Stephen Dedalus and the Daedalus Myth

The motif of flight that is constantly repeated throughout the book stems from Stephen's last name, which he shares with a man from a Greek myth. The mythical Daedalus was also an artist of sorts, only his art was inventing and building where Stephen Dedalus's art is words. Daedalus built a king a labyrinth, which he later became imprisoned in himself. This correlates with Stephen's life because he constantly builds up his life to be better for other people, and then constantly becomes imprisoned in the life he has created. One of the most relevant examples of this is when Stephen throws himself devoutly into his religion, to the point where he physically suffers as a result. He built up his life to please God and the priests, however in the end he turned away from both. He managed to escape the prison of his own mind in that situation the way Daedalus escaped the labyrinth he built, through his art. Where Daedalus used his art of creation to build wings to fly away, Stephen realized his calling to the art of writing and words.

In one passage, the myth of Daedalus is referenced while Stephen stares up at birds flying through the sky, "A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk like man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier woven wings, of Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon." In this quote, the hawk like man is Daedalus, and the way he is described is almost in an admiring way from Stephen. Stephen up to this point has still be unable to completely free himself of the constraints that his have afflicted him all his life, like Ireland, religion, and his family.

Overall, I thought "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" was an interesting book. The way it was written, through thoughts developing over years while Stephen grew up, was clever and engaging. Though some parts were difficult or boring, the book as a whole was exciting as I could never tell where Stephen would go next with his thoughts. His jumps from extreme to extreme kept me interested in what progressions he would continue to make throughout his life. The fact that Joyce wrote a book starting with a story about a moocow, and somehow make it into a serious narrative about a young boys journey into adulthood was very impressive.

"Vergissmeinnicht" Keith Douglas

In Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas, the speaker is a solider- most likely in World War II due to the dead German soldier mentioned in the poem. The speaker is returning to the scene of a battle after 3 weeks. There is no fighting at the scene this time, however the body of an enemy soldier, whom attacked the speaker and was then killed, is present. The first two stanzas don't allow for any humanity to be seen in the enemy soldier. The middle two stanzas introduce the aspect of his life outside of being an enemy, through the picture of the soldiers love with "Vergissmeinnicht" (forget me not), written on it. Yet, the stanzas continue to disregard his humanity because of his role as a combatent against the speaker and his companions. There is a shift within the last two stanzas that address the second aspect of the dead soldier, his role as a lover to the woman in this picture.

The rhyme scheme changes throughout the poem, never keeping with the same pattern for even two stanzas in a row. The second to last stanza, where the major shift in tone occurs, does not even contain rhyming within it and draws more attention to the shift as a result.

Douglas uses a lot of alliteration throughout Vergissmeinnicht. A larger emphasis is placed on phrases such as soldier singled, skin the swart, and solider sprawling through the repetition of the 's' sound in the beginning of each word. All of the phrases containing alliteration are revolving around the actual death of the enemy soldier. This has an effect of placing much more importance on the dead body of the solider then the life it lived before hand.

In reading this poem by Keith Douglas, I did not feel as though the speaker felt sorry for the dead solider, or even sympathetic to the soldier's lover. The final stanza seemed much more matter-of-fact than emotional, just stating how being a soldier took away the possibility of being a lover for the dead man. However, I think the lack of emotion was necessary for this poem to seem as though the speaker truly experienced this situation, because as a soldier he had to kill the man in order to survice.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" John Keats

The poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats contains two speakers. The first speaker starts the poem addressing the second speaker, who is pointed out by the first to be a knight. The first speaker questions the second about what is ailing him, and it is safe to sumise that the "beautiful woman without mercy" from the title is the reason. The transition into the second speaker is not done through typical means such as quotations or parentheses to offset him. The knight goes straight into describing that what ails him was not only a beautiful woman, but a fairy.

Keats sets different tones throughout the poem. The first three stanzas, which are all there is of the first speaker, show concern and curiousity over the knight's predicament. The following four stanzas are the knight explaining all the good things about his fairy love. There is a shift again in the eighth stanza, which focuses on the sadness of the fairy girl, and the knights attempts to comfort her. It seems, however, his attempts fail because the next few stanzas show how he dreams about many other men whom have experienced her love and lost it, and their warnings to him. The final two stanzas are the knight awakening from his dream without her. Keats effectively ends the poem with nearly the exact same stanza he began with, signifying the end of the story to the first speaker.

When reading this poem for the first time, I took the fairy to be somewhat evil or heartless because of the poems title implying that she was without mercy. However, upon rereading a few times, I began to believe the woman was not cruel or evil, but just unable to be take the love she had been given by the knight. The fact that her change in mood occured when she took the knight to her "elfin grot" which I'm assuming is her home, seems to indicate that he didn't quite fit into her world, and therefore she had to let him go when he fell asleep.

"When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer" Walt Whitman

The speaker of When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman is a man who, as made obvious by the title, had listened to an astronmer talking scientifically about the stars. The speaker, however, does not take interest in the science or the reasoning behind stars In fact, he becomes unexplainably sick and tired by the explanations. Because the speaker is impacted in a negative way by the astronomers lecturing, it is evident that the point of the poem is to focus on the less then scientific aspects of the stars. This is even more clear through the use of the word "mystical" in the final line which is a word that is quite opposite from scientific. The speaker can't explain why he had to leave the lecture, but the final line also points that out with his happiness in how he "look'd up in perfect silence at the stars".

Whitman uses the repetition of 'when' at the beginning of each phrase to show all the things that the astronomer is pointing out about stars and astronomy. Whitman ceases that repetion with the "How soon" and signifies a change in the attitude of the speaker. Prior to 'how soon' the speaker could almost seem interested in the lecture he is hearing, however following it the tone points to his boredom with astronomy and contentment in just observing the mystical aspects of stars.

Whitman chooses not to rhyme his poem, and by doing so gives it a more story-telling aspect. The speaker comes off as though he is narrarating this experience to someone instead of purposefully coming across as a poem. A rhyme scheme would have taken away from that story-like effect.

Personally, I experienced this poem as though it was being told to me by the speaker himself, and he was expressing his frustration at having just listened to a long lecture about stars that he would much rather just sit and stare at without hearing anything.

"Good Times" by Lucille Clifton

The speaker of Lucille Clifton's poem Good Times is a little black child reflecting on the things that make her life good. The wording of the poem is juvenile and uses improper English with no capitalization. This makes it more appealing because it seems like a truly sincere experience that she is describing. The fact that the good times the child speaks of are having electricity and paid bills, and the family being together also add greatly to the sincerity in the poem. Clifton uses repetition throughout the poem with using 'good times' multiple times at the end of each stanza, and using 'and' to begin most sentences of each stanza. This makes the speaker more evident, because children tend to tell stories in much more of a "and this and that and this" way, which is how this poem is formed.

My personal interpretation of this poem is that is one which shows not to take things for granted in a very clever way. Clifton points out all the very small things that make the good times happen for the speaker of this poem. Most of the things are hardly ever even considered, let alone the sole purpose of happiness. For example, "and the lights is back on" shows how only having electricity is enough to make her day better, whereas for most people electricity is just considered a given on a daily basis, and hardly ever thought about at all.

The way Clifton writes Good Times is very effective and well thought out, and had it been written from an adults perspective in perfect english it would not have been nearly as impacting as it was.