"Losses" Randal Jarrell

"Losses" Randal Jarrell

While reading “Losses” by Randal Jarrell, I experience strong feelings related to a bloody war- sadness, fear, tragedy and helplessness. Being the poem’s main topic, Death, itself, evokes powerful and disturbing images. Dark and stormy skies, shootings and bomb attacks and the image of hundreds of dead bodies lying on the floor, come all to my mind, leaving a feeling of sorrow.  Also, the poem suggests a plaintive melody, one that immediately stirs deep and genuine emotions.
Jarrell’s poem states all different “kinds of death” that a war can cause. Some people die by accident while training, others in conflict and only the “lucky” ones are awarded medals.  Life seems to have no meaning. Soldiers die and nobody realises the importance of that.

In my opinion, this poem can be compared with “To the Lighthouse”, by Virgina Woolf, in the sense that both deal with the topics of “death” and “war”. In “Time Passes,” Virginia Woolf records the deaths of three major characters: Mrs. Ramsay, who dies of unspecified causes, her daughter Prue, who dies as a result of childbirth and her son Andrew, who dies in war- “A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous”.  I think that the phrase “Twenty or thirty young men were blown up”, ironically suggests, just as the poem, disregard for the deaths of these soldiers. Here again, “life” has no meaning and “death” becomes simply a matter of statistics.

Postmodernism

After watching the trailers of “War Games” and “Wag the Dog”, I could identify some of the characteristics of Postmodernism presented by Mary Klages.
 

“War Games”, for instance, clearly illustrates one of the features of postmodern culture- the lack of distinction between game and reality. Here, a boy finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.  Similarly, the film “The Matrix”, presents the audience with a new and different reality, i.e the “true” nature of people’s reality. The film creates a world which becomes more “real” than the real world, making the audience think, as Klages states, that the “real world” is itself a constructed hyperreality.

The concept of hyperreality is also presented in the film “Wag the Dog”, in which a war is “fabricated” in order to cover-up a presidential sex-scandal. In this case, a false reality is presented as true, i.e the “real” reality. What appears in the screen becomes more real than what is actually happening in the world. And this idea is clearly related to Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum- the fact that the world has been replaced by a copy world, where people passively take that copy as the original. As Baudrillard suggests what’s on T.V. IS what is “real”, is the only reality we can know. We can’t be sure whether that reality is “really” happening.

TTL: Time Passes

Time Passes

Chapter 9

“The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder…”

I have chosen this quotation because I think it is really interesting how Virginia Woolf succeeds in dehumanizing the Ramsays’ house, portraying a world where death and desolation reign supreme. Human agency seems to have been superseded by that of natural elements- night, winter, waves, wind, storms. We, as readers can see, through the eyes of the house, how these elements interact and affect the house leaving a sense of emptiness and devastation.

 Woolf experiments with space and time. She makes the reader sense the span of ten years going by before the house is occupied again. As she does not present a definite account of ten years passing, we must actively perceive the text and move into a different frame of mind beyond the absolute of knowing and into one of sensing and perceiving.

I believe that the scene in chapter 7 “In spring the garden urns... and so terrible” is quite effective. By describing a setting that is really contradictory, Woolf makes us feel both, the stillness of the day and the chaos of the night. This scene clearly leaves the reader with mixed feelings.

Carvel Collins

Carvel Collins bases his literary analysis of “The Turn of the Screw” on those controversial ambiguities which have generated so many discussions among critics. Collins agrees with Wilson in that the story would be dull without its ambiguities and he suggests an additional one- according to him, Douglas and Miles are the same person. This interpretation strengthens Wilson’s view about Miles’ death- the fact that Miles does not die at the end of the story as the Governess says. Both critics believe that the Governess is an inaccurate witness and a victim of hallucinations.

In order to support his interpretation, Collins states various similarities from the plot: 

•    Only Douglas’ last name appears/ Only Miles’ first name appears.

•  Douglas is ten years younger than the Governess/ Miles is ten when the Governess is twenty.

• The woman is the governess of Miles’ sister when Miles comes home from boarding school/ When Douglas comes home from college he talks with the Governess who has been his sister’s governess.

Moreover, Collins believes that by carefully arranging details, Henry James opens the possibility of considering yet another ambiguity: that the Governess’ manuscript is a clear evidence of her mental illness.

We should bear in mind that Collins’ reading of the story is a possible one. He presents it as a “meaningful ambiguity” . Collins is doing what James expected from critics to do- “filling the blanks from their own imaginations”

Collins is clearly in the non-apparitionist camp, but he acknowledges that no interpretation can be proven to be exclusively correct. In this sense I agree with him. I believe “The Turn of the Screw” allows readers to develop countless of different -and even opposing- readings, all valid.  
The richness of this story is precisely in the understanding of how it works.

Pattern Poem: The Hero Poem

 Mahatma Gandhi
Courageous, humble, wise
“Father of the Nation”
Helping, protesting, struggling
In British ruled India The one who taught real peace in the world.

I've chosen The Hero Poem because I find it interesting to write about a person I admire. Besides the structure is really easy to follow. Hope you enjoy it!