My first hotspot was on page 201 and it states, “Underlying this perspective is a long standing view—the Orientalist view—that denies Arabs their right to national self-determination because they are considered incapable of logic, unable to tell the truth and fundamentally murderous.” I chose this because it was interesting to me. Since the U.S. is at war I always-perceived Arab states like Iraq to be bad. I don’t pay close attention to the media when it comes to stuff like this—so that’s partly my fault—but I just assumed that all these places Said talks about were as he said “unable to tell the truth and murderous.” He brings a point of view that is not normally thought of. It doesn’t make me change my views on things, but it does make me think that I may not have all the facts and that I shouldn’t be so easily blinded by things I hear.
“We are in for many more years of turmoil and misery in the Middle East, where one of the main problems is, to put it as plainly as possible, U.S. power. What the United States refuses to see clearly it can hardly hope to remedy” (202). This is the last paragraph of the essay and I believe Said writes this to try and sum together everything he was saying in a few short sentences. In my opinion though, it’s just repetitive. He pretty much says the same thing throughout his whole essay, but just in different ways and by using different example. Although his essay got me thinking, it also is less credible in my opinion because he is very biased. He has one view throughout the whole thing and he doesn’t really show any positive reasons to why the U.S. may be doing what they’re doing.
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” (221). These lines jumped out at me. To me, Yeats is making a powerful statement in those lines. To say that “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;” shows how things are beginning to break and become unstable. In the next line when he says, “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” this makes me feel like the center has finally broken and now there is chaos. I believe that these lines could also be used to describe other aspects of life and not just what he means in his poem. I feel like it just shows when things start getting bad and everything finally breaks and when anarchy comes, it’s the confusion.
My next hotspot was on page 222 and it reads, “Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are the words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight.” I chose this because it seems as if in the beginning of the poem Yeast is talking all about the chaos and anarchy, but when he gets here, he starts to have some hope that change is coming. By saying that “The Second Coming is at hand” he is starting to believe that things are finally changing. But, shortly after he sees something “troubles his sight.” To me this shows how he was finally looking forward to something, but then something scary distracts him and lessens his excitement. This was an idea that I liked because I think it relates to many other things in life. The idea of change and being excited that gets shot down by something that’s not foreseen.
Megan Vaccarella
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