Fallon 1 Kimberly Fallon Professor Lago English 1500 19 February 2014

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 into adulthood. What humans get out of readings all depends on the lens that they look through when interpreting the words sprawled out 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

Fallon 2 put into 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 get that the poem is about a girl that is assigned a chore by her mother. She is told to sweep the floor, and while she is doing her job, continuously the pictures that flash on the television distract her. The Vietnam War is constantly broadcasted, with the images of thousands of men being deployed into an endless forest of trees and jungle. 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. The psychological meaning of this is to adults, war is something natural that you do not fight. It is a duty for men to serve their country, and is a natural thing to occur. Yet, the girl, representing the younger generation, questions what she sees. She does not completely understand what is happening. Her mother does not talk about it to her, 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

Fallon 3 terms such as beautiful and masculine helicopters replaced with dragonflies (Alvarez). The youths deny death and war by hiding the horrors behind pleasant descriptive words to make it sound better. If they do not use words that are gruesome, than war and life do not seem as scary. 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. Calling them little men dehumanizes them, takes away their name, and makes it easier to forget about a war that thousands are dying in each day. Fear of reality and the brutalities of mankind get swept under the rug so that people can live in peace, 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, no one sees the war, so 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

Fallon 4 of death and reality of not just the young girl, but of many people during this time during the Vietnam War. When a critical approach is applied, it is so much greater than just a young child learning a new chore. 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, signifying that women are to fragile to worry about war, or to even to weak to comprehend what it takes to be a soldier, because during this time from the 1960s, women have yet to join the military. 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 lifestyle opinion that dates from hundreds of years ago and still today. The young girl already knows the female duty that is asked of her, and this is shown 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 to become just as educated as a man. 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).

Fallon 5 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 gender, showing that this poem being written in the sixties shows the struggles for not only racial equality, but also gender. While the sexual stereotyping is easy to find in the poem, one may also notice that throughout the entire poem, 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 do so much more that they are capable of achieving. The girl sees what is happening outside of the home, but never gets the idea that she can become something more than a housewife. She witnesses the television and how there is more to life than being a housewife, she is not yet in the state of mind to spread her wings and 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 doesnt have to 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

Fallon 6 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. As long as we have our shovel of curiosity, there is no end to the possibilities that await.

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Works Cited

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