Task: Write a commentary on the bleak epigraph to the play A Streetcar Named Desire. In your commentary, paraphrase the excerpt in your own words. Next, consider this point of view on love and existence. Why might Tennessee Williams start the play with this excerpt?
Tip: You may want to consider some of the following questions in your post. What mood does it set and how does it prepare you as a reader for the play? What predictions can you make based on the epigraph and the research you did on the play in class today? Post your commentary in this google doc, NOT on the blog itself: google doc and make sure to read other people's commentaries. You can respond or extend on other people's points.
Epigraph:
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
– “The Broken Tower” by Hart Crane
2. Write a commentary on the bleak epigraph to the play A Streetcar Named Desire (included below). In your commentary, paraphrase the excerpt in your own words. Next, consider this point of view on love and existence. Why might Tennessee Williams start the play with this excerpt?
Tip: Consider the following questions in your post. What mood does it set and how does it prepare you as a reader for the play? What predictions can you make based on the epigraph and the research you did on the play in class today? Post your commentary in this google doc: Comments, Juniors
Epigraph:
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
– “The Broken Tower” by Hart Crane
A.P. Language and Composition
1. Read chapter two of F.D., annotating as you go. Underline and jot down what you notice as you read.
2. Choose one of the arguments we identified in chapter one. Find two strong pieces of evidence that support the argument and analyze them, using the diction and syntax handouts to help you.
3. Read the Shmoop overview (included below) of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. It will help you focus on the rhetoric, rather than the plot of the autobiography:
Douglass's Narrative is like a highway map, showing us the road from slavery to freedom. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom and frees his mind. And if the book is like a highway map, then the mile markers are a series of "epiphanies," or moments of realization, that he has along the way. These events are turning points in Douglass's life, but they also help show how he got there, and what he had to learn along the way.
The first epiphany is Douglass's realization about what slavery is. He's born a slave on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, but as a child he's mostly spared the worst kinds of suffering. He sees his Aunt Hester get beaten, for example, but he's too young to be whipped himself. Instead, he suffers without really knowing it. He never knows his father and only meets his mother a handful of times before she dies – and then, he isn't allowed to go to her funeral. But he doesn't really know for a long time that this isn't normal. So his first turning point is sort of simplistic, but also important: realizing that he is a slave and all that that entails.
The second stage of his life begins when the seven-year-old Douglass is sent to work for a new set of masters in Baltimore. Baltimore is a whole new world for him, with a lot of new experiences, but the most important thing he learns there is the power of education. He has this second epiphany when his master's wife starts teaching him to read, which gets her in big trouble with her husband. Douglass finds ways of educating himself, but the real lesson is that slavery exists not because the masters are better than their slaves, but because they keep their slaves ignorant. Douglass starts to suspect that if slaves managed to educate themselves, it would be impossible to stop them from becoming free.
As Douglass becomes a young man, he starts fighting to actually be free. When he talks back to his master, his master sends him to work for a notorious "slave breaker," Covey, who tries to destroy Douglass's spirit. For a while it works, and Douglass is reduced to the state of mind of an animal. This is the lowest point in his life. His third epiphany happens, however, when he decides that he'd rather die than be treated like a slave anymore. So the next time Covey tries to whip him, he stands up to him, and after a two-hour fight, Covey leaves him alone. Douglass vows never to be whipped again. And he never is.
After this, Douglass bounces from master to master, but he's always on the lookout for a way to escape to freedom. And after one failed attempt, he finally succeeds and makes his way first to New York, then to Massachusetts. But even after he's free, he discovers that his journey isn't over. This is his final epiphany: even after he acquires his own freedom, he realizes he can't rest until all slavery is abolished. He not only becomes an abolitionist activist himself; he writes the narrative of his life to teach others, white and black, how to follow in his footsteps.
I think the reason why Williams introduced this epigraph at the beginning of his book is that he could possibly admire Cranes work as a poet and that they might share something in common with their disposition of metaphors. The part when Crane says “the broken world” suggests to the reader that the protagonist journey will start as something “broken.” As for the part when Crane says, “To trace the visionary company of love”, this could mean that the story of The Streetcar Named Desire revolves around the idea of love due to the word ‘trace’ suggests a sort of longing for the feeling of affection and love from someone possibly. Finally, the ending of this epigraph evokes a cryptic but also dramatic atmosphere by saying “But not for long to hold each desperate choice.” Like what’s the desperate choice? In addition, the broken tower can end as a metaphor that sets a theme of love or misfortune that Williams provides in The Streetcar Named Desire.
ReplyDeleteParaphrase:
ReplyDeleteAnd so it was I entered the broken world - The words "And so it was" implies that this is the beginning of something, and nothing will change.
To trace the visionary company of love, - The words "trace the visionary company" describes seeing something peripherally, in this case love. Never fully making contact with it
its voice/ An instant in the wind - The voice is fleeting. It never lasts for long.
(I know not whither hurled) - You never know where it comes from.
But not for long - The feeling (in this case love) never lasts for long.
to hold each desperate choice. - Because the love goes away, the terrible choices you make never last too long either.
Using this as an epilogue leads me to believe that this play will be about a women who fall in love constantly and is so blinded by these emotions that she makes terrible choices. However, she probably falls out of love quickly too, resulting in her not having a stable life.
According to the class discussion today, the word "streetcar" in the title perhaps represents masculinity while "desire" connotes this temptation of women. In my perspective, this epigraph specifically portrays the mind of women. As if they are desire to love and beloved in this messy society. The second two lines suggest that the narrator believes that love does not last long, it goes away quick just as "an instant of wind". However, despite the narrator figured that the consequence might be painful but "she" is still willing to make that desperate choice. This can connect back to the image seen in the class today; where a woman in a blue, transparent lingerie sitting behind the curtain and checking herself up in the mirror. While there were some drunks and gamblers on the other side of the curtain. By connecting both themes together, the woman in the painting dress provocatively and it seems like she tries to find love among those guys who represent the typical features of masculinity, rough, bold, and ruthless. The guys perhaps symbolize the "broken world" while the women decides to make this desperate choice by attempting to seek for love among these guys.
ReplyDeleteParaphrase: Crane is saying that men are desperate for love because they are the ones always asking women out (at least the majority of the time) and when they get rejected, they have to continue because it means so much for them that they need that attention.
ReplyDeleteI think that Tennessee Williams started with this to reflect on his life with his partner and to show that not all men are the stereotypical macho man.
The description of the tower signifies the central theme of the poem the most. When I think about towers, it sort of reminds me of high isolation because when you’re at a high point of view not only are you alone and sealed off from reality, but you have a 360 view of your surroundings. The part when Crane says “the broken world” implies that the journey of the protagonist will start in a harsh way or will become hard as they travel. It makes you more aware of your surroundings and allows you to contemplate on anything that comes to mind. The phrase “the visionary company of love” connotes how the whole concept of finding love and holding onto it seems eternal and cannot be done easily. With that in mind, it also conveys how one is able to identify love and companionship, but through a harsh path because it’s not something so feasible.
ReplyDeleteluka vuckovich