Analysis of Anthem

Hi guys, today I’m going to talk about Anthem and my personal opinion of it so far.  So far I have read two chapters of the book, and surprisingly I’m actually interested.  I thought I wouldn’t like the story because I’ve heard a lot of bad things about Ayn Rand, but she did a good job writing her novel.

Overall I think the story hooked me as I wanted to know what happens to Equality in the end.  However, I believe the morals behind the story are wrong.  Rand through the idea of teamwork and selflessness way out of proportion in an effort to make it easy to argue her idea of individualism.  Ultimately, collectivism and even communism are not nearly as bad as the dystopia that Rand created.

 I also disagree with Ayn Rand’s belief of individualism.  I feel that individualism creates very selfish people, and ultimately people must reach out to one another for us all to prosper.  If everyone only cared about themselves, then very important and helpful things would go away, like welfare and the military.  If nobody ever tried to help anyone else, the world would become an even worse place than the one Ayn Rand invisioned in Anthem.

– Josh

Poetry

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly,

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes

Title: When I first saw the title, I thought of my childhood dreams of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I also thought of the dreams and nightmares that I had as a child because those influenced my growing up a lot.

Paraphrase: Hughes is talking about how dreams influence and give color to your life; when your life has a goal, a feeling of determination, a force to drive you on.  He describes dreams as the objective of your life and without dreams you’re just an empty shell of person that is just waiting for nothing to happen.

Connotation: This author only rhymes the 2nd lines with the 4th lines in both stanzas.However, even with only those few lines rhyming, the poem still seems to flow and with meter.  Hughes also doesn’t harshly and bluntly describe life, he compares it to nature; such as instead of saying “Life sucks if you have no dream”, he describes it as a cold frozen barren field.

Attitude: The attitude of the poem seems to be encouraging like Hughes is trying to encourage the readers to find a dream, a purpose in life.

Shifts: The shift seems to happen in the 2nd line because the poem just got a lot more depressing with the author describing how blank life is without any dreams.

Title: Now that I look back at the title, it’s simply titled “Dreams”, a broad topic as if dreams can be anything you want it to be.

Poetry Analysis

As far as coming up with great descriptions for words, and expressing myself abstractly, I’ve always been pretty good at it. I like to look for thing under the concrete meaning and I look for poems and writers with this same view. When I was in 6th grade, I came across Robert Frost and I basically felt like for the first time someone had the same ideas as me. Mr. Kennedy just emphasized this point a few days ago when he told me, “Oh, Robert Frost never means what he says. There’s always something more to the story.” His rather famous poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay is my all time favorite.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

– Robert Frost

Title: At first glance, it’s not too difficult to see what Frost meant when he was saying nothing gold can stay. The title reflects his views on the fact that even if something seems great, after a while, it will lose its luster, or marvel. To look at the title of this poem from a literal point of view, it is rather ironic in the fact that gold is an element, and it cannot be any more pure than in it’s element form. Since gold is an element, it won’t and cannot rust. Thus being said, if something is actually pure gold, it will in fact stay that way.

Paraphrase: Frost opens the poem by talking about nature and the processes it goes through when it is first budding, or in Frost’s words, “gold.” He also makes it clear the difficulties nature always has, and eventually is overwhelmed by, in keeping itself, “gold.” Frost then alludes to the biblical Garden of Eden and the way it fell to prove his point of nothing perfect lasting.

Connotation: Frost doesn’t take an aggressive approach in telling his audience that everything good in their lives will eventually fade away. instead, he uses a lighter tone with words to imply the true meaning. Frost talks about nature having a “hue,” implying that it won’t stay that way forever, or that it is only how it appears. He also does a nice job of introducing the creating of a new leaf as being a flower, something beautiful. Even in his arrangement of the lines of this poem, Frost first introduces something hopeful and miraculous only to remind his audience that the poem will not stay that way, nor will nature, or anything gold.

Attitude: By reading Frost’s poem and analyzing it deeply, I began to see how much of a pessimist/realist frost appears to be. His attitude and tone is not happy, it is actually somewhat melancholy and depressing. The poem is short as well, which could show a slight sign of arrogance in Frost as he was saying his poetry is also another thing “gold” that cannot stay forever or last a while.

Shifts: After the fourth line, the author seems to have given up hope in his attempt to introduce good things but dilute them with bad. At first, Frost introduces beautiful things in nature, then he says something negative about how they won’t stay that way. After the fourth line, he does’t even make an effort to say anything lovely about the world. Instead, Frost talks about leaf subsiding to itself, and then goes on to allude to the most paradisaical garden in the history of the world in a negative way, discussing how it is no longer. 

Theme: Overall, other than the fact that Frost wants his audience to see how depressing the world we actually live in is, he was trying to simply show the fact that paradise/perfect things cannot exist with us on Earth. The Garden of Eden simply fell because of its perfection. There was no place for it in this corrupt world. Some would say Frost was a pessimist, but they should be doing something to change the world so that he will have no room to be. Frost wasn’t negative for no reason, he was simply a realist in the corrupt world we live in.

Poetry, Good or Bad?

Poetry. A simple thing many people confuse. Many people think poetry is boring or too confusing to figure out. If poetry is so bad as people say it is then what’s the point of it? Poetry is here for many reasons. Without it there wouldn’t be an inspiration for music. Also, like Sam said about poetry being songs. A poem is simply a song without music to go along with it. Without poetry, there wouldn’t be anything to sit down and just read in your free-time.

Poems can be good or bad, depending on your prospective of them, they can be too annoying, too long or just something you don’t like reading. Although, many people enjoy reading poems because of their inspiration or just a common thing to read when you are bored. Poems have a lot of meaning behind them that not many people realize until you analyze it also known as TPCASTT. Everyone simply judges a poem as being boring or not interesting. Not every poem is going to be pleasurable to everyone. Poems create a new aspect to English and just to a book or song.

The only one who can judge poems is you. You are the one who determines if you like it or not. Poems are a unique view on society and many people can relate to a lot of poems just like they can relate to songs. Poems and song have many things in common when you go beyond just the words it says. The meaning behind poems is way more creative then many people think or believe. A poem is good or bad whether you think it is or not. In my personal opinion, poems are a great way to sit down and relax. I love reading poems but I don’t like making them because I do not consider myself a “good” poet. Even though poetry comes in many different forms and types. Anyone can create a poem and there is no reason why you shouldn’t.

Poetry

Poetry has never been my thing, unlike others i just never really get the deeper meaning to this form of literature. Since we started to learn about them and try to go deeper into it, I started to find myself a little bit more interested. There are some that really confuse me or bored me, but there are also those that are like the sweet sound of music. So far I think I find poetry a little more enjoyable is probably because its not super long like a story, but the analysis part it is a pain.

To Be A Champion

To be a Champion is no simple task,
You gotta be quick, you gotta be fast.
Gotta be able to knock down a big shot,
Gotta try your best to let your opponent not.
Yes, to be a Champion, you gotta be good,
But I wanna make sure it’s understood:
The journey you take is no easy one,
It’s not quick, and it’s not fun.
At many times it can get very lonely,
But you gotta prove that you’re no phony.
Everything about it is real humbling,
Often you’ll find your mind stumbling.

If you can stick with it,
If you can pull through,
You’ll rise above all,
Like the Champions do.
Champions take the ring with pride inside,
Most of them have even cried.
Thoughts of the journey race through a Champion’s mind,
Of that big trophy he’d hoped to find.
A Champion thanks God for all He’s done,
He gives Him the glory, honors the Blessed Three in One.

Mindful of his recent feats,
Does a Champion brag?
No, he repeats.

-Brian Aji

Title- From the title, most people today would relate it to the super stars of the sports world today, but for me the first thing that cross my mind was heroes fighting monsters. Reason why that was the first thing that cross my mind was because in Greek mythology, there would always be a hero chosen by a god to journey out on a quest and become a champion among them after slaying a beast of some sort. To Be A Champion can also be infer to how success is accomplished  and how a champion is forge.

Paraphrase- This poem basically explains what does it take to become a champion, and the journey of how to reach there. One can’t just do what everybody does to expect the result of rising to the top. One has to go above and beyond to reach their goals.

Connotation-The author of this poem brilliantly use rhyming schemes to make this poem flow like a river when it is read. I find that the author might chose to rhyme at the end of every line is because like he said in his poem ” If you can stick with it, If you can pull through” and he demonstrated this by sticking with the rhyming and created a marvelous piece of literature.

Attitude- I find the mood of this poem to be tenacious at the same time encouraging. This poem reflects on a lot like people’s conscience because we all got that voice in our head that talks to us when times are bad or good.

Shift- I find the shift in the poem to be in the second stanza starting with “Like the Champions do. Champions take the ring with pride inside.” Reason why is because it teaches a lesson of even after you have become the champion that you wanted to be, you always have to remember where you came from.

Title- By rereading the title, I discover that champions are not just super star athletes, but those who are determine to pursue their life long dreams. Anybody can be a champion in their own ways if they have their minds set for it. It could be trying to become a doctor or graduate from school.

Theme- The theme of this poem is hunger. Someone got to be hungry to desire to become better if they want to be where they hope to be in the future. There is no short cuts to success, and even if the journey become lonely, one always have to remember why they chose this path. By going through the motions of things isn’t going to get anyone better, one has to put their best effort to get something even better in return. If someone works hard, they will surely become better, but sometimes doing the tiny extra little things is what going to make someone stand out above the rest. In the end when this life long goal is accomplished, always be humble and don’t get over confident in your abilities because there is always room for improvement.

After reading this poem, I feel poetry isn’t always about trees or flowers because at times it can be very motivational and inspirational.

 

Ayn Rand Quotes Analysis

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
-Ayn Rand

I couldn’t disagree more with Ayn Rand’s opinion of man in this quote. It’s deplorable really. She believes that man should only think about his own happiness and not consider how other people feel. So, she’s basically promoting selfishness. You must think about others in life because what you do can affect people in both harmful and helpful ways. For example, if you have a job and a steady income, you should probably give some of that money away every year to the poor or a charity. Giving that extra money could make all the difference in a person’s life, but not giving it won’t make any difference at all. Ayn Rand probably should have considered that before she said that a man’s own happiness is “the moral purpose of his life.” Another thing she should have considered is that a man accomplishes “productive achievement” seldom alone. Throughout his entire life, he is helped or guided by people, such as teachers, parents, or friends. Those people influence him and help to mold him into who he is today. Thus, he did not achieve in life all by himself, but was instead helped all the time by influential individuals whether he knew it or not.

“Man-every man-is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”
-Ayn Rand

What this quote is saying is that you should do things without the help of others, and that others should do things without the help of you. Only you control how your life ends, and you shouldn’t help affect how another person’s life ends. This is more of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, which promotes selfishness and having an enormous ego. She believes that you shouldn’t care about others, and that sacrificing time to help others is a waste, neither of which is true. If you help others, then they are more inclined to help you in the future. You can’t go your entire life without someone to lean on every now and then; it is impossible to be completely independent. Also, you are not an end in yourself, but only a means to your end. There are many factors that go into your life that are beyond your control, and you can’t do anything about. It’s impossible to control exactly how your life will end in the long run, especially if it is disease or a freak accident. You can only have partial control of your end. Also, you can have partial control to how another person ends. If they are in poverty and you choose to help them, then you are helping to guide their life for the better. So, you are a both a means to your end and a means to other’s ends.

As you can probably already tell, I’m no fan of Ayn Rand. I disagree with her philosophy and believe that it just isn’t the right thing to do. We are a united nation and should stand by each other and think of the group as a whole. Just thinking about ourselves was not what led us to such great success as a country, but thinking about everyone.

Also, it’s almost midnight, so I should probably be going to sleep. Good night.

TPCASTTing Poetry

“Hope”

By: Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune—without the words,

And never stops at all

 

And the sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm,

 

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

 

Title: Based on the title being “Hope” I am assuming this poem will be much about how the author has a hope or dream to achieve in that hope is the one thing that makes this dream feasible.

Paraphrase: “Hope” is about hope being an animate object that has feathers and rests inside a person’s soul and sings all the time. Then, a bird is heard, but the bird dies due to the incoming storm. The author closes with saying, hope has gone everywhere except her.

Connotation: Poetry devices that can be found in this poem are assonance along with alliteration. This poem is very abstract because the idea of hope is not tangible and while a rhyme scheme isn’t place, sentence fluency isn’t a problem due to assonance. The poem can become vague when discussing who the speaker is because it is never identified as a person speaking in a story of if it’s an author giving a narrative.

Attitudes: The attitude of the poem is choleric and critical in that the author doesn’t discuss the positives to hope. Only that once you receive hope, it is already too late and a bad event is coming to destroy the person and/or animal.

Shifts: The poem takes an extreme shift on line 5 from being a happy poem about how hope is like an animate object into discussing how hope crushes dreams and allowed for the bird to die. Another shift can be found from line 11 into line 12 where the author stops applying how hope relates to things outside her life and she begins to show how she is in need of hope, but doesn’t have any.

Title: After reading this poem, the title “Hope” means that hope does not come to everyone. Hope will only find its way to you in extreme need such as death, like the bird, or in lands where warmth is not accessible.

Theme: Hope only leads to hurt and broken dreams. One can find this theme within the poem from lines 11-12, “Yet, never, in extremity, it never asked a crumb from me.” This line expresses the author’s broken dreams because hope has never overcome her and without hope, a person cannot achieve complete happiness.

TPCASTTing

“Better Dig Two” – The Band Perry

I told you on the day we wed

I was gonna love you ’til I’s dead

Made you wait ’til our wedding night

That’s the first and the last time I’ll wear white

So if the ties that bind ever do come loose

Tie ’em in a knot like a hangman’s noose

Cause I’ll go to heaven or I’ll go to hell

Before I’ll see you with someone else

Put me in the ground

Put me six foot down

And let the stone say:

“Here lies the girl whose only crutch

Was loving one man just a little too much”

If you go before I do

I’m gonna tell the gravedigger that he better dig two.

Title: Better Dig Two reminds me right off the bat of a cemetery or a grave. It sets the tone and gives you a sense of darker meaning. The way it is presented, it almost seems like it has attitude like the singer wants to be buried alongside someone she loves.

Paraphrase: The singer starts off in the first stanza talking about how she was going to love her special someone until she was dead. Then, in the second stanza, she talks about how she would rather be dead before she catches him cheating on her. Later, she talks about how she loves this man so much, she would die with him so she wouldn’t have to live without him.

Connotation: Looking deeper into the lyrics, the whole storyline is very dark. She needs this special someone to be able to survive and if she doesn’t have him, she just can’t go on. To need the attention like this makes me believe that she feels lonely and maybe even a little unwanted. There is a rhyme scheme of AA, BB; which means the first two lines of a stanza rhyme and the last two lines of stanza rhyme.

Attitude: The mood of the song is depressing but also has an attitude toward the audience. She uses words like gravedigger and dead that make the song dark but the whole first stanza is full of attitude and sass that make the song upbeat and light.

Shift: There is a particular shift in the third stanza where she goes from talking about not wanting to see her man cheat on her, to wanting to be buried. It escalates quickly and is so powerful; the song is pretty much dark and depressing during the whole rest of the song.

Title: Reevaluating the song’s title, it is so literal to the actual lyrics. The singer is actually talking about telling the gravedigger to ‘dig two’ because she will die with her lover. She is too wrapped up in her love, she can’t see the reality of it all and believes that once he’s gone, there is no other reason to live.

Theme: This song has a moral meaning. When you love something so much, you can’t let it go to waste. You need to spend as much time as you can with someone or something. But, what was being mistaken throughout the song was that she was controlling. Her special someone didn’t have freedom because she couldn’t let him go. It’s the same life lesson you get taught as a kid, if you love something or someone, let them go.

The Last Time Anyone in This Class Should Talk About A Doll’s House

Although we have already analyzed the crap out of this play, I believe that there are some more possible points of view that we have not completely explored. The first point is that, even though Ibsen obviously intended for Torvald to be the bad guy, Torvald may not be the worst person in the world. Another, is that Nora, the supposed protagonist, became a character that resembled an antogonist in my eyes. 

I know that we have been calling Torvald an insufficient husband and a rather heartless person over the past month or so, but I don’t believe he deserves all of this heat.  Sure he was rather miserly and a somewhat shallow human being, but I firmly believe that Torvald is more of a victim in the story than Nora is.   An angle that makes Torvald out to be the antagonist in the story that is set up by Ibsen, is the one that Nora desperately wants to keep her secret safe from Torvald.  This view of Nora’s struggle against Torvald’s outreaching knowledge makes Torvald out to be a monster trying to bring down the villain when in fact Torvald is just bumbling through his own life. Now it is true that Torvald’s anger at Nora at the end of the play reveals what an angry and spiteful man he can be, but he did have a right to some of his anger.  His wife had kept secrets from him when if she had simply been open with him in the first place, many of these problems could have been avoided. In class we have also pointed out that Torvald treated Nora as he would treat a small animal with all his bet names such as, “songbird,” or “”little squirrel.” Although these names do deteriorate the status of women, Nora has done nothing in their long marriage to say that she did not appreciate her treatment.  Torvald was just going off of what he had always done because he had assumed that what he was doing was okay with Nora.

At the end of the story, Nora leaves Torvald in a quick turn of events and tells him that they can never be together again. Through Torvald’s eyes, this looks pretty rough. Your wife of many years has forged a check to save your life and your family name is possibly at stake and she has been hiding this for all these years. You get a shade too much angry at her and now she is telling you that she wishes to leave you and the children behind. To me, it sounds more like Torvald is the victim of a poor relationship and that Nora is becoming a rather unpleasant individual. Now, Torvald is still not the most thoughtful or loving person in Norway and he certainly does not deserve to be credited as the hero of the play. The fact that Ibsen intended that Torvald be the antagonist and Nora the protagonist is obvious and clearly supported. The fact that Ibsen intended this alone is reason enough to call Nora the protagonist.  However I still have a hard time believing that Torvald is somewhat entilted to some backup at the end of the play, and Nora more blame then she is recieving. Besides the point that she kept secrets from her husband that hurt their relationship and that she expected (expected!) him to take the fall for it, she also abandons her children in search of her own life.  A very selfish move if you ask me.  This is ironic because earlier in the play, Torvald mentions how the absence of a mother is usually what leads to criminal tendencies in children.

Overall, Torvald Helmer maybe isn’t quite the big bad wolf after and perhaps Nora should shoulder some of the blame on this one.  They both have done wrong, and they both have been the victims of the other’s actions at one point, but Torvald was given an unproportionate amount of blame by this class in my opinion.

The Role of Government in Ayn Rand’s Anthem

Ayn Rand’s Anthem is basically a novel about a dystopian future with an interesting form of “Freedom”. That is what the people are supposed to believe. The type of “Freedom portrayed in this novel is a cross between Communism and Totalitarianism.
The government in Anthem is a difficult thing to grasp. It is Communist in the sense that jobs are government assigned, the government provides everything a person needs, and the fact that all is for the good of the common man. This government is Totalitarian in the sense that all aspects of life are controlled by the government. The government controls what people con read, write, learn, and even how they talk. Breeding, punishment, and even people’s emotions are controlled by the government. Also, there are no secrets. If that is not a Totalitarian society, then I don’t know what is.
Not only does the government serve as the absolute despots of a dystopian world, they also serve as the antagonist of the story. Equality 7-2521 and the Golden One are the main protaganists that fight the government. I won’t ruin the rest of the plot for anyone who has not read the book yet, but there is a definite resistance.
In conclusion, the government in Anthem serves a major role in daily life. They restrict the citizens words, lives, educations, and occupations. I believe that the moral of this story is to stand up for your beliefs and to fight for them if need be. If you don’t, the beautiful, free nation of the United States of America may turn into a group of dystopian cities.