So I decided that I would take a different turn here and analyze a different type of work. I would like to credit www.cartoonistgroup.com for the highly amusing cartoon that I chose. You can find it here.
The title of the cartoon is “That’s life” by Mike Twohy, and it is a cute little cartoon that at first glance seems to be about two animals. Right away you can see a cat and a mouse in a room of some sort. There is also a table and two chairs, in which the two figures are sitting. The door in the background reads backwards, “Editor”. The cat is holding what seem to be a few sheets of paper. The cat is wearing glasses, and he sits at a higher level than the mouse before him. The eyebrow that is visible seems wrinkled, and likewise, the visible corner of his mouth is turned downward in a frown. The mouse, on the other hand is small in comparison to the cat, and its mouth is slightly open. Its hands are lifted away from his lap, hovering in the air. At the bottom of the photo is the quote “ The whole story is told from the point of view of the cheese.”
I also noticed that because of the cat’s size, it is able to lean over the table, whereas the mouse cannot. From the positions that the two are in I drew the conclusion that the cat was in a more superior position. Here you have the perfect pair of opposites. The cat and mouse. And from the looks of it, the cat has won. He is the editor, or boss if you will, of a newspaper company. The mouse is a writer, and has just finished an article about cheese, as the quote says. The cat is displeased because of the point of view that the mouse has taken. I take this to mean that the mouse chose only one side of a two-sided story to report on. In the story of the cheese, I suppose we are missing the mouse, which is the villain, and the cheese, the victim to be eaten by the mouse.
Beneath the surface, this cartoon depicts any person choosing to ignore both sides of any story. The paper represents a biased opinion that can only benefit one party, because it only appeals to the type of people who would support the victim. For example, what if a writer wrote an article about a crime, and only told the victim’s side of the story. Of course at that moment the victim seems to be the most important topic of the discussion, and the suspect is loathed and in the wrong, but do you know what actions led to the person committing the crime in the first place? Like this mouse, many people refuse to acknowledge the other side of the story because they feel that because the person committed the crime and they deserve to pay, end of story. However, the reasons for that person committing the crime could be just as important as the state of the victim.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
"Vietnamese Morning"
The next poem I analyzed was “Vietnamese Morning”, written by Curt Bennett. Bennett was an American pilot during the Vietnam War. This information was provided by WarPoetry.co.uk. For those of you who may not know, the Vietnam War took place between 1945 and 1975. The war included American and Vietnamese forces. Furthermore, this poem shows the calm before the storms of war. The central theme is encompassing the peace of the Vietnamese landscape within a time of turmoil.
From reading the first two lines I felt that war was fulfilling some kind of duty. It seems as if by saying “Before war starts in early morning,” the war is part of a necessary occurrence, or a natural passing moment in the day. The remaining stanza begins the prolonged description of the landscape of Vietnam. This poem represents the nature of peace, and how there is no effort in being naturally amiable. Besides the first two lines, there are no more mentions of war or devastation. Instead, the light of dawn, the end of the war-filled night, signals a rebirth of the land through the night. Where there may have been bloodshed in the rice fields in the third stanza, or within the mountains of the fourth, any trace of violence seems to have been enveloped by nature, and disintegrated until it returned to its normal resting state. The remnants of possible wreckage, at the end if the second stanza, represent the abnormal places where unrest would occur, but no action is noted. Whatever occurred there has been lost, forgotten until the war repeats its cycle.
The final stanza of the poem leads me to make a conclusion about the speaker in the poem. It seems that the beauty and peace that he is experiencing is short-lived. The fact that Bennett describes the fog as shy tells me that nature is hesitant to hold on to the peace present in nature because it will not last. Nature, as well as the speaker,long to hold on to the moment of serenity before the unrest begins again.
From reading the first two lines I felt that war was fulfilling some kind of duty. It seems as if by saying “Before war starts in early morning,” the war is part of a necessary occurrence, or a natural passing moment in the day. The remaining stanza begins the prolonged description of the landscape of Vietnam. This poem represents the nature of peace, and how there is no effort in being naturally amiable. Besides the first two lines, there are no more mentions of war or devastation. Instead, the light of dawn, the end of the war-filled night, signals a rebirth of the land through the night. Where there may have been bloodshed in the rice fields in the third stanza, or within the mountains of the fourth, any trace of violence seems to have been enveloped by nature, and disintegrated until it returned to its normal resting state. The remnants of possible wreckage, at the end if the second stanza, represent the abnormal places where unrest would occur, but no action is noted. Whatever occurred there has been lost, forgotten until the war repeats its cycle.
The final stanza of the poem leads me to make a conclusion about the speaker in the poem. It seems that the beauty and peace that he is experiencing is short-lived. The fact that Bennett describes the fog as shy tells me that nature is hesitant to hold on to the peace present in nature because it will not last. Nature, as well as the speaker,long to hold on to the moment of serenity before the unrest begins again.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
"War is Kind"
“War is Kind” by Stephen Crane is one of my favorite poems, and it just happens to be about war. The concept that stood out to me most excellently from all others was the sarcastic belief that war is an honorable event and a great way to die, and also that the men that enter war will only leave by death.
Throughout the poem, the narrator repeats the sentences “ Do not weep. War is kind.” The repeated choice of words tells me that the narrator wants the person he is talking to understand his point of view, and to be assured that it is not so bad that the son, father, and lover of that person has died in war. The narrator highlights the extremes of glory in fighting and dying for a cause, and the battlefield as a world in itself, with its own ruler and belief system, which seems to take the men over one by one.
At the end of the second and fourth stanzas, the narrator repeats the sentence “And a field where a thousand corpses lie.” In the second stanza it describes the citizens of the battle kingdom, which are inevitably all dead. In the fourth, it describes again, but in other words, the only result of their fighting. It is secured that the soldiers know that their outcome is the field where their fellow dead lie. They will in some way or another join them and there is nothing they can do to stop the course. “These men were born to drill and die.” In other words, they will be under the whips of the masters of war until they fulfill their life’s destiny of fighting, and then they will perish.
The main conflicting image in this poem is in the title itself. Throughout the poem, the narrator is justifying why war is kind. He combats the goodness of war with horrifying images of the beast-like state of the lover in the first stanza as he died and his horse ran frightened. He calls the soldiers little souls whose fates are no longer in their own hands, driven it seemed to me, towards a kind death? I’ve never experienced death, but I can attest to the fact that there is nothing nice about taking a fatal shot or stab to any part of the body. The narrator believes those left behind by soldiers should not weep because their deaths were honorable, and as it is said in the last stanza, the mother’s son has a wonderful burial decor signifying his honorable death. Does this comparison justify the fact that a woman’s son is dead? I suppose our definitions of war and kindness differ.
Throughout the poem, the narrator repeats the sentences “ Do not weep. War is kind.” The repeated choice of words tells me that the narrator wants the person he is talking to understand his point of view, and to be assured that it is not so bad that the son, father, and lover of that person has died in war. The narrator highlights the extremes of glory in fighting and dying for a cause, and the battlefield as a world in itself, with its own ruler and belief system, which seems to take the men over one by one.
At the end of the second and fourth stanzas, the narrator repeats the sentence “And a field where a thousand corpses lie.” In the second stanza it describes the citizens of the battle kingdom, which are inevitably all dead. In the fourth, it describes again, but in other words, the only result of their fighting. It is secured that the soldiers know that their outcome is the field where their fellow dead lie. They will in some way or another join them and there is nothing they can do to stop the course. “These men were born to drill and die.” In other words, they will be under the whips of the masters of war until they fulfill their life’s destiny of fighting, and then they will perish.
The main conflicting image in this poem is in the title itself. Throughout the poem, the narrator is justifying why war is kind. He combats the goodness of war with horrifying images of the beast-like state of the lover in the first stanza as he died and his horse ran frightened. He calls the soldiers little souls whose fates are no longer in their own hands, driven it seemed to me, towards a kind death? I’ve never experienced death, but I can attest to the fact that there is nothing nice about taking a fatal shot or stab to any part of the body. The narrator believes those left behind by soldiers should not weep because their deaths were honorable, and as it is said in the last stanza, the mother’s son has a wonderful burial decor signifying his honorable death. Does this comparison justify the fact that a woman’s son is dead? I suppose our definitions of war and kindness differ.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)