Is My Head in the Gutter? Or...

I was really excited to read this book. There was no forewarning that this was in Middle English or written by someone blind, or contained weird, dark magic that would accidentally reveal the devil. But when I sat down to read it, I realized that I'd seen the name Jonathan Swift before. Junior year of high school to be exact. Sandwiched somewhere in between Kafka's Metamorphosis and Camus' The Stranger, we took a "break" with Swift's "A Modest Proposal". If you haven't read it, do it. Takes a few minutes and it's the most bizarre thing ever. I won't spoil it for you. But I remember that it was indeed odd and that it led us into a big project where we had to come up with our own modest proposals in the satirical sense. Soooo...I knew that this read would be interesting.

But what really stood out to me, besides trying to grasp the symbolism of dozens of little people trying to contain one big thing or idea, was the vulgarity and specificity. We'll start with the specifics and then get down...and dirty.

The exactness of numbers and values really threw me. Swift provides us with the exact number of years that Gulliver works and studies and travels. He gives us his salary. We know how many men sailed on a ship and that twelve died and six survived including himself. Latitude, longitude? We've got it. My liberal arts brain knows nothing nautical, but I guess that information was helpful or interesting for at least a handful of readers. But why does Swift find the need to be so precise? "I felt this in my left hand" "I picked this up with my left hand". It actually drove me insane! It seems more like how not to write a book. I can appreciate specificity when it comes to something key, like the language. I love, well, most of the time, when an author creates or includes a different language in the book. It makes the reader feel the same way that the protagonist does. What does this mean? Why do they speak that way? Why are they different from us? So I do appreciate the verbatim phrases like Hekinah Dugal. But exactly where his ship sank in the ocean? Hmm...not so much.

The other thing that stands out is the vulgarity. Ohhh man. I'm not talking about the unnecessary urination. (I know at least two people will blog about that) I mean, the little innuendos and sneaky little bits that Swift slips into the story.

The island is Lilliput. Lilliput sounds harmless and it is for the most part, but when I looked up "lilliputian" it means small and trivial. At first I was thinking that this was for the small sized people, but now after reading I think it means they are small-minded. Whether they are small-minded and sheltered in ideas and knowledge or they're just idiots in Swift's mind, I'm not sure. But I think it's meant to be more mean than we would originally suggest.

His wife is a burden. This might be a stretch, but with the whole happy wyfe, happy lyfe motto in the back of my head from earlier this year, I paid close attention to her last name. Burton. To me, this sounds like "burden". Doe he find marriage to be a burden he must have in order to have money? He does make 400 pounds by marrying her? Perhaps he finds a wife to be a burden attached to having wealth.

And of course, who can forget Mr. James Bates, excuse me, Master Bates. If you caught it, you caught it. Unfortunately, my mind caught it before they even introduced him as Master which shows me how far down in the gutter my mind really is. I don't know what Swift is trying to get at by calling him this, but it's definitely there. There's no denying it.

Swift is a strange bird ahead of his time in satire and wit, and I don't know if I hate him for it or am deeply amused...

I've Got The World on a String

Milton continues to confuse me with his winding staircase sentences that lead to nowhere. I love the language and creativity he has, but just write a simple sentence once in a while to get your point across, you know? I do like where the story is headed though, and I wish we had time to trip over the words in all ten of the books, but my end of semester brain thanks Dr.MB for only making us tackle two.

All seems to be well in hell. We've now taken a look around and in addition to the expected molten fire, we've also found a surprising frozen tundra. Satan has asked his little devils to keep house and tidy things up to make hell a more suitable place to live. And now, because no good story begins and ends by staying in one place where you've been banished, Satan has taken it upon himself to go exploring. He journeys to the gates of hell, which I am actually surprised exist/he is not in charge of them. Part of me has always pictured Satan having some sort of docking station upon a lake of skulls or fire and only he has access to let people in or out. Anyway, he comes across two figures by these gates: a half woman-serpent and something shapeless and terrible. We find out that this woman is Sin and that her son, who Satan is the father of is death. Interesting, right? Sin and Satan have worked together to produce death.

I really like this theory behind the existence of death. Whenever someone dies from an illness, suddenly or just too soon, people are so quick to say something like, "How could God let such a terrible thing happen to such an innocent soul?" But is it God? If death was produced by satan and sin, it isn't really God at all. The embodiment of rule-breaking and cruelty has teamed up with a fallen angel that wanted God's powers. We don't know why death exists, but it's more of a chain of events than something God just thought up. If Satan had never betrayed God and fallen, then maybe death wouldn't exist. But then again, God knew that Satan would do this and it would eventually result in death. Beyond this, Satan actually bribes death and sin and says Hey, if you let me out of this gate, I'll let you roam earth with me. Satan literally brings death and sin to earth.

The chaos part confuses me, which I guess it should. I really thought chaos would be one with the earth, but I guess its more of a messy limbo. Chaos is described as a potpourri of miscellaneous tasks and objects that Satan must get through and I think that might be symbolic of the chaos a person on earth would have to go through to get either to heaven or to hell. Chaos sparks people to make decisions that can lean in either a positive or a negative way, but we have to make it through the chaos to make a decision. I also like that Satan sees earth is dangling from heaven by a string. In fact, I think that's my favorite symbol so far. We are dangling from a single tie to heaven. It's so much easier to fall into the depths of chaos or hell, but heaven is barely holding on to us and seems so out of grasp. The ties between heaven and earth are slim and few, showing that maybe good is not as common on earth and that if the earth is truly all evil, it would be quite easy to cut the string and let it all fall to chaos.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...

Well, it seems that Shakespeare was able to keep up his usual Comedy pattern of chaos, clowns, chaos and marriage. Not to be confused with the typical Shakespeare tragedy pattern of chaos, clowns, chaos and death. While I don't find this play particularly comical, I will admit that there is a good amount of wit in it, and there are some great lines and passages that make you think...damn.

However, I am very satisfied with the title. In past Shakespeare experience, I have been privy to reading The Tempest, Othello, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and a few others. Aside from The Tempest, it seems that my teachers have only really assigned me plays that have the title of a character or two who are in the play. As I'm sure Dr. MB is from her title contest, I am someone who loves book and play titles and finds it great when they appear in the text or their meaning is snuck in. It's a beautiful AHA! moment. And Shakespeare does not disappoint. I probably got too excited when I found this one, Act 5, scene 1, line 465, page 203:

"An Angelo for Claudio, death for death. Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure."

While I am not a firm believer in the theory of an eye for an eye, as made clear in my little Gandhi quote title, I do like that ounce of justice that Shakespeare has provided us. He gave us a title and then that title rang true in the set up of the punishment and the conclusion of the play. Everything finally came together. A lot of the previous blog posts complained that there was no justice and that these characters had no shame in running around in disguise destroying each others lives. In some cases, I completely agree, but in others, this line sort of changes my mind. Maybe in his time disguised as a friar, the duke has learned a better way to dole out punishments among his people. He may not be at 100% as a ruler, but he is certainly trying to get there. I still judge him for hiding, but after he is revealed, he does eventually fess up and explain everything too.

And although I like the title coming into play and the duke stepping back into his role, I am also unsatisfied with the ending. The Duke comes back and acts like some fairy godmother, hopping around and pointing at each character giving them their own happy or unhappy ending. And while like I said, I do not always agree with the whole eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, WHY DOES ANGELO PRETTY MUCH GET AWAY WITH ALL HE'S DONE? The Duke makes this whole measure for measure speech, declaring that there will be justice for justice and saying that for Claudio's death, Angelo will die, but then he pardons it so that Marianna can have a husband. "Lend me a knee" she begs Isabella. Give me a break! I don't see how this whole part fits with the title, unless that's the whole point? Is there such thing as measure for measure? Or is Shakespeare saying, we can't follow anything measure for measure as much as we want to because it just never works out that way. One punishment will never be equal to another.

I'm waiting for an epiphany here or for someone who gets it. I think the title is meant to be ironic, like you can't always get what  you want, or at least you can't always get what you want in exactly the same way that someone else has it. But I can't seem to quite peg why such a significant title was used, appears in the book, but then just doesn't fall through. Any ideas? Lend me a knee.

(also very upset that all the funny shakespeare memes are romeo and juliet and hamlet...give some measure for measure love, internet!)

From what Faustus has tasted of desire, Faustus holds with those who favor fire

Anyone who knows me or who had the misfortune of being in honors with me last semester, has probably heard me rant about death and more specifically, the afterlife. It's a creepy, eery subject that gives me anxiety and chills just thinking about it, but I think it's something we all ought to wonder about. Sure, we spend a 100 or so years on earth and it shouldn't be filled with worrying about whatever comes next, but after those decades on earth, what happens to us and our souls for the rest of eternity? I find anything that mentions heaven, hell, limbo, purgatory, the great beyond, etc. absolutely fascinating so I was really excited about this book, but I'm disappointed in the character of Faustus himself.

Dr. MB told us that we should try to sympathize with Faustus if we hadn't while we read, and I did sympathize with him to a point. I often have those Thoureau feelings where I wonder what life really is all about and if we're living the right way and sometimes wish I could remove myself from society and write poetry in the woods somewhere. So, I definitely understand Faustus growing tired of his life and his careers and hobbies and wanting to venture out and do something new. For me, this was doing everything in my power to get out of my hometown and go to college in another state. But for Faustus, his boredom and tiredness doesn't bring him to journey around or to pick a new career path or hobby. He turns to dark magic.

I agree with Dr. MB that this magic isn't really magic at all. I think that the so-called "magic" is symbolic for religious and philosophical thoughts and feelings that were frowned upon at the time of this book being written. Faustus making a deal with the devil, well several little devils, is less of a mid-life crisis, and more of a cry for help. I want to slap him across the face for being so arrogant and self-absorbed that he doesn't even believe that hell and evil are real when there is proof all around him and a contract signed in his own blood. Sometimes you just really want to shake a character and tell them how stupid they are.

On a more symbolic note, I am really intrigued by motifs and themes in this book. Especially, hell itself. In act 2, scene 1, line 125, Mephostophilis says, "Within the bowels of these elements where we are tortured and remain forever. Hell hath no limits nor is circumscribed in one self place, but where we are is hell and where hell is there must we ever be...all places shall be be hell that is not heaven!". Isn't it such a bold thought to say that we are in hell right now? That living your life on earth is hell and that maybe you can escape it in death, but maybe you will go on living in hell. Throw away the images of fire, swampy waters filled with skeletons and Satan sitting on a throne of thorns and imagine that instead of life, we call it hell and the only way to get out of hell is to die. And here, faustus has signed an agreement to never escape the hell that he's already in. I think Marlowe has made every reader stop and say, "wait, what?" in just a few lines of a play.

Besides flying dragons, ripping people's legs off and having the seven deadly sins dancing around, I do think that Marlowe is trying to send his readers a message. Yes, Faustus grew bored and signed away his soul and his freedom for greed, but it was of his own doing. I think Marlowe is continuing with that old message that we make our own fate. We need to appreciate life and follow a path, or we'll end up free falling into the depths of hell where we sign away to make bad decisions in order to feel good for just a while. I think this play was a moral lesson on what happens when we stray from our work and our religion, but on some level, it's still relevant today.


(thanks Robert Frost for letting me butcher your poem and use it to title my blogpost)

There's something fishy in these Utopian waters...

The letter to Peter:
Before we even get to the story, it's really interesting to read the letter because it attempts to prepare the reader for what to expect. Thomas More begins by apologizing by sending this over a year later when it was supposed to only take six weeks. He also says that it should be simple and easy to understand because fancy, complex language would ruin it. More blames his daily chores, family, job and duties for not having time to write and says that he took time out of eating and sleeping to get this done.

Most interestingly enough, he is embarrassed because he has no idea where Utopia takes place. The storyteller, Raphael, has left this detail out and nobody has asked about it either. I think this is really symbolic because we can all talk about a perfect society that we would like, but we may not know how it would come to be or where it would go.

Our fiction v. lying discussion also makes this quote stand out, "For as I've taken particular pains to avoid having anything false in this book, so, if anything is in doubt, I'd rather say something untrue than tell a lie. In short, I'd rather be honest than clever"(pp.7). The quote makes it sound like anything in this story that sounds fictitious is true, but as a reader I feel like I'm headed for a trapdoor on the floor.


Book One:
Well, it's official. I miss middle english. I have no idea what I just read. It started out simple enough and then it became sheep, thieves and shipwrecks into mysterious Utopia and I'm stumped. I know we'll dive into the chaos and confusion tomorrow, but I guess I'll share what simplicity I was able to squeeze out.

Raphael thinks he has found Utopia. The place and the ideal. What bothers me is that this "place" if it's real, or if it's a state of mind or an asylum, is known by nobody else so far in this book. He disappeared there for five years without his wife and children. It was perfect because he was alone? This makes me think that Raphael is some sort of outcast. Why does he not fit in with the society? He obviously thinks he is superior because he is a philosopher. He says over and over that a philosopher's ideas and thoughts would not be accepted in a king's court. But does he mean all philosophical ideas or just his own? There's something fishy going on.

Raphael describes the Utopia is surrounded by deserts, beasts, serpents and criminals and as you get closer to Utopia it is milder weather with better people and trade. This all sounds like some big , weird metaphor. Is his current life the outskirts of Utopia filled with cruel people as foul as beasts and pressure as hot as the son? Is he surrounded by rule breakers and vindictive people? Is Utopia simply his personal utopia?

I can't decide whether Raphael is an existentialist or whether he belongs in a straight jacket. I can't shake this feeling that Utopia isn't real. Right in the introductory letter, they share that Raphael has not said where it is. He does say that Romans and Egyptians shipwrecked there and stayed, but that's all we seem to get. He also says the tale will take a long time because he remembers everything. If he left to bring more people back, why hasn't he written it down or taken voyages there to show other people?

I'm going to foolishly put my foot down and state that Utopia is not real. It is real in the eyes of the believer but Peter and Thomas would see Utopia differently than Raphael does. My main question is really, is Raphael a philosopher or is he insane?