Forgive Me, For I Know Not What I've Done

“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” - Sherman Alexie

Alexie employs the varied stereotypes concerning American Indians that have been compiled over the many centuries from literature, song, and film to create an honest and sorrowful commentary on the relationship between American Indians and European Americans. Throughout the duration of the poem the author refers to these stereotypes as if a “Great American Indian Novel” has already been written, as if many have been written. When he concludes the poems he reveals that there is yet to be “the Great American Indian Novel,” because there are Americans Indians still alive. Alexie wittingly alludes to the facts that Europeans have driven the Native Americans from their land, and quite nearly destroyed their culture, in the Age of Discovery. Now as European Americans we are destroying their culture still through a strange commercial fascination of the civilization we were so apt to annihilate a few hundred year ago. As “white” Americans we crave the meaning, mysticism, and spirituality that the American Indians hold. There is also a part of our heritage in which we desire to be forgiven for past grievances. The cost to obtain what we yearn is assimilation, and further destruction. We have made true American Indians ashamed of their origin, because we have distorted the cultural meaning that once defined them through years of abuse. Kids don't want to grow up to be a cliché, they want to grow up to be normal. So many American Indians purge themselves of their abused lineage. Jenny Ray, an American Indian, travels the country trying to rejuvenate the lost meaning of her culture, even her children refuse to accept her long held traditions, because of the derogatory nature of the United States' history. We have taken characteristics from certain tribes, and types of American Indians and applied them to every person with ancestral blood in America. Everyday the demographics show that American Indian tribes are only decreasing in number. Sherman Alexie states that the time in which a book about American Indians will be popular will be the time when there are none left, after which all of the cultures of every tribe will be reduced to mere stereotypes.

Los Dulces de Guerra

“Dulce et Decorum Est” - Wilfred Owen

What a profoundly powerful and scarring poem this is. The point of view of the narrator is inescapable. There is truly no way in which anyone could ever look through their eyes while reading this poem. Although Owen describes such a horrid and gruesome event, the poem embraces an effortless rhythm and rhyme. Limitless chaos and torment somehow fit into these complaisant little boxes. The containment of World War I into this neat and traditional structure alludes to the very nature of war, as something that is planned and organized, but contains atrocities beyond the imagination. In this way the traditional poetic structure helps the reader to share a small portion of the severe impact of being a soldier. We as readers start to ask the same questions: Who could arrange such a thing? Why did this have to happen? But through piercing images that transform rapidly from a surreal stream of concurrent events, into a shatteringly real depiction of war, and violence in general. Specific poetic syntax in Owen's introduction, that of sentence fragments and word pairs, creates imagery that strikes the mind. Phrases such as “bent-double,” “knock-kneed,” “blood-shod,” and “all blind,” pummel the mind into attentiveness. Once Owen has grasped the reader's attention, he then proceeds to describe the scene with brutal intricacy. In some way or another Owen has found the strength to put to paper the memory of a fellow soldier slowly dying from chlorine gas. However, without these seizing images the poem would lose its weight. Owen's use of classical literature makes the poem timeless. He expertly defines the bane of the land of men since the age of hominids. Never have I read a more unsubtle, yet poignant poem regarding the placement of aspirations versus reality; politician versus victim. In just a few short stanzas Owen identifies the unseen predicament of his era and all of history, “children ardent for some desperate glory,” a time of con men fighting for dominance in the world, with the blood of naive and willing patriots.

Seasonal Revelations from Diction and Syntax

“in Just-” - e.e. cummings

To recall innocence from the memories of the audience, e.e. cummings rebirths the traditional poem in his allusions to spring. The author throws away boxes, and reinvents words to bring the reader back to their childhood. Recollecting youthful pastimes like “hop-scotch” and “jump-rope,” e.e. cummings creates his own adjectives such as “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful” to describe an infantile spring. Nostalgic, yet creative spacing in the poem leaves room for juvenile excitement and imagination. The absence of a space such as “eddieandbill” illustrates that of two boys running close together, doing everything together, as a childhood friendship can only allow. Open spaces portrays various other adolescent activities. If e.e. cummings had drawn in and around the open spaces in his poem there would be children jumping, and a balloon man calling out to them, however, e.e. cummings left those areas blank. He doesn't want you to see children jumping he wants you to jump, to hear the balloon man for yourself; he wants you to be a child once more. Still his vernal playtime image is not yet complete. In every other stanza he duplicates the scene of the “little lame baloonman,” “the queer and old baloonman,” and finally “the goat-footed baloonMan.” Cleverly e.e. cummings alludes to the Greek God Pan, the symbol of spring, to conclude his representation of the season. Half-man and half-goat balloon man watches over the immature children giving them their happiness and pure, lyrical innocence (“in Just-” is also referred to as “Chansons Innocentes I”), but remains detached from the experience similar to that of a parent or guardian. So not only does e.e. cumming recapture the resilience and delight of childhood motion, but he contrasts it to the calm and inferior contentment of adulthood responsibility. Through this e.e. cummings depicts the importance of not only receiving spring as a child, but dispensing spring as an adult.

Non-Communication::Family Disease

“A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease” - Johnathan Safran Foer

This deeply detached, yet highly emotional short story illustrates, quite literally, the origins of heart disease for a Jewish-American family scarred by personal history. The genius of the piece is associating something that is normally dissected through scientific and medical knowledge, and puts it through the sieve of human emotion. Foer then takes this intense and unforgettable emotion and strains it back through that impersonal and categorical filter of pictographs and definition, thus making it all the more emotionally intricate. The author makes use of literal symbols to create literary symbolism. Foer knows all too well that trying to explain the actions and emotions of his daily life would not only be fruitless and ineffective, but contradictory as well. By using shapes, he allows his audience to envision a situation that they can better relate to, instead of telling the reader what to see. The application of graphics instead of commonly used words and phrases, also mirrors the communication barriers that he tries to describe. Ultimately in the end we see a combination of undefined and unrecognizable symbols that more aptly and beautifully portrays their tragic circumstances than any word ever could. The myriad hieroglyphics and unspoken words, represent unresolved chaos that piles up in each member's heart, eventually manifesting itself in physical infirmity. The emotional pressures of historical horrors and ongoing disappointments of this family are so desperately piercing as to have disabled them from living fully. The narrator describes the thought of compromise and “the 'corroboration mark'” as suffocatingly depressing, as he ponders his own fate. He knows that the “yes-man” mentality will follow him forever because the alternative is death, or near death, due to the contingency of a heart attack; and so he is doomed to a mediocre, sorrowful, unquestioning, and unfulfilled life. This emotion stagnancy is the foundation of his heart disease, a disease that has become the basis of his family relations and his overall existence in a “↓↓↓↓↓... ∞.”