Old Age In Disgrace

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, William Butler Yeats’ “The Song of Wandering Aengus” and George Orwell’s 1984, each literature piece exemplifies all of the connections in Joseph Campbell’s 17 Stages of a Hero’s Journey in order to demonstrate the changes in the character’s development and the motivation behind their transformation.

While on the way to venerate Saint Thomas Becket’s remains, the entertainment of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims falls upon the requiting of stories between the different estates. However, this requiting quickly turns malicious, the Host’s simple proposition evolving into an aggressive show of social dominance that includes the boasting of both literal and metaphorical rape. The normalization (or, borderline reverence) of aggressive manliness contributes to the creation of both rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality. Consequently, when a man does not dominate a woman—or, does not use his masculinity to humiliate another man—he is seen as weak or effeminate, subsequently placing his sexuality under scrutiny. Such is the motive behind John and Aleyn’s rape of the miller’s wife and daughter—to make Symkin seem weak, and to gain a reputation of superior masculinity. Thus,

Often in literary works the author includes a theme to go along with their story. Two examples of this are the “The Seven Ages of Man” by Shakespeare and “Demeter” retold by Edith Hamilton. Both literary works follow similar themes throughout their story’s. The theme of both of these works is one of a cycle, “The Seven Ages of Man” being the cycle of becoming a man and the cycle of seasons in “Demeter”. The two cycles can be compared through the point of view they are told from, the amount of emotion in their stories and the importance of their cycles.

The jealous tone disappears at the end, however, and the poem ends wistfully and resigned stating that, “It’s an old/story—the oldest we have on our planet--/the story of replacement” (16-18). The speaker realizes that aging is part of the continuous life process, which starts at birth and ends at death. She understands that each phase of life has a specific purpose for maintaining the species. Her daughter must mature so she can create new life, just as the speaker did ten years ago. She knows that eventually her daughter will replace her and that the life process will continue to repeat itself for generations to come.

Ross Gay’s book Against Which, portrays his poetry to readers allowing them to gain understanding of the cruel world that one lives in. Moreover, the unusual brutalities that people are inevitable confronted with in life. The common denominators within Gay’s poems such as violence, love, fear, and loss allows the reader to visualize characters’ transformation within his poems. In a world of calamity, Gay has created poems that portray the corporal conforming to gender and sex but also human development. Using a reader-response criticism lens, I will be demonstrating my interpretation of Ross Gay’s poems and the meaning that I believe to be a common interpretation of his work. Within, Gay’s poems, “It Starts at Birth” and Angels Out of Reach” one is able to see a pattern of human transformation. By experiencing pain, love, loss, fear, and wisdom one is able to see Gay’s characters evolve through the narrators and readers gaze. In doing so, one is able to reflect on Gay’s poems and gain wisdom themselves.

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

In this essay, I will be while answering the questions from prompt one, “How and why does the protagonist's attitude toward her own situation change over the course of the story? How and why does she paradoxically become more alive and powerful after she “dies”?”, to complete Journal Assignment One. I will be discussing the short story by Margaret Atwood, titled “Lusus Naturae”.

The text proceeds from analyzing each poem individually, and later draws parallels between the two. It tries to answer the questions whether the poems are a call to social irresponsibility, and if the object of the poem, the common man should be scorned or pitied. That the common man who is busy conforming to the norms of the state and the society has lost connection with his natural surroundings evokes sympathy for him. Materialism has subsumed his capacity to think to an extent that he cannot even decide whether he is free to do as he wishes – can he say no to enlisting for war? Or can he hold an opinion that did not coincide with the larger public?

As Clarice Lispector was writing what would become her last literary creation, The Hour of the Star, little did she know that while her body was plagued with the devastations of cancer, her mental struggle for peace and grace in death would inspire her most renowned novel. Perhaps it is because of those circumstances, she created a novel with intuitive reflections on both life and death, as seen through the life of the main character, Macabea. The story is narrated by Rodrigo S.M., and although Rodrigo attempts to maintain a neutral stance, he is often conflicted by his own perceptions and feelings. At the book’s commencement Rodrigo spends quite some time explaining that while the story is mainly about a woman,

Yaeger takes issue with Tanner’s contention that extramarital desire functions in the 18th and 19th century novel as “an attack” on the rules governing “the opposed demands of private desire and public law,” rules that are “mediated” by the institution of marriage. (Tanner 13) While Yaeger agrees with Tanner that adulterous behavior by literary heroines does challenge one expression of patriarchy, Yaeger characterizes this challenge as only “mildly transgressive,” noting that “adultery remains well within the arena of permissible social trespass.” According to Yaeger, Edna’s falling in love with Robert Lebrun is an act of social misconduct that is easily imagined by, and indeed is anticipated by, the bourgeois Creole society she inhabits. Thus, Tanner errs when he equates adultery in the novel with “the possible breakdown of all the mediations on which society itself depends”; rather, Yaeger notes, for Edna “the thought or practice of adultery…is actually a conservative gesture within the larger scheme of things, another mode of social acquiescence.” Indeed,

Another supporter of changing the way aging is conveyed is author, Margaret Cruiksbank, of the book, Learning to be Old. In her book she is a proponent of changing the way the aging process is described. Her position is that the underlying meaning of popular terms to describe aging weakens its value. She denotes that the term “successful aging” is a false phrase for the elderly as it “masks both the wish to continue mid-life indefinitely and the white, Middle-class, Western values of researchers, causing them to emphasize productivity, effectiveness and independence” (Cruiksbank, 2009, p. 2). She also concludes that the term “productive” aging symbolizes “economic usefulness and social conformity” (Cruiksbank, 2009, p. 2), especially for the female gender. More importantly, these terms can be used to measure. This ability to measure is subjective to the questioner and an individual’s self-worth. She suggests the term “aging comfortably” as it signifies easiness, and a “faint hint” of pleasurable self-indulgence which may not have been possible in younger years (Cruiksbank, 2009, p. 3).

At age 63 he still believes he is popular, respected and good looking which Linda, his wife, encourages throughout the play. Statements such as “you’re the best looking man in the world” which supports his false beliefs. His unpopularity can be seen within the requiem when few people turned up to his funeral besides his close family who love him, all of which he pushed away including Linda, who he deceived.

Chaucer breaks the topic of sex into two basic parts: carnality and romanticism. Although carnal love is a controversial topic, Chaucer dives into the subject by creating characters with ferocious appetites for sex and the means to accommodate their desires. Whereas, to address romanticism, he relies heavily on

Within this novel, Morrie embraced his mortality with “love, acceptance and open communication” as he gave the reader a glimpse into what he considered to be “The Meaning of Life.” Using Mitch Albom as a vessel to pen his “own culture values,” Morrie was able to define the contradictions between others vision of “popular culture values” and his style of truly living through “life, death and reincarnation.” With the use of materials obtained from the course, this writer was able to summarize various observations about Morrie’s “final lecture” on life, death and family amidst his perceptual understanding that reorganized “aging as growth and not

Ever the keen social observer, Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) often expressed his reservations about the competences of the female mind through satire or by employing alternate literary voices. However, his ridicule of the female condition does not entail that he was simply a crass misogynist. In reality, the satirist scorned humanity in general: both men and women were unable to escape his seething misanthropy. Swift’s moral satire includes three notorious poems: “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” (1730) “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” (1731) and “Strephon and Chloe” (1731). Human beings tend to delude themselves and see order and beauty where none exists, yet in these poems both the male subject and the reader become disillusioned over the discovery of female humanity. Therefore, Swift seems to imply that life based on delusion usually ends in bitter disappointment, and thus attempts to free us from our prejudices and the futile denial of our basic nature. Furthermore, the author finds in Esther Johnson, or “Stella,” the perfect example of the redemption he aims to imbue in the rest of humanity. Thus, through his poems concerning women, especially Stella, Jonathan Swift reinforces his belief that all humans – even women – are capable of bettering themselves.