I am struggling to write my first real essay as a graduate student. It’s on The Merchant of Venice. I’ve decided to write on Jessica, Shylock’s daughter. When reading the play, I had the most vehement reaction to her character and they way she behaves toward her father. It’s an incredibly personal response, which really makes my writing this paper difficult. There are so many aspects that I find just… terrible. Mostly, though, the rejection of family and that sense of duty that is overridden by what I view to be her absolute selfishness is abhorrent to me.

Literature is so subjective. We write about what interests us, personally, from our own perspective, about what we, personally, think is important. The reason literature is so important is because it speaks of the human condition. It’s not only a marker for who we are, but also who we were, where we came from, and where we are going. Literature and language tells us how we live and who we are. It’s beautiful. Conan Doyle wrote about that desire to peel off the rooftops of homes and peer inside the little worlds that occur in our neighbor’s homes… we know from what words did and did not exist from that Indo-European mother tongue from which English descends just what kind of people our ancestors were. How is this not important in the trajectory of the human species?

When I go to my dentist, we engage in small talk and I always tell him that I’m studying literature. He always tells me that he hated studying literature because of that question he’d always ask, “what does this mean?” I laugh politely, but I rage internally. What he hates is that he’s being asked to think critically. I don’t find it a difficult task, myself. I, quite simply, don’t understand how people don’t have immediate reactions to things, how they don’t feel immediately – be it one way, the other, or just confusion. That’s what this is supposed to do: to elicit a reaction! While there is the possibility of there being a “wrong” answer, when it comes to a field like literature, it’s so remote… all ideas are so welcome. Even if they are “wrong,” they can lead to other lines of thought and new ways of looking at things.

Anyway… At the same time, I feel like we are somehow meant to attempt to remain objective somehow. Maybe I’m wrong. I read this article that warns critics from being too reductive in their studies. I loved it, it made me want to say, “yes! yes! accept the complexities about this play I’ve been in turmoil over…” So, I fear my own personal reaction reduces it still. I don’t know.

I want to write on the idea of bonds, values, identity, as well… it’s so wrapped up in what I think is important in my paper. I mean, the core thing I’m dealing with is Jessica’s abandonment of her father and the theft of his property (meant to be her inheritance, were she not to delegitimize and disinherit herself) and what it means to the play as a whole. That act strengthens Shylock’s resolve to go after Antonio with full force… How do I deal with all these things in six pages and with only two sources? I have six articles and the play itself. I want more room to work!

Other than that, I’ve been struggling with thoughts of the future. I’m often told by people in my life to just worry about what is at hand now. My problem with that is that I know what goes on now affects the future. So I panic about doing well now. Then, I panic so much that I refuse to deal with any of it and nothing gets accomplished anyway. Vicious circle that I do not know how to escape, just yet.

I worry that at the end of my MA program I’ll have a few level 80 characters on World of Warcraft, but no thesis.

It’s now September, and it’s been almost a month since I’ve written anything here. I want to write here, I want to document things in a public way because it seems more of a statement to the world that THINGS WERE EXPERIENCED. THOUGHTS WERE HAD. FEELINGS WERE FELT. I’m still having trouble negotiating how public I want to be with these things.

Since July, I have gone to Chicago to be moral support for a friend. I can’t talk about that here. I could talk about the need for moral support and friends at this age I am at, and at all ages. I don’t know how to expound upon that, though. It’s profound stuff.

I stopped going to yoga, but I plan to start. I realized that I’m about fifteen pounds over what is a healthy weight for someone my height. I tried one class of ballet and then quit. I started graduate school. And I’m displeased with graduate school.

So it’s not much, but then it’s a lot. I don’t know how honest to be, I don’t know how much or what to hold back. I feel like all these things are important to share, if I only knew how.

This is probably one of the most expensive textbooks I ever bought in my “career” as an English major, but even when I first bought it back in 2003 (not such a very long time ago, I know) I recognized it as the one that would be the most invaluable. Even six years (!!) later, I still consult it regularly. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my grammar is a bit weak. It (and my vocabulary) always have been. I know words and I know the proper usage of the comma, I just can’t seem to extricate those juicy tidbits from my brain for actual usage.

Anyway. I highly recommend this book. It’s the Writer’s Harbrace Handbook Brief Edition. There are more recent editions of it on Amazon, of course. But if you find yourself in need of a book that covers writing, grammar, and basic citation… this is a pretty useful little thing.

I’m thinking of changing the name of my blog, already. “Scenic Overlook” would be more appropriate, I feel, if I posted pictures or had a more descriptive, imagery-heavy style of writing. But I don’t. I write simply, I keep it short and to the point.

A gloss, in literature (and other studies), is a margin note. I usually see it referred to when describing the translation of some text from Latin to Old or Middle English by this student or that. My blog is rather like a large margin note on the face on the internet, so I’m thinking of just calling it that. It’s also shiny and pretty, so it has that double meaning. Gotta love those double meanings.

Anyway, I’m off to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. So, I shall have to mull on the idea of a name change for now.

http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/
http://www.sobriquetmagazine.com/
http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/
http://professorconfessions.blogspot.com/
http://acephalous.typepad.com/
http://www.margaretsoltan.com/

By Jove! My wildest dreams! My most terrifying nightmares! They exist in the blogosphere.