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(2015
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2015 #3: Web Highlights |
LITR 4328 |
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Cyndi Perkins
Web Review: Learning from Peers
1.
“More
than anything else, I love to read a story that involves a Byronic hero. A
Byronic hero is a character who is dark, handsome, and self-destructive. They
are often times haunted by something from their past and have a “wandering” sort
of searching behavior. An example of a Byronic hero, besides Poe, is Magua from
the Last of the Mohicans.”
-Sarah Gonzalez,
The
American Renaissance: Its Significance to Modern Day Literature
I enjoyed this essay because it reflected some of the
surprise I had when learning about the elements of Romanticism such as the
sublime and the gothic. She did a remarkable job explaining the terms and giving
examples from the texts that we have read so far. I also found it very
interesting when she described Magua of
The Last of the
Mohicans as a Byronic hero. I had to look
through the text to locate some of the passages she highlighted. At first, I
believed that only Uncas could be designated as a Byronic hero. I didn’t believe
that the author intended for the reader to see Magua as any sort of hero.
However, after looking more deeply at the descriptions of him that Ms. Gonzalez
mentioned and pondering Magua’s journey from a twenty-first century point of
view, I found her assertion to be quite enlightened.
From
Cooper’s point of view, he may indeed have been considered the villain and a
character to be feared as well as symbolize everything that the settlers were
threatened by. From the point of view of a modern reader, he is the victim of a
society that has forced him into a terrible position and he is only acting out
to save himself and his people. His desire to marry Cora so that she can
bear
him offspring in order for his people to live on is a lost cause. The book tells
us the fate of the natives is set in stone and that he will never be victorious.
As he becomes more violent and erratic, and therefore less human, he is only
proving Cooper’s designation correct.
I see now that he is a Byronic hero,
misunderstood as dangerous, therefore unable to be part of civilized society and
destined to fail in his endeavors.
2.
“The smog of the city blacks out
all but a few points of light, and I thought that was what the stars were for
the first 9 years of my life. According to this passage, my youth, my time of
supposed enlightened living according to Emerson, was lacking a very serious
component. My perceptions however, were very violently changed after a trip deep
into the Texas Hill Country. Staying in a Depression era house, I wandered
outside at night, expecting to see my familiar points of light. What I instead
saw tore my idea of the night apart. I looked up, and my sky was all so very
crowded, full of violent light and swirling dust, and it was so enormous. It was
larger than any sky I’d ever beheld, and I fell over backwards. Never in my life
had I felt so very small. It both scared and awed me, this night sky, and the
stars. I was experiencing, for the first time in my young life, the truly
sublime.”
-Mickey Thames,
Reach for the
Sky
I used this whole
paragraph as an example, because I didn’t believe I could paraphrase it without
doing injustice to it. This writer not only relates to us how Emerson’s writing
informs the present day, but how he warns us of the dangers of being too
submerged in “civilization.” I think anyone who has lived in a large city such
as Houston has had an experience such as this in which they take a trip to the
countryside and see the stars in all their magnificence for the first time.
There is nothing like seeing the Milky Way traipsing across the sky like a
highway for our imagination. It’s easy to see how our ancestors looked up and
saw stories in every star configuration. I, like many others, probably struggled
with the concept of the sublime. Our lives are controlled and protected and we
spend much of our time in buildings and in vehicles being transported from
building to building and therefore don’t have much opportunity to be exposed to
the sublime. After reading Emerson’s essay and Mr. Thames response to it, I was
reminded of the those trips to the country to visit grandparents and being so
awe-struck at the stars or even being overwhelmed with the beauty of the
countryside full of wildflowers.
Once you
understand the concept of the sublime, you tend to start trying to think of real
world examples, but I suspect, like me, most of us have a hard time not
resorting to memories of scenes in movies such as Class of the Titans or
Battlefield. However, as time goes on, if we keep thinking, we may remember
seeing the Milky Way for the first time, or standing on mountain and feeling as
if we are on top of the world or witnessing the birth of your best friend’s
child. Once we can relate Emerson’s vision of the sublime to our own lives, it’s
easy to understand. I think Mr. Thames did a very good job making that
correlation for us.
3.
“I
chose Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Nature’ because in such a short essay, Emerson is
able to speak to a wide audience. When he wrote the essay, the industrial
revolution was taking place so the settlers were experiencing the loss of
closeness to nature and more fiercely gained a never-ending desire to be close
to it once more”.
-Amanda Duarte,
Part 2 A: Connecting
with Nature
Though this writer also chose to write on Emerson’s
Nature, she concentrated on Man’s
relationship to Nature and his place in it. I loved this as well and also
believe that the loss of nature is an issue that we should all be worried about.
When reading Emerson’s essay, I couldn’t help but to relate to his concern over
large tracts of land being broken into many smaller lots in order to be
developed for economic reasons. Today, we have more dangerous problems such as
mountain top removal mining, fracking for natural gas, tar sands extraction and
other environmental horrors that are alarming reminders of our disconnection
from nature. Ms. Duarte mentions that the pollution and loss of nature causes us
to feel removed from it and therefore creates a longing within us.
She also points out
that even though Emerson understands we have the power to ravage Nature, we will
never be able to corrupt it. It will remain unchanged in spirit no matter what
we do. She also explains that Emerson understands that probably one of the
reasons this destruction of nature at the hands of men exists is because most of
us are completely disconnected from it due to our chaotic lives. We don’t have
the time to enjoy, ponder on or relate to Nature, which we have descended from.
Ms. Duarte seems to feel as Emerson does, that if we spent some time communing
with Nature, the feeling of sublimity would overcome us and remind us that we
should revere it and not seek to exploit it. Ms. Duarte mentions that
understanding our history will help us relate Emerson’s words to the present,
though not knowing history will not stop us from comprehending the meaning he
tries to convey of the importance of Nature to human life.
