The whole poem is vaguely apocalyptic. The hesperides are the "daughters of evening" and of the west where the sun sets. The splitting rock implies destruction and also creation. The line is two-fold. It can be apocalyptic because the "splitting" which results in basically the symbol of the sunset implies the end of humanity, especially when couched in the first world war period. But it can also imply hope that human tools can help us break this "rock" and maybe reach the beautiful sunset. It is the intertwined nature of hope and destruction, beauty and destruction, and modernity and creation/destruction which make this poem express the great contradiction of the first world war period. But as we know that war was not the end, nor was the next, nor will the next likely be either. There will always be another sunset until there simply isn't. The poem encapsulates the eternal and human here in one piece.

The neutral air seems in many ways above the turmoil of a world at war. Over the course of the poem there seems to be a distinction between the human world and the world. Auden qualifies it as "our world" in the last stanza, almost as if we are a part and separate of the natural world. In another line "buildings" of "authority" "grope the sky." Here the human world intrudes on the natural, but it is not controlling. It isn't grasp or hold, but is harmful and in its own way passing. "grope" implies lewd contact but not ultimate power over it. The authority here is the 'state' or maybe humanity in general. Does this mean that states do not, and cannot, control nature. And by that, maybe human nature. Either way, there seems to be a distinction here that Auden is exploiting, and which may inform his view of humanity in the world and for the future.

Its ironic that in certain ways both Vivie and Mrs. Warren are unconventional. It conflates higher education and prostitution, which is absurd, and frightening in the historical context. Not to knock prostitution, which is the oldest profession, but being comparable to university education is laughable. And that is what Shaw seems to be pointing out, that getting ahead for women is unconventional and highly laudable. But also unfortunate and sad, because getting ahead has to be by any means, whether through elicit sexuality or rigorous education.

This is one of the conflicts of this play: the conflict of children and parents. But that alone is complicated because that relationship in the play is not typical. The creation of children first of all is in some ways monetary: Vivie is the daughter of a prostitute cum madam. Vivie owes here position and good fortune to this odd situation. Frank also owes his father for his position. But also in conflict here is decency. Is it decent for Mrs. Warren to be a prostitute to support her daughter? Is it decent for Vivie and Frank to like each other seeing as they are half-siblings? It is overall a conflict of reality and society, and maybe how society forces such odd situations in the first place.

"Astray" and "Totters" are very childish terms for what the poem seems to be mainly hinting at. It makes sense that goblin market is couched in such ways, because such subtlety would ensure it would be printed at all. Orwell struggled to get Animal Farm published, and had some publishers convinced it was simply a children's story about farm animals. And Orwell was a man... That aside, the terms are almost sickening when juxtaposed with the slathering of sexual imagery and somewhat creepy undertones of metaphorical (or real, who's to say?) rape. These work in two ways. They disgust in the contrast of painfully innocent and horrifically evil, and they also serve in an extra textual way.

revenge is a major theme in Wuthering Heights. And at many times there could be a call for revenge over any number of actions. But revenge is complicated. One man's heinous offense is another's logical and conscious action. The rest of the paragraph is strewn with references to monstrosity, evil, and hell. It makes the "revenge" seem more like a witch hunt than a conscious and thoughtful action. Maybe it is a referendum on revenge, that it is predicated on gross generalizations and emotion. maybe not. The equational way Hindley references his "revenge" is far too thoughtful for the reality. It makes me wonder whether in the world of Heathcliff or in ours, revenge can ever be this way. Its too simple. And the following paragraph is evident that at least here, it is sporadic and ,almost in a way, insane.

Wow! Heathcliff makes this act through "natural impulse" to see the baby safe. But In the same moment he works against his revenge. He himself was "the instrument of thwarting his own revenge." It may only be a natural impulse, but that act is good nonetheless. It is a wonderful dramatically established scene, because what Heathcliff does is good and his desire for revenge simultaneously understandable in many ways. He's definitely not a good person, because "had it been dark" he may have smashed the baby's skull on the steps. But this scene finds a way to hate and understand someone cursed and blessed by fate.

I love the use of "overcast" here. It highlights the importance of environment in this novel so far. Because there is something disjointed and disturbing about the setting of Wuthering Heights. The moors themselves are windswept and cruel, and the house itself is also frightening. But thinking of a face as overcast drew me into seeing a comparison between the characters and their surrounding. How they suitably fit their world, or how the world necessarily fits them. The weather is changeable throughout the novel. One moment Lockwood is trekking to Wuthering heights in relative comfort, the next he is forced inside by an oncoming blizzard. Heathcliff is like the weather, capricious, malicious, and ever changing. His moods shift from outbursts of violence to quiet brooding. And his name is also so earthy, and natural. 'Heath' like the land and obviously 'cliff' like the precipice. He's a facet of nature. And also the name of "wuthering heights" i find exceptionally telling. 'Wuthering' is a name that is in an almost constant sub-atomic vibration between the words, weathering and withering. With those two words the place and the people are almost perfectly described. They are naturally destructive.

A shingle is a gentle beach onto which small boats and water-craft are secured. By "naked" the speaker could mean many things. The shingle could be naked of the loose gravel typically associated with such a landing, or naked of small boats. The rest of the poem lacks any mention of humans, only of nations and the long dead Sophocles, so I think it safe to assume that the speaker means of human life, ie. boats. And if the world's shingles are so naked, what a desolate world the speaker is describing. But naked also implies innocence. Are the empty shingles innocent in a primordial way? Without human touch is there something pure about them, or something dark and forbidding?

Task implies merely a job. The body of the poem is filled with the dazzling places that the British have conquered, yet the soldier(or sailors) are not heroic. They are simply bodies littered across the earth. And their "task" is also not to survive, but to win empire, and in the many cases, as this poem implies, to die for empire as well. And the "dead" imply loss, more often than victory. So how can this be victory with so much death?

its a puzzling bit of alliteration. I've never heard of clouds breaking on someone with the brutal kind of force this line describes. it is disjointed. Is the natural world viewed freely now a pain. This moment of reflection, looking at the sky isn't peaceful, its downright painful. This whole stanza is filled with these contradictions in imagery and also emotion. She falls and then swoons. Looks at the sky and then is bludgeoned by the clouds. She is then floated along. But as if she were dead. The contradiction of freedom -the exquisite pain- is beyond complicated.

Reading this, I can't help but to see this as a jeremiad. The imagery is biblical. Nature is awesome and full of a wrath. And there is a call and response aspect to this as well, like in a sermon. The speaker yells at us to "awake! arise! avenge!." It is a dialogue, but one-sided. The recipients of this sermon are present but have no voice to lend. We are asked if we "hast heard." But what even more makes this jeremiadic is the subject -slavery.

I just found this so weird and funny. It's almost saying that this is what the narrator feels, and what you as the reader should feel as well. Its a critique of sappy and cliched cheapo-romantic novels. Everything is stilted. You aren't made to feel love, hate, jealousy, or beauty. Your'e instead so often plainly told through ham-fisted writing that you 'must' feel this way -kind of like a mass-produced movie. And the almost absurd way it is stated throws it into contrast with the skill with which Austen writes and creates suspense and emotion in the reader throughout the work as a whole.

I just found this so weird and funny. It's almost saying that this is what the narrator feels, and what you as the reader should feel as well. Its a critique of sappy and cliched cheapo-romantic novels. Everything is stilted. You aren't made to feel love, hate, jealousy, or beauty. Your'e instead so often plainly told through ham-fisted writing that you 'must' feel this way -kind of like a mass-produced movie. And the almost absurd way it is stated throws it into contrast with the skill with which Austen writes and creates suspense and emotion in the reader.

For a second, Fanny is like so many other young girls in society whimsically looking for husbands. Is Fanny an insider now that she is treated as more of a woman with a societal value as Sir Thomas does? Does she herself believe it as this line leads a reader to believe? But then her worries begin to compound a few lines down. She doesn't have pretty dresses. She has no way of wearing William's cross. She has "anxious considerations." Do these anxieties make her an outsider, or is it natural for a newly 'out' girl to think this way? Either way, this line and the paragraph it is in begin to blur the distinction between insider and outsider. Being an other for years at Mansfield Park, what does this change mean for Fanny's identity?

"An evil of such magnitude" seems a bit dramatic to describe the incursion of an outsider into the Mansfield Park community. But then Edmund's opinion goes from a paramount evil to an italicized "if possible." Is it really imperative for Edmund to see Charles Maddox off, or is he softening his position because Fanny is an outsider too? But then there is also Edmund trying to weasel his way into this position alongside Mary Crawford and exclude Maddox. But his line of reasoning also coincidentally pushes Fanny aside. So by pursuing Mary he is marginalizing Fanny. Then is Fanny an outsider still? Even in Edmund's mind is that possible?

My first reaction was to laugh at the absurdity of these two words, which contrast so horrifically with what the narrator expressed about the familial situation of the Wards. Are these the words of the third person narrator or are they co-opted from Mrs. Price's letter? It didn't seem like Mrs. Price had much of a choice in her marriage. The disparity between "men of large fortune" and "pretty women" precludes the mention of her eventual husband, almost explaining this unfortunate reality. But this aside, Mrs. Price was expected to marry as was British custom. Yet, she ended up with hardly a man of rank or standing. So she wasn't careless in the least, only unlucky. Does Mrs. Price believe this about her marriage, that it is her fault? Would this phrasing have been entirely expected when the novel was published, and so might elicit only nods of approval rather than laughs?

This line and a half comes out in an almost stream of consciousness fashion. "Once again" the speaker sees these hedge-rows, but in short order realizes that they are "hardly hedge-rows." What the speaker remembered was hardly what what these "little lines / of sportive wood run wild" are. This double take seems to be included because it directly shows the incongruity of the speakers memory and his present and more circumspect perspective. Though the speaker is noticing the change of nature in these past five years the changes are not in the world but within his self. And because of this, nature and the speakers sister can be understood as devices through which the speaker is understanding his own maturity. Then though, the question arises: is this new sense of the world seen through mature eyes though fuller, better? What is the importance of these intoxicating, yet incomplete memories? Is there a flawed beauty in them?

"Sallows" has varied meanings. It can be, in the direct context of this line, likely referring to a species of willow, or far more unlikely to a dull yellow species of moth. But sallow is also an adjective describing a gaunt and sickly complexion. The beauty of "Autumn" is undercut by this fact. And while there is constant mention of the "soft-dying day" and the "wailful choir," this diseased death described in "sallow" is far more gruesome than the other deaths described. While "soft-dying" is full of a deep understanding of the beauty and of the glorious end of "Autumn," a river diseased is a far more fatalistic image. So then how beautiful does the speaker actually believe in this over-brimming seasonal sexuality and is there an undercurrent here of a far darker truth to the season(or person).

At the turn of the nineteenth century, London would rarely if ever be smokeless. The only time it might be was in the earliest hours of the morning. So this imagery of a beautifully "silent" and "bare" city is really more of an illusion than a reality. How long until the city wakes up and this "garment " that the city wears is cast off? Is beauty only possible without the hubbub of industry? Is the speaker trying to capture a reality or a dream of London? Both?

This is understandable simply because of his poetic virtuosity and the exceptionally apocryphal times he catalogued in his work. The period from World War I to World War II saw the rise and fall of empires, specifically the decline of the British world. The combination of setting and skill made for a highly potent poetic mix. His centrality to this period made his pronouncements vital to understanding the literature of his time and beyond. In fact, Northrop Frye the literary critic said: "A thorough knowledge of Eliot is compulsory for anyone interested in contemporary literature. Whether he is liked or disliked is of no importance, but he must be read."

While generally relating the patterns of the human body, music, and the universe by placing them together, these lines also work towards expanding the way the poem portrays life. It is interesting that Elliot would use words that are associated with music, because blood is rarely “trilling” and certainly never physically “sings.” Instead of merely describing blood, these words might instead act to change how the reader associates the “blood,” “arteries,” and “lymph” as bodily functions. Music is typically composed of different parts moving in tandem that “trill” and “sing” to create a more intricate pattern (the song). By juxtaposing these musical terms with the motions of the body, this leads to the insinuation that the patterns of the human body -the “dance” and “circulation”- might similarly form the more intricate self. Like with the song, built from disparate parts, a life is constructed at its’ basest levels from simple mechanics. Could the individual then be part of a greater pattern and not nearly as individual as we tend to think it is? How much of life then is a pattern or as predictable as the “drift of stars?”

It is rather odd that Elliot would refer to both "water and fire" together, when he mentions the other two of four classical elements (earth and air) separately. It is surprising because of the inherent contradiction posed by the two elements: water quenches fire / fire evaporates water. Could this be part of a recurring theme of contrast, one of a duality of opposing forces, or both?