APO 96225 / Larry Rottman

“‘Please don’t write such depressing letters. You’re upsetting your mother” (Rottman 846).  This is ironic.  The father asks the son not to do what his mother asked him to do.  The mother worries and wants to know how her son is doing but when he actually tells her he gets upset. Which is better to know and be depressed or to not know and be worried?  The poem ends were it started.  The whole poem shows shortness. The letters are very brief and say nothing really important.  The only comforting thing in the son’s letters is that the parents are still getting letter meaning he is still alive.  The poem shows how war is not really something to tell anyone about even if they ask and seem to want to know they really don’t.  The title of the poem adds to the separation shown between the parents and son because it is just letters and numbers of no real importance.

Much Madness is divinest Sense / Emily Dickinson

“Assent—and you are sane—” (Dickinson 830).  Assent to madness and you are considered sane.  What logic is this?  The speaker must be mad to thing that it is normal.  This is in fact the truth.  The many people who run about obsessively working are mad.  They are missing the best part of life.  This is thought how the world works.  If someone does not go along with this order then they are seen as outcast or slackers.  If they go about comely threw the madness they are seen as snobbish. They could also be seen as having a secret and trying to rule the madness.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain / Emily Dickinson

The first to stanzas sound like the poem could be describing a headache or migraine.  There in a constant beating or treading.  “Kept beating—beating—till I thought my mind was going numb” (Dickenson 776).  It could also be a sick person lying in bed with a headache and having to wake up but not willing to.  The bell tolling could be a sign of morning and the last to stanzas would be the person falling back to sleep ignoring the fact that it is morning.  The treading and beating could be others waking up and going about their business to start the day.  I believe it is more representative of a person who lost someone very dear to them and unwilling to fully accept it.  They are attending the funeral but being in a delirious state.  They are viewing it as if it is only in their mind.  The poem mentions being only and ear which could be when the church bells tolled at the end of the service then after they stopped and the body was laid in the ground there was nothing ells to do.  It is like the person fell into the grave with their beloved.

Bartelby, the Scrivener / Herman Melville

The story is told in a first person point of view of the lawyer who hired Bartelby.  This point of view provides a disconnect with Bartelby. It makes it so that we don’t know the past of Bartelby or any of his thought. Not knowing Bartelby’s thoughts make him more strange and hard to understand.  Making the lawyer the narrator gives us a close up opinion of Bartelby from someone else in the story. “Doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors” (Melville 650).  I thing it is the Lawyers fault for not firing Bartleby sooner or forcing him to work that caused him to get worse and stop working altogether.  If the lawyer would have forced Bartelby to act he might have come out of is delusional state.  At the end of the story when the lawyer mentions were Bartelby previously worked he says Bartelby was not fired until new management took over.  Maybe the old manager had the same opinion of Bartelby that the lawyer did which is why he had his job for so long. 

Miss Brill / Katherine Mansfield

Miss Brill is nuts.  She has been single for to long that she has become a spinster.  She has no real friend to speak of.   She goes every Sunday to listen to the band and watch people.  She eavesdrops on everyone that passes by or sites on a bench by her to listen to the band.  Miss Brill is a recluse.  She lives by herself and apparently talks to her furs. “‘What has been happening to me?’ said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown” (Mansfield 182).  Miss Brill is eccentric.  She thinks the eyes of her furs portray thoughts.  She later thinks that she is par of a theatrical production at the park.  She is then insulted by a child making remarks about her furs.  This causes her to change the schedule of her day by going strait home instead of stopping of for a pastry. She then puts her furs away and thinks she hears something crying. 

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night / Dylan Thomas

This poem show how those that are dieing do not do so quietly.  They all talk of something on their way out.  Some will rage against it and wish they could have done more in their life.  Some rage about what they have done hoping to live on past their death.  They hope to imprint their legacy onto someone else even when their achievements do not amount to much. The speaker tells what many other men do when they are leaving this world.  The speaker then asks his father to do the same. “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray” (Thomas 968).  This quote shows what the speaker hopes to accomplish through his fathers raging. He hopes to learn what his father wished to do and what he did do.  This knowledge will make the speaker sad but also bless him with a deeper knowledge of who his father was.

That time of year / William Shakespeare

Shakespeare is relating death with fall and the death or hibernation of nature.  Death is a part of nature that cannot be out run or evaded.  Death finds everything.  The poem’s speaker is an old gentleman. He is associating the end of a late fall day with the closing days of his life. Death comes quietly like sleep. He is laying on the failed dreams of his youth.  He thinks of the things he aspired to do and they stay with him unto his death.  “Consumed with that which it was nourished by,” (Shakespeare 967).  This quote shows how his dreams are affecting him now. In his youth they fuelled him on to try and accomplish better and better things.  In his old age they now eat away at his contentment and consume him with regrets.