Sharon Olds

The End

We decided to have the abortion, became
killers together. The period that came
changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple
who had been for life.
As we talked of it in bed, the crash
was not a surprise. We went to the window,
looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming
curved shears of glass as if we had
done it. Cops pulled the bodies out
Bloody as births from the small, smoking
aperture of the door, laid them
on the hill, covered them with blankets that soaked
through. Blood
began to pour
down my legs into my slippers. I stood
where I was until they shot the bound
form into the black hole
of the ambulance and stood the other one
up, a bandage covering its head,
stained where the eyes had been.
The next morning I had to kneel
an hour on that floor, to clean up my blood,
rubbing with wet cloths at those glittering
translucent spots, as one has to soak
a long time to deglaze the pan
when the feast is over. 

After reading "The Race" by Sharon Olds, I wanted to analyze a poem of hers. "The Race" was such an exciting and passionate poem that really left me in awe. This poem "The End" focuses on a couple who decides on an abortion. Instead of saying 'to get an abortion', the speaker chooses to say 'to have the abortion'. The 'have' that can be used to say to have a baby, is replaced with the act of killing an unborn baby. The next lines "The period that came changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple who had been for life" is confusing because the young couple seems to refer to the speaker and her significant other but there is a use of third person. Also, instead of the baby being dead, it is the couple who dies. This difference could point to the couple's termination of their relationship. The decision to abort the baby ends their own relationship as a couple. The crash, pointing to the auto accident, doesn't register to the speaker as a surprise. Maybe because the couple were discussing their decision to abort the baby, the tragedy of the car accident is not significant. However, the car accident is not just an ordinary accident. The major crash has the cops pulling the bodies out and the description is similar to a woman giving birth. The injured bodies comes out and are immediately covered with blankets. After witnessing the incident, the speaker has a miscarriage. One of the victim is dead while the other one is blinded with blood. Perhaps the shock from seeing the accident, even though the speaker says that the accident did not come as a surprise, triggered the miscarriage. Or the unborn baby decided to leave the mother who did not want it. The speaker cleans up her own blood without any help from her significant other. I do not fully understand the relationship she makes with cleaning the blood with the leftover pans from a party. Maybe the speaker had been joyful at the moment of her pregnancy but at the end of it all, she realizes the pain in cleaning the mess. 

It's interesting how the speaker sees the car accident that is like a graphic image of a miscarriage and has one of her own. Instead of becoming a killer by aborting the baby, the baby is miscarried. The question is, will the couple stay together because she did not go through the abortion? Or is the baby what connected the couple? 

Reading a few more of her poems, Sharon Olds has a distinct writing characteristic that usually involves an event that is fast paced and reads more like a story than a poem. I really enjoy her work and can't wait to read more.

Ernest

I actually watched The Importance of Being Ernest the past summer on a lazy 'let's watch amazon prime movies because they are free' day. So, when you said not to watch the movie, a guilty conscience pulled my mind. Even though I don't remember everything and the memory of the movie is very dim, I felt that the movie followed the play in sequence. Of course, with all the AP Literature knowledge in me, if I were to watch the movie again, I am sure I will be analyzing the faults of the movie. I really enjoyed reading The Importance of Being Ernest in class because the students really put in the effort to read their parts with an accent. Coming from third period, I know only a couple of people who would have tried their British accents. Second period's enthusiasm and friendly atmosphere makes reading plays a lot more entertaining and engaging.

The day we started learning about Oscar Wilde and about his witty way of saying many ironic yet truthful message, I went to tutor a sixth grader. When I was tutoring, I noticed their calender had a little quote below the month of April, "A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough" by Benjamin Franklin. When I read that, I was like Wilde! and then thought, 'oh, what AP Lit does to my life' :)

I really liked reading the play especially for its witty comments. Since I don't have a talent for writing, I always admire people with the ability to make profound statements. My favorite scene in the play is in Act 3 with Lady Brackwell sweating under Jack to try to get Algernon and Cecily to marry as quickly as possible. The total shift from 'Algernon should not marry a ward' to 'Algernon has to marry a heiress' is very funny. When Jack says, "How extremely kind of you, Lady Bracknell!  I have also in my possession, you will be pleased to hear, certificates of Miss Cardew’s birth, baptism, whooping cough, registration, vaccination, confirmation, and the measles; both the German and the English variety" and she replies, "Ah! A life crowded with incident, I see; though perhaps somewhat too exciting for a young girl.  I am not myself in favour of premature experiences" I mean the way she thinks the 'premature experiences' are too exciting for a little girl is very laughable. She does not think in terms of reality but only about the social status expectations. Anyways, the superficiality of Lady Brackwell's thoughts is revealed deeply when Jack mentions the fortune of Cecily. The comment on how people judge people's profile based on wealth, beauty, and education is still so prevalent in today's society. Society in Wilde's time is not very different from ours. I think the most amazing thing about literature is that the social commentaries are always relatable. The human race fails to grow and change. Even though the 21st century is so bent on trying to promote equality, society is only self centered and wishes to judge others to boost its own confidence.

Fight

It’s been a difficult couple of weeks. Since I have never blogged about my personal life, I would like to do it this one time. Since freshman year, I have never had the time to be involved too deeply in any high school drama because I was so intently focused in school and it’s unrelenting work. The countless Saturdays that were marked as ‘hangout days’ passed by me as I stayed home with a book in my hands. Social life? What? Friends were only existent in school and left my world as I entered my home. Of course, this is not to say that my high school years were terrible. I enjoyed working as hard as I did and even though sometimes I felt like I wasn’t being appreciated enough by my parents, I personally took the satisfaction in the effort I was able to put in. Even until the first semester of senior year, I worked as hard as I could and scraped each and every point in my classes in the midst of college applications. Now that it is less than a month away from graduation, I have let go of the string that I have held so tightly in the past. I am tired. I can’t push through anymore. It seems like no matter what I do, I cannot see the point in it. Not being accepted into the colleges that I knew I deserved (sorry if I sound arrogant) basically took all the drive and determination out of me. The feeling of being a failure is too hard to shake off. Not only that, in that loosening of the grip, I slacked off on my school work and decided to socialize. Because I was trying to do all the things I have missed out the past years in just a couple of months, I guess I shocked my parents. I met a boy. A boy who lost his mother in December. Even though he and I grew into a relationship based on the desire to be with each other just as any other high school students form a relationship, mine had to be different. I told my mom that I was dating a boy (first relationship in my life) in hopes that I could be open with her. Big mistake. I was clear that she was holding back her disapproval of me dating. My parents found out that I had sneaked off on Saturdays to see him and the truth came out. They thought he resorted to me because of the grief brought on by his mother’s death. Or that I found him appealing because his dad is a doctor and owns a hospital, so that I, whose dream is to become a pediatrician, could gain some guidance. I was personally disgusted. It was as if my past actions did not matter in anything. They even questioned my faith in Christianity. That night was full of thoughts of suicide and questioning the point of living. Living in America and knowing what I know about the things teenagers do, I am the ideal daughter. I have values that I personally hold dear which keeps me far away from the temptations of smoking, drinking, etc. Therefore, to me, my parents should overlook the lie of sneaking off and just tell me to tell them when I am going to see him. But they had to take it to a scale I hadn’t even imagined. It was as if I committed the most detestable crime, and I didn’t value myself. My true frustration is that no one will ever know what I have gone through and understand to sympathize with me. I hate putting on a mask to everyone to pretend that everything is fine because everything is not. And truthfully, school is the last thing from my mind. If my parents can’t even respect my decisions and try to understand my point of view, why am I living? Of course, I am not suicidal, and I have tried to get back on track with school work as best as I could, but there is still that buried frustration deep down inside of me.