Post #5: House Slaves

Scarlett O'Hara and Mammy of "Gone with the Wind" from ehrensteinland.com

Today's assignment was to read an excerpt on a particular aspect of slavery and to summarize it.


When most people think of slaves they think of hardship and hard work. According to the stories in Spartacus Educational there are differences between the house slaves and the field slaves. While some field slaves believed the house slaves had it easier than they did some house slaves felt they received the same treatment or worse.


Some of the benefits a few of the house slaves had included:

• Better food
• Better clothing
• The opportunity to sleep in later
• Treatment that matched the children of the slave owners

While other house slaves claimed to have been made to wake up early and go to bed after everyone else in the house was asleep. They were also not given better food as one slave owner's wife had spit in all the pots containing any leftover food to ensure the house slaves and their families wouldn't eat any.


Some house slaves fared better than those in the field because many developed emotional relationships with their owners, were given promises of freedom in the future and were sometimes also educated by the slave owner's wives. This could have created conflict among field slaves who may have thought the house slaves were becoming too much like the owners. A downside to having a closer relationship with the master was the close bonds forming into unwanted sexual relationships.

Post #4: Self Evaluation and Reflection

Night Falls, Ilustrated by Sam Fores from Complex Media

This week's assignment is to choose a blog which we've already written that we are most proud of. I've chosen blog #2, my assessment of the poem "Funeral Blues" by W H Auden. I picked this blog because I feel this is the one where I fully began to understand the blog assignments and what was asked of us. I completely related to the poem and although I spun it in a different direction than I believe the writer was going I truly believed the feelings were the same. Blog #2 also happened to be the one that I received the most comments on ;-)

While I've loved reading and writing poetry since I was a child, have always had a love of English in school, and became a published writer in High School I thought I had these English classes in the bag. I was definitely wrong. All in all I think I'm doing ok in the class so far but I'm still learning a lot of things I already THOUGHT I knew. In this brief amount of time we've covered topics such as:

1. Poem structure such as stanzas (divided sections), tone (feeling), theme (the main idea),  rhyme schemes (recurring patterns), metaphors (comparison of unlike things), and more. It can be a little frustrating at time but I enjoy the idea that we are being asked to dig deeper into what we see on the surface to find hidden meanings and messages. Breaking down/analyzing the poems also helps me to gain a better understanding of the Author's work.
2. Acts of plagiarism; which I now know is more complex than simply copying someone else's work word for word.
3. Research! Going over the usage of the school's online library and being urged to use outside sources to support our claims as well as paraphrasing and quoting sources.
4. Most importantly, I am too excited over just learning how to create and keep up a blog! I've been wanting to do this for a long time.

I think it was pretty cool to be able to help another class on the poem "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson. I'll admit I'm not much of a group person; not just in class but in general. I prefer to work solo or in a very small group because I like control and order and I don't care for dealing with multiple personalities. I also have a tendency to be very shy and find that I don't speak up enough when working with other people. Fortunately, I got lucky with the House mates I was paired with (for the most part). Everyone was eager and kind and we instantly started throwing ideas into the mix. We were all kind of on the same page with slightly different variations of our idea of the poem but were able to quickly piece our thoughts together into one collective idea and get it posted to the group's satisfaction. I wasn't aware that we could see the response of the people we helped. I was however a little disappointed in one person's complete lack of enthusiam and interaction with the group and found it a little unfair that all the work was done without ANY of this person's input but they received credit for it just the same as the rest of us. I don't think I would want to work in groups again if I couldn't work with the members of Morrison House. I feel that I would be forced to work with other classmates that don't share the same passion about the class or drive to succeed that I have causing time to be wasted overall. I am currently experiencing this issue when we dedicate class time to working on our papers.

I did have an opportunity to complete the House evaluations. I'm still pretty pleased with the House mates I have as I felt that the majority of them have done a good job with their blogs. They seem to be on point with their interpretations of the poems and I've even learned some things from a couple of them. They might have missed a few of Dr. X's instructions here and there (and a couple of blog entries- yikes!) but overall I think as the semester progresses their blogs will get even better than they are now and I'm looking forward to reading them.

Post #3: "Bitch"

From At Work and Bored

This week we are preparing for our first paper. We’ve been asked to choose 1 poem from 6 options and analyze it. I’ve chosen “Bitch” written by Carolyn Kizer in 1984. This poem has only one stanza which contains 33 lines and is intended for anyone that has been in a serious relationship which ended without any real closure for at least one of the people involved.

Here is my paraphrase from the poem:

The speaker has a run-in with a former flame (line 1) and begins talking to her inner self (line 2) trying to convince herself that he means no harm (line 3) and is only an old friend saying hello (line 4). She greets him (line 5) while her defenses begin to kick in (line 6). Trying to convince (line 7) and calm herself (line 8) she inquires about his family (line 9) and he gives her a familiar look (line 10) causing her tough interior to soften (line 11). She longs to embrace him (line 12) but holds herself back (line 13) while continuing the conversation (line 14) and keeping calm (line 15). She’s satisfied that she can control herself (line 16) and begins to reminisce (line 17) about the nights he would come home (line 18) and she would just gaze at him (line 19) but he would be too preoccupied to notice (line 20) or feel too stifled by her and send her away (line 21) until he was ready for her company (line 22). She also remembers when he was nice to her (line 23) on his good days (line 24) and those days mean more to her (line 25) than the bad days and day they broke up (line 26). She’s tells him she’s happy for his accomplishments (line 27) and begins to doubt herself (line 28) and think about her faults from their past (line 29) before comparing herself to his present and future (line 30). She offers well wishes for his wife begrudgingly (line 31) and pulls herself away (line 32) as she says goodbye (line 33). 

The speaker of the poem is a woman that is torn between the thoughts in her mind and the emotions of her heart. "The bitch inside me" is the attitude of a scorned woman and also the behavior of a vicious dog. The speaker's tone shifts between calm and ferocious- calm because of the way she addresses her ex-lover and ferocious because of how her inner self reacts by wanting to attack. There are several aggressive references made that support this claim:

1. Don't start growling
2. The bitch starts to bark hysterically
3. I'll give you a taste of the choke-chain
4. The casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal
5. I drag you off by the scruff

Although the woman no longer sees her ex as an "enemy" or "trespasser" and chooses to speak politely to him she hasn't fully gotten over the hurt he caused her in the past which appears to have had an effect on her future. This type of scenario reminds me of "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette. The song is about a scorned woman speaking to her ex after he has moved on. She offers him sarcastic pleasantries, congratulates him on his new life, reminisces about their good times and explains to him that she's changed. If the speaker in Carolyn Kizer's poem chose not to supress the bitch inside her this song would describe the encounter with her ex. 

Post #2: "Funeral Blues"

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID7485/images/take_my_broken_heart(1).jpg

Our next assignment is to choose a poem that stands out to us from a list of several. I've chosen "Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden. I've chosen this poem because of the overwhelming sadness I felt after reading it. The speaker appears to tell a story of a loved one that has passed on and describes his or her immense grief and disbelief:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

I instantly felt a connection to this poem not because a loved one of mine had died but more so because I could relate to a similar pain after going through a bad break-up several years ago. My boyfriend and I moved in together already knowing we were reaching the end of our relationship but hoping that this next step would turn things around for the better. It didn't. The more I realized we were drifting further apart the more depressed I became. Somewhere in my head I still believed we could make it and survived only on the "thought" of our perfect future. I put all that I had into trying to make our relationship work and centered every part of my life around him. When it finally came to an end we continued to live together for another 6 months. I was miserable.

On the day I moved out I felt as though my heart had been ripped out and I left it behind with him. I think the photo I chose accurately depicts that feeling. I attributed the line "bring out the coffin, let the mourners come" to my ex and I finalizing our relationship and the point in time where my friends spent every waking minute trying to check on me and make sure I was ok.

I would send this poem to my ex-boyfriend. We have both since moved on to other relationships and have become friends that can discuss anything. I'd like the opportunity to explain to him that the tone of the poem mirrors how I was feeling when I left our apartment. He often says I left angrily and with my head held high when that was far from the case. Once he reads the poem I believe he will then fully understand what our relationship meant to me at that time.

Post #1: Interpretation of the Rose

 From Angels Light Worldwide

Today we are working on our very first blog entry: Our interpretation of the Rose by Ferber.
The excerpt that interested me the most comes from the beginning of the interpretation:

There were several varieties of rose in the ancient world, as there are hundreds in the modern, but the rose in poetry has always been red (or "rose") in color, unless otherwise described. "Red as a rose" is the prime poetic cliché, and poets have used every other term for red to describe it, such as Shakespeare's "deep vermilion" (Sonnets 98) or the "crimson joy" of Blake's "Sick Rose". The rose blooms in the spring, and does not bloom long; the contrast is striking between its youth in the bud and its full-blown maturity, and again between both these phases and its final scattering of petals on the ground, all in the course of a week or two. It is rich in perfume, which seems to emanate from its dense and delicate folds of petals. It is vulnerable to the canker-worm. And it grows on a plant with thorns. All these features have entered into its range of symbolic uses.

I chose this excerpt because I believe it closely mirrors the stages of life for a human:

• The popularity of the color red (as in the blood)


• Roses blooming (as in birth or coming-of-age)


• The variation between the bud and full-bloom  (as in a child and an adult)


• The end stage where the rose withers and the petals fall  (human hair shedding and/or even death)


• Thorns which can be all the troubles/hurt a human may face throughout life

As a side note, although the passage I chose mentions the popularity of the red rose I chose to upload a picture of a blue rose. Not only is blue my favorite color I think the blue rose draws more attention and is much less cliché.  It is very uncommon to send someone blue roses however I would prefer to receive those instead of red because I think they would be more thoughtful. I also think it's relevant to the topic because like the many symbolic uses of the rose the color blue is also used as a symbol for moods (as in a person "feeling blue")


Source Citation

"Rose." Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Ed. Michael Ferber. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge, 1999. 172-177. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.