Fallon 1 Kimberly Fallon Professor Lago English 1500 24 February 2014 Dustpan of Reality Authors have been using

the art of writing to create arguments, teach a lesson, and philosophize since the dawn of reading and writing. Storytellers can manipulate a tale in any way they wish to create a special little piece of art that they can share with the world. Yet, no matter how a writer puts his or her thoughts on paper, the interpretation is all up to the reader. They can take a happy story and get the impression that it is concealed with sorrow and heartbreak. Or even read a poem about a frog prince and psychologically dissect it as a poem about a boy trapped in his denial of growing up. What humans get out of readings all depends on the lens that they look through when interpreting the words sprawled upon a page. The most common critical approaches used today include Historical, how the time period affects the meaning to the reader, Gender Focus, how the gender or the characters either positively or negatively affects them, and Psychological, or the hidden emotional meanings behind characters and stories. When reading Julia Alvarezs poem, How I Learned to Sweep, the lenses that were used to understand the bigger picture of a young girl were psychological and gender focus. Though one can take the poem as a young girl learning to sweep for the first time as a chore given by her mother at the same moment news of the Vietnam War cries on the television, there is a much deeper meaning when a critical approach is put into

Fallon 2 effect. There are endless ideas that can come from just one lens that is applied to a story; this essay will discuss a few deeper meanings to Julia Alvarezs poem about being young in an old world. To begin with, the first critical approach that is applied to the poem is psychological. When the reader reads the poem in black and white, they develop that the poem is about a girl whoe mother assigns her a new chore. She is told to sweep the floor, and while she is doing her job, continuously the pictures of war that flash on the television distract her. In the 1960s, the Vietnam War was constantly being broadcasted, with the images of thousands of men being deployed into an endless jungle of trees. When the psychological lens is applied, the reader can look deeper into the emotions of the girl and her life. In the poem, the young girls mother rushes in and out of the room, never paying any attention to the images flashing on the screen. Yet, the girl who represents the younger generation, questions what she sees. She does not completely understand what is happening. Her mother refuses to talk about it, so these young men flying on these contraptions called helicopters interest the girl. The Vietnam War was the first war to be truly broadcasted, and was called the first to be experienced right in Americas own living rooms. The ignorance of the youth is a representation of their fear to face reality. Such as when the speaker talks about war yet describes it in happier, more pleasant terms. Shown in the quote, shots were fired from those beautiful green gardens into which these dragonflies filled with little men descended, how the evils and horror of war are described in terms such as beautiful and masculine helicopters replaced with dragonflies (Alvarez). The youths deny death and war by hiding the horrors

Fallon 3 behind pleasant descriptive words to make it sound better. If they do not use gruesome words, than war and life do not seem as frightening. Yet the reality is that men are dying and war is a scary and hectic scene. The line beautiful green gardens exemplifies happiness, safety and new growth and life, the complete opposite of reality (Alvarez). The line that calls the soldiers little men, takes away a face of a man that will either lose his own life or feel the loss of a fallen friend. Dehumanizing them takes away their name and makes it easier to forget about a war that thousands of lives are being spent on. Fear of reality and the brutalities of mankind get swept under the rug so that people can live in peace, safely behind a mask. Not only does the poem psychologically show fear of reality, but also death. In the poem, the girl tries to clean harder, to get rid of every speck of death (Alvarez). The idea is that you can distract yourself from the fact that people are dying by just turning off the television, or keeping yourself busy. The girl stays on track of cleaning to keep her mind off of the news, proven in the quote, the t.v. blared the news; I kept my mind on what I had to do (Alvarez). Her mother even later turns the broadcast off, and that way, if no one sees the war, no one has to worry. It shows that they fear death, and by turning off the sight of something that manufactures so much demise, they can act happier knowing that it is not them. She also cleans harder when she sees men die, psychologically trying to wash away the things she just saw from her mind, I swept all the harder when I watched a dozen of them die (Alvarez). When the psychological lens is applied here, one sees the fear of death and reality of not just the young girl, but of many people as well.

Fallon 4 In addition to looking from the point of view psychologically, one can also use the critical approach and observe from a historical standpoint. As the mother enters the room and just as quickly leaves it, the reader understands that the mother never once listens to or looks at the television. She is oblivious of the scenes of war, symbolizing that women are too fragile to worry about war and to weak to comprehend what it takes to be a soldier. The mother is more interested in having a clean house, and her daughter learning the same. Taking care of a home was a womans job and was expected. This is a very common gender sterotype that dates from hundreds of years ago that continues today. The young girl already knows the female duty that is asked of her, and this is backed in the quote I knew right off what she expected and went at it (Alvarez). Her mother was a housewife, not a doctor or lawyer, and expects her daughter to live up to the same stereotypical lifestyle. During the sixties, women were not as pushed or even believed in enough to go to college and become equally as educated as men. Rather, they were expected to marry a man, raise a family, and make sure a home cooked meal was waiting at home for their husbands when they came back from their real job. Also, the lines from the poem in the Far East our soldiers were landing in their helicopters into jungles their propellers swept like weeds seen underwater take on a masculine faade, talking about the brave men risking their lives for their country (Alvarez). Yet the girl describes things in a more feminine fragile way, such as the description of the helicopters as dragonflies and Vietnam as a beautiful green garden (Alvarez). Julia Alvarez makes war masculine and rugged while housework and women feminine. They are characterized by sex, showing that this poem shows the

Fallon 5 struggles for gender equality. While the sexual stereotyping is easy to find in the poem, one may also notice that throughout the reading, the girl never leaves the room in which the poem begins. When looked at from the historical lens, one can infer that is a representation of the trap in which women are held hostage. They wish to escape the normal that is expected of them, to leave the house and achieve so much more. The girl sees what is happening outside of the home, but never gets the idea that she can become something more than a housewife. Though she witnesses the television and how there is more to life than being a housewife, she is not yet ready to leave the role that is expected of her. In the quote, She came back and turned the dial; the screen went dark, she has hopes to do more with her life, to dream, but does not have the support or self motivation to do it, so her little flash of hope is turned off, just like the television. When you look at this poem from a historical perspective and take into account of the time period, one can see that female and male roles have come a long way, yet there is still room for improvement. The great things about writing are that no matter how we interpret a piece of work, our opinion about it or the meanings we understand are never wrong. The minds ability to comprehend and extract meanings from writing is endless. They are even more infinite when the help of a critical approach is added, giving the reader a new perspective to look through. The lens we choose can make or break a story, or even inspire. We can now look deeper into an authors writing, and find on our own a little piece of undiscovered treasure. If we continue to cherish our shovel

Fallon 6 of curiosity, there is no end to the possibilities that await us, as long as we keep digging.

Fallon 7 Works Cited

Alvarez, Julia. How I Learned to Sweep. Ron Now Poetry. N.p., 1996. Web. Feb. 2014.