What is the poem “little tree” about?

As I read “little tree” by e.e. cummings, I developed a picture in my head of a little boy going into the woods and looking for a Christmas tree. I pictured a young boy who felt sympathy for taking this young tree that he took from the forest. He described the tree as a little flower, which made me think that the tree was so small that you couldn’t really use it as a decoration. The little boy seemed to be very proud of the tree and reassured the tree that he would talk care of it and nurture it like a mother would nurture her child. The little boy even seemed excited for him and his sister to sing for the tree. The poem seems to be in a sad, yet upbeat mood.The boy is sympathetic in the poem, but also very excited because he has found a cute little Christmas tree.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Little-Tree-E-E-Cummings/book/1902618556/

According to a website,  “little tree” is an ode to a Christmas tree. The speaker is a little boy who talks to the tree as if it is an orphan. The author explains the meaning of the tree being written in the shape of  a Christmas tree. The author describes the poem as looking like  a “self-contained Christmas card”. The analysis says that the shape of the poem adds to the overall sweetness of the poem helping to show emotion. The boy feels sorry for taking the tree.  He feels as if he has snatched the tree from its mother and that the tree is frightened. He sincerely tells the tree that he will comfort it and take care of it. The child promises to make the tree feel better by making it a beautiful decoration inside his home. The boy explains that the tree will get the privilege to let the beautiful decorations shine after they have been in a dark box for over a year. The boy lets the tree know that everyone will appreciate its beauty while its stands in the window for everyone to see. He and his sister are so proud of the tree that they want to sing to it. http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/poetry-analysis-little-tree-by-e-e-cummings-13488/

Here is a short clip of “little tree” being read:

As I researched further to see if there were any thought on the poem, I came across a forum where people commented with what they believed the poem meant. In this forum, one person said that the poem was about a small tree that a family brought home for the holidays. He also mentions that the young child looks at the tree as if it is a fellow creature and has feelings just as he himself does. This person believes that the purpose of this poem was to show what Christmas really represents. Christmas represents compassion and appreciation for others and all that we have. Another person who commented on the forum says that the poem really has no meaning, it is simply there so that the audience can picture all that is happening in the poem. This person says that e.e. cummings is descriptive and helps you to visualize the certain image that he is seeing in his head. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091206174504AAQggN6

http://www.ideashomeconcept.com/ideas-christmas-tree-for-children-room-decoration/5-ideas-christmas-tree-for-children-room-decoration-small-christmas-tree-with-animals-ornament/

I believe that this poem could have different meanings to everyone that reads it. I think that it has to do with everyone’s unique holiday tradition. Some family’s go out a find a tree in the forest to use as their tree and others decorate their home with a reusable Christmas tree. This poem shows us very vivid images of how beautiful and innocent a child can be especially at Christmas time. The child felt bad for the tree and felt like they had stolen the tree from its family. It shows us that Christmas is happy time to spend and appreciate your family ad everything that you have been blessed with.

 

Does a Story Change from Book to Movie? Is it Harmful or Helpful?

I watched the movie and read the story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway. The story is about a man named Harry. In the story, Harry is a writer who feels as if he has wasted his life. He had lived off his wealthy wife instead of doing what he loved and for that he has regrets. Harry had gone to Africa to find himself and to fix his mistakes, but while there he gets injured and infection sets up in his leg. Their truck broke down, so they have no way to get help. Harry decides that he is going to wait for  a plane to come rescue him, but the longer he is there the more it makes him realize that help probably is not going to come soon enough. As he lays there on the cot, he begins to have flashbacks about trips that he had made in his life. He relives all of the things that he has seen, what has made him happy, and his regrets. In the end of the story, the infection overcomes Harry’s body and he passes away. Yet in  the movie it appears that Harry is delusional and just does not answer his wife, but he survives. When the plane finally shows up, it turns to a happy mood, a mood of hope for Harry’s future. I cannot say whether the movie hurt the story, but I can say that the movie helped me a lot by putting faces with the characters and helping me to better understand the story. The movie did change Hemingway’s story though and distorted the true meaning of the story.

http://way2enjoy.com/jquery/threadpreview/1588001

There are many stories in the world that end up being butchered when they are transferred into movies. Many times movies completely change the story when they transfer it into motion picture. I have read many stories that have been made into movies such as, “Pretty Little Liars”, “The Lying Game”, All of the Harry Potter movies, All of the Twilight movies, “Because of Winn Dixie”, “Bridge to Terabithia”, and many more. I believe that to actually capture the author’s story and meaning, a person would have to read the book, otherwise you may get a distorted and watered down version of the story. Books have a lot more in them that movies leave out. I can name a few movies that were completely different from the book or else they left out what I believed to be vital information. I absolutely hated the movie “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, yet I loved the book. The movie producers took and omitted a lot of vital information from the book, when making the movie. I was completely irked by this fact. A lot of things did not make sense after they had omitted so much. They even switched up the roles of some of the characters creating confusion for the viewers who had already read the book. Other movies/ television series that were different from the book were “Pretty Little Liars” and “The Lying Game”. My favorite television series is “The Lying Game” and I have also read the book.

Here is a short book vs. movie review about “The Lying Game”:

The television series “The Lying Game” was really good and it really inspired me to read the books. When I began the book, I got a little frustrated at how different the stories really were. The only thing that seemed to really resemble the movie was the fact that all of the characters had the same names. The story line was completely different. The show was about a girl that discovered that she had a twin and worked really hard to find her. She found her via facebook. One twin was very wealthy and the other twin had grown up in foster care. The book on the other hand was completely different. The twin that had grown up in foster care (Emma) came upon a movie on the internet showing a girl with the same face as hers being strangled to death. Emma look up her sister on facebook and decided to go meet her, but when she went to meet her, she discovered that her twin had been murdered. She now has to find out who her sisters killer is. I personally love both sides of the story, but I believe that they stories should have been completely separate and not given the same name because they are completely different. In my opinion, this was hurtful to the original authors meaning. There was a reason that the author wrote about the girl being murdered instead of just reuniting long lost twins.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798274/

In my opinion, the book is always better. I will always read the book version of a movie if it is available. I like to see the differences and to get farther into the stories. I think that movies can be both hurtful and helpful. Movies give people a good visual of the characters in the story and sometimes show things differently than you see them in your mind, but movie producers often alter the stories. They add characters or take away characters. They add and take away the story. They simply take the story and twist it to work well with what they are throwing in so that you do not notice what was taken out, which sometimes leaves people confused if they have already read the story before. I know that many times I have went and reread the book after watching a movie to remember facts about what actually happened.

Why did Stanley seem to change so much in the story?

In the story “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Stanley Kowalski was one of the main characters. He was the husband of Stella Kowalski. In my opinion, he changed very dramatically from the beginning to the end of the story. In the beginning, he seemed to be a loving caring husband, who would do anything for his wife, but by the end everything had changed. In the end of the story, Stanley had turned into somewhat of a monster. Stanley had raped his sister-in-law, Blanche, and had beaten his wife, Stella. Stanley had no remorse for what he had done. I believe that Stanley had changed so much because he did not like Blanche. She made him crazy and made Stella rebel a little more, which Stanley did not like at all. Stanley had been to war and sometimes the soldiers can be affected greatly by what they have seen. Stanley did not like it that Blanche thought so much of herself and even thought of herself as better than him. Stanley and Stella could have an illusionists  relationship, it may appear on the outside that everything is wonderful and that they truly love one another, but on the inside they could have a terrible marriage.

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/Meanies_of_lifeBullies?pg=4

Stella goes along with everything that Stanley says and he pretty much calls the shots in the relationship. Stanley is a man of habit and structure. He wants to maintain the typical male gender role in his home, he enjoys spending time with his male friends, and his sexual relationship with his wife is very important. Stella seems happy to do all of these things for her husband. Problems arise when Blanche shows up with her “elitist” attitude. Stanley begins to notice a change in Stella’s attitude and he does not fell like the king that he thought he was anymore. Stella begins to trespass into his territory by ordering him around, but he believes that he is the dominant one.  Stanley starts showing his true self when he starts doing small mean things to Blanche. He starts by looking to find things to bring her down, he digs into her past and finds evidence that she is not as innocent as she says. He messes up her relationship with Mitch. Stanley feels like Stella is now looking down on him and when he feels like he is being mistreated, he gets aggressive and throws anything he can reach and break dishes and such. Sex is a big part of Stanley and Stella’s marriage and he feels like he cannot do what he wants because Blanche is there, he feels like his marriage is suffering because of Blanche. http://www.shmoop.com/streetcar-named-desire/stanley-kowalski.html

 

A scene from the movie after Stanley had hit Stella (showing his “soft side”):

Blanche seems to bring out the worst in Stanley. He cannot stand her though he tries to be polite to her. He gets thrown into a situation where he must get along with Blanche because she has nowhere else to go. He tolerates her, but slowly he starts to snap. Blanche has always done as she pleased without thinking of anyone else. Stanley gets very mad when she plays music during his poker game with his friends. He gets so angry that he throws her radio out the window and then out of anger hits his wife when she tries to take up for Blanche.  Stanley cannot stand how Blanche thinks that she is so much better than him and thinks that her sister can do better. Stanley likes to feel superior. he wants to be in control and Blanche challenges that as Stella begins to listen to her more and more. http://callybeckley.weebly.com/streetcar–character-profiles.html

 

When I think of Stanley, my mind automatically jumps to a present day character very similar to him. Mitch Hiller is a character in the movie “Enough”.  In the beginning of this movie, Mitch Hiller seems to be a very sweet and lovely husband. He fought hard to get his wife and took good care of her. He liked to be in control and for her to do things on his terms, but his wife decided to step out of the norm and protest the fact that he had been cheating on her. He did not like her stepping over him and he began to abuse her when he got angry or agitated. His true self leaked out and showed what kind of person he really was.

Mitch Hiller (Enough)

http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/billy-campbell-picture-12006109.htm

What was Langston Hughes’ life like in the Modern Period and how was his work viewed?

The modern period began in 1910 and ended in 1945. Langston Hughes was one poet that was very influential during this time, though people did not realize his greatness during this time. Langston Hughes was first recognized in the 1920s, during a time known as the ‘Harlem Renaissance”. A journalist discovered Langston Hughes and was inspired by his writing, so he wrote up an article about him. In the article, Du Bose Heyward told of how great and beautiful Hughes’ poetry really was and how he was going to be a negro poet that would be “well worth watching”. Despite Heyward’s statement, Langston Hughes endured much criticism from the well-known black intellectuals for portraying the unattractive view of black life. Many people referred to his poems as trash. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/langston-hughes

http://byricardomarcenaro.blogspot.com/2013/10/poetry-langston-hughes-dream-variations.html

Hughes claimed that Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman were his primary influences. Hughes is known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life. Hughes wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry. He is even known for his love of jazz, in which influenced his writing. His life and work were very important in shaping the artistic contributions in the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes was very different from other black writers of this time. He did not want to differentiate from personal experience and the common experience of Black America. He wanted to tell the stories of Black Americans in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their suffering, their love of music, laughter, and language. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83

Here is a short video about the career of Langston Hughes:

Hughes had a great love of writing. He became well known at the age of twenty four, but began writing much sooner than that. Hughes wrote up until his death in 1967. Hughes’ father tried to get him to pursue a different career and even paid for him to attend college, but Hughes dropped out soon after to continue his writing. In June 1921, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was the very first of Langston Hughes’ poems to even get published and it was also his most famous poem. Langston Hughes wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of editorial and documentary fiction, twenty plays, children’s poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts, and a dozen magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies. http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html

http://www.ala.org/emiert/cskbookawards/recipients

Langston Hughes was a great influence during his life.  I believe that he did not want the blacks to be ashamed of where they came from, but to show that they were much stronger and that they could get past all of the suffering that they were or had endured during their lifetime. In his writing, he wanted to show that music and dancing made them happy. Langston Hughes wanted to stay away from personal experiences, so that he could portray what life was like for all blacks not just his one side of the situation. Even though people did not realize how great and talented Langston Hughes was at the time, they all seemed to learn to appreciate his writing. Hughes’ writing appealed to people of all races and each learned to embrace his love of writing.

“Ghost House” by Robert Frost

As I was searching for a Robert Frost poem, this title caught my eye. The title alone interested me. As I began reading the poem, I tried to understand what this poem was about. From my interpretation of the poem, it sounds as if the speaker is actually deceased. He mentions that the house is no longer there. It only has the cellar walls; therefore, no one can actually live in this house. I believe that the speaker had lived in the house when he was alive. The particular line that made me think maybe he was deceased was this one: “Those stones out under the low-limbed tree Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar”. Maybe the speaker is the ghost that is keeping an eye on the old house that he once lived in. Frost also mentions the “mute folk”, which in my opinion could be the other people buried next to him. He describes them as tireless, but slow and sad. The tone of this poem is very sad and dreary.

http://maureentillman.blogspot.com/2010/10/ghost-house-by-robert-frost.html

It was very difficult to find other people’s take on this poem, but I did find some interpretations that were very different from mine. In these interpretations, the analysts all believe that Frost was writing about himself in particular, but I do not believe that is so. The analysis suggests other things that I had not considered, but did; however, make sense. In the analysis, the analyst put a lot more thought into the whippoorwill, which I had not really considered to have much meaning. The analyst mentioned that there was a belief in New England that the whippoorwill senses a soul that is about to depart and waits to capture it as the soul flees the body. I decided to look into the meaning behind the whippoorwill and discovered that many American Indians believed that hearing the cry of a whippoorwill was a sign of ill fortune or death. This particular bird played a huge part in this poem. In my opinion, Frost was trying to let the reader know why the person had returned to the old house. Maybe the deceased person had a family member that was going to pass and meet him there or perhaps to help us understand that the speaker was dead. http://www.eliteskills.com/c/490

A very interesting and visual reading of the poem “Ghost House”:

While researching other people’s views on this poem, I found a pretty simple, yet understandable analysis. I found another blog where someone wrote about this poem, but did not think so deeply into the meaning. This person simply looked and read the words for what they were, but looked more into Frost’s background for the information. The analyst looked at the word dwell and assumed that the ghost lived in the ruins of the cellar, though just like me he realized that the speaker was in fact dead. Also, the analyst interprets the tireless, sad people to be a young boy and a young girl. Other analysts seemed to think that the people standing in the graveyard was in fact Frosts’ mother and father. I, on the other hand, thought that the two people may have just been some family members that had passed away before him; therefore, he did not recognize them. The analyst also believes that this poem is more about loneliness, in which I interpreted it to be more about hurt and confusion. The speaker remembered the house in which he had once lived, but he did not remember it in the way that he was now seeing it. http://happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/10/number-291-robert-frost-ghost-house.html

http://ginagwen.com/blog/2011/01/daily-drawing-end-of-january/

I really enjoyed writing this blog and reading this poem. I had no idea I could enjoy a poem so much, just because I normally do not understand them very well. I am really into ghost stories and that is exactly why the title of this poem caught my attention. I also thought it was very interesting to find out about the myths of the whippoorwill. I am not a big poetry fan, but I do however like a few of Robert Frost’s poems as they do require you to put a little thought into them. “Ghost House”, in my opinion, was written in a way to represent thing in Frost’s personal life, but I do not believe that he was the speaker in the poem. I do believe that maybe he sometimes wished that he was dead, at this time he had just lost his wife and a child and was very sad and tireless, just as he had described the two people in the poem. In the poem the speaker had an aching heart, in a way I think that Frost may have been trying to point out that death does not fully separate you from the worries of life.

Henry David Thoreau and “Civil Disobedience”

In my opinion, Henry David Thoreau is one of the most important and well known protest writers of all time. He was a very influential man in his time and spoke out about what he believed in without a care in the world. One of his most famous writings was “Civil Disobedience”, where he spoke about about the corruption of the government. It was an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Henry David Thoreau was a very opinionated man and stated facts as well as his beliefs on any subject that he disagreed with. He referred to the government as an “unjust government”. I have to say that that statement is still true nearly 200 years later even though a lot has changed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born and raised in Concord Massachusetts on July 12, 1817. He had 3 siblings: John, Helen, and Sophia. Thoreau was a very smart man and attended Harvard College from which he graduated in 1837. He was not very sure as to what he actually wanted to do with his life after all of the schooling, but decided to go into education with his brother. Thoreau was also good friends with another famous writer by the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson acted as a mentor to Thoreau and introduced him to Transcendentalism. Emerson also used his influence to get some of Thoreau’s works noticed. Thoreau lived in a place called Walden pond, which was some land that Emerson owned. http://www.biography.com/people/henry-david-thoreau-9506784

While Thoreau was living at Walden Pond, he had a run in with the law because he refused to pay a poll tax and had to spend one night in jail. This run in with the law led him to write his most famous essay, “Civil Disobedience”.  Thoreau held deeply felt political views about slavery and the Mexican-American War. He made a strong case for acting on his own beliefs instead of the beliefs of the government. He strongly believed that if you followed the rules of the government instead of what you believed that you were just as guilty as them because you were not standing up for your beliefs. He said, “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right”. Since the publication of “Civil Disobedience”, many leaders of protest movements have been influenced around the world. this non-violent approach to political and social resistance has influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Ghandi.  http://www.biography.com/people/henry-david-thoreau-9506784?page=2

Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience:

It is very apparent that Thoreau truly stood up for what he believed in. He got arrested because he did not believe that he should have to pay the poll taxes. Thoreau took a stand for something that he deemed important. He looked at the government as evil and believed that any of the people who had anything to do with it or followed the rules and laws of the government were “evil- doers”. Thoreau was a well educated man and had some very influential people in his life. As I stated in the second paragraph, Thoreau did not know what to do other than what he saw as right.

What was life like in the time that Ida Wells Barnett lived?

I have always been interested in the historical aspects of things. Personally, I have always been interested in the ways that things were in the “old days”. It is great to see how far the world has came. When I discovered that Ida Wells Barnett was an African American woman from the 1800s, I knew that I would want to learn more about the history of her time and what it was like for African Americans then. Just from reading “Mob Rule”, it is clear that many sad and horrible events went on in her time.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mob-rules-in-new-orleans-robert-charles-and-his-fight-to-death-the-story-of-his-life-burning-human-beings-alive-other-lynchings-statistics-ida-b-wells-barnett/1104289638?ean=2940012765673

Mob Rule was written and published in 1900. In the year 1900, a race riot was sparked by a shoot-out between the police and a negro laborer in New Orleans. It was called the Robert Charles Riot. It happened on July 23rd and lasted for four days. Twelve African Americans and seven whites were killed. On August 23rd, the National Negro Business League was founded in Boston by Booker T. Washington to promote business enterprise.  By this time nearly two- thirds of the land owners in the Mississippi Delta were black farmers, most of who had bought and cleared the land after the Civil War. After the Civil War, 30,000 blacks were trained to teach and played a huge factor in helping more than half of the African American population reach literacy by 1900. The act of 1898 was amended and stated that railroads were not required to have second class coaches. http://www.blackpast.org/timelines/african-american-history-timeline-1800-1900

Here is a video that shows some of the great achievements of African Americans of this time despite all that was going on in the United States:

In the early 1900s, black were treated awful and even thought they had their own homes they still did not feel free. Neither male or females had any rights, they could not vote and women had no say in anything that happened out side of the home. People still committed hate crimes against them such as burning their houses to the ground. even when African Americans were granted more rights, those rights were still not recognized by the government which led to more riots and alliances. Religion played a big role in the African Americans lives at this time because in the churches they were about to be themselves and speak freely. Music was also a big factor in the lives of African Americans. Blues music emerged from work songs, folklore, and spirituals that showed the difficulties of the lives of African Americans. http://dmckenn2.umwblogs.org/the-color-purple/page-5/

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/documented-rights/exhibit/section2/detail/virginia-cabin.html

The text was most definitely shaped perfectly around this time and what was going on in Ida Wells Barnett’s life. She based her story around the Robert Charles Riots and started her story off about the true story and how the fight came to be. She used her wisdom and writing ability to tell what really happens and goes on when others not paying attention. she even went as far as to share the newspapers articles in her book. She wanted all the readers to know what was going on and to point out the differences in each different article that she had read. Times were not easy for African Americans during this time and Ida Wells Barnett expressed this very well in her writing.

How many children did Mark Twain have? Did they grow up to be a big success like their father?

As I was reading Mark Twain’s biography, I saw that he had children. I began to wonder if his children had grown up to be as much of a success as their father. Parents often have a big influence over their children, so I thought maybe Mark Twain’s children had the same love of writing as their brilliant father. I found out that none of Mark Twain’s children were a huge success, although one did marry a fairly successful man.  Twain had four children; three girls and one boy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1267727/Mark-Twain-tribute-daughter-auctioned.html

Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon on February 2, 1870 and they were considered to be one of  the literary world’s most famous love matches.  Soon after they married, they conceived their first child, Langdon Clemens, who was born prematurely in 1870, but died soon after at age 2. In 1972, they had their first daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens, who was deemed Mark Twain’s favorite child.  She passed away at the age of 24 from Spinal Meningitis. In 1974, his second daughter, Clara Clemens, was born. She was the only one of Mark Twain’s children to marry and have a child. In 1880, his third daughter, Jane Clemens, was born. She drowned in her bathtub at the young age of 29. She suffered from epilepsy and her seizure caused her to drown. http://www.marktwainonline.com/site/577770/page/924843

This is a mini biography of Mark Twain:

Clara Clemens married first pianist and conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch. He was also the father of her daughter, Nina. After Gabrilowitsch’s death, she married a man by the name of Jacques Samossoud. In her adult years, she wrote a biography of her father and her late husband. Susan Clemens began writing a biography of her father when she was only 13 years old. She included letters that her father had written and family stories that she found important. Jane Clemens was her father’s own personal secretary in her last few months of life. http://www.marktwainhouse.org/man/twains_children.php

http://thisismarktwain.com/autobiography/199.html

From what I read, it is very apparent that Mark Twain did influence his children. Two of his children wrote biographies and the other was a secretary for her father. His children were very smart and had plans for their futures. Two attended colleges, but their plans were cut short due to their untimely deaths. In this, I also learned that Clara Clemens’ daughter, Nina, died at the age of 55. She had never married and never had children; therefore, Mark Twain has no direct descendents.

 

 

What were Walt Whitman’s views on slavery?

As I was reading a biography about Walt Whitman, I came across something that mentioned the fact that  Whitman was a known abolitionist. That sentence got me interested in what Whitman’s actual views on slavery were. An abolitionist is a person who wants to end something, in Whitman’s case, he wanted to end slavery. When I read about him being an abolitionist, I automatically assumed that he was one of the few people in his time that disagreed with slavery, but I discovered that I was wrong. He had different reasons for choosing to abolish slavery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman

Whitman’s views on slavery were not much different from the average Americans’ views in his time. His great grandfather had owned slaves and Whitman did not have a high opinion of the people with African decent. Though, Whitman saw absolute slavery as disgusting and pitied the people in servitude. Some people say that he often referred to slaves in his poetry. The references were in “The Sleepers”, “Song of Myself”, and “Leaves of Grass”. Whitman decided to side with the abolitionists after he saw that the issue of slavery was threatening to tear the nation apart. He had not changed his views on race. Whitman saw what the issue was doing and decided that it was not worth the fight, though the Civil War still broke out and Whitman changed his interest to the suffering of soldiers on both sides. Despite his views on slavery and race, Whitman has influenced many notable African Americans writers, such as Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and June Jordan. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/whitman/more/e_race.hthttps://michaelasmommyblog.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1386&action=editml

This is a video of Whitman reading the words of his poem “The Sleepers”:

One source that I found said that it is questionable about how Whitman really felt about slavery and African Americans. In “Leaves of Grass”, he appears that he opposes slavery by including African Americans into the “ideal, multiracial republic”. He also portrayed them as beautiful, dignified, and intelligent. In many other of Whitman’s poems, he appeared to believe that blacks were inferior to whites and show little tolerance for the abolition of slavery. Whitman once wrote a novel about a man traveling down to the south and meeting a slave owner and a beautiful Creole slave woman who was sexually alluring, yet also vengeful and violent, showing that he fed into racist stereotypes. http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_51.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789927

Although it is not very clear as to if Walt Whitman was a racist man or not, it is clear that he does not believe in interracial relationships. It seems to me that Whitman did not really agree with slavery, but he was also influenced by the people around him. Whitman only chose to abolish slavery thinking that a war was just not worth it. Whitman never owned any slaves, though his great-grandfather owned them until it was prohibited in New York. In my opinion, Whitman seemed a little back and forth on what he thought about slavery and the abolishing of it.

Why did Emily Dickinson live such a secluded life?

After reading Emily Dickinson’s biography, I began to wonder what lead to her life of seclusion.  Dickinson appeared to be a very depressed and morbid woman. Her poems showed a great interest in death and dark things. Her poems expressed a lot of what I think was linked with her personal experiences with death. In one of Dickinson’s poems, she even made a reference to being ready when death came to take  her. I think that Dickinson may have been a depressed woman, who decided that her life would be better if she just spent it alone.

http://www.history.com/photos/women-in-the-arts/photo15

Emily Dickinson began her life of seclusion in the early 1850s, when she was only twenty years old. It began with the death of many close friends and mentors. The death of the principal of Amherst Academy, Leonard Humphrey, who was both a friend and mentor to Dickinson, furthered her depression and pushed her further into seclusion. She wrote to a friend about the tragic death of Mr. Humphrey and how it made her feel. Dickinson’s mother became very ill at the end of the 1850s and she required constant attention. Dickinson had to stay home to care for her sick mother. Her father noticed that she was becoming more seclusive as the years wore on and decided to build her a conservatory, so that she could garden, but Dickinson only used it as a quiet place to write her poetry. By the end of the 1850s, Dickinson began to live a total life of seclusion. She mainly wrote letters to people that she wanted to talk to. She had very little contact with anyone other than close family. http://www.egs.edu/library/emily-dickinson/biography/

As I researched further, I learned other things about Dickinson’s life of seclusion. She was a sickly woman. I also discovered that along with Dickinson’s seclusion, she never once expressed any concern or thoughts about politics. At the beginning of the Civil War, she chose not to help the war in anyway nor comment on it. She had lost too many people close to her because of war, which pushed her into to depression and kept her stressed. She did not want anything to do with the war whether it helped or hindered. The website defined Ms. Dickinson as a “prolific letter writer”. She wrote thousands of letters and it became her only way of communication with the outside world. Death of people close to her was a pretty common thing throughout her life, though she did not handle it well. After the death of her nephew, she had sunk into such a deep depression that it led to her premature death along with the help from Bright’s disease. http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/emily_dickinson.html

http://izquotes.com/quote/224336

Emily Dickinson was a very successful woman who lived her life secluded from the world. She could not bear the pain of living in a world were death happened so often. Ms. Dickinson lived in her fathers’ home until the day that she died. She had a hard life and dealt with many issues, including caring for her mother. She watched many people around her come and go. Her beautiful yet morbid poems were not seen by the public eye until after her death.