The Emigrée Brief Response

I recently came across Carol Rumen’s The Emigrée and decided to share with you my initial response to the poem. If you have come across this blog post in the hope of finding a distinguished and essay-worthy critical response, I am afraid that I will have to disappoint; however, if you are simply interested in hearing an alternate perspective on the poem, you may find this interesting.

What better place to start with the poem itself:

There once was a country… I left it as a child                                                                                                         but my memory of it is sunlight-clear
for it seems I never saw it in that November
which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.
The worst news I receive of it cannot break
my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.
It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,
but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.

The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes
glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks
and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.
That child’s vocabulary I carried here
like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.
Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.
It may by now be a lie, banned by the state
but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.

I have no passport, there’s no way back at all
but my city comes to me in its own white plane.
It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;
I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.
My city takes me dancing through the city
of walls. They accuse me of absence, they circle me.
They accuse me of being dark in their free city.
My city hides behind me. They mutter death,
and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.

Beautiful, I agree, but also confusing — especially in the evident contrast between those clear yet politically fading memories. I’m sure many readers will associate it with the acclaimed The Kite Runner where Amir and Baba similarly leave Afganistan with halcyon days in mind, memories which are difficult to shift even in light of present media footage and, in light of the Refugee Crisis, the 1993 poem remains equally relevant today.

As I said, I perceive great confusion in Rumen’s words and perhaps most significantly in the title itself. The placement of two words – one English and one French – implies that the narrator does not have a clear idea of where she belongs: she is perched between two cultures. This idea is developed in the third stanza where Rumen says, “they circle me” and “they accuse me”. The use of the impersonal pronoun “they” gives no indication of personality and implies that the narrator is isolated and does not fit within this generalisation. Furthermore, the mirrored syntax in each phrase creates something of a repetitive feel, even more so in that “they accuse me” is stated twice in the space of two lines, suggesting that this hostility is a frequent occurrence that the narrator is constantly plagued by. The clipped //c// of “accuse” almost acts as onomatopoeia for the verb’s implied slander, and the fact that such a vile word is placed next to the gentle, sound of “absence” suggests that the narrator is unsure of why she is being treated in such a way.  This innocence is, for me, the most heartbreaking feature of the poem because, as anybody would in this situation, the speaker is feeling lost. In that first line, fractured with caesura in the form of a doubtful ellipsis, we can see stark and overwhelming confusion and ye nobody makes any attempt to comfort her and make her feel at home. On the converse, she is consciously separated and thence isolated in the public eye.

Rumen’s message is simple: all immigrants and refugees have lives, pasts, families and memories: we must treat refugees/immigrants with respect.

Homework Deadlines Planning Sheet

One thing that is never included in planners is homework deadlines scheduling and, every evening when I pack my bag, this is the thing that I am most concerned about. I like to section off a page of my homework planner to write in the homework which will be due for said day; however, these planning sheets that I have made seem to work even more effectively. I may revise and upload other variations of this printable in the future but I thought I would share it with you as it currently stands. Enjoy!

Download Planner!

Mild Liner Uses

I was going to save this for a YouTube video but feel it would be better said on here. I will also be posting something similar on my tumblr (@mygrangerlifestyle) which I would really appreciate you taking a look at. Tell me if you do!

My number one favourite pens are the Zebra MILD LINERS. These have recently become really popular on the “studytube”, as I have heard some people calling it. My parents bought me the complete set as a GCSE present (find out my results here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPoMdO8svOg!) and I use them for everything. Not only can they be used as highlighters, but also as felt tips, making them twice as useful. See below what I use them for!

1. Highlighting passages that I have been set for Philosophy. I usually use the blues and greens — there are so many shades that you can use a variety of colours without your work clashing.

2. Headings. The felt tip side is perfect for clear and aesthetic headings.

3. Separating work. Sometimes I will split my page into two (for example, so that one side of the sheet is dedicated solely to new vocabulary). These work perfectly because they look pretty but are easier to carry around than washi tape.

4. Colour Coding. I use them to colour code all of my flashcards according to subject.

Not only this, but they really do look lovely on display in a pen pot!

My favourite colour is the yellow and the green (numbers 6 and 15). Comment down below and tell me which is your favourite.

Have a productive week!

Fitzgerald’s use of the word “Holocaust” in ‘The Great Gatsby’

“It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.”

Of course, in the postmodern day, we associate the word ‘Holocaust’ with the Nazi Genocide of the 1940s; however, Fitzgerald was writing in a time before this event and, upon reading this line, I was immediately curious as to what it would have meant in the 1920s. I decided to do a little research and you can find my findings below.

Etymology:

• Originally from the Greek word holokaustos. Holos meaning ‘whole’, and kaustos from the verbal adjective kaiein meaning ‘to burn’. It was literally used to describe an animal sacrifice to God.
• This is a translation of the hebrew word olah meaning ‘complete burnt sacrifice to God’.
• From the French word holocauste meaning ‘sacrifice by fire’ or ‘burnt offering’.

Connotations in the 1920s:

• Since the 18th Century, the word was used to describe mass violent deaths. The religious connotations suggest that the persecutors are sacred and acting in God’s will.
• In 1911, the first edition of the Oxford English dictionary described it as, ‘whole burnt offering; wholesale sacrifice or destruction’.
• In WW1, Winston Churchill used the word to refer to the genocide of Americans in World War II.
• Refers to all human life and not just Jewish people.

Implications in the Novel:

• Gatsby and Wilson are sacrificial offers to the Old Money God, this being the permanent class barriers which repetitively pushes people back to the social strata in which they were born.
• The word was used in an early draft of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and so much have been given the okay by Maxwell Perkins. Perkins made many amendments, and the fact that this wasn’t one of them suggests that it was there for effect: he didn’t simply say, ‘and the sacrificial offering was complete’.
• Holocaust is usually used in context of genocide; however, here, only two men have died. Perhaps because Gatsby’s life was worth that of 18,000 men – at least in the eyes of Nick, our biased narrator. In a way, Gatsby’s death not only destroys himself, but also the whole American Dream, and one could argue this equivalent to the death of the thousands of hopefully Minnesotan citizens.
• The holocaust has been a gradual thing that has been stewing over the whole of the book (‘it was complete’). In Chapter 7, Gatsby was torn down by Nick, marking the beginning of the holocaust. Even Wilson’s attempt to kill Old-Money-Tom supports their increasingly inevitable deaths.
• Wilson’s body is clearly significant because it completes the holocaust. Perhaps because brother has turned on brother (the two were both from poor backgrounds after all). The holocaust was already complete but the fact that they are now aware of Wilson’s death seems to be more significant than his actual death.
• Both men have been sacrificed to the American Dream. It is Wilson’s own decision, but the prospect of vengeance and the cold-blooded murder of innocent life worsens it.

Yes, this is rather different to my previous posts on this blog but, as you might have already realised, I am rather academic and enjoy learning new things. Consequently, I have decided that I am going to post some intellectual bits on this blog! I hope that you enjoy and learn something new (and, after all, I am sure that this is more the kind of thing that Hermione would like to read — also see my Hermione Granger inspired booklist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NyYsuVPFI&t=100s).