English Tuition Bolton Manchester: Dylan Thomas, King Kong and the Minotaur- Writing tip- SYNTHESIS makes analysis real.

Synthesis brings together separate elements to make a new and coherent whole.   Our  ability to synthesize different ‘readings’ or experiences help us make sense of our world. Synthesis helps our sense of orientation as in literary analysis, synthesis helps us find our way around a text and offer a reading that is compelling. 

 

Synthesis helps us to  coalesce our understanding.

 

It makes it real!

Today I have been exploring the different readings of the Minotaur, who like Medusa seems to be one of the most vilified, grotesque figures in mythical history.

The Minotaur’s terrible incarceration in the labyrinth, a place where he seems as ‘lost’ as his sacrificial victims themselves,  appears a metaphor for our hidden selves, our repressed secrets, our ‘buried’ mourning. His status as prowling, ‘buried’ monster preserved in time as if he was trapped  in amber! 

 

And as I was examining paintings by Picasso, Maggie Hambling and even a contemporary opera dedicated to the Minotaur, I was aware of the underlying rage of this mythical creature forever condemned by history to be a monster, just awaiting’justified’ slaughter by the’ courageous’ hero Theseus. Beneath the Minotaur’s rage however , there lurks despair and this despair and impotency perhaps I think filters on throughout culture metamorphosing into other narratives and texts.

 

For can’t  we all recognize the loneliness and  despondent otherness  of the Minotaur’s incarceration in the labyrinth; Lost, consigned to his underground prison, ‘fed’ sacrificial victims by those who fear and despise him?

I think   his monumental rage is our own.He is deprived of speech too-his monstruousness therefore a spectacle rather than an inwardly experienced characterization.  Hence his persistent fascination for us all. 

The Minotaur leads the way to  Frankenstein’s unnamed creature, rejected by his parent,  condemned to violence except in Shelley’s version- tragically informed by  language which makes his despair all the more real as Frankenstein’s creature can articulate how miserable he is and like Caliban in The Tempest can use language to inflict verbal rage.

So here below we have a marvellous quotation by Jeanette Winterson from her novel Oranges are not the only Fruit, my fictional review of the remake of King Kong and two brief analyses of one of my favourite poems by Dylan Thomas, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ The Minotaur’s rage and barely disguised despair underpins them all.

His rage is  a metaphor for our own buried emotion and palpable ‘lostness’- Freud’s id perhaps! 

 

“There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.” (Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit) 

Kong was being taunted in the theatre. God the arrogance of man. And yet, his love had not betrayed him. There was Anne  dancing in some cheap revue. The hollowness of the fake blonde though. No wonder poor Kong raged in his manacles. Demeter took out her pocket book and made a note. She loved her hooded nibbed pen. Deep black ink.  No flourish either which was a good thing. Crucifixion she wrote. She underlined the word very very clearly.

Meanwhile   Kong was rampaging on Broadway throwing away blondes like flies. Not this one. Not that one. He wanted his baby. Imagine that,  mother told herself. Nothing compares to you. Nothing.  Oh the passion of the guy. That rage.   

And then there she was. Floodlit with sheer love of Kong coming towards  him out of time. Mother wept loud and Callum looked over hoping his friend wouldn’t notice,  but proud too in a way. The girl climbed in to Kong’s hand. The cinema melted. Woman I can hardly express my feelings of tenderness.

Now they were in the park. The ice rink. Kong was waltzing his girl. Snow blessing their most perfect love.  Mother preferred his out and out rage. Now that mother could understand.  Mother looked into his haunted eyes and saw the loneliness of love. Was love worth the risk? (She adjusted Clara’s nappied bottom on her knee. Nothing wet yet). She decided it must be. yes, it was. 

I have an affinity with rage on this blog! Medusa gets lots of attention and so does Miss Havisham and even David Almond’s  The Savage. Perhaps it is the most Janus faced  of all of our emotions: rage the disorderly dancing partner of despair.

Perhaps rage is about trying to externalize despair in a deflecting,  non submissive way. I don’t know. But this a a great poem. It reminds me of my father and of my own fears about  acquiescence and non attachment. I think it is one of my most personal readings on this blog and although I am sure Dylan Thomas was often unbearable personally , his Welsh fury moves me deeply. We can all sympathise with his sense of helplessness as his father dwindles away his hold on life.Gentleness seems too much like a farewell to the living, an acquiescence that induces railing panic on the part of the still alive. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Sometimes only rage will do.

My father was Welsh and his favourite listening was Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood on an LP that has long been lost. My father was a wanderer in so many ways and on Sunday I found a letter I had written to him nearly 28 years ago when he was again living somewhere else, trying to build once again another new life, having no knowledge whatsoever, that within two years he would be dead. Reading the poem this morning to my son as he ate his cereal for school, I was suddenly aware of my father and  aware of his own profound sorrow about his tragically early death; his wrongful attachments to careless people whose sincerity proved unenduring and illusory and whom he loved because he didn’t dare to love himself at all.

In the poem the sense of visceral despair at the father’s impending mortality is spat out in this villanelle, where the poet tries to order his father’s life force to resist his illness and fight back for life.How ironic the ‘good night’ might be when what it represents is desertion, the abject loneliness of being the one left behind. The final stanza declares the desolate desperation of the poet for any communication from his father, be it savage or sane enough to save him from the dying light. 

Dylan Thomas was a poet who got so many things wrong in his life and perhaps even in his Art. Yet here he is absolutely right.

Sometimes only rage will do.

Reading Dylan Thomas for A Level and never encountered before except for Richard Burton”s Under Milk Wood which my dad adored.

What monumental  rage! Like King Kong when he is on Broadway and looking for his girl throwing away all the fake blonde pretenders to his soulmate…

 Find the poem very gritty and distinctly awkward. Muscular poetry I suppose and passionate grief which knocks me over.  

I don’t necessarily  want this to be the death of anyone I love as it is so resistant to leaving life,to letting go. It lacks peace. Yet its lack of peace yields up its grandeur too. For it is passionately attached to life. It affirms our uniqueness and our intimacies.  It communicates ‘don’t leave  me’ over and over again. Bravely, loudly and vulnerably.

Relentless tenderness that burns…

Not a lukewarm writer in any way and intensely  captures the flattening, abject rage of watching someone you love leave you too ****** soon.

Makes you think about your emotional contribution to this planet!

Mesmerising.