when gods don’t desire it, whocan witness their passage, either coming or going?”
This line shows that the gods control human fate.Odysseus's journey home depends on their will - without it, no one can move or even be seen . It highlights the theme of divine power over mortal lives in The Odyssey.
Eurylochos: he, suspecting a trap, hung back.She escorted them in, sat them down on chairs and benches,and offered them barley meal, cheese, and pale yellow honeymixed with Pramnian wine; but she added to this mixture 235baneful drugs to destroy their memory of their homeland.When she’d given it them and they’d swallowed it, then at onceshe struck them with her wand, and shut them away in sties:they now all had pigs’ heads, pigs’ voices, and pigs’ bristles,pigs’ bodies too; but their minds remained unchanged. 240So they were penned in, weeping; and Kirkē threw themoak nuts to eat, acorns, the fruit of the cornel tree—such food as swine that sleep on the ground will feed on.
Eurylochos's escape shows the danger of temptation and the importance of self-control by not following. This line highlighted his awareness and circe's cunning.
They wept aloud and shed thick-flowing tears,but all their lamenting accomplished nothing for them.
From this line, we can tell that Odysseus seems somewhat narcissist ; even though his comrades were killed, he doesn't express much sadness or remorse.
She at once summoned famous Antiphatēs, her husband,from assembly: he devised a miserable fate for them.
Greek culture valued Xenia (hospitality); however, instead of welcoming odysseus, the king plotted something cruel, marking a turning point in Odysseus's journey.
Odysseus
a king of Ithaca and Greek leader in the Trojan war who after the war wanders 10 years before reaching home.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel both
I think the two roads symbolize the choice we all face in life - one may be destiny and the other fate, but no matter which we choose , it leads us to a certain way of living and becoming ourselves.
Whatever she planted grew as if by magic, and her fame as a grower of .flowers spread over three counties. Because of her creativity with her flow-ers, even my memories of poverty are seen through a screen of blooms-sun-flowers, petunias, roses, dahlias, forsythia, spirea, delphiniums, verbena ...and on and on.
Her mother's garden symbolizes suppressed female creativity-beauty and art growing from struggle, like magic.
For it needs little skill and psychology to be sure that a highlygifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been sothwarted and hindered by contrary instincts [add "chains, guns, the lash, theownership of one's body by someone else, submission to an alien religion"Lthat she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty."
Society once saw creative women as "mad", but their so-called madness is actually passion, vision and art.
And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here
I think when she says it's easy to forget what she came for, it;s because there's so much to take in down there ; not just the wounds and broken things, but also strange , hauntingly beautiful details that make you want to stay and wander.Tat's why there seem to be people who have 'always lived here' - they've settles among the ruins, maybe trapped by it or maybe finding a kind of comfort in it.
We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
I think this is powerful because it shows that we are all part of this search. Even if our names weren't written in the old stories, we can still go down there and see the wreck for ourselves. I think the wreck here might be our traumas or things we try to forgetting. this line is really deep
the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.
I love how she describes the wreck so vividly that we can picture it. it makes me think of the dark times in our own lives when we wanted to reach the sunlight so badly. some things we believed would last forever ended up drifting into the 'ocean of lost memories' I especially like the part about the ribs, it feels like those old hurts we try to ignore, but every now and then they poke us again. we can't really erase them ;we just learn to move around them, like tentative haunters of our own past.
There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it
the ladder is a symbol of a way into depths of history/memory, but here she wrote 'we who have used it' implying that not everybody chooses descend..Only the ones who choose to climb down can really start to face themselves and hidden truths.
First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
this represents the conscious effort to go beyond the surface stories 'myths' and confront the deeper, often hidden realities 'the wreck'
I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone.
unlike heroic male explorers, the speaker dives alone leads to feminist emphasis on personal, solitary quest
Andthank God she was there, for I was filled with that icy dreadagain. Everything I did seemed awkward to me, and every-thing I said sounded freighted with hidden meaning. I wastrying to remember everything I'd heard about dope addictionand I couldn't help watching Sonny for signs. I wasn't doing itout of malice. I was trying to find out something about mybrother. I was dying to hear him tell me he was safe.
From this passage we can see the narrator keeps looking after his brother for fear of him being trapped by drugs again ;the theme of the obligation toward brotherly love.
Creolebegan to tell us what the blues were all about. They were notabout anything very new.
When Creole says that ' blues weren't anything new' ,is it because the music they play all derived from their past feelings and emotions? or is it telling us that sonny's expressing his life? ( But I think both are things he wanted to tell us)
And he was giving it back, as every-thing must be given back, so that, passing through death, itcan live forever. I saw my mother's face again, and felt, for thefirst time, how the stones of the road she had walked on musthave bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my fa-ther's brother died. And it brought something else back to me,and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and feltIsabel's tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise.
the narrator's reaction to Sonny's music shows howdleeply it moves him. I think it's also a turning point where he finally begins to understand Sonny.
'1 couldn't tell you when Mama died-but the reason I wantedto leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs. And then,when I ran away, that's what I was running from-really.When I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, Iwas just-older." And he stopped, drumming with his fingerson the windowpane. The sun had vanished, soon darknesswould fall. I watched his face. "It can come again," he said,almost as though speaking to himself. Then he turned to me."It can come again," he repeated. "I just want you to knowthat.""All right," I said, at last. "So it can come again, All right."He smiled, but the smile was sorrowful. "I had to try to tellyou," he said.
It shows how trapped he felt by his environment. Harlem represents pain , poverty , and a cycle he wants to escape. This highlights a main theme of the story - how hard it is to break free from suffering.
"Imean, I'll have a lot of studying to do, and I'll have to studyeverything, but, I mean, I want to play with-jazz musicians."He stopped. "I want to play jazz," he said.
It's clear that Black people have a really deep connection with music, and jazz is a big part of Black culture. This idea plays a significant role in Sonny's Blues, highlights how music becomes a way to deal with pain and as a form of expression.
"You got to hold on to your brother,"she said, and don't let him fall, no matter what it looks likeis happ~ning to him and no matter how evil you gets with him.You gomg to be evil with him many a time. But don't youforget what I told you, you hear?"
The narrator's mother, by charging him watching over Sonny, is asking him to serve as his brother's keeper. Another passage about the obligation toward brotherly love.
The way I always see her isthe way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon, say, when th eold folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always seeher wearing pale blue. She'd be sitting on the sofa. And myfather would be sitting in the easy chair, not far from her. Andthe living room would be full of church folks and relative s.
'Sunday dinner' and 'church' are strongly associate with the Black culture in the US, representing a traditional rooted in the resilience of African Americans during and after slavery.
"why does he want to die? He mustwant to die, he 's killing himself, why does he want to die?"He looked at me in surprise. He licked his lips. "He don 'twant to die. He wants to live. Don't nobody want to die,ever."
The speaker, as someone who has tried heroin before , must have a remarkably stable mind to avoid being controlled by the drug. I strongly agree with the line,'He wants to live. Don't nobody want to die, ever.' It reveals the underlying reason why many people become addicted; they long to escape a reality that they cannot bare living.
A teacher passed through themevery now and again, quickly, as though he or she couldn'twait to get out of that courtyard, to get those boys out of theirsight and off their minds.
I think ' a teacher ' might refer to the narrator himself; otherwise , why is it every ' now and again'?
These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, theywere growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptlyagainst the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They werefilled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, thedarkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, andthe darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to thatother darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed,at once more together than they were at any other time, andmore alone.
I don't think that only boys at that age would be on drugs. Girls might tool. Also, I quite like the way that the narrator describes addictive products as 'darkness' and something they 'dreamed' - it's truly a kind of lust.
But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control;so I take pains to control myself,— before him, at least,— andthat makes me very tired.
.9/23 .Troubling: the narrator shows in this sentence that her status is lower than John's , but why does she dislike this feeling while still abiding it? she could've taken advantage of her illness and fight back
I don’t like to look out of the windows even— there are somany of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.I wonder if they all come out of that wall paper, as I did?
.9/23 .interesting: At the peak of her insanity, the narrator even shows sympathy towards those women who were trapped inside the wall.