Mother of the Groom

    For our final assignment in our World Literature class we have to present a poem by Seamus Heaney and give our interpretation of it. I choose the peom Mother of the Groom and here is my interpretation of it.

MOTHER OF THE GROOM

 

What she remembers

Is his glistening back

In the bath, his small boots

In the ring of boots at her feet.

 

Hands in her voided lap,

She hears a daughter welcomed.

It's as if he kicked when lifted

And slipped her soapy hold.

 

Once soap would ease off

The wedding ring

That's bedded forever now

In her clapping hand.

 

 

     I believe that this poem is about the mother of the groom on her son's wedding day and rather then feeling joy she is sad and cold knowing that her son will be away from her. In the first stanza it talks about the memories that the mother had about her son as a child. One in particular is of bathing him and the joy that she had with him. In the second stanza it talks about the mother having to let go and her realizing that her son is growing up and she is going to have a new daughter. I think the word voided refers to empty or bare which is how the mother is feeling about losing her son to another women. The last two lines of the second stanza refer to the mother's feeling of her dropping her son because of her soapy hand. Her son being married gives her the feeling that she has lost him. Finally, the third stanza tells the mother's prediction of her son's marriage. She thinks that the marriage isn't going to last. This is from the lines, "once soap would ease off the wedding ring." The mother believes that no other women will be able to care for her son as good as she has.

Mistreatment of Women

     I came across an article about a women named Laticia and how she got abused by a man named Lamar. The story tells about how Laticia and Lamar were together for years and things were great. He provided for her and protected her but then one day things started to change and he became controlling and abusive. He would make threats to her about leaving and she tried to do as she was told to keep him happy. When she did finally called the Philadelphia Domestic Violence Hotline for admission to Women Against Abuse’s shelter they told her that they had no beds available. She was forced to sleep on the streets and return to Lamar just for food and shelter. Finally, Laticia was admitted into WAA's emergency shelter. There she was able to recover from exhaustion and the abuse. They also helped her with financial assistance so that she could become self-efficient.
     I think that this story is very moving and inspirational. No women should have to go through physical or mental abuse from any men. I think that it's a little repulsing that she was turned away when she first tried getting help from the Philadelphia Domestic Violence Hotline because it forced her to go back to Lamar. The site that provided me with this story also has stories of other women who have gone through abusive situations like this one. This relates back to "The Waiting Years" and the lack of education of young women and the abuse that resulted from it.

http://www.womenagainstabuse.org/index.php/hear-our-stories/survivor-stories/laticias-story

Does having someone to blame for a deformity make it easy to deal with?

     In Corby, England there are atleast four families that now have children with birth defects and the families believe that a nearby toxic landfill is to blame. This is information from a CNN article called British Families Blame Toxic Stew For Birth Defects. The children are being born with missing fingers. These families all live within a two mile radius of the landfill which has contributed to toxic waste running into a nearby pond. One parent, Joy Shatford, decribes his son's hand as "a palm and five little stubs." This situation reminded me of Quasimodo in Notre Dame de Paris because he also had a deformity. According to Wikipedia, a deformity, dysmorphism, or dysmorphic feature is a major difference in the shape of a body part or organ compared to the average shape of that part. Like these children Quasimodo was different because of his appearance, but unlike them he had no one to blame.
     My question is: Does having someone to blame for a deformity make it easy to deal with? For me the answer would be yes because if I could know what caused the deformity then someone could try prevent it from occuring again. Also, knowing that it wasn't my fault would put my mind to ease. For example, women that smoke or/and drink while pregnant have a chance of harming their child and the child could be born with a deformity. In the case of these four children they have evidence and reasons as to why they have a deformity, which is the landfill.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9909/26/britain.toxics/index.html?iref=allsearch

Slumdog Millionaire

     Hello bloggers, I would like to tell you about the foreign film Slumdog Millionaire. The main characters are Salim, Jamal and Latika. Salim is Jamal's older brother, he is forced to raise Jamal after their mother is killed during the Bombay Riots. Jamal is the younger brother that falls in love with Latika and tries finding her throughout the film. Latika is a girl that tags along with Salim and Jamal after both of her parents are killed. This film is about an 18 year old Mumbai boy, Jamal, who goes on to the show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and is accused of cheating. They believe he is cheating because he is just a boy from the slums and they don't believe that he could be smart enough to know all the correct answers. The film goes back and forth between the game and Jamal's life. With each question Jamal is asked during the game it goes back to the point of his life that he learned what the answer would be. Each one of the flash backs are significant parts of his life. 

     The part that stuck with me the most from this film is the hardships that Jamal faced through his life. All he wanted to do was to be with Latika but challenges always pulled them apart and he would have to search til he found her again. Jamal's brother was also not making it easy for him to be with her. He was very reluctant to let Latika to come with them as children and throughout their lives he was the reason that they thought Latika would go missing. An example of this is when Jamal and Salim jumped on a moving train, Salim grabbed Latika's hand to help her up and his hand "accidentally" slipped. Latika was left behind and Salim told Jamal to forget about her but he never did. In the end of the movie though Salim realizes that Jamal is never going to give up on finding and being with Latika so he helps her get away to find Jamal.

     Personally I liked this film because it was very inspirational and moving. The troubles that Salim, Jamal and Latika went through were heart felt. They each faced different life challenges that made them who they were. I felt pity on Latika because she was forced to be with people and live her life a certain way by others. 

Death of the Naturalist

Seamus Heany was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland on April 13, 1939. His family didn’t have the funds to send him to college, but a scholarship allowed him to attend college and live on campus. In 1962, Heaney published his first poem. By the end of 1979 he had published five more poetry collections and moved to the United States where he worked at Harvard, Fordham University and Queen’s University. Here is an example of one of his poem and how I interpreted it.

Death of the Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Heaney’s poem ‘Death of a Naturalist’ focuses on his experience of collecting and watching frogspawn as a child, and his reaction when the spawn turned into frogs. Naturalist could mean when you are a child and carefree. At that age nature doesn’t disgust you but as time goes on curiosity leaves a child. Then, going into adulthood nature disgusts a person more. We discussed in class that stanza one is more about fascination and understanding, like what would be seen through a child’s eyes. It expresses curiosity and uses very descriptive words that paint the picture of wanting to learn more and investigate. In the first couple lines it describes the image of decay. For example, the phrases: ‘flax-dam festered’ and ‘heavy headed’. At the end of stanza one it talks about a childlike account of how the schoolteacher, Miss Walls, taught Heaney’s class about frogs and frogspawn.

Stanza two is more about the unpleasantness of the scene being described. This would relate to what would be seen through an adult’s eyes. It’s less about discovering and curiosity and more about disgust and wanting to run away. In the beginning of the stanza it uses unpleasant phrases such as: ‘rank / with cowdung’, ‘angry frogs’, and ‘invaded the flax-dam’. The very last line, ‘that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it’ describes the worst place a child’s imagination could take them. It’s where the spawn actually becomes powerful enough to grab the child.

Knowing

In my world literature class we have been learning about Taoism and what it means. Tao means or equals the way. Taoism is about keeping the balance, being like the flow of a river and using one extreme to balance another. Examples would be male/female, dark/light, good/evil and death/rebirth. Our class had to analyze the poem called The Knowing, and these are my thoughts that I have analyzed.

Knowing

Without taking a step outdoors

You know the whole world;

Without taking a peep out the window

You know the color of the sky

The more you experience, 

The less you know.

The sage wanders without knowing,

Sees without looking,

Accomplishes without acting.

Taoism is about having no boundaries. So the knowledge that one accumulates makes them wise. As a child grows up they accumulate knowledge from the people around them, gaining knowledge of things they have not yet experienced. Therefore, even if they have never looked out a window they would know that the sky is blue. Although, once someone experiences something that's how it is perceived to them and that person might not get the full knowledge of something. This is what I perceived of the lines the more you experience, the less you know. An example of this could be nature. When someone looks at it once that's all that they see, they don't see the changes it goes through although they have knowledge of it. Towards the end of the poem is shows an example of using one extreme to contrast another extreme. The lines seeing without looking and accomplishes without acting are both opposite.  

Hello world,
It looks like I'm going to be making posts and doing blogs to you for the next couple of weeks. It's for my World Literature class in college. So keep tabs on me to see what I have to say if you would like! :) Peace and Love <3