Literature

The advent of new media, which started during the late 80s, has loosened the concept of media from mass communication into something that is very personal and interactive. What used to be very broad and encompassing has now transformed into a medium that allows the audience to gather individualized knowledge and information. Apart from this, new media also offered its audience a new sense of personalized communication, which was never present with traditional mediums such as radio, television, and print (Littlejohn and Foss 291).

With this newfound freedom, it is not surprising why more and more people are turning their faces from the boob tube into the flat screens of their computer. Chat and emails has made communication a lot faster and more global. For instance, individuals who are located from different poles of the globe can now simultaneously communicate and exchange ideas. Such mediums also allow them to transfer and swap photos, music, and videos. Social networking sites are now also considered as trendy and hip. It does not only permit the user to broadcast information about his likes and interest, but it likewise allows him or her to create a social network of friends without having the need to go out from the comforts of his or her home.

Thus, new media, particularly the Internet, has provided its audience with a mediated reality. The face-to-face interaction of the olden days is now reduced to something digital. Although, this new forms of interaction allows the user to communicate in ways that older media could not provide, it is also essential to ask effects of this mediated reality.

According to many communication scholars, a mediated form of communication presents powers and advantages as well as disadvantages and limits. Social integration for example, is one of the greatest values of new media (Littlejohn and Foss 291). This means that this medium allows its audience to create a diverse and wide set of contacts and even relationships. As seen in social sites such as Facebook and Multiply, more and more people creating online friends that are not limited by space. This community of users gives them a sense of belongingness or a feeling that everyone fits in. However, the same medium also presents the problem of identity. Since face-to-face interaction is not necessary, users can easily create a new person or a new them which they can easily present to other online users. One can easily change and transform his or her personality and even identity. By doing so, new media only fuels the person to become someone that he or she is not in order to feel that sense of belongingness.

Likewise, this cyber interaction has become a mere ritualized habit. Since actual interaction is no longer required, people may tend to communicate not because they want to, but because it has become a ritual. For instance, a user might want to check the Washington Post Online or their email, not so much, because he or she wants to know the news or check their email but because it is merely set as the computers homepage. Thus, checking it has become a formalized habit.

New media has also indirectly fueled and promoted physical inactivity. Since face-to-face interaction is no longer the gold standard for making new friends, people no longer exert the effort to go out of their houses and socialize with the real world. Instead of engaging in sports or other activities, most individuals would settle in front of their computer. Thus, typing and mouse clicking has become their only source of physical activity. According to recent research studies, about 60 percent of Americans have gained additional pounds because of the decline of physical inactivity (Geralds 1). This rising cause of epidemic is now fast becoming a problem among children. Kids today who are more exposed to new media, tend to be more overweight and weaker as compared to children who constantly play outside.

According to the communication scholar Harold Adams Innis, communication media are the essence of civilization (Littlejohn and Foss 291). This only goes to say that new media along with its disadvantages are now shaping mans history. With this in mind, perhaps it is also important for people to understand how to properly use the computer and the Internet to his advantage. This means that users should be aware and educated not only about the benefits of new media but most importantly about the dangers of todays digital culture.

DESIREES BABY
A drastic shift of personality occurs in Kate Chopins story, Desirees Baby.  This story, by Kate Chopin is about a child born to Armand and Desiree, the main protagonist in the story.  Later, as the child grows, it turns out to be black.  This seems strange as both Armand and Desiree are white.  Later, after Desiree leaves on Armands request, she kills herself over the issue of the child being black, which meant that she was black or had black parents, which was unacceptable to white couples.  However, later, Armand discovers that it was not Desiree who had black parents, but he himself who had a black mother.  In the story the character of Armand drastically shifts to accommodate the drastic twist at the end of the story as well as heighten the emotional response of the reader.

Armand, as mentioned earlier, is the husband of Desiree with who he has a child.  In the earlier parts of the story, Armand is characterized to be someone who is a hopeless romantic, as implied in the line, the way all the (Armand) Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot (Chopin)  Here, the narrator begins to develop Armands character as one who believes in love at first sight, then as the story progresses, Armands character is characterized as someone who is a happy and contented father on the birth of his child with the lines, Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name though he says not - that he would have loved a girl as well (Chopin) and he hasnt punished one of them - not one of them - since baby is born. Even Negrillon, (Chopin) this second quote taken to characterize Armand as someone who has become tolerant of their black slaves because of his happiness at the birth of his son, which is, in addition, validated by the line, Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand Aubignys imperious and exacting nature greatly (Chopin) This additional line, however, also makes implications as to the past personality of Armand as being imperious and exacting.  This character of Armand is, unfortunately, short lived, because when the child turns out to be black, he begins to ignore his wife (Chopin) as well as he becomes cold and indifferent to the queries of his wife such as when she asks, What does it mean. (Chopin)  This change in character in Armand turns out to be necessary in the end as it is a means of putting him in a position of regret when he later discovers that he made the wrong accusations of his wife and he should have been more lenient with his decision of allowing his wife to leave and kill herself.  This change of character also helps the audience to develop an intense emotional response for the actions of Armand and so heightens the effect of the twist in the end.

Characterization is very important in literature as it is a necessary tool in achieving certain elements in the story as well as in building up the plot.  Here in this story by Kate Chopin, Armands character and the shift in this character serves to accommodate the turn of events as well as heighten emotional response to the ending of the story.

Wellmans theatre is by no means an arbitrarily designed linguistic curio shop. His 1984 essay, The Theatre of Good Intentions, represents a kind of anti-naturalist manifesto in which he attacks the traditional theatre for its manipulation of warm emotions, its impoverished dramatic vocabulary, its fake profundity, its doggedly consistent and well-rounded characters, its fixation on questions of motivation and intention, its habit of explaining evil away and its obsession with victims. It argues that the well-intentioned play succeeds all too well in producing a perfect and seamless summation of itself and its own intentions, and nothing else. (Robinson, p.29)

We cant generally say he wants to write a play about the problem of such-and-such. Its more a question of ideas or images that puzzles him. It seems he wrote a play called Harms Way because he wanted to write a play in which everybody was angry, just to see what that would be like. His work is more a reflection of negativity, because theres a lot more individual energy and associations buried in places you dont want to look. The word harm is a metaphor for a way to describe social conditions, like violence, that this play deals with. Theres violence in love, in building in nature its called the sublime. But the concept of harm seemed more interesting. Sometimes Wellman starts with an image. One play began with an image of two people playing cards at a card table, only all three objects were floating above a river and that was enough for me to write the play. Similarly his other play Second Hand Smoke follows his obsession with how awful the workplace is, so he constructs the worst workplace and the worst boss in the world.

Wellman believes that for him the two main weaknesses with American drama are, first, that its phony--overly dramatic in unconvincing ways. Second, its so sentimental. The trouble with sentimentality is not that its silly or emotional its that its a lie. And yet if you write a play, it almost has to be sentimental---everybody from the producer to the actors will want you to have a happy ending. They joke about it, but its true. (Robinson, p.31)

Harms Way is typically a summary of a killer named Santouche, but along with that it also narrates the story of the many people who are sooner or later trapped in this web, including his lover, his companion, and a folk he meets along his journey. Playwright Mac Wellman uses a mix of sensitive words and colloquialisms from dissimilar periods to give the whole play a slightly lopsided feel. Scram and Hey, bud are thoroughly mixed with Nevertheless, I wish you well. (Wellman, 1984) The story is also intended to keep the viewers lopsided, so that they are never relatively sure of where realism stops and dream begins. A man who claims he is President McKinley demands that Santouche induce a stiff (i.e., dead guy) to bury him alive. A carnival convict turned pimp panders with his Church of Jesus Christ, Fornicator, which is a luminous condemnation of both con-men and prearranged religion. Wellmans operational theme of its all part of the show impels us to inquire much of what we take for granted in our society and culture. Though perhaps not his best play, it is a completely useful look at human contact, incentive, relations, and, most importantly, insight. Wellman does a wonderful job walking a superior corridor connecting absurdist and linear theatre, and this production brings out the best in his play.

A first reading of Ezra Pounds brief poem, In a Station of the Metro, raises many more questions than it answers.  One does not normally associate references to ghosts, flower petals and black boughs to a metro station and this is perhaps the first startling feature of the poem.  There seems, if one reads the poem literally, to be a lack of sense and rational thought.  It is only when this poem if read over and over again that it becomes readily apparent that a literal interpretation is probably not intended and that meaning must instead be derived from a figurative analysis of the words in the setting created by the poet.  After a couple of dozen readings, it seems to me that Pound is commenting on the continuity of the human experience.  More specifically, the metro might be a metaphor for the life transportation that all human beings experience and it is within this setting of a metro representing the human life cycle that Pound comments on the human life experience.  This paper will discuss why I believe that this universal type of theme, the continuity of human existence despite old age and death, best characterizes this poem.

I was immediately forced to cease my reading when I came upon the reference to apparitions a resort to a dictionary suggested that this could refer to either a ghost or the dead.  Both of these definitions are somewhat frightening and my initial thought was that this might have been intended as a dark poem.  Further reflection, after reading the entire poem together, convinces me that this is not a dark poem.  First, the poet links these apparitions to what he calls the faces that can be seen in the stations crowd.  There is no distinction between the living and the dead instead, the poets words seem either to equate the living and the dead or to use the apparition reference as a metaphor for human mortality and rebirth.  Both interpretations suggest a certain type of consistency in the human experience.  That consistency is the fact that all human beings are born and die all human beings are part of a larger human phenomenon that transcends their own individual lives or a particular moment in time at the metro.  The live faces in the stations crowd and even the metro are somewhat tangential except for their figurative import to the poet.  My first response, therefore, is that this is a poem celebrating the gift of human life and counseling that individual life is a gift very much like a one-way ticket with no return.  Life should be embraced and enjoyed to the extant possible.

My second response is that, in addition to celebrating the gift of human life, this poem is also serving as a warning in certain respects.  This can be deduced from an analysis of the references to petals and black boughs within the larger context of the poem.  Again, it seems doubtful that Pound was merely describing flowers and tree branches in this poem.  It is more likely that the poet was writing figuratively and a figurative approach suggests that the petals reference refers to youth and vibrancy whereas the black bough reference refers to the natural aging process and an inevitable decay in physical strength and mental faculties.  It therefore seems to me that this part of the poem is issuing a warning of sorts to its readers.  The warning is that while human life is a great gift it is also, just like the poem itself, extraordinarily brief.  The beautiful petals bloom, wither and die.  Other human beings will take our places, as the apparitions reference notes, but our own lives need to be lived to the fullest before time takes its inevitable toll.

In conclusion, I have three basic responses to this poem.  First, it is a call to celebrate the opportunity to live.  Second, it is a warning to enjoy the gift of human life because it is of a limited duration.  Finally, the poets short poem may be a technique to reinforce the precious briefness of time.

The mirror is considered to be a portal to a different dimension.  When I was staring at myself in the mirror for an hour or more I had the most remarkable experience of my life.  At first it felt really stupid to be staring at myself, but then something strange happened in the first fifteen minutes of the experiment.  I felt like everything around me was melting.  Other things reflected in the mirror aside from my face began to turn into a blur and all I could focus on was I.  Initially, I felt a strange sensation of calmness and peace.  As the other images in the mirror blurred, so did my other thoughts.  I found myself thinking about the face on the mirror that began to feel like it was not my own.  What at first was a superficial observation of the lines on my face, the folds around my eyes, the indentations and the surface markings on my face, and the unsightly elements like dried up zits and zit scars, blackheads on my nose, and white heads around it became and observation that went beyond just the superficial.  It felt like I was peeling away my face in my mind, layer by layer, from the skin, to the muscles, then to the internal workings of my eyes, and soon, my mind.  It was a most profound experience because at later points, I felt like I was the only one in the world.  It seemed like I had all the time in the world to think about my self and what was going on in my head at that very moment that I was staring at the mirror.

No sooner had I enjoyed the sense of calmness and peace that washed over me when thoughts began to pervade my mind.  I began to recall images of how the face I was staring at looked like as child, how it had grown to look when I was in my early teens, and how the face in the mirror evolved from one to the other.  All throughout these thoughts I felt that despite the physical changes I was still the same person I was years ago.  At certain points during the experiment, I would have short bursts of intense fear, dread, and sadness, as if I all the feelings that I had experienced before came bursting back.  At certain times during the full hour I had sensations of being tired and being weary  not physically though, but mentally and emotionally.  It felt like the mirror was reflecting all my pent up emotions back at me.  I also felt a strong sense of identity and ownership of the face in the mirror despite the initial strange feeling that I was not looking at myself.  Gradually, I felt a deep feeling of acceptance envelope me, as if I was isolated from the rest of the world and I did not care what happened around me and that I only cared about what I was looking at in the mirror.

I would also experience feelings of sleepiness, like I my eyes wanted to close, but I did not want them to.  Looking at me in the mirror felt pleasurable, at the same time a bit tiresome.  There was a tingling sensation of warmth that welled up in my stomach, and the feeling seemed to expand to my limbs, to the tips of my fingers and to my face.  I got the impression that the face I was looking at in the mirror was visually brighter than everything else around it also reflected in the mirror.

All throughout the experience, there were some things that did not happen to me though.  I wasnt able to think about anything else except my self, it was as if I was totally absorbed in myself and preoccupied in gazing at my reflection.  I also did not feel any form of anxiety like I was so sure of what I was gazing at and I did not want to concern myself about anything else.

This whole experience was an enlightening experience on my part because I felt emotions that I did not expect to feel and it seemed to me that the experience gave me a clearer and more vivid picture of myself and what went on in my mind and my heart.

Spending a day without my cell phone, iPod and Facebook seemed almost impossible to me. Just the thought of doing away with them made me cringe already even before disregarding them. I would say it was an empty feeling I first had when I took away these important gadgets. How was I going to contact my friends and family during the day without my cell phone How would I know the latest happenings on campus without Facebook Wouldnt I get bored without my iPod These are some of the questions that kept running through my mind when I begun this experience.

As if to confirm my initial fears, reaching my friends and colleagues was quite a challenging task. This was especially manifested when I had to pick my book from my friends room only to find that she would not be around till late that evening. I could have avoided this situation if I had my cell phone. Apart from that, I was not settled throughout the day. This is because I kept thinking that maybe there was an emergency yet my people could not reach me. What is more, it was very hard to make any plans since without my cell phone I could not reach my friends so as to establish what they are up to.

Further still, spending the day without Facebook was also quite challenging. I could not tell what new developments had occurred on campus, in my social affiliations or even among my friends. What is more, I felt like I had completely lost contact with my peers. Some of my friends on Facebook are from distant countries there was no way I could bump on them on my way. This was even intensified by the fact that I did not have my cell phone therefore there was no way I could reach them. In just a day, I was already missing my peers. I felt like I had completely lost contact and was missing out on important happenings.

Switching off my iPod for the whole day was also not an interesting thing to do. This made me realize how much boredom I manage to cut off with my iPod. I must admit this was one of the most boring days I ever experienced. What is more, I could not stay away from conversations I didnt want to participate in. In such situations, I would normally just turn on my iPod and enjoy my music. On this day, I was compelled to listen to conversations I was not interested in just because I had no iPod to bail me out of the situation.

On the other hand, though, I also realized how I spent so much of my time using these gadgets. The experience helped me to realize how much I usually cut myself off from my family. On a normal day, I would only have short conversations with them before turning to my social applications. On this day, I spent more time with my dad and we even had a long conversation. A day without these gadgets helped me to bond with my family better than I usually did.

Still on the same note, I also realized that I managed to complete most of my assignments. These were finished quite on time and I even had more time left to do other things. It was clear to me that most of my time was spent on all or one of these gadgets such that I barely had time to finish my assignments or even do other things such as bonding with my family and close friends. At the end of the day, I realized that as important as these gadgets are to me they also had a negative impact on my life. While it may be difficult to completely discard these gadgets, I could still try to spend less time using them. This will help me to ensure that I do not compromise my relationships with family and friends or any of my responsibilities.

Separated by two centuries Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton were two very different authors, who nonetheless reflected the lessons of classical myth and literature, as well as the more contemporary influence of Christianity. In his poem  Ode on the Morning of Christs Nativity  Milton uses allusions to classical figures such as Apollo, the Fates, Pan, and other mythical deities to juxtapose the emergence of Christ in both a religious and cultural context. Similarly, Geoffrey Chaucer in  The Friars Tale  from the Canterbury tales uses religion and classical imagery such as Dante Alligheris tales of hell and purgatory and Virgil to compliment and at times mock one another. While Chaucers use of mythical and classical imagery is more subtle, in both instances we can see how the influences of ancient and classical cultures and civilizations influenced not only the building of modern civilization but the foundations of literature.

Centered around the birth of Christ  Ode on the Morning of Christs Nativity  is a mixture of the divine and the ancient. There is no doubt that Milton wishes to impart the sacredness of Christs birth as a catalyst for humanity,  That glorious form, that Light insufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty   here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. Humanity itself is base, becoming only divine through its relationship with God and his son. Milton prompts the Muse of classical myth to sing a praise to the birth of Christ, this event that acted not simply as a beginning for Christianity but also as an end for some more ancient forms of religion and culture. The Muse is not simply the Greek ideal of creativity but also Miltons own creativity. He is showing the convergence of two sides of himself, both the learned and the religious. More importantly, he uses this type of classical imagery to show a continuity of thought. While Christianity is certainly a divergence from the type of religion that created the idea of the Muse as a physical being, Milton is illustrating how the two can work within a complimentary manner,  join thy voice unto the Angel quire.

In the hymn part of the poem there is almost a historical progression of beliefs and imagery Milton moves from imagery of nature to the more classical images of Greek and Roman mythology and legend. When Christ is born, he is greeted with a personification of nature herself, she is a being unto herself who  had doffd her gaudy trim to greet the birth of this savior. Like the pagan belief in Nature as a living being, Milton plays on this imagery to show the move from one belief to another but also to show a unification between the two. God is Natures  Master. However, even as Milton illustrates a unity between nature and God, he also condemns this personification as no longer in  season   To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour. Nature is the baseness of human nature, in Miltons view she is not rebirth and life but rather the animal tendencies of humanity. The Sun receives equally harsh treatment. Perhaps indicative of the more ancient beliefs of Egypt, where the sun was the supreme god, in the light of Christianity this belief becomes diminished,  As his inferior flame The new enlightend world no more should need He saw a greater Sun appear Than his bright throne, or burning axle tree could bear. The natural sun becomes a product of God as well. The world no longer revolves around the sun but both the sun and the earth revolve around the concept of God.

As much as Milton condemns some of the ancient religions and beliefs, utilizing their own imagery, he also employs it within the context of this new belief. In doing so he gives new life to some of the old beliefs. An excellent example of this is the use of the imagery in lines 133-150, where Milton uses the image of ideas such as mercy, justice, fate, truth and vanity which are commonplace in classical works. The underlining message of the poemhymn however, is pointedly clear as he switches once more to the use of classical imagery as a way to illustrate the decadence and falsity of the past while promoting the truth of Christianity. Turning his sharp tongue to Greece, Milton states,  The Oracles are dumb No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. The lessons learned from the ancients and the great thinkers of the classical age become based in folly, their belief in such things as Oracles and great gods such as Apollo who  from his shrine Can no more divine is made false by the birth of Christ and the rise of Christianity.

The Greeks are not the only ones to suffer this fate, as Christianity moves farther to the east great ancient kingdoms and their beliefs fall to the wayside with the influence of Christianity,  Peor and Baalim Forsake their temples dim, with that twice batterd god of Palestine. What Milton primarily appears to be saying is not that these beliefs have died but have become irrelevant. A god who was once strong due to the belief of its followers will weaken and eventually disappear as people begin to forget. However, Milton himself in using the images and names of these ancient and classical deities and virtues is in effect keeping them alive. Language, as Milton shows, is the basis of belief. Without the stories, there is little to inspire belief. More importantly, without someone to pass the stories along the legend dies. In his discussion of the birth of Christ, Milton is molding these traditions to Christianity and Christ, even if it is only to show how they have become debunk in the face of a newer ideology.

Religion is as much culture as faith, finding its way into everyday understanding and logic. The practices of a people, the rise and fall of civilizations can be tied to the rise and fall of their beliefs. In comparing Christianity to Greek mythology or eastern religions, Milton may be pointedly marking their downfall but is also showing a kinship between the ideals of faith that hold all of their beliefs together. Based on these rules, Christianity could as easily find its downfall in the advent of another more powerful and pervasive basis of faith. But faith is the central tenet of this poem, because there is no doubt concerning Miltons own faith in Christianity and that Milton does not contemplate a similarity between his faith and those of the past shows how he believes it to be a culmination of understanding.

Chaucer, coming before Milton, saw religion in a more practical light. Seeing the abuses of the clergy and recognizing the hypocrisies that sometimes arise between faith and the practice of faith, his characters were based in human nature and not the divine. Perhaps having been chronologically closer to the older pagan religions of Britain, Geoffrey Chaucers  The Friars Tale  shows more of a pessimism towards Christianity and its ability to abide by its own values and beliefs. The summoner, working on behalf of the church, summoning those who owe debts or have created transgressions to come before the courts for judgment. This is the court of man and not of God, which Milton speaks of. Finding a kinship with the demon along the roadside, Chaucer exposes the hypocrisy of a man who supposedly works for the church but exploits his fellow man for his own benefits.

Unlike Milton, Chaucers use of the classical allusion is much more subtle. The conflict between good and evil, the eventual fable-like karma of the summoners demise is an old context but is not as specific as that presented by Milton. Instead of relying heavily on allusion like Milton, Chaucer brushes lightly against the history of thought and belief. At one point he makes reference to the great classical thinker Virgil, who takes Dante through the levels of hell in Aligheris Inferno,  For you shall, of your own experience, In a red chair have much more evidence Than Virgil ever did while yet alive, Or ever Dante  (Chaucer). A man such as the summoner would know the truths of Dantes hell more thoroughly and completely than the observing Dante and Virgil as they went down through the levels. In his misdeeds, in his inability to live up to the standards not simply of his own faith but of common decency, the summoner is eventually pulled into hell. Like Milton, Chaucer is providing a continuity in literature and in the idea of retribution. For his sins, the summoner does indeed suffer. The satirical nature of the piece lies in the summoners connections to the church which reveal Chaucers own pessimism and distrust.

Despite the varying degrees of use, the allusions to the past and to classical heroes and imagery effect the overall impact of both Milton and Chaucers work. In laying the ideas of the past beside the ideology and the human applications of religion and belief, both Milton and Chaucer show the continuance of knowledge. While Milton seems to want to trump the past, he also draws on it as a source for inspiration and his understanding of his faith in Christianity while Chaucer views the future within the context of the unchanging precepts of human behavior.