"Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath

As we saw in the class discussion, Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus” can be interpreted in numerous ways.  However, I think that her poem was made to show her audience that she was a piece of art being looked and analyzed at by others.  Her attempts to die and fail are what people were amazed at.  She states that she was an “opus” or a “valuable”, which are all things of display (lines 66-67).  She also mentioned that “there is a charge, a very large charge- for a word or a touch” (lines 61-62) indicating that she was a display of art because people have to pay to look or touch a piece of art.  She refers to her audience as “The peanut-crunching crowd” (line 26) which is a sense of mock that the audience watches shamefully. The phrase “Gentlemen, ladies” (line 30) is normally used when speaking to an audience before performing an act.  This proves that she was putting on some sort of show that people came to see.

In lines 43-45 Plath states “Dying- is an art, like everything else- I do it exceptionally well.”  I disagree with this stanza because how can someone be good at “dying” if they are still alive?  Her many attempts to die are not something to be saluted at.  In fact, I think that these attempts are her failures, therefore how can she be good at dying if she hasn’t achieved it yet?  Nonetheless how can someone claim that they are good at dying if once they actually die, they can’t report it? 

After rereading Plath’s poem several times, I began to realize her transformation from an innocent shy woman into a strong, powerful lady with a sense of pride.  Her statement of “I eat men like air” (line 83) displays her of a higher being and shows her power over men, whether it be her dad, husband, or the Nazi men.  She calls “Herr God, Herr Lucifer-Beware-Beware” (lines 78-80) to warn them that she has revived herself and that there is no power greater than her.  This self of confidence towards the end of the poem shows her transformation from a weak, suicidal, expression of art to a powerful triumph defeat over the impediments in her life. 

I find it interesting how the phrases “These are my hands-My knees. - I may be skin and bone” (lines 31-33) displays an image in my head of a skinny, unfortunate, and murky figure.  However she also states “A cake of soap,-A wedding ring,-A gold filling.” (lines 76-78) which is contradictory to the phrases in lines 31-33.  These phrases automatically put the words of royalty, richness, and happiness in my mind.  This change of words throughout the poem makes me think that something significant happened in her life that allowed her to transform from being poor and unhappy to living a life of glitz and glamour. 

The poem overall is definitely captivating and allows the reader to interpret it in many ways.  Everyone that reads her poem will all have a different analysis of it.  The many ways of interpretations is why I think Plath’s poem is brilliant.  She gives her readers a sense of control by letting them use their imagination to understand it.  After reading this poem, I can see that Plath definitely had a lot of rough times in her life.  However she also expresses some of the joyful moments in her life by stating “And I a smiling woman. (line 18). 

The Woman Warrior

After attending the class discussion and rereading, I began to feel a sense of connection to the narrator of the short story “The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong Kingston.  “The Woman Warrior” displays a story about a first generation Chinese-American narrator trying to find a balance between the two cultures.  The narrator’s mother would often times warn her about certain life situations that may humiliate their family by telling her stories to grow upon (5).  One of the stories that she narrates is about the tragic event of her dead aunt that led their family to disgrace.  The story offers several possibilities about her dead aunt’s promiscuous act.  However, the most likely story was that the dead aunt “supposedly” had forbidden sex and got pregnant.  Due to the Chinese culture and the desire to represent a prestigie reputation; the aunt’s village raided her house and excluded her from being associated with the town.  The narrator’s mother particularly articulates this story because the narrator has started to menstruate and she doesn’t want her to bring their family to shame by doing any wrong deed. 

Being a first generation immigrant myself, I can relate to a lot of the feelings that the narrator portrays.  My family, as well, has made sure that I understand that I shouldn’t be doing certain unacceptable actions that would bring my family to disgrace.  The narrator and I have both been put into a situation where we have to find a balance between the American and Indian/Chinese cultures.  The narrator states “Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America” (5).  It is very challenging to be living in an American society as well as being brought up with different cultural and moral values.  Fortunately, through time and experience, I feel that I have been successful in balancing both of these worlds.  Luckily, America is considered to be the melting pot of the world filled with heterogeneous societies.  This has made the process much easier.  However, I often times find myself disagreeing with certain issues that my family brings up due to the American influence.  I have had to decide for myself about the types of morals and values that I want to live with.  In fact, I find it rewarding that I am able to be exposed to so many different types of ideas and that I can pick and choose and decide how I want to live my life. 

The narrator explains a Chinese tradition of having the daughter-in-law live with her husbands’ parents after marriage (7).  This is also similar in my Indian culture.  A lot of my cousins have had to move in with their husbands’ parents and play the infamous role of being a housewife and a daughter-in-law.  Traditionally, they are not allowed to work.  However, as the times have changed, more and more wives are found working in several industries.  Although I cannot connect to the dead aunt’s story that the narrator writes about; I can relate to a lot of the cultural complexities that she implies.  Confusion and frustration is found commonly in first generation immigrants.  However, the hardship that many of the first generation immigrants, as well as their parents, have experienced only makes them a better-rounded person due to the fact that they can understand multiple traditions, religions, and cultures.    

Role Playing

Role Playing

          In Octavia Butler’s book, “Kindred” the main character Dana and her husband Kevin time travel from 1976 back into 1819 during the slave era. In this time, Dana being a black woman and Kevin being a white man, they are forced to play completely different roles in order to fit in and survive in this brutal time. Dana was going to have to go from a normal women working as a temp in L.A. to playing the role of a slave trying not to get beat. As for Kevin, he has to go from marrying a black woman to playing the role of a slave owner who is supposed to resent all black people.

          When they arrive in 1819 together, they don’t come prepared with a story to tell anyone who asks. They realize that telling the truth about them isn’t going to work real quickly. When Rufus, the boy that Dana is supposed to keep alive, asks Kevin, “does Dana belong to you know?” (Butler 60). Kevin’s response is “in a way, she’s my wife” (60). Rufus gave him a weird look and told him that is was against the law for blacks to marry whites. This ensured them that if it wouldn’t hold up against a 12 year old boy it definitely would not hold up to anyone else. They eventually meet up with Rufus’s father and Kevin is forced to make up a story of why they were there and why they were broke. He was able to think off the top of his head and make up a believable story. Rufus’s father Tom Weylin then offers him a job to teach Rufus to read and while he is recovering from his injury. From that moment on he had to play the role as a teacher, which wasn’t very difficult for him since he was a teacher. He would also have to socialize with “a steady stream of ignorant pretentious guests,” which he complained to Dana about (97). This shows that Kevin isn’t at any real risk being in this time era.

          Dana’s role was much more difficult and risk bearing than the role that Kevin had to play. Even though she didn’t have to work on the plantation, she had to learn to hold her tongue and not talk back to anyone who was white.  One thing that had to be particularly rough for her was not being able to be with Kevin as often as she would have liked. She was also forced to sleep in less than desirable condition but most importantly not with Kevin. One morning Dana was sneaking out of Kevin’s room and Mr. Weylin spotted her coming out. All he did to her was give her a “wink” and walked away (97). Not only could she not be near her husband but she also has to be judge as being a whore and not say anything about it.

          Overall Dana had a much worst “role” to play than Kevin. While Dana was stuck doing busy work and being bossed around by Ms. Weylin; Kevin was “complaining of boredom” (97). This is tough on Dana because she is the one who is potentially risking her life, so she has to think about every move she makes so she doesn’t get whipped or beaten. 

Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

            Back in the 1800’s people didn’t know very much about medicine and diseases. This is what the narrator for, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman experiences after she has her baby. Her husband John and her brother our both physicians and believe that she has “a temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 1). She is not getting well fast enough, and John believes that the cure to her illness is complete rest. In order for her to get that rest he takes her to a secluded mansion for 3 months. At this mansion John treats her as if she was a child. Throughout the story the narrator slowly starts noticing weird things about the room, mainly the wallpaper in the room. Johns techniques in his medical practice drive the narrator to see people in the wallpaper and eventually go insane.

            When they arrive at the mansion, John makes the narrator stay in the stay in the nursery on the top floor of the house. This is the beginning of the babying John does to the narrator. She wanted a room downstairs, but John says that “there was only one window” in that room and she need as much air as she could get (2). When the narrator gets to the room, she notices that “the windows are barred” (3). Having bars on the window gives the illusion of being in jail and makes you feel like you are locked out from the outside world. She then notices the wallpaper and describes it as:

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. (3)

This shows that she believes this wallpaper is hideous and is truly bothered by how it was made. The environment she was set up in was setting her up for failure. She was in a room that resembled a jail cell with wallpaper she couldn’t stand to look at.

            Even though she is forced to stay in this room she tries to find the good in it. She realizes that with all the windows she gets a great view of everything from the garden to the bay. Even with all of these beautiful views, there is one thing that she can’t stop thinking about, “that horrid paper” (4). At this point she is beginning to get an obsession with the wallpaper. She begins to study the patterns of it and believes that the paper is looking at her “as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (5).  She continues to study and obsesses over it more. She even begins to see “bulbous eyes” starring at her from the wall paper (5). To further express her obsession, continually throughout the story she will be talking about something completely unrelated and will say things such as, “but I don’t mind it a bit-only the wallpaper” (5). She continually brings up the subject of the wallpaper even when what she is talking about has nothing to do with it.

            As she lives in the room longer and studies the paper more she continues to be able to bare the room and even like it. She hides the things that she sees in the wallpaper and believes that “nobody knows them but [her], or ever will” (8). She is constantly keeping watch making sure no one sees her looking at the wallpaper. She begins to see a pattern that “gets clearer everyday” until she finally makes it out to be “a women stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (8). I believe that this shows that everyday, she begins to get a little crazier and starts to see more and more things in this wallpaper. Finally, she gets totally insane and starts seeing actual people in the paper. She begins to notice that as the light changes so do the pattern of the wallpaper. At night she says, “it becomes bars” and she can see the women in the paper the best at night (10). As the weeks go by she gets tired more easily and sleeps more. John thinks it’s a good thing, but isn’t she supposed to be getting stronger?  All the analyzing of the wallpaper is draining her energy and making her weaker. Still obsessing over it, she sees John and his sister Jennie looking at the paper and begins to worry that they are trying to see the patterns that she sees.

They are only staying there for another week and she starts to worry because she has not yet figured out the pattern. She begins to stay up through the night because it is more “interesting to watch developments” at night (11). Though analyzing it at night so much she begins to realize that “the front pattern does move” and it is because “the woman behind shakes it” (12). This shows that since she has been staring at the paper night after night, in just the moonlight, her mind had begun to play tricks on her. She began to see what she wanted to see. It was as if the woman was trying to break out of the wallpaper by shaking it.  After she sees the women trying to get she believes that during the day she does get out because “[she] has seen her!” (12). On the last night she was going to be there, once she saw the women in the paper she ran over there and tried to help her get out. She tried and tried until “[they] had pulled all the wall paper off” (13). Her she believed that the woman from the inside was actually helping her pull off the wallpaper but in reality it was just her ripping it down herself.

            She was going crazy; she locked herself in her room and through the key out the window just so she could be alone with the wallpaper. Now that she is alone, she wanted to “astonish [John]” (14). In order to do that she tries to commit suicide by hanging herself. She finds a rope, but doesn’t have anything high enough to stand on. The bed is bolted down and she tries everything to move. She even “bit off a little piece of the corner off” and the only reason she stopped was because “it hurt [her] teeth” (14). What kind of sane person would try to bite through metal? When she first moved in to the room, the only thing she liked about it was that there were a lot of windows to look through. Now that she has gone insane, she doesn’t “like to look out of the windows” anymore because she is now seeing women outside creeping (14). What once was the only positive thing she could say about the room is now the one thing she can’t stand to do. Also, the one thing that she couldn’t stand to look at is now the only thing she cares about. John then tries to come into the room but it is locked. He finds the key and opens the door to his wife creeping on the floor. John faints, and she continues to creep right over his body.

            When the narrator first moved into the room she hated it. She thought the wallpaper was disgusting and couldn’t stand to look at it. Once she got obsessed with it she began seeing things in. I believe that she began seeing herself in the wallpaper because at night she said that it looked like there were bars on the wall, just like how the windows in her room were barred. The women she saw was her, because during the day the narrator would go out and walk in the garden sometimes. She wasn’t completely confined to the room. Just, as the narrator saw the women in the wallpaper walking around during the day. This was all caused by John’s techniques for treating the symptoms that she had. To detain someone in what seems to be a prison cell for 3 months would cause most people to go insane. She had nothing to do, so she began to imagine things to entertain herself. In her case, she imagined someone in the wallpaper with the same problem that she had. Since she was stuck in the room for so long she took it to far and began trying to break free of the room and the way she did that was by tearing the wallpaper down and creeping around. This problem would have never happened if they knew the medical stuff we know now. Then they would have realized that she just had postpartum depression.

KINDRED

Octavia Butler incorporates a number of different themes in her novel, Kindred. The idea of time travel, violence, gender roles, slavery, family, and playing certain roles in order to survive all play an important part in making Kindred the brilliant work it was. This book began in a way that allows for suspicion to occur and I thought that was very interesting. We are led to have certain expectations about the characters but we can then only suspend those beliefs because it is not the truth at all. I wasn’t sure if the author had a particular reason for doing this, or if she did it to make the reader aware of the fact that nothing is always as it seems.

One issue that I believe is worth talking about is the observation I made about the characters’ roles. For example, the colored boy Nigel is roughly the same age as Rufus, but he appears to already be aware of how things are going to be for the rest of his life. He knows how he needs to act and what he needs to say to please Mr. Weylin. With this being said he still wants to experience and be apart of things that white folks are granted. Nigel learns to live by Luke’s words: “’Don’t argue with white folks, don’t tell them ‘no.’ Don’t let them see you mad. Just say ‘yes, sir.’ The go ‘head and do what you want to do. Might have to take a whippin’ for it later on, but if you want it bad enough, the whippin’ won’t matter much” (Butler 96). I felt like he much rather do the things he desires and pay for it later rather than living a life full of what-ifs. Later when Nigel asks Dana to teach him to read he proceeds to make it clear he does not care about being beaten. Dana is at first hesitant in agreeing but eventually she breaks and states, “I’ll teach you. I just wanted to be sure you knew what you were getting into” (Butler 98). After she says this Nigel “turned away, lifted his shirt in the back so [Dana] could see his scars. Then he faced [her] again. ‘I know,’ he said” (Butler 98). This response took me back because I wasn’t expecting it. I find it very powering that Nigel is willing to risk his life for something like learning to read. To think that this is something we take advantage of and don’t fully appreciate makes me feel guilty for overlooking the severity of how slavery was enforced. They yearned for something as simple as spelling a word or reading a sentence and do we even think twice about how easily it comes to us?

The roles being played by Dana and Kevin are also important to this novel. The role as slave and slave master was necessary for both of them to survive. But have any events led you to believe otherwise? One in particular that made me question whether it was still a role or a new way of life was the little argument between Dana Kevin after witnessing the auction the kids were holding. It affected her more than Kevin and this didn’t sit well with her. He claims “’It has already happened. We’re in the middle of history. We surely can’t change it. If anything goes wrong, we might have all we can do just to survive” (Butler 100). I feel like Kevin’s main concern is getting Dana and himself back to the present safely. This is great, but has he somewhat become accustomed to his life on the plantation? For some reason when I read the line “’I see Weylin was right about educated slaves,’” spoken by Kevin, I read it as a negative remark. (101) I thought he was in agreement that slaves should not be taught to read because it gives them too much power but once I continued to read I do not believe that is at all how he meant it. He is rather encouraging her to teach him rather than deny him the privilege.

Kindred

Kindred

                The scenes described in Kindred are like no other story I have read. They are horrifying but for some reason I couldn't put the book down. I needed to finish reading to see if Dana and Kevin were ever reunited or if Rufus ever tried to rape Dana. The relationship that Dana and Rufus had seemed to keep my attention the most. Rufus always called for her when he was in danger and Dana would come to help him, like a savior. One of the times Dana came Rufus had just been beaten up by Isaac for raping Alice. Dana says, "I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman-to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one." (Butler, 124) You can't help who you fall in love with. Rufus fell in love with Alice and Kevin with Dana. They were both interracial relationships and even though centuries a part they were both looked down upon.
                  I just don't understand the hatred towards someone else because of their looks. I understand disliking someone because they did something bad and unspeakable but condemning a whole race because their skin is black instead of white is a little absurd. But it happened. Even now there are the color lines and separations among people because they are different.
                The doubling for Alice and Dana was also interesting. If Rufus loved Dana like he loved Alice, why didn't he try to sleep with her too? Rufus says, '"You were one woman. You and her one woman. One woman, two halves of a whole." (257)
               While I was reading I kept trying to imagine that what if this were me. Would I adapt and play the role? Would I have such a close relationship with Rufus, even though he hit me and made me work in the fields?

No Named Woman

The story of “No Name Woman” by Maxine Kingston is one full of ambiguity from beginning to end. The narrator tells the story with different scenarios and possible situations for the purpose of getting the audience to question the facts given. When I first read this shorts story I couldn’t quite understand why the narrator was telling the story about her aunt, especially when the first line in directly states that she “Must not tell anyone what [her mother was] about to tell [her]” (Kingston 3). It wasn’t until our class discussion that I realized the narrator was trying to put the pieces together and determine what kind of person her aunt really was, despite the rumors of her throughout the village.

The first scenario somewhat plays the aunt as the victim. We are led to believe that a man in the village repeatedly rapes her. As the beginning of the story progresses we are immediately introduced to the raid that took place destroying everything in the house of the “No Name Woman.” Later we are told that the man who is said to rape her also threatens to kill her if she tells anyone. When she claims, “’I think I’m pregnant.’ He organized the raid against her” (Kingston 7). We see here she can possibly be viewed as the victim. Once the village assumes she must be sleeping around, since her husband has been gone for years, her name is ruined, she is tainted, and she is put to shame. But was she really raped? Was there absolutely no way it could have been her husbands’ child? Even though as a reader this is the information we are given the full truth is still uncertain. The narrator is giving us insight based on information from her mother, which could in fact be biased because tells her own daughter, “What happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us” (Kingston 5).

This leads me to another topic we discussed in class when Ronald brought up the idea about this story being ironic. Ironic in the sense that the “No Name Woman” was being punished when she was the one who was raped when it should have been the other way around. When you first read the story the situation could easily appear to be ironic because the victim is punished instead of the perpetrator. But when we started discussing the possibility of this in class a bigger issue came up. I thought it was really interesting when we came to the conclusion that this part of the story isn’t really ironic at all because it happens in our society today. Women are demonized by our culture and are, more often times than not, too afraid to speak up if they are victims of abuse.

Although as readers we don’t know which version of the story to believe, but the third version is the one I choose to believe. The “No Name Woman” committed her last act of love. “Carrying the baby to the well shows loving. Otherwise abandon it…Mothers who love their children take them along” (Kingston 15). This I strongly agree with. As the mother she knew that her baby was already deemed to be nothing and a no one. Instead she believed it was her “devotion,” “responsibility,” and ultimate “protection” to take her daughter to die with her. Ultimately we do not know the truth of the story in it’s entirety but the outright defiance from the narrator herself proves she is trying to find her own truth and guidance for who she should be.