Response Papers

Dear Readers,

In a previous post I discussed some of my frustration trying to read The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot. The following is a response paper I did for The Waste Land and Tradition and the Individual Talent. Enjoy.

My Encounter with the Waste Land.

I found the text of both The Waste Land and Tradition and the Individual Talent in an anthology I bought for a British Literature course I took a year or two or three ago as an undergraduate. It’s the third edition of the Longman Anthology of British Literature, volume 2C, the Twentieth Century, and it has this nice biographical information written by the editors preceding Eliot’s works, in which the editors praise the name of T.S. Eliot. They say stuff like, “The man himself is an institution of literature,” and, “he is the greatest literature guy in all of history forever.” OK, so maybe I’m misquoting the book a little bit, but that’s pretty much how the editor’s information on T. S. Elliot sounded. I do remember clearly that the editors wrote about how Elliot is the king of modernism and also a semi-founder of New Criticism, and the editors couldn’t decide if Elliot’s poetry or his critical prose turned out to be more influential on the literary landscape of the modern world.

My first reading of The Waste Land went like this: I read it slowly, and whenever I saw the superscript number after a word, I went down to the note that Elliot had written. The first note said that if I really wanted to understand the poem, I should read a whole ‘nother book called From Ritual to Romance, a book which is, judging by the sound of it, very long, boring, and thick.

Sometimes Elliot’s notes were confusing, or in a different language (literally) and by the time I had sort of made sense of the notes, I had forgotten what the note referred to, and then once I reminded myself of what the note referred to, I forgot exactly what the note said. You will believe me when I tell you that it was all very bewildering. And anyway, sometimes I thought that there was no really clear reason to allude to a thousand different literary works, most of which were spawned in the days of “ye olden tyme.” So… the first time through the poem, I didn’t stop to try to comprehend the meaning of the poem or the connections among the various parts of the poem, since that would have taken me a very very long time, and there was this show on TV that I really wanted to watch, because the advertisements for the TV promised that the show would deliver T-Rexes and laser beams, T-Rexes and laser beams that were very easily understood, and which also made absolutely no references to other long, boring shows- the type you might see on PBS.

Next I meandered around the poem, letting my eyes drift around from line to line willy-nilly, and I remembered that a big theme of the class was about how “modernism is the literary response to modernity,” and I noticed one image that struck me as being very modern. It was the line about the lady who got ready for her dinner by getting out “food in tins,” and that image struck me as being very modern, you know- food in tins… that’s very modern… perhaps they were anchovies.

I noticed another sort of interesting thing that maybe made a little bit of sense and maybe made me feel some emotions. It was the part about the people walking around London, and the speaker of the poem called them all dead. I also started to wonder if the speaker of the poem was alive or dead.

Later, the speaker of the poem writes, “London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down,” and that made me very happy, because it reminded me of the carefree days of my youth, when I played the child’s game called “London Bridges falling down.” I then made up my mind that the part about “London Bridges falling down” was the entire summum bonum of the poem- the poem was all about joy, and happy children and sunny days. But then I remembered that the editor’s introduction to the Waste Land thought it was a very dreary poem, so then I became dreary myself. Yes, very dreary.

I then resolved to take a little bit of your advice, Dr. Rosendale, and read the whole thing out loud, to see if that would help me scrape any meaning or coherence out of the poem. I was by myself, alone in my room, with the door shut, when I made the attempt. I commenced reading it out loud, and I noticed some neat rhythmic patterns, and some neat rhymes, too, but after a while, maybe around line 200 or 300, I realized that all those sounds coming out of my mouth were nothing more than a cacophony of strange noises, and I got very scared. Indeed the thought struck me that my recital of the poem was conjuring up a triple-horned Beast from the Unseen World. Yes- those sounds were the magic words to an ancient Warlock’s spell! They must be! Fearing the triple-horned Beast, I shut the book immediately, and put it in a chest beneath my bed where I keep all my other books on the Occult, and started humming “London Bridges falling down” to cheer myself up.

After a few minutes of humming, my spirits improved, and then I thought that I should have something interesting and intelligent to say in our class, so I decided to consult the foremost experts on Elliot and his poetry- the editors of Wikipedia. Ha ha ha.

After Wikipedia, I decided to write my response paper on Tradition and the Individual Talent, which could be more easily understood, and which, -I was fairly confident- would not conjure up any Demons or ghosts or any other unpleasant supernatural creatures. But now that I have already written a good amount on my strange encounter with The Waste Land, I don’t need to write about Elliot’s essay.

The End.

Ha ha ha. That was funny. I didn’t get the best grade on it, and Dr. Rosendale wrote on my paper that next time I should put forth a more “concerted effort,” but oh well.

This next thing is the response I wrote for the next reading assignment in my modern American literature class, and it’s a little more academical-scholastical serious-tical, but sometimes I think it’s swiff, like yun.

Response to In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

One of the biggest themes that struck me when I read In Our Time was the lack of love- the lack of meaningful love between people- the lack of genuine love for people by people. There are several examples that illustrate the lack of love that predominates the text.

In Indian Camp, the husband of the Indian wife committed suicide during the birth of his child. The book does not explain why the Indian man committed suicide, but I would guess that either the man was scared to be a father, or he was grossed out by the horrible cesarean operation, or maybe there were big emotional problems going on.

In The End of Something, Nick breaks up with his girlfriend Majorie, who seems like a perfectly fine girl. And Nick seems like a perfectly fine boy. I don’t understand why Nick decided to break it off. They could have gotten married. They could have been happy. But for some reason Nick dumped Majorie, and the only reason he gives her is “It isn’t fun anymore” (34). Much like the episode of the Indian father’s suicide, we have no idea what went wrong with their relationship.

The lack of love in this collection of short stories is also manifested by the lack of affectionate physical touch between characters. We never get to read, in very much detail, about lovers kissing or touching each other affectionately. In The End of Something, Hemingway writes, “They [Nick and Majorie] sat on the blanket without touching each other…” (34). And then when Bill comes up to Nick, Hemingway goes to the trouble to point out, “Bill didn’t touch him, either” (35). In the used copy of the book that I have, a previous reader underlined “Bill didn’t touch him, either” and put a question mark next to it in the margin. I wonder what went through that person’s head. Maybe the previous reader wondered why Bill would have any reason to touch Nick. I think Hemingway was trying to highlight the lack of psychical touch among love interests, but there was also a clear lack of platonic touch among friends and family members.

When sex is mentioned in In Our Time, it’s not in a romantic way. The first two sentences of Mr. Mrs. Elliot reads, “Mr. And Mrs. Elliot tried very hard to have a baby. They tried as often as Mrs. Elliot could stand it.” (p. 85) For some reason they’re obsessed with reproducing- they want a baby very badly, but, the way Hemingway writes about it, there doesn’t seem to be much enjoyment in the process of reproduction. The rest of the story does not portray what most of us would call a healthy marriage.

Then there’s the incredibly bleak account of Krebs’ return from World War I. Maybe he has post-traumatic stress syndrome, or maybe he’s numb to feeling because he’s been exposed for so long to the brutalities of war.

To me one of the bleakest and most depressing parts of the book was Krebs was sitting alone on the porch of his parents’ house in Kansas. Hemingway writes, “He liked the girls that were walking on the other side of the street… He would like to have one of them. But it was not worth it. They were such a nice pattern. He liked the pattern. It was exciting. But he would not go through all the talking. He did not want one badly enough…” (72). It’s like Krebs is mentally checked out and depressed. The girls he watches are on the other side of the street, far away from Krebs’ lonely porch, and no attempt at communication or affectionate touching is made. Later Krebs tells his own mother that he doesn’t love her, and that he doesn’t love anybody.

I think that maybe Krebs horrible experience in the war was kind of like his Nick’s father’s profession. Both Nick’s father and Krebs had to deal with blood and guts and be man enough to do what had to be done. Maybe after Krebs and the doctor saw all that blood, they got desensitized to the gentler, romantic things of life.

Overall, the lack of love and affectionate, physical touch is one of the themes that unites the otherwise disconnected stories and vignettes that make up In Our Time.

The End

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa