Rob Handicott, Biblical Integration and Songs of Ourselves , Handout 5 Page 1
experience comfort and security in intimacy with God. Break my head means approximately bend my neck (a conventional gesture of humility); but Smith s phrase is a strikingly more evocative, radical description of what God needs to do with us personally (consider the connotations of break and head ). Do you think the references to Him convey strong Christian belief on Stevie Smith s part? Could a non-believer, to whom God is an invention of man to meet psychological needs, read the last four lines of the middle section as an account of what man (historically) has done, without necessarily implying God s objective existence? Could man s crying on God simply be another stage in human evolution and like the spring , have an ultimately natural, materialist explanation? Whatever your opinion, you ll probably agree that like so many of Stevie Smith s poems, this one is, in her own words, straightforward, but not simple ! In the final verse paragraph man swims upon the silt of death . Death is drowned; man, now a worshipper, can master it; he weeps for joy and amazement to find himself human (the closing line expresses the sense of wonderful discovery: I m just like a man. Hey, I am a man! Man has attained his ideal of himself.) Stevie Smith s vision of humanity is fundamentally optimistic (see Away, Melancholy on pp. 202-203); and, while her quirky, unconventional poetry does not sound at all like most sermons, her optimism seems based on a Christian faith fully aware of all the difficulties and objections raised in modern times but still mischievously hanging in there.
Quotations on Evolution relevant to A Man I Am by Stevie Smith
... since mankind first emerged from among the great beasts and knew himself. From the Proclamation of the High Executive in Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy (Eerdmans), p. 40
the evolutionary doctrine that what we call badness is an unavoidable legacy from our animal ancestors. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Fontana), p. 54
Rob Handicott, Biblical Integration and Songs of Ourselves , Handout 5
Page 2
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
The book, Last Man Out by Mike Lupica, is a very unique book and I would recommend it to anyone who loves sports, especially football, to read it. The setting of this book is in present-day Boston. The main character is Tommy Gallagher, a 12 year-old boy who loves to play football. The rising action of this book would be that Tommy’s father died because of a fire at a house that he was called to. Because of this Tommy’s sister, Emily, stopped playing the sport she was so good at. Tommy tried to persuade her to keep playing. Tommy kept playing football and kept making…
- 641 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
“It’s Your Ship” was an excellent book about leadership, however, I do believe it has its own particular of leadership style, since it was coming from a naval officer perspective. I really had to dig into my brain it relate instance to what they were discussing in the book. Captain Abrashoff did make point within his book that spoken volumes to me but some of his leadership a lot of leadership cannot do because of shaming within the profession community, rules of law or it can be illegal for someone to do.…
- 92 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” is a short story about the connection between one’s soul and life. The story centers around Hulga (Joy) Hopewell and the life-changing experience she has with a traveling Bible salesman (Meyer 265). As a whole, “Good Country People” shows how a person’s point of view can affect the experiences they have. At the beginning of the story, Mrs. Hopewell (Hulga’s mother) has a positive experience with the Bible salesman.…
- 346 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The short story, “Good man is hard to find” revolves around a typical American family in which the main characters are the “grandmother” and the “misfit”. The story by Flannery o Connor portrays a glimpse of what’s man reality is. The fiction reveals the usage of religion and beliefs for humans own satisfaction and how “good” differ from the “bad” which are both paradoxical opposites of each other. The writer used a title which seems very ironic and an extensive use of symbolism can be observed in the story. The story opens when a family sets out for a vacation and the children, mother and the father are accompanied by the grandmother who seems to be very annoying old woman for the rest of the family.…
- 953 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
The poem “Last Night” by Sharon Olds is a short poem about a fear of sex without…
- 219 Words
- 1 Page
Good Essays -
In the reading “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, the author describes his own experience of how kids and himself were treated by society during his childhood for being part of a different background. In the reading I noticed how the author shows us ways that he has become the person he is by the influence of his family, particularly his dad who sparked his passion toward reading books. In my essay I implemented an additional family factor other than my father and sister; I included my brother. He impacted how I treat people that are constantly looked down by society. In addition, I have grown from my brother’s death and as an effect I have matured as a person and a writer.…
- 302 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
“At a deeper level, Dr. Moreau suggests that man himself is an abomination who must fight their basic instincts. Just as Moreau’s beast-men struggle to avoid reverting to their beastlike natures” (Lightman Introduction). [From Bantam Classics reissue edition 2005]…
- 1569 Words
- 7 Pages
Good Essays -
It's important to recognize yourself as a writer before beginning to project yourself to an audience. As evident by the papers read recently in class and every English 101 course you hear about, the literacy narrative serves as any writer's introductory assignment, and it is rightfully so. The project is to analyze how literacy has been shaped by exploring reading, writing, and spelling struggles or triumphs from your past. Famous authors may use this to help their audience get to know them, but college students striving to fulfill a core requirement can use it to help better themselves as writers. Whether it be an untraditional means of education, an outspoken minority, or a "door breaking" point of view the topic appeals to an audience as it delivers the promise of understanding the author and whatever other topical issues the narrative brings along with it.…
- 821 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
-we must not consider man as he is now, deformed by society, but as he was in nature.…
- 17156 Words
- 69 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Pride is a tough thing to swallow. Everyone wants to be the best they can be and never be wrong, yet that isn’t how life works. People have good pride, which is the pride that shows confidence, success, and wisdom while bad pride shows arrogance, ignorance, and self-deceit. Mathilde, In “The Necklace”, by Guy de Mauspassant shows her bad pride through her dreams of living the high life similar to The grandmother in “A good man is hard to find” by Flannery O’Connor, which highlights the grandmothers manipulative and controlling ways. Although the stories are in different settings and different time periods, they both are able to clearly show the bad pride that both the grandmother and Mathilde have throughout each of the short stories.…
- 845 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
In the book, Bad Boys, Ann Arnett Ferguson goes on a three-year journey through Rosa Parks Elementary School to observe and research why it is that mostly black males are ending up in jail and are unsalvageable from such a young age. She interviews and observes daily interactions with the eleven and twelve year old students that have been labeled “at risk” by their teachers and peers. She wants to research how it is being in school when all of the educators have already labeled them as “unsalvagable, at risk, and bound for jail”. These kids pretty much act in the way that their teachers treat them. They get into trouble every single day and most of the times these boys provoke it because that’s how they think there supposed to act because they think they are already going no where in life. At such a young age, these boys, just because they are black, shouldn’t be criminalized and put in a different category than other boys. These children faced many challenges that effected how they learned in school, the way teachers and peers treated them, and how they are labeled as bad boys. Ann Arnett Ferguson said, “in the course of my study it became clear that school labeling practices and the exercise of rules operated as part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolate black male youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined”(page 2). This means that the educators didn’t really realize they were doing this and labeling these boys but it was more like a tradition and they saw nothing wrong with it. This is purely based on race and obviously some people are still in the mindset that black people are inferior to white people. Bad boys show black males from a very young age being adultified and become very masculine making them becomes part of the criminal system early on.…
- 1406 Words
- 6 Pages
Powerful Essays -
In the argument,”Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth, the author herself talks about her true life events during the slavery era. During the early 1900s, America endured a time of slavery where blacks were owned by whites and discriminated against for years. Black men during the early 1900s; were able to speak to their owners, establishing rapport and in return received better treatment than black women. Women during those times, black or white, were not able to vote or hold highly respected positions in the community. Although discrimination was directed towards blacks and women, black women specifically endured far more discrimination from both Caucasian men, and black men.…
- 661 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
"A Boy Named Sue" My daddy left home when I was three And he didn't leave much to ma and me Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze. Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid But the meanest thing that he ever did Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."…
- 610 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In the novel Keeper 'n Me by Richard Wagamese, he shows the importance of family and culture as a healing process in self-knowledge. The development of self-discovery is based on the world around, what is seen, heard, experienced etc. Learning about one’s self is about individual experiences, it is not something that a book teaches. Pursuing life first hand is the only way to learn about self-discovery. Garnet being alone for so long, leaves him unhappy and feeling meaningless, not having anyone to connect to. Every foster home Garnet’s been to never feels like home, he is always shut out or made fun of. He could not discover who he is as an individual being surrounded by negative energy. Being thrown in jail was a turning point in Garnet’s…
- 1508 Words
- 7 Pages
Good Essays -
My heart darkened, my bitter rage kindled against an entity I could not comprehend. Every iota and facet of my existence was allocated to survival, every last myofibril of every muscle to push against adversity. I was an unctuous servant of my flesh, a man who rode on the high tide of barbarism to fulfill the basic principles of survival of the fittest. But even Darwin was a man, a faithful citizen of his own laws. Men of science, who boast their Hardy-Weinberg logic like zealous preachers of clandestine religion eager to gain political fervor, claimed that Natural Selection was a mechanism that perpetuated traits most conducive to environmental pressures, but I beg to differ. It is serendipity, it is fate, and it is happenstance. And oft I wonder, why should I be the one to abide, what have I done to endure the destruction of the world and be impervious to age by the infinite passage of time? If only longevity was as humanity hoped it to be. My words are lost in the wind, my works wrought by mine own hands calloused with grief inaudible over the devil’s laugh. I was incompetent, my mind dissolved by apprehension and anxiety into an acidic broth of pain and confusion. The more I learned, the less I knew, the more arrogant and…
- 459 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays