Do not go gentle into that good night.

In my 102 class we have recently started reading and reviewing poetry. Poetry can be difficult to read at times, because sometimes the writer’s message doesn’t come across clear. Besides a few miss reads here and there I genuinely like poetry (maybe more than stories) and I have written a few of my own pieces. The piece I will be discussing for this post is “Do not go gentle into that good night.” by Dylan Thomas. With every verse there is one central idea that ties them all harmoniously, and that is the motif of death. There are six stanzas all with the same rhyme structure, which in turn helps each to blend together. There are also two lines that are repeated on and off again “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” and “Do not go gentle into that good night.”  These lines suggest that Dylan’s view on death should be something men do not just willingly accept, but rather “rage” against the light. The light is a symbol for life and the good night or darkness is the symbol for death. There are 4 archetypal men that Dylan expresses; the wise, good, wild and grave. Each of these men acts differently towards death, almost as if going through a set of steps or motions particular to dying.

The Glass Menagerie

Our first play of the semester is “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. I really had no idea what the play would be about, but after reading his bio in the Lit Reader I saw he wrote “A Street Car Named Desire”. I had watched the movie in my Junior AP class (which was in black and white). Both plays definitely have a style that only Williams could conjure.  I thought all the characters were unique but all shared one quality in common, they “manufactured illusions”.  For Tom it was the adventure that he craved. Amanda wanted to relive the part of her life when she was a young woman at Blue Mountain being courted for marriage. Laura, who is very weak, does not know much of the outside world due to her shyness and condition and creates a world in her glass and record collection. The end of the play is an emotional twist, because Tom finally does leave the apartment after a fight with Amanda and it leaves the reader with the decision of judging him harshly for abandonment, or accepting that he needed to find his own path in life and it was a push to make his mother realize she needed to do the same.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

One of our first readings was “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” It was a peculiar story about a man who struggles to find his purpose and place in life. Our “protagonist” is a Native American man who we first meet going on a trip to the seven eleven narrating his past about a girlfriend he used to have and the fights they would get into. The man had went to college but dropped out and is now trying to figure out where he stands. He thought that by leaving the Indian reservation that he would find a new and better life, but probably didn’t realize that even a new life would have its own challenges and problems. He wanted to break from the stereotypes that chained him, but failed at that and then began to play along with the image that people gave him. After he left his girlfriend he moves back in with his parents, back to the place he wanted to escape. He is jobless for a while and in a rut. He doesn’t seem to want to aspire to do much because he needs to face his past mistakes. 

The Yellow Wallpaper

Another of our readings that I found intriguing was “The Yellow Wall Paper.” It tells a disturbing story of a woman who is mentally ill. Ironically her husband is a doctor who takes care of her treatment, but he fails to help her by denying her sickness for what it truly is. He treats her like a child calling her a silly goose at times. The things that he says to the woman she repeats in her head making it seem like it’s what she believes. The setting is placed in a large summerhouse miles away from the nearest town. She is sent to this house for the treatment her husband hopes will work. The only source of freedom she revives is through her writing, which is forbidden by her husband. It all begins with the room that she is staying in. She says the room was covered in hideous yellow wallpaper with a repeating pattern. After a few days she is looking at the wallpaper all the time, at first looking at it in the light and the dark. Then following the pattern around and around looking for and end to it. Which could symbolize her searching for a meaning in her life because really she is the wallpaper, because after studying the pattern she notices the pattern were figures of women stuck behind bars. She wants to get “this woman” out of the wallpaper to free her. In retrospect she is trying to free herself. It’s hard to see this in the story since a woman with a mental illness is narrating. In the end she locks herself in this room and rips all the wallpaper off because it’s the only thing she thinks about. Her husband runs into the room to see her going mad and faints. Some say that the husband found her hanging there dead because the woman mentions having a rope tied around her waist. But then the reader has to question “who” wrote the end of the story, since it was supposed to be written in her secret journal, if she is dead. It also says that the woman walked over the man’s body after he fainted because she was walking along the walls of the room like she was mad. So is she dead and having an out of body experience, or is she still alive?  

Hills Like White Elephants

My latest reading that I was assigned was “Hills Like White Elephants.”  By Ernest Hemingway. It’s a 4-page short story about the relationship between “The American” and a girl named Jig. They are met at a cross roads when waiting to board a train to Barcelona. I did enjoy the story and the style that it possessed. My first impression after the reading was that the Jig was having an unnamed operation due to a various mental health reason. But after further discussion in class I discovered that the operation might have been an abortion instead. Which then ties into the relationship between the couple. My conclusion is that Jig was a mistress who became pregnant, but she wants to stay with this man. The man wants her to have the operation saying that everything will go back to normal when its over and that it was for the best, but also implies that he doesn’t want her to do it if she opposes the idea. Of course it’s her decision but his opinion will affect the outcome of her final decision. The end of the story was very unclear, Hemingway does not specify if Jig does go though with the operation or not, and lets the reader interpret the ending anyway they want.