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“A Simple Heart” is about a servant who lives a traumatic life because of her accepting and passive life. Her passive and selfless personality is the reason why people take advantage of her. After she loses the dearest people in her life, she still continued to live on. My love for her is bittersweet, when reading this story, I wanted to help and smack her at the same time. Passive people really gets me agitated because I see what people do to them, and they don’t do anything about it. After all the pain and suffering, I would think she would change. Especially when she loses her parrot, the only thing that didn’t take advantage of her.
Once I read about how Felicite worshipped the stuffed parrot, I knew she was crazy. But as the story continued, I saw how Feicite connected the parrot to Christ. I found it quite sad. Because Felicite’s life was entirely based on connections and relationships, when the parrot died, she wasn’t able to let go. I also noticed religion was predominant in the story and I know Christ is preached about concerning forgiveness. The idea that “no matter what we do, Christ would always still love us at the end” is very forgiving. . I think Felicite saw the parrot as Christ because she unconsciously wanted forgiveness. Unlike all the other deaths, it was Felicite’s fault that the parrot died; she left the parrot out in the cold. By worshipping the parrot, Felicite is asking for forgiveness because of her tremendous guilt. Hell, I would do the same too (not stuff the parrot, but pray for them every night for forgiveness)!
This story reminds me of the movie “Yes Man” starring Jim Carrey. The movie is about how the main character Carl lives a lonely life because he rejects any and every offer that comes his way (a “no man”) after his divorce. It is not till his best friend Nick persuades him to take a motivational seminar. The motivation seminar called “yes!” convinces him to say yes to everyone and anyone, and by doing that, there’s a guarantee he wont be lonely. In a way this reminds me of Felicite’s story, just without all the comedic stuff. If Carl says no, bad luck leans toward his way. It is like god is trying to convince Carl to always say yes. The idea is saying yes=good. Soon Carl couldn’t stop himself from saying yes, as if it was a permanent habit. I think Felicite has that idea in her head. Saying yes is what makes people happy and even though there are a lot of downsides for Felicite, she cannot find it in her heart to say no. I think the thoughts she have is if Felicite starts saying no to people, she would end up lonely.
I learned that there are always going to be people who have similar characteristics like Felicite. The author showed Felicite’s pushover personality in extremes. I don’t know whether to pity it or detest it. Everything from her lost love to the death of her beloved parrot is just very. .. depressing. But, it is nice to hear she died happy at the end of the book, as weird as it sounds …
Ode on a Grecian Urn is a detestable piece of romantic subjectivity. Romanticism is the acceptance of the subjective, individual experience as if it were the metaphysical truth underlying all existence. In this sentiment I find the most grotesque of human inclinations. To arrogantly believe that our feelings are tantamount to mathematical proof and qualify as fundamental truth is the most abhorrent of sins. The specific manifestation of this in Ode on a Grecian Urn is found on the last two lines in the last stanza of the poem, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” What arrogance a hypothetical divine being would have to impart on human beings. Truly, our beings would have to be the exact reincarnations of god in order for us to feel metaphysical truth. How ridiculous such a notion is!
Such romantics would revel in the polarities of emotion. Nazi’s commitment to their cause would be as glorious as a pious man’s spirituality. Despite this seemingly objective accommodation of all such emotions there is an impetus within myself to immediately reject such a reverie. I begin to counter this sentiment with other achievements that have been facilitated by man’s reason, yet a fundamental flaw is discovered in any such attempt. If one begins to speak within the confines of human existence about objective truths then one can never come to accept the equally important achievements of ants, or bulls, or any other entity in the universe. Objectivity is all encompassing. It cannot be limited by the confines of any given function be it man or beast. I doubt even the assertion that we understand what all encompassing may entail. What would have to be incorporated into our opinions about existence in order to strive for truth? All such questions I could not even begin to fathom. Not Mr. Keats though. This individual feels it necessary to utterly glorify a piece of classical art and say in truly Platonic fashion that it represents an ideal.
I am not one for such sentimentality. Yet, I am not willing to immediately accept the cold and logical interpretation of truth that would be expressed by an enlightenment inspired natural philosopher. I am willing to permit the accommodation of our experience into the whole which is objectivity. That is to say, I believe that there is a place for human emotions in truth yet that it is equivalent to a number in infinity. Human emotion cannot occupy more than an ant’s inclination to reproduce and protect its colony. From this, I believe that Ode on a Grecian Urn can be modified to account for “true” objectivity. In instances were, “[the] Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss…” we can also describe how the sparrow will never return to its nest or the sun the horizon. Only the last two lines must be discarded or infinitely many similar statements must be made for me to be satisfied with this poem. Hopefully, I did not sound insensitive in this tirade upon a mere fragment of this poem. I simply believed such a homo-centric view of the world is fundamentally false.
If only I knew that people in Russia have a link between a nose and a man’s private part…maybe I would’ve laughed a little more when I was reading “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol. Kovalyov, a collegiate assessor, wakes up one day and finds his nose not on his face. When I read the text I immediately thought of a comedy central skit done by Drew Carey and his blue-collar crew. The skit entails a bunch of men sitting outside a house and talking about each other’s “deck,” that is, patio deck, and the comedy revolves around their innuendos of the word “deck” to a man’s private part. Here’s the video:
I enjoyed this skit because I knew what the comedians were indirectly talking about and once I made that link between the nose and ehehem, I also see what Gogol was talking about. He mocks the bureaucracy of the government and their pointless jobs. He does this in an imaginative way but still keeps his message clear; like the comedians frequently repeating the word “deck” with different punch lines. When we have the Nose dressed up as a nobleman and such (and at a higher position than Kovalyov himself) carousing through the town and heading to church, the message of Gogol’s mockery is clear. Incorporated in his message is the ease of ascending up the social ladder because the nose is at a higher position than Kovalyov probably by means of marriage or as simple as sleeping with a wealthy lady. And as I’m writing this, I just realized why the Russians probably associate the two together: if a man stands straight with his arms at his side and if we get a sideways view of him, then we’ll notice that the nose naturally sticks out and the man’s private part can potentially stick out. This “sticking out” quality attached to a message is a formula for success. Therefore, the effect of the story wouldn’t be as strong. Likewise, I don’t think I would be laughing as much at the comedy skit if they weren’t alluding to the same thing as before.
So the recipe is quite simple: mix a little ordinary with a hint of the extraordinary and you got yourself a bestseller. In fact, I read that Gogol is known for making the ordinary extraordinary. Once again, my blue-collar boys do that too. And speaking of blue-collar, the jobs that Gogol is making fun of are useless and frivolous, unlike some blue-collar job that involve manual labor on top a short lunch breaks and little pay.
Maybe Gogol is also mocking the church-goers. Especially of the scene with the nose attending a church event, relaying somehow that even those most devout and pure individuals are touched by something universal to humans. Lastly, it seems that Kovalyov chasing his nose means that we are driven by our natural instincts and sometimes is suppressed by society. I’m not a Freudian but if Kovalyov has a weird dream like he did, then maybe this bachelor is holding some repressed urge to just get down and dirty with one of his acquaintances…Over and out
Reading The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe, I focused on the importance of reciprocal ownership of body parts and senses.
The narrator’s fears are based on the projection of his senses and body parts onto the elderly man he victimizes. First, the old man’s clouded eyes reflect the clouded, distorted perspective the narrator has on the situation he describes, starting with his own sanity. He sees himself as sane, logical, even brilliant. The more he labors to convince the reader of his superior sanity, the less sane he appears and it is clear that although the old man is physically unable to see clearly, the narrator can’t stand the appearance of the old man’s distorted body part because he is aware of the flaws in his own perception, at least subconsciously. Second, there is something fascinating about a murderer mistaking an innocent heart for his own. Besides going back to his clouded perception, this serves to equate the murderer’s heart for one which has stopped beating. This narrator is not heartless, he is rather dead at heart. Or, the mistake could imply that the narrator isn’t satisfied with his kill because the old man’s heart is not the one he really wanted to stop. That particular inference also implies that the narrator’s exaggerated sense of superiority over the old man is a reversal of what he actually feels-a sense of utter self-loathing and inferiority.
In this way, it can be said that metaphorically, the murderer and his victim are effectively sharing ownership of the same body parts. That being said, who saw Seven Pounds over winter break? Who else showed up expecting a thrilling mystery only to find themselves on the other side of anticipation in the first 20 minutes?
Despite the slight letdown of the almost immediate disclosure, the secret pertains pretty blatantly to the plot of Tell Tale Heart. The film follows a guilt-ridden Will Smith who intends to farm out his vital organs to seven deserving people in order to atone for a car accident he caused while texting behind the wheel. He is looking to turn his one failure of a life into seven success stories, in honor of the seven people who died in the accident his lol/btw/ttyls caused. Most of the story revolves around the woman he intends to give his heart to and the man he intends to give his eyes to. The situation in the film is morally inverse, but so exactly dissimilar that it is difficult to ignore. By sharing his organs, he is effectively living on through other people, while the narrator, intending to kill the perspective that haunted him, his own, actually killed something healthy. There is also the concept of suffering. Both Will Smith’s character and the narrator were hunting themselves. They both saw death at the end of the struggle and only Will Smith is relieved from his suffering, when in fact he is the one who dies. Life and death face each other in the mirror between these two characters and they move in unison, doing the exact same thing, but exactly backward. One murder results in happiness, the other in misery, yet both Will Smith and the narrator of The Tell Tale Heart are murderers, planning carefully to kill the person they despise most in the world: themselves. The only difference, which sends their plots spiraling in exactly opposite directions, is that the narrator missed his target…by a lot.
Glenn Hoban
While being introduced to Faust I kept asking myself “why does the plot sound so familiar or at least some of its events sounded somehow similar to something I‘ve watched a while ago?”. And then I realized that the plot reminded of the movie Ghost Rider starring Nickolas Cage. The story revolves around Johnny Blaze who, after realizing that his father has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, makes a pact with the devil, who is also, interestingly enough, referred to in the movie as Mephistopheles. He agrees to sell his soul to the devil on the condition that in return the devil would cure his father. He did not realize however that by selling his soul, he will become the devil’s bounty hunter, gathering evil souls on Earth and bringing them to hell. As expected the devil deceives Johnny and his father ends up dying the second day. Johnny leaves his hometown and the girl, Roxanne, he always cared about behind and later becomes a daredevil stunt biker by day and the ghost rider by night.
In both the movie and the play the main characters confide in the devil to do something for them, thinking that they are going to lead a happier life once their wish comes true. However, they soon realize that by making a pact with the devil, their lives turn upside down, and what they thought was going to bring them happiness and ease, becomes their worst nightmare. Faust for instance wants knowledge and young age, but because of his greedy ambitions, he ends up deceiving the one person he truly loved, making her an adulterer and a murderer. During the heated discussion between Faust and the devil, Faust yells at Mephistopheles “ I am stricken to my life’s very marrow by the misery of this one girl and you calmly sneer at the fate of thousands” indicating that Faust is trying to blame Mephistopheles for destroying her, yet he can not deny that he is the one responsible for what became of her. Mephistopheles replies” Who was it that ruined her? I or You?“. At that moment, Faust glares at him speechlessly and demands to be taken to her to free her. He feels guilty not only because he comes to love her truly but also because he knows that before she meets him she was the most righteous and innocent person he has ever known. Johnny, on the other hand, becomes burdened with the curse of working for the devil himself. When he tries to get his life back by reasoning with Mephistopheles, the latter tells him that if he defeats his son Blackheart, who desires to replace his father and to create hell on Earth, he can be freed from the curse. However, Blackheart becomes aware of the deal between Johnny and Mephistopheles so he kills Johnny’s best friend and takes his ex girlfriend hostage. This shows that even though it has been years since Johnny has signed the contract, his actions still affect those close to his heart, putting them in grave danger. In the end, Johnny is able to save Roxanne and defeat Blackheart but refuses to give his powers back to Mephistopheles, instead Johnny tells him that he is going to keep his powers and eventually turns them against him, his reason being that he does not want the devil to trick somebody else into selling his/her soul. Later, he tells Roxanne that he can not be with her, that he needed to be constantly on the road, which shows that even though he paid his debt for what he did, he felt that he did not deserve to have a normal life. Similarly in the play, Faust does not get a happy ending, instead he leaves the prison once Gretchen is forgiven.
It is important to point out however that both characters are different in several ways, one way being that both signed the deal under completely different conditions. Faust signed on the condition that once the devil is able to give him complete satisfaction, Mephistopheles can then claim his soul. Faust continuously strikes the readers as someone greedy and self centered because all his actions throughout the play are based on him thinking about his pleasures. For instance, he does not care that Gretchen looses her innocence for the sake of him getting what he wants. Johnny on the other hand signed the contract only thinking about his father. He is a selfless character who thinks about those around him and takes the full blame for his actions. Even if some for those actions were taken in hopes of making those around him happier. He burdens himself with the devil’s curse to ensure that others do not fall into Mephistopheles trap and naively become enslaved to him.
That one saying…..
“Three wishes, to be exact. And ixnay on the wishing for more wishes. That’s all. Three. Uno, dos, tres. No substitutions, exchanges or refunds,” explained the genie 
to the street rat
in the Disney film Aladdin. I’m sure we all wish we could get a hold of that lamp 
that is married and has who knows how many kids and would be above and beyond a miracle if it ever came true? World peace
? Or maybe something simple like a pony
? Now, second guessing a wish is quite uncommon. When in the moment you truly don’t think twice about what you’re wishing for, I mean why bother when you can have a twenty bedroom house with: five pools, two basketball courts, three movie theaters, a bowling alley, seven personal chefs
, two walk in closets for your shoes and three for your wardrobe, a diamond studded ceilings, gold toilets, a mirror that tells you how beautiful you are
, four pink six door hummers to be exact 
lol, a private jet, yacht and an island named after you?? Little do we know what loop holes come with this wish. Actually little did Aladdin and Faust know what came with theirs.
“I shall with pleasure, without more ado,/Wholly devote myself to you./You shall have my company,/And if you are satisfied,/I shall be your servant, always at your side,”(Faust lines 1644-1648). Basically Mephistopheles is Faust’s genie
(evil voice: Muahahahaha). Faust desired to be with a young and innocent girl named Gretchen. Aladdin wished to be a prince so he can marry the Arabian Princess also known as Jasmine
. To their benefit well at least at the time their wishes came true when Faust was made younger and thus appealing and had an intimate night with Gretchen and also when Aladdin turned into a prince. Of course this would have never happened without the help of their genies. Come on guys your pretty lame to need some ones help to woo 
a girl, simply as our generation would say, “they got no game.” ;)
Now Aladdin, you fool didn’t you know that scumbag Jafar 
would expose you’re not a prince, kidnap Jasmine and become a prince himself? Or Faust, didn’t you know that your one night of intimacy might get Gretchen pregnant, have her put in prison and get her mom and brother killed? I mean come on guys this was all pretty obvious, what were you thinking?! Not only did what they wish for have the girl’s locked up behind bars
or in a life size hour glass
, but it also had them run to their rescue. Now don’t you wish you didn’t wish for what you wished for? Hehe
Simply, we all wish. Wishing is an enchanting and it stirs our imaginations and ambitions. We either wish for the achievable things in life or just the complete impossible ones. However, what we wish for may not always be as we think an advantage to us. Our yearnings may entail consequences that we never saw coming. Therefore, as I watched Aladdin and read Faust, I wished 
I could be there and tell them that one saying, “be careful what you wish for.”
A novel that has a connection with Goethe’s Faust is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In The Scarlet Letter, a young puritan minister in Boston had an affair with Hester Prynne, who immigrated to Boston before her husband, Roger Chillingworth. The affair resulted in Hester Prynne having an illegitimate child, Pearl. Hester Prynne refused to admit who she had an affair with, choosing to suffer her punishment alone. Arthur Dimmesdale suffered from a great deal of guilt that was slowly killing him for several years because he did not reveal his crime while Hester recovered from her shame. While Hester suffered scorn from the townspeople of Boston, Arthur Dimmesdale enjoyed respect because of his position as a puritan minister. Chillingworth arrived in Boston at this time and saw that his wife had had an illegitimate child and eventually found out it was with Dimmesdale. He kept his identity a secret from the townspeople and devoted the rest of his life to trying to kill Dimmesdale by becoming Dimmsdale’s physician and confidant. Dimmesdale eventually admitted his crime and died as a result, which led to the death of Chillingworth. Chillingworth died because taking revenge upon Dimmesdale was the only thing that he had to live for.
There is a connection between The Scarlet Letter and Faust because a similar irony exists between the two literary works. Faust, like Dimmesdale, committed adultery and refused to accept his punishment. Both Gretchen and Hester accepted their punishments for their sins and were forgiven by God while Faust and Dimmesdale suffered more over a longer period of time for failing to take responsibility for their actions. The irony between Faust and The Scarlet Letter includes the roles of Chillingworth and Mephistopheles impact upon the actions of Faust and Dimmesdale. Both Chillingsworth and Mephistopheles are seen as the antagonist in both literary works. Ironically, neither Chillingsworth nor Mephistopheles was directly responsible for Faust and Dimmesdales’ mistakes. While it can be argued that Mephistopheles led Faust to seduce Gretchen, the seduction was a result of Faust making a deal with Mephistopheles through his own free will and allowing Mephistopheles to show him worldly pleasures. Dimmesdale also committed adultery through his own free will. Chillingworth and Mephistopheles are more responsible for the sins of Gretchen and Hester than for the sins of Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. Mephistopheles exposed Faust to Gretchen, who was naïve and innocent, and Chillingworth admitted to being a poor husband to Hester.
All of these similarities between the two literary works point out the irony that is shared by Faust and The Scarlet Letter. The irony is that the characters that were the least to blame for their mistakes were the first to seek redemption. Hester refused to take the opportunity to blame her sin upon both Dimmesdale and Chillingworth by refusing to admit who she had committed adultery with. Similarly Gretchen did not blame Faust for the predicament that he placed her in. Hester accepted the shame and the scorn from the puritan community of Boston and devoted her life to caring for her daughter. Gretchen accepted the punishment of death over running away with Faust. While both Faust and Dimmesdale initially believed that they were escaping their punishments by running away, both came to the realization of their mistakes when it was too late for redemption. Dimmesdale confessed his sin and died as a result and Faust’s soul was momentarily lost to Mephistopheles.
From Harold Ramis’ film Bedazzled (2000):
This is the clip (at a slightly more extended length–including Elliot’s first wish) that we watched in class to compare with the deal that Faust makes with Mephistopheles, and how this contemporary version of the “deal with the devil” presents similarities to and differences from what we see in the play.
One of the things that we discussed in class were the differences between the characterizations of Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser) and Faust, with a lot of you pointing out that Faust is a much more self-confident figure in comparison with Elliot, who just wants to be loved. Along those lines, it’s interesting that Faust’s desires represent something very individualistic–his desires are for his own fulfillment–while Elliot’s, though for his happiness, are much more about a sense of inclusiveness with the world around him.
So, definitely, since we discussed this very quickly in class, please feel free to add additional comments here with things that you may have thought of since class.
–Daphne
I thought it might be a little helpful for the class to have access to some of the media that we looked at together in class when we were talking about the Enlightenment, and its embodiment in art through the Neoclassical movement, and the Romantic works that we looked at as well. For those that might have missed this initial discussion, we were looking on a very visual level–not too concerned with the specific histories of these particular paintings, but more of how they embody the movements that we’re seeing literarily in the texts that we’re looking at in class. Please feel free to offer comments that you have about the paintings here as either a reminder of something that you may have brought up in class or maybe something that you’ve thought of since.
The first painting that we looked at was Jacques-Louis David’s painting, The Oath of the Horatii (1784). Here it is:
Some of the really great comments were notes on the symmetry of the figures as well as the architecture by which the figures are surrounded. This is really relevant to our discussion of Enlightenment ideals as being just that–ideals and idealized notions. In addition, the focus upon symmetry also emphasizes the necessity of order within this period, in a general sense.
There were also a number of interesting points about the power of emotion that we can sense within the painting. I believe it was Morgan who also made a really excellent point about the way in which we could empathize with the emotion within the image but that it didn’t necessarily evoke an emotional response in the viewer, which is very unlike the Romantic paintings that we looked at, the first one of which was Eugène Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus (1827):
A number of you made excellent points about the asymmetrical composition (particularly asymmetrical in comparison to David), the much more vibrant use of color, and the much more evident sense of emotion from within the image. There was a nice point made about the horse in the foreground having an obvious sense of anxiety that the viewer can perceive as well. These comments pointed to the very different appearance of the Romantic paintings, that is quite striking, in comparison to the Neoclassical (Enlightenment). There’s a different sense of immediacy here in comparison to the David, but there’s also a different emotional resonance that affects the viewer that we can clearly sense in this painting versus David’s. Finally, I think I briefly mentioned in class that another aspect of the Romantic is its interest in the “exotic”–and this is manifested here as well.
Next, we looked at J.M.W. Turner’s The Slave Ship (1840):
You all noted the really substantial use of color, and light in particular as a focal point. I think Linh had even noted that this appears very impressionistic, which is definitely true, and emphasizes some really important ideas about the painting’s Romantic qualities–notably that through the use of color the painting is attempting to evoke emotion in the viewer. We also discussed that the slaves who have been abandoned in the water are in the foreground as we see the ship sailing out of frame in the background–and that the combination of the content and the form here definitely evokes emotion in the viewer.
Finally, we looked at Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (1819):
A number of you pointed out how incredibly dark (both in the actual paint surrounding Saturn and in content) the painting is. There were also some great comments about the emphasis on the size of Saturn’s eyes (as well as the crazed look in them) as he devours one of his children. This emphasis on the dark also reveals another aspect of the Romantic, the focus on the truly disturbing as a different method of accessing information.
So, that’s just a quick overview–I know there were SO many other great comments made, and please add those in the comments–it is undoubtedly helpful to everyone!!
–Daphne
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