Finpudsning af engelsk

Hejsa.

Jeg skal op i mundtlig engelsk i morgen, og har dertil skrevet det jeg skal sige. (til IB mockexam skal man bare læse det op man har skrevet på forhånd).
Så jeg tænkte om der var nogen der vil se lidt på det jeg har skrevet? Gerne nogen der har læst digtet Miss Gee af W.H Auden.
Altså ikke rettet sproget til perfektionisme, men gerne komme med lidt generelle ideer/rettelser som jeg _selv_ kan ændre/tilføje.

På forhånd tak!
Mvh Ninna Caroline

Og det er som følgende:

My plan
The text I have chosen is W.H. Audens “Miss Gee”. The first thing I will do, is to tell you what kind of poem it is; the technical features of it. Then I will give a summary and analysis of it and afterwards characterize the most important characters in it and analyse their actions during the poem. After that I will analyse the environment and see if it has had any impact on the persons behaviour. Due to that, I will analyse selected events in the poem. As a round up, I will determine the theme of this poem, make some perspectivations to similar works and give my own opinion.

The structure of the poem
This poem is an epic one. What characterizes it as that, is that a story is being told and that it describes a longer period of ones life. It has 25 stanzas, and each stanza consists of 4 lines. I assume this poem to be told over approximately 1 month. The narrator looks back, so it’s a summary of the past time. So therefor could it easily be more or less than 1 month, since it’s quite difficult to determine it from a summary. In the beginning we hear something about her in general, which could run over days, weeks or even months. We don’t hear about a concrete incident before stanza 7, where we are being introduced to her dream. From here we know it’s round about two days from there to when she goes to the doctor. I then predict the time from when she has been to the doctor and till she is being dissected, the end of the story, to happen over 1½-2 weeks.

Narrator
The narrator in this poem is a he/she narrator. The fact that it’s a narrator, and not Miss Gee, who tells the story, creates a slight distance to the reader. To give more insight in “Miss Gee” as a person, the narrator has chosen to be an omniescent narrator. This means that he or she can read the characters thoughts and even know about her dreams (as can be seen in stanza 7 and down). If it hadn’t been an omniescent narrator, it could easeliy become quite unpersonal.The narrator would only be able to appoint what she is doing and only guess why she is doing it.

Summary and analysis:
This poem is about a woman called Edith Gee, who lives in Clevedon Terrace number 83. It’s quite crucial to notice that it is mentioned where she lives, because a rather important point in this poem is that no one really know who she is. During this poem we never hear about any friends of her, so I assume she’s a bit lonely. The things that keep her occupied is things she is doing for others; those others who really doesn’t appreciate her. The tings she is doing, is things like knitting for the church bazaar. This proves that she is doing all she can to be one of God’s better people. I don’t think she is doing this because she feels like she has to, but because she genuinly thinks that it’s for the better. To behave God, she doesn’t drink or smoke, she wears her clothes buttoned up to her neck in order not to look tempting to men (well slutty) and she apologizes to God for every sinfull though that might cross her mind.
Like the time when she had a naughty dream about the Vicar from Saint Aloysius. She imagines to be the Queen of France, and since this Vicar asks her so nice to dance, she dances with him. Alone this simple dance is a bit risky for Miss Gee. Especially when the Vicar suddenly turns into a big bull with a pulsating and hot breath. It’s quite clear in the poem that this bull represents sex (e.g stanza 8 and 9); specially the horns of the bull and it’s hot breath. She returns once more to the church to pray. It is stated in the poem that she kneeles down in the side-aisle. This could be a symbol for that she dislikes to be in the center. She has apparently never been in the center of any companies, and most likely not in her own life either. Something else has always been most important; for instance God. She prefers to be in the outercircle.
The following day she bicycled down to the doctor because of an ache inside her. On the way over to the doctors clinique she passes by a loving couple(in stanza 11). It says; (…) She turned her head away; (…) And they didn't ask her to stay., which probably means that even though she has the same thoughts as they have, and are living them out as well, she is still not welcome and not asked to join others company. She turns her head away. Maybe because she is shy and embarressed about her dream, even though it is everywhere out in the public.
After being examined everywhere, the doctor diagnoses cancer. The same evening the doctor talks with his wife about cancer and that he fears that Miss Gee might be a goner. According to the doctor, cancer only strikes childless women and retired men. While he is saying this, he is rolling his bread into pellets. This could either mean that it affects him, and that it’s a way of occupien himself in order not to cry or that he is a cynicle man that when all comes to all, doesn’t care a about Miss Gee. I think, and hope, that it’s the first one. Since he says “I fear she is a goner”, I suppose he did like her in one way or another.
After a short while Miss Gee winds up in the hospital and is being dissected in any possible way. In the beginning she has the blanket up to her neck, but later on the surgeons doesn’t care. They remove it, laugh at her small breasts, make students look at her like if she was a doll and then, in the end, they hung her up on a hook from the ceiling. This behaiviour is way beyond of what is an acceptable treatment of a human being. A human that has been living covered up all her life is being neglected efter her death.

Environment
This poem takes place in 30’s, round about. It’s at that time where people were quite religious, and belived that if they didn’t oblige the orders of God (the bible), they would go to hell after they died. And in order to retain respect, you had to be a good citizent. So the situation Miss Gee is in, in the first part of the poem is not unusual. Neither is the part in the end of the poem, since science had a hight priority and scientist started to investigate the human anatomy in a more serious stage at that time. Every new case had to be recorded, so ofcourse it would be interesting to investigate this.
I imagine the weather and the sourroundings to be spring or fall; neither warm or cold.

Message in the poem?
The author has done a lot of thoughts in this poem. One of them is the damaging way in which illness can function as a cultural metaphor. It lies under the skin in this poem that cancer is a disease of repressed emotion and life-energy. And that retired men and childless women have suppressed the life-energy, thereby becoming useless and cancer-prone. So it is more likely for people who hasn’t acheaped what nature tells them to, to get cancer. People were most likely to think like this in the 30’s, where this poem approximately takes place, although it’s written in the 60’s. But ofcourse we know now that this isn’t the truth.

My opinion and perspective
I think this poem is quite good because it deals with a quite sad situation; people who are a bit lonely and tries to live as good citizens, but the only thanks they receive is cancer.
This really makes me feel for those who has lived their life like this. I know one or another that leeds a life that is a bit similar to Miss Gees’s. I have no idea if their lonely or not, but if they got a disease like cancer, I would really suffer with them. Not that I wouldn’t if it was any other, but according to they way I see life, people as Miss Gee hasn’t lived life fully. To me it’s important to live life.