Additions
With the end of term and the summer holidays coming around the corner, I always like to end off on a good note in terms of academics. However, with me getting more and more tired as the end of term arrives, I find it harder and harder to work and instead I play more games.
In hindsight, I seem to be playing games much more in Singapore due to the fact that Singapore is a big gaming city and that it is easy to find places to play games with your friends. With gaming becoming a very big addiction, I have made an oath to not play video games until the end of terms which will at the very least help to get me to study instead of play games so as to score well for the last few tests of the term. Hopefully this form of cold turkey will help me to reach for other forms of enrichment and, in the best case scenario, get me off video games forever.
Before, I used to think that additions were a good thing; that addictions was something that makes your life worth living in a world that is constantly in routine. Of course, I say this assuming that that addiction is not things such as drugs which can have more detrimental effects to your body than the kinds of addictions I have. For example, I used to think that addiction to exercise (something I used to have strangely enough) was a good thing. It also helps if that addiction has a positive spill over effect on other things. For example, I considered exercise to be a very good addiction because it has positive spillover effects in terms of your social life, your self confidence and of course, your physical stamina as well.
That was until you begin to indulge in too much of a good thing. There were times when I went swimming for too long on a weekday to the point that I didn't have time to study while getting enough sleep. There were times when I either came to school tired or pumped up for the day without any prior learning the day before, which was detrimental to my academic life as well.
As much as I hate to admit it, too much of a good thing is a bad thing and all things must be taken in moderation. I learnt that the hard way.
I'm going to undergo cold turkey and I must admit, with my parents gone and me being home alone, playing games is a hard thing NOT to do. But I'm going to do it, hoping that my sacrifice will inspire you to do the same.
So what are your addictions?
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
Hey there! I came across your blogs when studying the poem "Pike" by Hughes today. You have lots of comments there and I thought about trying to see what else do you write about. So I found this blog. And I decided to leave a message: reading your analysis, I figured that you "left behind" some of Hughes´s personal life. He had three wives and two of them committed suicide. Shouldn't that be somewhere in the poem?! I cannot even answer my questions bc I could not find out when this poem was written, precisely. Would you know that? Have fun in Sing! I read some of your posts... they are fun! Tarci from Brasil
ReplyDeleteHey Tarci!
DeleteEven though I don’t reply to them much, I do look back at my old blog from time to time and smile from all the little trinkets of appreciation that my readers give me in the form of their compliments that I read in the comments. I do want to go back to the blog to update a little bit on these poets, update the website style and neaten up all the work but alas, I do have a lot on my plate if you read all my past posts on this new blog.
Nevertheless I will help you out with your work. I know how hard it is to find something in a poem. Most of the time all you have to do is look and think outside the box: in a sense you are in a crime scene looking for three things. Firstly, you are looking for why the poet made his piece: the motive. Secondly you are looking at what message he is trying to make. Why the pike? The meaning. Lastly, you are looking for all the events that led up to the moment: The backstory.
So let’s look at the two numbers that you have mentioned: two and three.
I don’t have much time, so I’m going to just ask leading questions:
1) Why did he only write the number “three”, three times in the poem? Does it mean something? He also wrote the word “two” three times in the poem as well. Three words, but “two” as the word. Does it look like I’m going anywhere here?
Just to make it look like I’m not spouting nonsense I will look at one area: The fifth stanza.
“THREE we kept behind glass… THREE inches… Suddenly there were TWO. Finally ONE.” Note all the numbers.
To me, in this stanza, the Pikes looks to be a representation of his wives. He describes the Pikes as perfect, which one can easily describe his or her wife (depending on their marital status) in a similar way. To me, the glass box seems to be like a box into his past, and that the three that he sees among the “weed” (the grey areas of your past that you don’t remember) are his three wives. When he sees two, and finally one, it sounds like he has accepted his past and is reaching closure as he starts to accept what has happened to his wives. Whether or not his fault for their deaths, you can argue both ways, but in the meantime I hoped that this piece of information has helped with your endeavours.
Feel free to ask for help any time!