"Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich

I saw this wreck as a situation she was told about and has been thinking about for some time. She also felt that she has been preparing herself for it in the first stanza (see pg 1826). The "knife blade" can be seen as the edge she felt she had in the coming situation. As she progresses through the wreck, she finds that she is forgeting why she decided to explore the wreck. But forces herself to focus on what she can see.  She is not down there to make up more stories or discover myths. And in her final stanza she explains how everything and everyone in that wreck will be there for a long time but the passing explorers and divers will never be remembered or kept track of.  The courage and cowardice she speaks of, are the reasons for why people even decide to go to such depths to see something. In other words, some people wish to understand something out of fear while others want to dive into the situation head on.

Entropy by Thomas Pynchon

What can I say? The booze, the drugs, the music...It was a never ending party and Meatball, I gathered, was the host who tried his best to please his guests. Frankly, I would have chosen his first idea and just gone to the closet.
Some members of the party: Duke, Callisto, Aubade, and Saul, seem to have troubled pasts or let their lives spin out of control.  Through all of the substances they use almost constantly (even as Meatball tamed the second party, he suspected a third waive coming on), each of these members feel like they achieve some new understanding, a superior understanding, about the situation they are in or the future, 
       " Rotarian. But it occurred to me, in one of these flashes of insight, that if that first quartet of Mulligan's had no piano,
        it could only mean one thing."
       "No chords," said Paco, the baby-faced bass.
       "What he is trying to say," Duke said, "is no root chords.  Nothing to listen to while you blow a horizontal line.  What
       one does in sucha a case is, one thinks the roots."
       A horrified awareness was dawning on Meatball, "And the next logical extension," he said.


And, "the Duke di Angelis quartet were engaged in a historic moment. Vincent was seated and the others standing: they were going through the motions of a group having a session. only without instruments." Really?!
Bottom line is, I was baffled at the fact that all of these people were attempting to have discussions of the starts, orbit, computers and humans, music masterpieces or jazz, when they were so full of substances and had not left the apartment for a couple of days.
I suppose much has to do with the characters utter disillusionment with the world and the fact that they feel like there is no way they could possible change anything about it.
  

The Third Dimension by Denise Levertov

"The Third Dimension" is the description of a feeling a person feels after they have been put through a rough situation.  It is the feeling you get the next day after an intense fight that ended in a parting of ways or the death of someone close.  Everything keeps going on, traffic, rain, the sun comes up, your boss wants you on time to work, the dog still needs to be fed, and you feel like you don't want to join in all of the hustle and bustle of the day.  You see everything as if you were in a third dimension, but when someone approaches you to say "How are you?," you go ahead and give a standard response, "good," as is felt by the following final verses, 

and I'm
alive to

tell the tale--but not
honestly:

the words
change it. Let it be--

here in the sweet sun
--a fiction, while I 

breathe and 

change pace.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Hayden

     This poem takes us into a glimpse of a father's schedule and a boy's relationship with him and it.   Throughout the poem, there are hints as to the relationship this boy (does not have to be a boy) has with his father. For example, in the verses, "and slowly I would rise and dress," shows his reluctance to be in the presence of his father which is emphasized in the verse, "fearing the chronic angers of that house."  Moreover, their relationship is more clearly defined by the verse, "Speaking indifferently to him." So we are faced with a boy who does not understand his father very well, and a father who feels that his weekly schedule of kindling a warm fire for his son to wake up to and polishing his shoes, are enough proof of his love for this boy.  

       The final two verses, "What did I know, what did I know, of love's austere and lonely offices?" show the boy's, now a man, understanding that love can come in many forms.  The emphasis on the words "lonely" and "austere" allude to the author's interpretation of love as a warm and sunny room full of hugs and kind words.  His father's love, however, was more practical than demonstrative.  He probably believed in long-term acts of love such as a warm house in the morning, building a college fund, fixing up an old car for him to have later...The author learns that love has many unexplored, or rather unexpected, rooms that may not always bear the face we expect to see. 

Triffled by Susan Glaspell

For this story in particular, the stark contrast between gender roles is made very clear. Where the men felt self-important enough to believe they were trully solving the case, the women felt more that they were being a little simpathetic towards Mrs. Wright's situation.  As the women continue to make observations about what they see, the men pop in occasionally and laugh at the "triffles" they fill their heads with while they do the REAL work.  The women, in the other hand, have actually made more progress than the men because they are in the room (the kitchen) where Mrs. Wright's spent most of time working or reflecting. However, in the end the women have found the most telling evidence and have also empathized to the extent of hiding the evidence. 

"The Mill" by Edwin Arlington Robinson pg835

       The Mill presents the conclusion of a struggling husband and wife who own a small mill that is forcing them to find a way to make ends meet.  The husband finally confesses, " 'There are no millers anymore," meaning they have been put out of business.  The poem is dated 1920 when the industrial revolution was paving the way for the economy, so the miller's words are more than just a temporary absence, but the end of the use of the mill.  That evening she waits for him until, "The tea was cold, the fire was dead." When she finally heads over to the mill, she finds him hanging form a beam, "What else there was would only seem/ To say again what he had meant;/ And what was hanging from a beam."  She then concludes she has nothing left to live for, no husband or job, and drowns herself in the water that once moved the mill and was their livelihood. 

"Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

The poem begins by describing Richard Cory, "Clean favored,/ and imperially slim"  followed by, "But still he fluttered pulses when he said,/ 'Good Morning,' and he glittered when he walked.// And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--."  A very interesting verse is the following, "And he was always human when he talked."  In other words, he looked so awe-inspiring that people doubted he was of this world.  Moreover, the poem also expresses how everyone felt around him, "We people looked at him:/ He was a gentleman from sole to crown," and, "In fine, we thought he was everything/ To make us wish that we were in his place.//So on we worked, and waited for the light,/ And went without the meat, and cursed the bread."  They all feel jealousy towards his fortune and status and wish to be in his shoes.  However, they find out Richard Cory shoots himself and are faced with the reality that even he, with his fortune and kingly manner, felt misery and despair.  The poem leaves the reader hanging because there is still an untold story about Richard Cory; his truly personal story, not what everyone saw in the exterior.  

The Open Boat

This story focuses on the many realizations that pass through men in that situation.  By very slow degrees, as readers we witness their initial hope for aid and hospitality, then the indifference nature has for their situation/existence, finally their realization that their efforts may well be futile and must accept as best as they can what comes to happen. The phrase, "If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?" (756), encompasses the heart of this story.  It is a continual hope that every man's existence is relevant to the balance of the world.  In the end though, death looms so heavily on their minds that a sense of reconciliation is forced upon them as to their situation.  


P.S.  I am not sure I understand what the titles "correspondent" and "oiler" mean, or the dimensions of the ship.  

The Yellow Wallpaper

Ok, so I realized way too late (as in I had read the whole story by that point) there was an explanation at the beginning about the story, however, I think I will go ahead and write from my perspective.  During her first description of the situation, I believed everything she said: the nerves, her vacation, the way her husband did not take her seriously...I believed it.  What made it most believable was her description of her "nervousness" being linked to "histeria" or "histerics" which many men believed to be a "woman thing." All of this convinced me until she began to describe the bedroom.  Weirdly enough, it was not the barred windows, or the holes in the wall, the gashes in the paper, that caught my attention.  It was the bolted bed.  I can believe a nursery would have had all sorts of wounds inflicted by children and that the windows would be barred seeing as they are on the second floor, but a bolted bed? This clued me into her situation.  From then on her obsession with the wallpaper and the woman she saw in the paper all were supporting my belief that she was under someone's care and dwelt in a world mostly of her making.  The final piece of information that confirmed my suspicions was the following, "I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.  I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once."  First of all, she was telling me about the woman who creeps and now she has admitted she creeps! She is the woman, and she speaks of suspicion.  Of what? So she knows John and Jennie are watching her because she creeps. However, why did he faint in the end?  The truth is, I am not really sure what creeping looks like, but it sounded like it would have made me faint too. 

The Passing of Grandison

I found the first part of the story, the "preliminary facts" (640), to be a form of sarcasm towards Dick Owens seeing as the author points out it was, "the most remarkable thing he accomplished before he was twenty-five" (641).  At the end of the story, I was left surprised however, I did not feel like Dick Owens had accomplished something absolutely incredible. For example, did this effort change his views on slavery and would he act on them? Did he really do this for Charity or out of the mere concept that he got what he wanted because of his economical and social position? Because the author does point out, "When asked why he never did anything serious, Dick would good-naturedly reply, with a well-modulated drawl, that he didn't have to. His father was rich...Wealth or social position he did not seek, for he was born with both" (640 bottom).  Therefore, I have a hard time believing Dick Owens deserves all the credit (he does deserve some, I suppose) for the act of freeing Grandison.


 I also wished to point out some of Charity Lomax's characteristics that made her comparable to Editha.  Early in the story we find out she is in some way connected with Dick, but I was surprised to find out that he had courted her for over a year and she did not really take him seriously at all. Moreover, her demand, " 'I'll never love you, Dick Owens, until you have done something.  When that time comes, I'll think about it.' " This statement is actually said by Charity directly to Dick where Editha thought this very idea,"She had always supposed that the man who won her would have done something to win her" (372),  and did not say it directly to George even though she implied it in as many ways as he possibly could.