The Representation of Art in William Carlos Williams' Poem The Rose
"The rose is obsolete." (line 1) The rose is no longer of use, out-dated, and out-moded. Modernists felt the same way about the traditional and accepted art of the early nineteen hundreds.
Roses are given to people so often. Who among us does not attach some type of personal significance to the image of a rose? I would venture to say that no one has not given, been given, or wished to give or receive a rose. Roses are delivered from florists by the dozen during all holiday seasons, for anniversaries, for apologies, for courting. . . And it is in this obsessive usage that the meaning of the rose has been exploited. What delivers more feeling - a single red rose bought at the corner gas station, or a single tiger lily personally chosen for its recipient? Yet, the rose remains the flower of choice to express romantic feelings. Perhaps the suitor is too nervous to go against popular beliefs, perhaps he feels that popular belief is so because it is right, or perhaps he is unaware that another option even exists. Perhaps he is unable to explore the different types of self expression that are available for him.
Modernists at the beginning of the century were faced by oppositional forces much like this young suitor. They strove to express their art in a much freer format then their predecessors. In trying "to avoid grandiosity and pompous themes" (Carroll, 185) they often explored simple themes in creative ways and always shocked the reader into thinking about life in a new way. This was a time of great change for America, yet the artistic expression, before the Modernists' intervention, remained cold and stale. An ...
... middle of paper ...
...rn view has healed its wounds, returning it to a healthy (and useful) condition. Finally, the last line shows that the emotions linked with the rose may be timelessly portrayed if done so in new and different ways. While traditional art is "obsolete" (line 1), modern art "penetrates space." (line 42)
Works Cited
Carroll, Lorrayne. “Carlos Williams.” American Poetry: The Modernist Ideal. Ed. Clive Bloom and Brian Docherty. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Levertov, Denise and William Carlos Williams. The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams. Ed. Christopher MacGowan. New York: New Directions, 1998.
Williams, William Carlos. The William Carlos Williams Reader. Ed. M.L. Rosenthal. New York: New Directions, 1966.
---. Interviews with William Carlos Williams. Ed. Linda Welshimer Wagner. New York: New Directions, 1976.
Throughout the life of Emily Grierson, she remains locked up, never experiencing love from anyone but her father. She lives a life of loneliness, left only to dream of the love missing from her life. The rose from the title symbolizes this absent love. It symbolizes the roses and flowers that Emily never received, the lovers that overlooked her.
Stanton, Stephen. "Introduction." Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 1977. 1-16.
Williams, William Carlos. “The Use of Force.” The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. Ed. Rise B. Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013. 501-03. Print
Ancient civilizations, although they practiced slavery, did not classify people based on race, but on other characteristics, such as religion and status. The concept of race first developed in the 18th century, as a way for slaveholders to justify slavery and secure their economic security. They called upon science to classify what it was that made the races different from one another, both physically and mentally, so that a clear distinction could be made. Thomas Jefferson included racial commentary in his writings, On the State of Virginia in 1784. He said that blacks were inferior to whites in “endowments of body and mind” (My Mix Reel handout). His view was similar to many whites’ at the time. If such a claim was true, it would be only natural that blacks should serve their white owners. Slaveholders were also concerned about the danger of slaves becoming familiar with freed whites. They drafted slave codes that were intended to “dishonor the blacks and thereby elevate the poor white without actually having to give them anything,” (Harris). The poor whites did not have power or influence, but because they were white they at least had a natural superiority over blacks. This helped to segregate them from the slaves, who they also viewed as posse...
“Human beings are not meant to lose their anonymity and privacy,” Sarah Chalke. When using the web, web users’ information tend to be easily accessible to government officials or hackers. In Nicholas Carr’s “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty,” Jim Harpers’ “Web Users Get As Much As They Give,” and Lori Andrews “Facebook is Using You” the topic of internet tracking stirred up many mixed views; however, some form of compromise can be reached on this issue, laws that enforces companies to inform the public on what personal information is being taken, creating advisements on social media about how web users can be more cautious to what kind of information they give out online, enabling your privacy settings and programs, eliminating weblining,
William Carlos Williams once said, “It is not what you say that matters, but the manner in which you say it.”(Examiner) This is a view he often incorporated into his poetry. Williams’ purpose through writing poetry was not to teach a moral, but to convey that simple things can be beautiful. Although many of Williams’ poems show this beauty in simplicity, a few good examples are The Red Wheel Barrow, The Great Figure, and Young Sycamore.
Different people, cultures, and nations have a wide variety of expectations about how much privacy is entitled to or what constitutes an invasion of privacy. Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information. Personal privacy has been declining in the past year which is caused by today’s technological society. With the latest technology such as face scanners, data collecting, and highly advanced software’s, privacy can be compromised, which is exactly what is being done today and it is unconstitutionally intrusive.
reflection of the ideals of the Puritan society. The rose shows the beauty that can
Concerning the contextualization of A Rose of Family as a sign of the times of women at that point, where cultural norms of women lead to a life in domestication. The recognition of the rose here as it is carefully placed in the title of the piece as well bears significance to the physical rose and what it meant to the young women in the South during the 1800s (Kurtz 40). Roses are generally given as tokens of love and affection by males to females. There are even remnants of it today where young lads also profess their love to women with roses; women still see it as an act of endearment towards them.
Constitution, the founding fathers recognized that citizens in a democracy need privacy for their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects.’ That remains as true as ever, but our privacy laws have not kept up as technology has changed the way we hold information.”
Garfinkel, Simson. "Internet Privacy Can Be Protected." Privacy. Roman Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Privacy Requires Security, Not Abstinence: Protecting an Inalienable Right in the Age of Facebook." Technology Review 112
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Joseph Terry. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 2001. 123-154.
Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print.
The issue on privacy is extremely controversial in today’s world. As the United States’ use of the internet, a global web of interconnected computer networks, expands, so does its problem with privacy invasion. With the U.S. pushing for new laws governing internet use, citizens are finding their privacy being pulled right from underneath them. Web users are buying and selling personal information online as well as hacking users for more information. One may argue that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet, but privacy is a right among Americans, and should be treated as such.
The point was that Williams is trying to imagine an autonomous work of art that has a deep thinking to it, that is in some sense violence or personified, and this sexual desire to make the tragic something living, introduces to the world of the tragic the problem of death. Tennessee William explores a conflict through between desire and death. There ...