Saturday Shoot//Abstract Color Play

New Holland 

Waiting

Tyvek, not "Ty vek"

Blue by any other name would be just as Bright

Cold, but Gold

Serve

May I Help You?

Thanks for looking!

Neutral Tones Analysis

A Doleful Outlook Though Nothing to Fear

     What is alive enough to have the strength to die? Thomas Hardy's poem “Neutral Tones” was written in 1867 but not published until 1898, and the four four-line stanzas picture a very dull one indeed, as every shade of color is no longer vibrant and every tone has become neutral (NAEL 1932). In “Neutral Tones,” the speaker mourns a lost love, and the unfortunate part is that all life ends up looking very bleak and worthless. In fact, many of Hardy's pieces focused solely on the outlook that all humans are ruled by a fate of a perverse nature and that events of disaster and irony are usually coincidental (1915). “Neutral Tones” exemplifies this in that Hardy (1840 – 1928) writes of how life is chance and love is a gamble. Even for the speaker, love was so alive it had the choice to die, and fate chose the latter (1914).

     When poems mention nature and compare it to something dead, in this case ashes, I cringe, because God created his world to glorify himself and bless his people. When I read that leaves had come from ash and were lying upon the starving sod, I was slightly upset. The seasons were fashioned for a reason, and Winter is simply part of his grand plans. Hardy may have been alluding to the fact that his love was not destined to be forever and therefore had started from ash and then fell (in a neutral tone of gray) upon the sod, which is not a lovely element to rest on. In essence, the piece irritated me because the theme overflows with selfishness. The fact that he lost a love should not be an excuse to think that the world is bleak and God has cursed the sun.

     Some say I over analyze situations, which could be true, but I love thinking, and after thinking about “Neutral Tones,” I thought about ones I have lost. When I remembered beloved grandparents and other family members I have lost, I gave the speaker more sympathy. Moreover, I thought about some friendships I lost, friendships over which I did not have any control whatsoever, and I understood what Hardy meant by “words played between us to and fro.” Confidences and stories exchanged between the two were right and good at the time, but now everything was meaningless because the relationship was disintegrated. He did not convince me that fate was perverse and that everything is a coincidence, but I could understand the feeling of not having control over a situation where a relationship between friends completely dissolves. I do admit to others that I have never lost a “lover,” which means I cannot imagine the hurt because I haven't experienced it. However, the piece reminded me of people being parted from one another in a drastic and painful way, and I could relate to the image of feeling like a gray leaf upon a dead piece of sod starved by the sun.

     Techniques used by Hardy were mainly vivid word pictures of neutral tones. The speaker, near a pond in the middle of the Winter, is mourning his fate and lost love. Hardy employs very visual language, and when he mentioned leaves, I was confused. Usually trees shed their leaves well before the middle of Winter, and the snow falls, covering the earth with a beautiful blanket to hide the arid ground underneath. Not here: At this specific pond, Winter is at its dullest state, and the neutral tones provide the perfect place to have a party of self-pity. The sod starves, and God has cursed the sun (NAEL 1932). What could be added to make a more bleak picture? For the speaker, it seems he is trapped in this tone and phase in life, and he certainly is not making any great effort to escape the pattern of thoughts he finds himself pondering.

     Losing a friend or love is aching, but that does not mean that the speaker is justified in thinking all the world is bleak because of it. It is true people need time to grieve when they lose one they love, but to go to such an extent as to compare the smiles spent on one another before the loss to dead, swept bitterness with a bad prophecy, it is as if to say that any friendship or relationship is dangerous because it might cause hurt or even be taken away by hurt. Though depressing, I have thought of this poem often. I do not have to worry or fret about fate or relationships, because I have a higher authority who is in control, and my Heavenly Father only wants the best for me. Even though I once lost many family members and friendships in a short period of time, I learned that when and if this happens in the future, I will most certainly recall this piece, if only to remind myself that I need not worry about losing someone and having to live life in a colorless way, because I am actually never alone.

     Hardy did have a point: It hurts to lose. From his poem, however, I had the feeling the speaker had been standing at the pond under the white sun for an extended period of time, longer than necessary, and though he had probably grieved enough, the narrator was simply prolonging his session of selfish sorrow. Hardy expressed that fate was perverse, and the speaker simply could not move away from the designated pond, a place of self-pity. To both Hardy and the speaker, love and fate were both alive enough to decide to disappear at any whim despite the pain he would feel, and when they did, the speaker was left numb and aching, and all the words and smiles exchanged before the casualty were considered worthless. I was annoyed at the doleful outlook on life the speaker assumed, but I could relate to it, and Hardy's colorful language to describe a colorless life and situation is vivid, and I can now look back and recall a poem about neutral tones that shows me how much I have to be grateful for, because no matter how bleak the Winter may seem or how starved the sod may be, my higher authority holds me in his hand. If God promises I will not be burned walking through the fire, I have nothing to fear from a Wintry crisis.

Works Cited  
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. F. New York: Norton, 2012. Print.

Neutral Tones: Thomas Hardy

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
         – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
         On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
         Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
         And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

I wrote an analysis on this, more or less, hopefully up in a week or so. Or less.  The poem frustrated me (as did many from this era) because people were so woebegone. Do not get me wrong: I like woebegone, but not when God is blamed for a world and life without color. 

Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.  

Sinterklaas Poem

St. Nick and Claus are different;

All who think otherwise

Think within an inference.

“Sint zat te denken,

wat hij jou zou gaan schenken.”

(Was that a sneeze?) Bless you.

The saint was thinking,

The thought, it was sinking.

What should he give to you?

They'd worked hard all year

Not a “Santa baby, Santa dear”;

Not even one pleading cry.

So two by two,

They set out their shoes.

And bid their parents “Goodnight!”

On that good night Zwarte Piet,

With fancy robes and slipper-ed feet,

Set out with Sinterklaas.

This party of four

Had no musical score

To accompany their task at hand;

But the surprises they

(Sinterklaas and Piet)

Placed in the shoes two by two,

Created smiles so grand.

A Determined Sluggard

Not wanting to do something is a vice.  It is hard to force something to do something it simply does not want to do.  Lately, all that’s wanted to get done is writing, but one can’t just spend life writing, unfortunately.  While thinking of all that’s yet to be done, or even what is yet ahead of me, I was reminded of Proverbs 6:6; “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.”

I do not think many think of themselves as “You sluggard!”, but I found it is actually a good motivator, especially when there is so much to do and even more to be started.  (I am not advising you to start calling yourself a sluggard).  Instead of feeling overwhelmed, ignoring that feeling, and then writing what I want to feel productive, I have to die to flesh and those ‘feelings’ and put the energy God has given me into what I should really be doing.  I should not be doing this now, actually, except that when I finish something, my reward is to write.  One still can’t spend life writing, though, unfortunately. 

Two weeks: Two weeks until we are free.  School seems a fetter when it drags out and does not say goodbye when the courses are over. Then again, if it were not as tedious, winter break would not be embraced as readily, and it would probably not be enjoyed to the fullest.  In a sense, the mindset that the break has to be worked for to such an extent makes it even more worth the efforts of being a gracious host to the assignments that need extreme attendance before the dinner is over. 

So what? I call myself a sluggard when I start to lag.  You can do better than that.  God’s the one behind you. You do not have to give in to tiredness.  I do not want to ‘fall asleep’ with a little folding of the hands (Proverbs 6:10). (How eery!) Thinking of me as a sluggard is not so I may mourn the fact while the courses draw out their leave, rather, I think “sluggard” because there is always room for improvement, and there are always bad habits to break. Especially for these two weeks, even though all the ants are under and hiding from the cold, I will go to the ant and consider her ways, for she is wise: Even if there is something in her way, she finds a way around it, and nothing smashes her determination. 

Thank goodness for Proverbs; thank God for determination.

Literary Analysis: Watership Down

This piece is one I truly enjoyed working on because of the exquisite flavors in Richard Adam's novel.  Rabbits and regimes, warrens and wires, and yes, bucks and battles, join creating a wonderful story. I won't give an abstract...

An Insightful Message: Rabbits and a 20th Century Preoccupation with History and Politics

          “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, Prince with swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed” (Adams 29).  The story of a group of rabbits (led by one named Hazel) that leaves their Sandleford warren to embark on a journey to found their own, new, warren is none other than Richard Adams' Watership Down.  This is no tale of The Velveteen Rabbit: These rabbits had their share of enemies, and though the author claimed it to be only a child's story written about the British countryside that he loves, his novel displays certain weighty subjects of importance (Adams “My Brit”). The people of the Prince with a Thousand Enemies were rabbits in the center of southern England within a real world to illustrate the importance of running, fighting, and overcoming evil.  Placed in the world and not a fictional other-world, the rabbits possess their own vernacular as well as stories and tales passed down as proverbs.  Richard Adams' tale of lapine comrades was written and published in 1972, after the world recovered from World War Two, a recovery during which the world experienced another explosion: One of popular culture amidst the modernist movements in art, music, and literature, forms people use to express their individuality (Spielvogel 628).  During this time, authors explored new themes and ways to emphasize their messages, and one trend was to write free-form poetry (such as T.S. Eliot's “Prufrock”) or novels from either a futuristic mindset or nature's point of view while being “mediators of insight” in order to display themes of political conflicts (Tarka).  An example of modern literature with a futuristic mindset is George Orwell's 1984, while one with animals basking in the spotlight is Animal Farm, also written by Orwell, who skillfully combined political messages in a future context or in the context of a group of animals.  With Watership Down, however, although Adams’ 20^th century novel may appear to be simply an imaginative tale about rabbits in order to elevate environmentalism, it clearly demonstrates the preoccupation 20^th century literature possessed in relation to history and politics by using epigraphs, parallels to Greek literature, and themes of political and socialistic regimes.

          The novel may lend the impression that it supports every aspect of ecological care and consideration because the main character is taken by visions of trouble, prophesying that the warren will be destroyed because man has visited and doom of the warrens' destruction by man impends (Adams Watership 9).  To be certain, the description of the extermination of those who remained at the Sandleford Warren, which Captain Holly relates to Hazel's troupe, is not for the faint of heart, as big men with white sticks (cigarettes) in their mouths gas the rabbit runs, resulting in screaming, hallucinating rabbits (154). These devastating effects, written in such detail and expressed by the story teller so horrifically, seem to elicit the inspiration to protect the environment. However, it is not the cry to protect all rabbits; rather, it is a part of the story Adams employed to endear his characters to his readers.

Watership Down, England

          The chapter in which Captain Holly explains the events of the annihilation of the Sandleford rabbits begins with an epigraph from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  The function of an epigraph is a form of literary strategy in which the author selects passages, quotations, or colloquialisms to set a stage or mood for the section following the epigraph.  The epigraph Adams used for this particular passage appeals to a reader’s sense of emotional sensitivity, for when a Russian states that man should love the animals and not cause them unnecessary harm for the sole reason that they are gifts from God, it is an impressive imperative that causes the reader to discover how and in what way the epigraph will tie into the following events in the story.
          Epigraphs were common during the Romantic era (of poetry especially), and employed most often. In 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge used a Latin passage to preface “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and even years later, T. S. Eliot used an epigraph from Dante's Inferno to further his point in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Greenblatt 443, 2524).  When Adams inserted epigraphs for his novel, he did so not only to set a stage for the readers' imagination, but also to tie the context of his modern tale in with those of the literature preceding his novel, illustrating how 20^th century literature was occupied with somehow combining a political or historical theme into a work.  Adams did both, and, in a sense, this act (incorporating epigraphs) is also a symbol of appreciation for pieces written before his novel, as he is giving them honor and recognition.
          The multiple ways the world has developed owes much to the Greek leaders, historians, and philosophers, and again, Adams gives honor to the preceding (or ancient) literature in that he employs parallels between his characters and those in Virgil's Aeneid, in which a young man, Aeneas, returns from the Trojan War and is determined to found the city of Rome.  Like Aeneas (the main character in the Aeneid) the rabbits break away from what they have been used to for years in order to create a new warren and are constantly met with numerous obstacles, some of which (such as Cowslip's warren and the lotus eaters) mirror the obstacles encountered in the Aeneid.  In doing this, Richard Adams creates a story that is looked upon as a great epic because it possesses the themes of this famous Greek poem (Anderson).
          Themes of the Aeneid include those of fighting for freedom and founding a new city, avoiding obstructions or obstacles that deter from the goal, and lastly, enduring anything that came across the traveler's path whether it was a challenge or the loss of a friend.  Aeneas, like the rabbits in Watership Down, had to fight to found and maintain Rome.  A similar obstruction the rabbits and Aeneas encounter are seemingly seductive areas, that is, places that have allure but are actually full of danger and death, such as the lotus eaters and Cowslip's warren (Anderson).
          Enduring hardships and bearing grief is also a theme in both tales: In the Aeneid, when Aeneas relates the horrors of the Trojan war, he is heartbroken as he tells of the woeful events of the war while Bluebell and Captain Holly (two rabbits who had remained at Sandleford) speak of the dreadful events of the extermination and utter destruction of the Sandleford warren.  While Aeneas moaned that none could retell the woes to give them justice, Captain Holly “looked sad and dark” after he related that his tale would “strike frost into the heart of every rabbit that hears it” (Adams 148).  The “death agony” Aeneas recalls the women mourning over in courthouses synchronizes with the instance in which the men gassed the Sandleford warren runs and the does screamed in agony over their death and the death of their kittens (Adams 154, Anderson).   Another parallel to the Aeneid that Adams adopted is that of the prophetic rabbit, Fiver, and the Aeneid’s Princess Cassandra, a young priestess who foretold the unfortunate fortune of Troy if the Trojans were to accept the horse left by the Greeks.  Like Cassandra, Fiver has physical fits and is captured in an other-worldly trance when he foresees the destruction of Sandleford after observing the signpost (Adams 7).
          Though the signpost set in Sandleford's warren signified the coming of men and the destruction of the warren, each warren in the novel signifies three political regimes.  When the rabbits followed Hazel and stopped at an eery warren (seemingly managed by a distant, detached, character named Cowslip) on their journey, the Sandleford escapees sensed a danger that persisted even when all seemed safe. True, Cowslip's community possessed the same vernacular, as well as poetry, proverbs and tales, but it was eery.  Fiver felt the entire aura of the place unnatural, as if death was hanging over the warren like a mist. When a native rabbit finished reciting a poem, Fiver absorbed it with absolute horror, and, stricken with fear, he came to his senses and realized what the mist was (Adams 103).  The oppressive mist Fiver sensed was the fact that Cowslip's warren was not free, it was run by fear of death.  The apparent leader, Cowslip, treated everyone as equal, and because he did not view himself as a spokesperson or even true leader, the warren suffered because of its socialistic regime. Adams' lapine characters knew that socialism was not what they had left Sandleford for, but by inserting the element of a regime that the rabbits fled from in order to establish their own, Adams suggests countries should flee socialism and found governments that encourage independence.
          When the independent rabbits continued their journey, they found a beautiful down to claim as their own, but there was one problem: There were no does, and no does meant no continuation of the new warren.  When this problem was addressed, the second political regime entered the stage.  Several rabbits from Hazel's warren made a trek to Efrafa, a militaristic, suppressed, not to mention depressed community of rabbits.  Efrafa is the supreme dictatorship. The leader, General Woundwort, is bent on system, control, schedules, obedience from his Council, and that every rabbit coming in to Efrafa “will find [them] perfectly friendly and helpful to rabbits who understand what's expected of them” (Adams 238).  Citizens are given no free choice of when to silflay (eat) or even when to pass hraka, because man may come and inflict harm or cause disease: “You can't call your life your own, and in return you have safety” (233).  In this dictatorship, the Efrafan council police “demonstrated the power to ferret out and punish every individual...engaged in or...suspected of political opposition” (Hallagan).  Adams’ colorful picture of a disgusting way of life in which citizens were limited in so many areas of life is a powerful one that makes readers appreciate freedom, because freedom to be able to live, eat, sleep breath, mate, and love is the most important of all.  In the end, the dictatorship crumbled for many reasons, but Adams' intention was not to allow this warren to prosper because it was a dictatorship that did not allow citizens to truly live.
          Adams' novel ends with a solid, peaceful, and well established order of rabbits who not only have room to breath, but room to live.  With Hazel, Fiver, and the singular character of Bigwig, the rabbits were able to be represented.  Watership Down and the rabbits therein were content; they had escaped certain death more than once and were now upon a down with leaders they could not be more grateful for, leaders who had led them through the dark mist, away from predators, and out of reach of the Efrafan clutches.  By ending on the note of a warren in the hands of a healthy democracy, Adams gives a subliminal message that democracy leads to peace and a secure, satisfactory homeland.
          Creating a phenomenal conglomeration of themes, morals, and characters, Adams chose rabbits with a peculiar vernacular, history, and mythology of their own to write a story that warns against the evils of supreme control.  The 20^th century novel certainly displays the era's slight engrossment with history and politics, but Richard Adams wrote a story with insight.  More than an environmental promoter, the novel's epigraphs set and influence moods.  Profound comparisons and parallels to the Aeneid, Virgil's epic, give the book a flavor that is not reproducible, and the examination of political and socialistic regimes proves this book to be more than a tale of fluffy rabbits. These rabbits had to fight for their freedom, even when seductive warrens, predators, and other obstacles stubbornly stood in their way.    All the world was promised to be their enemy, and whenever they were caught, they were promised to be killed. “But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, Prince with swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed” (Adams 29).  While the novel, like others during the 20^th century, is most definitely preoccupied with history, politics, and other interesting themes, Adams' insightful message to remain free from political and relational evils rings true:  Because of their bravery and endurance, the people of the Prince of a Thousand Enemies consistently came out as the victors no matter how dark the tunnel or how suffocating the run.

 Works Cited:

Adams, Richard. "My Bit of Britain." In Britain 4.1 (1994): 53. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 19    Nov. 2012.

---.Watership Down. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print.

Anderson, Celia Catlett. "Troy, Carthage, and Watership Down." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 8.1 (1983): 12-13. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.                                                                                                           

Hallagan, William. "Corruption in Dictatorships." Economics of Governance 11.1 (2010): 27-49. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 21 Nov. 2012.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization: A Brief History. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2011.        Print.

"Tarka the Otter, Ring of Bright Water, Watership Down." World Literature Today 82.6 (2008): 4. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.