love poem

Linda Pastan's poem entitled "love poem" is a work whose structure and repetition convey its own meaning. Grammar is dismissed in the poem so that the reader can get the sense that the love being mentioned rushes headlong without any pauses. There are no periods at the end of the sentences (even at the end), neither are the first letters in consonants capitalized. This technique helps the reader easily breeze through the poem while still being able to capture its meaning. The very poem itself becomes a symbol for a river flowing. Pastan is implying that love breaks all boundaries and never stops for anything. It is comparable to a river in that it flows and is "swollen" (line 13). Yet it can be "dangerous" in this sense (line 6). Love can be sweet but can also be consuming. This concept reminds me of Joyce's "Araby" where the narrator is so consumed in his attraction to the stranger that he can barely think of anything else.

There is also repetition in the poem that gives the reader a feel that love runs over everything in its path. The word "every" is repeated in lines 9 and 11. Nothing can escape love when it starts. Everything in one's life is affected when one is in a relationship.  It reminds me of the famous quote "love conquers all." There is also another phrase that is repeated from the text, "we must grab each other", in lines 16, 17, 19 and 20. The lovers must hold on to each other not merely because they are in love, but because their love is dangerous. Maybe the poet is saying that their love is forbidden and that it causes issues in their life.  However, the fact that they want to embrace each other is an indicator that even though their love has risks, they can still embrace one another.    

Works Cited: Pastan, Linda. "love poem." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. 441.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the third person narrator gives us some insight into the character of a self-righteous grandmother. She is particularly self serving in the sense that she is always lamenting about how the times used to be better than the present ones and, when later on in the tale, she attempts to use religion as a means to keep herself from being murdered.
As the grandmother's family is going on a trip to Florida, they stop at a barbeque restaurant. She converses with a worker there about the "good ol' days": "People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother (par. 35). "A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember they day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more" (par. 43).  The grandmother and Sammy believe that most of the people that live during their present time have no moral ethics and decent social mannerisms. Self-righteous people often lament at how everyone else but themselves are in bondage to their own selfish ends. Since they believe themselves to be holy, everyone else can be seen as hell-bound beasts, no matter if a small ray of common chairty emanates from their actions.

Yet one of those brimstone critters, "The Misfit", meets up with the grandmother with a gun in his hand. Fear begins to well up inside the grandmother at her imminent demise so she brings the God-Man to her defense: "If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you." "That's right," The Misfit said. "Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly" (par. 118-120). It would be easy to interpret the words of the grandmother as those that concern eternal salvation, but the word "trembling" conveys fear of death, rather than love for a lost soul. She is emotionally nervous of being shot and the only way she can see of keeping herself safe is to bring about repentance in The Misfit. If he changes his ways, he will not kill her. The ultimate irony of the grandmother is that she is the very kind of person she condemns.

Works Cited: O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. 396-409.