Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

What a great line. Am I right? It's just a phenomenal line. Thanks Will. It's the bees knees.

It's what really good literature provides us: reminders of the fantastic elasticity of language. Images so clear they must have been carved out of bedrock. Phrases so subtle they recede before us like vapors, crinkling our brows into that frown that means: I don't quite get it, but I actually do, somewhere in the deep and pleasant places of my brain/heart/soul.

Got line? Share a favorite in Comments.

Up next: Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman, beware. We are headed your way next week, valises in tow, big foamy football-fan fingers waving in the wind.

A gentle reminder, gentle reader: we begin Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on Monday. Please have Act 1 read, thought about, and ready to discuss.

Guiding question: Is Willy Loman, i.e. a common man, an apt subject for a tragedy?

Our esteemed author has some thoughts on this idea, and we want yours as well.

Lesson #37

Never trust the milk sitting out on your counter.


Or the clowns ringing your doorbell. Halloween, indeed, gentle reader.

If I were writing the Grendel essay...

...I would discuss isolation, suffering, and the human position of such ideas as it pertains to my passage. Remember Auden, gentle reader, from Musee des Beaux Arts, when he posits that suffering, as it is observed by the old Masters (who are never wrong!) "takes place / [w]hile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along."

Suffering happens! It "occurs" (to graciously steal from a first hour student) without us caring, without us granting permission, without us.

Us includes Grendel. Suffering, like the rest of the world, doesn't ask for his permission. Doesn't consult him at all. And he doesn't like that. Doesn't know what to do with that fact. Like walls.

Consider this: Auden's poem, like Brueghel's painting, positions suffering and tragedy so that it is not the center of attention. Which means something else is at center. Like life. Normal, routinized, humdrum life. So when suffering occurs, while it may be at the center of your life, it's not necessarily...

You get the idea.

The Nature of Art, the Deletion of Gatsby

What would the world be like without The Great Gatsby? I am thinking absolutely here. If we took Gatsby out of the world entire, what would the world look like?

Would the world notice? Would it truly be impacted?

After all, there are other stories about the American Dream, other protagonists that go for it all and fail due to a tragic yoking to the past. Right? Nick Carraway doesn't corner the market on a friend who cares too little too late; Tom isn't the only jerk; Wilson not the only man swallowed by life's circumstance; Daisy isn't the worst (she is the worst, but for the sake of argument).

What makes Gatsby so blasted special?

Isn't it the very heart of the book, the very fact that Mr. Fitzgerald somehow captures, like bits of the Skittles rainbow, the essence of Gatsby's fantastic capacity for hope and somehow translates it onto the page, to stand as cool and poignant and refreshing as Gatsby himself?

Isn't it because, despite ourselves, we love Gatsby and also we love what props him up? Isn't it because of the hope?

We want hope. We want to know where it resides, how to get at it, what to do with it once we have it. The tragic component here, I believe, is the fact that Gatsby's hope fails him. Or rather, how he commends himself to life based on that hope fails him. Gatsby is a dreamer, a Romantic, a man in love trying to sustain the best parts of himself in a world that devours sustainability. Gatsby doesn't change, but, then, neither does his hope.

Yet as good as that sounds (and I don't know how good it sounds, not at all...), let us not forget, gentle reader, that Gatsby fails. He goes down. Hard. Life gets him. Tom Buchanan wins. Gatsby, and his life and his figurative goodness all get exploded by brutish acts. No shiny veneer then. The Great Gatsby is about the failed American Dream; it is about how Idealism is Naivety; it argues against the notion that a person can cling to good and make good happen. What then? Where do we go from here?

Shouldn't Gatsby be driven out of the world? It is a book of lies, of awfulness packaged in million-dollar wrapping paper. It is a book that causes hope. And hope is dangerous. Because hope is not sustainable. Right?

And so we beat on, ... oh you know the rest.

Suggestions for the Grendel Essay

So. You have to write an essay about Grendel. And then I have to grade it.

Make no mistake, gentle reader-writer, we are both in this thing together.

Allow me to provide you with a small list of suggestions. Tips to consider. Some of them are things to do; some of them are things to avoid. This list is not so much my personal preferences for how you should write this essay, but rather, data gathered from past essays.

For your consideration:

1. It's spelled G-R-E-N-D-E-L. Do not deviate.

2. John Gardner is the author of the book, not a character in it. So, avoid constructions that go like this: When Gardner says... or What Gardner is actually saying is...

3. Instead of those examples from #2, just try to discuss THEME, which causes you to use constructions more like this: With this dialogue, therefore, Gardner suggests... or These details imply [enter theme here]...

4. Grendel is the nihilist.

5. Albeit, not a very good one.

6. Beowulf is not. (Remember the walls, the hardness of walls? Sing of walls and know that Beowulf is not a nihilist.)

7. #4-#6 are non-negotiable. Because accuracy counts. Personal opinions do not.

8.  Do not generalize. There is no space for it. Your passage needs to be addressed. Specifically and exhaustively.

9. Your passage lives in a context. Be sure to build that context. Referring to important details elsewhere may be important, so long as those details are specific and you connect them to your ideas.

10. Respect your details. Remember, one point of analysis cannot contradict another point in your essay. Likewise, one idea that lives in your passage should not contradict another idea found elsewhere in the novel.

11. Quote often. And then be sure to elaborate on the text in the quote. Example: If you are going to quote Grendel observing that "Beowulf was insane" but then proceed to elaborate and never directly address the word "insane," then you must go back and revise. "Insane" seems like an important word. Treat it like one. Talk about the connotations, tone, and speaker's point of view. Then connect it to a theme. If you can do this, you are on your way to an A.

12. Edit, edit, edit. Remember, grammar matters. Many, many students submit papers with A content but C grammar and mechanics. That equals to somewhere in B-land.

Good luck. No accidents.

That doesn't sound normal, so now what?

#1: The man is sad.

OR

#2: Sad is the man.

Same words, different order. Which one sounds more natural? Correct, gentle reader, #1 is the winner. Man seems to be the natural subject of this sentence; sad, therefore, stands as the predicate adjective modifying the man. The man is sad. Check. #2 sounds, well, funny. Stilted. Not normal. Again, I get it. It sounds funny because the syntax is out of whack. Done and done. Well, now what?

Well, nothing, if you are the writer and your mission is to revise that sentence for clarity. I would strongly advice using #1 and moving on.

What if you are the reader/analyzer? What then?

In our most recent timed write covering Li-Young Lee's poem "A Story," the opening line reads:

Sad is the man who is asked for a story / and can't come up with one.

So there is more to it than the first four words. Still, I get it. My job is not to rearrange the word order but to observe it and analyze it. What I observe is that the syntax is funny. Or, more specifically, the syntax is inverted. More specifically still, the noun and the adjective are inverted. And so is the emphasis. Sad gains prominence because Lee leads with it. Sad is a word I need to pay attention to, with all of its denotative and connotative meaning. More on that in a second.

Actually, not more. Let's stop right here. We have noticed that the syntax is worth analyzing. This is a huge step forward. Also, we have recognized the function of inverting the syntax, which in this case is to draw attention to the word sad. Another huge step forward.

Where do we go from here? We read the rest of the poem, looking to build connotative significance from the context. A tall order? Maybe. But very doable, because we nailed the first steps.