A Look Back Through The Semester

We started out the semester with words that come to mind when thinking..."America"
words like: liberty, growth, opportunities, greed, pride, melting pot, honor, land, french fries, young, baseball, education, walmart, rebel, hypocrisy

American is a new, young country. Americans like to be seen as individuals and being original....But the word original can't be without its root origin. As a country, America, is not something completely new. As someone in class said America it is a melting pot. This country is filled with all sorts of different people with different back grounds and different stories. This country was created by people with a history.


Two books that Dr. Sexson recommended
"Love and Death in the American Novel"
"The Geography of the imagination"

It was said in class one day to trust the tale and not the teller.
At first I thought this was absurd. If you should trust anyone it should be the person who created the tale. But the more we talked and it and the more I thought about it, it really makes sense. Sometimes the authors don't realize what different aspects they are including in the novel and really everyone should be able to read and tale and interpret it their own way. That is one of the great things about stories, the reader can really embrace the parts of the story that are important to them while another person can read the same story and have a completely different experience.


The 11 richest people of all time
1. Santa Clause
2. Richie Rich
3. Daddy Worbucks
4. Scrooge McDuck
5. Thirston Howell III
6. Willy Wanka
7. Bruce Wayne
8. Lex Luthor
9. J.R. Euwing
10. Charles Montgomery Burns
11. Charles Foster Kane

Notice something strange about this list...They are all fictional characters. Just a funny think to look and think through.


While reading the book "Daisy Miller" by Henry James our class discussions were circling around the ideas of flirtation and being carried away. The definition of flirtation that someone came up with in class was, "dancing around the boundaries of comfort or desire." I really liked that definition, I think it really captures the essence of the meaning.
Also the term being "carried away" began to slip into the conversation. This term has continued to pop up now and then during the continuation of the semester.
Being carried away, what does that mean? Have you even been carried away? Dr. Sexson asked that question is class and it really made me think of what "carries me away." Each time I keep coming up with the same vision...Being out on the river reading a book that I feel I am part of. I guess that is what most carries me away, books. I can forget the struggles and stresses of my world when I pick up a book and allow the characters to suck me into their own world. Also the mountains carry me away. Even though I rush around most days with blinders on when I do pause for just a moment and reflect in the simplistic beauty around me I am truly carried away.

Here are a few terms and points that Dr. Sexson thought important to know for the test:

Henry James
Flannery O'Connor
Wallace Stevens

Zora Neale Hurston
Citizen Kane

L. Frank Baum, when writing the "Wizard of Oz" was trying to create an original American story.

Who is the master...Henry James

The imagination is always trying to find meaning
The truth is in where you are and what you do

The Wallace Stevens poems needed for the test
*Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
*Bantams in Pine-Woods
*The Snow Man
*Study of Two Pears
*The Poems of Our Climate
*Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
*Sunday Morning
*The Idea of Order at Key West (memorized)

A little help in getting to understand Wallace Stevens
"Poetry is the subject of the poem" from stanza 22 of "The Man With The Blue Guitar"
In all of Stevens poems the subject of poetry can be discovered

His theme is the interplay between reality and imagination. Other words Stevens uses for reality are north, white and winter whereas other words for imagination are south, blue and summer.

Stevens is a Romantic
He can be compared with both Emerson (American) and Colerige (British), also both Romantics.
Romantics can be explained by three points
1. venerate nature
2. god-like power
-the power to create (poetry)
3. tend to be secular humanists
- in the absence of a god you have the self