In this one simple line from the movie “Mary Poppins”, Mary Poopins herself conveys both her frustration and self-realization of what she must do. Though she does convey frustration, there is not anger hidden inside of her. It is merely that the children that she is watching over and the other adults in the room are not listening to her at all. Since they are not paying attention to her she knows that she must join them, as they float above the room about to have tea. While she is not thrilled over the idea of giving in and going up into the air with everyone else, she realizes that is it what she “must “ do.
The point here of conveying two emotions through only three different words is to show the complexity of language in itself. While it may seem like just a simple example of Mary Poppins making a choice of what to do, it is really so much more than that. In this line Mary Poppins shows us how she has eliminated all other options of trying to the get everyone else to listen, and now knows what she must do. It is not what she particularly wanted to do, but she has no other option and going up there with everyone else “must” be done.
This all is able to connect back to the play which our class saw about two weeks ago in the village. “Idiot Savant” can be compared to the complexity that the one line from “Mary Poppins” shows to the audience. The entire play was based around the idea of language. It was to show us how important it was, how it should be used and the meanings that can be hidden behind it all. However, while both of these pieces of art convey complexity in language, “Idiot Savant is on a much greater level than that one line from “Mary Poppins can even try and compare too. Everything in and about “Idiot Savant” was complex, there was nothing straight forward in the play at all. In “Mary Poppins” her intentions, in the line that we are examining, were very clear yet there was still more behind it. In “Idiot Savant”, however, the intentions of everyone in that performance were unclear and the language that was used held an even deeper meaning. I feel that the movement in the play acted almost as a helping verb to the language being used. I do not mean that the movements helped me to understand the dialogue any better, as much as the movements added to the complexity of the language. Yet as much as I feel they made the play more confusing, I also think that they brought more things into the light for me. Think of it this way, if they had shown two people sitting down at a table and reading the script, how much more confused would we be? I think that the movements were there to both tone down and add more complexity to the performance. All of the movements can somewhat help us to understand what is going on, but at the same time most of these motions were so abstract that they could have added even more confusion to the audience. I think that the motions implied deep meaning along with the language being used itself. Honestly throughout most of the play, I forgot what the dialogue was during the different scenes, yet I remember the motions of the actors very vividly. They stood out to me more than the language because they were just so odd. It’s a visual experience which is hard to forget.
“Hubris at Zunzal”
This poem for the most part confused me greatly, as have most poems that I have read in my life. I do not know why but poetry has never really been the strongest part of any of my English/composition classes. Poems always seemed to annoy me a lot, like a child who thinks that he is better than everyone just because he is rich and fancy. That is exactly what poems are to me, rich and fancy kids who think that they are better than everyone else. Honestly that is why I enjoyed Billy Collin’s poem in which he mocked all love poems in one single shot. I loved it because it just called out everything which I have hated the most of poetry, symbolism. Symbolism to me was always the most annoying part to have to get passed and understand, but Billy Collins ripped love poems apart and for that I congratulate him. This poem entitled “Hubris at Zunzal” was not overall that bad for me once we started to analyze it in class together, yet I still do not like it. Even though there is not that much symbolism in this poem, to me it is still a snobbish rich kid. Why do they always think that they are better than everyone just because they are fancy? Poems and simple language can all have the same meaning in the end, so why don’t they just save everyone the trouble and stop being so complex. Take these two lines for example “And dumped it white into the waves, when it came upon me again me how sweet it had been”. Now in class I believe that we began to say how what the main character in the poem dumped into the ocean (his coconut milk and 150 proof rum) represented bought language and his thoughts and how he lost them by mixing them into the ocean. As a result of this he lost them (his thoughts) because as we all know that if you dump a drink into the ocean, well…good luck at getting it back because its mixed in their. Then he goes on to say about how it is so sweet when the drink washed back up onto him. How hard is it to say that you forgot a thought and it came back to you. I could have saved myself about 10 lines of writing and so much time trying to figure this out if the author had been straight forward with his thoughts in the first place.
Even though I do not appreciate the poem at all I can still understand how this is able to connect to the play “Idiot Savant”. The whole point of the play was to convey the idea of how important language is. The idea of this poem was the same thing I feel. It is to show how language is a gift and should not be wasted. The person in this poem wasted his thoughts and then luckily, they splashed back over him, but most of the time when you dump a drink into the ocean it is lost. There is no way to get it back, that is why you must hold on to it and keep all of your ideas together. I have about a page full of notes in my notebook and another ten or so ideas for blog posts about the play “Idiot Savant” saved onto my iPhone. This is because when I get a good idea or even a simple one I want to remember it, I do not want to have to rack my brain later on to try and remember what it was. The whole point that I am trying to make here is that you should not waste good thoughts. Keep them sacred because you never know what they might turn in to. Just as in one of the scenes from “Idiot Savant” we see Wilem Defoe’s character faced with the availability of taking a gift from one of the women on stage. He attempts to take the present but is unable to and after a while he loses his chance to get the box. After this we find out that the present inside of the box was a fancy watch. All of this is meant to convey to us that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. I find it quite ironic that after all of the time that he had wasted trying to get the box from the woman and deciding if he really wanted it, that the gift inside was a watch. He wasted all of the language used in that two minute scene trying to get a gift which just conveys to him that he is wasting time. Since time is of the essence, it is a gift, just like language and he should never waste it. He is frustrated and angry at the end of this dilemma because he has missed the opportunity. (This is a part of the play which is an example of what I wrote about before, when I mentioned how the movements in this play brought things into the light from me. The actions in this scene, the attempting to obtain the gift and the constant failure of that very action, all made my ideas more clear to me. If there was no action and only dialogue for this scene, would you honestly be able to understand it? I would not.) In essence Wilem Defoe’s character has just dumped his drink into the ocean. He has wasted his thoughts through wasting time and now is unable to get them back. The fact that the gift inside of the box was a watch show that time is a precious gift and do not let it get away from you that easily. Granted the poem did not seem to concern how long he took to finally dump his drink into the ocean but the fact is still that he did. The connection between the two here is that they both wasted their precious thoughts and were unable to keep control of language, one through carelessness and the other through wasting time.
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