Poetry Response

For the poem "My Fear" by Lawrence Raab I am going to break up the meanings stanza by stanza. The poem will be written out on the left and my interpretations of the stanzas will be at the bottom of the page.

My Fear

He Follows us, he keeps track.                                
Each day his lists are longer.
Here, death, and here,
something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams,
what do you have for me tonight?
And he looks through his sack,
his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds
the right one. Maybe he's sorry.
Tell me, Mr. Fear, what must I carry

away from your dream.
Make it small, please.
Let it fit in my pocket,
let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.
Fear, let me have a small brown hat
and a purse of crickets

like the ones i heard singing last night
out there in the srubbly field
before i slept, and met you.

-Lawrence Raab

In the first stanza when Raab says "he" I think of the he as being a person or an entity that has control over everyone's death and the time for them to go, kind of like the grim reeper or god. When he says the "he" has a list I think of all the names on that list that the being must visit so he can end their lives.

In the second stanza the person is talking about having nightmares. The being now is "Mr. Fear", and Mr. Fear is looking through his bag for a nightmare for us to dream about.

In the third stanza it is a continuation of the Mr. Fear who is picking out nightmares for the narrator to dream about. Raab is writing about how the entity reacts when he finds a nightmare for the narrator. The narrator also asks what must he carry, and I think this is referring to a journey as in what must the narrator carry through his journey to get out of it, and in good condition; the "journey" is going back to the dream.

The fourth stanza is a continuation that is saying what must the dreamer take out of the experience or the dream in order to learn from it and go through life with more wisdom. The dreamer is saying to have it fit in his pocket or stay with him at all times or not stay with him at all.

In the fifth stanza the dreamer does not want fear to stay with him at all times but to have something better like a small brown hat or a purse, something cheerful.

The last stanza is saying how the dreamer wants a dream that is happy like before falling asleep and hearing the sounds of the night. The dreamer does not want his mind to wander into something scary and wild but calm and joyful.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This book was a very difficult read for me. Conrad had a very extensive vocabulary and I did not understand the ship lingo very well at all. For a small understanding of the book what I did understand was the fact that Conrad was using the river as a way to represent society (a capitalistic society), and every detail of the story had some sort of heirarchy like the deck hands who have a captain down to slaves, and how every one seemed to look up to Kurtz. The story also seemed capitalistic oriented because the people at the bottom of the ladder always seemed to want to work up to the top of the ladder (who was Kurtz) and the people at the top of the ladder would knock down others coming to meet up with them. No matter how horribly seck Kurtz was he did not want to leave his position in the jungle finding ivory.

I annotated this book by using the writing style as a way to better my writing skills as well. I need to work on extending my vocab in my writing. I also liked how the writing style was different in this book; this book was a story within a story. Conrad used Marlow and the deck hand as the opening story and then developed another story using Marlow's capability to tell stories very well. I liked how the author would randomly jump from Marlow's story to the deck hand and crew waiting to set off into "the heart of darkness" or also known as the river. I also want to add into my writing skills the ability to make objects with supposidly no meaning to them have symbolism to the bigger picture.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner was a good book. This book showed off more facets of human nature then The Great Gatsby; which only showed the strive for money, and Heart of Darkness; which also only showed off the capitalistic nature of people. I believe the Kite Runner allowed people to see forgiveness, love, hatred, guilt, courage, and many more sides of a person's true personality. In this book Amir shows so many different characteristics that a true human has it allowed me to connect more to the book and understand the full meaning of all the characteristics listed above. For example Amir loved his father, his half-brother Hassan, and his wife Soraya so much he even overlooks there flaws- his wife being unfaithful, his father lying to him, and he even loves his servent when he was a child. This book also shows so many different levels of forgiveness and guilt it makes the story more like a reality.

The characteristic the author displayed the best was courage. How Amir went into dangerous parts of the world to save one little boy was very courageous. Sohrab was very courageous when he saved Amir from Assef just how Hassan saved Amir back in their childhood. Soraya and Amir adopting Sohrab was the best part of the book as well. I liked how the author did not make courage more glamorous like authors who write books about heros and knights. This author used courage in the most subtle ways and it still made the biggest impact on the entire book.

I annotated this book by creating a trail between the past and the future throughout the book, and I also looked at it as a way to better my writing. The author caught a perfect light when it came to personality traits in a true human being and I really liked that.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have already read the book the Great Gatsby during my junior year for Mr. Lowndes, but since it was assigned again I re-read it and still had the same opinion about the book. In my opinion the book gives views about human nature in being pointless, alone, and to contemplate no other meaning in life then to strive to have money. In this book these views are pointing directly at the American life style and not so much the entire human nature, but my feelings about that being the only motives for living are completely off.

This book conveys the ideas that American people will only strive to the ideas of having money and being as rich as possible to make you happy. I believe that it is completely false. American people live not for money but for their beliefs, love, honor, and justice. In this book it repeatedly shows how all the characters care for is what others think about their image and how much money they can attain throughout there lifetimes. For example Daisy, the woman stuck between Tom (her Husband) and Gatsby (her lost lover), merely marries Tom because he is rich and with complete incompetence stays with the man after being able to choose between her lover and Tom. She stays with Tome because of two reasons- self-image and money. Its quite pathetic how these people deal with their lives and quite frankly does not reflect over fifty percent of the real American people. This book, in my mind, reflects not the common everyday American people but the celebrities that take over TV talk shows and tabloid gossip. This book has so many twisted scandals and fake love that my opinions of it are very low.

Well, this post seems very negative, but this is how I feel about the book. I annotated the book by just keeping trails on the signifigance of Gatsby and why he was such a big player in the book. Obviously he was the most important character considering the book is named after him. I think he was such an important person in the book because he was more true then fake. Even though he lied about his profession and such it was great to see his motives were not self-image and money but merely love.

-Devyn