First Day Critical Essays: Excerpts and
Preliminary Critical Concepts
I.
Zach Packineau: "At first glance, the title of Roethke's poem seems to present a sense of happiness and cheer. But as one continues to read the poem, Roethke imparts an almost dark and depressing view of alcoholism...In the first stanza, readers can see how drunk the father is...Stanza III discusses the brutality of the child dancing with the intoxicated father...Again, in Stanza IV, Roethke's word choice is ever so intriguing..."
Shannon Koble: "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is about coming to a crossroad in one's life and choosing which path to take. In the first stanza, the narrator is looking down two roads...The second stanza goes into more detail about one of the roads...In the final stanza, the reader gets the feeling that the narator is looking back on his/her life and remembering that day he/she came to the two roads...The narrator concludes by stating, 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by...'"
Daniel Nasset: "His poem does not follow a traditional stanza or rhyming pattern and this just reinforces the confusion and frustration that go along between men and women and their urges..."
One basic critical skill you all need to know is the explication: a systematic paraphrase of a poem or story from beginning to end. It's a reading of a piece which makes explicit what is implicit. Exposition gets used from time to time in just about any critical school, and you can see Zach and Shannon using it above. Many of you took this approach in your first-day essays.
Also: the first school of criticism we'll be looking at is known as New Criticism or Formalism. A Formalist critic looks for a work's central theme or themes and shows how the work's elements reveal that theme. Again, you can see how the student critics (above) are employing this kind of criticism. Many of us were trained, at least to some extent, to use Formalist techniques in our earliest English courses.
And, finally, notice how Daniel is explaining the relationship between form and meaning in a work. Explaining and exploring that relationship if of interest to critics of all schools and persuasions. (Indeed, the relationship between form and content has always puzzled, teased, and otherwise interested us.)
II.
Colleen Moorhead: "'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' may not have been written in the modern day, but it still reflects the changing times. More and more, people are moving away from the rural way of life and into the big pavement cities. Vacations for these people often take them into nature, into a more simplistic state. It is clear that Yeats' words have lasted through many years and have still remained relevant. This can only mean that he knew his subject matter wasn't only stating his own beliefs. Yeats knew that it was affecting people all over. People will always hear 'lake water lapping' from deep inside themselves and long to be next to the shore."
Here you see Colleen employing a type of criticism which assumes that literature—or, at least great literature—is universal. That is, truly good literature has lasting appeal and contains universal meanings which transcend time and place. This was a pronounced belief on the part of the New Critics and is still widely held today (though it has recently been challenged, as we will soon see).
III.
Angela Scharnowske: "Some readers believe the poem is about physical abuse, while others believe it is simply about a father-son romp around the kitchen some evening. After having it explained by professors either way I can see where the readers are coming from, so I have yet to permanently make up my mind about it."
Abuse has been a popular topic in the media for many years now, but open discussion of abuse is actually a pretty recent phenomenon. It's a topic, in fact, that probably wasn't discussed at the time "My Papa's Waltz" was written. Indeed, it's unlikely that either the poet or his readers would necessarily have conceived of a damaging parent-child relationship as "abuse," since that term itself has come into vogue only recently. Keep in mind, then, how social trends may affect the way we read something.
Also: if the way we read something is in part determined by current fashions and social norms, is there no such thing as one great, definitive interpretation or analysis (as the New Critics believed)? And if it's true that lit. crit. is never free of the cultural conditions which produce it, is it also true that literature itself can never really be "universal"? Are literature and interpretations of literature both subject to their contexts?
IV.
Megan Gette: "James Wright's poem could be criticized as a fear of age and death, guilt of a young passerby, or the envy of something without a soul. I feel it is a constellation of all these, that human emotion reaches no boundaries and sometimes a man's single thought can plague him forever. Whether it is guilt, envy, or lust for an unattainable something, the poem aptly captures the emotions of any human being."
Samm Bohn: "This poem's subject may be light and doesn't seem to hold anything deep within its confines. The author seems to know what he is doing as he leaves the reader hanging at the end by making the reader wonder what is really happening to the subjects in the poem...There seems to b other issues at hand in this poem other than a neglected wife/mother...There may be more to the poem (as always) than the speaker is telling his/her audience...[P]oetry is vauge, but at the same time can be such a gateway into reality."
Brandon Hall: "The woman in the poem states that, 'You raise the ax,/the block of wood screams in half' (1-2). This powerful statement speaks volumes as to what the external conditions in the area are."
In the writers above, we can see a criticism at work which assumes that literary language and meaning are distinctive; that is, literary language means in a different way from other kinds of language. Indeed, patterns in literary works tend to be especially intense. And poetry, fiction, and drama are generally very paradoxical, suggestive, and ambiguous; they reverberate/signify on multiple levels. A critic's job, then (according to this approach), is to "unpack" the richness and resonance of a piece. In a way, the critic is almost a "translator" of a different language—the language of literature.
A less charitable view (and you can see Samm's mild frustration above) is that the critic is a de-coder of sneaky literary language which is always trying to somehow trick us.
V.
Matt Sather: "This poem taps into a feeling that everybody has felt. Maybe we can find what we are looking for by simply living on an island in the middle of the woods and just focusing on the sounds, sights and smells of being alive...Overall I enjoyed the poem. It wasn't beautifully written, but the message is profound and I sympathize with the idea that the writer was trying to convey."
Notice that Matt here includes his personal tastes and judgements about the work he's analyzing. He's therefore taking the role, to some extent, of a reviewer, which is different from (though related to, and sometimes included in) the role of the critic or theorist. (Reviewers evaluate; critics and theorist mainly explain or interpret.) Keep in mind that, when a teacher asks for a critical analysis, he/she probably doesn't expect you to record personal feelings or judgements.
We'll discuss more about this later, but it does raise some important questions. Should lit. crit. be an objective examination of a literary work? Should the focus of an interpretive paper be the work itself, not the interpretor's feelings? Is real objectivity even possible? If it's not possible, should we at least aim for objectivity as an ideal? Or should the critic forgo any pretense of impartiality and make evident, right up front, his or her biases, personal aims, social position—even his or her race, occupation, etc.?
VI.
David Waller: The poem 'The Anniversay' by Ai is a graphic and intense piece...The piece flows with an eerie kind of voice that makes a reader want to turn the page but their hand is frozen with gritty awe."
Alisa Priebe: "What's most amazing about the feelings that this poem portrays is the feeling it gives the reader, especially a reader who can identify with memories like these. I, too, like the child in the poem, have a gruff weathered father. I have a father who is not afraid to have a relaxing drink after work. I have a father who has worked harder in his lifetime than a person could imagine in three lifetimes. His face is permanently reddened by the wind and the sun. His fingers and nails are permanently blackened by earth. He is a man, who, by looking at him, looks as thought he is near death. His body may give out before he is willing."
Notice the nice writing in the two passages above. A critic's response to a literary piece can become a creative, literary act in its own right (though this is not especially so in recent criticism—some of the critical and theoretical writing these days is pretty awful! But you didn't hear me say that—wink wink.)
Also notice that "critical analysis" for Alisa = finding and identifying strong personal connections to a piece. Again, this raises questions: should/can criticism or literary analysis be "objective"?
VII.
Brandon again: "The poem tends to easily read with a feminist and/or Marxist point of view. It clearly shows how the woman in the family is oppressed by the men by doing the chores in and around the house. Additionally, it shows something about a struggle for power within the household..'The Anniversary' is a complicated poem but looking at it from the right angle can bring out a whole different story. Perhaps looking at it from a psycholanalytic perspective would make the poem read completely different."
Ok, I think Brandon has taken a sneak peak at our textbook, because he's touching here on some of the very perspectives we'll be examining this semester: Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Structuralist, Formalist, Culturalist...
There are many ways of looking at any literary work, and literary theory these days has developed into a complex, vast field in its own right. I very strongly believe, though, that studying lit. theory in no way means that we should devalue our primary, "precritical" perspectives and reactions to what we read. Those perspectives and reactions are probably more valuable than anything. Still, learning to examine literature from several critical vantage points, and examing those critical vantage points as subjects in and of themselves, is incredibly interesting. Taking a look at your own critical assumptions can teach you a lot about yourself, provide you with a real intellectual workout, and help prepare you for futher studies in English, the Humanities—possibly any field.
Basic Critical Skills: