Poem for Analysis

All the World's a Stage by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Mama Knows Best

I would like to extend to you a quote from Hard times that i feel is beautiful and yet seems to portray a message: Mama knows best.
    In this part of the novel, Mrs. Gradgrind is in her death bed, weak and brittle. Louisa has come back home since many a long days and is going to see her mother before she passes away. As conversation begins  Louisa says, " Are you in pain, dear mother?" and Mrs. Gradgrind replies with "I think there's a pain somewhere in the room" (193). If any of you have a close relationship with your parents and your mother specifically, it always seems that there is this telepathy that circulates between you and your mother. They sense things that you normally wouldn't even think possible. Now this isn't the case all the time but I feel as though we can all in some way relate to this situation where that someone, that mother knows whats wrong or that something is bugging you without you even giving way to it. When Mrs. Gradgrind says " There's a pain in the room" she refers to Louisa. Knowing how Louisa has developed as a character in the novel, she is a Mess, shes reached bottom. Marrying a man she despises, Supporting a Jackass of a Brother, being Suppressed by her father, and finally nearly seduced by Harthouse, Louisa has a lot of internal pain. The question that remains is how does she know all of this? how can her mother comprehend the pain that is invested in her daughter? who knows and that is what to this day some of us ask ourselves and that's what i think Dickens portrays in this quote, whether intentionally or not, his decision to put this in his novel greatly amplifies the scene and at the same time grabs and tie's you into the story, sending you off with Mama knows best.

Big Impact Quote

I'm going to go ahead and take the first page of the book as my idea of Dickens' literary masterpiece, because he takes an immediate stand, and establishes his literary criticism of society within the first page.  This is an extremely gutsy thing to do, and Dickens pulls it off masterfully.  I don't really feel like retyping a whole page, but the things that really stuck out to me were the words used to describe children, a common symbol of energy, youth, and innocence, and Dickens dehumanizes them to a point that they are only a means of storing information, using words like "vessels" or "vaults", like they are only serving to protect and pass on the information within their skull.  I just feel like very few authors would make their argument in the first page like Dickens did, and I feel that his boldness as a writer is characteristic of his style of writing.  He also makes the opposition seem complete ridiculous, with the overemphasis of the "Facts".  The reader goes into the rest of the text with a preconceived notion that fact-based (and later production-based) society is ridiculous, ineffective, and produces incapable citizens to a community.

Something to Keep in Mind...

Dickens conveys Louisa's inner desire to feel more than she does through the repetion of the pattern of fire, embers, and ashes. This "inner light" that Louisa connects with but can never really define seems to be an underlying force establishing that as gloomy as it seems, Louisa hasn't given up. With this in mind, does Louisa's draw towards Harthouse that drags her down Mrs. Sparsit's metaphorical staircase have any impact on her inner light? Does it grow with her attraction to Harthouse, or does he smother it like the other "fact based" men?

This is so pretty and inspiring I can't even handle it

So, as I was flipping through this lovely novel also known as "Hard Times", I kept trying to picture what the words were describing within that situation. The point of this post is to bring to light a passage that speaks to us and to simply enjoy the image the language creates. This one spoke to me: "Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the fire as in days of yore, though with a gentler and humbler face. How much of the future might arise before her vision? " (Dickens 286). Alright, I literally just sat here and reread that three times to even attempt at gaining all of what Dickens is trying to portray to the audience. (Hint, hint, nudge, nudge: you should do the same). This passage comes from the end of the story, where futuristic descriptions come in to give the audience some answers. It's disappointing that it seems like Louisa doesn't recieve her answers. The comforting idea is that she is finally at peace with herself and satisified with not having everything figured out yet. That's the beauty of making mistakes when you're young, you learn to appreciate those mistakes with time. (I say this with full awareness that I am no where near done with making all of the mistakes I will be appreciating later on in life). Louisa goes back to her fire, the fuel to her hope, the unanswered questions being the fuel to the fire. Fire needs fuel in order to continue to burn, and the fire needs to burn in order for Louisa to stay a happy camper. (Haha, I'm funny). Time was actually probably the best thing that could happen to Louisa. Time gave her the opprotunity to learn and to feel. It's so pretty. Just enjoy it.

Dragging up the Stairs

"Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs Sparsit's edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration.  She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming"(195).  The symbol of Mrs. Sparsit's staircase represents Louisa's "climb" from what is perceived by Coketown society as being rebellious and barbaric "a dark pit of shame", her individuality.   As time goes on, "day to day" and "hour to hour" Louisa makes her way out of the dark pit, and becomes more and more tame and acceptable to the status quo conformity of Coketown.  For this reason, she turns into a viable threat to Mrs. Sparsit's easy and effortless life, because Louisa is now turning into a model citizen of Coketown, and Bounderby no longer needs Mrs. Sparsit to be present in his home, using her reputation as a platform on which he builds his rags-to-riches, my mother abandoned me in a ditch, story that he so often uses to justify his actions in focusing on work and facts in Coketown's production driven society.     

Taking it further...

With Mrs. Sparsits Metaphorical staircase, Can the same staircase can be applied to the other character's in the novel? And if so what is their "Abyss" at the bottom staircase -rather realization or truth they have discovered?- For Louisa her "Abyss" was the realization that she had to derive Love from a Horrible Mr. Harthouse inorder to understand that she should've derived her Love from where it matters most: Home.