Final Blog Assignment

A theme in drama is “what the play means as opposed to what happens (plot); the main idea within the play. Sometimes the theme is clearly stated in the title. It may be stated through dialogue by a character acting as the playwright’s (the person who wrote the play) voice. Or it may be the theme is less obvious and emerges only after some study or thought, the abstract issues and feelings that grow out of the dramatic action.
Three literary pieces we read and discussed in the course are “Captured by Feministas”, “You Know How to Whistle, Don’t You?”, and “Hamlet”. How the author’s theme affects and influences me in these three literary pieces, which are plays, are in many aspects that occurred in my life. The theme for “Captured by Feministas” is punishment on being machismo. For “You Know How to Whistle, Don’t You?” is a Cuban, prostitute who is a communist; and for “Hamlet” is revenge, death, and love.
I have quite a few macho tendencies that I have learned to overcome. For instance, I will not wear earrings it is too “gay” for me; however, I have learned to say that “it’s just not my style”. There have been plenty things in my world that have been macho or sexist and I have overcome them. As for being a prostitute, NEVER! But, I am a strong believer in Castro and I am of Cuban decent. Therefore, I can understand what the woman was saying and what she felt freedom meant and how she went about on getting it. I have plotted much revenge in my days but have never gone through with the idea. As for the parts with love and death it is a weird mixture, you never know what one’s perception is on love until the person they thought they loved dies.

Poetry Is . . .

1. Poetry is expression, feelings, and emotions made into one literary work.

2. Who am I to judge what is and what is not poetry? If one tells me that this is there poetic work, so be it! However, I am able to tell the difference between good poetry and bad poetry.

3. Jose Lezama Lima: Was born December 19, 1910 in Havana, Cuba and also, died on August 9, 1976 in Havana, Cuba. He was a gay Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature. He has a degree in Law; however, his passion was literature. Lezama Lima's first published work, a long poem called "Muerte de Narciso," released when he was only twenty-seven, made him immediately famous within Cuba and established Lezama's style and classical subject matter.

An Obscure Meadow Lures Me
by José Lezama Lima
Translated by Nathaniel Tarn

An obscure meadow lures me,
her fast, close-fitting lawns
revolve in me, sleep on my balcony.
They rule her beaches, her indefinite
alabaster dome re-creates itself.
On the waters of a mirror,
the voice cut short crossing a hundred paths,
my memory prepares surprise:
fallow dew in the sky, dew, sudden flash.
Without hearing I’m called:
I slowly enter the meadow,
proudly consumed in a new labyrinth.
Illustrious remains:
a hundred heads, bugles, a thousand shows
baring their sky, their silent sunflower.
Strange the surprise in that sky
where unwilling footfalls turn
and voices swell in its pregnant center.
An obscure meadow goes by.
Between the two, wind or thin paper,
the wind, the wounded wind of this death,
this magic death, one and dismissed.
A bird, another bird, no longer trembles.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16960


Hon. Derek A. Walcott: Was born January 23, 1930 and is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist; born in Castries, Saint Lucia and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.After studying at St. Mary's College in his native island and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Walcott moved in 1953 to Trinidad, where he has worked as theatre and art critic. At the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green Night (1962). In 1959, he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop which produced many of his early plays.

A Far Cry From Africa
by Derek Walcott

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19973

The way these poems are an example of what poetry is to me is by the poets feelings, expressions, attitudes of what life on a certain perspective means to them. If I were to write some sort of poetry I feel I would write about the life that I am currently living in, have lived in, or the lives that people or research has taught me. To me this is good poetry alongside good history since they are true experiences and emotions.

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" Ernest Hemingway

I.

The setting to A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is late night in the 1920s at a cafe where there are two waiters and an old man. "In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settleed the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference."The characters could be nameless because the author decided it to be that way, Hemingway's stories are not the normal style of writing. However, having the characters nameless made the story interesting.

Knowing quite a bit about Hemmingway i would say the significance is probably because it was based on a certain experience that he encountered in his lifetime.

The connection between the old man and the older waiter is that they are lonely (living alone and single), and they both suffer from insomnia.

The plot of the story:
Conflict: The old man wants another drink after he is already drunk and the cafe is ready to close down and the young waiter causes a scene inregards to this.
Rising Action: When the young bartender tells him he should've killed himself last week and the older bartender begins to speak his mind.
Complications: The old man asks for another drink. The young waiter sees it as hes being selfish instead of making more business.
Climax: The climax of the story is when the older waiter defends himself and the old man to the young waiter by telling him how the lifestyle of old people are. And after the young waiter goes home the older waiter continues talking and begins saying the Our Father prayer and throwing in the word nada instead of the actual words that are used in the prayer.
Falling Action:When the older waiter stops to have a drink at the bar but decides that the cafe is much better to him.

The Theme of this story is good character: not about winning or losing its more how you play your cards.

II.

Ernest Hemmingway was born 1899 in Illinois. He had taken journalism/writing in school and joined forces to help those during war periods in Paris. From then on his writing skills matured and intensified making him one of the "modernistas" of that time. Four specific elements of his life that is related to the story are the following. Hemingway was a raging alcoholic as was the old man in the story. Hemingway and Old Man were suicidal. Hemingway and Old man have something in common about the war, soldiers/volunteers. And they were both wealthy however the old man died after his wife, whereas Hemmingway died before his wife.