July 28th

I agree with Fanny's first perceptions from the poem The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, which are insecurity and exposure. Moreover, the line she cited: "APRIL is the cruelest month...” is very relevant to understand the suffering that this poet was feeling in that time, perhaps. As she explaines, this month is in spring in the northern hemisphere, which means flowering, love, happiness, lights, colors, and so forth. However, we can see that Eliot was not feeling the same deduction of the spring's meaning. And this can be explained with psychological terms due to some people suffer in this season because they do not find the flowering, love, lights and colors that most of people are living.
On the other hand, connecting this approach with the quotation, we can see that Eliot suffered with this issue, even though he was smart and had money to have whatever he wanted. Moreover, Eliot was critical to this destroyed world in the way of society and modernism which were in war. How can we make people understand that we have a beautiful world that we are losing because of individuality? How can we change people’s minds? Existentialism and individualism were the based on social issues. People acted without think about the consequences, even to analyze the possibilities to reach what they want without thinking in the other, quietly individual.
Therefore, wars exist. Having power to reach a social position to manage and make people suffer to control the world for what reason; for the reason of being naïve, guides people destruct the world without any sense of rationale.
There are many poets, as Eliot, who are shouting through their ways of expressions why we behave like this! What we gain from this! We do not understand that with that greed and ambition the only thing we will reach are the death, but not only mine.

T. S. Eliot

What a difficult poem to read! It confuses me. Its many voices make me feel to be lost sometimes. It is well-known this poem, The Waste Land, was written in a period among the two worst wars in the world and the changes of world’s economy. Obviously, these facts influenced so much in this Eliot’s work. It is really amazing to see how Eliot portraits these facts in this poem. But it needs lots of analyzing to catch these ideas.

First of all, we know Eliot was a very smart person, who studied many things related to science, history, philosophy, and literature, among others. Therefore, in this poem, Eliot mixed many concepts of these subjects in The Waste Land. However, what meaning did Eliot give to this title?

From my point of view, this title means the land that men waste in terms of men have missed a beautiful nature land to destroy it with wars, industries, pollution, cities, greed, and so on. Where is this land? This land is disappearing every day with humans’ neglects.

Nevertheless, there are some people who want to change and stop this destroying, as Eliot states in his poems, especially this one which war is highlighted. Thinking in changes and try to change this society is very difficult because this world is full of fears and insecurities. This is a constant fight as personal (thoughts) as social. It is really important to see beyond what are in front of us, trying to find the true. We have to analyze and question all things control us. I know what I wrote is very difficult to understand, but now I have more understanding of this poem and Eliot’s position.

The "Moneydernism"-Horse Winner

Money, money... This word has been the word that I have heard almost all the time in my entire life. People are so blind because of greed and ambition to have and have material things which at the end kill them. In The Rocking-Horse Winner, Lawrence states the story of a family who loses everything, even love because of money. My mother is always mentioning, “You don’t understand that without money we can’t eat, have what we want, things for the house, and so on.” Unfortunately, she is right. However, this is true due to this material world. Industrialism has made worse people rather than improving it. This is a very difficult issue. D.H Lawrence knew this so well. He lived it. He hated it.
Nowadays, love is in this system of ‘Moneydernism’ (I gave this name to this situation) . For example, you have to be in love of someone who has a good standard and high socio-economic condition, etc. why? Where are the others? This provokes me to fall in the deepest hopeless, and makes me more difficult the possibility to change this world.
Lawrence suffered because of materialism, modernism, individualism, and industrialism; so he wanted to show this problem in his works to try making changes in people’s minds.

VI WO: Gender Issues

I was always thinking about equality between men and women. Since I have memory, I have had problems with men and women’s differences. Machismo has been the main problem in my life. Therefore, after discussions I have always ended in my own room crying alone, thinking in the possibility of having more equality and fairness in my family. Possibility which hopelessly I have not found, yet. However, I do not think in equality where men would be mistreating for women to have more respect and make justice. My idea is having freedom, without discrimination and differences. Women and men have the same treatment; they must be equal from thoughts to action. But this is very, very difficult to achieve, due to there is a strong though and even feeling of machismo and conservadurismo.

The interesting thing is, since I read Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, I could find the words that I lost to explain what I feel and think most of the times about this gender issue. She portrays differences and possibilities of changes among us through this essay. For example, she creates a sister of Shakespeare, called Judith, who was a great artist and writer. But she was not so respected non famous by the audience because of her … as I have felt and seen in this life and its around.