fear and loathing in lyn hejinian s 13th entrance

Poems

The number 13 carries with it emblematic connotations one of a kind to no other numbers. Widely recognized as unlucky, for the point of constructing entire buildings that omit the amount altogether, this stands being a superstitious product of dread. Thirteen furthermore represents the approaching of age, while seen in the Jewish Club Mitzvah and within the syntax of the expression itself, transcending childhood to be “teen” (eleven, twelve, tough luck, fourteen, and so forth ). This kind of idiosyncrasies from the number thirteen play themselves out in Lyn Hejinian’s 13th section setting out the thirteenth year of her your life in the graceful autobiography My entire life. In it, Hejinian is exploring metonymic organizations regarding the ease of childhood, expressly through images of animals and children by play, and effectively contrasts such contacts to the suddenly self-conscious fear and confusion of age of puberty, illustrating her own exceptional account of pubescent awkwardness.

Hejinian’s utilizations of animals in this excerpt every serve a few metonymic position that effectually illuminates the disparity between childhood and adolescence. Relatively youthful, harmless symbols of childhood become strongly juxtaposed with more adult themes, nearly as if told about from the point of view of an acerbate, self-conscious adolescent, as in: “The swan is a bitch. The lady was so at ease that her negative manners were graceful¦Poor other poultry in this cold” (54). Below Hejinian alludes to the well-liked children’s history, ‘The Unattractive Duckling, ‘ yet moves the moral of the story in a rough, more depressed perspective, sending your line the ducks out in the cold to feel shame for and referring to the swan by very adult word “bitch. ” Hejinian rarely zone into profanity throughout most of the autobiography, producing “bitch” function in an sarcastic way, as cynicism by her thirteen year old perspective rather than personally. It telephone calls to mind the character’s individual insecurities, inasmuch that she notices the swan “was so eat ease that her awful manners had been graceful. inch Paralyzing self-consciousness becomes a very clear issue with the narrator from the work, admitting that “I felt self-sufficient except with regards to my feelings, to which I used to be always weak, always in regards to someone else” (52-53). ‘The Ugly Duckling’ is also a story that primarily revolves around advancement, all begin as ducklings, the blessed end up getting beautiful swans, others only end up “plump birds” (52).

This exact notion of beginning equally and developing in different ways echoes before in the excerpt, when the narrator notes “As for we all who “love to be amazed, ” a moth has more flesh than the usual butterfly may lift” (53). Again the pet development demonstrates pertinent to understanding the passage’s connection to individual maturation, as the narrator hints in saying “I may have got started inexactly, I thought, nearsighted to a buttercup” (53). Moths and butterflies have clearly defined development periods, both begin as caterpillars, form cocoons, and grow into one or the other, pulling a seite an seite to the maturation of children to teenagers. Moths invariably receive considered infestations, while butterflies are generally considered beautiful, often chased by simply children in play, making butterflies emblematic of elegance and moths seem unwanted and unpleasant. Besides staying clearly significantly less desirable, the moth actually “has even more flesh than a butterfly can lift, inches presumably making a corollary to self conscious anxiety above issues with excess weight, as was also the situation with the aforementioned “plump wild birds. ” A clear pattern of using pets or animals for their metonymic value of childhood comes forth in the previously mentioned examples, because Hejinian mainly draws the actual maturation process to properly contrast areas of early children to teenage life.

A similar sort of differentiation is attracted even through the first few lines, where Hejinian writes, “Can one consider captive the roar with the city. Sue says noises from the schoolyard” (52). A demonstrable big difference in audio becomes set up between “the city, inch a metonym for adult life, and “the schoolyard, inch appropriately metonymic of the child years, instantly creating a dynamic comparability between the two sentences. The dog aspect of the “roar” acts to ferociously juxtapose a lot more innocent “Simon says seems, ” which will obviously comes from the years as a child game of ‘Simon Says, ‘ representing adulthood in a more wild manner over the playfulness of child years.

Kids become further more subjected to adult themes down the road when Hejinian writes “One can find out the name of one’s true love by plucking daisy petals, getting rope, or perhaps counting the tiny white-colored spots of imperfection about one’s fingernail” (52). Hejinian lists metonymic associations with childhood through children’s classic attempts to comprehend the very mature subject of affection. This wonderful depiction of youngsters further substantiates dissimilarity involving the simplicity of childhood, getting romantic information from arbitrary sources, together with the fear and confusion of adolescence, in which the idea of like becomes an “obsession with thought, ” (54) appearing to focus more on physical attractiveness while hinted in the previous paragraphs than other such insignificant methods. Even the superstitious, illogical aspect of the children’s take action of counting functions to illustrate the weak knowledge of the idea of love in childhood, drawing meaning from ostensibly practically nothing, as is in fact one meaning of superstition. Hejinian successfully distinguishes evident differences between the purity of years as a child and the convolution of age of puberty through these kinds of metonymic contacts of such children at play.

Works Mentioned

Hejinian, Lyn. My Life. Kobenhavn/Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2002.