Clarissa's decision

Classia is one of the main characters in Mrs. Dalloway. And she is plagued most of here life with whethe or not she made the right decision with whom she chose to marry. She had the option of marrying Peter or Robert and she ultimately chose to marry Robert. Robert was dependable and respectible, and this is what she wanted but Peter loved her a great deal. In the end I believe she chose correctly because that is what she wanted and Peter was not any of those.

Love Song

T. S. Elliot wrote "the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It is a poem about a man who is looking back at his life and realizing that he has never experienced true love. He had opportunities for true love but he let other things get in the way and matter more to him and now he has nothing to show for it. It is a sad poem because he is looking back and realizing all the things he missed out on.

Great expectations

Great expectations is a book by Charles Dickens and it follows the life of a young boy named Pip. He is an orphan and lives with his sister and her husband and as a child he fals in love with Estella but she only feels friendship in the end. At the end of the book Pip ends up alone without Estella.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein is a novel by Mary Shelley. The book is essentially about a man who decides to play God and create his own creature. However the lesson I think the author is trying to get across in this story is that you can't play God and if you try to there are serious consequences for your actions. In the case of this book the consequences are that the monster kills off his creators family. The other point I believe the other is trying to make is that we should evaluate how we treat others. The creature looked like a moster so people rejected him and treated him like a monster, if they had not rejected him the ending could have been much different.

Michael

Michael Is a poem by William Wodsworth. The author does not citize Michael for not changing he actually thinks it is a good thing. He is saying that change is not always the best option, sometimes it is better not to change. He thinks that he may be a better for the fact that he does not change.

Alone in the Woods

Alone in the Woods is a poem by Stevie Smith and it is talking about how man is angering nature with how he is acting and how he is treating nature.  Nature is angry because man does not appreciate it and thinks that it is ugly and not beautiful when it really is.  I think this is the authors way of saying that man does not appreciate what is around him and if he doesnt start appreciating it it will turn on him.

Digging

Digging is a poem written by Seamus Heaney. It is a peom that is describing of his father and grandfather and how they were bouth men  who worked with thier hand and in the fields.  He describes them as hardworking and then he explains how he broke with the tradition and became a writer. This set him apart from his family, but later he came to realize that he could still be hardworking just like his grandfather he would just apply it to writting.

In Memory of W.B. Yeats

In Memory of W.B. Yeats is a peom written by W.H. Auden.  The poem seems to be a contradiction when you first read it.  It says that poetry can do nothing and later it says it can, which seems a little strange considering that we are reading a poem and it is written by a poet.  So either the writer really hates his job or he has some other meaning behind this, considering Auden wrote a lot of poetry I'm going with another meaning.  I think what he is really saying is that poetry by itself is just words and words can do nothing unless they are read by someone.  People are the key to the problem peotry is there to state the ideas and opinions, but it takes people to make any sort of change.  If no one reads it or acts upon it, the the author is write poetry can do nothing but people can do amazing things with words.

Refugee Blues

Refugee Blues is a peom by W.H. Auden, it is about a man who is trying to get his family out of Germany just before World War II, but he is a Jew.  The imagery that Auden uses really paints you a picture of how the man must have felt. "Saw a door opened and a cat let in:But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews" He sees that even animals are treated better than he and his family is.  The man is extremely lost on what to do he recognizes in the poem that Hitler wants themdead and he is trying desperately to save his family but there is no way out.  The fish that he watches swimming in the harbor have more freedom than he does and this saddens him greatly because he can almost see his freedom it is just out of his reach.

T.S. Elliot and Religion

Elliot seemed to have troubles with religion throughout his works, no matter what he was writing it always seemed to have some section or phrase devoted to religion.  As his works progressed through the years he seemed to become more and more curious about religion and it shows through in his works. Some poems seem to leave you in a hopeful position on religion such as "The Wasteland" while others seem to leave you without hope such as "THe Hollow Men". Elliot obviously struggled with his views on religion and he displayed that through his works.

Aubade

"Aubade" is a poem by Edith Stillwell, at first glance this poem seems to be about kind of making fun of a girl that isnt doing much but is just content to do nothing. But I believe this is a carpe diem poem, the narrator is urging the girl to not sit there and do nothing, she is saying get out and live your life.  She keeps urging the girl to get out of her room and come down and live her life she should not waste it.

T.S. Elliot

Even though T.S. Elliot did not produce a large amount of poetry his works had a significant influence on modern British poetry. His work in the Waste Land was very confusing but I think that he wrote it that way so that people would think deeply about what they are reading. I also believe that he may have wanted people be able to interprut his poetry how they wanted and devise their own meanings from it.

At-Swim-Two-Birds

This novel seemed to me that it is more about the process of writting a story than about the actually story itself. You seem to get the feeling that the narrator is trying to figure out what kind of author he wants to be or that he is inexperienced because he never really completes a story.  It has humor built into the story, I also find it funny how the characters in the novel don't like to be controlled and they try to rebel against their creator.

Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock is a murder mystery which was a new theme for us to read.  What was not a new theme was the aspect of religion in this novel.  Like many of our books we read the characters seem to apposed to religion, characters like Pinkie are familiar as well he was once religious. When he was younger he was raised in the Catholic church but has completely rejected it now. This seems to be a theme of British novels during this time period.

A Handful of Dust

I find Tony's character  in this book to be very interesting. He is obsessed with restoring his families old aristocracy. He is so obsessed with it that he neglects his own marraige to restore his family home to what it once was. Tony is unwilling to give up his old family home and restoring it, just as England is trying to restore the old aristocracy.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Connie marries Clifford when she is very young, their marraige is one of intellectualism and not of romance.  She always feels inferior to her husband and constantly wishes for something more for her marraige.  This soon leads her to an affair with Mellor, who feels inferior in his marraige as well.  They provide a relationship of equality for each other that they do not recieve in their marraiges.

A passage to India

One of the main themes I  took away from this book that I believe the author was asking, was whether or not  the English and Indians could ever be friends. This question is best represented by Aziz and Fielding, in the begging they dont think that they can be freinds. But after they do become friends they have a falling out ulitimately because of their cultural differences.  Even after they have some sort of reconciliation they still can not find it in them to friends. They decide in the end that perhapse they could be friends at a different time or maybe if they were not in India. There friendship could never work while India was still under the control of England. In this case their cultural differences were to abundant to get past for them to be friends.

Mrs. Dalloway

This was a very different book, it was not set up like most books. It was not broken up into chapters and the book was constantly jumping back to past memories. The book is following Clarissa as she is trying to find meaning in her life. On the surface she has a really great life filled with parties and a glamoures social life. But underneath she is really question herself and the decisions that brought her to this point. She is remembering back to events in her life and specifically she questions her choice of marrying Robert, who was stable and dependent, but not exciting and her choice of not marrying Peter. In the end she comes to the conclusion that while she may not be completely happy with her life, she does have a good life and she should accept that fact.

The Good Soldier

In my opinion no one in The Good Soldier is actually good. Dowell is easily decieved and never actually see's what people are really like. Edward who in Dowell's opinion is the good soldier is not the good soldier, he is only focused on himself and is constantly cheating on his wife. Florence has decieved her husband for their entire marraige and has not been faithful to him. Leonora who is faithful, is aware of her husbands affairs and only cares about keeping up appearences and controling everything in their lives to the point she begins to go mad. All the characters in Ford's book have very serious character flaws and none of them could be considered good.

James Joyce, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is not like any book I have ever read.  It is written as a stream of conciousness which is really hard to read and follow but also makes it very unique.  He writes like this to show that Stephen, the main character, is still growing through out the book. Not only in age but also as an artist.  At the end of the book Joyce does something interesting, he switchs from stream of conciousness to writing as journal if it is a journal entry by Stephen. He does this because he wants to show that Stephen has grown and he is ready to speak for himself.