Poetry

20	And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
	Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
	Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
	From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

After analyzing this poem I realized it could have several different underlying meanings. I decided, though, that in my opinion it is referring to independence. The Green River Lip is supposed to mean the other people in our life whom we lean on for help. I think the poem is saying that we can never fully trust anyone or anything because it could all fall out from under you. You should never lean on someone for help without being aware that they could turn on you. People can change, and someone who you once thought was kind and helpful might end up being something completely different than your first impressions.

My attempt at Rubaiyat-style poetry:

Keep my eyes up, for the finish I yearn
My lungs and my legs, oh how they burn.
So much pain, this I cannot escape
Four hundred meters, just one more turn.

Paper 1-- the treatment of women throughout Middle-Eastern Literature

For my paper, I chose to write about the treatment of women throughout the pieces of literature we have read thus far. I chose to focus more specifically on the works of Othello, Canterbury Tales, and one of the 1001 Nights stories, The Husband and the Parrot.

When writing my paper, I wasn't as focused on the mistreatment of women as I was on their treatment overall. Some stories, such as the Canterbury Tales, had examples of both the mistreatment and the positive treatment of women. I thought it was definitely interesting to examine the different ways women were viewed throughout these classic works.

While I was able to find a few examples of women being viewed in a positive light, for the most part, the women in these works were definitely treated very poorly. After comparing the different works we read for class, and looked at the common characteristics they shared, I went on to discuss the implications that these works may have had on modern times. Middle Eastern women are typically not treated with the utmost respect nowadays, and I am without a doubt that this is a direct effect of the way women were viewed in the past.

the story of the husband and the parrot

*

For one of my stories, I chose to read "The Story of the Husband and the Parrot". This was the seventh story in the 1001 Nights, and it was slightly disturbing, to say the least. The first paragraph caught my attention immediately by cluing me in on the sexist (and, according to today's standards, politically incorrect) undertones of the story ahead:

THERE was a certain merchant, of an exceedingly jealous disposition, having a wife endowed with perfect beauty, who had prevented him from leaving his home; but an event happened which obliged him to make a journey; and when he found his doing so to be indispensable, he went to the market in which birds were sold, and bought a parrot, which he placed in his house to act as a spy, that, on his return, she might inform him of what passed during his absence; for this parrot was cunning and intelligent, and remembered whatever she heard.

First of all, the mere fact that a man could be so untrusting of his wife annoys me. He couldn't trust her merely because she was beautiful? Her beauty was enough to make him sure that she would cheat on him? Apparently ugly women aren't capable of committing adultery, so I don't understand why men even bother marrying beautiful women. They obviously can't be trusted. From as far as I can tell, the wife had never done anything to make the husband so suspicious, he is merely described as being "jealous". However, the husband buys a talking parrot to spy on his wife when the time came that he had no choice but to leave her for a couple of days. Basically the husband ends up killing his wife and the bird because of his anger and jealousy. In the end, he is all alone.

The storyline of the parrot was slightly familiar to me, and I'm sure it was to most of the class. It made me think of the Disney movie Aladdin, because there is a parrot in that movie who is used to spy on others. Jafar uses his parrot (named Iago, I'm not sure if it has anything to do with Othello) to get information about the Sultan and Aladdin. Similarly, Jafar's plan ends up backfiring, and of course, the good guys prevail.

*If you can't read the caption to this picture, it says "The husband asking the parrot about his wife's behavior"

the iraq war article and video

After having read the scholarly article on the Iraq War and watched the video, I have to say that I am not even slightly surprised by them. I think it has been pretty obvious over these past couple of years that President Bush is out numbered in his views on the U.S. pulling out of Iraq. When someone only has something like a 25% approval rating, that's their hint that maybe they should start listening to what other people have to say. President Bush keeps insisting that us leaving Iraq would put the world in a "catastrophic situation". However, I fully agree with Bob Herbert, author of "Nightmare is Here", who insists that it's too late; the situation already is catastrophic.

While I did attempt to watch the video you sent us, it had a very difficult time loading. It would play about 10-20 seconds, then get stuck and pause for about a minute and then play 10-20 seconds again. For that reason, I only watched about the first five minutes of the video. But that was enough for me to hear the comment (more or less) "In fact, as with other Bush Administration policy decisions in Iraq, the decision to disband the Iraqi army was made by a group of men virtually unexperienced in any militia decisions."

While I did agree with the article, I have a feeling that the video was just a little too left wing for me. I am without a doubt a democrat, but I think that it is just poor judgment and naivety to think that the Bush Administration has no militia experience. President Bush himself served in the military, and I'm sure many other members of the Bush Administration did as well.

As far as the article goes, though, I can say that it did not surprise me at all. I have mentioned previously that I do not know a lot about the struggle in the Middle East, so basically everything I read and see are news to me. According to Bob Herbert, the government has been virtually lying about the number of civilian casualties in Iraq. Once again, although this is news to me, it is not at all surprising news. President Bush is not getting anywhere near the approval that a president should be getting. It is therefore not at all surprising that he would try to avoid the fact that the majority of the nation is against him by insisting that he is right in his decision to stay in Iraq. It's bad enough that most of the country thinks that we shouldn't even be in Iraq, not to mention the fact that we have cause way more deaths over there than the general public is told to believe. Why wouldn't the government try to cover up or lower the number of Iraqi civilian casualties? It's basically the only hope President Bush is clinging to that he will end his presidency on a good note. Maybe, if the American public can't be swayed on their wanting to leave Iraq, they can at least not think of our government as a murderous villain.

Othello - racial slurs and stereotypes

Act one, scene one of Othello surprised me with some immediate racial slurs and stereotypes. I might not have picked up on as many of these that I did if I hadn't been reading from the Sparknotes website I mentioned in the previous post (while I did try reading the original version, I kept finding myself getting distracted by the translation which read through much faster).
Iago shows some true disrespect for the Othello when he goes to Brabantio to report that he was sleeping with (and secretly married to) his daughter, Desdemona. He refers to Othello, the Moor, as a "Barbary (African) horse" and goes on to say that he will have black, neighing grandchildren if he doesn't get a handle on his daughter. Earlier in the scene, he calls him "Thick Lips," which is clearly a racial slur.
The point I'm trying to make about all of this is that I'm surprised by how this kind of talk was apparently acceptable during Shakespeare's time. I'm sure it was the politically-correct, suburban atmosphere that I grew up in that taught me that it is not acceptable to refer to people in such a way. I guess it is naive of me to think that everyone has always been this way.
I also still can't help but be surprised that, even hundreds of years later, we are still dealing with biracial relationship issues. Wouldn't you think that we would have gotten over this obstacle by now? Seeing Shakespeare write about the types of social problems that we still deal with today really makes me wonder how we can be so slow in accepting the differences amongst the human race. We have made a lot of progress, but seeing the same problems displayed in Shakespearian times really demonstrates the slow rate at which the society of a human race can move when developing acceptance.
In the second scene of Act Two, there is a part that made me directly think of Hollywood nowadays. From lines 64 to 83, Barbantio is on a rant about how Othello needs to be arrested for black magic. How else could a Moor sway his innocent, law-abiding Italian daughter to marry him? This part is definitely straight out of a Hollywood film, where the daughter is told that she simply can't be with the man she loves becauase he is of a different race. In the movie Cruel Intentions, Cecile (a white girl) is told that she can't be with her cello instructor, Ronald simply because he is black. I can't even begin to name off all the movies or television shows out of Hollywood that tackle the race subject. Barbantino is so unwilling to accept the love between his daughter and Othello that he assumes there must be some sort of evil magic being used. Similarly, in Cruel Intentions, Cecile's mother accuses Ronald of acting on a bet instead of simply wanting to be with her daughter.

othello website

So i read the first three acts of Othello, but I wanted to find a side-by-side translation. I found that Sparknotes had a very helpful one http://nfs.sparknotes.com/othello/page_92.epl

canterbury tales

I have just finished reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and I have to say that the aspect of this story that struck me most was from approximately lines 139 to 160. Constance is about to be taken away and forced to marry a man against her will when she says:

"I, wretched woman, thought I die, 'tis nil.
Women are born to slave and to repent,
And to be subject to man's government."

These lines are basically saying that if a man were to die, someone might notice. But because of the fact that she is a woman, her life is virtually out of her control. Whether she wants to do something or not, it makes no difference. She is under the complete control of the men in her life and what they want her to do.

I'm fairly sure that one main reason that I picked up on this was that I am taking a Women's Studies class this semester. I had just finished my homework for that class before beginning the reading for this class, and I definitely had feminism on my mind.

So, after reading that section, I continued on with the story, expecting to see more examples of women being held at the mercy of men. However, when I got to around lines 196-236, I was slightly surprised. The Sultan's mother is speaking throughout most of these lines. She has the full attention of all of her council (mostly men, I'm assuming), and makes them vow to follow her. She is very upset with the fact that her son is marrying a Christian and says that if they choose to follow her (instead of her son), they will be saved. To my surprise, these men actually agree with her and follow her lead in trying to sabotage the marriage.

After giving it some thought, I realized the reason I was most surprised by the two contrasting ways in which women were treated. When we look to the Middle East today, we see women completely covered from head to toe. These women are mistreated and given limited rights day in, day out. It is therefore common for Americans to assume that since this is how the women there are treated now that this is the way it has always been. On the other hand, America (a predominately Christian nation), provides women with virtually all of the same rights as men.

Given my preconseptions dealing with how women are treated today, I was surprised to see the roles switched in Canterbury Tales. Constance, a Christian woman, was actually the one being persucuted. The Sultan's mother had the full attention of the male council and was actually had orders being followed by them.

I definitely found the power (or lack thereof) that women had hundreds of year ago to be very interesting. Where and when did this shift in power take place? Why are women presently regarded as a lower life-form in the Middle East? I'm sure that if my knowledge of Middle Eastern culture was better, I would know the answer to these questions. However, I am ashamed to admit that I know virtually NOTHING about the present situation over there, let alone the history of how it came to be. I am therefore looking forward to this class and all I might learn from it. As we move through history, I have no doubt that all of my questions will be answered.