In Cold Blood: The sickest movie we’ve watched all year.

      This movie was, first of all, one of the greatest movies I’ve watched all year.  The movie had many applications of modernist attributes throughout the movie.   One of the more obvious attributes of modernist literature is the re-structuring of literature and the reality it re-presents.  In “In Cold Blood”, the story itself isn’t just a mix of flashbacks but the storyline itself is a jumbled mess.  It is as if the storyline was a nice organized deck of cards that Truman Capote took and shuffled and never organized it again.  Another common theme in the movie was the dive into the inner psychosis of Perry Smith.  Truman found this dive to be necessary so he could that Perry Smith wasn’t this cold blooded killer but a brilliant man whose psych wasn’t able to handle the type of life he led.  Those were the major attributes but a couple of the minor ones were the appearance of various typical themes and the tightening of form (an emphasis on cohesion, interrelatedness and depth in the structure of the aesthetic object and of the experience).  The way I saw it, the tightening of form was used to connect the scenes seamlessly so as to say the journey as a whole made Perry go nuts.

    In most of the stories we have read, there may have been an experimentation in form, but the story still had a linear base on which to go off of.  In “In Cold Blood”, Capote tells what the killers did up to the robbery, the finding of the bodies and the investigation, then what Smith and Hitchcock did until they were caught and then trial and subsequent punishment.  The story starts with the men going for what is supposed to be an easy job.  You then find the friends of the family finding the dead without knowing but still have a good idea what happened.  The story then tells of how the detectives find out who killed this poor, unfortunate family.  The story then tells how the men enjoyed their life on the run.  It Truman’s way of showing us without us directly casting judgement, the differences between Hitchcock and Perry.  Then the story shows us how they were caught and the sentence they were handed, the death penalty.  While the two killers awaited their sentence, you once again saw the difference between the two killers.  On one side, Dick Hitchcock was a man who accepted his fate and acted like the convicted killer he was.  On the other hand, Perry Smith fought any way he could to try and get his sentence changed.  He also didn’t egg on the media, he drew amazing pictures and read books and talked to one man and one man alone.  He used this interesting story line to show that Perry Smith, unlike Dick Hitchcock, is a man who was a victim of his environment.

      Another way Capote was able to show who Perry truly was, was through an dive into his inner psychosis and showed what made him tick.  In certain scenes you could see his mood change in an instant, as if he had multiple personalites, one for his current life and another for the memories of his times hunting for treasure and the good times he had with his father.  You could see also the dreadfull memories of his life through flashbacks of his mother’s alcoholic and adulterative habits and his father.  Truman also shows how Hitchcock pushes his buttons to the point where he just goes on arampage and kills everyone of the family.  Capote also tries to show Smith as a man who doesn’t deserve to be dealt the punishment that he is given.  I’d have to agree because if he prosecuted today, he would be analyzed by a psychiatrist who would deem Smith, in my humbled opnion, to be not in the right mind to have commited these murders in such a violent manner.  Capote is trying to tell his readers that Perry Smith is once again the product of his environment and not truly psycho-maniac killer.

     These last two attributes that I noticed were only truly obvious in one scene each.  The tightening of form was most obvious when “Mr. Exibitionist” Dick Hitchcock starts having sex with the lady he brings home there is a seamless transition into a flashback for Perry to when his mother, drinking away is cheating on his father right in front of his eyes.  The transition is so seamless that I thought the scene was still of Dick having his way with his lady friend when in all actualaty, Perry was having a very painful flashback.  The last attribute I saw was when Perry was getting hung and two reporters are talking about what this hanging will do.  The younger, more naive reporter believes that something monumental will be done but, the truth was spoken from the older, more experienced reporter, who said thery say things will be done but the action that is said to happen will not happen and this whole process will just happen again, the hanging of these men will change nothing.  This is a typical theme found in modernist literature, a belief that God doesn’t exist and the critique of the traditions of the culture.

Long Day’s Journey into blog

     I know I am the guy who usually obsesses over the ambiguous endings of many of our modernistic stories, but there really nothing left up to interpretation.  O’ Neill delves deeper into the inner physch of his characters.  The physch of many of O’Neill’s character are all evaluated.  Whether it be Tyrone’s love for his wife versus her addiction and how it affects his family to Jamie love for his brother even though his parents hold his brother on amuch loftier shelf then him.  Of Course, there is also Eugene’s mother, a dope fiend, as Eugene calls her.  Eugene’s mother is the most intriguing because not only does the clock keep track of time during the play but the state of Mary’s drugged up state increasingly gets worse as the play goes on, till eventually get to the white ghost scene where Mary is drugged out that she doesn’t even recognize her own family.  Mary drugged stupor introduces many other attributes of modernism such as  a restructuring of literature for those times when Mary would go off on a flashback of past times with a demenor to suggest that she is detached from reality.  Many attributes are wrapped into this story because of the physcological problems of the whole family. 

         In one of the sources I found on Long Day’s Journey into Night, titled “The Fog of Substance abuse”, they link Mary’s addiction not as a reason to dull the pain and not as a way to escape from her family but as a way to escape what her life has become over the time she has lived with Tyrone.  A symbol of Mary’s addiction is her hands and the rheumatism that plagues them.  Shes sees her hands going from young, beautiful, and useful to old. ugly and useless.  At first the morphine was for the pain of the rheumatism but now it is used to make her hands and in some instances her life seem younger and more beautiful.  This is what causes her dive into her dillusional state and helps time move smoothly in the story.

Ms. Baz, if you want to view my source . . .

Desire Under the Elms

Desire Under the Elms, by Eugene O’Neill, is once again the story of an completely insane family consisting of a 75 year old father, his new 35 year old wife, 2 gold-digger brothers and Eben, a young man who will do anything he can to own Ephraim’s farm.  Many people might think that the biggest modernist attribute is the interior landscape of these different yet equally messed up characters, but the attribute that is most important in my personal opinion is the ambiguous ending. 

      As Scene four ends, you have the two lovebireds, Eben and Abbie, are being taken away by the sheriff as the curtain closes.  Many questions open up as the play ends when most the story’s question asked during the story have been answered but those that haven’t been answered are what will happen to Ephraim now that he is all alone?  What will be the sentence for Eben and Abbie?  What happens to Simeon and Peter?  Will Ephraim really burn the farm down when he dies because he now has no sons that he is proud of? 

     I believe that all of his life Ephraim has always been in control.  He wore his pants in the previous two marriages by working his wives to the bone.  Ephraim worked his wives to the point where they could not work anymore because his wives were on death’s door.  This is evident when Eben  tells his brothers,

“Eben-Didn’t he slave Maw t’ death?

Peter-He’s slaved himself t; death.  He’s slaved Sim n’ me ‘n’ yew t’ death-only none o’ us hain’t died-yit”

          Ephraim holds his control over the others by working them to the bone because he thinks he has the right to because of how hard he has worked for his farm.  This lack of control over Eben and Abbie’s love and that the child that wasn’t even his could push him over the edge.  The last straw was when he saw that the money he was going to use to go west was stolen and he went jubilent victory to a sadenned depression when he finds out that he is once again alone for probably the rest of his life when he said,

“Waal-what d’ye want?  God’s lonesome hain’t He?  God’s hard and lonesome!”

          It was as if he finally realized that after he screwed everyone in his life over and he would always be alone and would never be able to love in his life again. 

Tom’s Monologue in Glass

Tom thought that he needed to leave right when his mother blamed him for not knowing that Jim O’Connor being engaged. He thought he had suffered enough under the constant scrutiny of his mother and he thought his life would be better off on his own. His monologue was his reflection after living on his own for quite some time, and how he still feels sorry for leaving his mother and sister on their own. It seems as if he has been gone a long time when he said,

“I didn’t go to the moon. I went much further-for time is the farthest distance between two places.”

This shows how believes how long his separation from his family is worse then how far away from his family he is. When he left he saw that it was necessary for him to leave but as he lived on his own longer and longer he began to maybe not regret his decision but regret the position the position he put his family in to when decided to go after his dreams. In his monologue, Tom doesn’t talk directly of how long he has been gone but instead tells how in the quote above that he has been gone longer then what he thinks is the distance to the moon but yet he still regrets his decision to leave his sister and mother when he said,

“I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful then I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger- anything that can blow your candles out!

[Laura bends over the candles]

For nowadays the world is lit by lightning!  Blow out your candles, Laura- and so goodbye”

This quote is Tom’s memories of Laura and his mother, and he how whenever he sees something, it always sparks his memories of them.  As Ms. Baz said, this is an autobiographical play for Tennessee Williams and how his own struggles with his own mother and family.  Even though he never left his family, this is what he thought would happen if he left his family.  He would never be able to forgive himself for leaving them alone without a way to support themselves.  When he says, ” For nowadays the world is lit with lightning” he is saying that he will have spurts of happiness and his life will mostly be filled with darkness.

Streetcar and its ending?

We have just finished A Streetcar Named Desire. The ending of the play was considered controversial at the time because one, Stella stayed with Stanley, an abusive, cheating husband, Stella gave up on her sister and sent her with a stranger to what seemed like an insane asylum. You could infer that from the questions when the woman made an observation,

” These fingernails will have to be trimmed,”

If they were there to take her to another town to start a new, then why should her fingernails be trimmed. Also when Stella starts to have second thoughts about sending Blanche away, she implies that she is sending her somewhere she doesn’t want to send her when she says,

“Oh my God, Eunice help me! Don’t let them do that to her, don’t let them hurt her! Oh God, oh, please God, don’t hurt her! What are they doing to her? What are they doing?”

or when she said,

“What have I done to my sister? Oh, Go, what have I done to my sister?”

This shows Stella is reluctant to send Blanche where she is going, as if she will never see her again.

A reoccurring theme in the tragedies of Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire” is the “Varsouviana Polka” the song that was played right before Blanche’s husband, Allan Gray, committed suicide. The song reappears in Scene nine, when Mitch confronts Blanche about not telling her the whole truth about why she left Laurel. Blanche starts to say as if in a dream like state,

“Blanche: Something’s the matter tonight, but never mind. I won’t cross-examine the witness. I’ll just . . . . . . . pretend I don’t notice anything different about you! That- music again. . . .

Mitch: What music?

Blanche: The “Varsouviana”! The polka tune that was playing when Allan- Wait!

There now , the shot! It always stops after that.

Yes, now it stopped.”

The “Varsouviana” is always playing is harshly separated from an important person in her life. It was played when she told her husband he was disgusting and he went and killed himself. She heard the tune in her head when she kicked Mitch out of her life when he confronted her on her lies and called her a whore. On page 414, Blanche looks outside and sees the man waiting for her isn’t Shep Huntleigh, and the narrative stage directions said,

“The “Varsouviana” is playing distantly”

It shows that this man and woman is here to take Blanche out of Stella and Stanley’s life just as harsh and quickly as Mitch and Allan Gray were removed from her life. From being cut off of human connection whenever she hears the “Varsouviana”, one can expect that Blanche will never she Stanley or Stella again.

Duke won and I’m pissed! Oh yeah, UNCle Ernie

UNC lost to Duke last night 89-78. The Tar Heels were without Ty Lawson and the turnovers just kept coming. The UNC defense was awful, allowing Duke to hit 13 3-pointers and allowed them to sread the floor for easy shots. But enough about how much I hate Duke right now, on to UNCle Ernie.

UNCle Ernie is the king of open or ambiguous endings. In “The Killlers” two men come into a diner looking to kill a man who usually comes to a diner for dinner every night. The man, Ole Anderson , never showed up. When they left to go find him, Nick Adams ran him down and told him what was going down. Once he returns, disgusted that Ole Anderson will just accept his death is coming, wants to help him in some way but, the owner of the place tells him, “Well, . . . You better not think about it” This suggests the feeling of lonliness and that we are all alone in life. I believe that Ole Anderson will be killed from the tone of the owner’s, George’s, voice when in the above quote he tells Nick Adams not to worry about Anderson’s problems but only be concerned of your own.

Prufrock’s Love Ballad

Prufrock s a man alone and only people he talks to are those he meets at his parties. He hates the lifestyle, but must endure and live through it. The overlying aspect of suicide permeates through the song but it is never addressed directly.  Prufrock’s lifestyle is forcing him to live alone because instead of trying to enhance his relationship with a person, he trys to spread himself too thin at these different parties. The question of what he does is up to interpretation because the ending is left up to the reader to decide on.

The Modernist Literature has really brought poetry to a totally new level in my opinion.  The ability to develop a story while still able to portray an abstract idea or theme.  It has stories that we directly relate to such as the thought of suicide or the death of a close worker, it allows us to see under lying themes while giving us a story to keep us interested.

Hey!

Just watch it . . . it kinda ties in

An open or ambiguous ending is one of the more interesting attributes of Modernist Literature.   In the past stories we have read from other periods of  Literature, a character makes one pivitol choice that will shape the characters life forever.  In reality, this isn’t true.  The choices we make, in reality, only open more choices for us.  One decision does not make our life story and life goes on after a story.