"All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" by Richard Brautigan

In Brautigan’s poem “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace,” he presents the reader with two interpretations of what he thinks of technology.  His poem could take on an anti-technology or pro-technology message.  This anti-technology message can be seen in the urgent tone from parenthetical remark accompanied by an exclamation mark at the beginning of each stanza.  The lines “and the sooner the better!,” “right now, please!,” and “it has to be!,” shows Brautigan’s urgent message that we cannot let technology become superior and disrupt the balance we have between nature and technology.  While these remarks help to set a tone, they also seem like they don’t belong with the rest of the imagery of nature and technology Brautigan has in the poem.  It seems he has put them here to incorporate that society has become used to getting answer and solutions quickly because of technology, which is not good.  Brautigan ends the poem with the phrase “all watched over by machines of loving grace.”  While it seems to have a positive emphasis by using the phrase “loving grace,” it also is an eerie ending to the poem because it’s suggesting that technology has broken the balance and taken over. 

Brautigan’s poem can also leave the reader feeling that he has taken on a pro-technology tone.  This is shown by continually using images of a paradise where technology and nature can co-exist peacefully and happily.  Brautigan uses words that posses positive connotations such as “mutually, harmony, peacefully, free, joined, loving grace,” throughout the poem.  This choice of diction leads the reader to believe that Brautigan promotes the balance of nature and technology.  Brautigan uses images such as “a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together,” “a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics,” and “a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature.”  These images of nature and technology living together harmoniously show the reader that Brautigan wants a world where we can have the beauty of nature and the productivity of technology. 

I believe that the pro-technology message is more convincing because of how Brautigan continually works in the harmonious relationship between nature and technology.  While Brautigan has accepted that technology is going to be a prevalent part of our lives, he seems to hope that technology will live in peace with the rest of the world.  He offers the reader an optimistic out-look on this co-existence by repeatedly using positive words to create a peaceful tone throughout the poem.  I came away from the poem feeling that Brautigan believes nature can peacefully embrace the transition to a place where technology is abundant.  

"Design" by Robert Frost

List of images:
-dimpled, fat, white
-white heal-all
-white, rigid, satin cloth
-assorted characters of death and blight
-ingredients of a witch's broth
-snow-drop spider
 -dead wings, paper kite
-blue and innocent heal-all
-kindred spider
-steered the white moth
-design of darkness appall

Robert Frost’s poem “Design” is filled with imagery that helps to portray the uncertainties he has in God’s planning within the universe.  By using simple diction, Frost illustrates a seemingly ordinary event of a spider eating a moth, into a dark and evil scene. 

In the first few lines, Frost repeatedly uses the word white, therefore suggesting an image of purity and innocence.  Frost describes a white spider holding a white moth on a white flower.  It is unusual that these figures are all illustrated as being white, when they normally are not that color.  He says the spider is “white” and “fat,” insinuating that the spider has been previously feasting.  Frost’s unusually description of a heal-all flower as being “white,” when usually they are blue, implies that this flower is safe and pure.  As Frost describes the moth, he again uses “white” suggesting the moth’s life was innocently taken away by the spider.   Frost then goes on to explain that the spider, flower, and the moth are “assorted characters” chosen to as “ingredients of a witch’s broth.”  The “witch’s broth” creates a stark contrast between the previous white and innocent figures to a dark and frightening scene.  However, while there are the images of a “witch’s broth,” “death and blight,” and “dead wings,” Frost maintains the figures previous innocent depiction.  At the volta of the poem, Frost begins to question why the flower, moth, and spider have all come together, especially because of the contradiction between the purity of the color white they bare and the darkness associated with the death of the moth by the spider.  He then proposes that these three white figures could have come together by an evil force or that there is no reason for their presence together, especially at such a small level.

The images of white correlate to the title of “design,” which suggests that these figures were created to specifically be together by some other power for a particular purpose.  This is again portrayed when Frost implies that the elements added to the “witch’s broth” are mixed together for a reason.  Because Frost groups these figures together not only in the “witch’s broth” but by also by their color, he is suggesting that they were designed by one single higher power.  By providing the reader with images of darkness and wickedness, he indicates that the higher power controlling the universe may not have good intentions, but instead evil ones.  With the mixing of light and dark images, Frost’s poem vaguely offers an answer to his uncertainty on whether God exists and if God exists with good intentions.  

           

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The meaning of my title...

The reason for my title is a very interesting combination of reasons.  I will first start with my experience in high school with my English teacher freshman year.  I had always had some sort of interest in writing, but never really reading books (compared with my sister who reads an insane amount of books each week).  But this teacher changed the way I viewed not only the class of English and reading.  I began to love it.  I realized how this course could expand my imagination and vocabulary and how I could pick up any book and escape to a new interesting world.  The way my teacher freshman year exposed me to English inspired my writing and allowed my interest in reading to take off.  It wasn't until my senior of high school that this inspiration my freshman teacher had given me quickly dwindled.  I arrived to my first period English class ready and eager to learn.  I would soon find out that this English class would be the one thing I dreaded going to every day of senior year.  I had always gotten along with teachers and I had always had enjoyed what they were teaching.  This class was completely different.  She gave us ridiculous assignments that took hours to do and she would make fun of kids for not understanding parts of the book we were reading.  Instead of fostering my love for English, this teacher smashed it into the ground until I despised even thinking about English.  It's unfortunate this was my last impression of an English class.  So it is my goal to renew that love and excitement I felt with my freshman English class.  I want to again feel the wonderful ability expand, explore, and be inspired because of my English class.