ENGA11. Final exam prompt. Prof Leonard.
Due December 14, 11:59pm (Upload to ‘Assignments’ page).
5 to 8 pages
(250 words per page)
PROMPT:
The overwhelming loss and destruction of World War I, all to no real purpose, produced widespread personal and cultural trauma. A devastation that began as political, went on to ravage as well all that was understood as the personal and the social. It was as if Europe, not unlike Dorian Gray, tired of pursuing hollow sensation and extracting meaningless wealth from its far-flung Empires, stabbed the painting of all its inhuman deeds-- and destroyed its “self” in the process. To quote the (unheard) Septimus Warren Smith, "human nature" was “the brute with the red nostrils”—personified in the deceptively civilized Sir William Bradshaw, who imposed proportion and conversion in a mechanical, indifferent way.
World War I, literally and figuratively, exploded all the tenuous myths of modernity, which had been generating
an illusion
of a continuing “sacred” ritual within what were, in fact, the increasingly addictive cycles of modern capitalism. The unanticipated, unexpected, explosive and ferocious arrival of the “rough beast” of World War One was a catastrophe costing the death—when the casualties of all Nations are put together-- of twenty million men. In the aftermath of the disaster, a naive attempt was made, especially by those in positions of power, to declare the disaster “over” in order to “go back to the way everything was before”. Poems like “The Waste Land”(1922) , however, along with novels such as
Mrs. Dalloway
(1925) and, later,
Good Morning, Midnight
(1939), showcase an increasingly fragmented world of social alienation, one that moves us from “the age of anxiety” , focussed on how to restore meaning, to “the age of depression” where “meaning” itself begins to appear, as it does to Clarissa Dalloway, just the ultimate construction that generates
a superficial appearance
of coherency and significance.
All of our literature since the midterm, in one way or another, through both content and form, illustrates the effects of cultural and personal trauma. We discussed trauma, at length, and identified three aspects: 1. Loss of control 2. Loss of communication 3. Loss of meaning. We also noted how the various “myths of modernity" (PEPSI) obscured trauma and personal suffering, and, instead, made it seem that happiness is available to everyone--but only if they consume properly, and keep "a sense of proportion". In fact,
recovery from trauma requires feeling seen, feeling heard, and feeling accepted for who we are (love) rather than having someone “stamp” their own imprint upon us so we appear as they need us to appear (conversion), especially since this "conversion" is done by “the worst” (recall: “the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity”, Yeats, “The Second Coming”). The “worst” are made so because their “soul-destroying” treatment of others allows them to remain ignorant about their own shortcomings (what Dorian Gray does to Sibyl Vane; What Kurtz does to the Congo; what Bradshaw does to Septimus; w2hat Mr. Blank does to Sasha, what the factory/capitalism [tries to] do to the tramp).
Our task, then, as readers/viewers, becomes:
-How to discover a way to renew, to regenerate, and to restore a new sense of value that nurtures us, rather than a price that depletes us.
-How do we distinguish the sustainable (roots that clutch) from the merely satisfying (stony rubbish)?
-How do we remind ourselves to engage in the necessary pain of meaningful rituals, rather than pursuing the endless deferrals of addiction, so readily supplied and promoted by the consumption-stimulating myths of modernity (advertising).
- How do we communicate (Septimus: “Communication is health”)the resulting culture
of perpetual distraction, and
continual discontent, that this stimulation produces.
Discuss how each of the four quotes below (note: treat the still from
Modern Times
as one of the four "quotes") does one or more of the following:
--illustrates this crisis,
--exposes the rhizomatic underlay of desire and commodity culture that underlies it
--details
why
it is seductive and decentering (we
volunteer ourselves
to be subject to many of its negative effects)
--warns us that, unchecked, it can only get worse and worse,
--while, at the same time, offers ways to contend with it-- ways that grant us the insight that is a prelude to meaningful change.
Remember, your challenge is to show BOTH
what the quotes have in common, AND
how they suggest different variations
on how to survive the political, social and cultural disasters outlined in the first part of this prompt. Some quotes may be more concerned with
-ILLUSTRATING THE CRISIS,
-some with warning us of WORSE YET TO COME,
-others offering ways to contend with it.
Bearing that in mind, use ALL the quotes to walk through these various points in the course of your response.
Remember to have fun and stay curious. For the sake of clarity, I call this a “final”, but it is
actually designed to be a new beginning, one that, ideally, will continue beyond the confines of exams and GPAs.
still from the movie
Modern Times, directed by Charlie Chaplin, starring Charlie Chaplin
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta
("Give"): what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam ("sympathize"): I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison . . . .
These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
--TS Eliot. "The Waste Land"
What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party--the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself--but how? Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
But this young man who had killed himself--had he plunged holding his treasure? "If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy," she had said to herself once, coming down in white.
Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your soul, that was it--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?
She walked to the window.
Oh, but how surprising!--in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! She was going to bed. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.
--Virginia Woolf.
Mrs Dalloway
(social)
I take some more luminal, put the light out and sleep at once.
I am in the passage of a tube station in London. Many people are in front of me; many people are behind me. Everywhere there are placards printed in red letters: This Way to the Exhibition, This Way to the Exhibition. But I don't want the way to the exhibition -I want the way out. There are passages to the right and passages to the left, but no exit sign. Everywhere the fingers point and the placards read: This Way to the Exhibition.....I touch the shoulder of the man walking in front of me. I say: 'I want the way out.' But he points to the placards and his hand is made of steel. I walk along with my head bent, very ashamed, thinking: 'Just like me - always wanting to be different from other people.' The steel finger points along a long stone passage. This Way - This Way - This Way to the Exhibition....
Now a little man, bearded, with a snub nose, dressed in a long white nightshirt, is talking earnestly to me. 'I am your father,' he says. 'Remember that I am your father.' But blood is streaming from a wound in his forehead. 'Murder,' he shouts, 'murder, murder.' Helplessly I watch the blood streaming. At last my voice tears itself loose from my chest. I too shout: 'Murder, murder, help, help,' and the sound fills the room. I wake up . . . .
--Jean Rhys,
Good Morning, Midnight