Bye-Child

Seamus Heaney used this poem, "Bye-Child", to express how he feels and what he thinks about abused and mistreated children. The description of the child being a, "little henhouse boy" could be an attempt to connect with abused children universally, as many times they are locked up and they feel as if they are a poor animal in a henhouse. As Heaney implements the phrase "Your frail shape, luminous, Weightless" into the poem, he depicts the appearances of the children, and how an abused child would look, while letting the children know that he understands that they must feel insignificant and as if they carry no weight, literally and figuratively.
The soft language of the poem such as, "little henhouse boy", and, "Little moon man" are used to make sure that the child doesn't feel threatened by the words in this poem, and is able to listen to the gentle words and be comforted.
Through language, Heaney sympathizes with abused children, while sharing his opinion on how terrible he thinks child abuse is.

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful --
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

I enjoyed this poem mostly because of the unorthodox point of view it is told in, and the implication of a shifting tone. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator, the mirror, explains its life and how it spends its days. It explains that it has formed a relationship with the pink    speckled wall that it is stationed across from and looks at all day. The mirror vents about the separation created between it and the wall when the lights in the room go out. It is interesting that the author of this poem attempts to see how a mirror would feel if it was personified. In the second stanza, the mirror exclaims that the woman that looks into it is unappreciative. The mirror feels as if it is doing everything that it is supposed to, yet the woman always seems to be disappointed. The mirror experiences a woman's evolution from a young pretty girl to an aging woman who has lost some of her beauty. The mirror sees how this appearance change affects the woman's life and how she has let it take over her life. I most enjoyed the personification of the mirror and how it first did its job, but responded to anger by judging the woman.

Woodchucks Recited by: Eric, Jeremy, and Dean

Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt

This poem is about a boy growing up and always focusing on the fun and glorious parts of baseball, while his dad is trying to teach him a lesson. Bunting in baseball is often done as a sacrifice to advance other players on your team into a better position. For the boy's whole life, his father stuck to this one aspect of the game, bunting. The boy never took him seriously and always put most of his emphasis on home runs and the exciting parts of the game, but he always obeyed his father. In the last stanza of the poem, the boy is mature enough to realized what his father was doing and why it was so important, as he was, "getting a grip on the sacrifice." I believe the sacrifice that the boy was understanding was the one that his father was making for him as he dedicated time to help his son learn important things, as well as the sacrifice for his team that he would make by bunting.

Miss Forbes' Murder Mystery

There are so many aspects of Miss Forbes' Summer of Happiness to analyze, that I feel like her murder mystery is often overlooked. This is probably because there are not many hints as to who killed her at first glance, but out of context there are clues that lead me to think that the murderer of Miss Forbes is the boys scuba instructor and Miss Forbes' love interest, Oreste.
With the introduction of Oreste to the story, the author Marquez puts emphasis on the fact that Oreste always carries knives around his belt and insists on using hand to hand combat when he hunts. This is the first clue, as Miss Forbes cause of death was multiple stab wounds. Later in the story, Miss Forbes expresses her feelings for Oreste, as she finds him attractive, this established an emotional connection between them that seems strange and abrupt, similar to how it would be if Oreste was in fact the murderer.
There is an ancient Greek play called "Orestes", in which a character in the play named Orestes kills his mother. Oreste is connected to ancient Greece in another way when he is described as looking like a sea animal. Although Miss Forbes isn't Orestes' mother, she is an older dictatorial person in Oreste's life, similar to his mother in the play.
It seems like there are too many fingers pointing at Oreste for him to not be the murderer of Miss Forbes. This aspect of the story usually is neglected, while most focus on the personality of Miss Forbes, but I believe this murder mystery has enough to be deeply analyzed.

Mersault's Alternate Fate

Eric Steigelfest

              When Mersault, the main character in "The Sranger", realizes what his death sentence means, he shows a bit of emotion. This emotion, however, is not about any people or activities, it's rather about becoming free from his cell again. For me, Mersault's actions and feelings were not enough to convince me that he isn't a psychopath, as all of his behavior leads me to believe. I believe that the author could've taken an alternate route for the ending of the story, revealing that Mersault truly does have feelings and legitimately does care. An alternate ending to "The Stranger" could've been a scenario where Mersualt finds that he is in love with Marie, and agrees to say that he will try to let religion put him back on the right track, even if he didn't plan on believing it. If Mersault actually cared about anything, he would make the necessary sacrifices to allow that thing to continue to be a part of his life. In the original rendition of "The Stranger", Albert Camus has Mersault show, however, that he cared more about his dignity, uniqueness and lack of conformity than he did about anything else in his life. The last part of the book is the part that usually reveals the moral of the story and that was certainly true in this case. Had Camus told about how Mersualt discovers that he cares about Marie, the moral of the story would show the power that a love connection has. In contrast, I interpreted the moral of the original story to be that some people have strong minds with unique, and unorthodox beliefs that are more important to them than anything else.