Elemental Noir

Film noir has distinct elements creating the effect that makes this genre so famous. Film noir is film strewn with shadows, barriers, and the infamous femme fatale. It uses these things to symbolically evoke thoughts, ideas, emotions, mystery and suspense.
Film noir came about almost immediately in the years following World War Two, to bring about the emotions of the time. Hollywood began to proliferate these movies with the unique and intricate lighting effects, and authors began to write like the wind. Europe has a large influence on all of this, they began to say “Hey the American’s are doing it, too.”

One of the most symbolic pieces in a film noir is the femme fatale. She is portrayed as a beautiful, seductive woman, who is not out to be in love, but is usually linked to a mob or heist of some sort, just in it for the money. She uses her seduction to get what she wants. A femme fatale wants freedom, and does not want to be kept as a “pet” by a husband. They are evil women, there is no other way to describe it.

If the femme fatale is married, she will do anything to get rid of her husband, like in Double Indemnity (1944) where she resorts to murder. In Out of the Past (1947), Kathie Moffett shoots her way out of a confining relationship with gambler Whit Sterling.

Long Night’s Journey Into Day

I chose that title because as you read, it becomes clearer just how problematic this family is.

Eugene O’Neill was one remarkable playwright. His play, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, is juicy with the aspect of the inner self. He wrote a reality check to the American Dream in the form of his own family experiences. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is written in the time span of just one day. It involves Jamie, Mary, James, and Edmund. O’Neill uses Edmund instead of himself in this play, for Edmund was the name of a brother of his who died before Eugene was born.
Now, to go to James, the father in the play. He’s a stingy old man, won’t pay a dollar to save a life. He spent most of his time in cheap hotels just to save a dime, at least until he had to buy a summer home to please his wife, Mary. Something indicates however, he bought it just to shut her up. That can’t be told though. He expresses his love and tries to make excuses for himself. Everyone rags on him about how he spends his money and how much land he has:

Mary
With a resentment that has a quality of being automatic and on the surface while inwardly she is indifferent.
Yes, it’s very trying, Jamie. You don’t know how trying. you don’t have to keep up the house with summer servants who don’t care because they know it isn’t a permanent position. The really good servants are all with people who have homes and not merely summer places. And your father won’t even pay the wages the best summer help ask. So every year I have stupid, lazy greenhorns to deal with. But you’ve heard me say it a thousand times. So has he, but it goes in one ear and out the other. He thinks money spent on a home is money wasted. He’s lived too much in hotels. Never the best hotels, of course. Second-rate hotels. He doesn’t understand a home. He doesn’t feel at home in it. And yet. he wants a home. He’s proud of having this shabby place. He loves it here. (64)

Mary had to raise her children in the atmosphere of a hotel and moving around all the time. That can be pretty stressful. Perhaps that’s why she picked up her morphine addiction. This affects her family greatly, best said by Edmund, “Yes, she moves above and beyond us, a ghost haunting the past, and here we sit pretending to forget, but straining our ears listening for the slightest sound…” (155).
It seems to be that James is the biggest problem-causer in the entire family. Not only was he responsible for the atmosphere he provided, but he was also constantly drunk. Like Mary says “…You’ve always preferred the Club or a barroom…”
The hardest thing to take, though, would have to be the death of Eugene in the play. It was one of Mary’s sons. She blamed Jamie for his death because she kept telling him not to go near the baby when he had measles:

I blame only myself. I swore after Eugene died I would never have another baby. I was to blame for his death. If I hadn’t left him with my mother to join you on the road, because you wrote telling me you missed me and were so lonely, Jamie would never have been allowed, when he still had measles, to go in the baby’s room.(90)

That’s not even the worst part. How must this affect how Edmund feels? “I never should have borne Edmund.”(91)
Basically in this family everyone gets on each others’ nerves and hurts each others’ feelings. Then, they try to take it back, which doesn’t work because it was said and it hurt someone none the less. There’s no escape from drama in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. It’s what sets apart the realists and the dreamers.

Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie written by Tennessee Williams is one of the most claustrophobic familial plays in the known universe. He packs everyone tightly together in the same place, like a regular family at dinner time, but that’s the way it stays. There is no outside life for these people. Tom, one of the characters, goes to work every day, but the play never shows him actually at work. It takes place always when he’s back, or just the other two characters, Amanda and Laura, isolated without him.
The idea of these characters being so close together plays on the psychological aspect; they all get on each others’ nerves. Tom is stuck at home with his sister and his mother to take care of. His sister is a shy cripple, and she has a phobia of getting out into the real world because she is afraid of working, and what people might think of her. Amanda, his mother, is just simply one of the most annoying characters in play history, most famous for her words, “Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine!”
Now, Laura’s mother is obsessed with getting Laura a gentleman caller. She states that back in her day, she had them by the dozens but she chose their father, but he took off and left them all to forge for themselves. To them it must feel like they are worthless, and it’s demeaning. Tom works for the whole family to live, and his mother is so very ungrateful and always complains of him not caring and not doing the right thing for them, (I would be very angry if someone said that to me) but he put up with it anyway.
To sum it up at this point, there’s Laura, the over-self-conscious daughter who has a fetish with glass animals. They bring her off into her own isolated fantasy world. Then, there’s Amanda, the mother, who does nothing but rain down chaos of her own fantasy world away from the one they are all currently living in, segregated from that of Laura and Tom. Lastly, Tom, is just about the only honestly sane one in the entire household. He writes, brings in the money working at the factory, yet there is one thing that makes him just like the other two: his fantasy dream. He wants to get out of that place so bad, but he has nowhere to go. He just wants to roam and leave all the past behind him and leave his family to make-ends-meet on their own. He ends up being just like his father.
So in the end, Tom ends up leaving, yes, but his feelings aren’t as free as he’d liked them to be. He’s regretting every moment of leaving them, and his mother and sister are just as miserable. No one wins in this situation. It’s basically everyone goes insane from dealing with each other all the time, with their own little problems. Then they separate into their own little fantasy worlds to get away from each other. Next, one of them actually leaves. I bet that was exactly the situation before with the father. No one was really together at all in this play, they were all out for themselves and were isolated inside.

Lust Under The Elms

The most evident attribute of modernist literature is believed to be the representation of inner reality. In Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under The Elms the characters are blunt, and display their inner selves simply. O’Neill shows them for who they are, just simple people who will do what they want to get what they want.

CABOT-(grimly–without looking up) Our’n! (She cannot control a grimace of aversion and pulls back her head slowly and shuts the window. A sudden horrible thought seems to enter Cabot’s head.) They been up to somethin’! Mebbe–mebbe they’ve pizened the stock– ‘r somethin’! (He almost runs off down toward the barn. A moment later the kitchen door is slowly pushed open and Abbie enters. For a moment she stands looking at Eben. He does not notice her at first. Her eyes take him in penetratingly with a calculating appraisal of his strength as against hers. But under this her desire is dimly awakened by his youth and good looks. Suddenly he becomes conscious of her presence and looks up. Their eyes meet. He leaps to his feet, glowering at her suspiciously.)

ABBIE-(in her most seductive tones which she uses all through this scene) Be you– Eben? I’m Abbie–(She laughs.) I mean, I’m yer new Maw.

EBEN-(viscously) NO, damn ye!

ABBIE-(as if she hadn’t heard-with a queer smile) Yer Paw’s spoke a lot o’ yew…

* * *

EBEN-(With bitter scorn) Ha! (They stare again, Eben obscurely moved, physically attracted to her–in forced stilted tones) Yew kin go t’ the devil!

There’s nothing hidden here. They want each other. Lustful for each other as Abbie is lustful for the property she married Cabot for. Also you can see a bit of Blanche in here: “But under this her desire is dimly awakened by his youth and good looks.” To just be straight, everyone can read the psychology in the play.
Cabot is just who you think he is: a lonely, selfish, old man who thinks he’s jim-dandy better than everyone else around him. He sickens me. He lusts for being able to live and be better than everyone else for the rest of his life. Ay-eh. Straightforward.

A Streetcah Named Desiah.

There’s more than enough psychological malarkey going on in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. What one has to do to understand the way the characters are feeling is to literally put yourself in the characters’ shoes. One can understand the way Stanley feels about Blanche because his nice life with his lovely wife is being invaded. Stanley plainly states:

I’ve been on to you from the start! Not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes! You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light-bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and swilling down my liquor! I say-Ha!-Ha! Do you hear me? Ha!-ha-ha! (The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, 398)

Stanley is set on getting Blanche out! It is actually quite hard to figure out how Stella feels about all this because she loves her sister, but loves Stanley with an undying desire. Therefore, Stanley has another barrier keeping him from getting rid of Blanche as quickly as possible.
Now Stella is stuck in between two loves. She tacitly understands what Blanche is trying to say to her about Stanley, but she is unsure of what her sister is saying to her because all Blanche does is hide the truth from her and lie:

Mitch [slowly and bitterly]:
I don’t mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it- Christ! That pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all the malarkey that you’ve dished out all summer. Oh, I knew you weren’t sixteen any more. But I was fool enough to believe you was straight.

Blanche:
Who told you I wasn’t- “straight”? My loving brother-in-law. And you believed him.

Mitch:
I called him a liar at first. And then I checked on the story. First I asked our supply-man who travels through Laurel. And then I talked directly over long-distance to this merchant.(The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, 385)

Stella can only go with what she knows best, and that’s her new life. She really has nothing else to do but let Stanley and Blanche duke it out, she can really only stay neutral if she wants to keep both of them…

Blanche is quite a psychopath. Look at what happened to her. First of all, she loses her true, passionate lover- to a man… That is just completely disturbing.
Imagine if you were completely in love with someone and just… wow. I’m sure one can imagine. Then having seen him commit suicide… because of you. I can relate because I know what that feels like. To be blunt- it sucks. You can see why she would want to try to get back what she once had. She tries to make up for what she feels like she failed at. Unfortunately, this means degrading herself to seducing younger men. Then she has the whole Belle Reve incident, which just cuts morale even more, seeing her whole family die and have to pay for the whole thing by selling the only thing that meant anything to her. Now she wants the only thing she has- Stella. She wants to be with Stella and make things the way they once were. She tries to save Stella from something Stella does not want to be saved from.
Stanley is a giant brick wall with a mirror between Stella and Blanche. It can’t be knocked down, and it dishes out what you give to it. Blanche was done from the start.

Is it really a clean, well-lit place?

Let me tell you, it’s not a very clean place, for one. Just in the beginning of the story you can almost see the problems strewn about the café. The imagery in the story makes it look like the place is dim, with a dark corner where the old deaf man sits. His deafness, to me, symbolizes the fact that there’s a problem, or ineptitude towards something. The old man had tried to commit suicide, which is like a void of will, if I may. This seems to be made up for by the younger bartender’s will to live (notice how he is always in the presence of light). He is very selfish, whereas the older bartender would like to close up as late as possible so that any needy, weary person may find it suitable to be there in the late hours (He’s usually in the back, probably further away from the light). What’s quite contradictory to my thoughts of him, is the fact that he says everything is nothing… These three points of view almost seems to be confusion, do I want to die? Do I want to wait around for people to come, wait to see new things, or do I want to take advantage of what’s thrown at me and be as selfish as I can possibly be for my few years? The light of the bar seems to register as some constant, though. We know it’s there, and we know it’s liked- but what about everything else?

Hemingway’s Killers

I was having trouble trying to figure out how to say something about the inner psychology in this poem. Then, Ms. Baz pointed out to me that I could also talk about how there is an absence in the poem, which… there is. When you read the story, you notice that it is quite nonchalant in many ways. It is weird the way that George, Nick, and Sam react to the ‘Killers’. If one of you were in the same situation, you’d probably be freaking out. I know I wouldn’t be like them and basically not care. In the scene where Nick goes to visit Ole Anderson:

“George thought I better come and tell you about it.”

“There isn’t anything I can do about it,” Ole Anderson said.

“I’ll tell you what they were like.”

“I don’t want to know what they were like,” Ole Anderson said. He looked at the wall. “Thanks for coming to tell me about it.”

“That’s all right.”

Nick looked at the big man laying on the bed.

“Don’t you want me to go and see the police?”

“No,” Ole Anderson said. “That wouldn’t do any good.”

“Isn’t there something I could do?”

“No. There ain’t anything to do.”

That part at least shows a bit of concern. But at the end, it’s kind of.. WT*?

“What’s he going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“They’ll kill him.”

“He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago.”

“I guess so,” said Nick.

“It’s a hell of a thing!”

“It’s an awful thing,” Nick said.

They did not say anything. George reached down for a towel and wiped the counter.

“I wonder what he did?” Nick said.

“Double-crossed somebody. That’s what they kill them for.”

“I’m going to get out of this town,” Nick said.

“Yes,” said George. “That’s a good thing to do.”

“I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”

“Well,” said George, “you better not think about it.”

This is the way I see it: Someone’s going to get killed, okay there’s nothing I can do, nor anything he can do so… I’m over it. Too bad.
It’s just odd.

Whoa, really creepy.

I just realized, while I was writing that piece about “Abandoned Farmhouse” that there is a similarity between that and “The Hollow Men,” and “The Lovesong Of Alfred J. Prufrock.” It’s really cool because there’s always something that seems to be a constant, or something immortal. Like in “Abandoned Farmhouse” the toys left around and everything else justs stay in place like they will stay that way forever. In “The Hollow Men” the feelings of sorrow and deathwish will all remain. Plus in Prufrock, the element of impressionism comes in, especially in the lines “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.” It’s like looking at a portrait. It really is cool.

Oh Ted.

Ted Kooser with his amazing poem “Abandoned Farmhouse.”
What a way to show how you feel! It’s almost hard to describe because there’s so much. This poem displays much of the fight between the wife and the husband.
“He was a big man, says the size of his shoes/ on a pile of broken dishes by the house;”
“A woman lived with him…”
“…and they had a child,/says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.”
“Something went wrong, says the empty house”
“Something went wrong, they say.”
Okay.. so.. I picked out those lines because they basically summarize all that ekphratic [profanity word] in there. Kooser is very straightforward with the fact that a man and a woman had a fight and they left their problems to dwindle in time. Nothing is moved.

Helen

Epstein’s poem “Helen” truly displays an inner feeling by a common event that most people can relate to. The children in the story ask their teacher to tell them a love story, but the teacher doesn’t want to becuase all of the love stories he knows all have a miserable ending. I believe that it is a relay of the narrator’s own thoughts through the teacher into the poem. Yet, the child, seems to show the, how you say, “light at the end of the tunnel” or, the bright side. She simply says, “‘Tell us alove story anyway/And stop before it is over.’” It is like the author’s own discrepancy with his love life.