"Eveline" Intro Paragraph

In his short story "Eveline", James Joyce uses symbols--such as the past, dust, and an old photograph--to portray all that holds Eveline back from becoming an individual. Eveline is one who longs to escape from home, one who relies on the past to stabilize her present, and one who depends on others to make decisions for her. Joyce's symbolism represents the conflict that young adults often face when on the verge of breaking into adulthood and essentially coming-of-age.

I. Joyce begins the text with Eveline reminiscing her childhood; recurring nostalgia shows that Eveline has a tight grip on the past.
    a. "Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive."
    b. "Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire.... Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic...She remembered her father putting on her mother's bonnet to make the children laugh."

II. The concept of dust represents the layers of time that accumulated over the years and appears in the text more than once.
    a. "She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired."
    b. "Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from."

III. Joyce  uses the yellowing photograph of her father's old school friend as a warning to Eveline-- those who leave inevitably disappoint her father.
    a. "And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium..."
    b. "He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word: 'He is in Melbourne now'."

"Born Too Late"

While reading E.A. Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy", I couldn't help but feel a connection to Cheevy. There have been countless times where I've watched Sixteen Candles, or The Breakfast Club, and I wished I could travel back in time to live in the quirky and laid-back 1980's. What girl wouldn't want to be Molly Ringwald in a high-school dramatic film with a cheesy romantic ending?
And then there's Miniver Cheevy, who "sighed for what was not, And dreamed of Thebes and Camelot," (Robinson). He wanted to escape the "commonplace" , or the straight-and-narrow life plan set for him. E.A. Robinson makes it clear that Miniver Cheevy used his longing for the past as an excuse to escape his dreary present, "Miniver cursed the commonplace and eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the medieval grace of iron clothing," (Robinson). How could he miss something that he had never even experienced? Miniver could have watched movies set in the medieval era, or read many books on the time period, but that isn't the same as living in the medieval times. Therefore he wouldn't be able to miss it. It's like me, sixteen years old, claiming that I miss the good old 1960's. I would just sound ridiculous.
Robinson presents a character that is dwelling on the fact that current times are terrible, instead of facing the obstacles in his life. It's almost as if Miniver uses the medieval facade as a shield to block him from admitting the truth: that he's looking upon the past with longing and complaining about the present instead of improving his situation.
Although, at the end of the poem Miniver Cheevy contradicts himself, "Miniver scored the gold he sought, but sore annoyed was he without it...Miniver Cheevy, born too late, scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, and kept on drinking," (Robinson). He complains about his straight-and-narrow life, but without it Cheevy would not have the "gold", or money, that he receives. In the end, he would not actually trade his dull life for a medieval, heroic one. Miniver Cheevy just likes to dream of it.

Oh, the Irony.

Marge Piercy uses situational and dramatic irony in "Barbie Doll" to convey to the reader the tragic story of a girl who did everything in her power to conform into what others wanted her to be. The poem starts out with the "girlchild" growing up in the perceived "usual" way that a young girl would; playing with dolls and fake stoves and lipstick. Marge's repetitive use of synonyms of the word "small" in the first stanza is ironic-- "...miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy"-- because as the girl grows older she is seen as "a fat nose on thick legs," (Piercy). From the beginning of the young girl's life, she was programmed with the need to be "wee" and petite. As a reader, I wanted to somehow telepathically let her know that she did not have to change herself or feel bad about herself to please those around her. Thus dramatic irony, "when an event occurs whose significance the audience understands but the characters do not," (the oatmeal.com/comics/irony).  As a result of the pressures to become thin and "exercise, diet, smile and wheedle," (Piercy), she "cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up," (Piercy). The last stanza was the hardest for me to read. After going though with the surgery in order to blend in, the girl still was not happy with herself. Her society-- please forgive me, I just used the commonly used word society -- set women's standards so high that no woman could live up to them. It is still unclear to me whether or not the girl took her own life or died because of the surgery, but either way it's an example of situational irony, "Situational irony is when something happens and a reversal of expectations occurs...the reversal: the armor, which was intended for protection, is what ended up causing harm," (theoatmeal.com/comics/irony). In other words, the girl's surgery was intended to boost her confidence, to live up to her society's standards, and essentially be a perfect girl.

Instead, it ended up costing the girl her life. And, get this; the same people whom she could never seem to please were only appreciative of her as she lay in her coffin, "Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said," (Piercy). That only angers me even more. They had the audacity to show up to her funeral and only then did they call her pretty. It's saddening to think that the girl is looking down from Heaven, or some form of afterlife, finally pleased with herself. 

"Harrison Bergeron"

Hi! I'm Marina, and this is my blog. 

It took me a while to come up with a moderately interesting blog title, but with the help of my classmates I finally settled on "Metaphorical Marina". After all, this will be a literature blog. 

My classmates and I were assigned an assortment of poems and short stories to read over the summer. Out of all the texts I read this summer, I enjoyed "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr the most. The first sentence had me hooked, "The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal." Dystopian is one of my favorite genres, so anything set in the future gets me excited. As I read further into the story, I was amused to see how far the government went to keep every aspect of the community equal. It's intriguing, but also unsettling, because currently we live in a world that strongly advocates equality. What if someday our world turns out like the one in "Harrison Bergeron"? Do we believe so much in equality that we'd go so far as to monitor one's thoughts and feelings? 

My favorite scene of the story is when Harrison Bergeron and the beautiful-but-masked ballerina dance together on the stage, "They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it,"(Vonnegut). I love the vivid language Vonnegut used to portray to the reader the feeling of freedom. I can visualize the two dancing gracefully and enjoying their last moments of happiness, before being shot down by the Handicapper General. In a way, it is better to die than to continue to live shielded lives. Truthfully, I would rather die then live in a place where I couldn't think or feel on my own. 

Until next time!