Oh No by Robert Creeley Analysis

If you wander far enough
you will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places.

This poem was written by Robert Creeley in 1962. It is the story of someone who has wandered off track and ended up in a place for himself with all of his friends there. The title of the poem is interesting because "Oh No" makes the place seem like it is bad that they stumbled upon it, even though there is a nice chair for them and all of their friends are wearing smiling faces. At first glance it would appear that the narrator had stumbled into a paradise where he was among friends and could truly be himself and had finally found his purpose in life.The narrator insinuates that anyone has the ability to get there just by wandering far enough away, in this case leaving the people you care about behind and working towards your own ends. The place is not actually a physical place because anyone is able to reach it no matter where they physically are by wandering off the path of community and walking onto the path of self. It can be attained by anyone at anytime just by abandoning those who have been with you for all of your life and choosing to only work towards your personal advancement. This shows the narrator's inclination towards selfishness. He changes his goals and only makes plans with keeping himself in mind. The people who are there already who are described as "friends" are actually others who have given up on helping others and only strive towards fulfilling their own selfish desires. They welcome the narrator to come and sit among them and to accept his fate as one of them but the narrator doesn't want to. He realizes that the place is not the right one to go in life and only represents selfishness and stagnation. It is odd to think of the people there as selfish because they are so willing and seem almost happy to offer the narrator a seat among them. This is done with malicious intent though and would only serve to drag the narrator down to their level to live with the same torment they have for abandoning their friends and family. They only want to give him a seat so that there will be one more poor soul to be trapped with them for all eternity. The people who are there will never experience true love or friendship ever again in their life because they have given up on others and only exist to strive towards their own goals that they have set for themselves. Their wild abandonment of those who have cared for them or knew them will lead them down a path that will result in them being left alone forever and friendless. Anyone who can be fooled to leave the right path by the artificial smiles of fake friends and a nice chair deserves to be alone in the end. Friends, family, and those who care about you are more important than any personal, material, or financial advancements that you can make in the world.

Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Analysis

Plato's Allegory Of The Cave is the story about a man who is released from his chains and is able to see the world for what it truly is. The allegory actually fits the hero's journey archetype rather well. When he is released from his chains he is able to turn around for the first time ever and is able to learn what is casting the shadows on the wall that is everyone elses's reality. He is able to question his world and learn more about it. Eventually he is able to exit the cave that had been everything he had ever known and see the open world for the first time. He explores the world and eventually reaches a spot where he is able to just gaze at the sun. At this point he has become enlightened and has learned more about his world than he ever thought possible. He returns to the cave to try to spread his new found knowledge but is only met with ridicule. The people there either don't believe him or don't care enough to consider the possibility of another reality. This knowledge ends up making him an outcast to his own people. He is no longer able to play the game where they guess what shadow will show up next due to his eyes adjusting to the light of the outside world. His new found knowledge is preventing him from going back to the reality that he used to know and forcing him to look at it the way he now knows it to be. His acquired knowledge that he is trying to spread actually angers his people and eventually some of them end up wanting to kill him to put to an end his talk of another reality. He believes it his duty to try to enlighten his people even if they don't want him to and no matter the consequences, even at the price of death. After becoming enlightened the enlightened must descend back to their previous depths to help the others that are on the same level that they were previously on. Generally the enlightened feel that they are responsible for bringing that same enlightenment to others close to them. This is generally poorly received, with the enlightened then becoming the outcast, unable to break through to anyone and persuade them to give his view of the world. The people generally are unreceptive to this enlightenment because they don't know anything except their own perspective on reality. They have lived their lives chained and looking at the same wall and are content because they do not know any better. no one perspective is more right then the other but those who are enlightened are simply unable to go back to the way things were and as such try to bring others up to their level. The problem with this is that people see no use in being offered a new perspective and as such regard it with little to no value.

Winesburg, Ohio and The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot have many similarities between them. Throughout "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" themes such as loneliness, regret, loss of youth, loss of innocence, and indecision show up as the song progresses and the man shows his journey. These themes are very similar to those found in Winesburg, Ohio. The grotesques throughout the novel all possess most of these traits. An example of this would be Wing Biddlebaum. He has isolated himself so that he would not be thrown out of town for reasons unknown to him, but his isolation has in turn made him a very lonely person. He experienced a loss of youth and innocence when he was beaten and forcibly run out of town. Despite living in Winesburg for twenty years he has said himself that he was not a part of the town. These things are very similar to Prufrock. At the beginning of the love song he is unable to act because his analysis of his actions steered his mind towards negative thoughts, diminishing morality to an extent. In the next section the juxtaposition of "not enough time" and "always more time" allows Eliot to illustrate the harshness of age, the desire to be loved, and how people will justify being indecisive by saying that there is always more time. In the next section it shows that fear of judgement and exclusion paralyzes people from change. This leads to society, in its effort to police and judge people, often entrapping the same people who judge. The next section deals with the universal fear among people of the unknown in which people are unwilling to follow their dreams in fear of the consequences. The next part has Prufrock pondering what he has done with his life. He didn't go for the things that he wanted because he was afraid of the consequences of his actions and what other people would think. This led to his life being led along by others and not actively going for the things he wanted out of life. At the end of the love song Prufrock shows that people who have low self esteem tend to linger, daydream, and worry about the outcome of their actions until their moment in time was passed and the opportunity was squandered. The characters in Winesburg, Ohio are like this in the sense that they all have low self esteem and seem to waste their time. All that Wing ever does is pick berries and spend time alone. Doctor Reefy spends his time in an office by himself gazing out a window and observing the world around him but never acting in it or influencing it. Enoch spends time with his imaginary friends until they are taken from him and then is lost. These instances show that Prufrock and the inhabitants of Winesburg have many traits in common. They feel that they are oppressed by society and instead of going against it they simply give in and accept their fates.