The need for Human Connections in a Community

 The readings for today were very interesting and referred a lot to the relationships we hold with each other. The first reading that I looked at for today was Edith Wharton's "Roman Forever". It was a story of two long time friends named Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, who each were widowed and left with two daughters. I would characterize the relationship between Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade as one that is seemingly solid and loving on the outside but they each have their own opinions and hidden secrets about one another that have been kept quiet because they both really cherish the relationship they have. You can see throughout the story how they each give hints to a relationship that has undiscovered qualities within it. In part two Wharton stated, "Like many intimate friends, the two ladies had never before had occasion to be silent together, and Mrs. Ansley was slightly embarrassed by what seemed, after so many years, a new stage in their intimacy, and one with which she did not yet know how to deal". This suggests that throughout the course of their relationship they were still discovering different aspects of their relationship. I think that the ending of the story signaled an end to such a long friendship because of how serious the confession of Mrs. Ansley was. After having her best friend trick her into thinking that a man wrote her a letter, you would assume that Mrs. Ansley got the short end of the stick but she ended up having a daughter by her best friend's husband. Mrs. Ansley stated, "Well—because I didn't have to wait that night...I had Barbara". This shows that not only did Mrs. Slade jeopardize her relationship with Mrs. Ansley so long ago, but she also put the nail in her own coffin by not thinking the joke through. Mrs. Slade is the one who lost out on her husband, her children, and her friend. The end of that relationship was her fault.

In Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art", there are clues that she isn't taking the loss of "you" as easy as she claims because of her hesitation and joking nature. She stated, "--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love)...though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster" (16,19).the dashes at the beginning of line 16 and her insert of thought where she says "write it!" are signs that she is hesitating and having a hard time of stating what she said. The progression of the poem lets us know that the "you" she is talking about was someone special in that she reflects on losing frivolous things and justifies her loss as nothing of a serious mater but as the poem evolves she starts to reflect on more serious things that she has lost and admits how much she misses them. She stated, " I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,/ some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. / I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster" (13-15).She is arranging the poem to go from a lighthearted tone to a very serious one.

Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" was extremely hard for me to fully understand. I believe that the thing that "doesn't love the wall" is nature itself. This is suggested in the poem when Frost stated, "That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, / And spills the upper boulders in the sun" (2-3). In my opinion the wall symbolizes individuality in a sense. I think that the wall keeps coming down because as the relationship between the two farmers develop and take form, it must pull from each of their tendencies and characteristics to make a thriving relationship, so the wall crumbles more and more as their relationship becomes closer. The neighbors keep constructing the wall because I think that they are afraid of losing their identity and their individuality as two different farmers. The poem stated, "He is all pine and I am apple orchard. / My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him" (23-25).This suggests that they want to keep their property and farming separate from each other and the only way to do that is by having a wall. I also think that the wall gives them an excuse to keep a relationship between them, so they almost look forward to rebuilding the wall as a way to rekindle their relationship. I think that in this poem good fences do make good neighbors because it serves as a mediator between a relationship with two people and also protects them from losing their individuality.

One connection I had was with the story "Roman Forever". It was interesting to me how the author came up with a story that was so powerful and subtly dramatic in a sense. It reminded me of soap operas and how they are always revealing these big dramatic hidden secrets to each other. I'm sure that during the author's time there was infidelity going on, but the way in which she wrote the story shows how the style of writing books and scripts have been influenced.

What does Frost mean in the poem when he says, "We have to use a spell to make them balance:/ Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"?