Lone Soldier

Carlos Espinoza

January 25, 2010

ENL 3

Andrew Hageman

Lone Soldier

The Machinima amplified the effects of Langston Hughes’ poem “Suicide Note.” The Machinima added a visual for the poem allowing the poem to be more easily interpreted and understood. The video game scenery illustrated the message and meaning that the author would have wanted to transcend to the reader through careful analysis of the poem.

After reading the poem and watching the video many times I was able to piece them successfully piece them together. The Machinima depicts a Halo character standing on top of a high rock facing a river. He looks up at the sky and then down at the river right before he decides to jump off the rock into the river. Looking up toward the sky could be the character looking for a sign of higher power, contemplating if he should take away his own life. I also noticed the connection between the video game and the title of the poem. Jumping off of something that high would kill the character in the video game, which is also what the poem seems to be about, suicide.

The machinima stays true to the tone of the poem by accompanying its words with appropriate images and sounds. The images of the individual committing suicide by jumping off of the tall rock and into a river as well as the song in the background of the video created a lonely and depressing feeling that one could imaging feeling right before a suicide, coinciding directly with the tone of the poem.

I tried looking for an example of poetry in pop culture. The most that I could come up with were a bit of song lyrics. “Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are fighting in the Captain’s tower”-Bob Dylan “Desolation Row”.

Who Made Who

Carlos Espinoza

January 14, 2010

ENL 3

Mr. Hageman

Who Made Who?

Before I began to read the poem “All Watched Over by Machines in Loving Grace” by Richard Brautigan, I decided to analyze the title. The title did not make a lot of sense to me. I thought the title meant that machines would one day take care of the human race. I wrote a question mark next to the “Loving Grace” part of the title because the title described machines as being loving and graceful when machines don’t have feelings at all. The first half of the poem talked about humans and technology coexisting in harmony while the last part focused on being reunited with nature.

In the last stanza, Brautigan describes our environment as a “cybernetic ecology” (20). Cybernetic ecology would be the relationships and interactions between humans and machines. He also states that he would like to be “free of our labors\ and joined back to nature, \ returned to our mammal brothers and sister,” (21-24). Even though we are in an environment surrounded by technology he would like to be able to return to nature and not have to worry about anything. The poem ends with “and all watched over\ by machines of loving grace,” (25-26). I thought the last lines were saying that we praise technology so much that it’s almost as if we need it to live. By saying that they watch over us with loving grace is in a way comparing machines and technology to God. God should be the one we need, not technology in his place in Brautigan’s eyes.

The first two stanzas advocate humans and technology living in harmony amongst each other. Cybernetic meadow, programming harmony and a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics are phrases that do not normally go together, but are used in the poem to make technology seem more nature-like. Brautigan also describes a scene where a “deer strolls peacefully\ past computers\ as if they were flowers\ with spinning blossoms,” (14-17) illustrating how great it would be to have technology and nature coexist to that degree.

At the end of the poem, Brautigan makes it sound as if we need to break free from the chains of technology no matter how much we may believe we need it. Throughout the first two-thirds of the poem he talks about how great and amazing it would be to see technology through the same eye we see nature. I believe Richard Brautigan is anti-technology because even though he mentions both sides in his poem, he ends the poem with leaving technology and returning to nature. Even if most of the poem was pro-technology, I think that the ending is what pieces a poem together, allowing you to construct and confirm your analysis of the work and in this case leaving technology and going back to nature.

Captain of a Sinking Ship

Carlos Espinoza

January 12, 2010

ENL 3

Mr. Hageman

Captain of a Sinking Ship

As I read “Casabianca” by Felicia Dorothen Hemans, I was immediately transported to the middle of the ocean where I was introduced to the death and destruction of a man and his crew. The poem is about a boy who stays on his father’s sinking ship as it is slowly being eaten away by flames. The boy is the only survivor left on the ship. He refuses to abandon ship without the consent from his father, who died during the ship’s ambush.

The poem begins by describing the setting, “The boy stood on the burning deck/ Whence all but him had fled; / The flame that lit the battle’s wreck/ Shone round him o’er the dead,” (1-4). The first quatrain portrays the child as a lone soldier standing above the death and destruction of his father’s ship and crew. The boy is depicted as being heroic and proud as he stands upon the slowly burning vessel. As I read the poem I kept forgetting that the boy was not an adult, but a child. I would have expected an adult to stand tall as the last survivor, not a young boy. The poem describes the boy with phrases such as: beautiful and bright, born to rule, and creature of heroic blood to acknowledge this amazing and incredible accomplishment of his survival.

In the third quatrain, Felicia Dorothea Hemans demonstrates the loyalty and faithfulness of the boy to his father. “The flames rolled on—he would not go/ Without his father’s word; / That father, faint in death below,/ His voice no longer heard,” (9-12). The boy does not plan on abandoning the ship without the captain, his father’s, approval. His father, being captain of the ship, most likely taught his son to be a good captain. A quality of a good captain would be to never abandon ship or the crew. This is demonstrated by the boy’s tenacity toward staying on the ship until further word from his father, who had passed away.

In the last quatrain, Hemans concludes the poem with an aftermath of the destroyed ship. “With mast, and helm, and pennon fair/ That well had borne their part--/ But the noblest thing that perished there/ was that young, faithful heart,” (37-40). The flames continue to eat away at the ship and eventually take the boy with them. The boy dies because of his loyalty to his father. The last two lines of the poem again reminded me that it was a child who decided to die rather than to save himself, showing fidelity to his father until the very last moment of his life.