Colors :: Creative Writing Essays

Colors Emulsions are thin, gelatinous, light-sensitive coatings on film that react chemically to capture the color and shadings of a scene. Color film requires three layers of emulsions, typically cyan (a greenish blue), yellow, and magenta (a purplish red). As light passes through the layers, each emulsion records areas where its particular color appears in the scene. When developed, the emulsion releases dye that is the complementary color of the light recorded: blue light activates yellow dye, green light is magenta, and red light is cyan.(1) golden beer lemon (sickly) Sunflower caution banana (mourning) school-bus Yellow. In sixteenth century England yellow was a sign of mourning. Sunflowers are yellow- and there must have been lilies in the arrangement too, because I remember the smell of the hot-yellow pollen. Sunflowers are yellow, but I didn't know it then. In that lemon-meringue hospital room; sunflowers, for sunny, for sun. He was called Sonny (for son for Sunny: he who is built around an engine), and for a long time I thought it was spelled Sunny, and into the blue my sun fell one day and proved me right. I belong to this Sunny, whose light was so strong people flocked to him - he saw through them to them, I belong to this Sonny who had enough heart (engine red and strong,) to keep up old arguments while his eyes yellowed and that paper thin hospital gown became thinner, the thin oxygen tubes terribly distracting from his face (though he wasn't thin - he had been gorging himself to save us from watching him fade.) He had put me in charge of taking care of the (sun)flower arrangement and my hear t broke (like rays of sun, fragmented) as I poured the golden water down the drain and threw the dying flowers out. (We still have the vase at home. It was useless and too necessary.) Over and over, in my mind, I trot up the aging stairs in our house. I hear a voice chanting, "I'mgonedieI'mgonedieI'mgonedie" and I see him lying splayed out on the cyan bedspread in that egg-shell room and I want to scream, "Heywhat'suphowwasyourday?" The baseball game (thick with silence) is playing on the walls and ceiling at sickly angles and I want to whisper, "Sowho' swinning?" I want to disappear. I go into my room and I close my head and I search for a cardboard box (ripping through piles of paper inside myself), something to put him in before.

Race and Alabaster Essay

Othello and Desdemona’s marriage was doomed from the start. Even considering the racial nature of the marriage, his lack of a constant home, and the improper method of his courting, there is another reason why their marriage would never have worked. Othello’s label of Desdemona prevents him from considering her a person. He thinks of her instead as superior to himself in every way, to the point that she is a god. Her race, beauty, and status make her godly in his mind. Because Othello thinks of Desdemona as â€Å"Alabaster†(5. 2.5) he will never consider her capable of responding to his love. Because Othello is at his wit’s end when he refers to her as â€Å"Alabaster†, he is speaking out of his heart. After Othello reads the letter from Venice, he begins to speak in less cohesive manner. For instance the line, â€Å"Pish! Noses, ears, and lips. Isn’t Possible? Confess! Handkerchief! O devil! †(4. 1. 42) contains none of Othello’s former eloquence. He begins to speak with word association, rather than in complete sentences. For instance, the word â€Å"confess! † brings up the word â€Å"Handkerchief!†, and â€Å"devil! †. Because Desdemona, the handkerchief, and the sense of maliciousness were on his mind so much, he begins to express with abstract words and ideas instead of sentences. Although this makes his lines harder to read, they show us what he is constantly thinking of. Instead of clear and concise lines, they are a torrent of his true feelings. Therefore when he describes Desdemona as â€Å"Alabaster†, we can be sure it is his inner picture of her. Alabaster’s beauty gives you an idea about his feelings of bodily inferiority to her. Alabaster is a naturally beautiful stone, used by ancient Egyptians and Chinese to make statues and vases. This word choice gives the reader a sense of his feelings of inadequacy to Desdemona. He is never said to be ugly, on the contrary, he is described as â€Å"far more fair than black†(1. 3. 291). He must have felt some sensitivity about his physical appearance. In contrast, he describes her face as â€Å"fair as Dian’s visage†(3. 3. 389), Dian most likely being the god of healing in Celtic mythology. This implies both beauty and health. He then goes on to say â€Å"begrimed and black as mine own face†(3. 3. 390). Othello superimposes her clean and young white face with his grimy old black face. The fact that he believed her to be unfaithful with Cassio further proves his insecurity. Cassio is a clean white man with golden hair. Cassio is all of the beauty that Othello can not be, and is therefore able to provide something that he cannot. This makes Cassio a threat to Othello’s masculinity. Othello most likely gains this opinion of Cassio from his nonchalant attitude. When Cassio says â€Å"I never knew a woman love man so†(4. 1. 111) Othello immediately jumps to the conclusion that he is referring to himself and Desdemona. Othello is on the offensive with Cassio without any proof, simply because of his physical appearance. Alabaster’s smooth white surface illustrates the racial inferiority he feels to Desdemona. Race plays an enormous part in Othello’s relationship with Desdemona. Although he is an upstanding citizen and a good solder he is still unfit to marry because of his race. A reoccurring theme in the way that people refer to Othello is that of a great black beast. He is often described as an â€Å"Old black ram†(1. 1. 87) or a â€Å"Barbary Horse†(1. 1. 110). There is a sense that he is animalistic, even though in real life he is sophisticated and civilized. This spiteful talk is a back-handed reminder that he is a moor. The constant inference that he is a beast may have caused him to believe it himself. Othello believes that Desdemona could not love an ugly animal like himself. This puts her sincerity into doubt when she says that she loves him. Alabaster is a rock, and can not return any feelings of love that Othello gives to it. This is part of a feeling that Desdemona is something elemental and beyond him. For instance in the same speech he describes her as having â€Å"Promethean heat†(5. 2. 12), Prometheus being the god that stole fire for man. Therefore â€Å"Promethean heat† would refer to the element of fire in its purest form, something divine and primeval. He also says that her death should bring â€Å"A huge eclipse of sun and moon†(5. 2. 97). This paints her as something cosmic in scale, so large and important that the entire universe should be changed in her passing. Othello puts her on a different scale than himself. When he dies he says only that â€Å"in your letters†¦ [you should] speak of me as I am†(5. 2. 338). While he is normal, she is a cosmic and divine being, unfit to love a mortal like himself. This creates insecurity in Othello. He begins to ask how can a rock, or fire, or a star in the night sky love him? Because of his high view of her, he creates a complex of his own insignificance. From his point of view, Desdemona is unable to love him because she is too elemental to have emotion. Othello has, put simply, encased Desdemona in alabaster. He has formed an opinion of her that she is unable to break free of. Because he has so strongly locked her into this state of mind he is unable to think of him in any other way. She is so high up on the pedestal that he puts her on that he is unable to see who she truly is. This is Othello’s failing. By making her too powerful, too divine, any minor fault is a glaring defect to her immaculate surface. Then at the first flaw, she becomes low and nothing, and he needs to return her to her former glory. He must â€Å"Quench thee†¦ [and] again they former light restore†(5. 2. 9). He fails to see her love through her alabaster covering.

Aspects Of A Negro Life Essay - 1797 Words

Aspects Of A Negro Life Through his political activism and his artwork, Douglas dramatically changed the way other artists viewed African Americans. Politically, he helped found and served as president for the activist organization that drastically assisted with employing thousands of artists. he 1920s and 1930s brought drastic changes to the lives of many African Americans. Geographically, they migrated toward the urban, industrialized North, not only to escape racial prejudices and economic hardships, but also to attain higher social and economic status. This â€Å"Great Migration† transformed the streets of Harlem, New York, and gave rise to cultural changes of the New Negro movement. As this movement gradually gained popularity,†¦show more content†¦Through his political activism and artwork, Douglas was able to reveal the ideas and values exemplified during the Harlem Renaissance, despite significant criticism of his style. With this rebirth of traditional African culture, the number of African American artists rapidly increased. It became difficult for these artists to gain employment, even with the assistance of government work-relief programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Set up by President Roosevelt as part of his New Deal program, the WPA offered jobs to thousands of unemployed artists, in an attempt to boost the nation’s morale, as well as stimulate the depressed economy. Despite its good intentions, the government program was unable to pay decent wages and failed to provide employment for nearly five million artists (American). In response to this failure, the Harlem Artist Guild, founded in 1928, aggressively began to work alongside the WPA to ensure the success of African American artists. Led by its first president, Aaron Douglas, the activist organization played an influential role in helping artists attain the recognition necessary to qualify them for the WPA work projects (Bearden 131). With the assistance of Douglas, the Harlem Artist Guild, and the WPA, millions of African American artists succeeded in gaining employment despite the hard times of the 1930s (Artnoir’s). In his own works, Aaron Douglas used a strong,Show MoreRelatedJohn Altoon s Jazz Players From 19501396 Words   |  6 Pagesoutlining geometric shapes along with his use of strong saturated colors. Altoon’s Jazz Players reflects Modernism by exemplifying cubism as well as Harlem Renaissance art through the use of angular, geometric shapes and the depiction of the â€Å"New Negro.† John Altoon was born in 1925 in Los Angeles and died in 1969 at the of age 43 due to a massive heart attack (Orange County Museum of Art Website). 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