Poetry

            I think there is a connection to be drawn between the way that Hemingway depicts Jake’s injury and modern concept of BDE. For anyone who doesn’t know BDE is an acronym that stands for Big D**k Energy, which Urban Dictionary defines as “having confidence without cockiness”. It’s supposed to be a healthy, lowkey way of feeling yourself. In essence, it means that you’re secure in yourself. While one doesn’t have to be well endowed or even have a penis at all to have BDE, the basis behind the term being named that is pretty self-evident. As a society, we conflate this feeling of confidence with masculinity. There’s a reason that we make reference to a penis in a term whose meaning doesn’t imply a gender.             This brings us to Jake. To the outside, Jake seems like the most masculine person there is. He is interested in things like fishing, bo...

While reading and discussing Mrs. Dalloway, I kept thinking of two very similar questions. The first of these was “do Clarissa and Richard love each other” and the second being “do Septimus and Rezia love each other”. There are no clear answers to either of these questions provided in the book. After finishing the whole novel, I feel like most people would answer both of these questions with the same response: “it’s complicated”. The reasons behind these similar responses are pretty clear. The dynamics of both of these relationships have many parallels. The most striking of these are the problems caused by characters lack of feeling. Clarissa and Septimus both express through the book that they recognize that they can no longer feel strong emotions. After the war, Septimus notes the fact that he no longer feels and a large part of why he decides to marry Rezia in the first place is in the hopes that he will develop feelings. Clarissa consistently brings up how she fe...