Sorry, I accidentally forgot to blog about a poem for November!
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A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. 

William Blake

For my poem this week, I decided to go with the “Poison Tree” by William Blake because I had a friend, Kate Sadeski, who wrote a short story (in my Lit Mag class) with the same themed idea; they used words like foe, wrath, fear, deceit, etc to center their piece. Blake and Kate use negative emotions/feelings/etc as beings to elaborate on how pure the soul truly is when humans are first made. He says in the first stanza, introducing wrath as a being with life-like movements, “I was angry with my friend:/ I told my wrath, my wrath did end/I was angry with my foe:/I told it not, my wrath did grow”. Blake’s choice on diction brings a mirrored idea into the poem about how the evils inside us are the evils themselves. For example, it is not him who is truly evil, it his wrath and his idea of foe, etc that make him evil. In the second stanza, he elaborates on how he encouraged these beings to grow inside of him by “watered it in fears” and “with my tears”. He means to say that their presence in his life was his fault, by allowing them to take him over and tempt him.

He is also brings in key symbols to add to this point, like “apple” and “beneath the tree”, to show a sign that he was manipulated and tricked. He turned so easily mad and sad that he “till it bore an apple bright” and created/indulged in sin. In the bible, the foe was “satan” or the snake, that was beneath the tree, alike to his words in the last stanza. In the end, he is saying that he was so awfully depressed and easily manipulated that he committed bad acts/sins.

This poem is extremely interesting because of Blake’s closeness to the dark arts and the negative connotations to things like wrath and fear. To somebody biblical, this could be seen as the main point of view being hosted by satanic parasites that are slowly intoxicating him, but to somebody alike to Blake they would realize how Blake’s main point of view has a relationship with the darkness. Blake’s tone can change depending on who is reading it. Blake though favors the darker heavens, generally, rather than the angelic heavens because he believes the darker heavens are more true, and that the angelic heavens are deceiving.

A Cheap CW Show versus the “Age of Innocence” Threshold

A Cheap CW Show versus the “Age of Innocence” Threshold

To add to the list of “my productivity of Thanksgiving Break” (which, I won’t lie, has been taken over by sleeping between one in the morning to twelve in the afternoon) I made a terrible decision to sell my soul to CW’s most recent show “Reign”.  Reign is basically about a 15-year-old Queen Mary and her (of the 16^th century) role in Future King Francis’ French Empire. She is sent to France in attempt rekindle her arranged engagement to the crowned-prince Francis in order to save Scotland from being taken over by England. Sadly, when she arrives, she is clearly unwelcomed and has had several assassination attempts by the queen who disagrees with the engagement, and is forced to adapt to this obscure atmosphere where her words are hushed and are snapped at because she is a “woman”. Though Francis is cold to her because of her outspokenness and her presence is risky in the kingdom, he falls in love with her, as well as his looked-down-on illegitimate brother (whose mother is King Henry’s official mistress). She (apparently) falls in love with Francis, but is constantly disrespected by this Olivia-girl who Francis wants to openly make his mistress. I guess  this show is supposed to be about a love triangle but is actually about the Queen (QUEEN) of Scotland being abused because she is a woman therefore she deserves to be publicly humiliated by an affair, and when she takes interest in a man who will respect her (the illegitimate son of King Henry), she gets yelled at and tossed because it is wrong for her to look at other men while her own fiancée drags around his mistress.

Many viewers, including feminists, argue with my description of the show because even though having an affair is terrible, it was accepted in that society therefore it should be overlooked. They think Mary should just forget about the mistress and move on because it is her “job”. And though the inner-feminist in me disagrees with these critics, there is also a piece of me that wonders if I am wrong. Does Francis deserve to be judged, when his father taught him to do it? Does Francis deserve to be punished for something every man with power did have a mistress in that century? And when I really question it, I go back to the Age of Innocence, and how Archer seems to fight with the same system even though he was taught he had no logical reason to defend females, and I realize the show really isn’t about Francis at all. It’s about how women, like Ellen Olenska and Queen Mary, who are suppressed and ignored, continue to beat the odds against men and their social standards, and writers (novel or by screen) want us to realize that no matter what era it is/situation it has become, it is still wrong. The “Age of Innocence”, I think by reading The Age of Innocence , is the unofficial handbook of what a woman should be and what we are taught now (at least in Western countries) to break. It’s why we argue for criticism toward Francis, even though we were taught in World History that it was okay in that era. It is what makes us shudder when a man in Wharton’s story cannot fathom why Ellen Olenska would want a lawsuit against her horrifying husband, if it isn’t about looking for money. It is basically what makes us fight for feminism, even when there is a devil advocate ready to argue with a logical point.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that most of the time trashy young adult shows don’t always grasp feminism right, but when they do they really get it right. 

                William Blake, a gothic poet born in the mid 1700’s, is greatly known for his cryptic point of view in life and the afterlife. I, personally (even though I’m really not a fan of poetry), see him as a great inspiration as a writer and I do admire his taste and ideas because they are actually original – yes, maybe a little mid-evil and worrisome, but to me he was so messed up and possibly crazy that he’s extraordinary.  Though I’m not a fan of John Gardner, he adopted the same tone in his novel Grendel.  He even inserts a small portion of William Blake’s poem “Mental Traveller” in the beginning pages:

                “And if a Babe is born a Boy

                He’s given to a Woman Old,

                Who nails him down upon a rock,

                Catches his shrieks in cups of gold”

               

                Other then the fact that the stanza is depressing, it creates a good outlook on the character Grendel. Firstly, one of the bigger conflicts within Grendel is that he lacks freewill. Though I do believe everything somebody does is a choice, I also believe Grendel was pushed into his fate. The Dragon convinced him that the only thing he can do that will ever mean anything is to torment men, and after a while he lost himself within his duty of torturing people. In other words, he did not start bad. Actually, I thought he was pretty innocent in the beginning because even though he did not want to do it, he tormented people because he thought it was for the greater good. He killed his soul to “mean something”. Of course, that reiterates the entire question again, “Is Grendel a monster?”  Because murdering innocent people is pretty bad, but is he a martyr? But, precisely because of the line “who nails him down upon a rock” I do not believe he is. I believe somebody else forced him to – Woman Old.

                As far as I know, the Dragon was a man, but you have to look at the entire emotional connotation of woman – emotional, motherly, “take in”. Though the Dragon really was not that nice of a fellow, he mentored Grendel. He helped him find the one thing he wanted to do – mean something. Of course, trusting the Dragon came with consequences, hence the “who nails him down upon a rock”.

                The last line always catches me, but I think I understand it. I believe it means the evilness – the darkness or whatever – is priceless. Or, in different words, the horrible stuff that is happening is actually good. In a way, this makes sense. Grendel tells apart the kingdom trying to obey the Dragon and cause a mess, and yeah, sure, some people are getting murdered, but in the end it’s the greater good because it makes people come together. It makes people have a reason to keep going and build society and fight. Or at least that’s what the dragon says to Grendel – who knows, maybe the whole thing is a bunch of lies.

                But, either way, William Blake is a genius and John Gardner may be too. 

BBC’s show Merlin versus Grendel & the Dragon

                BBC’s hit show (which sadly canceled) “Merlin” is based upon the Arthurian legends about Merlin’s (the sorcerer) impact on King Arthur’s reign. BBC embedded many different allusions and adopted a lot of Campbell’s ideas within the t.v. show (with some minor tweeks). As I briefly brought up in my “Grendel Journal”, after reading about the dragon in Grendel, it made me question the impact of the dragon in Merlin’s story and the dragon in Grendel’s story. In a nutshell, Merlin enters Camelot as a scavenger to find a way to control (and hide) his magic under Gaius, his some-what mentor. But immediately when he arrives to Camelot, the younger version of Merlin runs into a hot-headed youth named Arthur, in which he gets in a fight with (before realizing, of course, he is the kings’ son). After getting thrown in jail temporarily, he is determined to leave Camelot and almost refuses his “call to adventure” until he meets a dragon, who in which he finds chained into a cave below the castle because of King Uther’s dislike for magic and magical creatures.  The dragon in Merlin, alike to the dragon in Grendel, notices his quick decision to change his fate and immediately stops him, by saying that Merlin and Arthur are meant to be “two sides of the same coin”. Or in other words, he must continue his role in Camelot to make Arthur a successful ruler, whether Merlin is happy with that or not. Of course, Merlin is convinced to stay (even though he swears to not believe in the dragon’s words). At the dinner towards the end of the first episode, Merlin saves Arthur’s life and is hired to be his manservant, forever stuck in his role in the kingdom.

                Though it is debatable of whether the dragon in Grendel is a bad being or a good being, his impact on Grendel’s decision leads Grendel to continuously destroy the community. Though in Merlin his role is the complete opposite – Merlin is supposed to keep balance by saving people with magic, especially Arthur – the dragon still holds a selfish dark side that destroys the kingdom.  Though it is not addressed in the beginning of the show, in the middle of the second season it is revealed that the dragon actually despises the kingdom and has been using Merlin as a way to cause chaos (like the Dragon in Grendel has been using Grendel to physically destroy the kingdom). After the dragon realizes that Merlin’s place in society had not backfired and he, frankly, has not screwed it up yet, the dragon reveals to Merlin that he will not guide him anymore if he does not let him go. Merlin is skeptical, finally seeing that the dragon could be potentially angry at Uther but he refuses to release him because of his love (context of this ‘love’ has been debated greatly) for Arthur. After a certain point though, when Merlin and the Dragon make one last final deal that the dragon will help save Arthur one last time in return with being free, Merlin is forced to release the dragon. The dragon burns down the majority of Camelot, trying to prove to Merlin how balance between the magical creatures and mortals is impossible (which, ironically, he had been telling Merlin the opposite to keep him in Camelot). That, in the end, only time will tell how the humans pan out.