The Voice of Reason

Judging from his expression at the end of the event, Krapp disagrees with the voice coming from the tape, when it says that "(Pause. Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back" (Beckett). Does this mean that this bitter, old man has lost the "fire" he once had? Fire appears to be a recurrent symbol or metaphor in near-suicidal works: In The Road, the fire represents the determination to survive as humans, deserving the term 'human' in the process. Apparently, the fire mentioned in this piece does not represent the same thing. It probably refers to the emotional sediment left by experiences. Maybe, the after-taste is bad enough to regret ever trying the experience. In this thing (a term to which I must surrender, considering my inability to properly identify this artistic genre,) the fire burned the man, and his scars are what make him question the beauty of the experience in the first place. Are experiences worth the trouble?

Krapp Crapped By Krapp In Tape

Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape is a work intended to be acted, as is apparent from the start. Plays are written in a very similar style as this, and one thing that intrigued me was seeing the word "Tape" in the space where characters' names usually go. Is it possible then, that the tape can be considered a character? Furthermore, the younger Krapp featured in the tape is treated by Krapp, the viewer, in a third-person type of way, so that the viewer criticizes the young Krapp as one might criticize an obnoxious stranger. On the other hand, when I watch a recording of my younger self, I, too, get the urge to patronize the youthful person I used to be. Nevertheless, I never find myself enraged enough to say, "Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to beleive I was ever as bad as that. Thank God that's all done with anyway. (Pause)" (Beckett). I must admit, though that I often exclaim, "I can't believe I was ever THAT bad!" All I hope is that in thirty years, I am not as rueful as Krapp. One question on my mind is the following: "Is this a monologue?"

Hamlet, I Presume

I expect Hamlet to include elements of comedy, given the participation of a comical actor (Robin Williams), as well as of psychology, and metaphysics. The mirrors mentioned in the introduction serve as a metaphorical device, as do many of the objects and events in the play. I expect the longest of Shakespeare's works to be different from the others in the sense of social and political criticisms. Why did Shakespeare require so much text to send his message? Is it conveyed as efficiently as possible, or did Shakespeare elongate the work to make a point?

Watch The Road on Carrera 7

Possibly filmed in Bogota around this time of year, the film based on the novel, The Road, adequately captures the setting and overall feel of the refugees. Now that I stop to ponder, while reading the novel and before watching the film, I used many images of Bogota to construct, in my imagination, the post-apocalyptic world described in the story. My imagination was perfectly equipped with a repertoire of bleak environments: Hail, smog, rain, you name it... all except depressing snow. Of the two places in which I have lived, both are seasoon-deprived, and one comes with the complementary addition of a post-apocalyptic climate on the side. Of the times I have travelled to snowy places, the cold powder has only instilled awe and a sense of beauty within me, and never have I seen more than a driveway or two full of dirty snow (other than in NY, but that's beside the point). In conclusion, if you are writing a book or filming a movie about a destroyed world where people eat each other, starve to death, or freeze to death (no third option, by the way), Bogota is the best place to be.

Amen

Oprah: Today’s show is for all who wonder what the beliefs of the first English writers were. This person’s works have endured for centuries, and are still being studied in schools today. Our guest today, is a writer born in October of 1400, and besides a poet, he is also a philosopher, a bureaucrat, a courtier, and a diplomat. He is credited for the renowned and unfinished The Canterbury Tales, and the first artistic use of vernacular Middle English as opposed to French or Latin. Ladies and gentlemen, Geoffrey Chaucer.

(Applause)

Chaucer: My Greetings, Madam Oprah Gail of Winfrey, and greetings to all.

Oprah: Hello, Mr. Chaucer

Chaucer:
It is, in fact, an honor to be here,
Among so many curious friends, o dear!

Oprah: So tell us, Mr. Chaucer, what motivated you to write your work, The Canterbury Tales?

Chaucer:
O my, o my, directly to the point.
So now we shall explore my sad viewpoint:
Why do all folk decide to play this game?
Hypocrisy and trickery by name,
We’ll see on days that passed and those to come.
The state of lies not spoken makes me numb.
If none decide to breach the lie they tell,
Then I shall joust the dragon from its shell.
The world now stinks of narcissistic frauds,
So proudly living openly as gods,
Defying all the laws of a true life.
I am, my friends, explaining my deep strife
With all that claims to be, yet is not so.
A cynic and a pessimist, my foe
Is the whole world, which sadly is so low.

Oprah: So are you saying that the world is full of hypocrites and always will be?

Chaucer:
I envy your naiveté with my heart
That you will never speak of any fart,
Which comes from one who you so dearly hold,
For how could such a thing from “beauty” come?
The knight is not excepted from the sum
Of those who claim to honestly conceive
A life without the riches they receive.
My sword against the lies has been my pen,
To end the falsehoods everywhere, amen.

Oprah: T-Thank you so much Mr. Chaucer for your insights. A hand for Mr. Chaucer… (Applause)

..."This program is brought to you by... Vital Radiance -Revitalizing beauty for your changing skin."

Logic, Tarnished By The Road

Ash-stained Conscience

The father character in the novel, The Road, is confronted with difficult decisions. These decisions include considering killing his son, shooting a man, exiting the food storage shelter after only a few days there, and others. These situations have hardened the man, and purged all hesitation from his heart. What drove him to kill the man who stole his supplies at the beach? The man was doing what any other starving person would have done. I believe that the father was not justified, but vengeful. The thief had no malicious intentions save stealing some food.

Truthfully, according to our standards, stealing from another would be considered heartless, and taking from a starving person would be cruel, but considering the standards of an apocalyptic world littered with cannibalistic savages, stealing some food without directly harming anyone is the most humane way to survive.

The father attempts to justify his action by saying that he wouldn't have murdered him, to which the son responds, "But we did kill him" (136). After this experience, I realized that the son's innocence demonstrated the father's increasing cruelty. There is a fine line between being cautious, and being paranoid. It is the son's duty to remain worried about ethics, while the father struggles to keep them alive by any means. While the father believes the son is simply tagging along as a liability, the son's task of kindling the "fire" is the more difficult job. The fact that this does not occur to the father makes the son's job all the more difficult.

Reviving The Truth

I am not sure whether to consider teachers' yearly rereads of course literature as true rereads. Unless the teacher is repeating the text for his or her enjoyment or better understanding, I believe that teaching a book over and over again is not the same as reading it repeatedly. I firmly think that re-readable books must be either classics or very complicated, for the reread to be worth the candle.

I do agree with what Sonya Chung in supports in her review, The Great Gatsby Revisited, including the statement that "in Gatsby, Fitzgerald also gets the essential doubleness of human nature so terribly, perfectly right. Every character is pulled in (at least) two directions; love and hate, admiration and disdain, are of a piece in almost every relationship. And the reader ultimately feels an unresolved, and yet somehow perfectly coherent dividedness about each character." (Chung) Not only is this viewpoint observed within the text, but is also a reflexion of reality. We are always deciding between two things: to go this way or that way, be with these or those people, prioritize between this and that, and hundreds of other entertaining decisions which make life malleable and spontaneous. I often ponder what would or could have been.

In the end of The Great Gatsby, the characters ruefully condemn themselves while they nostalgically yearn what they could have had. They accept the wastefulness with which they had carried their lives, and they are saddened when they know that others will undoubtedly repeat their ignorant mistakes. People never make mistakes. Errors do not exist. We all know when we are doing something we will later regret. Apparently, people enjoy learning of the suffering caused by others' errors, which they commit themselves. This is a type of ironic humor which emphasizes our repressed truths. It is no coincidence that the book Secret Regrets has been one of the top Kindle downloads.

Fire And Ash

The first time the father explains why he and his son are immune to evil, he says that "...nothing bad is going to happen to us. That's right. Because we're carrying the fire. Yes. Because we're carrying the fire" (42). At that time, the father still had his lighter. Later, when asked a similar question, the father responds with same answer; however, at that time, he had dropped his lighter, which can only mean that the fire he refers to isn't literal. In my opinion, the fire he possesses is the fire of hope and of unflinching humanity; the same hope and humanity the bad guys have lost. With regards to the terminology the child uses to refer to people as good guys and bad guys, the reader is indulged in the innocence of youth, and simplicity it enjoys.

"What is it? the man said. Nothing. We'll find something to eat. We always do. The boy didnt answer. The man watched him. That's not it, is it? It's okay. Tell me. The boy looked away down the road. I want you to tell me. It's okay. He shook his head. Look at me, the man said. He turned and looked. He looked like he'd been crying. Just tell me. We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course not. Even if we were starving?
We're starving now. You said we werent. I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving. But we wouldnt. No. We wouldnt. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Y es. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. Okay" (65).

Are We There Yet? Are We...

(59)


Undoubtedly so, a common film joke, when families are on a road trip, is for the youngest child to pester the adults with the typical "Are we there yet?" over and over. In The Road, the unnamed child asks questions which do not please the father. While his questions are not nearly as unnecessary as the question of an impatient toddler, the boy’s questions, nevertheless, give the father unwanted thoughts. The father is bombarded with a series of direct questions in staccato style: (51) (64) I believe that this style of short questions and answers emphasizes the hopeless heart of the characters and their enchained thoughts. On the other hand, when the father finds the apple orchard, the paragraphs seem to bloat with eagerness, in an attempt to send as much information to the reader in one time. As the reader, I shared the father’s relief, when he described how "he went row by row till he'd trod a puzzle in the grass. He'd more apples than he could carry. He felt out the spaces about the trunks and filled his pockets full and he piled apples in the hood of his parka behind his head and carried apples stacked along his forearm against his chest. He dumped them in a pile at the door of the barn and sat there and wrapped up his numb feet." (62)

Depressing, Worn-out Postapocalyptic Plots

While reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I can’t help but remember the numerous films released with the same plot. Titles that come to mind are: The Book of Eli, Twelve Monkeys, Resident Evil (all 4 sequels), and the child’s film, City of Ember, based on the novel. All of these films have something in common with The Road. The cliché being established here makes the reader dislike the plot not only because of the repetitive storyline, but also because of the depression it instills. With a scene like the following, the narrator shares his despair with the reader: “This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.” (McCarthy. 37) Perhaps our taste of film genre has mutated to include morbid depictions of vampires, post apocalyptic worlds, and worlds en-route to destruction (The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon, The Core, 2012, Red Planet, War of The Worlds, Independence Day, The Knowing, The Matrix…).

I would also like to mention that the style with which the grim epic is portrayed symbolizes the steps taken on the road to something else. This road represents the hope the characters need to survive in their bleak environment. The justified, broken paragraphs seem to me like steps. Here is an image of what I mean:

Dice, Gluttony, and Lechery, and Chocolate

Ironically, while reading the Pardoner's Tale (which was itself ironic), I mindlessly nibbled at a chocolate I had no hunger for. When I noticed what a sinner I was, I gluttonously enjoyed devouring it. It is curious, that the Pardoner's tale inspired no guilt in my gut. This may have occurred because I knew the Pardoner was a sinner himself. I was once taught by somebody wise that criticisms loose credibility when told by one who does not take his own advice. The Pardoner is a fraud, and he admits it numerous times, like when he states that his

403 "...entente is nat but for to wynne,
"...intention is only to make a profit,
404 And nothyng for correccioun of synne."
And not at all for correction of sin."

He is also imprudent, which we can see when he insults his listeners in the prologue when he proclaims to those who have asked of him a tale, that

437 "...lewed peple loven tales olde;
"...ignorant people love old tales;
438 Swiche thynges kan they wel reporte and holde."
Such things they can well repeat and hold in memory."

It is humorous to hear a sinner preach absolution openly, and may well be Chaucer's criticism of the Church.

A Bird Named Nevermore

In Poe's poem, "Raven", we see a number of symbolic elements which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. When describing the instance of bewilderment upon opening his home's door, we may see a possible symbolism in regards to the contrasting light conditions of the scene, as well as the description of the opening of the doors wide open: The differences in light that Poe presents in his poem represent a sense of comfort within his establishment which he doesn't sense once he opens his door. There are unknown things where he cannot see them, and he fears them. What he knows is his loneliness. The body language, so aptly illustrated in this image, may allude to Jesus's crucification. This means that the narrator is sacrificing himself for what he believes - his hopeless solitude. We also see that the Raven may represent his closest friend (which may be himself), who he believes is destined to abandon him:

With this revelation, we can assume that our narrator is comfortable with his disparity, which is why he is so astonished to hear the raven's "Nevermore". At the end, the reader is told that the raven's shadow represents the narrator's dying soul. Then again, it is common to find dark animals and images to represent death, which may just be case. The raven would then be ironic shadow of death that has come to remind our narrator that he is alone in his deathbed. One way or another, our narrator is not comfortable without his solitude.

One curiosity is the fact that the balm of Gilead is mentioned, which led me to some investigation:

Dreaming Or Hoping?

In The Wife of Bath's Tale, by Chaucer, we see a story told by a bitter woman who has, apparently, lost enough hope in men, that she must seek to hopes and dreams to fantasize the perfect couple. The couple she describes has a love that does not depend on anything superficial, which seems to be the basis for repression and the other unwanted characteristics of marriage the Wife describes in her Prologue. Her ideal mentality can be linked to a basic form of Hindu teachings as seen in the Bhagavad-Gita:

1185 "Whoso that halt hym payd of his poverte,

"Whoever considers himself satisfied with his poverty,
1186 I holde hym riche, al hadde he nat a sherte."
I consider him rich, although he had not a shirt."

The question is, ultimately, the following: Is the tale told by the Wife of Bath fantasy or hope?

Marry, Cook, Breed. Repeat.

"Of five husbands' schooling am I.

45 Welcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal.

Welcome the sixth, whenever he shall appear.

46 For sothe, I wol nat kepe me chaast in al.

For truly, I will not keep myself chaste in everything.

47 Whan myn housbonde is fro the world ygon,

When my husband is gone from the world,

48 Som Cristen man shal wedde me anon,

Some Christian man shall wed me straightway,

49 For thanne th' apostle seith that I am free

For then the apostle says that I am free

50 To wedde, a Goddes half, where it liketh me.

To wed, by God's side (I swear), wherever it pleases me.

51 He seith that to be wedded is no synne;

He says that to be wedded is no sin;

52 Bet is to be wedded than to brynne."

It is better to be wedded than to burn."

One humorous film I have seen is My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which tells of a traditional Greek Orthodox family with their customs somewhat exaggerated. The most emphasized ideology is the following: Females' raison d'être is to "marry good Greek men, cook good Greek food, and make many Greek babies." The entire film's events are developed around the breaching of such a psychorigid mentality. In the same way, the prologue of Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale is narrated by a woman who, after being schooled in the art being a good wife, has rebelled to become a brutal spouse:

"As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke

"So help me God, I laugh when I think

202 How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke!

How pitifully at night I made them work!

203 And, by my fey, I tolde of it no stoor.

And, by my faith, I set no store by it.

204 They had me yeven hir lond and hir tresoor;

They had given me their land and their treasure;

205 Me neded nat do lenger diligence

I needed not work hard any longer

206 To wynne hir love, or doon hem reverence.

To win their love, or do them reverence.

207 They loved me so wel, by God above,

They loved me so well, by God above,

208 That I ne tolde no deyntee of hir love!

That I reckoned little of their love!

209 A wys womman wol bisye hire evere in oon

A wise woman will be constantly busy

210 To gete hire love, ye, ther as she hath noon.

To get their love, yes, when she has none.

211 But sith I hadde hem hoolly in myn hond,

But since I had them wholly in my hand,

212 And sith they hadde me yeven al hir lond,

And since they had me given all their land,

213 What sholde I taken keep hem for to plese,

Why should I take care to please them,

214 But it were for my profit and myn ese?"

Unless it were for my profit and my pleasure?"Every time one of her five husbands attempted to repress her, she

"...folwed ay my dames loore,

"...followed always my mother's teaching,

584 As wel of this as of othere thynges moore."

As well in this as in other things more."

In her prologue, she reveals repressed feelings, previously unknown (or ignored) by men. This information should prove valuable to a man who wants to be a good spouse, even if he thinks he already is one:

"We love no man that taketh kep or charge

"We love no man who takes notice or concern about

322Wher that we goon; we wol ben at oure large."

Where we go; we will be free (to do as we wish)."

According to the Wife of Bath, women feel especially repressed when they feel they

387 "...koude pleyne, and yit was in the gilt,

"...could complain, and yet was in the wrong,

388 Or elles often tyme hadde I been spilt."

Or else many times had I been ruined."

While I believe that men often joke about this subject, I do not believe that the average husband feels so negatively of his wife as the Wife of Bath believes it to be:

371 "Thou liknest eek wommenes love to helle,

"Thou also compare women's love to hell,

372 To bareyne lond, ther water may nat dwelle.

To barren land, where water may not remain.

373 Thou liknest it also to wilde fyr;

Thou compare it also to Greek (inextinguishable) fire;

374 The moore it brenneth, the moore it hath desir

The more it burns, the more it has desire

375 To consume every thyng that brent wole be.

To consume every thing that will be burned.

376 Thou seyest, right as wormes shende a tree,

Thou sayest, just as worms destroy a tree,

377 Right so a wyf destroyeth hire housbonde;

Right so a wife destroys her husband;

378 This knowe they that been to wyves bonde.'"

This know they who are bound to wives.'"

It may also be the case, that in the time that the Canterbury Tales were written, that the entire marriage institution was based on a different set of values than it is today. If this were the case, then not only would the Wife of Bath be very satisfied living in 2010, but Chaucer would have something else to write about; the transformation of marriage through time. However, one time-resistant truth which men often try hard to ignore is that women rarely appreciate being corrected by their husbands. Nobody enjoys being told their faults by others, for that matter.

659 "But al for noght, I sette noght an hawe

But all for nothing, I gave not a hawthorn berry

660 Of his proverbes n' of his olde sawe,

For his proverbs nor for his old sayings,

661 Ne I wolde nat of hym corrected be.

Nor would I be corrected by him.

662 I hate hym that my vices telleth me,

I hate him who tells me my vices,

663 And so doo mo, God woot, of us than I.

And so do more of us, God knows, than I."

After reading the Prologue of the Wife of Bath, I have come to the conclusion that while not as radical today, the repression women kindles deep sentiments, which may cause extreme personalities such as that of the Wife of Bath.