Responses to Natalie's and Chelsey's Qustions

Natalie - What was life like for Emily Dickinson?

Emily Dickinson is my all-time favorite poet. One of her poems, called "Hope," is one that I've loved since middle school. Fortunately I once researched Dickinson for a paper and was fascinated by the way she lived her life. I don't remember too many specifics, but I remember reading about how greatly she was affected when her cousin and best friend died at a young age. It seems that may have been a source for her strong views on death. And after attending school she slowly became more and more secluded, like Scott mentioned in class. She was very depressed after another friend of hers died suddenly, but it was during that time of depression and seclusion that she wrote her best work. She actually rewrote many poems and structured them in an orderly way. She really never left her house, which a lot of scholars seem to think shows evidence of some type of mental disorder like agoraphobia. I can only imagine something like that or her severe depression caused her to cut herself off from the outside world. I think she may have been living at home this whole time, never marrying or having children, so I can see how not having the responsibilities of being a homemaker would allow her the time needed to write her poems.

Chelsey - If the Civil War caused the Literary change from Romanticism to Realism, what change has September 11 cause in the Literary world today?

This is a great question, and one could be argued over. I think there was more change from the Civil War because of how many Americans died and because it literally split the country in two. But 9/11 was an event that happened to us from outside sources. I'm not sure that literature itself has changed, but there has definitely been a surge of fictional stories surrounding the events of 9/11. I think it's been long enough to absorb what happened and America is now able to read novels about that day. One example I really enjoyed is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Maybe it just hasn't been enough time since 9/11 to notice a shift in literature. Or maybe 9/11 wasn't the right kind of traumatic event to trigger a movement in literature. We have definitely seen the repercussions in other areas of our culture - our sense of safety, how our government, airports, and war policy has changed... but has it affected the arts? I'm not so sure about that one.

Blog #1: Two Questions

After reading the packet assigned this week, I am scratching my head at Walt Whitman's purpose in "Song of Myself." I'm not the biggest fan of long poetry (I find it arduous to read and impossible to care about, save for Poe's "The Raven"), so naturally I got bored after the first few stanzas. As I started to read "Song of Myself," I noticed that the stanzas in which he talks about himself, I feel repelled by his language, his contradiction and his subtle egoism. With declarations like, "Walt Whitman am I, a Kosmos, of mighty Manhattan the son...No sentimentalist - no stander above men and women, or apart from them," and "I celebrate myself...For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you," he straddles between tooting his own horn and raving about the world and his modesty. So I question what his true intention is in this poem: to celebrate himself, as his first line declares, or to emphasize the greatness of the world around him.

My second question comes from "The Freedman's Story." The article, written by William Parker, recounts his confrontation with slave-catchers. When I finished the article, I wondered why, throughout this time in history, slave owners were so intent on catching runaway slaves. Was it because if they let one go, they might all try to escape? Or is it more than for show? Does the slave owner actually find worth in one escaped slave, enough to send a whole gang of slave-catchers after him? Are slaves that hard to replace? Wouldn't it be easier to let a troublesome slave run away rather than struggle to beat the work out of him (assuming that the slaves most likely to chance their life by running away are the ones most resistant to working)? I want to understand better the dynamics between a slave owner and his slaves - not just that they owned them, but how valuable a slave was to them, and what conditions decided whether or not they sent pursuers after an escapee.