-Henry & the Haitians (Ignorance is Strength)-

When Harry Gale Sr. died on April 20^th, his son, Henry was forced to become the CEO of their family business ; The Gale Foundation, a company based in Italy that sent emergency disaster help all over the world.  There were no specifications as to the role of Henry in the business in Harry’s will, just for him to “sit in the main office and stare out into the beautiful valleys of Italy.” And for eleven years, that’s exactly what Henry did; he woke up every day, put on his custom double breasted suit, chauffeured to work in his Mercedes, rode the elevator to the tippy top floor  and sat in his leather chair and watched the grape vineyards that surrounded the building.  He had quite a comfortable life.

Before, Henry was not a huge a fan of his father’s work, mostly because it looked boring, but while sitting in his office, Henry realized his father had the easiest job in the building. Other than the occasional signing of paperwork and nodding at pictures of improvement from disasters sites, Henry didn’t do much. All the work was done on the floors below him; the grimy gritty labor was below him. He just had to sit on top like a king to oversee the operation and he was paid handsomely for it.

It was not until Thomas, from Italia Magazine, came into Henry’s office asking for a photo shoot in the current country the company was working with, Haiti, that Henry left his office. He and Thomas both flew to Haiti that week to take pictures at the company’s Haitian building. Even before entering the building, Henry could sense something was not right. The structure stood tall and shiny covered in reflective glass windows, amongst the ruble that was left from the hurricane. Once inside, Henry noticed some shady men in raggedy clothes in the lobby but assumed they were just homeless people waiting to be sheltered. After the photo shoot, he walked around to explore the building and stumbled upon a journal in the main office where his father used to stay when he visited. The entries were accounts of the days of emergency help on the island. Charts of water and supplies lined the booklet. Most were stories of heroic rescues from Harry’s point of view and his thoughts and hopes for the company.

One entry stuck out to Henry, it read:

“Our ‘homeless men’ we have are doing great! Today they brought back 100 shillings and two gold coins. I had them beg all day because they didn’t bring me anything yesterday. But this will make up for it. It’ll be just fine.”

Then it hit him. Henry’s father had been cheating the poor Haitians, who had barely anything left after the hurricane, into giving the company money. The men in the lobby were hired by the company to go out every day and beg for money and the Haitians, with little money but big hearts, would give the men the last of their change. Then the men would scurry back to the offices and give the money to a company executive. That money would pile up and be used for holiday bonuses or company vacations. They had been doing this for years until the Haitians had nothing left. Henry could not believe what he had been a part of, what his father had been a part of and his father’s father and so on. He fled the country and the company the next day and started a new life in the Bronx.

-Train Ride-

Once on the train, I searched the floor for anything interesting; a gum wrapper, some trash and a gold pin. I picked it up and examined the details. It was a broche from a cheap pawn shop, I could tell because the sticker on the back was half ripped off reading “PINKI’S PAWN SHO”. Pinki’s was down the street from the parlor I used to work. I dropped the pin, nothing exciting. The train was in full motion now. We had entered a tunnel. The darkness through the windows was gruesome, so dark you could only see your reflection in the glass. I looked down again, trying to find something to keep me busy. I came upon some shoes, old man shoes. They were shiny black leather loafers but it was obvious they had been worn before. The laces choked the man’s foot. I could tell. His pants, on the other hand, were quite large for this frame and so was his coat. It was like he bought an entire suit a size too big, and was too lazy to ever return it. Or maybe it was a gift. I scanned this man’s attire all the way up until his face; I didn’t much care for that.

The petite woman beside me smirked at her Kindle. I leaned over to see what she was reading. The glowing screen read “The Misadventures of Arachna and Mr. Butler.” I continued reading, over her shoulder, about some evil witch and her butler who hatch a plan to kill their penny-pinching land owner. We got to page seventy before she noticed my heavy breathing over shoulder. She closed her Kindle.

-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner-

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is perfect evidence of Coleridge's wild and vivid imagination. He takes bits and pieces of mythology and symbolism and builds a story exploring both life and death. The power of supernatural forces over the ship and its crew helps to make the Mariner's own weakness clear. The supernatural is often related to weather and astrological events in this poem. After reading the poem, it is clear that Coleridge is fascinated by pirate life, life and death in a heavenly ground and godly images. The poem centers on death and paints an eerie dark image of death and life after death. When speaking about the boat and the sea, the poet uses passionate and enthusiastic words suggesting he finds beauty in these subjects.

 Throughout the poem, there is a real struggle, a struggle between reality and the supernatural.  The real aspects are simple; these include the physical things, in the start of the poem like:

-The details about wedding

 -The weather

-The position of the sun

-The hemisphere

-The Mariner's country

Further into the poem though, we see many unnatural references within the story like:

- The old mariner with his “glittering eye” and its hypnotic power

- The mysterious force that forces him to tell his story

-The albatross, a sacred bird with supernatural power

-The presence of strange creatures (spirits, angels, sea-monsters)

-The ship driven by mysterious forces

Though in the poem there is no explanation of supernatural events, only a rich and detailed visual description of the external world, often through the use of metaphors. The most significant metaphor, runs throughout the entire story, is that of the one between the Mariner's state of mind and the reality surrounding him.  

The Sick Rose by William Blake

In “The Sick Rose”, by Blake, the poet uses an invisible worm to suggest the corruption of the rose. As the worm eats away at the flower, it become sick and eventually dies, symbolizing the rose’s corruption by the worm. This poem can be compared to the Lamb and Tiger poems, in that this is also a poem centered around innocence and corruption. The further I examined the poem, the muddier my understanding became. At first, I was convinced the rose was being destroyed by the worm but as I read on I wondered if maybe “Rose” is actually a person, and the physical flower represented her. Then what does the worm represent? I then considered maybe Rose was a wife, possibly Blake’s wife even, and she had come down with a nasty flu or a disease of some sort and that was her corruption.

The worm could even symbolize the speaker of the poem, meaning the speaker could be the corrupter of his wife, Rose, or even their love. In literate, a rose is used to symbolize love, and the speaker speaks of infection of love or to love by doing so, the poem implies that love itself is sick. Also, the rose (Rose or “love”) is not aware of its infection because one, the worm is invisible and two, the worm only does its work in the night. This could mean multiple things, one being that love is unaware of its own decay or two that love’s secrecy leads to its downfall. The reason love is oblivious to its demise is because it is blinded by its beauty and idealist view put on it by society meaning society paints a clear picture of what love “should be” and what love “has to be”, that people don’t know what love “really is.” With this self inflicted blindness, society tends to misunderstand love and eventually kill it with knowing.

 Much like the other pieces in the Songs of Experience, this poem is brief, with two stanzas. The poem deviates from the Innocence rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD to the rhyme scheme, ABCB DEFE. The rhyme scheme is dark and foreboding. The length and meter of “The Sick Rose” are two key indicators of the foreshadowing destruction and the secretive yet a sense of joy which brings upon shame. The poem ends with a juxtaposition of romantic and destructive images – the first a “crimson bed of joy” and the second a life destroyed. This leaves the idea that something of value and purity has been successfully tracked, threatened, infected and then destroyed.

-Acts by Quotes-

Macbeth- 

Act 1: When the witches say “All hail, Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor and the future King.” This is the small seed of an idea the witches plant in Macbeth’s mind which drives through the whole play.

Act 2: Lady Macbeth: “My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.” This is one of the many times in the play when Lady Macbeth belittles her husband which leads him to go the rest of the play trying to prove her and the rest of the world wrong and gain back his manliness.

Act 3: Macbeth: “I’m in blood stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go over.” This is Macbeth recognizing that he has gone too far and he has too much blood on his hands already that there is no point in going back or stopping because then the people that died in his hands would have died in vain. This is him trying to stop and reason with his crazy actions and thoughts, very rarely does he self evaluate his situation because he is so hot headed and blind so this moment is golden. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he is remorseful or anything of the sort, I don’t think he ever reaches that point in the play ever but this is one of the very few times Macbeth actually thinks, just thinks for once.

Act 4: I was frantically searching for a quote about sins or how many sins Macbeth has committed. Macbeth was saying something like “I have committed more sins than that of those we have names for” or something like that. It was saying he did sins without names and I wanted to find it and I looked for it but unfortunately the five minutes passed before I could dig it out. I think it’s in this act I’m not sure it might be in Act 3. 

-Inevitable Doom-

In the last act of Macbeth, our fool of a protagonist finally realizes his inevitable doom. Macbeth realizes that all three of the apparitions’ visions/predictions have come true. The first is an armed head, come to warn Macbeth of Macduff’s bad intentions. He tells Macbeth that Macduff is coming back to Scotland to ruin him. The second apparition is a bloody child and it tells Macbeth that no man born of a woman can do him harm. This gives Macbeth great confidence: "Then live Macduff: what need I fear of thee?” The third apparition is that of a child wearing a crown and holding a tree who says “Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.” The apparitions give Macbeth a false pride making him think that since every man is born of a woman, no man will kill him and that if he avoids Birnam woods, he will not die. He is terribly mistaken.

                Macbeth blind pride leads him to lock himself in his castle, avoiding the forest of his doom. Little did he know, the apparitions’ visions would all come true. Macduff and his men, marching towards Macbeth’s castle, decide to hold branches from the forest they were emerging from, which just happens to be Birnam woods, to hide their numbers. So technically, the forest came to Macbeth and apparition 3 came true. Then later, while fighting Macduff, Macbeth finds out that Macduff was not exactly “born from a woman” but surgically removed rather in a C section. So apparition 2, check. And lastly, Macduff kills Macbeth and takes his head for a prize, so check for apparition 1.
                In class we discussed that the first apparition, the armored head, was Macbeth’s bloody head that Macduff took after he killed him. Macbeth was warning himself. The second, the bloody child, was Macduff as a baby torn out of his mother’s womb. The last one, the baby holding a tree with a crown, was Macduff with the branches from Bernam woods and a crown because he will end up king.

                I think when he has the talk with Macduff while they’re fighting is when it hits him. That’s when he realizes that he has gone so far so blinded and the realization of his doom. He puts all the pieces together and his false pride and courage slowly crumble revealing the foolish coward he is. From then on, both the audience and Macbeth sense tragedy in the future. Before, although the audience knew Macbeth's downfall was near, Macbeth himself was still unaware so the audience had some hope of his escape for his situation but after he notices his fall too, both sides just wait for his inevitable doom.

Macbeth, you fool!

We discussed Act 4 of Macbeth in class today. This act is arguably the darkest act yet with the murder of Macduff’s wife and son and the weird sisters’ spell song. In the act, we really see a shift in Macbeth’s character. When the apparitions warn him of Macduff’s interference, Macbeth immediately plans to kill him and not only him, but “all unfortunate souls that trace him (Macbeth) in his line.” This is a change from his usual character because now, he is willing to kill anyone and everyone who gets in his way, unlike before, where he was killing just the people who needed to die.

This unnecessary killing of bystanders in Act 4 reminds me very distinctly of Breaking Bad. Like Walt, Macbeth has now begun hiring murderers to do the deed while he sits back and watches from a distance. When he murdered the king, he was nervous, hesitant and almost sick but for the murder of Macduff’s wife and child, he simply orders someone else to do it. In all honesty the death of the wife and child was completely unnecessary; Macbeth just killed them for vengeance on Macduff because he couldn’t find him to kill him.

I compared Act 4 to the “finger of birth-strangled babe ditch-deliver'd by a drab” line in the witches’ “double double toil and trouble” song. Although Macbeth has been traveling this evil slippery slope for quite some time now, this is the first truly evil, doing evil just for the act of doing evil, act we have seen from him. In the song, the witches list all terrible things but the baby finger is by far the worst, making it the climax of the soup, likewise, Act 4 is the climax of the play so far.

In this act, we get a picture of how truly foolish, over confident and just dumb Macbeth’s character is. Just by the way he interacts with the witches in the beginning of this act, praising them when they tell him something he likes and ignoring or cursing them when told something not in his favor; we can conclude that Macbeth’s character is a reflection of humanity’s indulgence in its blissful ignorance mentality. I subconsciously think of Macbeth as a child, with his short temper, foolish childlike way of thinking and his blinded views. The audience clearly has a better understanding of Macbeth’s situation than he himself because he is so blinded by his confidence, pride and ignorance.