Choose one of the following to answer. Please post your response by Wed., March 9, 4 p.m.
1) Describe the relationship between the straight and parenthetical passages in Martha Gellhorn's "The Third Winter." In other words, what is the function of each and how do they function in relation to each other?
2) Analyze an instance of Gellhorn's use of metaphor or simile. Include why she choose this image and whether or not it works and how or why.
16 comments:
1) Describe the relationship between the straight and parenthetical passages in Martha Gellhorn's "The Third Winter." In other words, what is the function of each and how do they function in relation to each other?
I believe the point of the parenthetical statements is to include historical information relevant to the story, but which strays off course from the conversation she is having with the Hernandez family. It appears to me like they are flashbacks, or a separate timeline going on during the story, but they are used to further illustrate the conditions that the family is speaking of, as well as what this war was shaping up to be.
The first set of parenthesis goes into detail about the food lines that the grandmother is speaking about. She says how fights break out between the poor folks and then Gellhorn takes time to describe the conditions in full detail. It's more than just the food shortage. People fear for their lives, because of the chance of bombings happening at any time. She uses these paragraphs to tell how these people live in fear and are practically starving.
She continues speaking with Mrs. Hernandez, and two of her children. She says how this war will make Spain a better place, then the second set of parenthesis talks about the political conditions of a changing Spain. In the first paragraph she says how this is the third winter of the war. The army started as a civilian militia but she says they "became an army and looked like an army and acted like one." But in this separate chain of events she describes what she sees the way she sees it, which is much different than Mrs. Hernandez. She sees a troop of young brutes, who at one time where lawyers and med school students who were "reduced" to the life of a grunt getting in gunfights.
The third set of parenthesis talks about a hospital Gellhorn visited and her interactions with some of the children and the nurses. It gives more insight into how the food shortages and the bombings make the citizens lives a living hell. It really shows a first-hand interpretation of everything the reporter is being told by the family she is interviewing. It backs it up, but also gives breaks in the story.
Lola Hernandez talks about the opera, and then the next parenthesis talks about the culture in Barcelona (including the opera). Basically the function is to give cultural insight, as well as pertinent facts that explain and further drive the point of the piece. It is an interesting way of using an interview in your writing. But it is also a way to include a lot of your own experiences, and the experiences of your interviewees.
Reading through Martha Gellhorn’s The Third Winter, my favorite metaphor (at least, I think it’s a metaphor) actually comes in the second sentence.
“There was nothing much to drink; a sweet fizzy poison called orangeade and a horrible liquid supposed to be sherry.”
Focusing on the first part of the image, the toxic orangeade, I think Gellhorn was trying to be funny, and start the piece off on a whimsical note. Dealing with war, the piece is obviously heavy by nature, yet Gellhorn’s writing keeps the tone light but serious. Contradictory as that may sound, when reading it, I was able to picture just how bleak and scary the situation was, without being thoroughly depressed. Maybe that just says something about me as a person, but I’m going to blame Gellhorn’s writing style.
The image itself is hilarious. I actually laughed out loud. Orangeade is disgusting, and to hear it referred to as “sweet fizzy poison” is, in my opinion, a clever way to describe it. It also has a double meaning for me, as a diabetic, because that stuff is actually sweet, fizzy poison.
I think the image works for the piece overall because it draws the reader in. I read that, and immediately wanted to read more. Her writing style interested me, so I wanted to read on (which I would have anyway, because it was the assignment. It just helped that I actually enjoyed what I was reading!)
I liked the simile found on 427, where Gellhorn compares the children of the hospitals to toys. She writes, “The children looked like toys until you came closer-tiny white figures propped up with pillows, swathed in bandages, the little pale faces showing, the great black eyes staring at you, the small hands playing over the sheets.”
The simile seems to be doing two things. First, it shows how small the children are. Their smallness is reiterated by the phrase, “swathed in bandages,” which gives the image of an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. While children are small, babies, by comparison, are smaller. The image helps illustrate how the size of the children has been diminished by the war, malnutrition, etc.
Secondly, the simile helps us to see the children in context to the war. The word toy is an interesting choice on Gellhorn’s part. Toys are inanimate objects; things that are subject to our whims and then disposed of when we’re finished. By saying the children looked like toys, your mind associates them with something disposable. The war has taken some of the life from them; they are less animated now. I think Gellhorn wants to show how people become disposable or even insignificant in war. Individuals with names, families, hobbies, etc., become labeled as “casualties,” and immediately they become a little less real to people who are not directly affected. The simile helps to show this.
I see the parenthetical passages to be a memoir or flashback, always pertaining to the very moment she is experiencing in the Hernandez household. (For instance, Gellhorn reminisces to the hospital scene with the surgical and medical wards at the moment where Lola tries to convince her that her pale, weak infant was "a fine baby".)
Firstly, it should be noted that those passages are just as long–if not longer–than the dialogue or scenes that happen in present tense. What that indicates to me is that the content in the parenthesis should be considered at an equal level as everything else. I found that those passages were ultimately more informative about Spain's then-current socio-economic standpoint, and how the war played a significant role in those things. The parenthetical passages strategically delve further into an underlying message, or importance of what we are reading (That Spain's people were struggling to survive, while businesses based on, or supported by war, managed to succeed); without them, the impact would lessen. Without them, the story would only revolve around the Hernandez family, as opposed to the entire country's daily encounter with bombings, death and fear. The parenthetical passages are what translates one family's experience into a larger picture.
The simile that stood out to me the most was “The children looked like toys until you came closer—tiny white figures propped up with pillows, swathed in bandages, the little pale faces showing.” This particular simile appealed to me because I found the whole part with the children at the hospital to be the most emotional. The simile provides detailed imagery of the poor conditions of the children. They don’t appear to be real which is why the simile compares them to toys. It also portrays the terrible impact the war has had on their lives. They are pale and thin, which makes them look lifeless. They are “propped up” because they are weak and sickly. It is clear from the description that the children are greatly affected by what is happening around them.
The purpose of placing the straight and parenthetical passages next to each other is to make the story personally appealing, while also magnifying the total affect the war had on Spanish citizens. We see the baby who is sick in the house, based on the narrative, and then we get a passage explaining the mind-boggling numbers of how hundreds of thousands of babies are sick and deformed in the hospital.
Another example is the pride of the men in the Army. We hear the old father speak of his two sons fighting nobly for the war, talking about how his son came home 'and refused to speak of war'. Then Gellhorn gives us a passage explaining how the Spanish Army was originally a citizen militia, but has grown into a proud military, willing to die for their families.
I really like Gellhorn's approach, and believe they serve as a function to give a realistic account of the war, both historically and personally. We get fiction and we get facts, and when Gellhorn lays one on top of the other, it creates an almost cinematic image. We see the dark, intimate setting of the family in the house, and how each person is affected: the child, the mother, the father, the wife of a soldier at home. And then we also see the grand scheme -- the facts and figures; how the soldiers and the citizens of Barcelona are responding to the war. The whole story illuminates how every day life is just impossible to replicate during wartime, and how it negatively affects not only the soldiers, but the countrymen involved in the war. Literally, war deforms those born during it.
The simile that caught my eye was simple, though I believe it speaks a great amount about how every day citizens have to have a militaristic mindset during war. On page 424, during one of the parenthetical sections, Gellhorn describes how people get used to the sound of bombs and are able to tell whether or not they are close to them. If they hear a close explosion, "...they scatter for doorways or refugees. They do this professionally, like soldiers." I find that this simile is very strong and speaks a lot about how citizens must transform during wartime, and the change that everyday life takes.
The Spanish Army, one made up of citizens are now professional -- same goes to the people at home, waiting and listening everyday, wondering if a bomb is going to drop near them. The way that the people respond 'professionally' and 'like soldiers' gives an image of children stopping from playing games, the mothers stopping from shopping, all the run and hide like a drill. It's a frightening image, but it definitely is one that drives Gellhorn's point home.
Gellhorn's use of simile and metaphor in this piece creates a vivid and complete picture of her subjects. Each use also contributes to the atmosphere relevant to each setting she describes.
"Old Mrs. Hernandez nodded her head, which was like a fine worn wood carving, and made a little sympathetic noise."
When I read this the first time, I instantly got a picture of Mrs. Hernandez-- a small, olive-skinned face with well defined features and fine lines to commemorate her years. The image stuck with me as I read the rest of the piece, and could picture her speaking.
This simile not only contributes to the character of Mrs. Hernandez, but the attitude Gellhorn has towards her. She recognizes the stress of living during the war, as well as the strength the woman must have to have survived the conditions. I also think that it expresses a sense of wisdom and particularity about Mrs. Hernandez, that she has purpose in her movements (as each stroke in a wood carving would have purpose).
This simile is also ironic because Mr. Hernandez is a carpenter, and does not have much work because there is a lack of wood. I wonder if Gellhorn chose this purposefully to recreate the atmosphere of the Hernandez home, that it was earthly and certainly not extravagant.
The use of Gellhorn’s straight and parenthetical passages is unlike any other writing I’ve ever seen. I think what she’s trying to do is paint two different, but related pictures for the reader. In the straight narrative, she’s giving the Spaniards names and faces. By focusing on one family here, it has a real humanizing effect. As Vonnegut says, you have to give the reader to root for, and in Gellhorn’s work, you’re certainly rooting for the older woman. Also, she went into quite a bit of depth about the little boy, which really tugged on your emotions, i.e. when he was explaining that he would hide under the bed to stay safe from the bombs, and the older people in the room didn’t have the heart to tell him that would be useless; there was no better option, so they might as well leave him to believe that would protect him. Gellhorn’s focus on a select few helps you relate to the people she’s describing, and gives you people to sympathize with.
On the other hand, the parenthetical sections paint a larger picture of the suffering cause by the war. I think she save the best for last when describing the munitions factory. It’s sort of this unknown place, in the middle of nowhere that nobody really knows about. It’s almost autonomous from the rest of the world. She describes the horror of the sirens, that everybody has to go through on a daily basis in Barcelona; but these veterans (not literally) of war are so used to it, they calmly walk out to the wall and knit and gossip. She does this in other parenthetical stories as well, showing how hardened the people are by war. She does this earlier by describing how thin even the singers are, that people are going to see because going to the theater has become cheaper than food. To describe the city as a whole, as Gellhorn does in her parenthetical passages, gives the reader an idea of the grandness of the suffering. She also includes statistics, like the 200,000 children in a state of pre-famine, which shows the reader that its not just the one family that’s struggling – it’s hundreds of thousands. And that’s the beauty of using both the parenthetical and straightforward writing.
2) Analyze an instance of Gellhorn's use of metaphor or simile. Include why she choose this image and whether or not it works and how or why.
Gellhorn's uses many metaphors and similes throughout "The Third Winter." Many involve comparing something depressing, dying, or dangerous to things that are beautiful or child-like. My favorite of these was Gellhorn's comparisons while in the munitions factory. The explosive powder looked like sequins and the beautiful fabrics were used as bags for the explosive. These comparisons comment on times of war. "A thick white silk," which would have been used for a wedding gown any other time, is used to make pouches for explosives. The very dangerous powder is compared to something harmless and, practically, playful. Everyone is trying to distract themselves from the war. The women fight in the bread line to forget. People see movies and opera to forget "they are not safe, not safe at all." These comparisons mirror that wanting to forget. Seeing explosives as sequins is a way of distancing oneself from the war.
At first I didn’t even realize that one of the sections was in parentheses –I was at the end of a sentence and it ended in a parentheses, which made me go back to the beginning and realize three full paragraphs were in that same parentheses. I thought this was odd and almost confusing, but I realized that each parenthetical passage was important and related well to the straight passages.
One that I noticed and liked in particular was about the opera. In the straight passage on page 429, the speaker is asking Lola Hernandez about the opera, where Lola replies that she doesn’t like to go because she was afraid of missing her husband’s return home from war. “So now I stay home.” This specific passage was so moving and full of emotion – really capturing the suffering and horror of every day for those in and out of war.
The following passage is in parentheses, where the narrator talks about the opera and movies in general and how they are escape routes for those experiencing war. “…sitting there with something to look at on the stage you forget for awhile that you aren’t really safe, you aren’t really safe at all” (430). While people would be at the movies a bomb would fall in the distance and it would take awhile for the film to come back. I read this piece and just couldn’t believe it. But the movies, the opera, etc., was all that these people had. It’s all they had to get by.
So here, I think the straight and parenthetical passages work perfectly. First you have a specific person speaking and their story, and then the general story that shows what everyone is going through and how “you might even forget how hungry you are” (430).
I just feel that these passages are necessary in their formats in order to really exemplify the time period and what was going on.
"There was the seven-months-old baby with tuberculosis who did not notice and there was another child, like an old-faced doll against the pillows, who turned her head away" (428).
What makes Gelhorn's usage of metaphor work is how tight she keeps everything. She doesn't pick something completely random to show herself off as overly witty or anything, but she uses an image from a previous scene to draw comparison to a current situation. For instance, the one that I picked, she had just been noticing the playthings (or lack thereof) of the children in the hospital. And when the dinner cart comes rolling around, in a city where everyone is trying to eat, one child is like one of those inanimate playthings. Old faced.
This isn't the first time she's using this particular metaphor either -- she says that the children look like toys on the previous page. That's a part of why this instance works so well. It's the repeitition of an image, the sort of call and call-back, that sustains the idea throughout the piece.
I believe the relationship between the straight and parenthetical passages in Martha Gellhorn’s third winter is because she adds to the story by using the parenthetical passages to add historical information. These passages provide detailed information and show a wider picture of how the war is affecting the people, leaving a majority of the population hungry and fearful of being blown away by a bomb. The reader is able to grasp a broader understanding of how the population of the country is being affected by the war she describes the long lines and the people’s reactions to famine.
The straight passages throughout the novel represent the present time as these sections hold dialog between characters, illustrating how the conditions of the war are affecting individual families. The child is forced to stop attending school, despite his aspirations to become a mechanic because his family is fearful he may become a victim of bombings. Martha was very creative in the way she chose to present this story but both methods added context and meaning to the piece, making it very effective in its goal of informing the reader about a specific period of time.
Gellhorn uses similes and metaphors consistently throughout the story. I believe this coincides with Vonnegut’s rules for writing, specifically the rule about only including things that advance the action or tell us something necessary. Gellhorn is not using these metaphors to ‘beautify’ the story, but instead to help the reader comprehend how these people are living their lives, and sometimes this can only be done through a comparison.
A specific example is the last paragraph found on page 424. Gellhorn describes the food rationing with such vivid metaphor and similes that it is impossible for the reader to not be able to picture the image she is presenting. She compares the amount of rice rationed to the size of a pack of cigarettes and the amount of meat to the length and thickness of your finger. She compares everyday images with food that a reader has never seen compared before. It adds to the shock and severity of the situation that the persons of the story are in.
Yet these comparisons are so elegantly done that they do add a certain beauty and eloquence to the story. The reader cannot help but be amazed by how Gellhorn has the ability to discuss such a brutal topic with such poise and eloquence. I was amazed that a story about such horrific and brutal effects of war could use such beautiful metaphors and similes while still displaying the hard life these people had to live. For example the metaphor in the very beginning of the story on page 423,“and when we saw the bombers, they were like tiny silver bullets moving forever up, across the sky.” Such a simple simile is still discussing a horrific thing, war airplanes flying above their head as a constant reminder of the war, but by employing a simile to describe them as ‘tiny silver bullets’ helps readers who haven’t ever seen a bomber or know what one looks like, or what it feels like to hear or see one above them, understand what it felt like and how it looks. By describing it as something else instead of physically describing the planes, it helps to make the image sound less threatening, while still retaining the image of war.
I honestly enjoyed the first line of the whole story, which I believe is a metaphor. "In Barcelona, it was perfect bombing weather."
I really like this metaphor because it incorporates an every day saying into a witty saying about a time in a war-ridden place. It works greatly with the piece because the whole story is essentially about how Spainards really do not know whether a bomb will be dropped on their area or not. The only thing they can do is what makes them feel safe, like hide under a bed. I think this metaphor couples very well with the vignette about the opera and movie theater. People go to these things knowing all of the horrible things going out outside, but they attend the play or movie like everything is alright.
I will start by saying that I'm not fond of Gellhorn's prose. It's strange, and she changes tenses a lot. It's like, very stream-of-conscious but structured at the same time by the parentheticals. The parentheticals served their structural purpose but really annoyed and distracted me because I felt her writing itself was unstructured. I'm thinking the whole time, 'jesus, just pick one!'
Because of that, I'm going to answer the similie/metaphor question. I found that her comparisons were used in the way that I think professor Good wants us to use comparisons--they serve no other purpose than to further the image in our minds. These were not metaphors for the sake of clever metaphors, rather they used
imagery to help us picture what we couldn't see. At times, they weren't even clever. Like this one: "The factory looked like a series of cement barns, not connected particularly, and shining and clean and cheerful in the winter sun." There's nothing clever about "cement barns," except for the fact that it's pretty easy to picture what a cement barn would look like next to another cement barn, and it's pretty easy to picture cement shining in the winter sun. "cheerful" is probably the most clever part about that similie, because it's just a little confusing--how can a barn be cheerful?--but just a little. But I think she chose this image because that's just what it looked like. Not trying to be cute, not trying to be funny, just trying to further the image in our minds.
The metaphor that most struck me, though, seemed effortless as well but really made me cringe. She describes a soldier whose "fingertips were nailless pulp." Ugh! Euw! Nailless isn't even a WORD and it's nauseating. The fact that she said they "were" nailless pulp rather than saying they "were like" nailless pulp was even worse. I pictured the bottom of my orange juice glass balled up and stuck onto the end of my fingers, replacing my nails. I think she chose this image because it describes something as disgusting without necessarily evoking the image of something disgusting. Everyone in the Western world knows what citrus pulp looks like. It's a normal, every morning type of thing. But putting that image as the replacement for your nails is shocking, partially because "nailless" in itself is universally painful and partially because you've just never thought of pulp in that way. But it definitely works--Gellhorn has successfully ruined orange juice for me.
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