TP DASTT "The Disappearing Alphabet"

Poem: “The Disappearing Alphabet”        Author: Richard Wilbur          Date: 1997

Title: The title, “The Disappearing Alphabet”, significantly brings up images of childishness. The word, alphabet, is, in most cases, a word only applied to children in cases like, “Learn the alphabet.. etc.”.

Paraphrase: The speaker begins the poem by saying that “If the alphabet began to disappear,
Some words would soon look raggedy and queer”. He then continues by saying that, since letters forms word which, in essence form our world, if the alphabet disappeared our world would disappear. He then goes through each letter of the alphabet and comments on words that would vanish or cease to make sense if a letter of the alphabet disappeared i.e. “HIMPMUNKS” and “WATERPROO”. Finally, he ends the poem with a final claim that, without the alphabet, the world would “[dissolve] to nothingness”, and urges the audience to “do not let/ Anything happen to the alphabet.”.

Devices:

• Rhyme - The first, obvious device in the poem’s structure is the very strict, very formal (consistent with Wilbur’s style) rhyme scheme with relies on consistent series of couplets. This, although formal, gives the poem a very childish, lighthearted tone that lasts throughout its entirety.
• Meter- Although it works in conjunction with rhyme, the meter is not quite as consistent. It is just a fairly straightforward iambic meter, however, at times this is abandoned and the poem seems to awkwardly hobble along. This seeming flaw in the poem, is significant in that it parallels awkwardness and inefficiency of Wilbur’s choppy, broken, and often, nonsensical words.
• Coinage/Irony- Wilbur’s main irony in the poem comes in when he coins words by removing certain letters. Thus he creates humorous, gibberish such as when “cows eat HY instead of HAY”. While he could easily stop there, he instead chooses to continue on with these coined words, acting as if describe a physical, tangible object i.e. “What’s HY? It’s an unheard of diet,/ and cows are happy not to try it”.
• Diction/Imagery - Although certainly connected to his use of coined words, Wilbur’s distinct imagery and diction supplement these non-sensical words by providing images of non-sensical scenes such as when the speaker says, “If G did not exist, the color GREEN/ Would have to vanish from the rural scene./ Would oak trees, then, be blue, and pastures pink?/ We would turn green at such a sight, I think.”. Through this, the speaker creates an absurdist, surreal setting which reflects Wilbur’s imagined world without language - it simply does not make sense.

Attitude: The general attitude within the poem is very light hearted and a childish, playful tone, however there is still a definite hint of cynicism and satire in it. Yes, the poem is humorous, surreal, and childish, but at the same time Wilbur seems nearly pedantic in his crusade-like defense of language.

Shifts: The only real shifts in the poem occur at the beginning and end. These shifts are significant in marking the beginning and end of Wilbur’s absurdist world created by words in the “Disappearing Alphabet”. As such, these shifts are important in setting off Wilbur’s (still whimsical and playful) more serious, pedagogical moments from his purely imaginative and creative dream-like world.

Title: After going through the poem as a whole, the title seems to take on a different, yet still similar meaning. Of course, it does still remain playful and childish and it does concern the alphabet, but it also takes on a dual meaning. In this sense, the word “Alphabet” becomes symbol for language and literature. Thus, “Disappearing” makes turns the title, and effectively the whole poem, into a defense of the “Alphabet”.

Theme/Total Meaning: The total meaning of the poem basically concerns language, literature and words. In the title, “The Disappearing Alphabet”, we see that Wilbur is using the poem to defend these concepts and show their value and importance. For instance, he that it is “by words that we construe/ The world” and that if we lost these “words” “the world would vanish too”. Thus, in the poem, Wilbur shows that words and language are our way of interpreting the outside world; they are a way of transforming things that are inherently inhuman into things that are uniquely human. By going on to describe ridiculous instances in which letters of the alphabet simply vanish he is able to show the importance of words and how, without them our world changes drastically into something almost unrecognizable absurd.

TP-DASTT "Sir David Brewster's Toy"

Poem: “Sir David Brewster’s Toy”        Author: Richard Wilbur          Date: 2002

Title: Doesn’t make sense without any background information, however once we find out that David Brewster invented the kaleidoscope, it provides much needed context for the poem.

Paraphrase: The speaker begins by describing a tube that “you” image peering down to find “colored-glass debris”. He then goes on to describe an illusionary rose which the kaleidoscope creates, morphs, and eventually destroys. He then goes on to describe the “jumble[d]” colors and the “gaudy” images and eventually compares them to celestial images. The poem finally concludes with the final conclusion that the images in a kaleidoscope provide a euphoric, almost unreal glimpse of “hope”.

Devices:

• Structure - The first, obvious device in the poem’s structure is its kaleidoscope shape which enhances the poem’s playful tone and provides an almost tangible element to the ephemeral images.
• Diction - Probably the most important device in the poem as it allows Wilbur to contrast the heavenly images that the kaleidoscope produces with the harsh, very worldly object of the kaleidoscope itself. Very lofty, elevated diction - ironic for being a cheap child’s toy.
• Imagery - Continues the theme first started with his use of diction, imagery is used to contrast the celestial and spiritual to the earthly and scientific.
• Rhyme - Strong ABA rhyme scheme with three line stanzas, very formal, and consistent with Wilbur’s style which is often compared to Theodore Roethke and William Wordsworth despite being a prominent poet during the time of the Beats.
• Meter - Shifts between very strict, consistent meter, and broken, chaotic, jumbled meter. Reflects the distortions and shifts of a kaleidoscope.  

Attitude: A very reflective tone, like one would expect from a person looking into a kaleidoscope. Very awestruck, wondering tone with the beautiful, religious images created by the kaleidoscope while at the same time recognizing the elusive, transient nature of the images. Also, much more down-to-earth, if not scornful, attitude toward the kaleidoscope and the components that make it up.

Shifts: Multiple shifts in the poem such as when the “glass-colored debris” yields a “pied rose”. Also seen when the “corruscating Flinders” end up “Fashioning once more/ a fine sixfold gaudiness” which then goes on to be compared to “Heaven’s joys”.Final shift before the last stanza as the speaker connects the kaleidoscope to hope on earth.

Title: At first, all the title seems to provide is context, however after reading through the poem it becomes apparent that it is more meaningful. By bringing in Sir David Brewster, who is a fairly well known scientist, and the word “toy”, Wilbur connects science to a childish fun. Furthermore, by including the “Sir”, he keeps with the motif of the elevated diction as if to reflect the transformative, almost magical nature of the kaleidoscope.

Theme/Total Meaning: In one sense, the poem can be interpreted as a reflection on the experience of looking through a kaleidoscope (which could reasonably be extrapolated to other life-altering or enlightening experiences). In this sense, the kaleidoscope is a mystical, magical experience that occurred at the intersection of science and imagination. Thus, imagination and childish idealism were able to take mundane, ordinary “debris” and “flinders” and transform them into a looking glass into a world in which even the light is “paraphrase[d]”. However, while this is an acceptable analysis it is also hard to ignore the spiritual elements and Wilbur’s own Episcopalian faith. With this in mind, it is important to recognize words and phrases with religious connotations such as “colored-glass”, “cathedral’s wall”, “prophets”, and “Heaven’s joys”. Thus, when we look at it in this sense the “exercise in hope” becomes much more important as the “magic” from the kaleidoscope acts a glimmer of heavenly hope that shines into our own broken world.

TP-DASTT on "The Death of a Toad"

Poem: “The Death of a Toad”        Author: Richard Wilbur          Date: 1948

Title: At first glance, “The Death of a Toad” seems fairly comical, almost absurd. It is such an insignificant part of the minutia of life that it seems simply ridiculous that a poet would even write about such a subject.

Paraphrase: A power lawn mower catches the leg of a toad and mutilates it, forcing the toad to grotesquely hop across the “castrate[d] lawn”. Throughout this process the narrator provides imagery of the toad instead hopping in mystic, spiritual lands to a “final glade”. He then imagines the toad’s glorious death and imagines an afterlife for the toad in which the toad can experience “ebullient seas” and “cooling shores” in an amphibian ruled kingdom.

Devices:

• Irony - the backbone of the poem, irony allows Wilbur to glorify the toad yet at the same time, through dramatic irony also allows him to create humor and very light satire
• Imagery - the device which allows Wilbur’s irony to shine through. “Chewed and clipped”, “hobbling hop”, “banked and staring eyes”, are all violent and grotesque but are also contrasted with “a final glade”, “misted and ebullient seas”, and “lost Amphibia’s emperies”
• Rhyme - masculine rhymes with an AABCBC rhyme scheme creates a whimsical, sing-song tone which contrasts with the often times harsh, stark imagery
• Meter - referred to by Wilbur as “loose iambic”. Often choppy, with uneven, cacophonous sound which parallels the three legged toad’s also choppy, uneven, and bloody floundering across the lawn.
• Paradox - one of the most prominent, most effective devices used in the poem. In fact, it is really a poem of contradictions or paradoxes. First, the toad is dying, but it is only in death that we are really able to see the life of the toad. Then, the journey of the toad is elegant and royal, but at the same time we also know that the toad is only hobbling across a lawn to die. While the death of the toad seems glorious and epic, Wilbur uses dramatic irony to remind us that it is only an insignificant toad. Even the language and imagery of the poem is vivid and elegant but it is also harsh, garish and grotesque.

Attitude: The attitude or the tone is likewise filled with paradoxes. It is respectful and glorifying but at the same time violent and grotesque. Likewise Wilbur uses epic language such as “The rare original heartsblood goes” and the anachronistic “Amphibia’s emperies” which contrasts not only with the violent imagery but also with the modern image of the “power [lawn] mower” and “castrate[d] lawn”. In the end, this all combines to be a paradoxical, gently satirical, and self-aware attitude toward the poem.

Shifts: The shift after line two coincides with the shift from modern, harsh imagery to classical elegant imagery, the shift from the toad’s death to the afterlife journey. Later shift at line sixteen shows accomplishes the same thing except in reverse. Reminds the us of the dramatic irony and keeps the toad’s death in perspective.

Title: While at first the title seemed simply ridiculous, it is now more. It is still ridiculous, that it is a poem about a toad, yet in an ironic, self-aware style. Through this, Wilbur confirms our expectations of an absurd poem, but also defies them through his epic treatment of the toad in another use of paradox.

Theme/Total Meaning: The poem as a whole is meant as a subtle yet comic irony on the complexities of modern life as we can see through the very obvious use of irony. However, the paradoxes and self-aware nature of the poem are also hard to ignore. In this way, the irony is not only directed towards the death of the toad but also towards the audience, the poet, and the poem itself. In this sort of meta-poem, it could be read as Wilbur sort of mocking his own use of language in which in can manipulate words, sound, and literary devices to impact his audience and their perception of the poem.

Poem

I went out hunting and saw an elk,
the find of a lifetime or so they say
with a glistening, silky, elegant hide
and curved, pearly antlers reaching toward heaven.
A rare find - when all comes together, the summit of a career.
All that was left was to reap the prize-
to choose the right tool, line up my shot
and with surgical precision, harvest life from the royal bounty.
Yet in my folly I grew impatient.
I grasped the shotgun by my side
and pumped round, after round of molten lead
into its umber flank, until it collapsed with a whimper
spewing blood, intestines, and shredded tendons
all over the fecal, microbial forest floor.

I ruined the meat.

Death of a Salesman

Well first of all, I will discuss Willy’s “complex relationship” with the American dream. The thing is though, Willy has no idea what the American dream is. Throughout the play, he searches and searches for something or really anything that can possibly give his life meaning, but he fails and ultimately ends up dead. To him, the American dream isn’t an idyllic suburban house with a happy family, rather, the American dream to Willy is simply being successful and finding meaning in life. He’s not really sure what that will look like - but he’s pretty confident that he will know it when he sees it. First, Willy looks to his career for success. He saw his father sell flutes and remembers the successful, well-liked, salesman who had an inspiring funeral and decides that sales will bring him success. Thus, he travels. He goes from New York to Boston then back to New York and back to Boston over, and over again. He thinks that if he sells enough, if he is successful enough, he won’t have to worry about money and will be content. But Willy fails. He tries to succeed in the business world but ultimately fails. He is put back on commission and eventually fired. He decides that must not have been the American Dream then. Instead, maybe the American Dream is having a successful family and prosperous children. So when Willy is fired he turns to his Biff and Happy. Just because he didn’t succeed doesn’t mean that they can’t be. Maybe they can start a business in Florida, be independent, content, and look of for him. Maybe that’s the “real” American Dream. But then that fails too and Willy again decides that wasn’t the American Dream. He looks to the past in his hallucinations thinking that he might find some vestige of the American Dream there but even that doesn’t work. Ultimately though, in a final act of desperation, Willy turns to the future for his “American Dream”. The way he sees it, he has looked everywhere else and there is really no where else to go. So he drives his car into oblivion thinking his death will bring him the American Dream. In the end, Willy still has no idea what this dream is, but he thinks his legacy might be it. Maybe if he just left his family $25,000 they could finally achieve what he couldn’t. Maybe then he would be remembered as a success. Maybe then he would finally find the American Dream. Besides, it’s “guaranteed”.

So really, when we talk about the “meaning of the work as a whole”, we need to realize that Arthur Miller wasn’t saying that Willy was chasing after the wrong dream. He doesn’t suggest that Willy somehow had all the wrong ideas and that Biff’s “American Dream” of finding freedom and success in the West was right. In the same vein, he shows that Linda and Happy each failed when they saw their “American Dream” in Willy. Instead, Miller argues that there is no “American Dream”. There’s no mysterious picture of success, no ephemeral image of happiness. Essentially, Miller uses every character to show that the American Dream simply doesn’t exist no matter how hard you look for it. Willy looks for it in his job, his family, and even his death. Biff looks just about everywhere and Linda passively waits and hopes it will come to her. In fact, the only characters who really achieve success are Charley and Bernand and they aren’t even looking for anything. They simply live their lives like they want to, how they want to, and with no regard for any sort of externally imposed “dream”. The whole point of the play is that the American Dream is a myth. There’s no set formula for happiness, success, or really anything for that matter. If we live like there is, we will only end up like Willy - alone, discontent, and dead.

As for what I think the American Dream is, I don’t really think it’s changed much over the years. Back in the fifties it might have been a house in the suburbs, a nuclear family, and a good career, but now it’s just been diversified. The house in the suburbs has been replaced by a small cottage, a vast mansion, or a bohemian enclave. The nuclear family has been replaced by a spouse, some kids, or some combination. And the dream of a “good” (or at least fulfilling) career hasn’t gone anywhere either. The thing is, people are just going to do whatever they want to try to be happy. They look to a family, a person, possessions, God, or something else entirely. At some point someone will try to put this vision of happiness into an easily accessible, packaged “dream” and maybe later someone will decide to label it “The American Dream”. In the end, I think Arthur Miller was mostly right. It might seem a little pessimistic, but I think it’s actually a better alternative. At the very best all an American Dream or even a personal dream can provide a set of goals and hope for the future. But at it’s worst a dream can feel binding or restrictive. So I think that a clear “dream” and a direct plan for the future doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Instead, I’m just going to live my life now and worry about labeling it later.

Walk

Well to start off I wasn’t really super excited about going on a walk. I wanted to go somewhere exciting and interesting to walk to but I didn’t have to time to drive anywhere. So I just left from my house.

At first I couldn’t concentrate on anything, my mind just wandered and I did a horrible job of “reflecting” on anything. I did take a lot of pictures of somewhat obscure things but I didn’t really have a plan on how to use them. I just found my pictures interesting and I figured I could make up something about it later. After a while I just came to the conclusion that I would not experience any type of “awakening” or intense moment of realization. I even came up with some basic structure as to how I would write this assignment. I would just describe my walk at the end I would say something about how the walk didn’t really change me or anything but that’s okay because I’m happy with who I am right now.

But obviously, that’s not how I wrote this assignment. Just a little while after I had already planned out my entire writing assignment I got to the top of a hill near a school. Around the backside of the school there’s a hill that used to have some type of trail on it but now is little more than rocks, dirt, and fallen trees. On the other side of this hill, at the bottom, there is a trail and often times I will ride my bike along this trail. It used to be that I would carry my bike down the hill, over the fallen trees and stuff, but last year for my birthday I got a pair of clipless shoes with cleats at the bottom so I can’t really climb down the hill anymore. So for my walk I decided to walk down the hill, mainly just because I hadn’t been down it in a while, I couldn’t think of another place to go, and maybe (if you want to get super reflective) I missed it.

As I was walking down, I saw a little part of the former trail branch of a ways to a place I had never noticed before. At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. I saw an old tank of some sort and what looked like tile and concrete. I also noticed a little shed back a ways and quite a bit of graffiti all over the place. It took a while, but I eventually decided that it had to have been an old house. The tiles I saw were actually on top of a couple square yards of linoleum and I figured out that it must have been a shower in a bathroom (really where else would you find linoleum and tile). And the concrete I saw, I’m pretty sure that was the foundation of the house. I think the shed was just a shed, but it did have electrical outlets and stuff so I would bet that it was built along with the house. I still didn’t know what the tank was, but after a while I decided that it had to be either a septic tank or a tank for heating oil.

Then I headed back. It was pretty much pouring down rain now but I was content. That old house (or what used to be a house) make my walk interesting and worthwhile. For a long time though, I couldn’t think of a way to connect this to anything deep or basically say anything besides “Yeah, ummm I saw a demolished house and... Yeah, it was pretty cool”. Now that I think about it though, maybe the significant part wasn’t that I found an old, demolished house but that I actually took the path to the house just to see what I could find.

Yeah, I kinda took a lot of pictures... 

Blog Post 2

“However much you improve the man’s raw material, you have still got something else: the real, free choice, of the man, on the material presented to him, either to put his own advantage first, or to put it last. And this free choice is the only thing morality is concerned with.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Lewis makes a lot of claims in Mere Christianity, but few of them are emphasized as much as this one. Although his argument for relative morality is somewhat short, his views on “free choice” and his belief that actions should be evaluated based on whether a man puts himself first or others first comes up multiple times. However, to understand these beliefs, it is important to understand what Lewis meant by “raw material” and morality. Earlier in the section he illustrates his point with two men in a war. They both suffer from irrational fears about going to battle but they end up receiving psychoanalytical help and overcome their cowardice. Later though, one of the men uses his new found courage to help him perform his “duty” while the other man uses his courage to effectively hide himself and keep himself safe. Lewis then claims that the irrational fears of battle were psychological problems, which prohibited the men from performing their duties. As a result, they could not initially be judged for their actions because their irrational fears were beyond their control. However, he says that, after receiving help, the man who fought acted morally but the man who ran did not. Consequently, their irrational fear is their “raw material”, and their choices, once returned to a state of normality (a new “raw material”), are what their morality should be based on. Another example could be two different car crashes. In one car crash, for instance, the brakes could unexpectedly stop working and the driver would be forced to cause a collision. In another crash though, the driver could intentionally ram into another car to hurt someone. In the first instance the driver could not be held responsible for the crash because the car was out of control. On the other hand, the second driver would definitely be held responsible for his actions because his car was functioning properly and he chose to cause a crash. He was thinking only of himself when he caused the crash and, as a result, acted immorally.

If only it was that simple. In reality though, both the man and his raw materials are inseparable because of the Fall. Although Adam and Eve may have been able to choose whether or not to eat the forbidden fruit and although people may (arguably) be able to choose to become a Christian, the “free choice” of an individual to act for others instead of themselves (and thus act morally) is mostly wishful thinking. Instead, I believe, that because of man’s sinful nature, nothing is done but out of self-interest. For instance, say a person devotes twenty hours a week to feeding the homeless, working for a charity, evangelizing or doing some other supposedly magnanimous activity. It might appear that he is doing it all for other people, but it actually benefits him as well. In one case, maybe feeding the homeless, he would be losing his time and energy, supposedly giving it away for the sake of other’s. Instead it is simply a transaction. Whether consciously or not, he is exchanging his time and effort for love and acceptance (or a variety of other things) either from the homeless person or from the people he is working with. He and others may even think that he is volunteering simply because it is the “right thing to do” but because of man’s sinful nature he is still thinking of himself. No matter how disguised the social transaction is or how well hid the personal benefit (psychological or otherwise) is, we can never truly do something simply for the sake of doing good. We will always see the benefit to us. Thus the example of the two car crashes becomes irrelevant. In one instance the man made a decision to cause a crash and will generally be seen as immoral. However, the other car crash involved no decision, the man was more or less a bystander in a natural occurrence. Consequently, when Lewis gives the example of the two men going into battle, it is entirely possible that, by Lewis’s definition, the second man is just as moral as the first. The two men are both acting out of self-preservation; the second man just does not hide it. When that man goes to battle he runs because he is afraid that he will get injured. Meanwhile, the first man goes into battle and makes a calculated social transaction, exchanging his personal safety for acceptance and respect among members of his community. In the end then, judging a man on his actions and not his environment is impossible. Man’s sinful nature makes unadulterated goodness nonexistent and we ultimately cannot take into account every conscious and subconscious factor that went into an action. As a result, determining morality apart from an omniscient God is impossible, so we must rely on Scripture to evaluate a person’s actions - not whether they acted out of a sense of self-interest or whether their environment made their actions justifiable.