Yellow Wallpaper and Metamorphosis

I tend to be a rather direct disliking absurd or strange ways of writing that deviate from convention.  However, I did admire the Yellow Wallpaper and The Metamorphosis and I actually quite like The Metamorphosis.

The major reason i liked The Metamorphosis was that the dialogue in the Metamorphosis most resembled some of the plays I studied when I was still in IB Theatre arts, these were called absurd plays, where the dialogue was repetitive, the characters said the opposite of what they meant, or their phrases cliched or just so absurd and confused that it sounds like no normal human being would say anything that way.  The Metamorphosis sort of resembled that type of story.  it was about a group of characters thrust into a really absurd situation, in which one of them in for without any reason at all, changed into a monster.  Hence I actually found the ways they tried to cope with Gregor quite understandable, as crazy or absurd as they were.

The Yellow Wallpaper, was very image rich for such a short story.  Visual and sensory imagery were prone in this story and I noticed a lot of synaesthesia as well… a condition that possibly points to Gilman’s earlier madness.  I did find this a rather disturbing tale though and a very convincing depiction of madness.  Apart from that, I am actually not quite sure what to think about the Yellow Wallpaper…

This weeks essays are going to be really interesting for sure…  Poems, absurd stories, a short story about madness… hmm…

 

For a Wasteland, it’s rather vibrant

T.S. Eliott’s Wasteland was confusing.  All those imagery pretty much filled my senses like, as Kevin said, a minature movie reel playing.  Wait.. HOLD THAT THOUGHT…

If it’s a Wasteland, it’s certainly not a poetical or a wasteland that’s not vibrant.  Instead, what we’ve gotten from Eliot is a very rich and varied description of his wasteland, sometimes I could just taste the spring air.  There is actually an incredible amount of tactile, audiosensory imagery that is available for the reader of The Wasteland.  Kind of strange, the effort that Eliott put into describing his Wasteland, makes it NOT a wasteland in terms of senses, it delights our senses in fact, twists and turns, drawing our attention and leading us to focus on certain places and words.  This makes us feel not a wasteland of emotions, but forces us to feel…

Not to mention the allusions, which I found, confusing, but delightful for an admirer of history.  To see all those lines from various works of literature, intermingled with Eliot’s personal references is not just amusing, but it creates an incredible amount of intricacy within the work.

So, for a Wasteland, Eliot’s poem is actually quite a goldmine of imagery… seems a Wasteland can be full of beauty…

Freud and All that Jazz

Well… Freud is.. interesting.

Okay seriously, as the first philosopher we’ve ever studied to equate practically everything we do to our desires, love and need for sex, he’s pretty darn revolutionary.  I mean Plato, Hobbes, they all talk about how desire is a bad thing.  In fact, they try to severely repress desires severely, through the Kalliopolis and the Leviathan.  Freud is probably the first to say that desires and libido are necessary or else we’ll self-destruct ourselves.  And he’s darn fascinating, in fact, his ideas may explain many things we are confused about.

I’ll get to the point, porn.  Why is porn, particularly internet porn so popular these days? Seriously, it’s skyrocketed and the adult media industry has grown hugely. The priest in my church keeps focusing on the issue, so when I read Freud, I thought of the issue.  Well if we look at Freud, its kind of explained.  Humans know that sexual love affords the greatest pleasure.  Of course, the risk (as Freud explains) is that getting married, and getting bonded to a particular love-object has great risks, particularly of betrayal, of rejection and so forth. Therefore, it makes sense why man and men of this time have become so bloody interested in internet pornography.  There are no risks.  The love-object, is anonymous, a piece of media, and it satisfies sexual desires.  Of course the attachment is very temporary, but it does explain why people are so attracted to adult media of this time.  This shows that Freud’s ideas on sex and pleasure can be quite easily applied.  I also quite liked his idea on how saints direct their desires, by diverting their love toward everything.

Then again, Freud does have his drawbacks.  I mean it seems very unlikely that EVERYTHING in the world is motivated by sexual desire.  Pain and pleasure do play a part of it and the superego as well but everything by sexual desire?  That’s a little pushing it.  However, I can’t think of a convincing argument against it yet, so I’ll leave that in the air.

I also understand why we are reading this after jekyll and Hyde.  It raises questions on what part of Hyde is Jekyll… I mean is Hyde the ego and Jekyll the superego?  But if Jekyll is the superego… that means he has to have an ego… but Jekyll is Hyde… well I’m getting off track, the point is, Freud offers some convincing explanations on how Hyde and Jekyll developed and how human conscience developed.

All in all, I found Freud very informative, though I tended to get lost as he began to explain more advanced concepts.