treated him as such. He wants all Americans, regardless of race, to put aside prejudice and live in the equality that the Declaration of Independence expresses. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (Jefferson 1). Du Bois believes that this can be accomplished once both blacks and whites work together to "give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack;" the process will progress once the products of freedom are used by all to unify the nation (Du Bois 1691).

When Du Bois writes, "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son," does he mean that African Americans are seen as seventh on the race totem pole (Du Bois 1687)?

"The White Man's Burden"

       In Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden," Kipling addressed American colonization towards those who would become slaves or below Americans that moved to an area of new possession. When Kipling wrote the poem in 1899, he most likely was referring to the American colonization of the newly attained Philippines. He said many times towards the oppressed in his poem, "Take up the White Man's Burden," and conveyed an acceptance towards American colonization (Kipling). He showed this through his advice towards the oppressed by telling them to "send forth the best ye breed" and by telling them not to "call too loud on Freedom," as if this was their new purpose in life, so that the white man could succeed (Kipling).

       Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell both discussed the exploitation of the oppressed in colonization in their works, "The White Man's Burden" and "Shooting an Elephant," yet their views of colonization differ. Kipling referred to exploitation as working for another's gain and said to the oppressed, "Go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives' need" (Kipling). He also said repeatedly, "Take up the White Man's burden," showing his consent of the exploitations of American colonization. Yet, Orwell conveyed the negatives of imperialism and colonization through the narrator of "Shooting an Elephant." He complained of the evils he saw in the prisons and the way the Burmese treated whites because of the exploitation that they suffered. Orwell portrayed an encounter with colonization that caused him to recognize its evil, though Kipling doesn't recognize it in his poem.

What does Kipling mean in the sixth stanza when he wrote, "The silent, sullen peoples/ Shall weigh your gods and you" (Kipling 1)?

To Shoot or Not to Shoot

       In George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell explains his fickle feelings towards imperialism throughout his time as a British soldier in Burma, particularly during his wavering decision to shoot an elephant. In Burma, Orwell sees the wrongs of imperialism coerced on the people, yet he doesn't side with them completely either because he hates being ridiculed, especially by the Buddhist priests. He writes, "I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts" (Orwell 1). Even in this quotation, the effects of imperialism are seen in one who isn't for imperialism. He portrays a disintegration of the individual and the dehumanization of colonialism by calling the Burmese people beasts. In the end, although he is above them, Orwell is pressured into shooting the elephant because he would rather kill it than be tortured by the jeering masses around him.

       Orwell is concerned about his own freedom towards the end of his story. His diminishing freedoms reflect the communists' view of slavery in society that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles present in The Communist Manifesto. They write that a society must "assure an existence to its slave within his slavery" (Marx and Engles 2). This means that those in authority ought to make sure that workers have enough necessities, so that they are content in their poverty. Orwell recognizes that he must shoot the elephant because "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys" (Orwell 2). Orwell must do what the natives expect of him or else he will be ridiculed, or in Marx and Engles' case, the people will rebel because they aren't satisfied in their slavery.

Shouldn't Orwell not want the other Europeans to grasp that he only shot the elephant to avoid ridicule because then he could still seem like a fool to those that figured it out?

Suffering for Survival

       In "The Open Boat," Stephen Crane shows the naturalist beliefs of creation being evil and creation reflecting who God is. The crashing waves that prolong the drowning of the captain, cook, oiler, and correspondent reflect how evil God, Fate, or the seven mad gods are. They put the boaters in many opportunities that could kill them like the raging waves and boating next to a shark, but they also taunted the boaters with many ways of escaping drowning that could have been successful if they hadn't been ignored. This conveys the darwinism of naturalism through the belief that man is just a part of nature and isn't special, separate, or above all else.
      
       The correspondent in "The Open Boat" is much like the man in "A Man Said to the Universe." He looks to Fate with no understanding of why his death is to be prolonged and taunted by the many opportunities that could have saved him and the three others. He says once, and similarly at other times, "If I am going to be drowned -- if I am going to be drowned -- if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?" (Crane 737). The correspondent thinks that Fate, which he references at another time, or the seven mad gods ought to feel obliged to save him or that they plan to save him since he has suffered so much in his traveling. The man, like the correspondent, in "A Man Said to the Universe," wanted the universe, which could represent God to naturalists, to recognize his existence. The universe cared enough just to say that it didn't care, just as the travelers were given many opportunities to be saved from the dingey but were never thorough enough to ever be successful.

Did any of the men, particularly the oiler, actually drown at the end of the story?

Stephen Crane and Realism

       Stephen Crane wrote three poems, "In the Desert," "A Man Said to the Universe," and "War is Kind," that reflect the ideas of naturalism. In "A Man Said to the Universe," Crane portrayed his naturalist beliefs by showing that man's existence has no significance of obligation to the spacious universe, which could be seen as greater than man. It shows how he believes that God has made man but has ignored him and his existence. In "War is Kind," Crane explained that war is kind because it ended the lives of suffering men quickly. He wrote, "Do not weep, babe, for war is kind./ Because your father tumbled in yellow trenches,/ Raged at his breast, gulped and died," but later wrote, "Swift blazing flag of the regiment,/ Eagle with crest of red and gold,/ These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of the slaughter, make plain to them the excellence of killing" (Crane 1). Crane depicted the miseries of dying in war but contrasted it with an agreeable ending by explaining that this is one of the best ways to die.

       

       In Stephen Crane's "In the Desert," he wrote about a creature that eats its own heart, but it enjoys it. The creature liked its heart, "Because it is bitter,/ and because it is my heart" (Crane 1). The creature's reason for liking his heart is similar to the arguments of Jonathan Franzen in "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts." The heart of the creature was bitter yet it ate of it and liked it because it was bitter and its actual self, not because others liked it or because it was a popular thing to do. The "liking" of this poem is the kind of "liking" that Franzen suggests people should think and feel because it is derived from something true and "Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you're having an actual life" (Franzen 2).

Why does Crane explain why war is kind to maidens and babes but not to mothers about their sons?