week 8

October 17 and 19

The Bear, by William Faulkner

• a good hunting story
• he is famous for long, meandering sentences
• Boon: one of his greatest characters

'Ode on the Grecian Urn' by John Keats

• about truth, not girls
• work of art inspired by a boy chasing a girl
• they are frozen in time, he will always chase her
• there is only one truth
• pride, honor, courage, and humility are all real
• "beauty is truth, and truth is beauty"

Important images from "Dead Man" and "The New World"

• the land mirroring the sky
• this is the only simile in the bible: Exodus 24:10:

" Under his feet was something like pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself"

DEAD MAN:

• they enter the world of the dead on train #29
• fawn killed (innocent) by old and corrupt
• William Blake lays down with it and gets it's blood on him- he understands how the old world works
• they get shot through the heart while they are having a lovers quarrel
• The Indian knows more than WB because he was abducted and was taught about Homer and poetry
• based on the life of the poet William Blake
• All about the Native Americans and the relationship between them- discovered the vision and the intelligence of them
• he is an accountant from Cleveland: he goes through a metamorphosis, an initiation

Important people for test:

• William Blake
• Ralph Ellison
• Bildungsroman
• Dead Man
• far-fetched

2 great prose writers:

1. Ernest Hemingway: simple, direct, economical dialect

• paratactic: lots of things held together with the word 'and, like deep focus
• like the New Testament writing styles

2. William Faulkner: long sentences with a specific rhythm

• like the Old Testament writing styles

'energy is eternal delight' ~William Blake

Motive for Metaphor:

• Ulysses (Odysseus) and Penelope: a woman waiting for her husband
• 'Was is Ulysses? or just the warmth of the sun on her pillow?'
• Men rising up to the zenith, then going back down again
• William Blake and Wallace Stevens are alike: "if the doors of perception were cleansed, then everything appears the way it really is"
• Aldous Huxley "The Doors of Perception"

ontology: the study of being

Primal: 'Bear, Man, and God'

1. separation of the neophyte from his family
2. retreat into the forest (zone of unfarmiliarity), symbolizes death
3. need to experience death- beyond the shade
4. wild animal conducts them in what they need to do- swallowed by a creature ex) Jonah, Pinocchio, 'Invisible Man' in the basement

men's 'rights of passage are public, women's are not:

• patriotical society
• men aren't supposed to know
• women are mysterious

'Poetry is a destructive force'