Art and story of Eros

Eros is known as the god of love. Considered to be one of the oldest gods of ancient Greek society, he was the maker of man kind. He is also credited with the power to grant new life from his use of love in humans and in early mythology even animals. Eros has had three identities in his life as a god to the ancient Greeks, each in connection with the three main periods of the Greek empire. Although he has had three names and identities his power to instill love and therefore life have always been the same. Depicted as a human with wings armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows tipped in poison that causes love. Usually depicted as a male, his age varies from artist to artist. Ancient Greeks depicted him as a full grown adult male. The image of Eros as the cupid we are familiar with today, as the dwarfish and pudgy child, was not used until the Renaissance Age in Europe.

"What is Love" free writing poem

Love is evil, mean, ruthless.
It only leads to unhappiness.
Why do we fall so freely for it?
To lessen our sorrow?
Or do we just emptily say it
hoping to get laid tomorrow.

"What is Love" Free writing results

Love is simply the demise of the individual self.
Love makes one cherish the source of the the love more than one cherishes themself.
Once the individual self is compromised into the state of love,
they stop being unique and become conformed to the idea of being in love.
There-fore love is an addiction to passion. A passion that is unattainable solo.
Like all other addictions, if left unchecked it will destroy the individual self of the addict.
My advice: SOBER UP!!!!!

Lost Book Found

This movie was a great make you wonder type movie. I really liked the ideas provoked and the passion of Jem. He filmed for years to make this movie. The only draw back was that I found myself reflecting on my own personal journies during the more confusing abstract parts of the movie. All in all a pretty good flick. Here is a site that has a ton of information on Jem and his movie Lost Book Found. http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?LOSTBOOKFOUND

Comments on blogs

I looked at around half of the classes blogs and commented on Jocelyn's and Mariah's. I tried to create a link to each and failed. So the links below essay #2 are not working and I gave up trying to delete them. I did enjoy reading the various views offered by the class. And I am pleased with the level of intrest I have seen over all. If you want to see my comments you will have to access them through the class blog at http://121-12.blogspot.com

Essay #2

Charles Tewalt
Wayne Berg
English 121W-12
Essay 2
A Response to Question 5
This essay is going to be a comparison and analysis of the four readings our class has completed. These literary works were composed by three individuals; Jon Krakauer, Jorge Borges, and Wallace Stevens. These men used similar story lines to express mans’ underlying need to define life for themselves. Their artful use of metaphors imply a far deeper meaning than what is seen upon the first reading of any of these works. Of the two poems and two short stories analyzed in class there is this main underlying theme of a search for meaning. The adventure that is undertaken to find this meaning is what makes each of these pieces so different.
Jorge Borges presented two of the four works, one each of a poem and a short story. Both of Borges works carry very similar themes and I will compare his poem, Break of Day, to Wallace Stevens’ poem, The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain. Borges’ short story, The Circular Ruins, will be compared to Jon Krakauer’s short story, Into the Wild. This is the best way to contrast and compare these works, by grouping them in their respective genres.
In Borges short story The Circular Ruins, his character is an old man who canoes deep into a jungle to a weathered and worn ancient temple. In this setting the old man devotes himself to sleeping up to twenty hours day. His goal is to dream a human in such detail that it may walk the Earth as a mortal would. In this quest the man comes into a road block that he overcomes to eventually see his quest become reality. In a twist, at the
end of the story, the old man realizes that he too is nothing more than a dream of someone else. This ‘dream is our reality’ idea is what underlines Jorge Borges writings. His expression of this idea lends us all to question the way we each perceive our understanding of the world. The quest this old man went on was not a far departure from Chris McCandless’ journey to find his reality. Jon Krakauer wrote of the journey Chris McCandless went on in his book Into The Wild. The main characters of these two stories both set out to find an environment that suited there quest. Both men found themselves in long forgotten places of solitude in which they prepared themselves to find the answers to their questions. This need for solitude in order to gain the perspective they each desired shows that the fruits of their quests were within themselves, they just needed to be alone to discover the truth that lies within each of these characters.
Wallace Stevens’ The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain, and Jorge Borges’ Break of Day poem are in essence views on the perspective of life. Stevens expresses a way to gain perspective by the continual struggle to find the place that fits you not a place you should fit. Once there you can rest and appreciate the fruits of your struggle. Borges takes a different approach to show the reader a radical approach to the view of the world. In Borges’ poem Break of Day, he stresses that the world is just a collection of random dreams and that in the dawn, dreamers are few and the world as we know it is most venerable. This rather deep and complicated concept is more a metaphor of his infatuation with the Zen like state the mind is in during a dream. These two poems show a rather strong need to describe life’s meaning in words.
All three authors not only want to express their views on life, struggle, and the
journey to explain their inner questions. They all provide us (the audience) with clues that help us to question what we accept and sometimes, even the courage to search for our own purpose in this life. These literary works do not offer answers only ideas, leaving us to ponder; if the meaning of life really does lie in these works alone, or, are they really in the mind of the reader?

1st impression

The first reaction to Jorge Borges poem Break of Day was one big circle. I felt at the end that his story line made a huge loop. In a way it did. The darkness that he associated with the dreams that kept the world together lived on during the day in “the eyes of the blind”. It took a second reading to begin to catch it all.

Borges & Stevens

Jorge Borges poem Break of Day, as well as his short story The Circular Ruins are glimpses into Jorge’s obsession with the dream. In both of these works the dream is the foundation of the story. Break of Day talks of the idea of the world, and all it consists of, being nothing more than a combined collection of peoples dreams. In The Circular Ruins Borges tells of a man who devotes two or more years to sleeping around twenty hours a day. In his slumber his dreams manifest a son that becomes real and with a twist in the end the old man realizes he too is but a dream of someone. This obsession with dreams is a basic struggle of man to explain what life is really all about. No different than Wallace Stevens’ Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain. His epic mountain saga is a typical metaphor to see, understand, or explain what this life is all about.

Metaphor

“Metaphor- a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as if it were another.” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, pg 406)
The metaphor is a versatile tool to use in writing, and one that Borges, Stevens, and even Krakauer use in very different ways but to send the same message.

1st Essay

Charles Tewalt
Wayne Berg
English 121-12
2 February 2007
The Flights of Men
The Alaskan frontier, abound with it’s endless opportunities to explore, journey, or disappear into the wilderness, has drawn people to this frontier for centuries. Each year many people lose the battle with the Alaskan elements. So, why then, is the story of Chris McCandless so special? Perhaps it was his undertaking of an adventure so large in scale that many with five times McCandless’ experience have yet to attempt it. Or, perhaps it was to undertake his own soul flight. We may never know for certain, but one certainty remains, Chris McCandless was ambitious, mysterious, and alone. The question is not why he did this, but rather, was he successful?
To some the answer comes rather easily, yet others ponder it for a while. To them it is not a black and white answer. Concerning survival most say Chris was obviously not a success, since he perished in his bus. Others disagree, “…I admire what he was trying to do. Living completely off the land like that, month after month, is incredibly difficult.” (New Humanities Reader, pg. 306) Living off the land was a secondary challenge to Chris, he must survive so therefore the land is his garden. Chris went to Alaska to find himself, that is obvious by his largest miscalculation, leisure time. It is apparent that Chris greatly if not tragically underestimated the huge time investment it would be to become truly self sufficient in a land as unforgiving as the Alaskan interior. The proof, is his carrying of several books. The variety of the books suggest that they were to aid him on his journey to find himself and his place in this world. He bought into the romanticized versions of these authors own journeys into the wild and of the success of
their soul flights. This was Chris’ greatest error and the one that cost him his life.
Over fifty years prior to Jon Krakauer telling of Chris’ tale Into the Wild, a poet was writing about the same soul flight. Wallace Stevens penned a poem titled The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain. In his prose we find a maze of symbolism that express the journey to find greater understanding of something. That something is a journey, perhaps one of the soul, like Chris, or perhaps one of religion or self conflict. No matter what the personal reason for the journey they all are in one group, internal struggle for perspective. The mountain is a widely used symbol in writing to explain or symbolize struggle, with a challenge in the climbing of the mountain and the reward of the view or perspective once on top. Stevens uses his words to make a poem that shows the same quest to gain perspective over ones internal struggle. We as humans will all come to our own mountain to climb or poem to write or wilderness to conquer. It’s in us all to try to understand the unexplainable.