Formalism, Structuralism, and How to Analyze Literature

1. Denotation is the more literal meaning of a word or phrase. If the the word is, ‘war’. The Denotation is - a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state. The Connotation is what the word may imply due to the circumstances of the work. The connotation of the story would be ‘to keep peace, or destruction, or even death.’

2. Another thing I learned was when it comes to structuralism is that it's very similar to lego blocks. All the Red lego blocks can be figurative language, Blues can be symbolism, Yellows can be mood and tone, Greens can be diction, Whites can be imagery, and Blacks can be any other literary devices. Now that you have these blocks you can throw them together in any order and get a mess of colors. Or you can think of the picture you want to make, for example a 'tree in front of a blue sky on green grass'; you now know that you will most likely use the Greens (diction) for the leaves and grass, The Blues (symbolism) for the sky, and a mixture of Red and Green (diction and figurative) for the tree trunk.

3. When it comes to readers with less experience with serious literature, they improve their skills by focusing more on one element at time. Focus on one element at time and and you can then create meaning with the separate elements and then piece them all together to then form an even LARGER meaning. going back to the lego block analogy. Looking at and analyzing all the Reds can mean B, looking at the Blues can mean A, all the Yellows can mean R, the Greens can mean N, the Whites can mean E, and last but not least the Blacks could mean L. They all have separate meaning, but piece them together and your message could be B-A-R-N-E-L.  

Spring and Fall; Gerard M. Hopkins

   I believe if I were to read this poem from beginning to end and was then asked to analyze the poem and create a theme from what I read; I can guarantee I would have interpreted something completely different compared to analyzing ‘every’ two line of the poem individually. When analyzing two lines of the poem individually, and repeating that process; in a way you’re creating a theme statement for each line. The poem is total of fifteen lines, which is eight lines grouped in twos. For every two lines you glare at the words before you tearing it apart. Then you say what does this piece mean, and what does this piece mean, and that piece mean, then puzzle piece them back together everything cohesively binds and you thus receive a small piece (meaning of two lines) of the larger picture (the entire poem). By tearing apart two lines you can determine the mood, tone, point of view, connotation, denotation, any symbolism, figurative language, imagery, irony to form a miniature theme that plays or changes throughout the poem. You can think about it like it’s the universe, the universe is made up of millions of galaxies, galaxies are made up of stars, meteors, planets, and even black holes. Those ‘smaller’ things make one thing, and a collection of that ultimately makes something greater (the poem itself and the universal message). Again reading and analyzing poems this way ended up being a new and interesting way, compared to simply reading. It may take slightly more time but in the end it you achieve a better understanding of the poem, besides it rhymes and has ‘deep’ meaning. You learn more about that ‘deep’ meaning. What specific lines help you understand that?, What literary devices are used to magnify or push forward that? This way of reading and analyzing poems is very helpful and from using it I interpreted a theme that; ‘Spring and Fall’, is about the inevitability to aging, growing up, no longer being a child, or coming of age. I achieved this theme by again taking apart two lines each. The first two lines are, “Márgarét, áre you gríeving, Over Goldengrove unleaving?” From them I interpreted that a woman named ‘Margaret, is sad/grieving over a grove - group of in a forest, unleaving, or in other words going into the season ‘Fall or Autumn.’ A woman is sad/upset about a grove going through the changes from spring to autumn. The next two lines are, “Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you.” From these two lines I interpreted that there a simile comparing man to leaves. Simply saying man is nature but also hinting towards - men are leaves, leaves are falling of the trees in Golden Grove because it’s Fall, when the leaves fall of the trees they die. So men ‘fall of the trees’ and die, because of ‘fall’. Then there’s, “you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you.” I thought; “fresh thoughts”, fresh means new, I hear new and I think newborn or baby. Then, “care for, can you?” Someone is questioning can I care for new thoughts, or newborns. I completed my line analyses and from there I put them together. Someone is upset because ‘the seasons are changing’ and men are dying, and she does not know if she can care for newborns. That’s only a rough draft if you will but then you think about that and eventually it comes to you. Newborns and men, there’s a huge age difference between them. Trees bud in the spring, fully grow leaves, then fall arrives within six months, (which is fast) and they fall off and the process repeats. For men to fall of trees and die they must first be buds or ‘newborns’. So Margaret is upset/sad because newborns are growing up too fast, getting old too fast and are dying. Aging is inevitable so can she even care to care. All that to say, aging, growing up, and coming of age is inevitable and does happen pretty fast. It’s a sad reality to face but as humans we can’t really care too much, we can’t stop it.

A Diagnostic Test/Exam Packet

Personally ‘Mirror’ by Sylvia Plath was more of an appealing poem. The literary devices she used had a positive effect on the poem as a whole. I really enjoyed how she used personification, similes, metaphors, point of view, and imagery; it really set the mood for the poem. The fact that Sylvia Plath combined both personification and point of view in the first line of the poem is fascinating and new. By writing, “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions”, we learn that the ‘mirror’ is telling the ‘story’. The mirror is being personified, making it less of an inanimate object to more of a person. The mirror thinks, feels, and expresses it’s experiences with the world it sees. Personally I love when inanimate object posses the ability to comprehend the world us humans live, it adds another point of view, (they, the man, or the woman) beyond the human point of view, (I, me, or my). For an author to express emotions in a story or poem in this case with words can be apparent to the reader, but to express human emotion through ‘outside’ eyes and from an inanimate object made into a ‘real’, human like, or comprehensible thing can be more difficult. It’s definitely different and says a lot more about human nature than if it were human commenting on another human. This aspect really sets this sorrowful, almost regretful mood to the poem. The mirror has it’s purpose, can’t change that at all but has to deal with the constant “faces” that appear in it. This repetition of faces peering into it to me  says humans are self conscience creatures that need to feel attractive to themselves to be attractive to others and have now become obsessed with their appearance so much we look for “liars” like “the moon, and candle” to appear more flattering. Even though without science there would be nothing to change about appearance. Maybe it’s primitive, and and animal instinct but lions, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish don’t look in reflective surfaces we the motive and conscience thought of being more or less ‘attractive’ in their own eyes. Again this poem really caught my eye, said something deep and complex, and really struck thought within the first two lines; only using personification and point of view.      

1/21 Poems,

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne, was a longer poem compared to the previous poems that I have read and felt like a lot of imagery, symbolism, similes, and metaphors to remember and I may have ended up missing them and not interpreting them way I should or could have. I eventually went back to read the poem again using the strategy of analyzing each group of lines separately but before doing that i made the conclusion that the poem was about death. But more specifically I interpreted that  about losing a loved one in the war, and coming to terms with the lost and resuming your life and finding love again eventually.

When I went back and read the poem I focused on the beginning four lines and ending four lines. The beginning four lines, “As virtuous men pass mildly away,  And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say,  The breath goes now, and some say, No:", expressed that morally correct men/people are 'leaving' or dying, something or someone is whispering to their souls (I think death). People who loved them protest, are sad or upset that they are leaving. The last four lines, “Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.” I felt like these lines were saying, Who other than the man/woman I loved could be apart of me like my foot is and help me ‘run’ or function like he/she did. Because he/she is dead, I’m back at the beginning of living life ‘happy’ (because the mood of the poem is sorrowful, full of grievance - hence the title), because without them there’s no ‘us’, my life with him/her is over. Like a carousel I’m back where I began, finding love and living life content. I put them together and came up with the poem still being about love, war, and lose.

Poem 4/8,

‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ by Langston Hughes, I have to say is my second favorite poem besides 'Mirror'. I say this because I can really relate to this poem  considering my race/color of my skin. This poem was clearly about race as expected considering the title and if you look closely to the words Langston Hughes used and the way he uses them. The lines, "I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins”, expresses this idea of the motherland or native land where one or all originates from. More specifically people of color originate from one place, Africa. This explains the words like ‘ancient, blood, and veins’; I recently learned that Africa is where all life originated and from that continent people branched off thus populating other land masses and creating the world we know today. Africa is almost like the Garden of Eden emphasizing this ancient feel/mood. The middle of the poem and in my opinion the most powerful part of the poem, “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.”, says this sad yet powerful statement. The poem clarifies that Africa is the continent where everything began. But then we move from the ‘Congo’ in African to ‘New Orleans’ in America. The poem is called ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ so we can now infer that the poem is about slavery since we change scenery; Africa to a southern state in America. We can say that this individual was ‘free’ in Africa and was then taken to America to be a slave and this person saying, “I’ve known rivers”, is symbolism of slavery; being taken from your home and being forced to treat another place as your home.  

Poem 4/10,

When reading ‘Death be not Proud’ John Donne, due to the language of this poem considering it was published in the 1600’s, I found it extremely difficult to understand and analyze. Words like “‘art’, ‘thou’, and ‘dost’”, confused me and became a distraction from what the poem was trying to say. Besides the obvious theme presented in the title, and in the first and fourth lines, which is death. From line eight an on, “Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”, I soon realised that this poem is referring to death but caused by an “illness”. I started my research on trying to figure out a theme. The poem was published in the 1600’s and I looked up an outbreak of the ‘Black Death or Bubonic Plague’ remembering that the a plague did terrorize Europe but wasn’t exactly sure. Sure enough The Black Death started the 1300’s in China caused by fleas and rodents and spread to Western Asia and Europe killing around 25 million people ending in the 1600’s. I now understand that this poem is about the ‘Black Death’ killing people. Now I understand the tile of the poem and the first line of the poem. The title of the poem is more like the first line is less of a simple statement or title, it’s as if the author is speaking to the ‘Black Death’ itself as if it’s this entity or live person. The author is telling the plague not to be proud even though you have been given this name that goes down in history a something ‘Mighty’ because you aren’t. The poor died with no help, and kings with riches tried all types of vaciences, antidotes, ‘charms’ to stop it in it’s tracks. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” Then three years pass and eventually the ‘Black Death’ is gone, the ‘Black Death’ has died and is no more.