Daddy

Relationships between family members can be tricky to describe in many instances, as one can see in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”. A single event that ruins a relationship can happen, and within the poem, the reader can sense that such might have happened, as one can see through the speaker’s choice to call the father “bastard”. Abuse happens that can change the attitude of the speaker’s view of the said father. Is the death of the father in the poem “Daddy” a literal death or a figurative cry for help towards her father in which she lost a relationship with?

Throughout the poem, the speaker speaks of her father as if he was dead, but what if there were another scenario that might have happened? The tone of the poem is clearly angry but also comes across as a cry for attention that might be seen from the view of the reader. Because many readers tend to read poems in a biographical way, the fact that Sylvia Plath’s actual father passed away when she was young is a good reason to assume that the father is actually dead, but stepping away from this view, one might insinuate that the death was simply, or not so simply, figurative. The poem suggests several instances where the speaker reveals conflict that she had with her father. Lack of communication seemed to be the biggest issue that the speaker had with her father, which can be seen in the lines, “I never could talk to you./ The tongue stuck in my jaw./ It stuck in a barb wire snare” (Plath 24-26). Lack of communication in relationships, especially in child-parent relationships, tend to scar the children and teaches them to fear their parent to a certain extent. Fear is a great component of the poem because she compares her father to a Nazi, which, at the time, was rather extreme because of how recent the Holocaust had been.

At a point in the poem, the speaker refers to the fact that she married a man just like her father, “I made a model of you,/ A man in black with a Meinkampf look/ And a love of the rack and the screw./ And I said I do, I do” (Plath 64-67). When a girl marries a man who is just like her father, it is thought to be an Elektra complex, which insinuates that she has some sort of unresolved issue with her father. When the speaker states, “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two-/ The vampire who said he was you/ And drank my blood for a year,/ Seven years, if you want to know./ Daddy, you can lie back now./” (Plath 68-70), is it truly possible that she killed people? Probably not, but speaking metaphorically, she might have cut them out of her life. This leads to the idea that her father isn’t actually dead, but rather figuratively dead to the speaker at the moment. This leads to another idea that quite possibly the speaker is trying to make amends with her father, but at the end of the poem, the speaker says, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Plath 80), offering the idea that she has simply given up hope on redeeming the relationship that was held between the two.

            

No Namers

The No Named Woman is a story that has the ability to relate to todays world. It is unfortunate to say that what happened to the aunt in the eyes of the mother; who concurs that the aunt must have been raped and impregnated, is relevant in society today. There are many instances in which women are raped but they do not have the ability to speak out and defend themselves. This story speaks loudly of the actions that were taken between men and women. It is scary to say the least. One of the worst quotes I ran into states, “No one talked sex, ever. And she might have separated the rapes from the rest of living if only she did not have to buy her oil from him or gather wood in the same forest” (Kingston, 7).  This really grabbed my attention in realizing that this type of action happens all around the world and even on our college campus. It has come to my attention that this story is relevant in today’s society.

            At the beginning of this story I thought there would be a different intro into why the aunt is having the baby and out of nowhere, bam, Kingston hits you with the possibility of rape. It is frightening to read what happens to the aunt and how she was treated even though it was not her fault in what the outcome was. What caught my attention in the earlier quote was how it the possibility of the rape scandal to be coming from a man that is active in her everyday life. Furthermore, she would not be able to mention anything due to the social stigma that would bring on both of them. To me this relates straight back to actions that happen on college campuses all around the country and world. Girls are sexually abused at a rate which is sickening, but, what is even worse is that the person doing the actions are everyday people that walk around the campus with that girl. Yet, these girls are afraid to come forth and tell people what happened because the social stigma would still follow that she was lesser of a human. I am not saying that rape victims are the less of a person because that is not what I am saying at all. I am saying that rape is a very touchy and uneasy topic that people aren’t familiar on how to react or go about consolidating or facing the fact that it happened to some one they know.

            I know this blog post isn’t as connected to the reading as it could have been but I wanted to take the time and point out that this story grabbed my attention in the way that the content is such a relevant topic in society. It was hard for me to read the rest of this story with a clear mind as to what happened to the aunt. Between the aunt in the story and people around campus, it is clear that rape is not dealt with lightly and that it is important to speak out unlike the aunt in the story. We do not live in China during the early 1900’s; there should not be a social stigma on being raped. It should be dealt with in the most professional way possible.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

 

As soon as you start reading this story, you immediately get a feeling for the family dynamic. What I picked up on instantly was how the members of the family treated the grandmother. In most scenarios—real or fiction—grandparents are loved and respected, but here, the grandmother was openly disrespected by her own son and daughter-in-law.

            On the very first page of the story, the family kind of ignored the grandmother while she talked about the Misfit and brushed her off like she’s a senile old lady who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And when the car crashes, her son yells at her and then yells obscenities at her again when she recognizes the Misfit and calls him out. If I had to feel bad for any of the characters, it’d be the grandmother because she never intentionally does anything wrong, it’s just plain bad luck. Her memories getting jumbled, the cat causing the crash, her panicking and calling the Misfit by name, all things that could have happened to anyone in that situation. None of it is forseeable.  Even when their lives are being threatened, the poor grandmother is still being disrespected by her son and the murderer is the one who is standing up for her. If that isn’t completely, 100% backwards, I don’t know what is.

            I don’t feel badly for the rest of the family and I certainly do not feel bad for the Misfit. Giving yourself a clever nickname and blaming it all on your messed-up childhood is not an excise to go around killing innocent families.  The way I see it, everyone gets dealt either a lucky or a crappy hand in life and using that as a justifiable reason for what the Misfit did makes zero sense to me.

The Cost of Julius's freedom

The narrator of the Goophered Grapevine is a self-centered businessman, in addition only caring about money and success as a businessman, he believes everyone else is the same way. In the beginning of the story, he claims he moved to the south for his wife’s health, but he also admits that he was involved in the grape-culture and wanted to expand his business. The narrator explains, “Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honestly I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate.  I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that the raw winds, the chill rains, and the violent changes of temperature tended to aggravate my wife’s difficulty, and would undoubtedly shorten her life if she remained exposed to them,” (31). The fact that he explains his wife’s condition in a few sentences, yet uses the rest of the story to explain how he came across the grape business in the south, shows that he places more importance on his vineyard than his wife’s health. In addition, the narrator explains he has been looking to expand his grape business in either France, Spain, Or California for a while before his wife fell ill.  Also, I find it suspicious that he especially emphases the fact that he has “implicit confidence” in his doctor’s advice, as if he is trying to cover someone questioning the doctor reliability. Therefore, using the excuse of his wives health, the narrators decides to invest, for his own personal (selfish) success and enjoyment, in the grape business down south.

The final piece of evidence that the narrator views everything from an investment standpoint, is when he buys Julius’s land and pays him a profit in return to be his coach-driver: “Uncle Julius had occupied a cabin on the place for many years, and derived a respectable revenue from the product of the neglected grape vines… I believe, however, that the wages I paid for his service as a coachman, for I gave his employment in that capacity, were more than equivalent for anything he lost by the sale of the vineyard,” (43). By the time Julius meets the narrator, Julius was enjoying his personal freedom for only a few short years. The narrator doesn’t understand what it is like to be someone’s property, which takes away your personal freedom. However, after being a slave for most of his life, Julius does understand what it means to be someone property. The narrator’s inability to understand the cost of Julius’s freedom can’t be bought with any dollar amount, causes the narrator to believe that Julius will be happy to be payed a sum of money worth way more than the value of Julius’s property. Especially after never being allowed to own property for most of his life, finally owning part of the vineyard probably meant more to Julius than just a business. However, the narrator fails to step outside his own shoes and see from Julius’s point of view- that Julius’s land is not just a business- a way to earn profit- but also his home. In other words, the narrator believes that money can replace Julius’s loss. In addition, the narrator fails to understand that by buying the property from Julius, Julius loses more than his home and his business, but also his personal freedom, which is worth more than any sum of money Julius is offered.   

The Misfit

Tuesday was a very active day when it came to discussion on the readings that we were assigned. I first want to commend the group that presented for their hard work and ingenuity to be able to ask the questions that sparked such a grand discussion. I immediately wanted to post about the discussion but I was unsure of what to write about. I knew that death was a large part of the discussion whether it was who to blame or why it happened or how it could have been avoided. I recently caught myself reading through a fellow students blog and I realized that Tuesday was focused on murder and how it affected the plot of the story. But we were never able to focus on murder and how it affected the characters in the story. I have taken some time to think about and consider some of the options that could have occurred if we were to look at how murder affected the characters.

            At the end of the story the family (including the grandmother that seemed to be the lead of all this mayhem) was maliciously murdered and everyone in class really reacted to why they were murdered and seemed to forget the fact that murder is such a large action to take. I am interested to know the motives behind the Misfit as to why he would murder the whole family, baby and all. I have taken some time to reflect and I think that one of my comments that I made in class could be true or maybe I think it is that way because I watch too much criminal minds, anyways… I have come to think that the Misfit killed the whole family because he was on the run and times were tough. Not only was he a fugitive of the law but the grandmother found him out and now he ran the risk of once again being caught.

My first instinct was to think what would I do in this situation if I were him? Would I tie them to a tree considering it is a road off of the beaten path and get away in the rolled car that could be fixed and hope they didn’t get out? Or do I commit the ultimate deed and end them. Just thinking those thoughts is gut wrenching to me and I have no idea how or why anyone would murder anyone. Taking another persons life seems unfathomable. No matter if the law is after you, murder has no positives. It may have a short-term benefit but in the end you are taking the lives of a whole family that otherwise would be on their way to Florida to enjoy some of those sunny rays. Regardless of his motives and the discussions in class. I have become curious at not only myself but todays society for how we read and watch stuff that is so graphic that we just override the fact that a family was brutally murdered by a serial killer. I hope I have not offended anyone.