"Getting Out"

The whole process of divorce is devastating in general. Personally, I would call it one of my worst fears. So much goes along with it and there just doesn't seem to be an easy way out. One of my friends has parents who are going through a divorce right now and it is definitely not easy on the family.

In the beginning of the poem, the speaker uses the word we. Then, in the middle stanza, the speaker uses I and you. This change of word just shows how they slowly separate. The worst part about this poem is the tone. I can hear the speaker actually saying there words in my mind. Their nostalgic, reminiscent, and sorrowful tone is clearly shown through these words. I actually felt sympathy for the speaker after reading this poem. It is obvious that breaking apart was a hard route. The speaker shows this by two paradoxes at the end of the poem, "taking hands we walked apart" and "we held on tight, and let go."

Batter my heart, three-personed God

#13

In general, this is a very strong and touching poem, but I think that the author wanted to get one of his main points across by using paradoxes. Donne wanted to let the reader know that most of the time, situations have to get worse before they truly get better. For example, the text says "If you don't imprison me, I will never be free." This makes no sense when read literally, but the speaker will never be free from sin if they aren't punished and repremanded. This whole poem can be summed up by the theme "Break me down to Build me up." The human race will never know how to do things the right way if they don't get punished for the wrong. Also, once we have done wrong, we can't just sprint back to where we were before we fell behind. We have to learn to crawl, then stand, then walk, then jog, and finally reach where we were. It's a hard thing to do, but sometimes our hearts have to be battered before they are renewed.

Mr. Cohn

"Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody." (pg. 104)

I feel like Robert Cohn is the most shunned character in the book. If it weren't for her looks and deeds she did for men, Lady Brett would be. She technically should be. Frances loves Robert, but she has learned to hate him more and more as he strays away from her. Mike Campbell and Bill Gorton never have anything good to say about him. Jake also has a hatred for him and deliberately tries to harass him. On page 103 Jake even says, "I was enjoying Cohn's nervousness." This paradox makes people wonder how bringing out the worst in people could be a wonderful quality.

This also did make me wonder if this quotation was more of a sarcastic remark. Jake is the one who says it after he torments Cohn, so I do believe it could seen as sarcastic or maybe even antithetic.

Can't Deny the Truth

"You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference - a powerful, implacable beauty- and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly." (pg. 77)

I love the truth in this passage from the book. It is so true that we like watching horrible things. It must just be something about the way we are composed. We hate that bad things happen, but when they do, they somehow mesmerize us. I can relate to the comment about forest fires. When I went on a trip out West in the sixth grade, I was amused by the forest fires. They ruined people's lives, but for some reason I couldn't take my eyes off of them. Sometimes I think it is the power of fire that strikes me in utter awe.

The section in the book How to Tell a True War Story also kind of confused me. I didn't really understand some of the paradoxes he used. For example, "In a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true." I can't really grasp that one. The end of this section did make a lot of sense to me, so I am going to type it out because I do find a lot of truth in it. Also, O'Brien uses anaphora here to make his point more coherent. "It's about" begins every sentence except for the first one. He wants the reader to truly understand what a true war story is about.

A True War Story...
"And in the end, of course, a rue war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

She Never Wrote Back

" so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back." (pg.66)

When Curt Lemon, Rat Kiley's best friend, died, Rat wrote a letter to Curt's sister about how great of a guy Curt was and how he was a number one comrade. He told about how brave Curt was and how he would volunteer for the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. She never returned his letter. I am sure that letter took a lot of time to write and so much thought and heart were contained on that piece of paper. She never wrote back.

In this instance, Tim uses an effective paradox to describe Rat's eyes. "Big sad gentle killer eyes", Tim wrote. I believe these descriptions show how torn and confused Rat's emotions were after not receiving a letter in return. They were big because he was surprised at his death and sad because he lost his best friend, his one true companion. His eyes were also gentle because of all the memories he had of Curt and how he loved him as a friend, but to contradict the gentle, they were at the same time killer. This was because he wanted to get revenge on the enemy for slaying his buddy, but also he was angry because he didn't understand why Curt's sister refused to listen and reply.