In Cold Blood

The Modernist period of Literature, Literature being the operative word, seems to be a period were all the rules of the past changed. No longer were we praising god and creating legends out of men, or criticizing government with satire. No, Modernist Literature existed as a level of extreme fear and aloofness. “God is dead” a statement with intense fire in Arthur Millers The Crucible may very well define the entire genre of modernist literature. In Modernism the characters are alone, and are principle characters stop being heros and become one step away from being villians themselves. In this godless existance they eternally alone, never making connections forever trapped in the hells they make for themselves.

Modernist tools such as disrupted story lines, unique perspectives, the internal landscape, and the self-imposed isolation, as well as the Anti-hero of pulp fiction, can be found far outside of the realms of fancy: in the every day world of ordinary human beings. In Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood a movie adaptation by Richard Brooks of Capotes nonfiction Novel about the Clutter family murders, focusing primarily upon Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, the killers. From the very begining of the movie the timeline is extremely convulated, only showing the crime near the end of the film, allowing the viewers that one shred of hope in there minds that maybe, just maybe, they were innocent. Now that statement is incontrivertibly false, they most definately did kill the family, however Capote’s use of disrupted story line gave readers/viewers an oppurtunity to gain sentimentality with the killers and to grow to actually like them as people, so that there death is all that more of a powerful scene at the end. The work was groundbreaking in that it established a new perspective, it allowed an average person to make a connection with these men, and realise that outside of there crime, and therefore outside any mental illness, there were really good guys who were almost victims of fate. Alvin Dewey said in the movie “In the end we have 6 murders” the four Clutters, Perry, and Dick. Perry’s life especially demonstrates the self-imposed isolation. He had spent his entire life with an abusive father who might as well have killed his mother, and nearly killed him with a (luckily) unloaded shotgun. Perry knew he wasnt ready for parole. It is only after he got the oppurtunity to speak with psychiatrists during his five years on death row that he is able to understand how his own mind was fractured and how he was capable of such terrible acts of violence.

Trumen Capote made excellent use of the tools the modernists before him had created, and with him he took an intrigueing true event and made the world realise that although the killers had massacreed a family they were not animals they were humans, the same as you and me. A perfectly distressing thought that falls right into modernism.

Long days Journey Into a Dark Abyss

In Eugene O’neils Long Days Journey into Night, a dramatic work of fiction that truly is a day in the early life of O’neil, is quite possibly the greatest literary piece of modernism in existance. As a truth about O’neil’s life it demonstrates how his life was disparing mess devoid of communication and nothing but rifts between his family. These seem common to many families, and while many may not be able to say “that’s my life”, they can very well see some facet of there own life reflected in his work. As previously stated O’neils masterpiece contains a solid basis of what we call today modernist perspective, specifically that very same self-imposed isolation. As the drama unfolds the isolation and the hate builds up as the characters become more and more drunken and high, to the point when the entire family seems to break down in the end, only to fall into there isolation and denial, and prepare to face it all over again the next day.

In the first act the family is very well tied together everything seems to be great, Emily has grown past here morphine addiction, and the family is still blissfully ignorant to the fact that edmund’s slight cold could quite possibly be consumption. The family is well tied together, hiding any problems, and only Jamie, the elder brother, has any suspicion of the dark truths that the family hides. This recognition that not all is well in the family proves to be a burden to Jamie as he finds the deciet unbearable and tells his opinion openly to his family and is criticized of imagining things, when reality he is merely criticized for bursting there delusional bubbles. The self- Imposed isolation is most conclusively shown in the first Act with the near constant bickering between James Tyrone Senior and Jamie, both won remaining guarded and apologizing when they dont really mean it remaining contained in there own little prisons.

The Next two acts further demonstrate this isolation through the increase in jaded bickering, eventually culminating with all there fears justified as the truth Jamie shouted so long about in the first act came true. In the beginning of the Fourth act jamie is completely absent having left to get completely hammered. his isolation, unlike his families does not make itself out through guarded llies to the others, but through actual isolation away from the family with a prostitute who was so obese she had no customers. Meanwhile the rest of the family isolate themselves through alcoholism and diluted fantasy of the past. Mary takes heavy dosages of Morphine ot escape from her present world with the husband she “loved” to return to a time when she played the piano and dreamed of being a nun. Her escape to the past is her own isolation, and Edmund and james each hide themselves at the bottom of a bottle.

As the play draws to a close none of the deciet, save for the morphine addiction, and Tuberculosis, is revealed and beaten, and like a normal american family they hide there troubles forever worrying too much about being politically correct and not enough about retaining the truth. In the end the only thing that came out of this whole day was: Edmund has TB, and is drunk out of his mind, James is drunk out of his mind, and vows not to be such a cheap bastard, Emily is as high as a kite, and Jamie is as drunken as the rest, having returned from the prostitute, and warns Edmund not to act like him. A typical american family bound forever in a cycle of Isolation that would eventually destroy them one-by-one.

People whos Blogs I posted on

“I’m going to the movies!” Glass Menagerie analysis action.-Allison

Desire under the Elm’s-Ashley P.

Desire under the Elms!!- Ben

The Glass menagerie- Evan

Just a Quickie on Glass- Jeff C.

Escaping Reality- Jeff V.

Desire Under the Elms- Joe D.

Street Car Named Desire is anything but Perspectivism- Jon

Glass- Kaitlyn

The Influence of Light in the Glass Menagerie- Katie

Desire Under the Elms- Kelcey

Lust under the Elms- Kelly

Desire under the Elms- Kyle

P.O.V- Lan K

Glass Menagerie- Lindsay W

A Streetcar named Insanity- Matt D

“Rise and Shine!!!” Time to Step Back into Reality!- Meme T

Uncle Ernie: American Beau- Mike B

The Glass Menagerie- Molly P

The Glass Menagerie- Nicole S

Desire under the Elms- Stephannie B

Street Car’s Twin Play, The Glass Menagerie- Stephen C

Glass Menagerie

Loneliness. In the modernist period of American Literature new topics came into focus for the literary folk of the Era. With the end of the Great War(WWI)the literary minds of America became consumed with thoughts of isolation, with the concept of the end of days, and the beleif that what If god does not exist. These Beliefs express themselves as immense isolation and loneliness. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams might as well be one of the defining works on this feeling of Isolation. The entire focuses on the isolation individual members of a family feel. this isolation expresses itself in different ways, however the main focus of the story is that as the members of this family effect each other, eventually those bubbles break and there forced to see the world for what it is, not as the idealistic dream worlds they created for themselves

Tom, the principle character, is consume with his own world, his night world. during the day he goes through the motions alienating everyone else hating the world long for the opportunity to return to his night world. The eternal wake up call of his mothers “Rise and Shine!” is the constant reminder of the hell hole that he lives in. When night comes, and he is able to leave his hell and live life he goes to the movies, choosing to live through the adventures of men like Clark Gable, he chooses to live a false life.

Tom: Yes, movies. Look at them– All of those glamorous people–having adventures–hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves–goody, goody! It’s our turn now, to go to the South Sea Island–to make a safari–to be exotic, far-off! But I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and i am about to move!

From the beginning of our story Tom has grown fed up with his manufactured reality choosing instead to leave and have his own adventures. This belief eventually becomes his escape, for as the reality he lives in becomes too much to bear he cracks, and the last vestiges of his bubble are incinerated, and he leaves.

Laura, his sister lives in the most pronounced bubble of them all, it permeates her entire life. She fears the world and isolates herself from it, choosing instead to live through her glass figurines. This this irrational fear is caused by her own perceptions about her minor disfigurement, one leg being longer than the other. as she raps herself within her isolated cocoon she becomes more and more detached not going to work, going to the park and movies instead, her isolation becomes such that Amanda and Tom are forced to find her a husband. However even her isolation is not impenetrable. When Tom brings Jim to visit Jim breaks through her cocoon and even pulls her out a changed person, free from the debilitating control her deformity holds over her. saying things like

Jim: You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is? That’s what they call it when someone low-rates himself!

as well as

Jim: Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of ‘em born and all of ‘em going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine!

Later on he breaks her favorite figurines horn off, it was a glass unicorn.

Laura: Now it is like all the other horses.
Jim: It’s lost its–
Laura: Horn! It doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.
…
Laura: Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns.

This horn symbolized the differences that made her inferior in her eyes and by him breaking it off it tantamount to removing her deformity, it broke her free of its control.

Amanda’s bubble is the most problematic of all. It binds her to a false reality, and because of her personality she is forced to press that reality onto others, most often her daughter Laura. She grew up in a genteel country society and grew accustomed to it and since her present life is anything but genteel she is forced to dwell in her past

Amanda: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion. Won the cakewalk twice at Sunset Hill, wore one Spring to the Governor’s Ball in Jackson! See how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura?

Amanda: Sometimes they come when they are least expected! Why, I remember one
Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain–
Tom: I know what’s coming!
Laura: yes. But let her tell it.
Tom: Again?

Amanda: One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain- your mother received seventeen gentleman callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t enough chairs to accommodate them all! We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house

Throughout the whole story she presses her past on her daughter and doesn’t see what her children want. This illusion proves to be the most diabolical, for not only is she unable to escape it, but it is this very belief structure that drives Tom away as early as it does and destroys he r daughters chances for survival.

There all alone, and As Tom/Tennessee says at the end he never finds peace, and is damned to remain forever trapped to his loneliness, the irony being while he left to live a real life free from illusions, he was trapped in a world more lonely than the one he left, and never managed to escape.

Desire under the Elms

Desire Under the Elms is a mid-life work by Eugene O’neil, over the course of this tragedy the lives of the principle characters unravel and they see each other, and allow the others to see them for what they truly are: disparing individuals who are trapped within their own world of hate and fear. This hatred traps them within there prisons and keeps them bound there for the entirety of there lives. This prison is expressed in two ways at the end of the story, firstly there is the presumed imprisonment of Eben and Abbie, and from there the possiblity of execution. this imprisonment and death show the short route there selfishness leads them to. In contrast Ephraim Cabots damnation is far more drawn out. His is the curse of life. He will “live to be 100″ alone, at which he’ll presumbly die and for aiding in the deaths of his two wives he’ll burn.

Over the course of the tragedy every primary character is damned in some way,

CABOT–(edging away) Lust fur gold–fur the sinful, easy gold o’ Californi-a! It’s made ye mad!

SIMEON–(tauntingly) Wouldn’t ye like us to send ye back some sinful gold, ye old sinner?

PETER–They’s gold besides what’s in Californi-a! (He retreats back beyond the vision of the old man and takes the bag of money and flaunts it in the air above his head, laughing.)

SIMEON–And sinfuller, too!

except for the prothers Simeon and Peter who are saved from there prison through the deadly sin of greed. The solititude these characters feel in there world must be examined from character to character, from the raging insanity seen in abbie to the inability to make decision’s in Eben’s life, to Cabots self imposed isolation were only the hard survived. These realities shape characters into there end results: three damned individuals and a dead baby.
Focusing on Abbie the damnation seems as less of a choice and more like a natural reflex.

ABBIE–(calmly) If cussin’ me does ye good, cuss all ye’ve a mind t’. I’m all prepared t’ have ye agin me–at fust. I don’t blame ye nuther. I’d feel the same at any stranger comin’ t’ take my Maw’s place. (He shudders. She is watching him carefully.) Yew must’ve cared a lot fur yewr Maw, didn’t ye? My Maw died afore I’d growed. I don’t remember her none. (a pause) But yew won’t hate me long, Eben. I’m not the wust in the world–an’ yew an’ me’ve got a lot in common. I kin tell that by lookin’ at ye. Waal–I’ve had a hard life, too–oceans o’ trouble an’ nuthin’ but wuk fur reward. I was a orphan early an’ had t’ wuk fur others in other folks’ hums. Then I married an’ he turned out a drunken spreer an’ so he had to wuk fur others an’ me too agen in other folks’ hums, an’ the baby died, an’ my husband got sick an’ died too, an’ I was glad sayin’ now I’m free fur once, on’y I diskivered right away all I was free fur was t’ wuk agen in other folks’ hums, doin’ other folks’ wuk till I’d most give up hope o’ ever doin’ my own wuk in my own hum, an’ then your Paw come. . . . (Cabot appears returning from the barn. He comes to the gate and looks down the road the brothers have gone. A faint strain of their retreating voices is heard: “Oh, Californi-a! That’s the place for me.” He stands glowering, his fist clenched, his face grim with rage.)

This page just after the introduction of Abbie into the story provides the reader with her back story. A back story that, yes, is full of tragedy those tragedies throughout her life definitely explain the poor decisions abbie will make later on in the work, however this lonesome past, which further tires her into this lonely world devoid of loving people, is no excuse for the decisions she will make, and in this world were god is seen as something unclean relating to Mr. Cabot, there is really no hope for Abbie to escape the doom she has set before herself.

CABOT–(raising his arms to heaven in the fury he can no longer control) Lord God o’ Hosts, smite the undutiful sons with Thy wust cuss!

EBEN–(breaking in violently) Yew ‘n’ yewr God! Allus cussin’ folks–allus naggin’ em!

CABOT–(oblivious to him–summoningly) God o’ the old! God o’ the lonesome!

EBEN–(mockingly) Naggin’ His sheep t’ sin! T’ hell with yewr God! (Cabot turns. He and Eben glower at each other.)

CABOT–(harshly) So it’s yew. I might’ve knowed it. (shaking his finger threateningly at him) Blasphemin’ fool! (then quickly) Why hain’t ye t’ wuk?

Over the entirety of the work no one aside from Ephraim Cabot openly acknowledges the existence of god. In fact, for Cabot the entire story is about god, that is what makes his damnation all the more sweet.

CABOT–Listen, Abbie. When I come here fifty odd year ago–I was jest twenty an’ the strongest an’ hardest ye ever seen–ten times as strong an’ fifty times as hard as Eben. Waal–this place was nothin’ but fields o’ stones. Folks laughed when I tuk it. They couldn’t know what I knowed. When ye kin make corn sprout out o’ stones, God’s livin’ in yew! They wa’n't strong enuf fur that! They reckoned God was easy.They laughed. They don’t laugh no more. Some died hereabouts. Some went West an’ died. They’re all under ground–fur follerin’ arter an easy God. God hain’t easy. (He shakes his head slowly.) An’ I growed hard. Folks kept allus sayin’ he’s a hard man like ’twas sinful t’ be hard, so’s at last I said back at ‘em: Waal then, by thunder, ye’ll git me hard an’ see how ye like it!

Cabot’s arrogance apparently had existed long before he had taken the farm, long before the events in Desire Under the Elms because of the hardness he had acquired he attributed his own traits to god and in effect made god in his image.

CABOT–(then suddenly) But I give in t’ weakness once. ‘Twas arter I’d been here two year. I got weak–despairful–they was so many stones. They was a party leavin’, givin’ up, goin’ West. I jined ‘em. We tracked on ‘n’ on. We come t’ broad medders, plains, whar the soil was black an’ rich as gold. Nary a stone. Easy. Ye’d on’y to plow an’ sow an’ then set an’ smoke yer pipe an’ watch thin’s grow. I could o’ been a rich man–but somethin’ in me fit me an’ fit me–the voice o’ God sayin’: “This hain’t wuth nothin’ t’ Me. Git ye back t’ hum!” I got afeerd o’ that voice an’ I lit out back t’ hum here, leavin’ my claim an’ crops t’ whoever’d a mind t’ take em. Ay-eh. I actooly give up what was rightful mine! God’s hard, not easy! God’s in the stones! Build my church on a rock–out o’ stones an’ I’ll be in them! That’s what He meant t’ Peter! (He sighs heavily–a pause.) Stones.

Cabot’s work becoming hard in the last passage alludes to purgatory were sinners would work off there sins before entering into heaven. in this passage Cabot his received his call to enter heaven and goes and finds it: a place were he can live an easier life but not a sinful one. he then turns away from that eden and returns to purgatory to the backbreaking work. He chooses his fate, however even while he is making his decision he makes it completely about himself, not God. Saying he could of been a rich man, and that he actually gave up what was rightfully his, even though in the scriptures that he would have read stressed piety and the relinquishing of worldly possessions

Cabot–All the time I kept gittin’ lonesomer. I tuk a wife. She bore Simeon an’ Peter. She was a good woman. She wuked hard. We was married twenty year. She never knowed me. She helped but she never knowed what she was helpin’. I was allus lonesome. She died. After that it wa’n't so lonesome fur a spell. (a pause) I lost count o’ the years. I had no time t’ fool away countin’ ‘em. Sim an’ Peter helped. The farm growed. It was all mine! When I thought o’ that I didn’t feel lonesome. (a pause) But ye can’t hitch yer mind t’ one thin’ day an’ night. I tuk another wife–Eben’s Maw. Her folks was contestin’ me at law over my deeds t’ the farm–my farm! That’s why Eben keeps a-talkin’ his fool talk o’ this bein’ his Maw’s farm. She bore Eben. She was purty–but soft. She tried t’ be hard. She couldn’t. She never knowed me nor nothin’. It was lonesomer ‘n hell with her. After a matter o’ sixteen odd years, she died. (a pause) I lived with the boys. They hated me ’cause I was hard. I hated them ’cause they was soft. They coveted the farm without knowin’ what it meant. It made me bitter ‘n wormwood. It aged me–them coveting what I’d made fur mine. Then this spring the call come–the voice o’ God cryin’ in my wilderness, in my lonesomeness–t’ go out an’ seek an’ find! (turning to her with strange passion) I sought ye an’ I found ye! Yew air my Rose o’ Sharon! Yer eyes air like. . . .

Cabot’s worldly greed grows over the course of the story. He is lonely in the company of his family, and all that matters to him is his farm. blaming them for aging him. he rants about his, his, his, and all the while it becomes increasingly more apparent that he may believe in a God, he does not revere that god and in fact committed some of the worse excesses of human nature.

Ephraim Cabot may be the only god-fearin’ member of this family but his god is merely himself glorified, the piety he should reflect upon his lord, as well the respect and devotion to its cause is directed upon himself inferring that he in someway believes that he is that god.

And if the most god-fearin’ member of the bunch is screwed with that much Narcissism then the rest of the bunch cant be much better off!

Desire leads to Cemeteries which leads to Elysian Fields

In Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire the evidence of this despairing loneliness is as evident as it ever was in any of T.S. Elliot’s poetry, and even more visible then in the works of Mr. Hemingway. With Blanche’s arrival in the first act, Mr. Williams makes reference to and foreshadows the hell that these people live in as well as the torture that will come after.

Blanche [with faintly hysterical humor}:
They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!

Tennessee Williams is basically saying that by falling to desire one is lead to the cemeteries, or death, and from there they travel to the Elysian fields, which can be construed as one of two locations: The Hellenistic Greek heaven, or Limbo, from Dante’s Divine Comedy. As a learned man Williams could realistically be referencing either location, however the society the characters live in infers to us that Williams Elysian Fields are a bad place, connecting it more to Limbo, which is Dante’s first ring of Hell, a false heaven, disjointed from God. That describes Williams Elysian Fields perfectly: a Hell were the people are so wrapped up in there own problems, or reveling in there own lust that they don’t realize: they’re in Hell.

Physics

2. The gravitational potential energy remains the same, despite the added weight, due to the formula used to find gravitational potential energy (mgh) in this formula the gravitational potential energy is determining by multiplying the height of the object by its mass, and by gravity. Since gravity  is a constant the only changeable factors are height and mass, and as the mass is doubled the distance the car travelled was halved, generating the same gravitational potential energy.

3. the coefficient of friction is 715.6

We Retreat Further into the Abyss that is our sanity

The Hollow Men by T. S. Elliot again presses the seclusion people feel in the world. The poem begins with the statement “We are the hollow men” In this world we see people for what we truly are, mere shells of ourselves, a people who have lived past our time, and in this world even though we are all living long after the end of our time, we are not living together; we are trapped within ourselves.

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

In this world we burnt ourselves out through violence and ask those who have passed on not to remember us for the acts we committed but as the shells we are. Its as though we are ashamed of what we have done.

In the second passage we fear death we hide “In a field, Behaving as the wind behaves” avoiding “death’s dream kingdom,” the place we all will go once our damnation is over: true damnation in hell. We seek to push back the clock trying to remain away from “that final meeting In the twilight kingdom”

And yet our damnation persists, we chain ourselves to these shells and hide from death, and find ourselves thinking back to the days of our youth, when we should be realizing the truth: our world is going out in “a whimper” rather than a bang because we no longer communicate. we fear those we have wronged and rather than face the consequences of our actions, which may very well be our own deaths as a coherent whole, we run from each other, as we attempt to run from our fate. In a very every-man-for-himself manner we attempt to hide from death, and in the process alienate our neighbors, making our own hells within ourselves

This fear comes about from a loss of hope in that world, and is the way they face it. The loss of hope leads to a total collapse in societies cheery disposition, leaving it with a world void of happiness, or laughter, or anything except for people locked in there own personal hells because they are to afraid of retribution for the sins they have committed the hope for some form of salvation is gone, and in its wake is only the will to survive.

J. Alfred Prufrock

is a man who is alone in a world full of people who are detached from reality. In The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock is an Individual who has lived alone, and will always live alone. He spends his time attempting to meet people and his time goes by he fails to connect with the people he meets:

If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

this inability to connect leads him to a deeper pit of despair, and as he ages the meaningfulness of life seems to be lost upon him:

For I have known them all already, known them all:–
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

He has become an empty shell he has lost faith in everything and like so many in life he falls to despair. This despair leads down a road of loss until finally there is no escape. the sorrow the unaccepted individual feels is enough to destroy them, which in the case of Mr. Prufrock it does.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Prufrock however is not the only one in this world who wallows in despair, The women in his world jabber on about nothings and allow the world to pass by them. This dividing feeling of solitude destroys Prufrock’s world, and with it him.

An Aspect of Modernist Literature

The part of modernist literature that most interested me was

The appearance of various typical themes, including: question of the reality of experience itself; the search for a ground of meaning in a world without God; the critique of the traditional values of the culture; the loss of meaning and hope in the modern world and an exploration of how this loss may be faced.

The most important aspect of modernist literature, in my humble opinion, is the solitude individuals feel in this world. the only thing the individuals seem to share is the sense of loss of meaning in there world. however even that feeling of anguish is unique to each individual, truly separating them from there neighbors.