Monday, April 27, 2009
Paper Topic
I have read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. The topic of my paper will pertain to a question that crossed my mind countless times as I read the novel. Is McMurphy a catalyst to the inner strength and manliness that the likes of Chief and the others have or is he the sole source of their manliness, courage and eventual recovery. Furthermore, I will also examine the question of weather the patients were really patients in need of help or outcasts of society that needed a place they wouldn’t be judged. I believe that these two inquires will overlap to some degree.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Keats' Coping with Death (take 3)
The life of John Keats was anything but rosy. It would be difficult to wish such tragedy and perpetual death on even one’s worst enemy. However, it is this perennial sorrow that gave Keats his inspiration to be among the elite 19th century romantic poets. His sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be” deals with questions of mortality and one’s legacy that every person struggles with at some point. Unfortunately, Keats gradually became more and more consumed by these feelings, beginning in his very early years and exponentially amplified by every death he encountered (each family member he outlived.).
To fully understand the loneliness, fear, anxiousness, and mortality that Keats expresses in his sonnet, one must look at the many devastating moments Keats experienced in his brief life. Beginning at age 9, Keats lost his father, when his father fell head first off of a horse. The following year his grandfather, who had filled in as the father figure for Keats, also died suddenly. When Keats was 15, his mother lost her battle with tuberculosis, a disease that would haunt John and his siblings. A few years later John lost his grandmother. By this time John had bounced around between schools and apprenticeships before finally abandoning his final attempt at medicine and pursuing his love of language. Just as his life began to turn and he began to gain fame as a poet, the death of his grandmother left John burdened with the responsibility of his ailing brother, Tom Keats. This was the same time that John wrote his first draft of “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. Watching his brother’s diminishing health forced John to experience the death of someone very much like himself. I believe that this forced John to cope with the ideas of his own death and ponder the temporary and fragile nature of life. Face to face with a death in an individual that was more like John than anyone in the world culminated in a laundry list of things that John most enjoyed in his life coupled with a great regret of the things in life he had not and might not ever experience.
John Keats channeled his consuming thoughts into this sonnet. The sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet. The most apparent theme of Keats’ sonnet is that of time and the uncertainty of a tomorrow. This theme strings together the three quatrains, each beginning with “when”, a word that magnifies the fleeting nature of time. This notion is expressed most directly in the first quatrain by the first line “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. The quatrain continues on to touch upon some of Keats’ most concrete and immediate desires such as his wishes to publish the countless literary works currently trapped in his mind. He also laments his relative lack of knowledge in comparison to the knowledge contained in the “high-piled books” that he has yet to read. This is another slight against himself and his vulnerability to death at such a young age. Keats, obviously a man driven by his work, views his lack of knowledge as a lack of possible material for his poems. This is even further hinted when he flashes a bit of the knowledge he already possesses with his use of the word “charact’ry” coined by Shakespeare, and meaning hand written or printed letters. Keats’ quest to become skilled at the craft of poetry is obvious in this first quatrain. He uses a series of references to harvest, the harvest from within his brain, and emphasizes all of the harvest related words with alliteration. “[G[lean’d”, “garners” and “grain”, all begin with the same consonant.
Keats’ second quatrain shifts from the traditional, education driven forms of inspiration for his work, to the romantic material that nature’s settings provide. His description of heavenly views in this quatrain hint at the notion that even with all the time in the world, it is possible that nature is a boundless source of inspiration and creation.
Keats is, of course, aware that no poem explaining the pleasures of life would be complete without a shout out to love. Thus, he wrote the third quatrain. He alludes to the perfect woman as the fairy like “fair creature of an hour”. This woman embodies all the love that that he has yet to experience. He mourns that his life has not yet been touched by the “fairy power” of love.
Finally, Keats seems to take some solace in the concluding couplet in which he professes that he will outdo death through “love and fame”. The final thought of his sonnet “I stand and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink” is effectively the credo that Keats has adopted to live his life by. He needs to achieve Love and Fame to avoid “nothingness”. This line justifies all preceding lines of the poems as it explains his great emphasis on the quality of his works and the anger that he feels that life might cheat him by taking away possible materials and tools that he needs to become immortal in the shelves of man.
(865)
To fully understand the loneliness, fear, anxiousness, and mortality that Keats expresses in his sonnet, one must look at the many devastating moments Keats experienced in his brief life. Beginning at age 9, Keats lost his father, when his father fell head first off of a horse. The following year his grandfather, who had filled in as the father figure for Keats, also died suddenly. When Keats was 15, his mother lost her battle with tuberculosis, a disease that would haunt John and his siblings. A few years later John lost his grandmother. By this time John had bounced around between schools and apprenticeships before finally abandoning his final attempt at medicine and pursuing his love of language. Just as his life began to turn and he began to gain fame as a poet, the death of his grandmother left John burdened with the responsibility of his ailing brother, Tom Keats. This was the same time that John wrote his first draft of “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. Watching his brother’s diminishing health forced John to experience the death of someone very much like himself. I believe that this forced John to cope with the ideas of his own death and ponder the temporary and fragile nature of life. Face to face with a death in an individual that was more like John than anyone in the world culminated in a laundry list of things that John most enjoyed in his life coupled with a great regret of the things in life he had not and might not ever experience.
John Keats channeled his consuming thoughts into this sonnet. The sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet. The most apparent theme of Keats’ sonnet is that of time and the uncertainty of a tomorrow. This theme strings together the three quatrains, each beginning with “when”, a word that magnifies the fleeting nature of time. This notion is expressed most directly in the first quatrain by the first line “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. The quatrain continues on to touch upon some of Keats’ most concrete and immediate desires such as his wishes to publish the countless literary works currently trapped in his mind. He also laments his relative lack of knowledge in comparison to the knowledge contained in the “high-piled books” that he has yet to read. This is another slight against himself and his vulnerability to death at such a young age. Keats, obviously a man driven by his work, views his lack of knowledge as a lack of possible material for his poems. This is even further hinted when he flashes a bit of the knowledge he already possesses with his use of the word “charact’ry” coined by Shakespeare, and meaning hand written or printed letters. Keats’ quest to become skilled at the craft of poetry is obvious in this first quatrain. He uses a series of references to harvest, the harvest from within his brain, and emphasizes all of the harvest related words with alliteration. “[G[lean’d”, “garners” and “grain”, all begin with the same consonant.
Keats’ second quatrain shifts from the traditional, education driven forms of inspiration for his work, to the romantic material that nature’s settings provide. His description of heavenly views in this quatrain hint at the notion that even with all the time in the world, it is possible that nature is a boundless source of inspiration and creation.
Keats is, of course, aware that no poem explaining the pleasures of life would be complete without a shout out to love. Thus, he wrote the third quatrain. He alludes to the perfect woman as the fairy like “fair creature of an hour”. This woman embodies all the love that that he has yet to experience. He mourns that his life has not yet been touched by the “fairy power” of love.
Finally, Keats seems to take some solace in the concluding couplet in which he professes that he will outdo death through “love and fame”. The final thought of his sonnet “I stand and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink” is effectively the credo that Keats has adopted to live his life by. He needs to achieve Love and Fame to avoid “nothingness”. This line justifies all preceding lines of the poems as it explains his great emphasis on the quality of his works and the anger that he feels that life might cheat him by taking away possible materials and tools that he needs to become immortal in the shelves of man.
(865)
Keats' Coping with Death
The life of John Keats was anything but rosy. It would be difficult to wish such tragedy and perpetual death on even one’s worst enemy. However, it is this perennial sorrow that gave Keats his inspiration to be among the elite 19th century romantic poets. His sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be” deals with questions of mortality and one’s legacy that every person struggles with at some point. Unfortunately, Keats gradually became more and more consumed by these feelings, beginning in his very early years and exponentially amplified by every death he encountered (each family member he outlived.).
To fully understand the loneliness, fear, anxiousness, and mortality that Keats expresses in his sonnet, one must look at the many devastating moments Keats experienced in his brief life. Beginning at age 9, Keats lost his father, when his father fell head first off of a horse. The following year his grandfather, who had filled in as the father figure for Keats, also died suddenly. When Keats was 15, his mother lost her battle with tuberculosis, a disease that would haunt John and his siblings. A few years later John lost his grandmother. By this time John had bounced around between schools and apprenticeships before finally abandoning his final attempt at medicine and pursuing his love of language. Just as his life began to turn and he began to gain fame as a poet, the death of his grandmother left John burdened with the responsibility of his ailing brother, Tom Keats. This was the same time that John wrote his first draft of “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. Watching his brother’s diminishing health forced John to experience the death of someone very much like himself. I believe that this forced John to cope with the ideas of his own death and ponder the temporary and fragile nature of life. Face to face with a death in an individual that was more like John than anyone in the world culminated in a laundry list of things that John most enjoyed in his life coupled with a great regret of the things in life he had not and might not ever experience.
John Keats channeled his consuming thoughts into this sonnet. The sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet. The most apparent theme of Keats’ sonnet is that of time and the uncertainty of a tomorrow. This theme strings together the three quatrains, each beginning with “when”, a word that magnifies the fleeting nature of time. This notion is expressed most directly in the first quatrain by the first line “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. The quatrain continues on to touch upon some of Keats’ most concrete and immediate desires such as his wishes to publish the countless literary works currently trapped in his mind. He also laments his relative lack of knowledge in comparison to the knowledge contained in the “high-piled books” that he has yet to read. This is another slight against himself and his vulnerability to death at such a young age. Keats, obviously a man driven by his work, views his lack of knowledge as a lack of possible material for his poems. This is even further hinted when he flashes a bit of the knowledge he already posses with his use of the word “charact’ry” coined by Shakespeare, and meaning hand written or printed letters.
Keats’ second quatrain shifts from the traditional, education driven forms of inspiration for his work, to the romantic material that nature’s settings provide. His description of heavenly views in this quatrain hint at the notion that even with all the time in the world, it is possible that nature is a boundless source of inspiration and creation.
Keats is, of course, aware that no poem explaining the pleasures of life would be complete without a shout out to love. Thus, he wrote the third quatrain. He alludes to the perfect woman as the fairy like “fair creature of an hour”. This woman embodies all the love that that he has yet to experience. He mourns that his life has not yet been touched by the “fairy power” of love.
Finally, Keats seems to take some solace in the concluding couplet in which he professes that he will outdo death through “love and fame”. The final thought of his sonnet “I stand and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink” is effectively the credo that Keats has adopted to live his life by. He needs to achieve Love and Fame to avoid “nothingness”. This line justifies all preceding lines of the poems as it explains his great emphasis on the quality of his works and the anger that he feels that life might cheat him by taking away possible materials and tools that he needs to become immortal in the shelves of man.
(815)
To fully understand the loneliness, fear, anxiousness, and mortality that Keats expresses in his sonnet, one must look at the many devastating moments Keats experienced in his brief life. Beginning at age 9, Keats lost his father, when his father fell head first off of a horse. The following year his grandfather, who had filled in as the father figure for Keats, also died suddenly. When Keats was 15, his mother lost her battle with tuberculosis, a disease that would haunt John and his siblings. A few years later John lost his grandmother. By this time John had bounced around between schools and apprenticeships before finally abandoning his final attempt at medicine and pursuing his love of language. Just as his life began to turn and he began to gain fame as a poet, the death of his grandmother left John burdened with the responsibility of his ailing brother, Tom Keats. This was the same time that John wrote his first draft of “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. Watching his brother’s diminishing health forced John to experience the death of someone very much like himself. I believe that this forced John to cope with the ideas of his own death and ponder the temporary and fragile nature of life. Face to face with a death in an individual that was more like John than anyone in the world culminated in a laundry list of things that John most enjoyed in his life coupled with a great regret of the things in life he had not and might not ever experience.
John Keats channeled his consuming thoughts into this sonnet. The sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet. The most apparent theme of Keats’ sonnet is that of time and the uncertainty of a tomorrow. This theme strings together the three quatrains, each beginning with “when”, a word that magnifies the fleeting nature of time. This notion is expressed most directly in the first quatrain by the first line “When I have fears that I may cease to be”. The quatrain continues on to touch upon some of Keats’ most concrete and immediate desires such as his wishes to publish the countless literary works currently trapped in his mind. He also laments his relative lack of knowledge in comparison to the knowledge contained in the “high-piled books” that he has yet to read. This is another slight against himself and his vulnerability to death at such a young age. Keats, obviously a man driven by his work, views his lack of knowledge as a lack of possible material for his poems. This is even further hinted when he flashes a bit of the knowledge he already posses with his use of the word “charact’ry” coined by Shakespeare, and meaning hand written or printed letters.
Keats’ second quatrain shifts from the traditional, education driven forms of inspiration for his work, to the romantic material that nature’s settings provide. His description of heavenly views in this quatrain hint at the notion that even with all the time in the world, it is possible that nature is a boundless source of inspiration and creation.
Keats is, of course, aware that no poem explaining the pleasures of life would be complete without a shout out to love. Thus, he wrote the third quatrain. He alludes to the perfect woman as the fairy like “fair creature of an hour”. This woman embodies all the love that that he has yet to experience. He mourns that his life has not yet been touched by the “fairy power” of love.
Finally, Keats seems to take some solace in the concluding couplet in which he professes that he will outdo death through “love and fame”. The final thought of his sonnet “I stand and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink” is effectively the credo that Keats has adopted to live his life by. He needs to achieve Love and Fame to avoid “nothingness”. This line justifies all preceding lines of the poems as it explains his great emphasis on the quality of his works and the anger that he feels that life might cheat him by taking away possible materials and tools that he needs to become immortal in the shelves of man.
(815)
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