Julie &Black Music Lovers★

Remption of the Tulliver Family in “The Mill on the Floss”

           In “Mill on the Floss”, George Eliot creates a central family with the heroine, Maggie Tulliver, in both domestic and social framework. This is a story about a Victorian middle-classed family searching their identity and way to happiness. With Eliot’s descriptions, readers can see how the Tullivers struggle in Capitalism society, facing their problems, and being redeemed by the narrator’s arrangement in the ending. To explain the family situation, we will start with its four members. It has four middle-classed family members, formed by father, mother, a son and a daughter.

The Tulliver Family as   Victims of Capitalism and Patriarchy

Journal of the Second Week, March 17^th

Chief Seattle’s speech and the whole series of Indian poetry are famous while we discuss the conception toward nature between aborigines and city people. Therefore, when speaking of the incapability of accommodation to ‘civil life’ as being in the city, Indians’ idea may be a little strange to us. But as I think it over, the reason they dislike the city is because they can not find family there. Nature seems to them a big family, and Indians are living in it, be a part of it. They don’t afraid of the darkness in plain, in forest and valley when they have no lamps. Instead, the city’s brightness make the m blind as the noisy hustle deafen their ears. They believe human beings are born to live as a sensitive part of nature’s world. They think they are trivial because they have so many family members to respect and love.

It occurs to me that there are some sentences in Wordsworth’s poem ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’. Following are the sentences which respond to Indian thinkings: “Thanks to the human heart by which we live/Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears/ To me the meanest flower that blows can give/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”  Through out the poem, the poet believe that human is born to be in nature, so God has given us a vision to see ‘celestial light’ which is also in nature. However, humans always forget their first birthday present and seek for other unimportant ones. In order to adjust this kind of attitude that takes nature for granted, the poet brings out the idea of finding ‘human heart’ back again. The ‘human heart’ here presents a humble attitude to live in nature and the most proper mind to live with nature is philosophic because it seems hard for us to have the initial visionary and appreciate nature sincerely. The poet then uses three words to describe and make restrictions of the ‘human heart’—‘tenderness’, ‘joy’ and ‘fear.’ The last word is the most significant because human beings usually think themselves as the over soul among all creature instead of knowing they should be humble to all nature beings. I reckon Wordsworth and believe that people like Chief Seattle hold all conditions named by the poet. His heart is full of fear because he knows he is merely a member of this immense family. His heart knows what tenderness is because he cares both his tribe and the white men’s, in the name of brotherly love. He enjoys his ancestors’ and the nature’s immortal company in joy, too. I think all these are what we should learn and keep reflecting ourselves on, as human beings.

Nature Writing

Journal of the Fourth Week, April 14^th : A Ride Beneath Celestial Light

 One morning in a summer vacation years ago, when I was in my junior high and my brother in elementary school, my mom took us back to grandma’s house at Junan Town in Miao-Li County . Children at the age often feel frustrated when they have to throw away all the benefit and entertainment of the city. If fact we felt even more frustrated when we heard that grandma’s television was broken. What could we do in that shabby, boring house and still be happy? However now I memorize that vacation happy because we found the way to enjoy life without network and television. Most of the time we read, and we went now the rest of a day. Junan Town was a simple, small place even till now, but it has many beautiful natural surrounding. Most of me and my brother’s childhood memory to the sea came from that vacation because mom sometimes took us there. It was a entrance called ‘Hai-ko’(‘mouth of the ocean’), not far from grandma’s house. There was a grey, plain beach which we didn’t think it beautiful at all; however, we enjoy its savage silence there.

One morning before dawn, about four am, my brother and I woke up and couldn’t feel asleep again because we went up to bed too early last night. After a short discussion, we decided to slink out the house without waking the adult. Beneath the window, the two of us dressed up quickly in grey light outside. The moment we successfully got out we look at the grey-blue sky before dawn in the first time of ecstasy; we were also excited because we were doing something adults didn’t know. We made our mind to go to the sea and got on our bikes. The road and its surrounding were kind of dark and we didn’t quite sure about our directions. However, we all rode fast in the empty, wide roads and lanes of the town. Suddenly we met the end of residential district and there’s a dark- green forest before us. That proved our direction right. We were urban kids, the forest in night seemed kind of scary and ghastly, but later we decided to ride though it as far as possible. When we stopped in front of the forest, we could already see how yellow and milk-white light spread and scattered the bottom of the night sky in distance. The boundary of sky and sea was becoming clearer brightness in amazing speed. Then we rode in the gloomy forest in full speed. As I remembered, the trees were almost black and the fallen celestial light was not vivid because it was almost covered with all kinds of leafs and trunks. We merely saw a glamorous, ghostly white passing us as fast as we rode in high speed. It was strange that we had forgotten our fear to the forest at that moment; in fact we later felt the speeding joy in company with us. And it seems like the surrounding, the atmosphere of the forest changed with our mood. Soon the black trees became pretty green and started to shine at us. 

Then we rode out of the forest and almost drove ourselves into a new, immense gold brightness. The beach is right before us, upon it there was a flow of dazzling orange which turned fancy blue. Even the somberness of night clouds faded out in the color of flawless whiteness. Sitting at our bike, we rode along the beach and waited there till the sublime, shiny sky completely became sunny blue. In silence, I remember me and my brother smiled at each other for we had shared the amazement of nature together. It has been years after our splendid experience. I wonder if kids in the country side all know the ecstasy of beauty and are willing to expose themselves into daily contact with nature. If so, they are so fortunate. I hope me and my brother can get up early next time we decide to drop all the urban entertainment to grandma’s house, so that we can have another splendid rode under the celestial light of dawn once again.

Greek Tragedy

93102038

Julie Chen

December 18^th

Love and Violence: Euripides’ “Medea”

By reading Knox’s paper about Euripides’ “Medea”, most students take the positive side of Medea’s characteristics as their second impression, so do I. So recently I have been searched for paper that emphasizes Medea’s negative characteristics, in order to read the play from other point of view, however, many criticsI found are confusing, especially when the critics mention too much about Western culture and literary tradition that is too abstract and unfamiliar.

However, in Artisitide Tessitore’s “Euripides’ ‘Medea’ and the Problem of Spiritedness” (The Review of Politics, Vol. 53 No.4, p.587-601), he interprets the character Medea’s from different aspects by using the word ‘spiritedness’, bringing out both heroic and brutal interpretation of Medea. Tessitore also tries referring Euripides’ will, on the aspect of ‘how’ he finishes the play. Although the critic doesn’t make out best in its ending, the author directly confronts with Knox and their critics that define Medea’s heroic character as single viewpoint while emphasizing the ‘positive’ side of Medea. Actually, I also agree with the critics that point out Medea’s brutality (including Tessitore’s), however, instead of taking the character’s brutality as a negative characteristic, I see it as the true side of the play. After all, the ambivalence of Medea does not make any part of the drama minus, as a whole, it even makes the drama more outstanding. Life itself, I think, is full of ambivalence indeed.

Before jumping into conclusion, I would like to briefly introduce Tessitore’s idea about “Medea”. In “Euripides’ ‘Medea’ and the Problem of Spiritedness”, Tessitore mentions a lot about Euripides’ way and writing, he also speculates much on the Euripides’ intention though out the play. Tessitore’s statement is thrilling and adventurous to me because other critics often merely focus their study on text and characters, rather on conjecture the author’s method and intention. That kind of speculation usually limits reader’s imagination by giving too much answer. These experiences also tell me that I should read over that play myself and try writing something with some basic the arrangement before reading paper from those famous critics.

Julie Chen

93102038

Death in Literature and Films

Professor Zeng

2005/01/12

Julie Chen

93102038

American Literature I

Professor Percy Kuo

Introduction on Emerson’s Concept of Nature

Greek Tragedy

93102038

Julie Chen

December 24^th, 2006

Antigone: For LOVE or JUSTICE?

        After reading Charles Segal’ “Antigone: Death and Love, Hades and Dionysus” in the text book, the theme of Eros in the drama interests me, so I found another two papers to read—“Eros in Politics” by Richmond Y. Hathorn and “Politics and Man’s Fate in Sophocles’ Antigone” by Alfred R. Ferguson. At the beginning, I will brief introduce their center idea in this paper with the arrangement of my personal opinion.

        The Ero’s theme is fewer discussed in Ferguson’s “Politics and Man’s Fate in Sophocles’ Antigone”, he mainly explains human justice and the meaning of life in the paper with inference of Sophocles’ purpose of writing. Ferguson sees Sophocles’ characters in a more divine way, that is, they are made for certain purpose and will stands for their own purpose to death. To explain the characters’ identification, Ferguson doesn’t use the term of EROS to frame the characters, he simply point out different conscience of each character while proving they are precisely made by the author.

“Perhaps the main basis for naming Antigone the ‘Stand-bearer of human conscience’ is Sophocles, drew men as ‘they ought to be’ whereas Euripides draws then ‘as they are’.”(p43, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Dec., 1974), The Classical Journal) Ferguson also reckons that Antigone’s intention as the individual presentation of all men’s conscience. He calls this individual conscience “the human spirit that is sacred and inviolable unto death and beyond”, therefore, Ferguson reckons that the living shall act out human beings’ cognizance sanctity with the “ritual attention to the dead”. “Ritual attention” here is so significant that it connects more than the beloved livings, but also dead person. The spiritual attitude of persistence and selfless is what Ferguson thinks “justice”, Dike. However, he doesn’t see Antigone’s opponent, Creon as a simple villain (as Ferguson portrayed, many critics have this kind of idea) but another presentation of justice, which is for the whole family and state, simply trying to get rid of ritual roles which is persisted by a young woman, on the love to her brother. Therefore, Ferguson does not blame on Creon’s stubbornness or chauvinistic thinking, he merely points out the contrast between Creon and Antigone. “Thus here are two separate perceptions of Dike to which each protagonist is absolutely, grandly, passionately dedicated.” The justice here stands for “two mutually exclusive perceptions of the good” (p.45).