I decided to analyze the poem "First Hour" by Sharon Olds. I want to analyze this one because it confused me a little bit and I wanted to look deeper into it. I feel like it's talking about a baby when it came right out of the womb, but then sometimes it sounds like it's talking about a baby in the womb.
As I read through it more and read it over again, I'm realizing that it's actually talking about the baby after it came out of the womb, hence the title "first hour," the first hour of it's life. The part that is extremely interesting to me is when it says, "I hated no one. I gazed and gazed, and everything was interesting, I was free, not yet in love, I did not belong to anyone, I had drunk no milk, yet - no one had my heart." It seems to tie into the first line which is "that hour, I was most myself." In my opinion, it's like the baby in this story is saying that the first hour of life is so much more different than the rest. We are innocent and free. We know absolutely nothing and we have no hate in our hearts. We aren't in love with anyone or attached to them. We don't belong to anyone and no one actually has our heart. It's like in that very moment, we are the rawest version of ourselves and nothing else matters.
But I do have a few questions about this poem, such as: what is the meaning behind "all I had to do was go out along the line of my gaze and back, out and back, on gravity's silk"? It doesn't really make much sense to me. I would also like to know what Sharon meant when she wrote, "I lay like a god, for an hour"? I think I understand the rest of the poem but those lines confused me a little bit.
This poem is really interesting and intriguing to me since it's from the point of view of a baby and I've never seen a poem written from that perspective. I'm not really a huge fan of poems, but this definitely caught my attention and I liked reading it!
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Stitches: A Memoir - Analytical Response Blog
David Small’s life is extremely chaotic and in his book, Stitches: A Memoir, there are many, many topics one can cover… from his relationship with his mother, father, etc to how he interprets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into his life and even the languages that all the family members use to communicate.
For my analytical response, I’ve decided to analyze how David relates to Jesus Christ in this book. I want to write about how David was almost sacrificed through science just as Jesus was sacrificed for our sins. I picked this topic because Jesus means a lot to me and I feel like I could easily analyze how Him and David have something in common.
In the beginning of the book when David was little and he stayed the night at his grandma’s house, we see that he had no idea who Jesus was when he saw Him hanging on the cross in his grandma’s room. We don’t quite know if David ever became religious or not because his mother didn’t seem to raise him in a home with crosses hanging around (his grandmother was surprised to see that he didn’t know who Jesus was), but later on in the book, we notice that David is, in fact, similar to Jesus when it comes to him being sacrificed for science purposes as a child.
I wrote down that David was a “martyr” in my notes, but now that I think about it, I don’t think I’d use that word since David was not killed for his beliefs, but instead, his dad almost killed him by giving him too many "rads" or radiation with all the X-Rays. He didn't do it on purpose since it was "standard practice" at the time, but it still happened. This was a very unfortunate situation and it was beyond David’s choice, just as Jesus did not have a choice in dying on the cross because it was a part of God’s greater plan and it had to be done in order for us to form a relationship with our Creator.
We see in the book that when David’s dad tells him that he has cancer (and that HE was the one who caused him to get it), there is what seems to be a cross going across his face. That’s where I first figured out the relation to David and Jesus. It could very well be the shadow of something in the distance, but I don’t think David Small would draw that symbol without a meaning behind it. I feel like this is his way of showing us how he feels about being sacrificed for science when he was younger. There are a few more images in the book where we see Jesus on the cross and I plan to analyze those pictures as well and relate them back to David in some form or fashion, but this is all I’ve thought about for now!
For my analytical response, I’ve decided to analyze how David relates to Jesus Christ in this book. I want to write about how David was almost sacrificed through science just as Jesus was sacrificed for our sins. I picked this topic because Jesus means a lot to me and I feel like I could easily analyze how Him and David have something in common.
In the beginning of the book when David was little and he stayed the night at his grandma’s house, we see that he had no idea who Jesus was when he saw Him hanging on the cross in his grandma’s room. We don’t quite know if David ever became religious or not because his mother didn’t seem to raise him in a home with crosses hanging around (his grandmother was surprised to see that he didn’t know who Jesus was), but later on in the book, we notice that David is, in fact, similar to Jesus when it comes to him being sacrificed for science purposes as a child.
I wrote down that David was a “martyr” in my notes, but now that I think about it, I don’t think I’d use that word since David was not killed for his beliefs, but instead, his dad almost killed him by giving him too many "rads" or radiation with all the X-Rays. He didn't do it on purpose since it was "standard practice" at the time, but it still happened. This was a very unfortunate situation and it was beyond David’s choice, just as Jesus did not have a choice in dying on the cross because it was a part of God’s greater plan and it had to be done in order for us to form a relationship with our Creator.
We see in the book that when David’s dad tells him that he has cancer (and that HE was the one who caused him to get it), there is what seems to be a cross going across his face. That’s where I first figured out the relation to David and Jesus. It could very well be the shadow of something in the distance, but I don’t think David Small would draw that symbol without a meaning behind it. I feel like this is his way of showing us how he feels about being sacrificed for science when he was younger. There are a few more images in the book where we see Jesus on the cross and I plan to analyze those pictures as well and relate them back to David in some form or fashion, but this is all I’ve thought about for now!
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