Donne Blog 2

THE BAIT.by John Donne
COME live with me, and be my love,And we will some new pleasures proveOf golden sands, and crystal brooks,With silken lines and silver hooks.There will the river whisp'ring runWarm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun ;And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,Begging themselves they may betray.When thou wilt swim in that live bath,Each fish, which every channel hath,Will amorously to thee swim,Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,And if myself have leave to see,I need not their light, having thee.Let others freeze with angling reeds,And cut their legs with shells and weeds,Or treacherously poor fish beset,With strangling snare, or windowy net.Let coarse bold hands from slimy nestThe bedded fish in banks out-wrest ;Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,For thou thyself art thine own bait :That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,Alas ! is wiser far than I.

Commentary:

In "The Bait" by John Donne, the author uses diction to concentrate on the shifting of the sentiments that the speaker has towards love. Donne uses this poem to portray the idea to the reader that love can be something that is at firs very attracting but in reality is nothing but an illusion of what love truly is.

Through the opening stanzas of the poem Donne uses nice and sweey words to establish a romantic mood towards his lover. The initial format of his stanzas connects his ideas and help express his thoughts. Also the established rhyme scheme serves as a platform for the pattern that the author uses to focus his spectrum on love and its deceitful ways.

Without any doubt the speaker is speaking to a lover or a potential one at that. He is asking the lover to be his and in a way he becomes aware of the deceit that love has. As the thrid stanza comes to an end there is a shift in the authors tone towards the idea of love. He goes from using words such as "amorously" to words like "treacherously" to show his realization that what he believe was so beautiful and pure is nothing but a big lie, in a way.

Donne brings the poem to conclusion when he mentions that "That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, Alas, is wiser far than I" which in my interpretation means that the men that are not attracted to all the glamour and beautiful deceit of the bait are so much better than what he is as he is unable to catch that and escape from it.

John Donne Commentary (1)

THE GOOD-MORROW
by John Donne

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and IDid, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ? But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear ;For love all love of other sights controls,And makes one little room an everywhere.Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west ?Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;If our two loves be one, or thou and I Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Commentary:

In "The Good Morrow" by John Donne, the author uses diction to express to the reader the idea that he has found the love of his life. Through his language choice Donne furthers his central idea and emphasize his tone and the mood that the poem tries to establish. The repetition of key words and elements as well as the rhyme used help further develop the poems intensity and emotions. Donne chooses to allude to biblical images when he mentions the Seven Sleppers in the opening stanza of the poem.

Also, the timing of the poem and the tenses used throughout it add to the unique diction that identifies this poem. The poem itself can be viewed as the transitional story of a love-filled soul that has found his true love after having "sucked and country pleasures" and that now sees the "good-morrow". The transition that is stated beneath the surface of the poen add to its value as it is through diction that the authors sense of change shows his maturing into a passionate lover.

The last stanza shows more examples of his use of diction to emphasize his happiness. He talks about the two lovers becoming one and goes on to say that "where can they find two better hemispheres". He concludes by expressing his true feelings when he mentions that "Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die." which is a clear reflection of what he feels for his loved one as he knows that no matter what the love between the two is unbreakable and will forever go on.

Blasphemy!!!

Exodus 20:7 says “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” A very strong statement, don’t you think? Well I do.

As I approached my timeline to create an act of resistance, I was truly running out of ideas!!! I was drawing on a blank, I didn’t have an idea on what to protest. And then Ahong came along with a very clever idea. She wanted to protest the use of God’s name in vain, so I decided to jump on that wagon and join in her in the cause.

At first I really wasn’t sure where this was going to get us to. Don’t get my wrong, I loved the idea, but I really didn’t know what was going to be outcome of this. Ahong planned the activity and we all agree to wear a shirt, which Ahong made, to school on Monday. The shirts said “Don’t offend my God, I don’t offend yours”. Though simple, the message was very direct and to my believe very powerful. I had more than a few of my fellow classmates what the shirt was all about.

Once I came home I had to go and get a hair cut. So I just dropped my book bag off at home and drove myself to the barber shop. When I got there, it was pretty empty, but nevertheless my shirt was still intriguing to the few people there. I began to explain the idea behind it and they thought it was pretty neat that we all took some of our time and dedicated it to fight for what we believe is right.

If I was given the chance to do this again I think that I will probably dedicate more time in being involved in the creation of the shirts and also I think I will like to make this act of resistance more public and recreate it on a larger scale.

I personally believe that the act of resistance was very impacting, although it’s not going to be an overnight change, I believe that this has raised awareness about this topic. I think, better yet, hope that people will take more consideration in respecting the sensibilities of others when it comes to things like using God’s name in vain. I will most definitely like to continue with acts as this, and I think it will be really cool if we all did one as a class. Got any ideas?

Finally!!!

Now that I have posted all that i wanted I really wanna talk about wheter i liked to book or not....welll in this case its really hard to decide that, because I feel that there are too many factors that I have to consider to make a decision.

First of all I really did not like the overall and general depiction of both sexes, by that i mean i dont like how men were seen as sex crazy animals and women as not bright individuals. But then again you have Lysistrata who is very very very smart and did a fantastic job leading the revolt.

Another thing about this play that i would have changed was the setting, I feel that the adaptor of the play should have had changed not only the language and formated to modern times but they should have also formated the basic setting of the play so that the main concept was more clearly undestood by the reader.

Finally I wanna say that I have enjoyed blogging but i missed writting the papers (motifs, chatracter analysis...) : (

Until next time!!!!

UWM!!!!!

We had 3 very bright and intelligent individuals come in to class and give us some great information about college english courses. The presentation was well planned and they all had a strong argument to complete and really seemed real when they spoke. They all had very good presentations and knew what they were talking about.

One of the things that really shocked me was that they were all very young and were pursuing their doctors degree. Another thing was that they have similar teaching styels but they are diverse in a way and also how different these courses are then what we are used to in high school, sucks for us because its gonna be just like TOK!!!!!!!!

What kind of power do men have?

If women are said to have power over men, couldn't it also be said that men have even more power over women?

I say this because it is their actions that lead women to think about a way to stop this war and therefore in a way the man egged the women like Lysistrata to think beyond their boundaries and come up with this idea of abstinence.

So I'm gonna keep it short and sweet and open it up for discussion...what do you guys think that the men are the one with the central power and that from their power women obtain theirs?

Does this really work?

In the play the women decide to go and strike the war by not having sex with their husbands, so we got to think about it in class and we wondered...could this idea work in our day?

To me the answer is very simple and short...NO!!!!!

The idea that couple stop having sex is very absurd because of several factors.

1) The men are away and there is no real chance to have sex because, welll is not like they are really close to each other at all.

2) It is cery hard to get everyon to participate because we have grown apart as a society.

3) Nowadays there are also women that are in the military, so what do we do with that?

Fianlly i would like to point out that we also really lack a strong and centralized women leader to take on this role that Lysistrata did, we have to many Kleonike's and not enough Lysistrata's