Say what...?

So far this has been one of the most difficult poems I have ever read in my entire life, it is super, extremely complicated!!

It is obvious that death and life after death as well as resurrection (?) play a big role in the poem, I can tell by the following lines:
“April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire…”

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”

It reminded me when we’re burying my dad, I remember the grass was so green and flowers were in full bloom. I thought here I am burying my dad, his dead body in a land full of life. It was a mix of feelings.

One of the things I’ve always feared is water; it’s actually one of my biggest phobias. The sea, a lake, anything related with water freaks me out.  T.S. Elliot mentions water a lot throughout the poem and death by water.

One of the things we discussed in my group was that Nick was a soldier, something that I didn’t see when I first read the story. I got the feeling that he had gone fishing because he wanted to get away from something or someone. We came to the conclusion that he wanted to get away from himself and he also wanted to let go of something. He suffered from PTSD he saw war everywhere during his fishing trip.

On the other hand, Wright’s “Almos’ a man” was a lot easier to understand and analyze, something that we came to the conclusion that he left on the train because he already made a foul of himself there, he needed to get away in order to fit in. He needed to leave to prove the town’s people that he really was a man.

All stories are great, all three of them.

"Two-Hearted River" & "Almos' a man"

Hemingway’s “Two-Hearted River” and Wright’s “Almos’ a man” were very detailed stories, while I was reading them I felt I was there. Hemingway’s way to describe what can be a simple fishing trip was phenomenal! I loved it, he made me feel every detail in the story and I really felt I was next to Nick living and seeing what his eyes were witnessing. It’s almost as if Hemingway is recommending the reader to get in touch with nature, to get away and connect with earth and all the beautiful scenarios and experiences it has to offer. On page 981 he says: “…the day was hot but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.” Nick needed to reconnect with him and what better way to do it then going fishing. His amazement when he catches a big trout was so finely written by Hemingway.

Dave Sanders is quite a unique character, he’s so innocent but at the same time he feels like he needs to prove the world what kind of a man he is! A man brave enough to shoot a gun! While I was reading the story it reminded me of the first time I shot a gun, the combination of fear, excitement and adrenaline are something out of this world. This feeling is released when you pull the trigger and BOOM! It’s incredible how a gun can give you such sense of power and security. I felt sorry for the kid, if I was his mom I wouldn’t have trusted in his word. If his dad wanted a gun he would have bought one long time ago, that was such a lame excuse. The accident with Jenny left Dave as a fool in front of the people and I love how Wright ends the story with the lines: “Ahead the long rails were glinting in moonlight, the stretching away, away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man…” I took it as he could no longer prove the people of his town that he was “man” because he made a fool of himself with the mule incident.