Critical Thinking Blog #5

Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" was an interesting read because it seemed so straight forward that maybe I've missed the deeper meaning. The descriptive imagery was something I noticed right off the bat with Fitzgerald's work, especially in the line "the long Minnesota winter shut down like the wite lid of a box" (1823) almost trying to show how confining and depressing Dexter's life is. To escape this death-like grip he becomes smart with money and seeks fame, "He wanted not associations with glittering things and glittering people - he wanted the glittering things themselves" (1826). To Dexter the ultimate "glittering thing" is Judy Jones, a shallow girl who plays men like puppets. Judy seemed a lot like "Daisy Miller" to me in how she plays with men and isn't aware of her effect. Dexter is also incredibly reminiscent of Winterbourne in that he wants to posess Judy, yet doesn't really know anything about who she is as a person. Judy is easily distracted by men, "When a new man came to town everyone dropped out-dates were automatically canceled" (1832) yet Dexter doesn't care. He throws aside a woman who truly loves him, knowing what he knows about Judy, to be with her anyway. It seems that Fitzgerald is making some type of statement about women being the downfall of men or how women are easily exploited. I keep coming back to the line in the story, "She would have been soiled long since had there been anything to soil her, - except herself" (1835) which I think is Fitzgerald's way of saying anyone can be the cause of their own downfall. Judy cannot be touched no matter what she does or what men do to her, only she can be the cause of her own destruction.

My critical question that I give to everyone is what is Fitzgerald trying to say about the Judy character and/or women in general? Are people really the cause of their own doom or are outside influences the factor?

Critical Thinking Blog 4

To me the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" seemed to discuss a man who was slowly dying from not living his life to the fullest. His talk of the yellow smoke that "slides along the street" (1577) seems to imply that some type of doom is coming to him. In all the poems we've looked at there seems to be this theme of the unlived life. It seems to be summed up the best in the lines, "I am no prophe - and here's no great matter;/I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker" (1579). I think that the war aspect (mind you I'm not sure when this poem was penned) played a hand in this poem. Prufrock is discussing how he hasn't done anything with his life and how he wasn't born into greatness, "I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be" (1579) and he seems to believe that if he was born into greatness things might have been more positively skewed for him. He also says that he was almost "the Fool" (1580) almost as if everyone is making fun of him and he is an idiot for not doing more. His view of modern culture and his life is that he should have risen above who he was made to be, and when he didn't he deserved the things that happened to him. My question is, do you see the theme of the unlived life here? And what are his thoughts on destiny and fate in terms of position in life?

Critical Thinking Blog #3

Out of all the Frost poems the one that I was interested with the most was "Mending Wall." I would see Frost as a modernist because he constructs a very simple world in his poetry, especially in "Mending Wall," that doesn't focus on materialism. The concept of the "wall" in the poem is meant to keep people and objects separated, "My apple trees will never get across/And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him" and the theme of "Good fences make good neighbors" is an incredibly modern concept. He's saying that fences, meant to divide, also keep us from connecting with our community and a support system that is supposed to be involved in our lives. A good neighbor is defined, according to Frost, as someone who keeps to themselves and doesn't meddle. The person that Frost has as the protaganist asks, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out,/And to whom I was like to give offense." Nowadays we have all sorts of barriers keeping us separate from the outside world and we don't even notice how untrusting we are of people around us. I think that Frost has this type of growing community dealing with this makes us look at our own community. His themes are new and relevant because they are inherent in our world today. The question I pose to other is what else could the fences in "Mending Fences" symbolize and why does the character feel the need to question the use of fences?