Trifles by Susan Glaspell

Explorations of the Text


1. What clues lead the women to conclude that Minnie Wright killed her husband?

The disheveled kitchen, the messy stitching on a quilt and ultimately, the dead bird in a box. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters see that these objects represent a warping of domestic life, they notice Minnie's probable state of mind and concluded the Minnie killed Mr. Wright.

The quilt serves to emphasize Minnie Wright's loneliness as well as the uncertainty of her domestic role. The unfinished quilt indicates her unsatisfied wishes for warmth and love in their household, as temperature again proves a convenient symbol for the happiness of the Wrights' relationship.

The disheveled kitchen and unfinished work tells that Minnie was being disturbed while doing her daily chores. Something serious must have happened to have stopped Minnie from doing her work. The dead bird, a canary, suggests that Minnie Wright killed her husband in revenge for the canary because the canary had a broken neck and Mr. Wright was killed by the neck.


2. How do the men differ from the women? from each other?

In the play "Trifles," in everything from the things they notice to the things they say, men and women behave completely differently. The men seem to have no time for the women and feel that they are focusing on the smaller and unimportant elements of the crime scene or the "trifles" as the name of the play states. Unlike the women, the men overlook the emotional implications of the unbaked bread, half-cleaned towels, and messy stitching on the quilt. The women however, see that these objects represent a warping of domestic life, they notice Minnie's probable state of mind and turn from outside observers of the crime scene to increasingly active investigators albeit their status as mere housewives as opposed to the men who are actual investigators.

Women in this play understand what life is for other women. The men completely do not understand. They assume that their way of solving the crime is the best way and are completely uninterested in all the "clues" that the women turn up. They are also completely uninterested in emotional response, which the women are in tune with. The men continues to look for the big clue and dismiss the women's methods knowing that they will never find anything that way. Even at the very end, when the men have found nothing, they make fun of the women once again.


3. What do the men discover? Why did they conclude "Nothing here but kitchen things"? What do the women discover?

The men as investigators did not find anything in the house. When the men observe the troublesome state of the kitchen, they immediately criticize Minnie's homemaking abilities and that is it. To them, the kitchen would hold no clue and they view it as a "trifle" as they proceed to investigate other parts of the house.

Unlike typical male crime solvers, however, the women of Trifles avoid the ruthless search for information that also characterizes Henderson and instead achieve their solution by the seemingly accidental observation of Minnie Wright's kitchen while simultaneously developing a desire to protect rather than condemn the perpetrator.

Susan Glaspell

 

Susan Keating Glaspell was born in 1882 in Davenport, Iowa. She graduated from Drake University and worked as a journalist on the staff of the Des Moines Daily News. When her stories began appearing in magazines such as Harper's and The Ladies' Home Journal, she gave up the newspaper business. In 1915 Glaspell met George Cook, a talented stage director. Together they founded the Provincetown Players on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Players were a remarkable gathering of actors, directors and writers. The troupe included Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Much of Glaspell's writing is strongly feminist, dealing with the roles that women play, or are forced to play, in society and the relationships between men and women. She wrote more than ten plays for the Provincetown Players, including Women's Honor (1918), Bernice (1919), Inheritors (1921), and The Verge (1922). In 1922 Glaspell married George Cook and moved to New York City, where she continued to write, mostly fiction. In 1931 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Alison's House, a play based loosely on the life and family of Emily Dickinson. Glaspell spent the latter part of her life on Cape Cod writing.

Adapted from http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/notread/author.html

A Date With a Literary Scholar, Refaat Alareer

Freshly Baked Souls by Refaat Alareer

As fire balls and sparks descend,
And the little ones rejoice,
Look up, and cheer, unable to comprehend,
Sooner than they expect
They will be blown
(It’s none of their wishes
If only they had known!)
And more freshly grilled balls of flesh ascend.
And fall on full dishes
And fill the boxes.
And the hollow minds.
The full bellies.
They look down. Rejoice. Cheer.
“Freshly baked!”
“Freshly baked!”
“Who wants freshly baked flesh for breakfast?”
“Throw me a piece. “
“Throw me  four.
I have just eaten but crave for more.”

***

The hearts are not hearts.
The eyes can’t see
There are no eyes there
The bellies craving for more
A house destroyed except for the door
The family, all of them, gone
Save a photo album
That has to be buried with them
No one was left to cherish the memories
No one.
Except freshly baked souls in bellies.
Except for a poem .

Mr. Refaat Aleer, a Palestinian poet (although he doesn't think of himself as a poet but a mere blogger) came to visit us in class on the 21st of October 2013. It was a great experience for us to have met such a bold and wise soul. It took him around 1-2 months of effort to reach Malaysia. He taught us a little bit about Palestine, its history and the current condition there.

Palestine from 1946-2012

It was surprising to find out how Palestine evolved over a short period of time. Some of his poems that he recited were If I Must Die, Over the Wall, And We Live On..., I am You and Freshly Baked Souls. His poems were all meaningful and although we were not able to fully relate to his poems as we have never experienced war, we were able to put ourselves in the shoes of the unfortunate Palestinians who are forced to face grief and misery every single day through his poems, it was heart-rending.

 Mr. Refaat also provided us with tips on how to write poetry. He started off with reading his poems from his favourite poet, John Donne. Also, practice makes perfect. Write and write. Read and read. Slowly, you will become more and more inspired and will start seeing details that will be useful in writing poetry.

Mr. Refaat truly is adore-worthy and definitely one of the people I look up to. Thank you for the eye-opening and worthful experience.

War Poetry

What is war poetry?

• Poets have written about the experience of war since the Greeks, but the young soldier poets of the First World War established war poetry as a literary genre. 
• Poems which concentrate on the subject of war. 
• Poems which are written during a war that seems to have a noticeable influence on the poet. 

World War I Poem

Anthem for a Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
--Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
 Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
 Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
 And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
 Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
 The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

World War II Poem

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randell Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Modern War Poem

I am You by Refaat Aleer

Two steps: one, two.
‏Look in the mirror:
‏The horror, the horror!
‏The butt of your M-16 on my cheekbone
‏The yellow patch it left
‏The bullet-shaped scar expanding
‏Like a swastika,
‏Snaking across my face,
‏The heartache flowing
‏Out of my eyes dripping
‏Out of my nostrils piercing
‏My ears flooding
‏The place.
‏Like it did to you
‏70 years ago
‏Or so.

***

‏I am just you.
‏I am your past haunting
‏Your present and your future.
‏I strive like you did.
‏I fight like you did.
‏I resist like you resisted
‏And for a moment,
‏I’d take your tenacity
‏As a model,
‏Were you not holding
‏The barrel of the gun
‏Between my bleeding
‏Eyes.

***

One. Two.
‏The very same gun
‏The very same bullet
‏That had killed your Mom
‏ And killed your Dad
‏Is being used,
‏Against me,
‏By you.

***

‏Mark this bullet and mark in your gun.
‏If you sniff it, it has your and my blood.
‏It has my present and your past.
‏It has my present.
‏It has your future.
‏That’s why we are twins,
‏Same life track
‏Same weapon
‏Same suffering
‏Same facial expressions drawn
‏On the face of the killer,
‏Same everything
‏Except that in your case
‏The victim has evolved, backward,
‏Into a victimizer.
‏I tell you.
‏I am you.
‏Except that I am not the you of now.

***

‏I do not hate you.
‏I want to help you stop hating
‏And killing me.
‏I tell you:
‏The noise of your machine gun
‏Renders you deaf
‏The smell of the powder
‏Beats that of my blood.
‏The sparks disfigure
‏My facial expressions.
‏Would you stop shooting?
‏For a moment?
‏Would you?

***

‏All you have to do
‏Is close your eyes
‏(Seeing these days
‏Blinds our hearts.)
‏Close your eyes, tightly
‏So that you can see
‏In your mind’s eye.
‏Then look into the mirror.
‏One. Two.
‏I am you.
‏I am your past.
‏And killing me,
‏You kill you.

What is Poetry? What is Drama?

Poetry

Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.
It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association, and the musical qualities of the language used. The interactive layering of all these effects to generate meaning is what marks poetry.

Adopted from http://www.poetry.org/whatis.htm


Drama

• Drama is a unique tool to explore and express human feeling. 
• Drama is an essential form of behaviour in all cultures, it is a fundamental human activity.

Drama is an Ancient Greek word meaning ‘act’ or ‘deed’. The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle used this term in a very influential treatise called the Poetics. Aristotle classified different forms of poetry according to basic features he thought could be commonly recognised in their composition. He used the term ‘drama’ to describe poetic compositions that were ‘acted’ in front of audiences in a theatron. 

Adopted from http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/DLiT/2001/drama/whatdram.htm and http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/faculties/learndrama/what_drama.htm

Turtle Soup by Marilyn Chin

You go home one evening tired from work,
and your mother boils you turtle soup.
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth
(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;
that turtle lived four thousand years, swam
the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.
Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,
grazed on splendid sericulture."
(So, she boils the life out of him.)

"All our ancestors have been fools.
Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles
to kill a famous Manchu and ended up
with his head on a pole? Eat, child,
its liver will make you strong."

"Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice."
Her sobbing is inconsolable.
So, you spread that gentle napkin
over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.
The golden decal on the green underbelly
says "Made in Hong Kong."

Is there nothing left but the shell
and humanity's strange inscriptions,
the songs, the rites, the oracles?

1. Notice the author's choice of the word "cauldron" in line 4. What image or connections does this word evoke? Why might the author have chosen "cauldron" rather than "pot"?
The word "cauldron" suggests that the speaker does not like what her mother cooked for her. "Cauldron" is a large metal pot that is usually associated with witchcraft. The speaker thinks that it is unethical to eat turtles, "the symbol of long life".

2. Chin refers to "the Wei," "the Yellow." and "the Yangtze." Why does she reference these rivers in China? Why not include the Nile, the Amazon, or the Mississippi?
It is understood that the speaker is a Chinese American. This suggests that the speaker still considers herself as a Chinese and has not yet forgotten about her origin, who she is and where she came from.

3. What is the tone of this poem?
I would think the tone of this poem is argumentative.


Ideas for Writing

1. "'Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice.'"

When a family migrates to a new land, they tend to leave everything behind. The language that they speak, the environment that they're used to, their culture and most importantly, their home in order to adapt to the new surroundings. Their whole identity, almost. For example, when a Chinese family moves to America, the children will most likely speak American English on a daily basis which in turn, leads to the lost of their mother language which is understood as one of the major parts in a culture. Preserving a culture in another land with its own culture is possible but extra effort must be put in.

On a brighter note though, they become exposed to opportunities. Lets look at it this way, you win some, you lose some. You get to learn about other cultures, you get to explore instead of confining yourself within your comfort zone and as a result, you become more resilient and pliable. It is inevitable that culture is of importance but sometimes you need to make a sacrifice to ensure good for all, which brings us back to the above quote "sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice." However, this does not, in any possible way, mean that sacrificing one's culture altogether is acceptable. There is nothing wrong with bringing your culture along with you to a new land but at the same time, do not restrict yourself. Get to know about other cultures too.

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus…

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter’s room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there…
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands.

1. What is the mood of the speaker in the opening lines? What images suggest his feelings?
Depression. The sounds of the words “Lately,” “way”, “opens,” “envelopes,” “go,” “wind,” “run,” slow the stanza down and readers can feel down from the proliferation of "o" sounds as well as the notion of the ground opening up and enveloping the poet.

2. What is the significance of the daughter's gesture of peeking into "her own clasped hands"?
Peeking into "her own clasped hands" suggests that the persona's daughter is praying and it changes the his short suicide note into a twenty volume note that will never be completed.

3. What does the title mean? How does it explain the closing line?
The word "preface" suggests that the persona had intentions to commit suicide and had made suicide notes but "my daughter" was the reason he changed his mind.

4. Why does Baraka have three short lines, separated as stanzas? How do they convey the message of the poem?
The lines "Things have come to that." and "Nobody sings anymore." show that the persona has grown "accustomed" to everything and nothing brings joy to him anymore whereas the last line "Her own clasped hands." gives hope and a reason to turn over a new leaf. 

5. Why does Baraka begin stanzas with "Lately," "And now," and "And then"?  What do these transition words accomplish? 
The transition words show how the persona slowly changes his mind and eventually aborted his plans on committing suicide as he sees hope in "Her own clasped hands."

6. How does the speaker feel about the daughter? What does she represent to him?
The daughter is the one to whom the persona has responsibility, the daughter is the one who loves him and whom he loves. The daughter represents hope and faith.