Emotions and Tunbridge

While reading “Cincinnati” by Mitsuye Yamada, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, I noticed the common themes of unspoken/spoken emotions, and how authors choose to express a character’s emotion through different literary elements. For example, Mitsuye Yamada reveals the speaker’s emotions through a first person point-of-view; we feel the speaker’s feelings and emotions as she experiences them in the poem. Both Theodore Roethke and Edgar Allan Poe also emphasize emotion in their works, though they use different techniques. Reading about emotions and the role they place in our decisions and reactions to events, as well as noticing the way the Tunbridge students handle their emotions versus the way adults handle them was very interesting to me.

I was very excited to finally begin my service at Tunbridge Public Charter School with the students this past Friday. Going into it, I was a bit nervous about making a good impression with the first graders. Sure, I’ve interacted with young kids before and I enjoyed it, but I found myself thinking about if they would like me. My nerves quickly went away when I was greeted by about twenty smiling, young faces when I got into the classroom. Also immediately, I remembered the joy working with children brought me, and their excitement to meet me as well made it a lot better too. While spending a few hours with the kids at Tunbridge, I began to observe how the first graders display their emotions—whether it be interacting with others or how they personally “handled themselves.” It was interesting to see how when placed in a situation that a student did not like, some their emotions were very vocal and aggressive, while others kept quiet and to themselves. I believe that observing the students, as well as analyzing the poems and short story this week helped me see the different ways emotion can be shown.

            In the poem “Cincinnati”, the readers are invited to live the speakers first day of freedom through her eyes. Almost immediately, I was able to feel like I was in the speaker’s place at the given moment. The poem talks about the speaker’s first day of “freedom” in a new city. We can infer that the speaker is Japanese, and living in a time where Japanese-Americans were not treated well by everyone.  In the third stanza of the poem, the speaker says

“No one expect one

hissing voice that said

dirty jap

warm spittle on my right cheek”

The writer’s use of line breaks and first person gave me a deeper connection with her words and story—a more personal connection. I believe this had a lot to do with the form of the poem. Later on in the poem, the speaker says “My hankie brushed the forked tears and spittle together.” This line is another example of how emotion can be showed without a single word being spoken. I found this to be evident at Tunbridge as well, with a less severe event. A little boy in class was constantly misbehaving, and the substitute teacher had to raise her voice at him and assign him a reflective lunch (eating lunch alone and writing a short reflection on what they had done.) It was very clear that the student was upset about this, but rather than displaying his emotions with screaming or crying, which I slightly expected, he chose to stay quiet and not interact with anybody for the rest of the hour I was there. Though he did not speak, his emotions were loud and clear.

            The short story, “The Cask of Amontillado” is one that I had read previously in high school. I think that this story shows how unspoken emotions and oblivion can lead to, in this case, fatal events. Despite Poe’s reputation of writing such stories, I believe that there are themes which go beyond Montresor’s desire to kill his once “friend” Fortunato. Montresor does not like how Fortunato has humiliated him, and rather than expressing these emotions verbally, he comes up with a plan to get Fortunato drunk and kill him. I found it very interesting how Fortunato is so oblivious to Montresor’s anger and hatred, even when he is being killed. I believe this goes to show that you cannot expect others to know they have angered or hurt you. Montresor faked his friendship with Fortunato up until the very last second. This is obviously not an effective or positive way to handle emotions, and something I have thought about when it comes to my service with the first graders. I hope that in my short time at Tunbridge, I can do my best to influence the children to never feel like they have to keep their thoughts and emotions unspoken, but rather vocalize them so others know how they feel.

            Finally, the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” shows emotion in a much different way. At first, the poem may seem like an innocent work about a son and father, but it is clear that there is a different meaning. The speaker says

“You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt”

By almost using waltzing as an analogy, there are clearly emotions and deeper meanings in the poem that the speaker wants to get across to us. I personally think this is a very interesting, intriguing way for the writer to tell this story. By setting the scene as a father/son “waltz”, we are almost caught by surprised by the brutality of the event, as well as it’s true meaning.