When completing open-ended responses, remember to use
RATE.
Prompt:
Lily reads this poem in her mother’s book:
The Sick Rose
By: William Blake
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Response Requirement:
• Why would
Deborah have underlined portions of this poem?
• How is Lily
represented in it?
Taylor Davis
ReplyDeleteMs. Drosdick
Period 4
4/11/14
Journal #7
In the poem, “The Sick Rose,” by William Blake, Deborah has underlined all of the lines of the poem that relate to her misery. She also doesn’t want to forget them. She has abandoned her own daughter to escape her husband. She is trying to convince herself that she made the right choice. In fact, she has underlined some words twice. On page 274, it says, “That’s where I came to eight lines by William Blake that she’d [Deborah] underlined, some words twice.” The only reason people save lines from books is if they really want to remember them. Readers of poetry are affected by poems that they can relate to. Deborah has underlined the lines because they describe her life.
Lily believes that her mom is the rose. On page 275, she says, “My mother was William Blake’s rose.” In the poem, Lily is represented by “the invisible worm.” At least, she believes so. After Lily identifies her mother as William Blake’s rose, she identifies herself, “…for being one of the invisible worms that flew in the night.” Lily thinks that she has destroyed her mother’s life. She relates to the part of the poem that says, “Does thy life destroy?” I don’t agree with Lily. I think that T. Ray is really the invisible worm. The line before “Does thy life destroy,” is, “And his dark secret love.” I believe Deborah would identify T. Ray as the “worm” and she as “his dark secret love.” Lily is convinced that she is the one being represented as the worm.
William Blake’s “The sick rose” can have many different possibilities, one going the literal route and one going the more symbolic route. For example taking the literal route, you would imagine a rose with parasites in and on it, but when it relates to The Secret Life of Bees, there a numerous more amount of possibilities. Say if one were to ask, who or what Rose would be. The answer can vary from all characters, but from the context of the poem Deborah would be the rose. In the poem Rose is a person, the r in Rose in text is capitalized. Deborah has a huge portion in the poem. Starting with her being sick the stanza “O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm,” She is Rose, and she is sick of T-Ray and his abuse. T-Ray’s abuse being the invisible worm. There arguing would be the howling. Also “And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.” T-Ray’s supposed love destroyed Deborah, she was lead to believe that they would both take care for each other. Rather than that T-Ray left Deborah alone on a peach field all day. The crimson bed of joy was the sanctuary where Deborah ran off to, the Boatwrights.
ReplyDeleteLily is also in this. And “his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.” Could mean Lily, that’s how she died. Deborah died because of Lily the secret love, being since that T-Ray and Deborah never married. If not for Lily, Deborah may still be alive; she would have never been killed and wouldn’t have wasted the time to speak to Lily. “The invisible worm” Also affects Lily, the abuse, and the unspoken words really kill Lily’s spirit
Journal Entry: Option D
ReplyDeleteDeborah may have underlined portions of this poem because it relates to her. Key words and phrases stood out to her and reminded her of her situation. By underlining these important stanzas in the poem, it helped express her feelings without the use of words, but with literature. In the poem it states, “That flies in the night, In the howling storm…” this relates to how Deborah fled to the Boatwright’s (flies in the night) and how she ran away in the middle of her chaotic and depressing life (howling storm). She loved this poem so much, and saw things that related and stood out to her. That poem spoke for her, so she made it stick to her by underling portions of the poem. Just like Deborah, students underline important things when analyzing excerpts and texts. Underling is for important things. And apparently, Deborah thought that portions of The Sick Rose were important enough for her.
Lily is represented in the poem in the sense that she is the invisible worm. Lily was an unexpected baby and for the majority of her life, she was without a mother. And, her father never did care much about her. So in a way, she has been invisible and unexpected. “The invisible worm.” In the poem depicts Lily as a small, fragile, independent, and invisible girl. Just like how the runt of a litter is ignored and left out, Lily is the invisible worm.
#7eleven3
ReplyDeleteLove though it can be an amazing part of life it can also be the most destructive part as well. In the poem The Sick Rose Deborah is represented as the rose, and T-Ray is represented as the invisible worm. The worm causes the rose sickness and eventually leads to the destruction of the rose. Deborah would have underlined parts of this poem because it symbolizes her life once she found out she was pregnant with Lily. In hopes of having a happier future for Lily Deborah goes back to T-Ray. He without knowing it at the time starts to cause Deborah to become infected with his "dark secret love." Therefore inflicting pain on her life.
Lily is represented as the "of crimson joy" in this poem. She is bittersweet joy to Deborah. Lily was a good child, which was the sweet part about her. The bitter part was that in order to avoid being a single parent Deborah was forced to return to T-Ray, someone who she had lost the feeling of love for. Once Deborah had been pushed past her breaking point and left the "invisible worm" or T-Ray was still inflicting pain on her. She had then realized that she left her "crimson joy" or Lily behind. There are always consequences for your actions but at this point in time Deborah didn't know that.
#4musketeers24
Deborah underlined portions of the poem because some parts may have related to her family life. "And his dark secret love" relates to that tiny bit of affection T-Ray possessed. In the howling storm relates to that major fight Deborah and T-Ray had that altered Lily's whole life. This poem can easily relate to Deborah's relationship to T-Ray. However, bits and pieces can relate to Lily.
ReplyDeleteLily and Deborah doesn't really have a relationship in the story however Lily's love for her is strong. "Does thy life destroy" relates to Lily's life being ruined by the catastrophic event that had to occur between Deborah and T-Ray. Lily must represent the "worm" that found the secrets of Deborah that August had in her possession. When the truth was revealed to her she had a split change about her opinion about her mother, but right when she stood up for herself with Rosaleen and August giving Lily their support, her feelings for her mother, changed to, acceptance.
"And his dark secret love does thy life destroy." This poem has meaning to Deborah. That line relates to her relationship with T. Ray. Her life was falling apart or was being destroyed by T. Ray. Even though he loved her, it ruined her. She wasn't that happy, so it was slowly destroying her. This poem relates to the way she felt about some aspects in her life. "She said she was leaving T. Ray, that she has to leave home." It was hard for her to be around him, when she was so unhappy. So, this poem relates to her relationship with T. Ray.
ReplyDelete"The invisible worm, that flies in the night, in the howling storm". This is related to Lily. It is how T. Ray only notices her when he is angry or upset. Otherwise, he doesn't really want anything to do with her. "Of crimson joy" relates to Lily from her mother. Lily was the joy in her mothers life. The reason why she came back that day, was to go get Lily. "I figured May must've made it to heaven and explained to my mother about the sign I wanted. The one that would let me know I was loved." The picture of Lily and her mother, proved to Lily how much her mother loved her. That's how this poem relates to Lily.
Week 5: Option E
ReplyDeleteThe poem written by Lucille Clifton, “Why people be mad at me sometimes” stresses a conflict throughout the poem. One of the conflicts displayed throughout the poem is how people remember something like a memory, while they have two different perspectives of it. The poem says, “but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine.” This shows how two different people have a different perspective or different thoughts about memories. Someone might remember how something happened one way and the other person might have a different thought on what happened. The person who this poem is relating too might think about how something happened in their own thoughts, but someone else might be having a different way of thinking about their memory. Many characters in The Secret Life of Bees can relate to this about their memories and how it differs from other peoples perspectives on it as well.
This poem can relate to Lily because she thinks she knows that her mother was going to come back for her clothes and was packing in order to go somewhere. Lily wasn’t sure at the young age exactly about what was going on so she got a different perspective of the situation and that’s how she remembered the memory. Once August had a talk with Lily about the arrival of Deborah to the sister’s home, Lily was shocked to hear the news that Deborah was going back to Sylvan to retrieve her clothing and Lily so she could leave T-Ray. Page 254 August says, “….Finally she went back to Sylvan to get you.” Lily was shocked to hear this news because she always had a different perspective on the situation. The next sentence says, “I sat up and looked at August, hearing the quick suck of air through my lips. She came back to get me?” Lily seemed astonished because she never had that thought of it and always kept remembering her thoughts on the memories and not others. Maybe this will show Lily to consider others thoughts so she can think about believing them and still remember hers as well.
#4musketeers13
When a man and women have great love for each other they get married, but sometimes the people who get married don’t always love each other. Deborah would have underlined this poem because she didn’t love T.Ray fully and she only married him because she almost had to. This made Deborah realize the deeper meaning of sometimes love isn’t pure. On page 248 the text states “But after six months it started to wear off.” This shows that Deborah stopped loving T.Ray. In the past 25 years divorce has become a much common occurrence. This is a good thing because people now don’t have to fake love each other for it to be considered socially acceptable.
ReplyDeleteRepresentation is a big part of writing because it allows the reader to make high level connections with the text. Lily is represented in this poem because she “thy destroyer”. Lily is the destroyer because she is the one who killed Deborah. On page 242 the text states “I accidently killed her”. This shows further shows that Lily is represented in the poem. Taking a humans life may be the worst thing to do and it is very hard to receive forgiveness for your actions. However, in Lily’s case she deserves it because she would give up everything to take it back because her soul will always have a hole because of her innocent actions.
This poem is a very beautiful poem, and I don’t say that about a lot of poems, let alone about really anything. Deborah may have underlined portions of this because they were either extremely symbolic of her family or maybe they just had a deep meaning to her. For example, the line “And his dark secret love, Does thy life destroy.” This “dark secret love” may be referring to T-Ray. When Deborah had to leave T-Ray for August, it obviously had to have shown some sort of hatred or some kind of problem. Perhaps T-Ray was the same back then as he was during the book. “The invisible worm, That flies in the night” could possibly represent Our Lady in Chains. Not to compare Our Lady to an invisible worm, but August does say that “Our Lady is everywhere”.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Lily is represented by the “Rose” character. Mentioned in the first line, Lily fits the bill for this person. The second part of the first line says “Thou art sick!” I could make a cheap connection, and say “oh, like how she lied about being sick to get out of stuff she didn’t want to do”, but there are better connections to be made. We have to go by what Deborah knew, so it has to be something about Lily before Deborah died. Maybe it had something to do with Lily apparently being an “unwanted child” as Lily herself put it. Baby Lily must have been a burden on Deborah, as bad as that may sound. Maybe Deborah took in in a “bad sick” way and not a “disease sick” way. Another possible answer lies in the first line of the second stanza, “He found out thy bed”. This might be symbolic without Deborah even realizing it. Lily ran away from her home in Tiburon, and a certain he (T-Ray) found out thy bed. Maybe this second part symbolizes him finding the note on Lily’s bed. There are many possibilities, but no solid answers…