Wasn't as Bad as I Thought

I really like this story. I found it difficult to put down. I wouldn’t consider this story any harder to read than Measure for Measure or, dare I say, Beowulf. The author still had very long sentences, which I found myself getting distracted in the middle of, and having to go back to the beginning to understand. I found the way that she writes to be very fast paced and able to hold my attention, for the most part.  I feel like, even though I could sense what was going to happen, it still surprised me when it did happen.

I didn’t like how the women in the story had little independence. Maybe I read this wrong, but the story said that the king was in the wrong since he took Imoinda from her husband, and she still can’t get out of his hold. It also bothered me that she didn’t try to get out of his hold; she cried a bit and then accepted it.

I also don’t like the fact that once a woman gets old she is seen as undesirable in the story. I would think in a society where trust is a big theme, they would value a person on a deeper level than solely on looks.

Oronoco’s optimism bothered me a bit. He was so trusting in everyone and believed everything that people said, and that bothers me because I can’t do that. Before I can truly trust a person, I need to have known them for a while and they have to have never crossed me.
I mostly don’t like his trusting nature because it makes me feel bad for him. Oroonoko is so trusting that everything that happens is a surprise to him, he doesn’t seem prepared for anything. Maybe that is a nice way to live, though, not always fearful of the worst, simply experiencing the best that life has for you because no one is out to get you. It’s like when the weatherman says it’ll be sunny all day and you pack an umbrella just in case. There is no just in case for Oroonoko.

One last thought I had was why did Behn chose to write the story like she was there and saw some of the action. I wonder if she actually experienced it, or if she is writing like that to give her story more credibility.

I am Lost

I am confused by Paradise Lost. When I read the epic poem, I could follow it for a while and then I would get extremely lost. Also, I would find a part where I understood again and then I would get lost again and I kept going through that vicious cycle.

I do think that I feel sorry for Satan and his followers, but I'm not entirely sure if I feel sorry for him, I'm sorry that he is in the situation. I think that sorry might be the wrong word to describe how I feel because I don’t feel any sympathy towards them or their situation; I just think that it would suck to be the king/ruler of Hell. The way that Milton described Hell, it seems miserable (kind of the point) but still. From lines 61-69 Milton describes Hell and it makes me never want to do another bad thing for fear that I might go there. Milton writes, “No light but darkness visible… And rest can never dwell, hope never comes….” There is no hope once you have entered Hell and no rest, only torture.

I think that I feel bad for Satan because he is the king of all of this darkness. Being the ruler of everything sad must be hard, especially since he has seen the wonderfulness that is Heaven, and now he is condemned to be the ruler of eternal torture.

I also don’t feel sorry for Satan because rather than accepting what he has done and hoping that one day God will forgive him and let him go back, he seeks to get revenge.  Also because he seems like he wasn’t happy in Heaven. He says “Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,” which I took to mean that in Heaven he was in Hell, and now he’s in Hell, so he’s in the same place even though the scenery has changed a bit. Am I interpreting that right? Do you think that he is happy being in Hell?

I said all of this to say that I think that the reason that Milton told us so much about Satan before getting to Adam and Eve, was to show that everyone has a backstory and a reason for doing what they do. In Satan’s case, he is trying to get revenge on Heaven and God.

 

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!  I don’t agree with you there, Satan.

Swerve

So, remember how I said that I like Faustus before, yeah that no longer applies. I feel that I can understand why he plays pranks on the Pope, but that is only if his backstory is one of the ones that we came up with in class on Wednesday. If it’s not, then he seems like a complete jerk. In act 5, I just couldn’t get past his last long soliloquy and because of that I don’t feel sorry for him. I feel that he got what he deserved. I mean come on, it was an hour before he was supposed to die, and now he’s all sad.

The way that I am thinking about this is, in his last soliloquy, he talks a lot about wanting to be saved and wishing that he hadn’t made the deal with the devil, but it’s like dude you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.

It reminds me of a Sunday night when I have a paper due on Monday morning and I am hoping that maybe something will happen so that school is cancelled the next day and I won’t have to turn in my paper. But it’s completely my fault that I haven’t started my paper until then and while I was off doing other things, I wasn’t telling myself that I should be writing this paper. I was enjoying not doing my paper and now I have to accept that I have to stay up late to write this paper because I didn’t start it earlier.

 

Faustus has been given so many chances to repent. Even in the end, Scholar 2 says “Yet Faustus, call on God,” (5.2, 56) which I took to mean that he still had time to be saved, but in classic Faustus way he tells him that he can’t and that it’s too late. I liked Faustus in the beginning of the play because I thought that he wasn’t positive of the choices that he made, as evident by the good angel and the bad angel showing up a lot, but in scene three and four the good angel and the bad angel were gone, as to show that he was sure that he had chosen the right side. So, for him to be really sad in the end, I just have no sympathy for him.

Not Such a Bad Guy

I actually like Doctor Faustus as a character. I found him to be a very relatable character in certain aspects. He was relatable in how he knew what he wanted and went about different ways to get it. In the beginning he tried to get what he wanted with education and after he was finished with that, and still didn’t have what he wanted he turned to black magic. He is also relatable in the way that he would use his power first on himself and then on others, specifically students.

I don’t think that he is a selfish person or that he deserved what happens to him. I think this because, he seems so confused to me. The fact that he is not quick to use Mephostophilis power to get all of the riches that he wants, but instead asks questions about life shows that he still isn’t sure that he has made the right choice. Also it seems that he gives himself many pep talks before he signs the deal and is still not sure that he has made the right decision, as can be seen by the good and bad angel showing up.

I also don’t think that Faustus is taking the easy way out. He has accomplished so much and not found satisfaction in any of that, so to him this would seem like a logical jump. Black magic seems like the only thing left that can give him what he wants. It would also seem to me that Faustus just needs to figure out what he actually wants in life. I say this because, he talks about wanting riches and exotic fruits, but with all of his knowledge and curing the plague I would think that he has enough money and knowledge to go and acquire riches and travel so that he can have exotic fruits. Maybe he’s just lazy. I don’t know.

I think that he was mainly tricked, not by Mephostophilis, but by himself. I think that all he needed was someone to talk to. At least at this point in the book, I don’t think that he wants all of the riches he talks about, he just wants answers to his questions, answers that education couldn’t tell him. As we talked about in class, no one really talks about Faustus, so I assume that he doesn’t really have any friends. I think that had Faustus had friends he might not have ended up where he was.

What a Girl Wants

Okay, so I have been really scared of writing these blog posts because everybody gets to see them and what if I make a mistake or write something dumb, but I am trying to become more comfortable with it.

So with that said, this is what I thought of the Wife of Bath’s Tale. I don’t think that in life, most women, there may be some who do, want to have dominance over anyone. I took dominance to mean complete control over something or someone. When thinking about this, I narrowed in on how relationships have changed over time and why sovereignty might have been more important back then.

Nowadays, I don’t think that what women want most is sovereignty in their relationship. I think that is because the dynamic of relationships have changed. An example of how relationships have changed is shown in the television show I Love Lucy, where Ricky Ricardo is still the dominant partner; he is the head of the household and he makes all of the decisions. Lucy has to ask him for permission to do and buy things. Back when this poem was written, women were given to their husbands along with all of their money and wealth. It was as if they were property and had to listen and serve their husbands until that happy day when their husband died. Now, I see relationships as more of an equal partnership, where everyone comes with what they have and what they have is shared in the relationship. I have a friend whose mother is a stay at home mom and her father works for the government. They share all of the household responsibilities. By household responsibilities, I don’t just mean the cooking and cleaning, I also mean the finances and taking care and maintaining the family.  They split the effort because they have determined that they are both equals and want to share the work that goes into having a family. Back in the times of the Canterbury Tales, women needed sovereignty from their husbands because it was the only way that they could get a say in the relationship.

I also don’t think that being widowed is seen as a good thing or a thing to look forward to anymore. I could be wrong, but I don’t know of anybody who is waiting for the day that their husband will die. I know that back then, women wanted their husbands to die so that they could acquire all of the money and property and have sovereignty.

Villains or Naw

Are Grendel and the dragon really villains in Beowulf?  When I was a child, I refused to eat Trix cereal because I felt bad for the way that the children in the commercial treated the rabbit, and I didn’t want to support their behavior. All the rabbit wanted was some of the cereal and he would go through great lengths to try and get some, but the mean children would always take it away from him. I was so enraged by the commercial that one day in Kindergarten, the kid next to me was eating a bowl of Trix and just as he poured all of the contents into his bowl, I snatched the bowl away from him and said “silly “insert name here” Trix are for mean people”. Needless to say, that day I had a five minute time out (a very long time for a kid) and a letter home. I say all of this because, the children in the commercial probably saw the rabbit as the villain, whereas I saw the children as the villains. In Beowulf, although written to seem like villains, Grendel and the dragon are misunderstood just like the rabbit in the Trix commercial.

Grendel really just wants some friends. The guy sits in his cave with his mother day in and day out. I love my mom and I don’t know what I would do without her, but at the end of summer vacation I am always ready to come back to school because I have had too much of her.

Also it was almost as if the Danes were being rude, showcasing their happiness and parading around in “the hall of halls” (pg 7 line 78). I’m sure if they hadn’t have made so much noise Grendel wouldn’t have even known that they were there or happy.  Understandably, Grendel got mad because he can’t party with them and started killing them. It’s that feeling when you are sad, but you are around other sad people so you feel happier. If I were Grendel, while I was killing people I would be thinking “yeah I’m lonely, but at least I’m not about to be eaten”. I know it seems as though I am justifying killing; I am not I am simply saying that I can see what drove Grendel to killing.

 

The dragon, in Beowulf, was sleeping peacefully, when his one of his things got stolen.

Side note: I find it interesting some of the wrong doings in the poem take place a night or while sleeping. Grendel attacks at night and the thief steals from the dragon while the dragon is sleeping. What do you guys think about that?

I know that if someone took my phone and wouldn’t give it back I would be pretty upset and try very hard to get it back. I was always taught that stealing was wrong, so when I think about the thief it seems that he is really the bad guy here. The Geats are being punished because one of them wronged the dragon. It is like when a teacher gives a punishment to the whole class because one person is acting out. As unfair as that may seem, it does lessen the amount of acting out in the future. The Geats are being taught a lesson and hopefully, because of this, no one will steal ever again.