Hear You Me.

Outside we see the truth. It is the one place where beauty overtakes us. Even the ugly things are beautiful. Today while we were outside many things came to mind songs, city noise, branches, pure static and complete silence. You see, it all started with a bird. I saw this one bird and it made me think of that song Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World. It goes, “So what would you think of me now, so lucky, so strong, so proud? I never said thank you for that, now I'll never have a chance. May angels lead you in? Hear you me my friends. On sleepless roads the sleepless go. May angels lead you in?” It makes me think of all the things I never did that I wish I had. Somehow I got to thinking about chaos. I think maybe I heard a siren far away in the distance. I think about how there could be people so devastated in your own town and you wouldn’t ever know. It is terrible. How can we be so oblivious to what is going on? How can we not care? Things like that barley cross our minds half the time. Cities havoc vs. country’s calm: how does that come about. What makes the city so visibly crazy and the country appear so calm? I saw a leaf bending and broken there with the mulch and a branch forcefully being pushed downward by gravity and then I looked to my left and saw a piece of metal rusting.  That’s another thing out of our control. Time was passing and I watched as it took shape, forming with the contours of the mulch morphing with the air. Nature was shifting and bending kind of like I am for society to be accepted. Things evolve and things change out of our control whether we are ready or not. Just like cars die, so do animals, and bugs. Color and light fade as months and days go by. Its just pure static in the way it life moves, the way we move.

Romanticism

In the Short story “The Devil and Tom Walker” there are many examples of the society shifting from the age of reason and classicism to romanticism. They no longer focus on reasoning and order. They appreciate nature and balance. They enjoy art and poetry. They focus a lot on individuality. Nature is one of the elements of romanticism that is displayed the most in the short story. “Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots.”  In this case, I feel that the forest is society and its saying tom was sifting through the tough spots of society and straying away from it. It seems to me that Tom is practically the only one at this point trying to physically get close to nature. He seems to be at one with nature, more so than the others. Slowly we start to see the woods becoming symbolic of individualism.  Also, in the short story the characters care about past and legend, just as romantics do. In this story they talk about Captain William Kidd, a pirate. “There was a great amount of treasure buried by Captain Kidd” they base their beliefs around Captain Kidd and what he has done. And, another instance, in “About the year 1727, just at the time that the earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meager, miserly fellow, of the name of Tom Walker.”  Also, the characters are very passionate about things whether it is shown through love or hate, it is still passion. “The lonely  wayfayer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his way, rejoicing, If a bachelor in his celibacy.” (pg 243) Although this is fighting it still shows passion enough to fight for something. Your individual beliefs and that is what romantics believe. They believe in personal thought and free will. They are the people that stand up for what they believe in.

This relates to literature class

The Fall of the House of Usher displays subtle hints and situations suggesting that the narrator has gone mad just like Roderick. At some points, it also suggests that maybe the narrator is Poe and that Madeline and Roderick are how he sees himself. That maybe Roderick is his physical side that is broken and Madeline is a character portraying the mental state that he is in. The narrator of the story suggests that Madeline and Roderick are twins and this could mean that the narrator’s physical and mental state are equally disturbed. Madeline is silent and incoherent. ““Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared." I think, going with the theory that Madeline and Roderick represent the narrators state, that Madeline is the mental side. This passage suggests that the narrators state of mind is shut off and silent. She was hopeless and so is his mental state. Roderick is sort of extra sensitive to everything. He has the same traits as a modern day schizophrenic but back then it was undiscovered. It had no name. Therefore he looked insane. “Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin and the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity." This very long quote shows those schizophrenic characteristics. The awareness he faces. Every move he makes, everything he says, he says with caution. He is like a cadaver. He is a deadly looking creature, but he sure is aware. I think that the narrator is trying to say that he is physically aware and mentally unaware. His mind and body are in very different states, but they both add to the madness within him.

Romanticism in the Scarlet letter

In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are many examples and instances of romanticism. It is all about individualistic expression. The actual plot of the novel is not normal it goes against the normal way of writing. The novel was written during the crossover between the age of reason and the romanticism time period. Hester vs Society is a great example of this. In my eyes, Hester’s bold personality and strong physique represents romanticism while the church and government town represents the age of reason. I can not really pick a single example. Hester's response to her punishment is a great one though. She stays there and does not visibly react to her punishment. In her eyes she is a horrible sinner. She has committed the largest sin, but at the same time she does not care. She goes against all the towns’ morals and goals. Her actions are rebellious. Also, Pearl is another example of romanticism types. She throws stones at adults. Pearls actions are not very puritan and she is not very logical. The age of reason is about organization, balance, and order. Pearl and her mother are elegant and intricate, not simple. The towns people display the age of reason and its way of life because they are about order, balance, and scales.