Portfolio Entry #5

‘Jack fell as he’d have wished,’ the mother said,
And folded up the letter that she’d read.
‘The Colonel writes so nicely.’ Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. ‘We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.’ Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how ‘Jack’, cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.

1. Jack died by trying to run away from the war and was shot by an officer.

2. Jack is a coward because he was fighting for his country but became scared and tried to run away from his problems.

3. If I was Jack I would have stayed and fought because even though I am a pacifist, it is something that I need to be strong and fight for the freedom of those that I love.

4. The narrator has a pessimistic view about war as he knows the true reality that not everyone does. You know because at one point he calls Jack a “cold-footed, useless swine” for trying to run away from his duties.

5. The narrator is saying that soldiers are not always as brave as they are made out to be, which is different from past poems that we have read because they all portray soldiers as being brave and honourable.

6. The contrast between the first two stanzas and the last is very big as in the beginning you see it through the eyes of the mom who is sad that her son had died, but proud of him and in the end you see the real story and your opinion of Jack changes.

7. “gallant lies that she would nourish all her days” because you can not be nourished off words but her soul can be nourished off of those lives.

Portfolio #3

I was first introduced to this photo from the movie “Letters to Juliet” and since that time it has captured my interest. It is a photo taken in Time Square on August 14, 1945, the day the Second World War ended. I love this photo because it is so full of hope and joy for the future, a future without war. It is a kiss meant to be spontaneous and unplanned, just the result of the pure joy that came from the end of the war. To me this picture is a metaphor for happiness and joy and this picture captures those feeling irrevocably.

Portfolio #2- Anthem for a Doomed Youth

Anthem for a Doomed Youth

By Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstruous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

1. Wilfred Owen’s response to war is different from mine as I have only ever seen war from a distance, it has never been a part of my life while war is daily point in his life. He thinks of war and intense images flood his brain, while my memories are ones of movies and pictures, noting personal.

2. He compares soldiers to cattle with the sheer amount of which were dying, without barely a second thought. They are led to the slaughterhouse, disposed of, and a new batch is brought in, without anyone thinking anything of it.

3. Prayers and bells would be “mockeries” as to them the prayers of the people they could not see and they were in a world all their own, untouched by the church and its people.

4. The second part answers the first in that it shows the reactions to the beginning part, with the boys and girls and the memorial services help for those dying in the first section.

Portfolio #1-War

Typing war into google 2,760,000,000 results come up and well, that is a lot, certainly a lot more than I can go through, but focusing on the first 10 shouldn’t be a problem. When I type war, this is what the first page looks like…

Now the first page to pop up is not surprising, Wikipedia, the site that seems to run the world now a days and is a massive page containing everything you will probably ever need to know about war in a hopefully unbiased way. As you continue on you see more pages from wikipedia, one about a band named war, one specifically about World War II. Then there is a movie called “War”, what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says about war, a computer game called “Warhammer”, the band previously mentioned “official” website (though in my opinion more people probably look them up on Wikipedia rather than their website), what the catholic encyclopedia has to say about war, and rules for the beloved card game. I think from looking at this some of the generalizations that could be made about war is that is something to have been very prominent in humans time on this earth and it has shaped what our world has become. Also though if I was looking at this from an outsiders point of view I would feel as if people were making light of such a heavy subject with band names, card and computer games and the lack of respect from everyone on the subject of war.

It seems to me that war has become so common that it doesn’t shock us anymore, which makes me sad.

struggling for power

We have moved on in English, we are now trying to tackle Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest. I am actually quite excited as unlike most people in my generation, I enjoy Shakespeare. I don’t know what it is from, it is is because I have to work to understand it or if my three years of seeing plays performed at Bard on the Beach is rubbing off on me, but whatever it is it allows me to welcome with open arms the start of a new play.

We have finished reading the first Act and with it the introduction of many character, all whom are controlling or being controlled by one another. That is what this post is for, to unscramble the mystery of the power struggle between the different people.

As you can see Prospero is the one that is in control over all of the people on the island. His daughter Miranda is loyal to him as she has had no one else to compare him too. Caliban is his slave because he can not rise above him yet but he will try anything to gain the island back for his own. Ariel is loyal to him only because he saved him from the witch Syrocrax and is willing to do anything to secure his freedom. Ferdinand is now in Prospero’s control because he is willing as long as he can see Miranda every day.

Prospero is currently the one in control but I have feeling very soon all of that will change.

what I thought

As this novel study has gone on you have seen the themes, the plot, and the characters of A Clockwork Orange and while there has been some personal interjection you haven’t seen my complete thoughts on this book now that I have finished and reflected on it. I started this book with honestly not the most open of minds, from the second I started the first page and was introduced to Alex I hated him. These sentiments continued through most of the entire novel, but when he became changed, my opinions for him did as well. “Very hard ethical questions are involved,” he went on. “You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321. Never again will you have the desire to commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against the State’s Peace.” (S.2 C.3) I began to find out that when he had no choice of what to do or how to feel he became less of a human and I started to miss the old him. The old Alex had choices, and could decide what to do instead of the robot-like person he became. When the results of the procedure were reversed and he became as he was before I was relieved, not because I liked who that person was, but because I could now see the potential of who he could become and who he did in the end strive to be. I found reading about this moral dilemma engaging as I am often asked the same question surrounding my faith, “Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?” This is why I believe there is good and bad in the world because God gives us free will, like Alex in the beginning and end of the novel, and we are not like robots without a choice on what to do like Alex after treatment. We need to have a choice or we are nothing more than morally neutral animals; “When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.”  I have enjoyed reading this book, seeing Alex go through a change in first a bad in in the end a good way, and seeing the similarities in discussions that I have every day. “The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

So thank you, A Clockwork Orange, for leading me on this journey, but I am afraid our time together must end. It isn’t you it is me, bigger and better things await.

A Clockwork Orange

As I have remarked before, A Clockwork Orange is written in three parts each containing seven chapters that describe a certain part of Alex’s life. You are subjected to different ideas and different sides of Alex in every section, with gaps between the first and second section lasting two years.

In the first section Alex is a hooligan who runs around with his gang causing a disturbance just for the heck of it. In the course of a few chapters they beat up an old man, rob a convenience store, rape a ten year old girl and break into an old lady’s house to steal from her. It is in this last endeavor that Alex is betrayed by his droogs and arrested. It is later discovered that the old lady whose house he had been in had been killed by a blow to the head from Alex placing him in court for murder. It is there where he is sentenced to  fifteen years in jail where the next section starts off.

The next section begins two years later, while Alex is in jail. He is housed with many other not so nice people and when an important man is making his rounds in the jail Alex makes a rude comment in his direction. This causes a bit of an uproar and for Alex to be considered for the new special program the jail is trying out to rehabilitate prisoners. Alex readily agrees to the procedure as it would get him out of jail in a week and guarantees that he will never be back. The treatment ends up being more of torture than treatment and you see Alex suffer through every moment of it. After a week Alex is disgusted by any form of meanness, even to the point that he can’t kill a fly. He is released and sent out on the world.

The third section starts off just where the second one ended; with Alex leaving jail and being left out on his own. He goes to his parents house, but finds they have rented out his bedroom and overreacting he runs off to try and start a new life. He finds himself in the home of a man who feels he can use Alex’s story to incite a reaction against the state. Him and his comrades try to get Alex to commit suicide and blame the state and it almost works but not quite. He is found be a man who fixes his mind and after a while of back to the way he was, but after a while he decides to settle down and start a new life for himself.

That is A Clockwork Orange and in my next post I will talk about what I though about it.

writing stylishly

Every author has a voice, a way that he or she speaks to you through the words on a page and this is no exception in A Clockwork Orange. The voice in the story is someone that you have heard a lot about on my journey through this story, Alex DeLarge. “There was me, that is Alex” he starts off the story showing that this story is something that he is recalling, something that happened in the past. With the story being told from Alex’s point of view you don’t know anything more than he does so when something is a shock to him, it is a shock to you as well. The fact that this book is so well known though didn’t help my reading because I knew something was going to happen and so for most of the novel i was just waiting for it. I knew more than the main character, but not in a way that the author intended. With the addition of his own language Burgess until you get the hang of it, reading was a very stop and start method as I had to look up a new word every few lines. As time went on, however I learned how he inserted this language in and learned the words so reading was a much more fluid experience. “…I knew I wasn’t going to get nothing like fair play from these stinky grahzny bratchnies, Bog blast them.” Anthony Burgess writes in a way all his own, which I respect even through the moments I wanted to throw the book at a wall because of how hard I had to work to understand it.

themes in a story

A Clockwork Orange is written as a cry for help for the world. It shows a future that may happen if things that are happening now keep going at the same pace. To Anthony Burgess, the author, our society is on the way to becoming like Alex’s with forced employment, and the torturing of prisoners.

The story examines the differences between order and freedom. In this world everything is under State Control, from the people’s jobs, to the way that prisoners are rehabilitated. However, before his prison sentence Alex had full control of what he was doing, no matter how disgusting and horrible those things may be. When he goes through “treatment” all of the free will that he had experienced before was taken away. He could no longer choose to be bad, the mere though made him sick to his stomach, every sense of free will was taken away. While that may be comforting to the government, what kind of followers do you have if they have to choice to follow you or what to do?

I would not hesitate to call Alex’s behavior at the beginning of the novel evil, that is what doing those acts with no remorse is. What I saw in Alex after he had been through prison though gave me no peace of mind.  Does that mean that we need evil in our world? It all comes down to free will again. Alex became almost less of a human because of his lack of choices and free will. As Sirus Black in Harry Potter said “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” Becoming a better person doesn’t come from eliminating the evil inside of us but choosing not to act on those natures that are normal for everyone to have.

This book delves into many complex themes that a lot of people try to avoid on a daily basis. Are we really good or really evil and can you eliminate a part of who you are without becoming any less human? How far can the government control our lives? These are all questions that reading this novel made me think about and things that Burgess was trying to get across.

moving the story along

As I remarked before, I had very little compassion or empathy for the main character of  A Clockwork Orange so the thing that made me keep reading and kept my interest in the book was the plot. There has never been a dull moment so far and once I got a hang of the language and how it was used a found myself flying through the second part of the novel. The way that the novel is divided is into three sections made up of seven chapters each. Each section talks about a different part of his life with the first section being about his trouble making days with his droogs, the second taking place two years later when he is in prison and going through a new treatment to get out of jail and the third section describes his life after prison.

The novel is told in the voice of Alex so you know what he is thinking but you don’t know anything more than he knows. You are stuck inside of his mind, which in the beginning can be a pretty disturbing place. I kept reading at this part for the sole reason of wanting to see him get punished for the horrible things that he was doing. It seemed every page Alex was committing a new crime and like a train crash you don’t want to look, but you can’t look away. Anthony Burgess uses fear and disgust to drive the plot of the first section.

In the second section Alex has been put in jail and he is two years into his fourteen year sentence. He finds out about this new treatment that will get him out of jail and his interest is peaked, as well as mine because if something is going to make him change I want him to go through that. When it starts, however my excitement dies down because what he is going through is too horrible for me to even imagine. I keep reading because I want to see him survive and get better and not be traumatized by the horrible thing the call treatment.

Now, in the third section where I currently reside Alex is out of Jail trying to make a life for himself. Everywhere he turns he is met with people who want revenge, or don’t want anything to do with him. For the first time I feel bad for him. He was just tortured and now he is left on his own and I want to see him succeed. I want to see him make a life for himself that is above what his life was like before and that is what is driving the plot and my interest in the story.

It is hard in my novel to find events that relate to my life because Alex’s life is so different from mine, I have never acted on the urge to beat somebody up, and I have never spent time in jail. But what I can relate to is what Alex is going through right now, the sense of not fitting in and that you don’t belong. People only look at something that happened in the past, not at who he is now which has happened to me and it is not a fun situation to be in. There are people like Alex all around the world who just cause trouble for the heck of it and get away with it which is how my book connects to the rest of the world.

Plot is a major part of any novel and A Clockwork Orange is no exception.