Class
Discussion Notes: 9.17.2005
- (Eleanor) the questioning of God
results from a gradual loss that people might not even realize is
happening—might be more profound that they didn’t realize the lost and had
no last chance to grasp onto the dear friend
- (Laura) Biblical parallel to Jacob—Genesis
32:22-32
- What was Hopkins trying to communicate in his
“terrible sonnets”?
- (Eleanor) using poetry as an outlet
for emotional frustration- his words were very angry; ex: wretch
- Wrestling with God
- (Laura) translation
- Why the struggle? So he can separate
the good and the bad in himself or the strength from the weakness
- Agnostic- a person who doesn’t say
there is or there isn’t a God
- He’s appealing to God—even if he’s
questioning God, he’s appealing to him- would an agnostic do that?
- Ruskin
- A nature-guy
- One of the two main books in the 19th
century—represented “taste”
- An Evangelical Christian at one point
but he turned away from his religion because of science and exploration
- “harassed by the clinking of the
hammers”
- Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse by
Matthew Arnold
- visiting some place in the
mountains—standing outside of the monastery wishing he had the monks’
faith
- grande chartreuse- a liquor
- primary emotion connected to the
disappearance of God- despair, grief, melancholy
- “wandering between two worlds…”-postmodern
- William Butler Yeats
- “Things Fall Apart”
- According to many people, this
condition gets worst in the 20th century—how can you have a
dream of reason or progress after that?
- Faith in reason as controlling human
society
- “Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek In
pity and mournful awe might stand Before some fallen runic stone---For
both were faiths, and both are gone” (918)
- Historicism- the relativity of all
cultures, can never be sure (904)
- There are other religions with
validity, so we can’t be sure that anyone is the right one, so we give up
- (May) you have to create your own
meaning out of your own life because everything is relative—you build up
a society to fulfill all of your needs
- (Ben) with lots of faiths, we will
develop tools to deal with this interaction
- (Mitha) don’t we live in a society with lots of
different religions? But our discussion shows that one is always
dominate---when you realize there are so many variations, you come to
terms with the way things are
- (May) there’s an infrastructure of
values in American, but some people don’t even have to infrastructure so
everything is relative to them—wandering between two worlds
- (Laura) being around people of other
cultures makes you more perceptive of their beliefs
- (Rachel) recreating one’s world after
it has been shattered by the forces of life and you’re left with no
footing—“wandering between two worlds”—you might have no faith in
anything because the world is so new to you
- (Bump) how do you enter the mind of a
fanatic? Getting rid of disbelief
- (Laura) seek out what’s right but not
just for you—everybody can’t be right
- (Susan) there’s one end but so many
ways to get there
- (Puja) what’s right for someone else
may not be right for me—even the term “right” is relative
- (Anush) almost every religion says
that theirs is the only right one
- (Mitha) a lot of it has to do with the
society—Hindus in America—it’s
the way society tells you about your religion