"My Son, My Executioner" , Donald Hall

"My Son, My Executioner", Donald Hall, page 367 of Sound and Sense

My son, my executioner
I take you in my arms
Quiet and small and just astir
and whom my body warms



Sweet death, small son,
our instrument of immortality,
your cries and hunger document
our bodily decay.



We twenty two and twenty five,
who seemed to live forever,
observe enduring life in you
and start to die together.


Analysis:
"My Son, My Executioner" is loaded with examples of literary devices. In the second stanza the child is compared to "sweet death" showing how the child is the metaphorical representation of death to the parents. This is also ironic because children are usually symbolic of life,not death. Yet at the same time through the usage of paradox, the boy is also personified as being "enduring life" showing a contradiction in the descriptions of the child. This reveals the duality of the child, because the child is the result of the parents lives and the through their child they will live on after they are gone,through their "instrument of immortality". At the same time though through diction it is likely that the parents are being slowly "killed" by the child because they most likely were not ready for a child yet, one of them being only "twenty two" and the other" twenty five", they had a lot of time together, and maybe they weren't ready for a child just yet, because the birth of a child would signal the end of their relationship/their lives together as they knew them, and instead of focusing on each other they would focus only on the child. It is in this way that the child would "leach" the life out of its parents so it could live, thus revealing the 'paradox' of the relationship between the newborn and its parents.

Aside from the irony, metaphor, and paradoxical relationships described before, the poem also uses a pseudo-rhyme scheme, in that some lines rhyme but others do not, examples being "forever","together" "executioner","astir" . Backtracking a bit to the "leach"-like relationship "your cries and hunger document our bodily decay" shows how through the diction of "document" that it is not an immediate thing, but gradual, and that the child is slowly through its cries and hunger is the cause of the parents bodily decay.

All in all, I personally believe that the poem was pretty successful in delivering its message, and although the poem is short it is riddled with literary devices contributing to the overall meaning of the poem as a whole. I believe the poem is simply referring to how when a parent has a child it is the end of their life as they knew it previously, because instead of doing what they want, their responsibilities and commitment to their child prevent them from continuing whatever life style they had before. It is in this way that it is a 'death' of one part of your life, and the beginning of a new phase, one with the focus of life on the child instead of oneself, this is why the child is both an "executioner" and an "instrument of immortality" , because it may be "executing" the parents past life, but through their child they will live on. Evidence to support this is clearly demonstrated throughout the last stanza.

"Guns" ,W.D. Ehrhart

"Guns",W.D. Ehrhart, Sound and Sense page 360

Again we pass that field
green artillery piece squatting
by the Legion Post on Chelten Avenue,
its ugly little pointed snout
ranged against my daughter's school.

"Did you ever use a gun
like that?" my daughter asks,
and I say, "No, but others did.
I used a smaller gun. A rifle."
She knows I've been to war.

"That's dumb," she says,
and I say, "Yes," and nod
because it was, and nod again
because she doesn't know.
How do you tell a four-year-old

what steel can do to flesh?
How vivid do you dare to get?
How explain a world where men
kill other men deliberately
and call it love of country?

Just eighteen, I killed
a ten-year-old. I didn't know.
He spins across the marketplace
all shattered chest, all eyes and arms.
Do I tell her that? Not yet,

though one day I will have
no choice except to tell her
or to send her into the world
wide-eyed and ignorant.
The boy spins across the years

till he lands in a heap
in another war in another place
where yet another generation
is rudely about to discover
what their fathers never told them.

Analysis:

One of the most interesting lines in the poem in my opinion is "artillery piece squatting
by the Legion Post on Chelten Avenue, its ugly little pointed snout, ranged against my daughter's school." I say this because the personification of the artillery gun as being a (presumably) pig, for having a snout really reveals how the author feels about the gun, in that it, like the pig, is filthy and the manifestation of sin.Just as the pig is usually represented as being a glutton, the gun is now being likened to the pig in that by extension it could be an allusion to the gun being an object of sin, because it is used to kill. Furthermore, this quotation also foreshadows that many of the small innocent children of the school the gun is pointing to, are going to grow up and experience the hardships of war, just as the narrator has. As for the gun pointing out to the children it somewhat builds to the satirical theme of the poem in that it is like it has chosen the children by pointing at them, beckoning them forward to war, and the destruction of their innocence.

Stanzas 3-7 also are more examples of literary elements. In that they feature a dramatic monologue/train of thought style explanation on what the narrator is thinking in response to his daughter asking about the gun. In this he explains how he was just 18 when he killed a 10 year old boy , the image still sticking in his head to this day. The passage then highlights the emotional struggle the simple innocent question of "Did you ever use a gun like that?" brings to the narrator and makes him struggle with the realization that he will have to either tell her the struggles he faced one day, or leave her ignorant to find out for herself the hardships of the world.

In essence I thought this poem was pretty well put together. I believe that it is trying to be satirical to war, and that it is attempting to highlight the personal struggles war will bring about to peoples lives, and that the consequences of our actions during war will echo on after we are gone, if we do not teach our children about war eventually they will be ignorant to its 'touch' should they ever have to face it. This is demonstrated by the last stanza in which the narrator proclaims "Yet another generation is rudely about to discover, what their parents never told them." All in all, I think the poem is pretty successful in getting its message across.

The Handmaid's Tale

One of the major themes of Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is the transition from a society based on sex for pleasure to a society in which it has become for reproduction only. The origins of this transition could likely be found in the Church due to their desire for people to be more "orthodox". This loveless sex is demonstrated by the ceremony, in which Offred and others like here have sex with commanders, for the sake of reproduction. This is difficult for Offred because she remembers back to a time when she had control over whom she would have sex with, and could do it for pleasure rather than it having some "greater" purpose. I personally thought that the unhappiness generated by the "pleasure-less" world, was an attack by the author on the strictness of the church, which ties it again into the religious undertones.

"I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born." is a line that really demonstrates the lack of liberties of the people in the society, in a way that it is incredibly clear to me. The statement that she is "made ", as opposed to something born, is very profound in that it is showing that, she was not always like the way she is now, in need of being "composed" which is another word for controlled, but she was born with liberties, and now the world in which she lives, has "made" her to be what she is, the person in need of composing. In essence here, I just think that this quotation really shows the struggle for self-identity the people of Gilead are feeling.

As for my thoughts on the novel as a whole. I thought that this novel was superior to novels such as We, because the emotion of Offred, brought it to a whole new level that separated it from the "pseudo"emotionless characters of We. The Handmaids Tale, seems more realistic in that it is less of a science fiction novel, and more of a novel making a social commentary about the world we live, and how certain behaviors if taken to extremes, could be the bane of society. This is what makes The Handmaids Tale, so easy to relate to in comparison to other dystopian works.
As for the subject material, well it didn't exactly "thrill me" personally, but I felt like I understood the purpose of the novel, although I may not have agreed with some of it. So due to this I believe that the novel was good, but not excellent, which is why I'd rate it 3.5/5. This is because I simply found it hard to like the novel, although on the otherhand to deny the brilliance of its in depth writing would be folly. Thus in my biased opinion, it was good for what it is.

We

Yevgeny Zamyatins, We, is a dystopian novel in which its city, One State, seems to be the manifestation of the Marxist ideas of Communism. One of the things that is a major theme of the novel, and also contributes to the communistic idea, is the pink tickets in the novel. The pink tickets serve as a way for the government to moderate the publics sexdrive. The city has in place a system in which any number(person) is entitled to any other number, as a way to prevent jealousy/emotions,(keep everyone equal). This is just such a crazy idea in my opinion because one can just imagine what it would be like to have un-consentual sex with random people on a regular basis(unconsentual being if they pick you, not if you pick them).In essence I believe this is contributes to the overall theme of the novel, in that people are "entitled" to other people, which just goes to show how violated peoples liberties have come, and how the denizens of one state are oblivious to it.

"I rushed to the house office, handed over to the controller on duty my pink ticket, and received a certificate permitting the use of the curtains. This right exists in our State only for the sexual days. Normally we live surrounded by transparent walls which seem to be knitted of sparkling air; we live beneath the eyes of everyone, always bathed in light. We have nothing to conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the difficult and exalted task of the Guardians much easier. Without it many bad things might happen..." in my opinion is a quote that really shows how deprived of personal freedom One State is, and I believe the quotation really paints a picture of how One State is so privacy-less. At the same time word choice, such as that of "rushed" implies that he was excited, and looking forward to "using his pink ticket", which shows that all though the citizens of One State are deprived of emotion for the most part, D, is struggling ,because he is showing emotion in this very quotation. In essence this quotation in my opinion portrays some of the major themes of the novel.

I thought We was a pretty decent novel, although personally I preferred Anthem because of its more upbeat ending(which is kind of ironic being its a dystopia). In any case, We, was hard to follow at first due to the point of view, being from the eyes of a mathematical "fanatic", who'se trouble in interpreting his emotions, tends to cross over into the readers point of view, adding a bit of 'chaos' to the reader.However at the same time the thing that makes it difficult to understand makes it 'authentic', to an extent I believe. All in all thought We, was in my opinion "3/5 stars", in that it was good but, nothing made it really stand out more than other dystopian novels I may have read,and the point of view from D's point of view was a little cumbersome.

Anthem

In Ayn Rands, Anthem, at the conclusion of the novel Equality(the protagonist) renames himself Prometheus, and his lover, the golden one, is renamed Gaea. I found this to be one of the most interesting premises of the story, with the Allusion to Greek mythology.
The name Prometheus is from the Greek Titan, of the same name, who "stole" fire from the gods and gave it to man. It is for this reason that it is interesting that Equality chose this name for himself, because he has given the world "fire" in the form of his "light", and has been punished into a pseudo-exile for it ; but it is also a symbol of hope, that like Prometheus he had given the humans hope which is made manifest through the light, but also in the knowledge that the acts of Equality have changed the way humans will perceive the world. It is also in this way that Prometheus(Equality) serves as a messiah type character, because by liberating himself from the chains of the society, he can then go on to spread the revelations he has made to others, and teach them the truth.
On the other hand Gaea, is the god of the earth, and known as the "mother" god. It is to this end that "the golden one" will fit this model issued by her name, in that she will be with Equality together most likely as a motherly figure, who is now free to experience the earth, without the boundaries of the city.
In essence, the choosing of the names Prometheus and Gaea are very significant in interpreting the ending of the book, because the names chosen imply a hope that they are going to make a difference in the world now, like those who came before them with the same name.

"I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth." is one quote i found to be intriguing. It is obviously talking about the fact that happiness is found only on earth, because that is where the people are, and with the people one can ascribe a purpose. Also, it is to this end that I believe it is trying to make the point that the happenings of the universe, make one have a sense of "cosmic insignificance", and that the things that really matter are not of the intangible world but the material world that we live, that will make us happy.

Overall, I think Anthem was actually a very good story. I liked that its plot was simplistic, but with purpose. Also, it was short and to the point, and managed to hold your attention for all 100-some pages. Although it has a lot of good ideas in it, perhaps a bit more details about life in the civilization/"city", would have made the story have more of an impact. All in all, a solid story, 3.5/5 stars, in my opinion.