Domination of Black by Wallace Stevens
The poem " Domination of Black" by Wallace Stevens takes place on an early autumn night, focusing at one point on a person in a room thinking about darkness, while a fire is going in a fireplace nearby. A few images appear repetitively, which tie the poem together more clearly.
The poem begins by describing the setting: night time, by a fire indoors. Then explaining that the colors of the fallen leaves and bushed nearby outside have changed color. This is visible to the person inside by the fireplace. From a deeper meaning, this may be explained by the way leaves and branches appear different as they are looked at while pulled upward or about in the wind. Here a different appearance is achieved before falling back into place as normal. From here a reference is made to the color of the large hemlocks. Their color is said to be striding, in other words walking, almost as if they are getting closer to the indoors. "Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks came striding." (Stevens 68) From here an image of a cry of peacocks is heard. Their cry is uncertain at this point, while much is left open for interpretation.
Next the colors of the peacock's tails are being explained in terms of the leaves that have fallen and are turning in the wind. A specific reference to the twilight wind is made. "Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind." (Stevens 68) This "twilight" setting may prove to be a negative effect on the situation overall.
Following this the leaves are being described as sweeping across the room. The scene is made clearer by being compared to the way the leaves flew from the branches of the hemlocks of above, quickly down to the ground below. "Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks." (Stevens 68) Once again a cry by the peacocks is heard. This time the reason for it is given. Their cry being caused by either the leaves, or a cry against the twilight. At this point is seems as though the reason would lie more within the twilight than simply the leaves falling and moving about. At this point it may begin to be considered as a period of uncertainty, or decline in some form, before the following day is on its way.
Following this a period of turning is introduced.
This week I read the short article on Alan Locke’s, “Enter the New Negro”. This article is discussing the Negro problem in depth. “By shedding the chrysalis of the Negro problem, we are achieving something like spiritual emancipation”. Locke believes that if we get rid of whatever is holding us back we would gain something renewing and beautiful.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” is an eye opening story. Ellison introduces us to a black nameless citizen. All the nameless citizen wants is to be acknowledged and to please the white men, which is strange given the white common men are forcing him to brutally fight his black peers. Ellison’s story is focusing on the ignorance of African Americans due to the constant deception of the white supremacist. (Ellison)
Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life ofAminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life.She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.
In the stanzas of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, the speaker very honestly observes the scenes from outside her apartment. From her point of view, she sees a both a bird and a dog in the process of sleeping. The speaker views these animals as having simple lives unbothered by endless questions or worries. Instead, the two live peaceful, uninterrupted existences, rising every morning knowing that “everything is answered” (ln. 22). However, the speaker lives in contrast to this statement instead anxiously awaiting the next day where uncertainty is a likely possibility. Unlike the dog and the bird, the speaker cannot sit passively by as the world continues in its cycle and she carries a variety of emotions, such as a sense of shame. It is evident here that the speaker has gone through or is currently undergoing some sort of struggle. When she states that “Yesterday brought to today so lightly!” she does so in longing for the world to recognize her for her issues by viewing the earth’s graces as so light of actions, and in doing so, she fails to recognize that she can no longer comprehend the beauty of nature that it offers her. In viewing the light hitting the trees as “gray light streaking each bare branch” (ln. 11), she only sees the monotony of the morning and condescends it to merely “another tree” (ln. 13.) To her, the morning is something
As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.
"Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had greatly lessened, when I began to distinguish my sensations from each other. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with drink, and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me, and the boundaries of the radient roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant sounds of the birds, but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me back into silence."
Reading my first book for this class, I was really looking forward to it. The book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, is an interesting book because it touches base on mass incarceration and the caste system. Figuring out that society is on a war on drugs and racism in the justice system is upsetting, and yet interesting. Michelle does a really nice job in organizing the book and presenting the plot. The fact that this book informs and explains arguments, what is happening with the justices system is complete true. Our lives would look complete different; and some of her points are happening. People do not realize getting incarcerated will take some of rights away. This essay will reflect on the book its self, answer questions,
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.
Lynch is a writer and teacher in Northern New Mexico. In the following essay, she examines ways that the text of The Souls of Black Folk embodies Du Bois' experience of duality as well as his "people's."
“’A storm must have brought it here’. . . ‘Sadly we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree” (154). Hurst is marking his start to illustrate two symbols, the storm and the scarlet ibis. Hurst uses parallel imagery to connect these passages and create the symbols. “The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run…I went back and found…he had been bleeding from the mouth…the vision in red before me looked very familiar” (155, 157). Hurst is creating parallels between the storm and the narrators pride and the scarlet ibis and Doodle. Hurst illustrates the storm pushing the scarlet ibis to its physical limits and he also illustrates the narrator pushing his brother to his physical limits. The narrator’s is the “storm must have brought it here,” to Doodle because like the storm, the narrator pushed Doodle to his limits. Hurst connects the scarlet ibis and Doodle increasingly throughout the text using the colors, bleeding and red. “The vision in red looked very familiar” (157). Hurst exercised “the storm,” as a symbol for the narrators pride and the ibis as a symbol for Doodle to portray pride as a storm that swept in and devastated the narrator’s
The relationship of the speaker to his surroundings is introduced into the main narrative in the opening of the poem, and is specific to when this occurrence is taking place, “At midnight, in the month of June”. June is the month in which the summer solstice takes place, in the Pagan culture of this time “Midsummer was thought to be a time of magic, when evil spirits were said to appear. The pagans often wore protective garlands of herbs and flowers.” (chiff.com) Today this concoction is used by modern herbalists as a mood stabilizer. Midnight is also known as the witching hour when ghosts are considered to have their most power. Black magic is also thought to be infallible at this hour as well. The speaker of the poem describes himself as standing beneath the moon, this sublunary expulsion is pertinent to the narrative of the poem, and he is admitting his mortality in this line. The moon is personified in the fourth line “Exhales from her out her golden rim”, which is ...
What do you feel when you see a sunset? Warm, happy, amazed, awe-inspired? The sun rose yesterday, and will again tomorrow, and will again the day after that, it’s not as if the sunrise is a miraculous event, yet the emotions are visceral. It’s beautiful, and this strikes a deep, primal chord inside. John Berger attempts to unravel this mysterious attraction to beauty in his essay, “The White Bird”. The white bird in question is a small, wooden carving of a white bird, hung in the kitchens of certain cultures that experience long winters, such as the Haute Savoie region in France. According to Berger, the birds are an attempt to hold onto the fleeting beauty of nature, and a reminder of the spring to come. “Nature is energy and struggle. It
...e roots of the old tree, the star’s light was intercepted by green shoots and small, crinkled leaves— last season’s seeds. Tiny children of the mother tree, they were doomed to live out their lives under her suffocating blanket of branches. Now as they gazed upward, innumerable points of light gazed back. A light wind rustled the miniature stalks of the saplings, blowing the new debris around in short-lived eddies that danced softly through the night.