Week 3......15 to go!!!

2. "somewhere i have never travelled": Obviously, cummings relies on intense visual imagery to convey his experience of love, but he also uses other devices to, as critic Ryan Poquette notes, "describe everything he is feeling all at once" and that "The poet's goal is have readers experience the depth and potency of his love in the same way that he is experiencing it." Aside from visual imagery, which rhetorical devices/literary elements does the poet rely on to convey such experience? Do you agree with the author in terms of cummings's ultimate goal here?



From what I saw, Cummings biggest focus aside from the flower metaphor, was his reference to a “voice” and an overall feeling. He referred to this in line 19 when he mentions that he doesn’t know what it is about this woman but her voice is far beyond that pleasure in which a flower can bring. Honestly, I can’t say I agree with the author here. I had to read and re-read this poem a number of times to understand what Cummings is trying to say. I do know he is speaking of an intense feeling, in which he had, not necessarily sexual but a delicately mixed cocktail of love, lust and strength of the woman, who the rose is portraying in this piece. We can all relate to “depth and potency of his love” as I’m sure we have each once felt such strong feelings for another person. He uses this element, strong emotional attachment to help convey his goal. I like the piece but don’t personally feel like he’s getting his point across. 



5. A Doll House: Critic D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke suggests the following: “It is against conventional middle-class values that Nora rebels. Of course, she has been made to believe that she was happy, that she was an ideal wife, and that her husband loves her, and she was living with the belief that an ideal husband like hers would, if the necessity arose, sacrifice his life to save her reputation. It is these illusions that are shattered at the end.” If this is so, to which values does the author refer? Against which elements of middle-class society might Nora rebel?



I think the elements the author is referring to are the ones that in a modern day society, we are much less likely to find women dependent on a man in the way Nora was dependent on Helmer. But see, he wasn’t the only one she was dependent on…..she was just as dependant on Krogstad, to keep her secret. In this day of age, many women are working outside the home, we don’t have maids to keep the children and technology to keep us updated….and unfortunately available if there were money laundering or other suspicious things happening behind ones back. In her time, she was simply filling a role, one that was frequently subject to criticism if one stepped out of that role. She rebelled at the end, as she pushes the envelope suggesting that she isn’t as childish as everyone portrays her and leaves her family behind. Something a woman following society’s imposed role at that time, would never think of doing!