Well I wouldn't say it was an athletes foot, I am relatively active but nowhere near athletic standards, you do flatter me so!
Ahem. Not athletes foot no... it was my heel. Strange, no?
Annifa wrote, "My foot itches."
I have been reliably informed there are 12 itches in a foot. Be brave, and keep the hell outta the computer forum. Your lost key reply had me in sitches.
Happy Kwanza.
I hope you are all preparing for my threads 1st Birthday party tomorrow
Holy shat time flys.........ohh and i've been preparing for months now....I was hoping to surprise you, but apparently you beat me to it!!!
I'm with InTraNsiTiOn (I typed that out... no copy/paste for me!), time sure does seem to fly.
InTraNsiTiOn
I copied and pasted that. No typing that out for me!
Oi bitches! Pay attention to me, now dammit. I am joking thank you please I am sooo not that rude in real life.
Help! Am trying to write an essay that I have left to the last minute la ti daaar can anyone write it for me.. I mean, help me find stuff about DH Lawrence I've been googling for ages and quite frankly Im getting bored and lazy.
Found plenty of biographical info which (or is it 'that'?.. I'm not quite sure) may be useful but I'm looking for some critical analysis of The Prussian Officer to support/discredit my own most wondiferous opinion..
Anybody?.. no... dust?
Anger in the Work of D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence was probably a very angry man. His writings are full of extremely intense feelings of anger and hate which do not seem to belong. This anger is usually connected to love. The title character and the Orderly in "The Prussian Officer" have a love-hate relationship, except one hates, the other loves. The Orderly, as recipient of unwanted love, feels great resentment and anger towards the Officer, so much so that he kills him.
"The Prussian Officer" involves a gay officer. There is something dysfunctional about all of these relationships, however, and the anger exposes it. There is no reason for anger if there is not something wrong, so we know that there is underlying unrest in, Ted and Elsie's marriage, for example. The anger is supposed to hint at trouble, then it is up to the reader to discern from clues in the rest of the text the particular irregularity in the story.
The anger in "The Prussian Officer" is somewhat different because it is associated with love and resentment. Hilda and Laurie hate Emma because she has brought shame upon the family. As the father indicates, the family is dysfunctional in the first place, partially due to his failings and the lack of mother. This is the "problem" which is indicated by all of the anger and resentment. Hilda and Laurie are also jealous because they are probably virgins, but their sister is not.
In spite of plot differences, Lawrence is fond of using the anger motif to convey multi-leveled relationships. The relationship between Anne and the mole is not merely rodent-human. The Captain and Orderly do not only associate as ordinate/subordinate, much to the orderly's chagrin. The Rowbotham sisters resent Emma for what she has done, not for any immediately apparent reason. After the initial identification, the reader has to find the true meaning of the anger in order to fully understand
Nottingham University England hold most of his papers. Do post your finished work.
Tryagain, thank yee kindleee!
Are you actually really really sure you want to read my essay? People will mock me... Plus if I do get constructive criticism (.. if people who are not like me and actually post sensible replies read it) they will laugh at me and and and it's too late to change it now as I have to hand it in tomorrow morning and and and...
Ok I'll post it.. but only if you promise to skim read it, perhaps completely overlook it, then tell me it's great, just great - spiffy in fact, yes, that I can allow.
Brace yourself...:
D. H. Lawrence - The Prussian Officer
I have chosen to analyse the closing scenes, parts III and IV, from D. H. Lawrence's 1913 short story The Prussian Officer. Lawrence wrote The Prussian Officer in the summer of 1913, and it was added to a collection of short stories of the same title in 1914. In 1912 Lawrence was living in Italy with Frieda Weekley, this was the first time that Lawrence had lived with somebody in relationship, and the fact that Frieda was tormented by leaving her children behind made the relationship very difficult. It was also a challenge as they were living in a foreign country, therefore the language barrier and a shortage of money placed extra stress on the relationship. Lawrence puzzled over what exactly it was like to be in a relationship, specifically the ?'third thing' in a relationship, the difficulty to understand the ?'other' and to submit to a woman's understanding of him. This ?'other' area, the space between, was the area that Lawrence was beginning to move into in his writing. Lawrence was interested in what happens when relationships do not work, he explored the way that relationships fail. Lawrence believed that cruelty was a form of perverted sex, and it is this notion that he explores in The Prussian Officer, specifically the biological effect that cruelty has on the body.
Originally titled Honour and Arms, The Prussian Officer was renamed due to the outbreak of war, despite the fact that the officer in the story is not actually Prussian. The story of an officer and his orderly, The Prussian Officer draws attention to several issues, including trust, sadism, envy and homosexual desire. Trust is a powerful element of the story, along with envy; it one possibility that the officer's cruelty to his orderly stems from envy, he is envious of the orderly's youth. The word ?'envy' is derived from Latin, literally meaning ?'video', to look. Throughout the story emphasis is placed on the eyes and the eye contact made between the officer and orderly: "His subconscious remembered those steely blue eyes and the harsh brows, and did not intend to meet them again." (Lawrence, D. H 2000 p176) Eye colour was something that Lawrence used symbolically; the officer's eyes are blue, to show an idealised perspective - what Lawrence would refer to as living in the mind. The orderly's eyes however, are brown, to emphasise warmth - living in the body.
The officer feels empty when confronted by somebody who seems to be ?'fuller' than he is; therefore he wants to destroy the orderly in order to corroborate himself. This idea is not a new one, in the story of Snow White for example; the desire to destroy something because it is more beautiful is clearly evident. Interestingly, the orderly's name is Schöner, meaning ?'more beautiful'. The officer's jealousy causes him to abuse the orderly, both physically and psychologically. His bullying is reminiscent of torture, his wanting the orderly to look at him shows the power relations in the psychology of torture: "Look me in the eyes when I talk to you" (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p178). For a person to want another person to look at them is also a desire that people have in sexual relationships, we seek corroboration from the other person.
The officer's abuse towards the orderly could also be based on an attraction as well as a jealousy: "In spite of himself, the Captain could not regain his neutrality of feelings towards his orderly. Nor could he leave the man alone." (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p177) I feel that the relationship between the orderly and the officer may have involved some form of homosexual desire, however only as a secondary factor to the pleasure the officer felt through physical abuse; any sexual contact may be alluded to, or mimicked in the style of writing; "all the force of all his blood exulting in his thrust, he shoved back the head of the other man" (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p188), yet is not actually depicted. There is no attraction in the traditional sense, no real feeling that the officer is in love with the orderly, and romance is far from apparent. The orderly does not have the intellectual capacity to deal with the abusive (whether sexual or otherwise) relationship that he has been forced into; therefore the only way that he could escape was through the murder of the officer. The murder itself has clear sexual overtones, not because there was anything actually sexual involved, but because of the way that the event was depicted. The description has sexual connotations, it sounds like a rape, and once again Lawrence draws upon the sexualisation of power relations.
Parts III and IV of The Prussian Officer detail the aftermath of the murder of the officer. Brian Finney writes that the officer's use of brute force is used to express his perverted sexuality, one in which he is sexually gratified by sadism, however this ultimately causes his death when the orderly turns the same brute force on him: "Lawrence gives narrative life to his belief that these unconscious forces are powerful enough to kill, or nearly kill anyone opposing them." (Finney, B. 2000 p15)
Lawrence skilfully uses touch and sight symbolically throughout the story to represent the fight that is constantly raging between the conscious and unconscious forces within the officer and the orderly. (Finney, B. 2000 p15) Soon after murdering the officer the orderly passes out from thirst, heat and exhaustion, succumbing to the unconscious that he needed to escape to, to be free from the torment of the officer. However, when he comes round he hallucinates; "He saw the blood-disfigured face of his Captain, which he hatedÂ… deep inside him, he knew that it was so, the Captain should be dead." (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p190) The orderly, upon returning to consciousness, is immediately haunted by the image of the officer; he cannot deal with the conscious state and therefore a return to the unconscious ultimately proves to be the orderly's fate.
Finney writes that all that is left to the unthinking orderly towards the end of the story is the permanent darkness, and it is important to note that the orderly was killed by the sun. The sun is the source of light and of sight, and of the consciousness that becomes "so fatally lacking in his life" (Finney, B. 2000 p15). The depiction of the mountains; "He stared till his eyes went black, and the mountains, as they stood in their beauty, so clean and cool, seemed to have it, that which was lost in him" (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p193) serves to taunt the orderly; they have an "unattainable detachment" (Finney, B. 2000 p16) that the orderly desperately needs; yet it succeeds to elude him. Lawrence also uses the powerful imagery of lightning to represent the irregular and uncontrollable flashes of consciousness, of the real world, that are left to the orderly as he drifts in and out of consciousness. What initially appears to be simply a description of a storm at night; "During the night the lightning fluttered perpetually" (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p192) also functions as a form of reflection of the orderly's mind.
The narrative style of the passage also somewhat reflects the state of the orderly's mind. Lawrence sentences are at times short and fragmented, flitting from one thing to another just as thoughts would sporadically appear in the mind. The reading experience induces in the reader the sense of the world, and of reality, drifting in and out of focus, resembling the orderly's "brain opening and shutting like the night" (Lawrence, D. H. 2000 p192). Critics suggest that the rapid advancements Lawrence was making in literary terms are apparent in the growing confidence with which he uses symbols and metaphors in The Prussian Officer.
Finney writes that it would be incorrect to suggest that Lawrence had replaced the nineteenth century's reliance on mans' mental abilities in favour of a more Freudian belief in the superiority of the unconscious. Instead, Finney believes that between 1907 and 1914 - during which time The Prussian Officer was written - Lawrence was working towards a dualistic vision of man, in which there is a balance between intellect and emotion, and reason against feeling. Lawrence appears to celebrate the life of the passions at the expense of the more conscious life of the mind (Finney, B. 2000 pp12-13). Lawrence was especially aware of the imbalance after the industrial revolution; his ideal of the complete and passionate life was threatened by technological advancements in a changing world . In The Prussian Officer it is evident that Lawrence has documented what has happened when the imbalance is extreme. The orderly was too absorbed in the life of passion, of the body; whereas the officer was to the other extreme. Lawrence was trying to equalise the balance, and his concern with the duality of life influenced his earlier stories, almost all of which were compiled in the 1914 The Prussian Officer collection (Finney, B. 2000 p13).
Lawrence was haunted by a sense of apocalypse, which was confirmed when World War One broke out. He was convinced that the Christian democratic ideal was destroying itself, and saw the war as the outcome of a collective death wish, a death wish that he portrayed in his work through such characters as the two protagonists in The Prussian Officer. (Finney, B. 2000 p17)
The final scene of the story is a powerful image. The bodies of the orderly and the officer lie side by side in the morgue, and Lawrence again the points out the difference between the passionate body and the enclosed mind - the officer is rigid, yet the orderly appears to be sleeping, as though he could awake at any moment.
Beautifully written, pure poetry. In my humble opinion, you have captured the essence of his mind.
(One small point - a surplus ?'the' in the last but one line "again the points"). Yes I did read it all.
Why thank you. How very kind. Adding extra words is unusual for me, I usually miss words out. It's like playing blankety blank.. Another trick of mine is missing off the last letter of a word if the following word begins with the same letter. Worra dodo.
"You cannot make another search so soon after your last"
Er.. what's that about???
How rude! Why the hell not eh? Is there a quota on these things? What a load of old tripe.
Craven will justify it saying it lowers the server workload but I think that... that's just what it does.
On behalf of the search team may I offer sincere apologies, the message you received should have read:
"You cannot make another POST so soon after your last"
Your avalanche of a post every six months places great strain on finite resources. It may surprise you to learn that your posts in Welsh have to be painstakingly translated into English by a team of Druids, which as you can well imagine, is a very time consuming. So, slow down.
BTW Sut mae?
I like that I have at least two threads to go to when I make triumphant returns (for 30 mintes) to A2K.
These speakers buzz a lot. It bothers me.
Yarr! Smog. It's because you always get a reaction
My computer makes buzz noises but with added 'about to take off' noises.
@annifa,
Oh my god??? What's happened here? What's with the layout? And where's my Audrey pic? Huh? Nooo!
@roger,
Ahhhh waaahhh woo wah??? What's happened here? I haven't got to the bottom or the top or the middle or the inbetween parts of this new place... Where's Audrey gone? What's all this nonsense?
@annifa,
Man, you leave for 2 years, and look what happens.
But since you're here -- does this fat make me look pants?
