Smith 1 Sara Smith Professor Lago Experiences in Literature 1500-12 April 30, 2014 Google: A Helping Hand for

Difficult Literature The Internet has replaced physical dictionaries and personal opinions with Dictionary.com and search engines. Before the Internet became our main source for gathering information, homework involved more extensive research and it required thinking for oneself. Now, typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse around can replace that. The Internet has changed the way we find information and the way we use it. Now, no one is complaining, but it has definitely made it easier for students to read and understand any literature that is not completely straightforward and obvious. Daddy by Sylvia Plath is written beautifully, but many of the words and phrases are not common knowledge, such as Ach du, big as a Frisco seal, Luftwaffe, and ich (Plath). If this poem was assigned and there was no Internet access, I would have to find a German dictionary and still not all of those phrases would be understood. For example, big as a Frisco seal, refers to a seal common in San Francisco and since I do not have a working knowledge about San Fransisco, the only way I could figure out what that meant to use a search engine (Shmoop). Having access to a wide variety of information allows students to think differently about literature. Instead of struggling to understand the literal meaning of words and phrases, they are now free to explore and examine the figurative meanings of a text as a whole. For instance, when Plath writes ich, ich, ich, ich, it translates to I, I, I, I. Knowing that translation helped me take a deeper look and then I understand that the speaker might have a stammer when

Smith 2 talking to her father because she is either afraid to talk to him or he makes her nervous (Plath l. 27). When researching Daddy on Google, multiple different opinions and summaries popped up, as would happen with any other popular piece of literature. Stephen Gould Axelrod said, "at a basic level, 'Daddy' concerns its own violent, transgressive birth as a text, its origin in a culture that regards it as illegitimate a judgment the speaker hurls back on the patriarch himself when she labels him a bastard (Osborne). At first that sentence sounded intimidating but when I broke it apart and read it carefully, I understood that Axelrod was talking about the maledominated literary world that existed when this poem was written. He brought up an argument that the poem is less about Plaths ex-husband and father and more about the world she was living in. This is one example of the many perspectives and ideas drawn up from Daddy. It becomes the students task to read through these kinds of ideas and learn more about a difficult text. Then, they must choose an idea and perspective they agree with and believe in. The problem with this method is that instead of thinking critically and creatively, students are simply choosing from a set of previously thought up concepts. The student must start with a general opinion on the poem or story before Googling it, that way they are not only influenced by other peoples opinions on the Internet but they can use other perspectives to build on their personal ideas. When I went on Google to find other opinions and analyses, the poem became clearer and the language made more sense. Some sources said that each time Plath wrote about a different figure she was actually referring to her father. She called him a Nazi, a shoe that trapped her, a swastika, and a vampire(Plath). She made the reader see the speaker as a Jew and a victim. In the first stanza she wrote, You do not, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have

Smith 3 lived like a foot (Plath l. 1-3). The second stanza says that he died before she had time, which different online sources said could mean different things, such as, before she had time to kill him or before she had time to get to know him. One source said she calls him a bag of God possibly because he is as powerful over her life as God (Osborne). Those are examples of opinions and analyses that helped me build my understanding of Plaths poem. Most of what I read from online analyses was what I already understood from the poem after reading it a few times but it helped a lot to search it on Google. Where I initially thought Plath was talking about loving a black man, she really was referring to her fathers evilness inside. She would have tried to kill herself to be close to him. Like I thought, people helped her recover and she married a man that reminded her of her father who she was married for seven years and he sucked the life out of her, like a vampire. Google also had some interesting facts, like Plath being married for seven years and the definitions of the German words and phrases. Also, I learned that her father was a professor and that is what she is referencing in the eleventh stanza where she wrote, You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you (Plath l. 51-52). These lines are very straightforward, but usually, it is hard to know what is right in a poem because there is so much figurative language that you have to comb through to find the meaning. And even when the reader has found the true meaning, it could be wrong because it is not being seen through the poets eyes. Unless the poet spoke out about their poem, most of the analysis process is what it means to the reader. The outside sources did not shape my understanding completely though because I had my own opinions prior to looking it up on Google. If I had read an easier and more straightforward piece of literature my opinions would be completely my own, unshaped by any outside source, because I do not feel the pressure to research it. Something more direct, for me, would be

Smith 4 Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood. She used direct sentences that are hard to not understand and chose to avoid complex symbols and figurative language. Her sentence structure is very simple and most of the story flowed like this, Yes, but Fred has a bad heart, or They go on vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging (Atwood). I did not feel any pressure to look it up on Google and get other peoples points of view because I understood the story on my own thanks to its easy and non-figurative language. My understanding of the story was that it is a funny and different way to show that every persons life ends in the same way, death. No matter who a person meets and falls in love with and no matter how they are treated, their ending is the same and not particularly happy like the title suggests. Atwood ends the sections either with Eventually they die. This is the end of the story, or she refers back to that sentence (Atwood). In the end, everyone dies whether it is from natural causes, suicide, murder, a tidal wave or a bad heart. This is the point that Atwood seemed to be making and I figured this out on my own, without looking on Google. I like my interpretation of Happy Endings and Im sure I would have found a million different ideas and viewpoints on this short story if I had looked it up. Students might get frustrated and discouraged if they cannot grasp the language of a text, such as Shakespearean language, and they may end up giving up and not completing the assignment. Websites like Sparknotes.com and Enotes.com help explain even the most difficult pieces of literature. Not all literature has to be researched; some pieces are simple enough to be understood on their own. But often times the Internet can still help. During high school I, and everyone I know used Sparknotes for English class. Sometimes, even if I read the book I still looked it up to get a better understanding. However, it is important for students to form their own analysis first

Smith 5 before looking at any other interpretations. By doing this they can hold onto some of the creativity that goes into literary analysis. Whether your search engine of choice is Google, Yahoo or Bing the Internet plays a huge part in how we understand a text and how we read it.

Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. Happy Endings. Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Joseph Terry. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2011. 445-447. Print. Osborne, Kristen. Sylvia Plath: Poems. Grade Saver. Web. 3 February 2014. http://www.gradesaver.com/sylvia-plath-poems/study-guide/section5/ Plath, Sylvia. Daddy. Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 3 Febuary 2014. Shmoop Editorial Team. "Daddy Summary." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 3 Febuary 2014.