Mythological Allusion Poetry: "Musee des Beaux Arts" by W.H. Auden

Due to background knowledge that Auden was a Christian humanist, it’s inferred that the “miraculous birth” of line 6, and thus the “dreadful martyrdom” of line 10, allude to Jesus Christ. Christ was exceptional in the Bible because he was sent to Earth to redeem mankind from sin, to allow humans to be reborn with a clean slate through his death. Although this crucifixion was a spiritual phenomenon, Auden ironically writes that it was not a spectacle that awed the masses, but it was ignored and left to “run its course anyhow in a corner”, like some inevitable daily task such as brushing one’s teeth or urinating. Just as 1930’s Europeans were too wrapped up in ideologies to be sensitive to the sufferings of their neighbors, Auden claims Biblical people were too consumed with amusements to recognize the magnitude of Jesus’s martyrdom. This parallel also reinforces the central paradox of Auden’s piece by proclaiming that while Jesus’s birth was heralded as “miraculous”, his death was cast aside in obscurity.

Just as Jesus presented a monumental rebirth for humanity, Icarus launched a remarkable rebirth for himself by his fantastical winged escape from the bowels of the Labyrinth. Line 14 shifts the reader directly to a painted portrayal of this, Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” The focus is blatantly drawn away from the transcendental flying boy struggling in the water; instead, the eye is attracted to the brightly-colored ploughman in the foreground. Auden wrote that although the ploughman may have heard Icarus’s plunge, he ignored it because “for him it was not an important failure.” Just as Bruegel chose to relegate Icarus to the background, Auden claims that his painted ploughman does too. Although he’s able to to detect the suffering of Icarus’s “cry” and the fact that there was a failure, the ploughman prioritizes his menial labor over the suffering and the phenomenon because he sees Icarus’s fall as irrelevant to his own life. This epitomizes the want of compassion Auden observed in the Spanish Civil War, as humans senselessly slaughtered one another for abstract ideals. It also recalls the poem’s central paradox. Icarus was reborn into the world by marvelous wings, but rather than attracting legions of admirers, he unexpectedly dies in a very opposite manner: alone and ignored in the sea.

To exemplify his views on human nature from his observation of people killing each other over ideas while being an ambulance driver in the spanish civil war, In his first stanza, Auden ironically illustrates the apathetic mindset of both the young and old by contrasting the similar yet  inversely complimented belief in a miraculous savior from youth to old age by describing the actions of the youth as “skating on a pond at the edge of the wood” to exemplify their passionate naivete and isolation, saying they don't specially want” the miraculous birth” yet they secretly know that the death of the savior will affect them as compared to their adulthood where they are “passionately waiting” for a savior, yet, as Auden states in his second stanza, “everything would turn away” at the sight that the adults had been waiting for, “a boy falling out of the sky” because of the unchangeable apathy of human nature.

In Musee des Beaux Arts, the use of everyday, plain diction emphasizes the ever present apathy in the poem. Auden contrasts  in line 10 “the dreadful martyrdom”, the death of Jesus Christ, with a dog going on with its “doggy life” and a horse scratching it’s “behind on a tree” in lines 12 and 13. This use of colloquial diction manages to present such a biblically significant event as barely worthy of note and as one that had little to no effect on the dog’s nor the horses life, and thus was not worthy of their attention. The same simplistic diction is used to portray the apathy towards Icarus’s fall, where the diction at the end of the poem is then used to ironically contrast Icarus’s plunge into the sea, eloquently written as “the splash, the forsaken cry” (l. 16), with the the ship sailing by. The ship has just seen something amazing, quote on quote “a boy falling out of the sky” (l. 20), yet through such basic diction Auden makes the observers of this remarkable event seem indifferent and uncaring, summed up by the ship having “somewhere to get to” (l. 21) and thus sailing “calmly on”. Icarus himself has finally experienced true freedom, a rebirth even, yet even as he achieves this high peak in his life, he paradoxically falls to an obscure death, indifferently observed and ignored. Auden ties the colloquial diction in his poem back to the apathy of his own time, where it seemed people were so blinded by politics that they became insensitive to the hardships of their fellow human beings.

Biblical Allusion Poetry: "It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It" by Anthony Hecht

In the beginning, Hecht sets his poem to anticipate a classic fairy tale ending, in which good and evil are black and white and good triumphs in the end by using perfect rhyme, but just when the reader begins to understand the sinister of the world, Hecht  jolts the reader by suddenly switching to visual rhyme. The visual rhyme, similar to Hecht’s view on morality, isn't as cut-and-dry as the perfect rhyme was. The final contrast between what we expect and the reality of heroes shows up in the last two stanzas when he uses perfect rhyme in lines 32-35 to describe the perfect ending, as compared to the last stanza (36-40), where he employs no rhyme scheme to parallel the reality of the world: there is no perfect hero and no perfect ending.

Hecht’s first allusion to the Bible in his title, “It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It”, traces back to another source: Hamlet. The line comes from the title character’s infamous “Speak the speech” monologue instructing the players how to reenact his uncle’s murder of his father. He warns them not be overdramatic and base with their acting, for that would “out-Herod Herod.” He encourages them to apply nuance to their performances, and not be so blatantly evil as the child-slaying Biblical figure. Such oversimplification is so wasteful, Hamlet claims that “it offends [him] to the soul.” Therefore, by titling his piece with this allusion, Hecht is referring to a Biblical symbol of evil incarnate, Herod, but he’s ironically claiming that casting anyone in an entirely good or evil light is rudimentary and useless, as Hamlet proclaimed.

Hecht claims that even Jesus, the chosen savior of all men, was not enough to triumph over the wicked child slaughters throughout history. Hecht implicitly alludes to Jesus when he describes “a hero [that] comes to save the poorman, beggarman, thief,” which relates to the Biblical stories in which Jesus healed a blind beggar so he could see and when he granted salvation to repentant thief upon his crucification. According to the Bible, Jesus, as God’s son, is the manifestation of virtue who can surpass even death. But according to Hecht, Jesus was no match for Herod’s massacre, as he refers back to “childermas” in line 34. Hecht implies that Jesus’s failings were not only prevalent in Herod’s day; they were significant in the Holocaust as well. Rather than exalting his indomitable strength, Hecht surprisingly points out that  invincible redeemer who was even once dubbed “King of the Jews”, did not save millions of Jewish children “from the gas” of Hitler’s concentration camps. By including allusions that span across millennia, Hecht illustrates that the futility of moral absolutism is timeless, that it applies to basically every scenario.

Hecht argues that such moral discrimination is fruitless because virtue may ultimately succumb to vice. The allusions to the Biblical figure of Job are central to Hecht’s piece. In order to prove that Job doesn’t merely praise God due to his prosperity, God allows Satan to play with him like a toy; the devil carelessly strikes him with afflictions such as boils. In the end of the Biblical version of Job’s story, he remains faithful to God throughout his adversity and is eventually rewarded. Thus, Job has become an icon of loyalty in contemporary literature. In Hecht’s version of his story, however, Satan is able to find out “even Job,” to taint God’s allegiant servant. Hecht plays with this symbol of good to promote his idea that moral classification is useless, as even those deemed most righteous may eventually succumb to evil.

Hecht uses classic symbols of evil to show the disparity between real life and idealistic beliefs. At the start of the poem the children are watching a western, presumably featuring a pure hero, the cowboy, and ultimate evil, the villains that chase after him. In that western, “The Good casts out the Bad.” (4), meaning the hero of the story predictably wins in the end. This satirical line almost chides any who believe there is only absolute good and pure evil. The poem then tells of how the narrator’s children believe the giant and witch, symbols of evil, are “sealed in doorless jails” (8). Yet when the “children have gone to bed” (12), secure in their view of the world, the giant and witch are set to “bust out the clink” (11). This symbolizes how while the children still believe in their idealistic version of life, when they are asleep and unaware, the right and wrong becomes much more complex and indistinguishable. The irony of using ultimately good or evil characters such as Santa Claus, witches, giants, and cowboys further serves to show that the world is a place where justice doesn’t always prevail and the lines between good and evil and are blurred.

  

The Undying Loyalty of the Anglo-Saxons: A Study of "Beowulf"

Thesis: In the epic “Beowulf”, the Anglo-Saxon concepts of bravery and loyalty through heroics are characterized by the hyperbolic contrast of good and evil.

Beowulf is idolized as a beacon of virtue though the use of kenning and hyperbole. Kennings in the text are used to depict Beowulf as the ideal Anglo-Saxon force of good. For example, the cultural values of loyalty and bravery can be seen when Beowulf is named “Higlac’s brave follower”.  Beowulf is then depicted as “That mighty protector of men”, which espouses the values of brotherhood and camaraderie prevalent in Anglo-saxon times. Finally, the use of the kenning “strong-minded” shows Beowulf to be unwavering and brave, once again values in anglo-saxon culture.

The hyperbole used to depict how the “sharpest and hardest iron” of Beowulf’s soldiers “could not scratch at his skin” due to Grendel’s association and use of evil is contrasted with how Beowulf, with his own hands, almost as if a hero so virtuous needs no weapon,  is able to battle and emerge victorious against Grendel.  Grendel is characterized as an almighty monster, a “tormentor of [men’s] days” (491) , a hyperbole that further strengthens the idea that Beowulf is a beacon of virtue,  for he was able to defeat such a monster. Through hyperbole, the importance of Beowulf’s deed that day is depicted by how he “purged Herot clean”, which emphasize Beowulf’s great deed as well as symbolize Beowulf as the force of good that was able to slay the monster and thus “had driven Affliction off” (407).

Inhuman imagery and metaphor as well as Christian allusions characterize Grendel as a force of biblical evil. The agents preserving this tale avoided diction that would imply that Grendel was even remotely human: the imagery characterized him as several vicious maladies. Just as Hrothgar embellished his Herot hall with the antlers of formidable stags, Beowulf strings up Grendel’s limb like it’s from a prize beast from a precarious hunt, “claw and shoulder and all.” His men try to “hack at Grendel from every side” like they’re trying to remove an unrelenting weed. Grendel is an “affliction” that needs to be “purged” from Herot. This imagery and metaphor conveys that Grendel is a ghoul, a weed, a disease: all threats to mankind. He epitomizes every menace to humanity; he has no sympathies or ties with it. 

Grendel’s hostility has supernatural potency: allusions that characterize him as a follower of Satan. Grendel is a descendant of Cain, the world’s original traitor according to the biblical book of Genesis. Cain kills his own brother, and God banishes him and all of his progeny from Christendom. Loyalty is a hallmark of Anglo-Saxon creed, therefore this association with betrayal immediately condemns Grendel’s character in that society.Also, in this particular section of the poem, a kenning defames him as a “sin-stained demon.” The diction “sin” is a direct reference to a God-defying error according to Christianity, and “demon” is a term specific to the Christian idea of a follower of Satan. The facts that Grendel captures Hrothgar and combats Beowulf is explicitly described as sins when the orators decry it as a “feud with Almighty God.” In their disdain and fear of God, Satan’s followers huddle in Hell, so it’s only fitting that upon his death, Grendel would descend to the depths of purgatory and join “still worse fiends.” The faithful Beowulf sends the demonic Grendel back to the abyss where he belongs, back to wallowing in the hub of Christian sin.

Parallel structures and caesura draw the virtues of Beowulf and the wickedness of Grendel into direct contrast. Beowulf jeopardizes his safety in order to pay Hrothgar back for the “wergild”, or “man price”, he provided for his father. He’s irrevocably loyal to his father, and therefore at the service of a man who granted him a favor. This inflated sense of courageous allegiance is exalted in the cold, isolated environment of the Anglo-Saxon period. Beowulf is quite admirable as a “protector of men”, a title the storytellers grant him in the very first line of this section. After detailing his ferocious lashes at Beowulf’s soldiers, the authors characterize Grendel as being on the complete opposite side of Beowulf, the “afflictor of men.” The parallelism between these phrases links them together; a reader will get caught on their variation. These phrases cast the characters of Beowulf and Grendel as black and white, one is mankind’s savior, or “good”, the other is mankind’s villain, or “evil.”

The triumph of good over evil is stressed by the caesura or pauses throughout this poem. They allow the reader to ruminate over Beowulf’s merit and Grendel’s despicability, particularly in the run-on sentence in which Beowulf is exalted as “a prince of the Geats” and Grendel’s evildoings are listed out: “the grief, the sorrow, the suffering forced on Hrothgar’s helpless people.” The caesuras, or commas in this particular sentence, divide Beowulf’s regality from Grendel’s wickedness, and they provide pauses that allow the reader to swallow each of his despicable deeds. Beowulf’s honorability is referenced, and glimmers in comparison to the drawn-out litany of Grendel’s sins.

The epic“Beowulf” illustrates that good wins over evil in “The Battle with Grendel” to symbolize the power of loyalty and bravery in Anglo- Saxon culture. 

A Psychoanalytical Approach to Hemingway

According to biographer Scott Donaldson, the plot and characters of “A Very Short Story” draw many parallels to Hemingway’s experience fighting in WWI. While stationed in Italy, a 19-year-old Hemingway became enamored with a 26-year-old nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. Her nickname for him was “bambino mio, her dear boy,” and she often patronized him as “Kid” (Donaldson). Like Luz, Agnes did not wait patiently until she could join her lover in America; she was wooed by an Italian officer. Agnes wrote to Hemingway to break off the engagement, encouraging him to “show what a man you really are.” This likely fueled Hemingway’s idealization of a literary hero as a “manly man”, as well as the emasculation motif of this piece.

Hemingway’s ideal “hero” was transient between lovers, as he believed that dependence on one woman indicates vulnerability. The unnamed American protagonist in “A Very Short Story” contradicts this model. He is very attached to Luz, feeling “sick about saying good-bye” after quarreling, and promising to “not drink” or “see his friends or anyone in the States” for her. What deepens this blow is the fact that the protagonist’s obsequious loyalty is not reciprocated; Luz moves on to an Italian lover. As if to finalize the protagonist’s loss of manhood, Hemingway writes that he develops a STD, which damages his genitals. Since genitals are at the very basis of gender identity, the protagonist’s injury to them epitomizes the fact that he is no longer a man. While Hemingway championed masculinity in his personal life, including in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald in which he fantasizes a house in which he “would have nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors”(Baker), his writing demonstrates a need to deflect his injury from his former lover on to this fictional character. He excludes the protagonist from his ranks of heroes, beating him down as a loser.

"Eggs as an Ending": Creative Project for Summer Reading

Text: Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending

Essence: Although some may mask it with impressive oratory, all humans have the same rudimentary core.

Brief Summary: The Sense of an Ending chronicles the young adulthood and then older middle-age of Brit Tony Webster. While attending an elite private high school, he befriends Adrian Finn, a philosophical genius. One of their classmates commits suicide because he impregnates his girlfriend, an action Tony and Adrian condemn for being “inartistic.” Adrian himself commits suicide several years later, explaining it via a lofty philosophical treatise. Tony idolizes Adrian’s erudition and honorable death— but decades later discovers that he killed himself for the same “self-indulgent” reason as their former classmate: he accidentally fathered a child.

2009 Prompt: A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Thesis: In Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, the egg Mrs. Ford cooks for Tony is a paradox representing the birth of their kinship, which also, according to Tony’s frayed logic, eventually leads to the death of Adrian. Adrian’s suicide is the greatest controversy of the novel.

Explanation:

As soon as I revisited The Sense of an Ending and saw its cover, I knew eggs would be integral in my creative representation of the novel. Eggs are introduced when Tony Webster, the protagonist of Julian Barnes’s work, receives cooked eggs from his girlfriend’s mother, Mrs. Ford. Mrs. Ford was much kinder to Tony than his actual girlfriend was, so when the relationship ends and he discovers that his friend Adrian is dating his ex, he tells him to “check things out with [her] Mum” (106). Adrian commits suicide not long after, and Tony eventually discovers that he did it because he accidentally got the mother pregnant. Tony’s logic becomes unhinged after this revelation, and he begins to blame himself since he “had urged Adrian to consult [the ex-girlfriend’s] mother. [He] replayed the words that would forever haunt [him]” (162). Therefore, although the egg symbolized the birth of Tony’s connection to the mother, according to his faulty rationale, it also caused the death of Adrian.

The egg has great notoriety as a symbol outside of the novel’s context. It’s central to the creation stories of ancient Egyptian, Polynesian, Chinese, and Greek mythology. In the ancient Greek Orphic tradition, the divine embodiment of light hatched from a silver egg and then created the rest of their gods. In more contemporary religions such as Christianity, an Easter egg in particular represents a paradox similar to the one I discovered in The Sense of an Ending. The egg resembles the massive boulder blocking Jesus’ tomb, but the fact that Jesus moved this boulder for the resurrection presents it as a symbol of birth and life.

Also notice that every Easter egg had the same skull inside, regardless of decoration on the outside. The notion of death as “the great equalizer” is also a motif here, as everyone, from the most basic (Robson) to the most sophisticated (Adrian) will all succumb to death. The result is the same, no matter your personality, integrity, or character. Death has been referred to as an equalizer since these passages in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes: “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not... For the living know that they will die” (Eccl.9:2-3, 12-13). James Shirley, a late English Renaissance dramatist, wrote a poem titled, “Death the Leveller.” Its first stanza claims that despite their royal status, even kings are not immune from death.

“Death lays his icy hand on kings:  

                         Sceptre and crown        

                        Must tumble down,  

And in the dust be equal made  

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.”

The egg symbol has added significance in the context of The Sense of an Ending. During adolescence, the boys anxiously await entry into “the real world,” like chicks eager to hatch from their eggs. Tony reflected: “In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives” (10). But admission into adulthood is what led to their undoing: Tony begins to feel a feeling “somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred…about [his] whole life” because he “had lost the friends of [his] youth” and had “abandoned the ambitions [he] had entertained” as a student (109). The anticipation of the hatch relates to the nostalgic notion of adolescence in the late twentieth to early twenty-first century, upper-middle class England, the setting of The Sense of an Ending. Adolescence is the period in which chicks eagerly anticipate the freedom of the hatch, but reality is that adulthood will actually only lead to grave sorrow.

The act of hunting for Easter eggs also relates to the deeper culture of the novel. When describing his elite preparatory school, Tony states that “the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes has always remained implicit” (9). This phrase encapsulates the jealousy that simmered beneath the surface of his camaraderie with the intellectually-superior Adrian Finn.  Tony and his friends subtly envy not only his intelligence, but the fact that “the only person…whose life so far contained anything remotely novel-worthy was Adrian” (16). My Easter egg hunt embodies the preference for competition over cooperation among the teenage protagonists of The Sense of an Ending. Before the discovery of the sparkling egg, those who found normal eggs were satisfied with themselves and their findings. But once the sparkling egg was revealed, the other eggs seemed duller and less noteworthy in comparison. Adrian’s introduction provided a new gauge of impossible standards for Tony and the rest of his friends to measure their own success.

Bibliography:

"Creation Stories." Myth Encyclopedia. Advameg, Inc. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

"Ecclesiastes 9:2-3." Bible Hub. Biblos.com. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

"Easter Symbols and Traditions." History.com. A E Networks, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

Shirley, James. ""Death the Leveller"" Bartleby. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

Compare/Contrast Essay for "Angela's Ashes"

Free-Response Essay on "The Age of Innocence"

Essay:

The Countess Ellen Olenska is an exotic caged bird in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, upstaging the bland, conventional May Welland. Despite her obvious advantages in wooing Newland Archer, he remains faithful to wife May due to dogmatic disdain of divorce, the examples set by other aristocratic New York households, and disapproval for the philandering of the nouveau riche.

In spite of her intrigue as a foreigner, Newland initially avoids interaction with Ellen since she is a divorcee— a taboo in nineteenth-century, primarily Christian New York. The dogma that divorce is immoral impedes upon Newland’s attraction to Ellen at the opera, as he therefore sees Ellen as tainted with the wreckage of a holy union of marriage.

Wharton sets up this tale of forbidden lust by outlining the pedigrees of moneyed New York, exposing a hierarchy of “old money” at the top of which are the esteemed Van der Leuyden’s. Wharton characterizes this couple’s relationship as strong, as they focus almost exclusively on each other, rarely hosting dinners or parties even for relatives. The fact that Newland convinces them to hold a celebratory supper for divorcee Ellen is a tremendous feat. Since they remain faithful and happy together, Newland esteems this prominent couple as moral role models for his own marriage to May. This is why he remains loyal to her despite Ellen’s temptation; Newland desires a home life as wholesome and stable as that of the Van der Leuyden’s.

The foil to the Van der Leuyden household is the estate of Julius Beaufort, a libertine nouveau riche who often hosts illicit parties and cheats on his wife with a woman named Fanny. Newland’s mother and other aristocratic acquaintances often scorn his womanizing, and thus Newland himself resents such behavior. Although he begs for Ellen to “come to him” just once, he soon resists, realizing that he doesn’t want to sink to Beaufort’s level.

The cultural pressure manifests in even more subtle ways in Newland’s psyche. He’s often quick to flee from opportunities to have a fling with Ellen, as when he waited to see her on the deck outside the vacation home. He was tethered so strongly by social standards, yet so magnetized by her charms, that he essentially left his decision to cheat on May up to a coin toss: if Ellen appeared on the deck, he would pursue an affair with her; if she did not, he wouldn’t. She didn’t, and thus Newland shied away.

Even after May’s death, which liberates him from the confines of fidelity to her, Newland finds he still cannot come to Ellen. In the final chapter of the novel, he and one of his sons seek out her residence in Europe, but he ultimately never knocks on her door. His moral culture was so impressed into him, that even when both he and Ellen were free to love one another, he, ironically, can’t help but resist.

Wharton titled her novel The Age of Innocence, despite the fact that Lawrence Lefferts and other gossips spread around rumors of adultery to everyone. No one in old New York is innocent of knowledge of each other’s infidelity. But when Wharton manifests the effects of the buttoned-up culture in young Newland’s moralistic and psychological actions, she maintains that at its heart, the nineteenth-century is still pure.

In Reflection:

The Open Question Essay didn’t seem as challenging as I had suspected. This was probably due to the fact that I had just read a book on the suggested works list: Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. My recognition of the title boosted my confidence. Since the work was fresh in my mind, I was excited that I was able to recall three pinnacle scenes from it: Archer’s first glimpse of Ellen at the opera, his deciding to abstain from pursuing Ellen since she didn’t appear on the deck, and his neglecting to visit her one last time in Europe. Not to be pompous, but I was also pleased with my diction, such as “philandering,” “libertine,” and “pedigrees,” and when it was supplemented by my cultural allusion to the “nouveau riche,” I thought I crafted a mature writing voice. I also created smooth transitions between paragraphs, often linking conclusion sentences and topic sentences with a repetition of a word, or a connector phrase such as “even more.”

That isn’t to say that I’ve mastered the Open Question Essay. While I conjured up three key scenes from the novel, I was only able to extract one direct quote. Stronger essays are backed by textual evidence, so in order to remedy this, I will review two of the suggested works listed in the back of my 5 Steps to a 5 book the night prior to my next in-class essay. I will primarily study notorious quotes from each work, as well as noting their contexts. I will gauge the success of this strategy with next essay score.

I also hope to bolster my next essay score by applying nuances to my analysis of a text. I harped on obvious cultural influences on Archer in the novel— religion and fellow aristocrats. But I failed to fully explore the more subtle effects Archer’s peers had on him— how Beaufort was a nouveau riche and thus considered lower-class than the old-moneyed families, and thus his actions (including his affairs) were instantly considered gauche. To avoid making more broad strokes, I seek to devote at least three extra minutes to mapping my essay before drafting it. That plan of action will allow me enough time to consider every potential facet of the main points of my essay.

The main points of my essay need more analytical support as well. My first point, touching on Archer’s religious influences, has only one sentence of elaboration: “The dogma that divorce is immoral impedes upon Newland’s attraction to Ellen at the opera, as he therefore sees Ellen as tainted with the wreckage of a holy union of marriage.” It doesn’t fully realize the connection between Christians’ reverence of marriage and its effect on Archer’s attitude toward Ellen. As a concrete method of ensuring full analysis in the future, I will aim to write three sentences per point in my next essay. Hopefully, a high score will reflect my success in this pursuit.