A Blog of Ice and Fire Part 2: The Series

Now for the fun part.  The rating for Game of Thrones on IMDB (a 9.4 out of 10) to me is a load of bollocks.  I know that for any adaptation of a book the adaptation is never better, but HBO being HBO focuses on the wrong aspects of A Song of Ice and Fire.  You know its bad when scenes are added that never actually occurred.  Even worse is when scenes are not as epic as in the books (the wildfire scene for example).  Long story short, I have to look past the nitty gritty details that are omitted or done the wrong way.  However HBO did butcher an entire character story line (if you watch the show you'll understand).  Ok I'm done with the ravings of a mad man.  The show is actually very good and deserves praise, but it is not as good as George Martin's series.

Let's start with the characters.  The actors play their characters well.  That is one of the aspects of the show I appreciate.  Peter Dinklage was the perfect choice for the Imp.  Sean Bean as Ned, priceless.  The greatest part about the casting is that many of the names are unfamiliar.  Rather than know the actors, viewers get to know the characters they see on the screen.  So instead of watching the show just to see a bunch of familiar actors that people only see as actors, the characters, I hate to use this expression, come alive.

Another part of the show that I liked, especially in the first season, was how lines were taken verbatim and incorporated into the screenplay.  That made it more authentic even though the show deviated from the books in several ways.  Even some of the lines that were not in the books originally were very good.  Most of Tyrion's lines were not from the books but were funny.  So even though plot wise the show does not follow the books as much as I would have wanted it to, Game of Thrones makes up for it with an entertaining title sequence and a very accurate depiction of the setting.

I have to discuss the theme sequence for the show.  It won awards!  I have never seen anything quite like it.  Best part about it, the sequence shows each major setting for that particular episode.  Ingenius!

So there are great things to be said about the show Game of Thrones.  However, it should not have focused on the explicit nature of A Song of Ice and Fire.  I know they needed the fanbase, but that was where it deviated the most.  Because HBO focused too much on minor points that were probably inconsequential in terms of the big picture, the important parts of the plot had to be changed and certain parts now don't flow.  That being said I recommend watching the show AND reading the books.  It's cool to see what HBO does in terms of depicting the major scenes that George Martin created.  I can't wait for both the show and the books to be done!                   

A Blog of Ice and Fire Part 1: The Books

I don't know where to start when talking about George Martin's yet-to-be finished series A Song of Ice and Fire.  There are so many different story lines all happening simultaneously and all of the characters are described in great detail.  Put it this way, the soon-to-be seven-book series dwarfs A Tale of Two Cities (another name for the series could be "a tale of too many cities").  Surprisingly, one of the things I like the most about the series is its complexity.  All of the important characters are portrayed in such a way that one can visualize exactly what's gone on for them (except Rickon Stark, but he probably becomes important later).  I didn't need the series Game of Thrones to show me what the characters looked like or what they did.  Actually the show mucks up the plot (to be discussed in next post).  Long story short, I fell in love with the series after the first two or three chapters of A Game of Thrones, book one in the series.

As I mentioned before the complex nature of A Song of Ice and Fire is one of the reasons why I love it so much.  Every time I read a new chapter I'm forced to review it in my head and at the same time figure out how it fits in with the rest of the plot.  Furthermore, it makes me want to try to find out what happens next by looking up the characters online.  That's when I start cursing "A Wiki of Ice and Fire" for its lack of spoiler alerts.  This shows how expansive the books are.  There's a wiki devoted just to the unfinished series.  I know Lord of the Rings is even more involved in its character development, I think A Song of Ice and Fire contains more scenes and more parallel stories.  What's even better about the books is that these plots are interwoven.  Just like in Faulkner's As I lay Dying the chapters are named after the person narrating the story, and there multiple perspectives on a single event.  It was cool to read more books of the same structure because I enjoy that kind of setup.

I should probably try to broach the plot without spoiling it (very hard!) since that is another aspect of the series I like.  To avoid the spoiler alert problem I'll just discuss characters and I won't say if they are living or not (George Martin is the best character killer thus far in my opinion).  If you've been watching the TV series none of this will be new.  My favorite character is Tyrion unsurprisingly (Peter Dinklage is the man!!!!!!).  As the dwarf in the series, no one but prostitutes like him.  I root for him every time I open up my Kindle app on my itouch.  He has the best lines and the best inner thoughts.  One of the only things the show did right was him.  He has everything I want in a title character in that he has substance.  You joke with him, cry with him, and get angry along with him.  Kudos to him for being able to put up with Joffrey (biggest tool ever!!!!!).  Also he has the best japes (I had to use Martin's word for jokes).  That's what keeps my attention going in the show because I want to know what Peter Dinklage will say next as Tyrion Lannister. 

I could go on for longer about the awesomeness of the Imp, but I can't not talk about Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean is awesome).  What to say.  Ned Stark is the epitome of honor and truth.  Unlike the devious nature of Varys the eunuch or Petyr Baelish, Ned is a good guy in that most everything he tells his six children is morally correct in terms of the time period ("he who passes the judgement should swing the sword" is a great example).  There is no one quite like Ned because he is loved by many but also is very hardened ("winter is coming" greatest motto ever).

Now onto the devious characters because I have to talk about Varys and Petyr Baelish.  These two members of the King's council are the smartest men in the entire series.  However their practices make them seem like bad guys even though Varys says he does everything he does for the good of the realm.  On the one hand you have Lord Varys the master of whispers who seems to know everything about all of the current happenings in the series.  He comes off as cryptic and all-knowing but some characters believe they have him on their side.  In reality he works for himself which is his greatest characteristic.  He is one of two Jay Gatsbys in the series.  The other is Lord Baelish, or Littlefinger.  An economics wizard and a master negotiator, Littlefinger started from nothing and by his own efforts became one the meanest intelligent characters in A Song of Ice and Fire.  I think its interesting that he makes most of his money through his brothels in King's Landing.  The best part about these two masterminds, however, is the fact that both of them have devised plans to rule the realm indirectly.  Littlefinger needs lands, riches, and an army, and it is unsure what Varys needs to do but clearly he has tricks up his sleeves.

In any case, A Song of Ice and Fire in my opinion is a great series.  It's complex, mind-blowing, and very very addictive.  You will get sucked into it at the very beginning.  If a TV series that doesn't accurately depict the books earned a 9.5/10 on IMDB's ratings, a rating that very few movies can come close to, then it has to be an amazing set of books.  On top of that it's not even finished yet!  Right now I'm starting book four out of the five finished ones and I can't wait to read about what happens next.  In closing, A Song of Ice and Fire is worth reading!                                    

A Long Overdue Post: My Thoughts on The Godfather

I'm surprised I even remember the amazing experience of reading Mario Puzo's The Godfather.  It's been a couple months since I finished it and I didn't get around to posting the many things I liked about it due to the third quarter's poetry blogging.  I enjoyed reading W.H. Auden and having to break down his works, but I ended up forgetting to write about The Godfather.

I don't know where to start because nearly every part of the book was great in its own way.  I will definitely use this on the A.P. Lit exam's open-ended question if I can.

Like most people I saw the movies ( the first two; the third one doesn't count!) before reading Puzo's book.  They were truly great movies (the first one was number 3 on A.F.I.'s top 100 movies), which convinced me that the book they were based on must be great too if Francis Ford Coppola was able to make two landmark films out of it (it helped to have Puzo as his other screenwriter).  That was what got me started on the book and I was glad that I finished it because Coppola left many parts out, which makes sense.

The novel didn't seem like a novel at all, that was how good a portrayal of the Italian Mafia it was.  It is known that Puzo did base the book off of a Mafia crime family that did control New York in the early 1900's, but that does not detract from its awesomeness.  Sadly one of the aspects of The Godfather I liked the most was its graphic nature (the horse head in Jack Woltz's bed was crazy).  This leads me to discuss the killings.  This was the best part of the story by far.  Everything was described as if it really happened.

Even though I knew the plot very well from having seen the movies so many times, I liked reading the back stories of certain characters (Luca Brazi was not given enough time on the screen!).  It was also interesting to find out that most of the second movie was not in the book, but rather was created by Coppola and Puzo in order to continue Michael Corleone's story.  The text itself ends with Michael in Nevada with Kay and his children and one is unsure if things fall apart between them or not.  Without writing another book, Puzo uses The Godfather: Part II to show how Don Michael uses his power and to show what he loses by being a mobster.

Overall I love The Godfather because it never lost my interest as a reader.  I knew the entire story but was not bored even for a second.  All of the characters were well-developed and the narrator followed most of them until they died.  Even the minor characters were explored in just as many pages as the major ones.  I would recommend this book to all those that want a story with action, betrayal, and an unhappy ending.                      

Wrapping Up Auden: Thoughts on Love and Terminal Illness

Sadly I'm at the end of the rope for my discussion of the W.H. Auden poems that I plan to use in my paper for this quarter.  The final two works on the docket are "Are you There?" and "Give Me A Doctor."  I'm combining them into one post since they are short but sweet (if you think terminal illness is sweet).  While they are not extensive, they will in my essay help show the range of topics Auden broached (for "If I could Tell You" this means making the reader's mind explode).

Here is a link to "Are You There?":

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8493059-Are_You_There_-by-W_H_Auden 

Let's begin with the less commanding title.  "Are You There?" is one of Auden's "love poems."  I put love poem in quotation marks because these Auden poems are neither pick up lines nor verse based in Keats' mastery of the emotion of love.  For me "Are You There?" was more a statement of what love is for certain people.  Right off the bat, the first stanza engages the reader with two possibilities to examine: a person is either alone and forced to think about if they were in love, or a person is in love and forced to think on what would happen if they were alone.  Long story short, one is alone or in love.  While this stanza is good at hooking the reader, it presents the subject matter simultaneously (always good to kill two birds with one stone).  With your undivided attention, Auden then proceeds with a head-scratcher as his next verse.  I was unsure as to the precise meaning of these lines upon reading it and rereading it several times.  However, once I looked up simulacrum (line 6) on wikipedia, it made sense a little.  Simulacrum means "likeness" and is very connotative in that it could refer to an inferior representation of a person or object.  In an almost "ah hah!" moment, I figured that the purpose of the second stanza may be to show that dreaming of being with someone is inferior to actually being with that person.  Using the same reasoning, the third stanza shoots down Narcissus in an allusion to his tragic tale about loving oneself too much.  In a nutshell, the speaker states that it is not rewarding to be self-absorbed and that things are infinitely better when shared in the company of others.  The third verse concludes the first half of the poem, which dealt with love in general.  The rest of the stanzas look at love from the perspective of children and adults, and then they wrap up the poem with a few lasting remarks.  In compare and contrast manner, Auden explores the nature of love's development from childhood to adulthood.  The speaker does not seem satisfied with both extremes, which implies that balance (like with anything else) is in order.  The last stanza expresses this in the line, "Whatever view we hold."  In the most important part of the poem (more lines in this stanza than the rest), the speaker gives the reader an inkling of hope with "perhaps we are not alone."  This is the line that left me thinking.  Like in Auden's other works, he hits you with a final thought that may leave you cringing or in a contemplative state.

"Give Me a Doctor" also made me think long and hard.  Here it is reproduced for your dining pleasure:

Give me a doctor partridge-plump, 
Short in the leg and broad in the rump, 
An endomorph with gentle hands 
Who'll never make absurd demands 
That I abandon all my vices 
Nor pull a long face in a crisis, 
But with a twinkle in his eye Will tell me that I have to die. 

Now you may not have thought about this on first read, but after a few times, I picked up on the problem with the second to last line.  The preceding lines seem to fit for a woman doctor, but yet it says "twinkle in his eye."  This poem just got a little deeper (uh oh!).  On the literal level it's a day in the life for doctors in the in-patient ward of a hospital where a person (unknown gender) is terminally ill.  However, Auden messed with us in that we are unsure if the speaker is homosexual like he was or if the narrator is a woman, in which case the oddity was a false alarm.  In my opinion, the first possibility is more likely because Auden was known to have been a homosexual and this could have been a way to show that it is not a bad thing.  Back in his time, people did not easily "come out of the closet," which means that he would have to hide any message related to homosexuality deep in his poems.  I just thought that that was an interesting observation.  This is probably not central to "Give Me a Doctor," but it does make for some good irony.  Rather, I think the big picture purpose is to reveal insight into what it is like to be on the brink of death in a hospital environment.  You either have brutally honest doctors that crush patients with reality or the ones that plant false hopes of survival.  What the speaker seems to want is a middle-ground doctor, one that will tell him that he will die, but in the right way.  This goes for any terminally ill patient.  One must break the news in the correct way or else all hell breaks loose.  It's also shown that the looks of the doctor are important as well.  First impressions are everything!  What helped me understand this work was to put the images and personality traits in the first six lines together and see what they show about a doctor and then connect that with the last line.  Speaking of connections, I successfully related homosexuality to terminal illness.  Score!!

Anyway, I'm about ready to write this paper on a poet whose works I enjoyed immensely.                                                                            

One of My Most Favorite Lines in a Poem and Why

"Time will say nothing but I told you so."  I can't stop thinking about that line in Auden's poem "If I could tell you."  This work surprised me in that it evoked an emotion.  It forced me to reread it because I had never thought of time being personified in the way Auden did it.  Here is the poem for your dining pleasure:

Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

I would not believe it if someone told me that didn't make them stop and think.  The web page that I found this poem on had six pages devoted to people's reactions to reading it and you guessed it they all had nothing but positive remarks.  The strangest part was in my research on the poem I found that it was almost named "But I can't," a possible way to complete the actual title, "If I could tell you."

Overall I was very sad that I had to explicate this poem because like with anything else (jokes specifically) deconstruction is a fun sucker (sorry Jacques Derrida).  That's why in my annotation sheet on "If I Could Tell You" my useful critical approach was reader response.  The many comments on the work helped me to understand what others saw in it, thereby helping me pick out the important points.  Thankfully key lines wasn't an issue.  In retrospect before I began contemplating the line "Time will say nothing but I told you so," there were very few lines in poetry that really made me want to think on them about what they really meant.  I applaud Auden for personifying Time and making something similar to song lyrics based around it (nearly a conceit!).  He picked a metaphysical topic and kept my attention longer than the metaphysical poets could.

I can't wait to write about the merit of "If I Could Tell You" in my paper on W.H. Auden.                        

Auden's Very Own Public Service Announcement

Just got done reading through another Auden poem.  I was "hooked" after reading its title: "Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue."  Already one knows it has something to do with drugs ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" comes to mind).  After reading through it I got the impression that Auden had a bone to pick with cocaine and morphine, or addictive drugs in general.  However, the poem must have been written for a bigger purpose, but I thought it was interesting that the work read like a rhythmic public service announcement.  I'm not insulting anything about the poem.  It rhymed nicely and wasn't in a lofty language, which makes it easier to grasp.

The message the poem seemed to convey was pretty simple, but that does not mean a closer reading couldn't bring new insight to the table.  I think the main underlying concept is the impact that addictions have on people.  The common denominator in everything Cocaine Lil did  (and how she looked) was you guessed it snorting cocaine, which is very addictive.  The drug gave Lil some of the best experiences of her life from a social standpoint, but was her downfall just like using any other illicit substance.

Strangely enough as I was reading and rereading the work, the TV show "Breaking Bad" came to mind.  Walter White and Lil both lead lives centered around addictive substances.  An even closer connection would be between Lil and Jesse Pinkman, Walt's friend and co-conspirator.  Even though Jesse does not currently use meth, he was an avid user in the past seasons.  In comparing and contrasting Walt's experiences as a meth cook and Lil's experiences as a user, one sees how on both sides of the drug trade addictions can still be a powerful motivator.  I have not spoiled anything about the show.  As a final note on "Breaking Bad," I consider it great (IMDB gave it a 9.4 out of 10!).

In conclusion, "Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue" is on the surface a public service announcement, but a closer reading can show that it might be a statement on the impact of addictions and how they can lead ultimately to one's demise.                      

Why Auden? First Thoughts on His Poems

So I decided on W.H. Auden as the poet of discussion for my next several posts.  I wanted to know why Morrie Schwartz, God rest his soul, considered him his favorite poet.  After reading one of Auden's most famous poems "Funeral Blues," I figured Morrie liked the themes of life and death.  "Funeral Blues" could have been one of the poems Morrie liked because it expresses the deep sadness people experience after losing a loved one.  For Mitch Albom, Morrie was his north, south, east, and west.  That was why I chose Auden and I am glad I did because looking at "Funeral Blues" as a statement about death is only the tip of the iceberg.

"Funeral Blues" dues to its rhythmic nature has been used in songs several times and it seems like Auden wanted it set to music.  It rhymes in the standard aa bb like most songs and reads very naturally.  Within this simple setup lies a very profound message about the deep roots of true love.  The deceased person discussed in the poem must have been very important to the speaker if he was the narrator's north, south, east, and west (could describe Romeo!).  Furthermore, the narrator wishes that everything but the kitchen sink cease all activity in order to mourn the loss of the deceased.  This is where the iconic first line "Stop all the clocks" comes from.  That first stanza marks the denial of the truth that the world keeps going after someone dies, which can be problematic.  No matter, Auden shows the actual emotional reaction people have when they learn of a loved one's demise.  The second stanza expands on the ideas of the preceding lines, but instead focuses on the notion that people die every day and very few are recognized by the general public.  What Auden does is show this issue from the mourner's perspective, which is characterized by asking why society does not stop to sympathize.  The speaker discusses what ought to be when the opposite is true in reality.  Filled with grief and sadness, the narrator then goes on in the third stanza to express the gravity of his or her (not specified) love for the dead person.  An interesting thing happens in these lines.  Auden gives away a big portion of the poem's meaning.  In traditional poems (sonnets are a good example) a central message in the last few lines is built up to through the combined efforts of the preceding content.  Finally after the lamenting of the third stanza, the final four lines are a statement of the resulting depression due to the "hole" created by the deceased leaving the speaker's life.

Overall I really enjoyed reading and rereading "Funeral Blues."  Now I get why Morrie considered Auden to be his favorite poet.  He saw in Auden a person who was not afraid to talk about death and dying, which were (and still are to an extent) taboo.  I will be posting more thoughts on Auden's poems as I read them, and hopefully these thoughts don't turn into full-blown explications.