Bruke's English Journal

The sunlight touches everything and gives it a warm embrace. The air has a perfumed scent and the seats are plush. Every surface is dustless. All the polished metal shimmer as to demand your touch. You walk to the seats and sit. The impact of your rear is completely absorbed by the light green cushions. The second phase of sitting down is almost as pleasant as the first. Your back falls into the padded chair. The chair fits you perfectly, you were made for each other in the heavens. The nurses are nonchalant and they move with a serene purposefulness from room to room on their rounds. There are vases of colourful flowers and framed pieces of art on the walls. In the corridor is a burping water dispenser and in most rooms you can hear the noise of a television.

After a while, the horizontal lines of blended colours are all you can comprehend. The occasional pause of a doctor answering a query from a lost guest attracts your attention and you are drawn. The exact words spoken are beyond you since your mind is full of its own words; work, time, food, responsibility, care, school and on. The sanitised, spilt tea free, table possesses a few too many magazines. The glossiness of the all the covers reflects the sunlight onto a no-longer empty wall, filling it with reason and purpose. You flick through the books thoughtlessly, aimlessly looking back at the previous magazines.

An appealing voice calls out a name, it is yours. You are comfortable where you are, everything is fine. To stand makes no sense. Why step into unpredictable darkness masked by promises and pamphlets? Yet you begin to leave the grasp of the chair, the chair trying its absolute hardest not to let go. You fight it. You are up. There, you hear the voice again; it comes from the other side of the hall. A stampede of doctors, nurses and patients block the ever-growing distance from the voice.

The first steps are always the hardest, if only that was true. Every step you take becomes more difficult than the last. The sunlight becomes harsh on your eyes. The sounds that didn’t concern you become noisier. The sweat dripping down your forehead collects at the tip of your nose. You have all the time to wipe it but you don’t. Silence, only broken by the inevitable droplet of anxiety that falls and shatters, hitting the ground.

Your vision returns, the contrasts dimming down. The constant tears. The uninterrupted beeps. The endless crying. The perpetual cheers. No longer constant. Time stops and starts without hesitation. You doubt your understanding of the present and it has become futile to try. Your senses are returning to normal, but not completely. The softest cry you have ever heard resonates around you. There, in her arms, nature’s product of true love. Perfection is a rare sighting for most men who live on earth, yet you, you have perfection in front of you.

The subtlest of breezes comes in through the gap in the window, which sweeps and carries your pains away. The calm whistle of the wind clears your mind, as the first laugh of your child paints a new image in your once troubled mind. Your face reflected on theirs. A more vibrant you, a more caring you, a more loving you. You stare at this precious little angel. Your hands quiver as you slowly reach down to touch their little fingers and feel the softness of their skin. You run the tips of your fingers gently across their smooth face. You fall in love.

You regain all your senses, but they are different. You find the burping water dispenser meditating. You appreciate the sun illuminating the room, you can see clearly. You are happy.

Genesis 2:7 – “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Personification – How has personification been used in this poem to enhance meaning? Why?

Owen uses personification to present to the naivety of the speaker. ‘ Gently its touch awoke him once’. The speaker is referring to pre-war, when the dead soldier would wake up in the morning due to the Suns beams. The Sun is being personified as its touch is what awoke the soldier. Of course this is not the reason we get up, but without the Sun nothing will be. The speaker believes that the Sun is what ‘awoke him once’ so it can do it again.

They are asking God to bring back life into the fallen soldier. God and the Sun allows seeds to grow into plants, and even let there be life on  Earth ‘cold star’ . With this power to give life, the soldiers believe it is possible for the Sun to give life again. This is there naivety. At the end of the end of the poem the speaker’s anger is directed at the futile Sun. ‘O what made fatuous sunbeams toil, To break earth’s sleep at all?’ The speaker is questioning the point of the Sun giving life if all that humans do is destroy each other.

In stanza one the Sun is described as “kind” and “old”, its warmth ancient and affirming, as if it were a God. The idea of reviving the fallen soldier could be a metaphor for finding comfort in religion. In stanza two however the tone changes, they start to question the Sun’s power which disproves the idea of looking for comfort within religion. ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ The biblical idea that God sculpted us out of clay is implied in this line. The idea of the sun making the world can be linked to the way God created the world in seven days, in the bible.

After Caesar is assassinated by the senate, Anthony shows a front to the conspiritors to make sure they don’t kill him. ‘Fulfil you pleasure’ Anyhony tells them to do as they wish and that he want stand in their way ‘ if you beat me hard ‘ if they have a grudge against him because he was Caesar’s ‘arm’.

When Anthony is alone he feels guilty for being ‘meek and gentle with these butchers’

‘This Flesh is mine’ is a play written by Brian Woodland. In the play Brian interlinks two stories into one play. The story of Achilles, the greatest Achaean soldier and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Brian seamlessly changes the setting, noises, costumes, ect. to tell us the story of a great Greek soldier who refused to fight for a king and wished to exit war. The story of the Achilles and the Trojan war falls under the category of myth, while we know the  middle eastern conflict is true. But in 3000 years it may also become just legend.

After World War 2, the Jewish survivors of the holocaust wanted their own country, to have a Jewish state like the Arab states around the Middle-East and Africa. They were given the large majority of Palestine by the allies of the war. They weren’t welcomed by the neighboring countries (e.g. Jordan and Egypt). The Jews felt like this was their original home and that they were always supposed to be there. Tensions rose. In 1948 the Arabs and Israelis went to war because five Arab nations invaded territory in the former Palestinian mandate as soon as the announcement of the state of Israel independence on May 14, 1948. The war concluded with Gaza under the control of Egypt and the West Bank under the control of Jordan. The Palestinians fled to these locations, from what is now Israel, for safety.

After another war in 1967 Israel took control of the Gaza strip and the West bank, While the majority of the Palestinians were still there. Israeli troops stayed there for years. Israelis hoped they might have been able to exchange the land they gained for the Arab countries’ recognition of Israel’s right to exist and end the fighting. Israel finally left in 2005, however soon after a ‘terrorist’ group called Hamas won elections with the ideology of taking back what was originally their home. Hamas uses violence to achieve their goals. As a result to Hamas attacks, Israel created the blockade,2007, that stands till today to prevent Hamas from gaining weapons and to prevent attacks. The blockade also stops imports and exports drastically effecting the living conditions for the civilian population.

The second part of the interlinks is the Trojan war with Greece. The history of the war is mixed with myth and fact. This is evident in the most supported reason why the war began. It started as a way for Zeus to reduce the increasing population of humans and. The more practical reason, as an expedition to reclaim Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon. Helen was taken by the Trojan prince Paris as his prize for choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess in a competition with Athena and Hera to win a single golden apple. Menelaus and the Greeks wanted her back and to avenge Trojan impudence.

A Greek tragedy entails a tragic plot based upon myths from the oral traditions of archaic epics.(where the story has a theme of grandeur and heroism). Usually you would have a man with great power and significance or personal qualities, fall or die due to his inability to deal with an uncontrollable circumstance or through the combination of a personal failure. We see how Achilles deals with grief, rage and war. During the play we witness the downfall of Achilles eventually leading to his death.

The scene I have selected to perform is Act 1 Scene 9. I believe this scene is the point at which the audience knows the Achilles is on the down fall. The death of Achilles’ closet friend, in some interpretations his lover, Patroclus, simply made him angry. However during the scene we see Achilles blame himself because his feud with Agamemnon was the reason for Patroclus’ death. At the end of the scene Achilles seals his own fate by thirsting the blood of Hector, Patroclus’ killer (‘he merely dealt the final blow’). Achilles accepts the fact that he will die if he kills Hector, but he is overwhelmed with rage that he has to do what he thinks is necessary. I feel that the transitions in grief would be interesting to explore in the performance and the moment Achilles snaps into realization that war is inescapable and if you try those closet to you pay the full price. Achilles’ attempts to exit the conflict are futile, he is a warrior and warriors only know war. I also believe that Ajax and Phoenix represent Achilles’ conscience. They are true characters beloved by Achilles, however they can also symbolize the questions running around the crazy mind of Achilles.