Love Drunk

"Love," by anonymous

There's the wonderful love of a beautiful maid,
And the love of a staunch true man,
And the love of a baby that's unafraid--
All have existed since time began.
But the most wonderful love, the Love of all loves,
Even greater than the love for Mother,
Is the infinite, tenderest, passionate love
Of one dead drunk for another.

     I don't like to think that I'd have to be drunk and dead in order to love completely, but this poem makes it sound like I need to be. But that's the 'wonderful' irony in the poem, created by a tonal phenomenon that we, as the reader, can sense by cold, Times New Roman text; we can feel its subtle, sadist message, the teasing and almost condescending nature that the poet uses regarding the concept of love in the human condition. He (or she) gives me the impression of a failed explanation of what love is, as if the reader were a complacent 5 year-old that he could influence and convince that love is not what the little girl thinks it is. Almost like reading a children's story to a group of kindergarteners, except you have the Grimm Brothers; edition. Something along those lines.

     But on to the tone itself. the rhyme scheme is what really sets the mood as childish and playful. It isn't until the very last line that we're hit with preliminary confusion, realization, and final discomfort at the message that this poet is trying to convey. There isn't really a shift in tone, per se--I read it with that same happy bouncing inflection that most rhyming poems deserve to have when read. But the meaning and implication of that tone changes drastically when the dead drunk is involved. Suddenly, the chipper voice of love transforms into a dry, sarcastic, and flat retrospection as to the meaning of love. Not of a love that is defined by coherent and acceptable people of society, but of a pure love borne out of drunkenness, confusion, and pain. The grating connotation of a dead drunk dissonates the tone that is used to read it, leaving the reader a bit disarmed in the process.

     So love must not have the greatest implications for the sad, sorry guy that wrote this. The concept of love is ripped apart as he not-so-subtly contrasts the allusion of true love in virtuous people (beautiful maids, stauncy men, and unafraid babies) with the realistic, passionate love that drunkards have of each other. Depressing to think about, really. the drunkard's love give rise to many implications; maybe of an unrestricted love? Of a proliferating love? The common assumption of drunks is that they have a looser tongue and less inhibition with each other, so it only makes sense that the love that they may share for one another appears to be unrestrained. Does this translate to true love, to pure love? Depends on the reader and what she thinks of drunk people, I guess. but gonig under the assumption that drunks are more free-spirited, the implication of love from the three 'virtuous' people  therefore seem rehearsed, taught, and controlled.

     And let's not forget that these drunkards are dead. The poet presents the stages of life backwards from the beginning to the end, starting with man and women, leading to a baby, and ending in death. What's up with that? He seems to suggest that in order to experience the "infinite, tenderest, passionate love," we have to have experienced its oppositve first: death. It sounds very similar to what my mother says about affluence and appreciation; one cannot appreciate the value of money unless he was poor first at some point in time. Is the true passion that comes with love only available to those who have experienced its opposite (death) to appreciate it more than face value, and be 'drunk' off societal pressure, without inhibition, in the process?

     I can only imagine what must have happened in his life to make him write something like this, so universally unacceptable to believe in, but realistically rings truer than any optimistic notion we have about true love and caring. Love might just be yet another human ideal that we all strive for, but never achieve. The existential me asks "What's the point?" though the ideal, optimistic me says "Let's change that notion." Maybe I should get drunk and see what happens. But knowing me, I'd be the type to fall asleep if I really lost all that inhibition.

Started at the Bottom…Still at the Bottom

     I'm no fan of Drake, but the titular lyric seemed fitting. After finishing A Doll House by Ibsen, I feel much obliged to state that I, in accordance to many many many (I assume) other students and teachers, hate the alternate ending that Ibsen imposed to please the audience he was stuck with. It's no wonder the poor dude can't even live with himself after releasing such an atrocity. Nora, the supposedly enlightened woman and an ideal that all men and women strive for to reach intellectual freedom and self-worth, goes mainstream and stays in her stagnant relationship with her clueless (and just as inexperienced) husband. Where's the sense of closure in that? There isn't any feeling, no artistic and symbolic thought that went into the writing of this ending--a huge contrast for Ibsen, as he wrote most of the play with subtle hints of deeper meaning without giving everything away. All of his artistic credibility as a playwright is lost with that ending.

     The main problem I have with this alternate version is the hypocrisy with which the husband uses to get Nora to stay. That, in itself, seems like a cheap move even for Torvald. In the heat of Act III, Torvald shows his true colors as a selfish husband who cares more for public appearance and perfection instead of the well-being of his family; his cries of "I'm saved! I'm saved!" are testimony to that. Krogstad's letter, which was more or less addressed to Nora instead of Torvald, is seen as Torvald's own saving grace (I'm saved) instead of Nora's (We're saved). It's as if she should have never deserved this solace, that she still has to suffer the burden of 'doing the wrong thing', or pay Torvald a price for making him so angry (even though she did all of this to save his life). There is absolutely no mention of their kids, or of their kids' futures, as far as Torvald's concerned; their well-being is nonexistent. It's like that classic test of parental wit; if a fire alarm sounds in a house, the first thing a thoughtful parent would look for is the child. If a fire alarm had sounded in the Helmer home (or any 1800s equivalent of an alarm), Torvald would be the first to bolt out the door. Sadly, Nora would be the second.

     So the hypocrisy is only overstepped when he uses the children (not his children--he doesn't deserve children) as an excuse to get Nora to stay at home. We see that his offspring are just as much as strangers to him as Torvald is to Nora when Torvald exclaims, "But first you shall see your children for the last time!" 'Your children'. Nora's children. Not 'our children,' a collective responsibility that makes a family whole. He is basically separating himself from his wife and kids here, creating a dividing line to separate 'family' into 'me' (Torvald) and 'you' (everyone else). He manipulates Nora into thinking she's the selfish one for leaving the kids, even though Torvald doesn't give a second thought of them, doesn't even consider them his own. Where is the justice in that? The 'honor'? The concept of a "real marriage"?

     The counterproductive conclusion of the whole story here is that nobody wins. The fact that Nora doesn't escape from her prison doll house shows that no change has happened, that Nora will revert back to her old ways despite her exposure to the benefit of knowledge and independence from the real world (through Dr. Rank, Krgostad, and Mrs. Linde). And, more importantly, the audience will see these three characters as villains for trying to break up such a 'perfect' marriage that the Helmers have. The message it sends is twisted in itself: 'keep living with me because I don't want to raise kids that aren't mine! And I like to control you!' Lastly, Ibsen's message of the struggle for individual freedom is completely lost in translation as Nora changes from a dynamic character to a static one. In the beginning of the play, she's a ditsy lost girl who does not know how to mother her children and happily submits to a husband who doesn't know any better; she climbs up the ladders of self-fulfillment and virtue, an arm's stretch away from the key to happiness and self-adequacy, at the end of it all she tumbles back down to the bottom of the cliff because she feels bad about leaving her children motherless, even though she isn't even qualified to be a mother.

To sum up my feelings, an equally fitting meme: http://img01.lachschon.de/images/155928_SadDoge_1.jpg

Alternate Ending:
http://ibsen.nb.no/id/11111794.0

¿Por qué no los dos?

     …comes the adorable reply of a little girl promoting the fabulousness of a combination of hard and soft-shell tacos in one box. It's funny, as I was fast-forwarding through the commercials to get to the real heart of the matter (an episode of Conan where he tries and helplessly fails at playing Tomb Raider, so he compensates by killing her as many ways as humanly possible), I stopped to look back at this long-forgotten product. As two older siblings fight tooth-and-nail to get what they really want for dinner (hard or soft shell tacos…an argument that my household has had the fortune never to go through), the smaller of the family of three, an adorable little girl, asks in Spanish, "Why not have both?" And while the party music plays in the background with the family celebrating in joy ("Feed your Fiesta!") my mind instantly shifts to Newland Archer. No, not because of some taco-induced tragedy that he goes through in the second half of the book. Fair warning-I'm about to go on a rant that may or may not reveal the ending. So for those who haven't finished the book, you've been warned.

     In truth, having the best of both worlds isn't always possible--with the exception of tacos, of course. As Newland Archer lives between two women, May Welland and Ellen Olenska, he figuratively digs himself a big and deep hole by wanting both women throughout pretty much the majority of the novel. What annoys me the most is his lack of future planning, of his brainless actions in wooing Ellen Olenska while wearing May Welland's ring. What did he expect out of this affair? What good comes out of being with Ellen as a married Welland man? In many scenes of the book his thoughts are just plain silly. There are notions of Newland wanting to run away from May and elope with Ellen, of sailing off to sea and never coming back…even of killing May so that his hook-up with Ellen will finally be seen as acceptable. His thought-process here is awful. Commit a crime--murder, per se-- to save face.

     But let's look deeper here, to see why he wants two women in the first place. There's the obvious; they're both foils of each other. Each carries a characteristic, trait, or personality that the other is absent of. May is a reserved, optimistic, rich, yet delightfully dull human being. She has all the requirements fulfilled to be the ultimate housewife, but she has the experience of a 3 year-old girl. Newland describes May almost as a slave to her own social class, claiming that "[t]here was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free" (160). Brought up by her mother, she exhibits her mother's ways of living as a stable house puppet of a wife for Newland. And her analytic, creative abilities? Forget it. She may be a straight shot with a bow an arrow at the Beaufort's annual Archery competition, but she'd also be the one who gave up against a bear attack, even with a bow and arrow strapped to her back. Thoughtless. She isn't driven intrinsically, by a desire to prove her worth; rather, she is a pawn of the social hierarchy, an outlet to produce and maintain the Welland family line.

     The other Welland--a classic attitude that many of the Wellands and Mingotts take on Ellen--is otherworldly and fantastic. Raised in New York, but inhabitant of Europe, she embodies the all-knowing qualities any travelled man should have. In terms of housewifery, she's a lost cause. She is an outspoken, down-to-earth woman who cuts through the superficial haze that the upper class created for itself. This is apparent in her criticism of New York. "It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country," (196), Ellen says, implying how conceited and unoriginal the American society really is, in contrast to what it claims to be. Her subtle yet hard-hitting jabs at the New York way of life irks the inhabitants of the city, and her family is no exception. She's lived through it all, and like the wise words of Tardar Sauce the grumpy cat, "I am not amused."

     And being the greedy, expectant man Newland is, he wants both. He craves some type of stability and comfort, of an innate need to fulfill even his own mother's wishes of going with the high society flow in marrying May (and he does). He loves the idea of 'teaching' May all the things he knows, to shape her and play with her like a doll whenever he feels the need. But this idea of her being a hollow case with nothing on the inside to show for it is what makes him turn to the other woman--Ellen. He consequently also wants an equal, a woman who shares his interests in traveling, exploring, and admiring the arts. Ellen would be a perfect fit here, regardless of her sex. Newland doesn't care for other people's family business or clothes (like Jackson or Lefferts), and for this reason we see that he doesn't have many friends to begin with. So when someone like Ellen walks in, a beautiful damsel in distress and an intelligent human being, it's not surprising that he feels an instant attraction towards her. So which woman is the perfect one for him? I can't be sure. Newland is too complex of a character to really love May regardless of her faults, but he is also too rigid in stature to really love Ellen, including her gutsy attitude. And with that note, I believe that neither woman was a good fit for Newland. The fact that he kept jumping between the two women means (to me, at least) that neither had all the qualities he desired in a partner, so he couldn't have been happy with either one. Sadly, he's too blind from puppy-love with May and admiration with Ellen to really open his eyes. His saving grace is found in his children, specifically his first-born, Dallas. If he can't fulfill true happiness, at least teach to his offspring who can, right?

     When the little girl in the TV asks, "¿Por qué no los dos?" I shrug and say that sometimes having two good things isn't always the best idea. Newland tried to have both, and look what happened to him. He nearly drove Ellen out of the country (and she later does, but on her own will--a loss for Newland). His life with May isn't exactly depressing, but he never expresses gratitude and happiness for his wife besides a reserved and self-taught affection. Has he fulfilled his purpose in life? Does he have regrets? I'll leave that for Newland to decide when he sits on the bench and stares out at Ellen's Parisian balcony, years and years later. As for me, I will continue fast-forwarding until I see Conan flail his controller around.

Taco Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqgSO8_cRio

Conan 'playing' Tomb Raider (a bit inappropriate, but it is Conan after all): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCe8-1dbXZc