Presentation! East Coker

See Sam's blog for photos of our fabulous presentation. I think it was pretty effective in explaining our ideas about the poem...except for the lack of time. For my section, I definitely cut out some things to make sure my remaining group members had at least a few minutes!
A few things I didn't say you might want to know, and an overall summary:
My section of East Coker begins in the war: "Beneath the bleeding hands we feel..." Eliot wrote East Coker after the right before the second World War, hence being "between two wars." Even the hospitals in the war were bloody, terrifying areas during the war, as demonstrated by the first few lines of my section (starting on page 29). Here, Eliot is also saying that the role of the doctor and nurse, who are injured themselves ("If we obey the dying nurse") is to make the dying soldier as comfortable as possible: "to remind of our, and Adam's curse." Here Eliot references the Bible, the first of many times throughout my section.
Despite the desolation of the war, Eliot introduces the Biblical idea that "to be restored, our sickness must grow worse." In other words, we must die to truly live, a Christian doctrine.
The Catholics believe that communion is the Eucharist, the ultimate transformation, the drinking of God's blood and the eating of his flesh. "The Body of Christ, given for you...the Blood of Christ, shed for you" (so they say at the Lutheran church of my childhood). This is connected to the final paragraph of stanza IV in East Coker: "The dripping blood our only drink/The bloody flesh our only food." The next few lines relate to Good Friday, which fits with the rest of East Coker, as it was originally published on Easter: "In spite of which we like to think/That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--/Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
The first few lines of stanza V and the end of my section relate to Eliot's mid-life crisis of sorts: "So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years--twenty years largely wasted." This reminded me of Dante's famous lines from The Inferno: "Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood."
Eliot's mid-life crisis is also related to his disillusionment caused by the war, and by the fruitlessness of l'entre deux guerres, French for between two wars.
Overall, my section of East Coker was a reflection of Eliot's sufferings caused by the war, but by his continuing faith despite this. This part of the section sort of brings the reader back down to Earth, before reminding them of their rising after death.

Diamonds in the Dead

Hello, James Joyce. I hope it's okay if I just say one thing: I hate him.
Now that that's off my chest, I can continue with my discoveries of diamonds in his work. I suppose that hate is a bit strong, and I do think that he contributed many great works to English literature, but I just don't like him. I can't even really explain it; I've read both The Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and I could read them without total torture, but I just still don't like James Joyce.
Okay, now I can officially start looking for diamonds.
For me, the epiphany I could identify with the most is Gretta's, when she hears the song. Music is a powerful memory trigger, in my experience. Hearing a song from any time in your life can vault you into instant nostalgia. Sometimes, it can be a good nostalgia, looking back on the past fondly, and other times, it can bring back painful memories. I am embarrassed to admit what horrible taste in music I have, but "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls is a particular trigger, and causes memories of 6th grade dances and my father washing the dishes. Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" always reminds me of the end of my first love, which always breaks my heart a little.
There is also a connection of epiphanies here, which I find intriguing: Gretta's epiphany then triggers Gabriel's inner turmoil and his own epiphany about the relationship between life and death and the living death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcgyKo7vbm4

My favorite part of reading...

Discovering that book you just can't put down! This started at a young age for me--I suppose I focused on the lower-brow books when I started gobbling up books in about the 3rd grade, but I was such an avaricious reader that I read too fast to keep up with our frequent trips to the Bozeman Public Library. As a result, I read books like The Secret Life of Lobsters and The Bible along with Nancy Drew and Goosebumps. I take great pleasure in any form of reading, including the so-called "lowbrow" books, a term I completely detest. Yes, I've read and enjoyed many of the great classics--they're classics for a reason--such as Anna Karenina, a personal favorite, and The Grapes of Wrath and many many more. You can't be an English major and not read an array of wonderful books, even if you're a forgetful student like me. However, I also have loved many of the books that are viewed to have no academic worth, like Harry Potter and Nora Roberts, both author's of books I have read at least five times, no joke.
Perhaps this makes me a bad English student. Gwendolyn Morgan once told me I should only read books that are outside of my comfort zone. I definitely do this, again, English major, and James Joyce is certainly outside of my comfort zone, but I also believe there is great power in your comfort books, books read purely for entertainment. If nothing else, it's better than T.V., right?

Wind in the Willows providing a definition of "epiphany"

Chapter 7 of Wind in the Willows is aptly entitled "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." These days, for many of us, strains of Pink Floyd will drift into our head at these words, but Kenneth Grahame came before Pink Floyd was even a twinkle in Syd Barrett's eye. "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" also happens to be the chapter of the major epiphany in WitW. "Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe upon him...an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near...All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered" (Grahame 124-5). Here, Rat and Mole glimpse their "Him," and are never the same.
This leads to another idea we discussed in class--what happens when an epiphany is over. The epiphany always seems like a good thing--an amazing moment that changes the course of your life, or so was my vague idea of the definition prior to this class. I was, in fact, always waiting for that epiphany--the moments that come so few and far between and truly change you and make your life happen.
However, the reactions of Rat and Mole after their shining moment ends had me rethinking this idea: "...they stared blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realized all they had seen and all they had lost...As one awakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can recapture nothing but a dimes of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking" (Grahame 126-7).
This leads me to compare the epiphany to a dream, and consider that with the ending of a epiphany, something is lost. When a beautiful dream ends, something is lost too, and sometimes returning to reality can be difficult and painful. Sometimes, one could be tempted to wish the dream would be real. Is reality better than any dream? Most would say yes, and I would be forced to agree--and to compare this to something completely different, it's like an old fairy tale, where the princess is captured and taken to a perfect land that is too good to be true, and opts to return to her less-beautiful home. She chooses to live without the prince because to trick someone into loving you isn't true love at all.
Along with the love theme, there a famous quote from Tennyson's poem, In Memoriam A.H.H.: "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Perhaps a somewhat cliched quote, but it rings true for epiphanies, in some cases, same as with love. Is it better to continue through life without experiencing this epiphany, or better to experience it and try to move on, while dreaming of it?
Epiphanies, after reading "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," are those unforgettable moments that make you truly experience life. Maybe you'll miss this moment for the rest of your life, or move on towards the next, or maybe the other smaller beauties in life will help distract you, as it is for Rat and Mole: "A capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water...blew lightly and caressingly in their faces, and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before" (126).

Amy the English Major

I came into English quite a bit later than some of my peers. In fact, I have only been an official English major for a year and a half, although I've been steadily squeezing in English classes since I was a freshman and cycling through my various majors, such as Anthropology, Spanish, History, Political Science, and even a brief stint in Mechanical Engineering (which only lasted a few weeks before I came to my senses). After all of these majors, I've grabbed a few minors along the way, and eventually came to a crossroads--which of these minors can I turn into a bonafide major I'll enjoy? Turns out, MSU won't let you graduate with four minors...go figure. I looked at the various pros and cons of each (Psychology was quickly rejected, Anthropology followed soon upon the discovery of two added years of school) and eventually landed in English. I remembered my high school classes, where I ate up the books twice as fast as my peers and voluntarily researched the underlying themes of Chinua Achebe and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I also remembered one of those lone English classes where all of the other members moaned about the sheer number of readings and focused on their REAL majors, while I did the same, while secretly relishing our writing assignments.
The road has been rather bumpy since I did declare English, with a few quarter-life crises and trips abroad to interrupt my studies, but I've always come back to English. I haven't regretted any of my classes, although some have been more painful than others--most of the surveys are a pain, and Lit Crit was the bane of my existence during one semester full of 6 other classes, but finally being in the glorious upper division classes is it's own reward. Now, finally, absolutely in my last semester, I'm going to miss all of these classes--even Gwendolyn Morgan's summer Advanced Comp course--when I head out into the "real" world and try to make something of myself and this degree!