April 2016 – asia lenae

Posted on April 28, 2016May 8, 2018 by Asia Lenae

Sylvia Plath’s “Insomniac”

blonde sylvia

Shakespeare called sleep the “chief nourisher in life’s feast.” For whatever reason, artists throughout the ages have not been invited to the dinner party. In his fascinating article “On the Edge of an Abyss,” journalist Greg Johnson asserts that insomnia has tormented artists more than promiscuity or severe alcoholism:

“Even more than paranoia, envy, or rampant egotism, a vulnerability to insomnia might well be the trait most commonly shared by serious writers throughout literary history, regardless of their personal temperament, aesthetic program, or country of origin. In fact, this painful and usually chronic malady has plagued writers so frequently, and with such intensity of anguish, that the insomniac state and its attendant longings might justifiably be considered metaphorical of the writer’s rarefied inner world. If insomnia is the very image of his unblinking consciousness, his stubborn refusal to conclude, however briefly, his voracious scrutiny of the world and of his own mental processes, then it is not surprising that sleep— especially “dark, dreamless sleep, in deep oblivion!”— becomes the corresponding image of his most profound and unattainable desires.”

Like Johnson, many have supposed that there is something about the artist’s particular psychological makeup that predisposes him to insomnia. William Wordsworth. The Bronte sisters. Kafka. All complained of this nightmarish inability to rest. Throughout her life, confessional poet Sylvia Plath also suffered bouts of excruciating sleeplessness, requiring a sedative most nights to get to bed. Plath’s poem “Insomniac” pays tribute to the bedtime affliction that so often tormented her and, I would contend, offers us rare insight into the connection between the artist’s mind and the inability to rest:

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,

Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars

Letting in the light, peephole after peephole —

A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.

Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus

He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness

Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie

Exposes embarrassments–the mizzling days

Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,

Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,

A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.

His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.

Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue —

How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!

Those sugary planets whose influence won for him

A life baptized in no-life for a while,

And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.

Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.

Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.

Each gesture flees immediately down an alley

Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance

Drains like water out the hole at the far end.

He lives without privacy in a lidless room,

The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open

On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats

Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.

Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,

Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.

The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,

And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,

Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

The speaker, a stand-in for Plath herself, first describes the sky as a “sort of carbon paper/Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars/Letting in the light” (Plath 1-3). This image of the night sky as carbon paper-a type of paper used for making copies-suggests the world he observes while bogged down in thought is a mere duplicate, an inferior copy of the real one. Interestingly, the light peeping out from behind the sky is depicted as “bonewhite”- a telling image that implies the speaker’s restlessness is so unbearable that he longs for the ultimate relief, the slumber of death. Despite the extent of his suffering, our speaker finds no solace in the surrounding world: while the “eyes” of the stars watch him blankly, the moon appears sadistic as it wears a “rictus,” an ugly, twisted expression usually denoting disgust or wry amusement (Plath 5). This idea is extended a few lines later when Plath refers to his insomnia as a “desert pillow” and his sleeplessness as a “stretching of fine, irritating sand” (Plath 6-7). Here, the bare, desolate imagery of the desert- a region universally understood as a barren symbol without vegetation or water-hints at the hopelessness of his condition; up all night, the speaker feels alone and desperate, as if he were deserted. Certainly, Plath intended for this secondary meaning of “desert” to resonate as the speaker feels that his midnight restlessness is both unfair and inescapable.

But why is the speaker plagued by this wakefulness? what is the source of his insomnia? The second stanza attempts to explain the origins of his condition:

“Over and over the old, granular movie

Exposes embarrassments-the mizzling days

Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,

Parental faces of tall stalks, alternatively stern and tearful,

A garden of buggy roses that made him cry.

His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.

Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars” (Plath 8-14).

Though many imagine night time as a peaceful reprieve from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, Plath envisions night as interminable hours of unbearable solitude. Rather than spend his nights in quiet contemplation, the speaker preoccupies himself with replaying the same painful memories “over and over” (Plath 8). If insomnia is, as Greg Johnson argues, the byproduct of an overactive mind, “Insomniac” seems to warn against such over-thinking as it is just the speaker’s introspective tendency to turn inward and obsessively sit alone with his thoughts that hinders him from attaining any sort of tranquility. The fact that Plath refers to this ceaseless replaying of cognition and memory as an “old, garnular movie” reveals the story of his life is nothing more than a film: compelling and life-like but ultimately false. This almost Buddhist-like reading of reality is further supported a few lines later when Plath claims memories “jostle” each other for face time like “obsolete film stars” (Plath 14). Meaning to push, elbow or bump someone, typically in a crowd, “jostle” portrays the speaker’s mind as a tumult of thoughts where differing versions of reality compete for dominance. If memory is nothing more than a “film star,” the speaker’s recollection of events is simply a dramatizing of reality-not reality itself. Though writers try to make sense of the world through the construction of stories, Plath suggests that imposing similar rules of resolution and climax onto our own lives is ultimately futile. No matter how many nights the speaker stays up “replaying” his days of childhood trying to extract an overarching meaning, the images of his life are always fading and granular- they’re never intelligible. In this way, Plath proves frenzied thinking lies at the root of insomnia, which might elucidate the malady’s prominence among our greatest artists.

Plath continues to portray the artist’s “unblinking consciousness” as the source of the speaker’s nighttime suffering when she notes that his “forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks” (Plath 13). Figuratively, the rocks represent the heaviness of the speaker’s thoughts. Like a sack of rocks, which is heavy and burdensome to transport, his fitful debating and analyzing weigh him down and keep him from slumber. The fact that his unremitting thoughts disfigure his face and make his forehead “bumpy” suggests a restless mind can wreck your well-being and devastate your sanity. Though in the rational, scientifically-oriented West we tend to glorify reason and judgement, in “Insomniac” such traditional indicators of intelligence manifest as pathologies and overall deteriorate the speaker’s health. For artists like Wordsworth and Plath, then, “voracious scrutiny” of the world was not a gift, but a curse- causing manic, hysterical thoughts to scurry across the consciousness until it was impossible to fall asleep.

The speaker isn’t offered even momentary relief from this voracious scrutiny, we learn, because he has become “immune to pills” (Plath 15). So despairing is his condition that no pill seems to work, neither “red” nor “purple” nor “blue” (Plath 15). Rather than alleviate his symptoms and soothe his troubled mind, ironically the sleeping pills only serve to underscore his frustration: “How,” the speaker bitterly exclaims, “they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!” (Plath 16).

In the next line, Plath depicts sleeping pills as “sugary planets,” delectable sweets the speaker longs for (Plath 17). Her choice of the word “planets” is particularly telling: like a faraway planet millions of light years away, sleep-that unfathomably ordinary yet precious thing-seems, for the speaker, unbearably remote. When he can persuade sleep, that enticing but elusive lover, to stay the night, it transports him to another universe, another life, one “baptized in no-life for a while” (Plath 18). And here Plath poses a lovely paradox: by equating sleep with holy water, she implies the quiet death of sleep is essential for life. Our nightly rendezvous with slumber is purifying like water- it renews and rejuvenates us. Here, the religious allusion to baptism seems noteworthy: if baptism is the religious rite of immersing someone in water, symbolizing purification or regeneration and admission to the Christian Church, the fact that Plath compares sleep to a baptism suggests sleep is restorative. Furthermore, because baptism is often performed on young children and accompanied by name-giving, sleep represents a rebirth-a cleansing of the day and a chance to be reinvented and start over.

Plath reinforces this image of sleep as rebirth in the next line when she likens awakening from a good night’s rest to the “sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby” (Plath 19). Like baptisms, babies call to mind purity and freshness, which indicates the mind can be reborn when it’s been able to renew and clarify itself. Yet rather than submerge itself in the forgetful waters of sleep and wake up to find itself revived, the insomniac mind stays up, grouchy and restless, not reborn but dead to the new day.

The astounding power of the artist to carefully observe and render the world is just what leads to this figurative death. Stress. Worry. Anxiety. All result from a sharp, keen mind and represent the driving forces of insomnia. Plath captures this idea perfectly when she calls the insomniac’s head a “little interior of grey mirrors” (Plath 22). Recalling the earlier image of the sky as blue-black carbon paper, this portrait of the mind as a “mirror” reveals thought is an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recreate the world. After all, mirrors only reflect reality-they aren’t reality itself. The figure of mirror also brings to mind a fun house, an erie place where the normal laws of the universe are suspended and once ordinary impressions appear distorted. Grey-that dreadfully bland color-creates a mood of tedium and listlessness, which proves the speaker feels like a prisoner when trapped in his mind and deprived of the external.

In the end, “Insomniac” is not just about one person’s inability to sleep-it’s about the terrible power of the intellect to cut us off from existence. For Plath, the artist’s mind is both a prison and a fun house: like a prison, the mind’s persistent thinking confines us to the four walls of our skull and, like a fun house, its depictions of our lives are often inaccurate.

Posted on April 11, 2016August 10, 2022 by Asia Lenae · 5 Comments

10 Ways Reading Can Save the World

Literature professors and avid bibliophiles have been lamenting the death of reading since the dawn of the internet age. Recent research suggests the average American only reads 12 books a year and nearly half of 18-24 year olds read no books for pleasure. But what’s all the fuss about? Why should we care?

Reading Prevents Crime

reading prevents crime

For years, it was rumored that prison officials used 3^rd grade reading scores to determine how many jail cells to build. Though California Dept. of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton recently debunked the myth once and for all, research does show there is a strong link between reading levels and crime.

In a study of 96 boys from Michigan and Minnesota public schools, Dennis Hogenson found that reading failure was “the single most significant factor in aggressive delinquents.” In other words, lack of reading skills— more than race or socio-economic status— may best predict later crime. So what does cracking open a book have to do with breaking the law? Child psychologist Carl Kline hypothesizes that poor readers lose confidence in themselves and thus become frustrated with school. Continued frustration over prolonged periods results in either “aggressive behavior directed outwardly toward society (delinquency) or inwardly toward the self (neurosis).”

So will a surge in reading rates suddenly rid the world of all murder and armed assault? No. But that literacy and crime are related is undeniable.

Reading Increases Academic Achievement

reading increases academic achievement

That early literacy levels impact later academic achievement is nothing new. But the idea that 3^rd grade reading scores can predict the course of a child’s life is startling…and in fact confirmed by a 2010 University of Chicago study. Over 10 years, University of Chicago researchers followed 26,000 3^rd grade students through middle and high school to determine whether early literacy could predict future educational outcomes. 8^th and 9^th grade reading levels, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment, experts believed, would reflect a child’s ability in the 3^rd grade to read at grade level.

Of the students who were reading below grade level in 3^rd grade, 40% were also below grade level in 8^th grade. Additionally, only 45% of those who had read below grade level graduated from high school, compared to more than 60% of students who had read at grade level and nearly 80% of students who had read above grade level.

It is a common saying that until the end of 3rd grade students are learning to read, but beginning in 4th grade are “reading to learn.” Those who fail to master basic literacy skills by this critical period risk falling behind which, according to researcher Joy Lesnick, makes it almost impossible to catch up. Children need us to model good reading habits, but if our enthusiasm for reading wanes, if our fervor for literature continues to slump, future generations of children will suffer.

Reading (Especially Literature) Teaches Empathy

reading (especially literature) teaches empathy

Why read literature? According to social psychologists Emanuele Castano and David Kidd of the New School in New York City, people who read literary fiction can better empathize with people. In their 2013 study, groups of participants were given different reading tasks ranging from excerpts of literary fiction, popular fiction, non-fiction to nothing at all. After reading, participants were given Reading the Mind in the Eyes, a Harvard social intelligence test, to measure their emotional IQ.

The results were staggering.

Those who read literary texts like Louise Erdrich’s The Round House were significantly better at identifying other people’s emotions. For example, when shown a pair of wide, terrified eyes, a popular fiction or non-reader might misinterpret them as showing jealousy when a literary reader would correctly guess panic. (If you’re curious, you can take the test here).

The very nature of literature, Castano and Kidd argue, may explain the results: while literature requires the reader to guess at the complexities of a character’s behaviors/motives, popular fiction a la’ Nicholas Sparks often relies on stock, overly simplified character types, which are of little help out in the real world of complicated, mysterious people. So if you need to brush up on your people skills, the idea goes, bypass the bestseller section and pick up a copy of Crime & Punishment.

Reading is a Lesson in Tolerance

tolerance

In an increasingly global marketplace, children have to interact with other cultures more than ever. Kids Health defines tolerance not as a putting up with other cultures, but as a “respecting and learning from others, valuing differences, bridging cultural gaps, rejecting unfair stereotypes, discovering common ground, and creating new bonds.”

Reading novels may not eradicate all bigotry and hate, but it’s a start. In one study, high school English teacher Anna Schmidt surveyed two of her ELL classes before and after reading novels about another culture. Disturbed by her students’ casual use of offensive terms like “retarded” and “gay,” Schmidt wondered whether literature might teach them a much needed lesson in tolerance. In the surveys, students were asked to answer questions that assessed their tolerance of other cultural groups; students read the selected texts and then responded to the same survey after. In addition to the assessments, Schmidt tallied the number of prejudiced, inappropriate comments students made during class (unbeknownst to them of course).

Interestingly enough, students did not show significant gains in tolerance according to the quantitative data. Observation of students, however, demonstrated that they did become more tolerant of the group they had read about. For example, those who read Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, a novel tracing the development of a young Chinese girl who strays from social convention and refuses to have her feet bound, only stopped making racist, small-minded remarks about Chinese people-not other cultural groups. So though reading literature can shatter powerful misconceptions and dispel prevailing stereotypes, the lesson in tolerance may be limited to the culture studied.

Reading Promotes Civic Engagement & Volunteerism

reading promotes civic engagement & volunteerism

Reading literature can also promote positive social behavior like charity and social activism. In a NEA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, researchers found that 43% of literary readers volunteer compared to only 16% of non-readers. These results astonished researchers, who predicted only a slight difference between the two groups.

So why are literary readers nearly 3x more likely than non-readers to do charity work? Experts claim a keener social consciousness may explain the results. Reading, evidence suggests, is an effacement of self: it is an imaging of the world from the perspectives of other people. To read a novel is to encounter the foreign “other”: a character who hardly resembles us and superficially seems quite different, but ultimately shares our same, human hungers for love and belonging. Turning the crinkled pages of a beloved novel may seem like a passive activity, but it provides rigorous instruction in the world of another individual. By asking us to momentarily discard our own identities and listen to the most intimate thoughts of another, literature dismantles unsophisticated notions of us vs. them, making us more likely to be sympathetic toward others. Because readers are so well-versed in this art of being other people, they are generally more compassionate and volunteer out of a moral duty to serve their fellows. A drastic decline in reading, as is happening now, threatens to compromise such altruism.

Reading is Vital to Preserving a Free, Democratic Society

reading is vital to preserving a free, democratic society

Democracy depends on an active, engaged citizenry of free thinkers. As scholars Michael Boatright and Mark Faust note, “Reading opens opportunity, invites critique, revisits outmoded ways of knowing, and incites readers to join in a meaning-making process that speaks to present contingencies and the needs of the times.”

Unfortunately for many of us, the national obsession with standardized tests and the Common Core has made reading a perfunctory exercise in late night Spark Notes searches and end of the year multiple choice exams we hope we can guess our way out of. Rather than excite and provoke us, reading— as it is currently taught in U.S. schools— squashes curiosity, slamming the door on exploratory imagination by shifting focus away from deep analytical thinking to plot-based questions and definitive yes or no answers. “Who do Marcellus and Bernardo see at the beginning of Hamlet?” “What does Hamlet do to prove King Claudius’s guilt?” These are the kinds of idiotic questions that litter our English classrooms. Besides being outright boring, these pointless, ho-hum drills fail to prepare students for the real world, a world that demands that they actively participate. Such mundane methods of assessment simply ask students to regurgitate routine, factual information instead of challenge them to form opinions of their own.

But reading— at its best— can empower students to clarify and define their world view as well as upset erroneous ideas they once believed to be true. This ability to criticize and question, to bring ideas under the bright light of analysis which is at the heart of close reading, is crucial to a healthy, functioning democracy where citizens govern themselves. Even our forefathers considered reading a bulwark against tyranny and injustice; when asked whether he’d prefer a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, Thomas Jefferson famously said “he would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

In a world saturated, in fact, based in language and information, citizens must learn to navigate the ideological terrain and uncover answers for themselves if democracy is to prosper.

Reading is Power

reading is power

Remember those immortal lines from Animal Farm? “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

If we were to analyze this fine sentence, we’d say its genius lies in the fundamental contradiction of its claims. To be equal suggests total conformity, complete sameness of status and opportunity. However, the second clause (introduced by the contrasting coordinating conjunction “but”) serves to rewrite the first. The word “some”— which usually acts as a determiner but here behaves as a pronoun— immediately alienates the once identical and unified animals. Some— that little, insignificant pronoun— splits the supposedly equal citizens into stratified, unequal groups. Its radical vagueness (after all, to whom does “some” refer?) points to the chillingly oppressive tactics of totalitarianism’s manipulation machine. If “some” is left forever without an antecedent, eternally ambiguous, the question of who belongs to this privileged class is up for debate and, thus, can be determined at will by those in power.

But the real kicker happens a few words later when Orwell claims that some animals “are more equal than others.” What makes this last clause so great? We might say its the language of comparison intruding and imposing itself upon the language of democracy. Equality signifies the principal tenet of democratic philosophy and, though Napoleon’s government imagines itself as a kind of egalitarian, classless utopia, here the comparative adjective “more”— in much the same fashion as the unspecified pronoun “some”— reveals his democracy a farce. “More” directly violates the notion of equality as it positions some animals as higher, or better, than others.

Orwell’s glaring contradiction performs two functions: 1) it proves the manipulativeness and cunning of Napoleon and those in power and 2) by its open ridiculousness, the commandment reveals the extent to which the rulers have succeeded in governing the ruled.

Though Animal Farm is a work of fiction, it has some serious, real world things to teach us about the importance of reading. Napoleon succeeds in oppressing the other animals largely as a result of their failure to read critically. It is no coincidence that the most illiterate places in the world have some of the most corrupt, politically unstable governments: a critical, literate public is the first step to preventing the manipulation of language by those in power.

Reading Counteracts Our Thirst for Instant Gratification

reading counteracts our thirst for instant gratification

If “patience is a virtue,” today patience— if anything— is a forgotten virtue. In a world overrun by quick fixes, get-rich-quick schemes and the instant gratification of Facebook and Twitter, many of us have forgotten that the best things in life require us to invest time and effort. Unlike watching yet another rerun of Law & Order SVU, reading flexes our patience muscles by demanding we work painstakingly before we receive any sort of reward.

According to behavioral economist Dan Ariely, there is a clear link between effort and reward: the harder and longer we work for something, he contends, the greater we will perceive its value. To test his theory, Ariely asked 2 groups to make origami: in the first group, participants were given detailed instructions; in the second, the instructions were eliminated entirely. After completing the task, each group was asked how much they would pay for the finished product.

What Ariely found was that— even though their origami was far uglier— those who were forced to work harder by a lack of instructions valued their creations substantially more than those whose task was relatively simple.

So what does this tell us about reading? Reading is naturally more challenging than passive forms of entertainment like television and, thus, offers us greater opportunities for real payoff. Patience— that gentle, dogged, if underrated quality— is a byproduct of voracious reading and necessary to accomplishing anything in life that is worthwhile.

Reading Stimulates the Economy

reading stimulates the economy

A shortage of capable readers is also bad news for the economy. Though oral and written communication skills top the list of most important job qualifications, 38% of employers rate new hires as deficient in reading comprehension and 72% as deficient in written English skills.

Though unemployment has remained high at 6.3%, employers complain there are not enough qualified candidates to fill available jobs. Some blame the prevalence of texting and social media for the deterioration of our basic language skills, but the more likely explanation is that we simply don’t read. If we continue to neglect books, we can say goodbye to an educated workforce and hello to economic turmoil.

Reading Reduces Stress & Makes Us Happier

reading reduces stress & makes us happier

“Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation,” says cognitive neuropsychologist Dr. David Lewis of the University of Sussex. More than listening to music, strolling through the park, or unwinding with a steaming cup of tea, reading can calm anxiety and restore a state of well-being and balance.In fact, in a recent study, Lewis found that reading can reduce stress levels by up to 68% while listening to music reduced levels by 61%, drinking a cup of tea reduced them by 54%, and walking by 42%. Playing video games was the worst stress reducer, eliminating stress by only 21% (which should be no surprise, considering video games have been shown to actually increase aggression).

“Participants only had to read silently for 6 minutes before their heart rates slowed and their muscles began to relax,” observed Lewis, who also noted that their stress levels were actually lower than before they started.

Reading soothes the agitated mind by catapulting us into an imaginary realm where we can briefly detach from the uncertainty and terror of our own lives. But reading is not a pure, irresponsible escapism: it is a functional escapism that leaves us better equipped to calmly handle the realities of the world.

Posted on April 8, 2016February 17, 2018 by Asia Lenae

Milton’s “When I Consider How My Light is Spent”

John Milton

WHEN I CONSIDER HOW MY LIGHT IS SPENT

By John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,

And post o’er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

In his poem, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent,” Milton meditates on how to best serve God. The speaker-much like Milton himself-is confronted with personal tragedy when he goes blind and can no longer write. Devastated, our speaker must come to grips with his condition and find hope in darkness.

The poem opens on a despairing world defined by night: “I’ve spent half my days, he laments woefully, “in this dark world and wide” (Milton 2). Though the world is “wide” and beckons with possibility, it is amassed in black, rendering the speaker’s anguish at being excluded all the more tragic.

In the next lines, he continues to bemoan his misfortunate claiming that his “one talent which is death to hide” has been “lodg’d with me useless” (Milton 3-4). In the same way that the vast possibilities of the world taunt him now that he’s incapacitated, that fact that his talent is “hidden” rather than unrecoverable operates to torment the speaker. His one talent-his gift with words-is not permanently lost but rather “useless” without his sight, rendering his loss all the more excruciating. The verb “lodge”-meaning to make firmly fixed or embedded in a particular place- creates a sense of claustrophobia as if his talent were being confined and points to his debilitating loss.

As readers and witnesses to his suffering, we feel sympathy for the speaker’s plight. When he spitefully questions God’s fairness a few lines later, we believe him justified: “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” (Milton 7). Hopeless and bitter, the speaker makes some valid points: how can God give us a destiny to fulfill but deny us the means to attain it?

Before the speaker can challenge the Almighty, however, Patience intervenes and explains the true meaning of service: “God doth not need/Either man’s work, or his own gifts: who best/ Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best” (Milton 8-11). Though the speaker imagines “his work” as his service to God, Patience-personified as a full-blown proper noun with the ability to speak- tells him otherwise; serving God is not money or prestige or the acquiring of worldly power but the willing acceptance of His will.

The speaker may believe he wants to write to serve God, but his true motives are a little less certain: does he want to compose the next great American novel out of an altruistic need to glimpse some sort of existential truth or is he really an ambitious man whose new disability interferes with less lofty, material objectives?

In this way, the speaker stands in for us, the reader. Like our tormented speaker, we, too, confuse worldly success with spiritual attainment. What’s interesting about Patience’s response is her use of the word “bear.” The word “bear” carries heavy, burdensome connotations and possesses several meanings: 1) to carry; 2) to take responsibility for; 3) to be able to accept or stand up to; and 4) to endure. Each of these definitions shares a solemn sense of duty.

What’s more fascinating is what we’re asked to bear, “his mild yoke” (Milton 11). Acting as the grammatical object of the verb “bear,” the noun “yoke” refers to a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or cart that they are to pull. Here, the implicit comparison of man to steer and God to driver suggests man’s proper role is a submissive one. Rather than wrestle our fate from the universe, Milton seems to suggest we are better off assenting to God’s plan (however seemingly heartless or unfair) and letting him act as our guide.

This notion of service as obedience is a very Christian idea and echoes Milton’s argument for self-effacement and submission in his masterwork Paradise Lost. The poem’s final line- “they also serve who only stand and wait”-reinforces this image of service as passive and acts as a hopeful reminder to the depressed and downtrodden: if we sit and wait, Milton argues, darkness is usually just before dawn.

Posted on April 6, 2016March 12, 2018 by Asia Lenae · 5 Comments

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love is Not All”

millay

LOVE IS NOT ALL (SONNET XXX)

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

One of my guilty pleasures is Chris Brown and Jordan Spark’s “No Air.” I have many an embarrassing memory of my best friend and I blasting this cheesy, over-the-top love song during senior year. Devastated that she lost the “love of her life,” Sparks opens the song with crooning melodrama: “Losing you,” she insists, “is like living in a world with no air.”

But is it?

19th century poetry and sappy top 40 love songs tend to exaggerate the role of love in our lives. This idealized vision of love is just what modernist poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is rallying against in her lovely, understated poem “Love is Not All.” Though Millay uses none of the unorthodox pyrotechnics of her modernist contemporaries, she still manages to undermine convention, albeit in a more traditional style. In this Shakespearean-style sonnet, Millay resorts to none of the time-worn cliches about love and instead subverts such familiar platitudes:

“…it is not meat or drink

Nor slumber, nor roof from rain;

Nor a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood nor set the fractured bone” (Millay 1-6).

Here, the profusion of negation suggests Millay is more interested in revealing what love is not than in defining exactly what love is. The poem’s very title- “Love is Not All”- refuses to offer a concrete definition, only explaining love in terms of what it is not.

For Millay, love is not adequately described by the banalities of cheesy Hallmark cards and rom-coms. The objects Millay chooses to name in her illumination of what love is not- “meat”/“drink”/“slumber”/“roof”-represent necessities essential for physical survival. Though gushy love songs may proclaim that “love lifts us up where we belong,” Millay reveals such hyperbolic language a farce: however giddy and exciting the experience of love, it can never, she argues, sustain us. And despite popular claims to the contrary, love is not redemptive: it cannot reawaken our “breath” or heal a “fractured” bone. We can be pretty certain that Millay would disagree with the Beatles’ sweet-if naïve-assertion that “all you need is love.”

So is Millay just a coldly rational, love-bashing cynic? Interestingly, no. In the tradition of the Petrarchian sonnet, “Love is Not All” sees a major shift at its 8^th line:

“Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (Millay 7-8).

So though Millay aims to refute the prevailing misconception that love is “all”, she is not negating its importance all together. Sure, love might not bring a drowning man to shore but it can still provide solace in a lonely world.

Millay’s problem, then, is not with love itself but its exaggerated importance in our minds. You can profess genuine, profound love for another, she’d say, but please, for the love of god, don’t claim that living without them is like “living in a world with no air.”

Posted on April 3, 2016February 17, 2018 by Asia Lenae · 3 Comments

Sylvia Plath’s “The Rival”

sylvia & ted — Sylvia Plath & her husband, Ted Hughes

THE RIVAL

By Sylvia Plath

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.

You leave the same impression

Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

Both of you are great light borrowers.

Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.

I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,

Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,

Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,

And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,

But in the daytime she is ridiculous.

Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,

Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,

White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,

Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

In her near flawless poem “The Rival,” Sylvia Plath maps the geography of her own resentment toward her husband’s mistress, Assia Weevil. The poem’s title suggests one who is engaged in competition against another for the same objective or for superiority in the same field. Though many have attributed the status of the rival in this poem to Plath’s mother, Aurelia Plath, and even her husband, Ted Hughes, the poem’s title clearly refers to Assia Weevil. Considering the denotations of the word “rival,” it’s logical to say these women were competitors vying for the same thing: the handsome, charming Ted Hughes.

The first line introduces a metaphor for her husband’s mistress that Plath will sustain over the course of the poem:

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.

You leave the same impression

Of something beautiful but annihilating

Both of you are great light borrowers.

Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected” (Plath 1-5).

By comparing Assia to the moon-a traditional symbol for cold detachment and primitive femininity-Plath depicts her antagonist as cruel and stony-hearted. Ironically, Assia’s “beauty” is described as “annihilating,” which suggests a woman’s allure can pose danger. Like the moon which shines beautiful and white in the sky but unleashes the evil and depravity associated with night, Assia’s beauty wins her the adoration of Hughes but destroys his wife. Plath only makes one significant distinction between her enemy and the moon: while the moon “grieves at the world,” Assia appears “unaffected” (Plath 5). The fact that the moon-an inanimate object-demonstrates a warm sympathy for humanity underscores Assia’s heartlessness. In the same way that she feels indifferent toward the suffering of the world, she cares little, Plath would argue, about the devastation and heartache her affair with Ted has caused.

Plath elaborates on this depiction in the next line when she makes an implicit comparison between Assia and Medusa:

“And your first gift is making stone out of everything” (Plath 6).

Like Assia, Medusa’s beauty wins her the affections of many but eventually leads to her downfall. Originally a fair, golden-haired maiden, as a priestess of Athena, Medusa was sworn to a life of celibacy. When she broke her oath and fell in love with Poseidon, Athena punished her by transforming her into a terrifying, snake-headed monster. From then on, anyone who had the misfortune of staring into her eyes would be reduced to stone.

The parallels between Assia and Medusa are endless: both are fair and attractive, both violate a sacred oath (for Medusa, the promise to remain celibate; for Assia, the bonds of another couple’s marriage) and both see their beauty transform them into a kind of monster. By comparing her rival to something as hideous and appalling as Medusa, Plath implies her husband’s infidelity is despicable. What’s even more heart-breaking than the discovery of his betrayal is the fact that his mistress has no remorse. Like Medusa, like the moon, she is merciless, unfeeling as stone.

Many say the most hurtful thing about infidelity is not the cheating itself, but the lies and deceit that accompany such a violation of trust. This is certainly true in the case of Hughes and Plath. In the third stanza, Plath explains how she realizes Assia and her husband are having an affair when she intercepts their letters:

“Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,

Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,

White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide” (Plath 13-15).

Here, the phrase “loving regularity” stings with bitter irony. For Plath, their correspondence-a symbol of their budding romance -is not “loving” but rather a kind of poison, as deadly as carbon monoxide. The fact that their affair is described as “white” and “blank” suggests that-like the colorless, odorless gas-their relationship is present but difficult to spot. After all, a husband never cheats at home. He stays at work late. He checks into a hotel. Cheating involves a large dose of deception.

What’s agonizing for the betrayed is not so much the cheating itself (which, yes, is horribly, unimaginably painful) but the constant lying such cheating entails. This subtle sense that her husband is cheating torments Plath, who accurately suspects he is having an affair but has no concrete evidence save a few of their letters. A sultry woman caller who rings during dinner. A few lingering, too flirtatious looks. An unrelenting stream of letters. This is all Plath can see of their affair. By comparing these hints of infidelity to carbon monoxide, Plath indicates her suspicions are like a gas-they diffuse and spread but are insubstantial; she can’t see them or smell them but they consume her.

Posted on April 2, 2016December 27, 2021 by Asia Lenae · 7 Comments

Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant”

Sylvia Plath Typewriter

THE APPLICANT

By Sylvia Plath

First, are you our sort of a person?

Do you wear

A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,

A brace or a hook,

Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then

How can we give you a thing?

Stop crying.

Open your hand.

Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing

To bring teacups and roll away headaches

And do whatever you tell it.

Will you marry it?

It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end

And dissolve of sorrow.

We make new stock from the salt.

I notice you are stark naked.

How about this suit——

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.

Will you marry it?

It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof

Against fire and bombs through the roof.

Believe me, they’ll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.

I have the ticket for that.

Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.

Well, what do you think of that?

Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,

In fifty, gold.

A living doll, everywhere you look.

It can sew, it can cook,

It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.

You have a hole, it’s a poultice.

You have an eye, it’s an image.

My boy, it’s your last resort.

Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

In her remorselessly satirical poem “The Applicant,” Sylvia Plath explores the restrictive nature of 1950s gender roles. The poem’s very title rings impersonal and business-like as it shrouds the potential candidate in anonymity. This namelessness begs the question: who is the applicant and what is he applying for?

The first stanza doesn’t answer much of our question:

“First are you our sort of a person?

Do you wear

A glass eye, false teeth, or a crutch,

A brace or a hook,

Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch” (Plath 1-5).

From the very first line, the interviewer seems antagonistic and accusatory; rather than kindly introduce himself or offer the applicant a cup of coffee as is common courtesy in an interview, he opens with a tough, hardball question, one that’s almost impossible to answer: “First, are you our sort of a person?” (Plath 1). Here, the presence of the 1^st person plural “our”— as opposed to the 1^st person singular “my”— suggests the interviewer is not judging the applicant by his own standards but by the standards of society.

What “sort” of person society desires is a question Plath contemplates over the course of the poem. The next several lines catalog symbols of disability: a “glass eye,” “false teeth,” a “crutch,” a “brace,” a “hook,” a “rubber breast,” and a “rubber crotch.” Though one would think such handicaps would pose an obstacle to employment, the interviewer seems angry when the applicant responds that he has no disabilities:

“No, no? Then

How can we give you a thing?” (Plath 6-7).

The fact that the speaker wants the applicant to be impaired indicates the position requires some level of disablement and demands he adopt something artificial.

In the second stanza, we finally learn what position the applicant is interviewing for: the role of husband; however, as the poem progresses, the interaction between the speaker and applicant becomes less of an interview and more of a commercial:

“Open your hand.

Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing

To bring teacups and roll away headaches

And do whatever you tell it.

Will you marry it?” (Plath 9-14).

Interestingly, here Plath portrays modern marriage as a commercial transaction in which women are objects to be sold. The woman’s objectification is made clear from her first introduction as a “hand.” Rather than name the potential wife or even introduce her as a complete, functioning body, Plath presents her only as a “hand,” a fragment of a complete person, thus objectifying her. The word “hand” immediately evokes marriage (as in, to take “one’s hand”). By identifying the woman only as a “hand”— a potent symbol of matrimony— Plath reveals the devastating extent to which the role of wife comprises a woman’s selfhood.

More important is what the hand does in the poem. The hand does not sit stagnant but rather “brings” teacups and “rolls” away headaches for her husband-to-be, an indisputable symbol of women’s submission to men. The unmistakably domestic character of the verbs reinforce this image of a woman’s role in the home. By employing images that connote ill health and depicting the wife as healer of such ailments, Plath again suggests society imagines the modern woman’s proper role is as a caregiver.

4186-3187

Though “The Applicant” is no doubt a condemnation of women’s traditional gender roles, that’s not to say Plath didn’t believe men were victims of gender policing as well. In the next stanza, the speaker turns his attention from the wife for sale back to our main character:

“I notice you are stark naked.

How about this suit-

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit

Will you marry it?” (Plath 19-22).

Here, the “stiff,” “black” suit embodies masculinity in 1950s America. Just as repressive post-war America demanded women be perfect portraits of domesticity, strict, normative gender roles required men to be the heads of households and breadwinners. The fact that Plath describes the applicant’s role as something put-on like a suit reveals the artificiality of all gender roles, ultimately proving prevailing ideas of femininity and masculinity false.

For Plath, what constitutes womanhood (or manhood, for that matter) is merely a construction, not intrinsic to our actual biological gender. This reading is further supported by the fact that the applicant is “stark naked” before the speaker offers him a suit. If nudity connotes purity and innocence, the applicant’s nakedness indicates at this moment he is free of restrictive ideas about gender. It is only when he puts on the suit that he adopts his prescribed gender role and allows himself to be confined by its rigid expectations for his behavior.

“The Applicant” finally culminates in tragedy when the poem’s signature refrain (will you marry it?) moves from question to statement a few stanzas later:

“My boy, it’s your last resort.

Will you marry it, marry it, marry it” (Plath 39-40).

This syntactical change from interrogative to declarative may seem insignificant enough; however, it represents a major shift in the poem. Though the prospect of marriage and a traditional, nuclear family once figured as a desirable option for the applicant, by the poem’s end, such a lifestyle is no longer a choice— it’s a requirement. This shift from possibility to inevitability leads to an unsettling conclusion: no matter how much one rallies against ideas of masculinity and femininity, such limiting gender roles in Plath’s 1950s America are inescapable.