Rose-Colored Narration

The narrator in Oroonoko appears to see the Prince through some sort of rose-colored glasses. He or she starts by saying that everything about Oroonoko has not been embellished in any way and that "it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues, there being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition of invention" (2183).

Yeah, okay. Thing is, if everyone in this story has flaws, why is Oroonoko so highly praised? According to the narrator, the man has "real greatness of soul", "refined notions of true honor", "absolute genorosity", and "softness that was capable of the highest passions of love and gallantry" (2186). I understand trying to sell something, or in this case, someone, but holy cow. This narrator practically worships the guy. Maybe I'm being super cynical, but this seems a little suspicious.

Regardless of the narrator's praise of Oroonoko, I do feel a little sorry for him. I'd be pretty ticked if my grandparent decided that they liked the person I loved and stole them away from me, even though they have plenty of other lovers already. It's just greedy, not matter how beautiful and kind and modest Imoinda is.

I still feel a little unclear on this, but it sounds an awful lot like the King sends Imoinda a veil which basically stakes his claim on her. She can't refuse, and Oroonoko can't do anything about it either. So the King wins. Great...except for the fact that the King does this simply because this girl sends his heart a-flutter, and "the obedience the people pay their king was not at all inferior to what they paid their gods; and what love would not oblige Imoinda to do, duty would compel her to" (2189). So his thought process is he's gotta have her, even if she doesn't love him. I'll stop there. Creepy old dudes who try to force themselves on younger women make me twitch.

My last thing that I find really interesting is the fact that if you're not looking closely enough, the first part of this reading is a pretty sweet Romeo and Juliet-ish love story. But we don't just see our "Romeo and Juliet". We get to see a lot of different people. No matter what happens by the end, I know one thing. I'm intrigued by this story a lot. As an added bonus, it's beautifully written. And I see sentence structure I recognize again. That's a good place to start.

Words, Words, and More Words

I'll admit, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with this reading. There is so much to unpack, and at the same time, I don't know where to start or even what there is to unpack. My guess (and hope) is that I'm not alone.

The first thing that I will say is reading The Argument before actually starting the poem was super helpful. I at least have a good sense of the plot thus far and where it is heading. We basically start with Satan in hell with all his crew after they have just been kicked out of heaven. Milton seems to believe that this fall took place before the creation of man and the rest of the earth. As far as I'm aware, there isn't really any evidence to support if his timeline is right. There also isn't evidence to support it being wrong. So my first question is this. Did Milton come up with this timeline himself? Or was he influenced by the beliefs of the church at the time? I am wondering if this understanding of the fall of Lucifer comes from Milton, kind of like how a lot of people's understanding of hell comes from Dante.

If I had to pick a passage that I was interested in the most, it would be lines 162-165. "If then His providence/Out of our evil seek to bring forth good/Our labor must be to pervert that end/And out of good still to find means of evil". This is part of Satan's response to a demon who basically says "What are we going to do now"? Not only is this piece of the response easier to understand, it also has some sinister connotations. The word "pervert" is a fascinating word choice. While we now usually associate the word with something sexual, Milton uses it in a way that is so much more. Synonyms include, but are not limited to: distort, corrupt, subvert, twist, bend, abuse, misapply, misuse, misrepresent, misinterpret, and falsify. (Thank you, Google). This one little word implies so much about Satan's intentions in this poem.

Another thing I noticed about this poem was how much I was reminded of The Screwtape Letters. Writing from or about the perspective of the darker side of a story is a common thread in these two pieces of literature. Another common thread is the focus of the demons on getting back at God through the downfall of mankind.

I'm apprehensive yet excited to keep reading. Intuition tells me that like the previous works we've read, it will be worth stumbling my way through if only to come out the other side.

Finally...

Oh man, I've been itching to get to this reading. This is what I have been looking forward to the most for this class.

So it is with great joy that I dive into the Scottish play for the seventh or eighth time. I've seen at least two film versions of Macbeth, and the witches are by far the creepiest in the Patrick Stewart version. Witches as nurses? Guaranteed instant goosebumps.

Whenever I read Shakespeare, I always find something knew in his plays that I hadn't seen or paid much attention to before. For this reading, it was in Act 1, Scene 3, Line 125-126. Macbeth says in an aside "Glamis and Thane of Cawdor! The greatest is behind". There is so much which can be unpacked in this one little phrase.

The first is the more obvious. He has achieved Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and the greatest, according to the witches, is yet to come. That's pretty easy to see at face value. But this time, the word "behind" stuck out to me. If this first meaning was all that Shakespeare intended, it would have made much more sense to say "ahead". But he says "behind".

My interpretation of this is that Shakespeare is doing some fore-shadowing for us. It's his way of quietly telling us that Macbeth will begin a decline in his character. At this point in the play, he's pretty squeaky clean as far as his character goes. He's heroic, just, and a good soldier who is loyal to King Duncan. But this is as good as he gets. From here, he begins his descent into a pretty rotten person who does some equally rotten deeds. I hadn't thought to see this line that way before, which is one of the reasons why I love reading Shakespeare plays. Every reading is a new adventure.

One question I have always had about this play concerns the witches. Do they really have the power of prophecy? Or was Macbeth just taking the ramblings of three weird old ladies into his own hands? Was it destiny? Or was it all Macbeth? Truth be told, I don't know. I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.

I love the wording in this play. I really do. One of my favorite parts in this act is the First Witch's story about the chesnuts. The phrase "rump-fed runion" (Act 1, Scene 3) is way more satisfying than "fat pig". Shakespeare is full of excellent insults to store for a rainy day.

On a final note, Lady Macbeth is by far my favorite character in the play. She is so deliciously evil. She's also an incredibly strong female character, at least in this part of the play. When she taunts her husband in the final act, my inner self could not help but rub her hands together in glee. She is so vicious. "Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now to look so green and pale at what it did so freely? From this time such I account thy love" (Act 1, Scene 7). You can feel the venom dripping off the page.

As always, I can't wait to read more. On with the show!

An Honest Liar

I found the Pardoner to be first and foremost one of the sleaziest characters I’ve encountered in literature. After reading his prologue, I felt like I needed to wash the sliminess of his conman ways from my hands and my brain. It was pretty gross. Then, I got to his tale.

His tale is intriguing. He is definitely an immoral man, but this is a pretty straightforward and moral tale. If someone like the parson, or even the knight, had told this tale, I would have had a different perception of it.

While I’ve encountered “do as I say, not as I do” people, I can’t say that I have ever met one who so readily and calmly admits it. Most of the people who are like this go out of their way to ensure that no one figures out this flaw in their character. The Pardoner doesn’t care whether or not people know. He’s okay with what he does, even if it is wrong.

Reading his prologue did strike up a thought about what a hypocrite really is. A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another. Interesting…I don’t know of anyone who isn’t a hypocrite in some way. They aren’t an uncommon figure. They’re all over the place, yet we as the readers are automatically compelled to point fingers and be angry at this one guy who is honest about his hypocrisy. In pointing out the Pardoner’s hypocritical speeches and saying “See? See how awful this guy is? What a slime ball!”, are we worried that someone will point out the hypocrite in us? I’m a hypocrite. Let’s face it, you probably have been, too. In looking at the Pardoner, I found that my finger was pointing right back at me. Go figure.

On another note, the role of the old man in the Pardoner’s tale was really intriguing. I think he’s Death. My reasoning for this mostly comes from the fact that in many stories that I’ve read, Death doesn’t usually ignore threats directed at him. If the three guys in the bar we ranting and raving about how they were going to kill Death (which is a funny enough phrase by itself), I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility for Death himself to show up to prove a point. In this case, he took the form of an old man. Death usually isn’t stupid in stories. He is pretty clever and not above trickery. The three guys are drunk.  They’re not exactly thinking clearly. Why wouldn’t they believe that some random old guy they’ve never seen before is telling the truth? He had an easy answer, and all they had to do was stumble over to the tree. It wasn’t like they had to go on this long journey. And hey, they did find Death.

I pledge I have neither given nor recieved any unauthorized aid on this assignment.

The Canterbury Tales: Poetic Exposition is Poetic

As I read the beginning of the prologue, I began to think of a line in Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Even if you don't who the guy is (I didn't until I looked it up), you'll recognize this phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night". Bulwer-Lytton then proceeds to add to this sentence and explain just how dark and stormy the night is, kind of like Chaucer does with this part of the prologue.

So, in our reading, our narrator is off on a journey to Canterbury. He stops at an inn, where he meets a group of 29 people who just happen to be going there, too. He then tells the reader that he is going to give a rundown of who these people were, what position they held, and what they were wearing.

Twenty. Nine. People. Oh boy...

We start with a knight, who is naturally brave, courageous, noble, etc. All qualties we associate with a knight. One that I did found interesting was he isn't described as wearing armor. "Of fustian he wered a gipoun" (75) translates as, when aided by the notations in the book, "He wore a tunic made of rough cloth." That's not the image of a knight I've always held in my head. My knight usually looks a little like this:

Doesn't seem to match what Chaucer describes. It even sounds like his horses are better dressed than he is, which conjours up another weird thought:

Again, probably not what Chaucer had in mind.

We move on to our second person of intrique, "a young squyer" (79). When I got to line 92 "He was as fresh as is the month of May," I was instantly reminded of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. This lovely, flowery description of the squyer is rather similar. This guy sounds like somebody I would like to be friends with, or at least be an acquaintance.

Further examination shows similarities to Beowulf. Both the knight and the squyer perform manly deeds of courage to earn respect and honor. So far both of them seem to be less arrogant and obnoxious than Beowulf could get, but of course, this is only the prologue.

I am curious about the identity of our narrator. Who is he? Why is he going on a pilgrimage? Why Canterbury? Is he a knight, too? All of these questions make me sound like an announcer in a soap opera.

As far as the language itself goes, I'm finding that when I read it, I can understand fairly well. There are words that we don't use anymore, which has made it awkward at points. Speaking it is an entirely different story. It's so strange to look at Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, and the text I sent my mom and see how much the English language has evolved and changed. It's not a bad thing by any means. But it's making me think.

I pledge that I have not given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment.

Beowulf: Why Say It In One Word When You Can Say It In Twenty?

I'll be honest. I've never read Beowulf before, and I never had a desire to do so. All I ever heard about was how boring it was and how it took forever to read. I was not exactly looking forward to tackling this piece of literature. When I sat down to read, I imagined it would be like hiking up a mountain. In the rain. With a backpack full of bricks. But I digress.

I found instead the writing style made the poem much more fun to read aloud. Please note that I wrote read aloud. I knew that the only way I would be able to focus on this poem and keep my brain involved was if I engaged my ears as well. Sure enough, it worked. I could visualize the action going on around me. I began to have fun with the poem. I changed my voice, tone, and facial expressions to match the characters and scenes that I was reading. Suddenly, I wasn't just reading the poem. I was in it.

One of my favorite parts of this poem so far is when Beowulf and his troop march up to the hall and are met by a soldier who says, "'From whence do you carry those covered shields,/gray coats of mail and grim helmets,/this troop of spears? I am herald and servant/to Hrothgar; never have I seen/ so many foreign men so fearless and bold./ For pride, I expect, and not for exile,/and for greatness of heart you have sought for Hrothgar'" (333-339).

It would have taken him a lot less time to say, "Who the heck are you?"

Of course, if everybody got straight to the point in this poem, it would be a lot shorter. It would be way easier. However, I don't think that's the point of this poem, because it's not meant to be read quietly to yourself. It's meant to be performed. The audience or reader is supposed to be actively participating in the poem. Reading it is just plain boring.

Some of the action sequences or dialogue of this story remind me of a kid telling me a story. They tell it in such a way that makes me want to scream, "Get to the point!" They make sure I get every detail whether I want it or not. The action sequences feel like a slow motion movie shot where I see every single miniscule detail.

The person reading this poem only has their voice to help the audience visualize exactly what happens in every single scene. These sequences are described in a way that makes sure you know what happens at every precise second. This can't have been easy to pull off.

In the last few lines of our assigned portion of Beowulf, Grendel is supposedly defeated. I highly doubt this. There's a lot more of the poem we get to read. Maybe I'll tire of the slow motion stories. For right now, I'll enjoy my hike up the mountain.