A Lit Comparison of William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

          Structurally speaking William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” run on similar lines with death being a prevailing theme in both that can be experienced and perceived in different ways. In Eliot’s piece, there are 5 sections that each possesses its own individual narration, including additional character narration in section three alone. In Faulkner’s piece, we are given 15 different character narrations to help solidify that no two people see any situation the same. It seems that the perspective narrations in “The Waste Land” could be themed similarly to the different perspectives that evolve from Faulkner’s 15 narrations if we look under the pretext that Eliot’s poem “…is preceded by a Latin and Greek epigraph from The Satyricon of Petronius. In English, it reads: "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said, “Sibyl, what do you want?” she replied, “I want to die." (Wikipedia)

        In Eliot’s “The Waste Land” one of the narrations in section 2 it is repeated to “Hurry Up Please It’s Time. Goodnight Bill, Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May. Goodnight. Ta ta. Goodnight. Goodnight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.” (383) as it seems she too “had five already, and nearly died of young George.” (383) In Faulkner’s piece, we have a woman who birthed 5 children and whether out of spite, selfishness, or a combination of both Addie Bundren makes her death a task for those who claim to love her. Though she is most fond of her son Jewel, her death has been held off long enough but it is still a thought that “him and Darl went to make one more load. They thought there was time. That you would wait for them and that three dollars and all…” (713) This alludes to an air that both women have had their fair share of life and mothering and they are ready to say “good night” (383) and let “…the two flames glare up for a steady instant. Then they go out as though someone had leaned down and blown upon them.” (714) Leaving “rats’ alley, where the dead men lost their bones” (381) and a “handful of rotten bones that Addie Bundren left.” behind. (714)

        Each story is not only the death of a mothering figure or the perception of the loss of a loved one, but the life that breathes around them as life does continue on for everyone around the one who’s time is up. Both Eliot and Faulkner knew just how much the supporting characters mean to the story at large. They could see the big picture and all those present inside one's life. Eliot wrote how the “nymphs”, “their friends” and the “loitering heirs of City directors” they had all “departed” leaving the solace of the bitter cold to run through those who the departed left behind.

“The river’s tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The River bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends, Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept… Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear the rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread ear to ear.” (383)

        That passage seems to be a similar allusion to Faulkner’s section where Darl explains the river where he Vernon and his father taste the bitter cold of a non-violent surface that was cutting them in half. Addie may not be walking with them but she is there as she always had been displaying the allusion of peacefulness when in actuality it’s the “ludicrosities” of “three blind men” who journeyed the “horizon” and “valleys of the earth” as men who focused on their “misfortune”.

“I had not thought that water in July could be so cold. It was like hands molding and prodding at the very bones. Vernon is still looking back toward the bank” (754) … “If ever was such a misfortunate man,” pa says. “If ever was such a misfortunate man,” pa says” (756) … “Jewel and Vernon are in the river again. From here they do not appear to violate the surface at all; it is as though it had severed them both at a single blow, the two torsos moving with infinitesimal and ludicrous care upon the surface. It looks peaceful… for the dead eyes of three blind men those mammalian ludicrosities which are the horizon and the valleys of the earth.” (757)

        It seems each river has a personification that is a cold bite with a man’s sing-song words repeated for emphatic dramatic effect to softly speak volumes about the magnitude that each river plays on them all. While Eliot writes a long poem of a scattered nature and Faulkner writes a long story of a poor family’s trek through nature, nevertheless, each author is using combination narrations where not just one person tells the story. This gives each piece the same air of multiple perspectives tying with individual opinions to a central theme that seems to center on death, the fact that we are all headed there, and the journey to it. They both use the bigger picture of a journey to exemplify how complicated life can be while illustrating in multiple voices how different it is for and within every single person.

                                                                   Works Cited:

• Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine.The Norton Anthology of American Literature. D, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2012. Page. 698-793.
• Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine.The Norton Anthology of American Literature. D, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2012. Page. 378-391.
• “The Waste Land.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land. Accessed 29 July 2017.

Lit Discussion of O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

                                                       Boom-Down, Like Cement
        I chose to read O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” due to its fascinating style of writing. It has this small yet powerful story hidden amongst all this military artillery and combat gear. O’Brien very carefully and cleverly opens this story with a seemingly never-ending list of, well, “Things They Carried”, justifying the title. Within this incredible amount of items that O’Brien intertwines the personal items and the story behind some of them, namely the story behind Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Lieutenant Cross’s story unfolds through the third-person omniscient because O’Brien knows all the things that Jimmy Cross thinks that none of Cross’s platoon knows he’s thinking. “Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself.” (667) Through trinkets that Martha had sent Lieutenant Cross he was able to imagine a world with her in it as his love, and due to the monotonous boredom that comes along with heavy loads and tediously long days away from civilization Lieutenant Cross allowed his mind to become consumed with thoughts of her. O’Brien states one of the most impactful lines when he states “Imagination was a killer.” Throughout all that these men were forced, chosen, and chose to carry, Lieutenant Cross chose to force his self to carry the guilt of not having prevented Lavenders’ death. He chose to place the blame on his wandering mind that was intricately woven into all of these items. “Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame.” (676) In this blame Cross now burdened as his own, he became not only the antagonist but also the protagonist as well, in a man vs. self type of conflict. A man died on his watch there was no one else to blame, his platoon did nothing wrong and even the enemy, the mostly invisible enemy could not be the sole bearers of the blame. No, it was the man who was put in charge of keeping this platoon safe and his men alive. By carefully ticking off each and every item the platoon men needed, wanted, and chose to carry O’Brien was able to shape each character individually as well, as a unit. Which did the right thing of presenting this platoon as a band of brothers, which is hat they solider into each of them from day one. Had Lieutenant Cross not had his head in the clouds daydreaming about a love he manifested in his lonely hours, then he might have been able to keep Lavender alive, or so O’Brien would have us believe Cross feels through his sequential list of events that happened to this one specific platoon.

        War stories are ridiculously hard to tell when the writer or storyteller has never actually been to war. So, by O’Brien carefully listening to his friends tell their war stories he was able to make a list of war-related details, which just so happen to work extremely well at effectively setting the stage for his piece without deriving from the list itself except to background and anchor Lieutenant Cross’s items. It is the items and their respective journeys with their respective solider that set the stage for where they are located. Simple dialogue for emotional effect carries the reader even further along in their trek to Than Khe. “They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages, where it would always be the same.” (672) These words strung together in a checklist, ticked off kind of way helps to add to the setting which aids in describing how each solider could become a part of their surroundings or, such as with Lieutenant Cross, lost in thoughts that took them away from the visions of destruction and isolation that kept them moving “humping” forward.


                                                                     Works Cited:

• Charters, Ann. “The Things They Carried.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, 9th ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, pp. 664–677.

A Short Lit Comparison of Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

        There is something similar about Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio’s section Mother in that both main characters are dying, and while dying they reflect on the life they have been apart of thus far. Also, both Harry and Elizabeth had, what seemed like awkward encounters, with their supporting characters Helen and George due impart to their impending deaths and their unusually lonesome personalities. “Don’t pay any attention to me.” (836) it wasn’t that Harry wanted Helen to truthfully leave him alone he just did not want to keep hurting her and be bothered with her steadfast attempts to stay positive. He did not want to hurt this woman who had been dealing and putting up with all of his pungent words that he flung at her and his neglect to care for himself, essentially putting them both in this unfortunate situation. He was dying and she was trying to hold on. It was like digging a knife of guilt into his soul and he retaliated and desired the comfort of solitude so he could continue on with his dying and internal pity party of self-reflection and regret.

        “I think you had better go out among the boys. You are too much indoors” (273) It was never that Elizabeth truly wanted her son, George, to leave her side but she was painfully aware of how awkward their meetings were and she did not want him to feel obligated to have to remain there while she sat lifelessly self-indulging in her own inevitable death. For as long as George sat there with her in silence it was like he was digging a knife of guilt into her soul so she encouraged his departure.

        There are also distinct and vast differences as well, including main character genders, cause of characters oncoming death, the characters who sit with each dying characters gender, setting, allusions within each stories context, and the fact that Harry dies at the end of Hemingway’s story but Elizabeth is still alive at the end of Anderson’s section titled “Mother”. All of these result in completely different stories however that underlying personality that Harry and Elizabeth posses that is psychologically known as guilt brought on by remorse is present in both stories. Both Harry and Elizabeth feel guilty for not having achieved certain goals in life and now knowing the chance will shortly be taken away for good upon their deaths and they now feel remorseful for time wasted.

“No, he had never written about Paris. Not the Paris that he cared about. But what about the rest that he had never written?” (838)

“Between Elizabeth and her one son George, there was a deep sympathy, based on a girlhood dream that had long ago died.” (269) 

       Each character seemed to represent a lost quality that each writer, Hemingway, and Anderson, had inside his soul. Harry and Elizabeth each had things that they never accomplished in their lives and it now created a void. Both Hemingway and Anderson express this void through these characters and their loner past that clouds their minds. Harry could not be understood by anyone, or so he thought, and his missed opportunities are now images that plague his sleep. Elizabeth could not be understood, even by the Theatrical group that she wanted so much to be apart of and she magnified their laughs that “It’s not like that” (272) when she ventured to speak her inner thoughts. Both Hemingway and Anderson used these characters as a metaphor for their own personal regrets.



                                                                       Works Cited:

• “The Snows of Kilamanjaro.” The Norton Anthology: American Literature, edited by Nina Baym. Norton, 2012, 836, 838. “Mother.” The Norton Anthology: American Literature, edited by Nina Baym. Norton, 2012, 269, 272, 273.

Short Lit Response to Wallace Stevens/William Carlos Williams Vs. Ezra Pound

        Had I not been told that Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams had other professions other than writing I would not have been able to tell by simply reading their poetry. It is detectable that they think differently then Ezra Pound, but not detectable that they were not full-time writers. Their poetry has as much sustenance, if not more, then Pounds does due to Pound’s common inability to be solidly coherent at all times in his writings. It seems that Pound was trying to impress a certain elitist group when he wrote his continuation to Homer’s Odyssey along with many of his other poems geared at furthering the Mythological poetry of the past. This was ever clear with the number of footnotes needed in the Norton Anthology just for the common person to attempt to get through Pound’s relatively short continuations. When reading Stevens or Williams very few footnotes were added because there were very few references made to past works that required readers to read and/or know in order to understand. Wallace Stevens says “Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires.” (287) This is not cryptic, it does not include words that come from another dialectic point from the past; it is simple and straight forward. It does not boast legal professional jargon nor stories of past clients, nor descriptions of how to run or better our lives. His job did not define his poetry, it provided him money to survive, and possibly a more level head. Pound’s sole career included writing and nothing else, it could then be remarked that possibly Pound was too engrossed in the literary world that he was becoming disconnected to humanity giving his writings a bias towards other writers and not the general public at large.



                                                                        Works Cited:

• Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine.The Norton Anthology of American Literature. D, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2012. Page. 287.

"The Gilded Six-Bits" by Zora Neale Hurston Short Analysis

                                                               Southern Forgiveness
        I chose to read The Gilded Six-Bits by Zora Neale Hurston which is set in the south during the Great Depression. In this story, it is evident through dialect the class setting of Missie May and Joe, a middle-low class husband and wife, who were married within the past year and saving up to start a family. This story was not overly laden with descriptive details about their surroundings but the ones that it did provide were strong within the story. It starts off short, sweet, and to the point in its clear cut description that stated “It was a Negro yard around Negro house in a Negro settlement…” (421) the story then quickly established that Missie May kept a clean house that was “scrubbed white” from a “weekly scouring”. We learn quickly that Missie May’s ability to keep such a clean tight ship is all made possible by the job Joe keeps with “G and G Fertilizer”. These elements gave Hurston’s settings that “something happy” feeling that drove the climb to the climax. It was within this “something happy” that Joe was contented by the wife he adored, that “So long as Ah be yo’husband, ah don’t keer’bout nothin’ else.” (424) This “something happy” was a setting that represented strength, stability, and security for Joe and through his eyes, he assumed it represented the same to his wife. However, Missie May did not here contentment within her husband's words when the walked home from Otis’s ice-cream parlor. Instead, she heard her husband wrapped up in Otis’s money and the way he flaunted it proudly. She didn’t understand his admiration from afar. So it was within that “something happy” that Missie May accepted Otis’s sexual advances in exchange for some of his illusionary gold. As in her mind having this illusionary gold was what seemed to appeal highly to her husband’s happiness. As ironies of life go, Missie was caught and ashamed on a night when Joe got off work early. Joe, upon seeing this unexplainable indiscretion was lost and confused as to why Missie May was unhappy. It took time and patience to heal the wounds of the “something happy” and the assurance that their new baby brought that solidified the “something happy about the place” again.



                                                                      Works Cited:

• Hurston, Zora Neale. “The Gilded Six-Bits.”The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction", Bedford/Saint Martin's, 2015, pp. 421-429.

My Thoughts on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

        In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot addresses ageism in love. How time stands between comfort and frustration. How we allow ourselves to become bound by time, but in doing so time slips by and we miss out on what is important, lending to regrets. Eliot also brings forth the thoughts of human psychological delusional justification, because we always seem to want what we cannot have; once it is attained we become disinterested. So we are involved in a tiring battle with all aspects of mortality. It is written as if Eliot is Prufrock and we are being given a window into his mind. As we walk through life with Eliot/Prufrock we see what he sees…

“Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells…”

…feel what he feels…

“And I have known the eyes already, known them all-
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall;
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?”

…and he even remarks on what he thinks to be the remarks of those who he feels are judging him…

“With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?”.

        By asking whether or not he should “Disturb the universe” or not he is showing us his clear understanding that this is bigger than a personal id/ego and more so something that is bound to all of our morality and the justification we give to all aspects of it that is the universal property of all humans. So he is allowing the readers into the inner thoughts, harsh realities, and inner fantasies that are bringing what is imaginary, possibly illusionary, in his mind, into our reality. If something is not spoken out loud is it really real? All of this is a Modernist twist on non-time constraint thoughts that were suppressed in the predecessor Victorian era.