Modernism
After reading "The Ice Palace" I decided it was a very good story. This story was so good I had to read the second part called "The Jelly Bean". I think that F. Scott Fitzgerald had a good idea when he thought of this story. My thoughts of what the story was going to be about was very different from what it really was. I thought the story was going to be about Jazz music and etc but it really was about something totally different.
The Ice Palace is a mainly about this girl named Sally Carroll Haper. Sally Carroll is a nineteen-year-old girl from the city of Tarleton, Georgia. Sally has lots of friends in the south because that is where she grew up. Sally’s best friend is a boy by the name of Clark Darrow he’s also one of the most popular boys in Tarleton. After he asks Sally to go swimming with him he tells her that he knows about her getting engaged. She is amazed that he knows and she just admits it. Clark is upset he thinks Sally should marry him not some northern Yankee. After that Sally’s fiancée comes into the picture his name is Harry Bellamy. Somehow he talks Sally into coming up north to spend time with him and to meet his family. After a couple of weeks there, Sally meets his family and goes to a couple of ballroom dances. So to make a long story short they visit this ice house where somehow Sally gets lost when the crew had found her she delirious and is yelling she wants to go home. So she gets home and it’s like the story starts over again.
I chose the Jazz Age and now I’m going to tell you a little something about the topic. The Jazz Age was also known as the American High. The Jazz Age was the period between the end of World War 1 and the start of the Great Depression. After the Jazz Age started most people felt that it was a waste of WWI pre-war values. The Jazz Age also had a lot to do with the topic of this paper "Modernism". Most people that were living during this time might say that it was the coolest age ever. The Jazz Age gets its name from jazz music, which saw a huge movement in popularity among many different cultures.
In the story "Jazz Music", ballroom dancing, nice housing and sleighs in the north mostly represent the Jazz Age. Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about: Home was a rambling frame house set on a white lap of snow, and there she met a big, gray-haired man of whom she approved, and a lady who was like an egg, and who kissed her-- these were Harry's parents. After that she was alone with Harry in the library, asking him if she dared smoke. It was a large room with a Madonna over the fireplace and rows upon rows of books in covers of light gold and dark gold and shiny red
.All the chairs had little lace squares where one's head should rest. The couch was just comfortable, the books looked as if they had been read. With her father's huge medical books, and the oil-paintings of her three great-uncles, and the old couch that had been mended up for forty-five years and was still luxurious to dream in. This room struck her as being neither attractive nor particularly otherwise. It was simply a room with a lot of fairly expensive things in it that all looked about fifteen years old. As you can tell from those paragraphs the north was where the Jazz Age really took place. That paragraph explain how one of the rooms in their house looked. Hanging round he found not at all difficult; a crowd of little girls had grown up beautifully, the amazing Sally Carrol foremost among them; and they enjoyed being swum with and danced with and made love to in the flower-filled summery evenings -- and they all liked Clark immensely. This little paragraph gives you a little example of dancing and the way young people hung out in the south.
"Richard Corey"I feel that this poem is saying that Richard was who every body wanted to be. He had lots of riches, good looks, and a good personality, while every body else was poor and had nothing. But one summer night Richard Corey went home and put a bullet through his own head. I believe that Richard always acted like every thing was O.K. when he was around other people but things weren’t what everybody thought. I feel that maybe he was very alone and wanted something to live for. And that since he did not have that he decide to take his own life. I feel that this poem is a good piece of Modernism because it is a good example of Disillusionment. I say this because no one really knew what was going on in Richard’s life they just thought they knew because of the way he presented his self. And he was rich----yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place. So as you can tell from this passage they thought his life was going great but really it wasn’t.
"Mending Wall"The poem "Mending wall" to me is about the separation of two people by a wall. I believe that out of all the poems I had to read this one was the hardest mainly because I could not understand what was going on. This poem is also about the two neighbor’s feelings. What I mean is that one feels that since the wall is up it interferes with their friendship. One neighbor believes that the wall is a sense of privacy, but it does not interfere with the two neighbor’s friendship. This poem is a good example of psychology I believe. In this poem you have to look at the situation from both neighbors point of view. We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do no need the wall: 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. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? So as you can tell from this paragraph one neighbor liked the wall but the other one felt it wasn’t necessary. But in the end you are in both neighbors own point of view.
"A Dream Deferred"I really understood this poem and since I understood it I liked it a lot. This poem is basically you what you think happens to a dream when it is put off. I feel that this poem really gives a good example of Disillusionment. I say this because of the poem’s title itself "A Dream Deferred". No one really knows what happens to a dream when they are deferred. So the person who wrote this poem no there was no logical basis to this question. Here is an example from the poem. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? So as you can see this is a good example of Modernism.
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"When reading this poem I really had to read a little bit at a time. The first bit is talking about how he knows the names of ancient rivers older than the world and older than the flow of blood in human veins. Next he’s talking about how his soul has grown deep like the rivers. So I feel that what Langston Hughes is trying to say by this poem is that he has seen a lot of things, things other people may not have seen. So he fills that his soul is as ancient as the rivers. I believe that this poem has a lot to do with having the reader see inside the mind of the characters to see what was going on. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
"Incident"I think this was a good poem mainly because it actually rhymed. "Incident" is about this eight-year-old who takes a trip to Baltimore. He was on the trip from May to December but he only remembers one thing. There was a boy around his age that he had never seen before he smiled at the boy but the boy stuck his tongue out and called him a nigger. So I feel that since that’s all he remembered it must have really mad him anger. To me this is a good example of how modernist felt about the American Dream and it not coming real. I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger." What I mean is that one part of the American dream was for everybody to be treated as an equal, but in this situtation I bet the kid didn’t feel equal.

