Literary+criticism

Mushrooms

Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly

Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding,

Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water, On crumbs of shadow, Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing. So many of us! So many of us!

We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning Inherit the earth Our foot's in the door.


 * Sylvia Plath **

__//Biographical perspective//__ Sylvia Plath's life as a writer had been fairly successful, and it can be said that she led a pretty good life. During her scholarly years, she was a top-achieving student of a middle-class family who earned awards and was recognized for her talents. However, beneath the surface, she was full of personal discontinuities, starting from the death of her father during her childhood when she was only eight years old. The mushrooms described throughout this poem represent the problems that plagued her life. "Overnight" when no one seems to notice anything and where things that don't seem to be existential may come into being ("discreetly, very quietly"). They definitely exist, taking ahold of their space, as is described in the second stanza as they "take hold on the loam" and "acquire the air," while they go still go by unnoticed ("nobody sees us"). While her writing career continued quite smoothly, other problems in life harassed her-- when she was a mother of two children in her twenties, she was diseased and had an insufficient amount of money. These problems didn't have a dramatic inflict on her, at least directly at the time ("earless, eyeless, perfectly voiceless..."). But as her life got busier, and as she was barely able to keep up with her writing and only because it was the once place she could vent and probably the source of her refuge and she took took the effort to make herself the time for it, she found herself unable to withstand it all. Which is why even those internal conflicts, pain in life that at first might have seemed quite bearable ("diet on water, on crumbs of shadow"; "we are shelves, we are tables, we are meek, we are edible.") turned out to have more and more pressure on her ("soft fists insist on heaving the needles, the leafy bedding, even the paving"). Illness and poverty wasn't the end of her earthly problems; her husband Ted Hughes who was an English poet left her for another women with glamorous looks. She probably went to being a poorer state since then, with more burden on herself, having the responsibility of childcare solely put upon her. Her attitude also got darker and things were leading towards self-destruction-- in one of her last poems, she wrote, "dying / is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well.'' This looming sense of devastation and the buildup of her suffering is portrayed in this poem: "So many of us! So many of us!", "in spite of ourselves. our kind multiplies: we shall by morning inherit the earth / our foot's in the door" (since the mushrooms represent her grief and/or the source of torment in her life). Even though they started out as barely noticeable and "perfectly voiceless," they eventually "widen the crannies" and "shoulder through holes." And gradually, they came to taking up all of her life that she ended up taking her own life at the age of 30. Moreover, that wasn't the only time she longed for suicide, for she had made attempts before, in her junior year at college. Thus, her poem "Mushroom" makes references to the hardships and distress that plagued her life and led to her suicidal state of mentality recurring throughout and finally, prevailing over Sylvia Plath's life.

Biographical Literary Criticism on Silence: Shusaku Endo was a Japanese who had been raised in Japanese culture and at an early stage of childhood converted into a Catholic due to family influence. However, he had never felt truly comfortable with his religion. Studying in France as an adult also formed his multicultural personality aspect. Having seen, and probably to some extent experienced, how the same religion can be molded into different cultures according to their customs and the people, and retained in ways that diverge from one another, Endo started to ponder about what could be the true accountability of religions and one's beliefs. After having gone through multiple times of questioning his own faith and that of others, he has written Silence as a means of exploration of religion, and its tendencies when placed in other cultures. Sometimes the specific rituals that are considered important and highly regarded are done in "unorthodox" ways in some places. However, the faith of the people aren't any less sincere-- this concept is conveyed consistently throughout Silence, specifically in the characterization of Father Rodrigues, the missionary, as well as the devoted Christian peasants in Japan. These ideas may very likely have been developed from his access to religion, and two cultures. The historical background of Silence is also a very apt one, when religious persecution was rife in Japan and in the Christian perspective, there were very much that was being questioned about each individual's faith. This is not only conveyed from the Christian perspectives in the book, but also in the opposing, atheist-like side of Japanese officials as well, since they turn out to be very informed about Christianity but have merely come to the conclusion that it is not to be accepted in Japan. Reasons for this, according to them, consist of cultural clash that exist culture-to-culture as well as culture-to-religion. The religious, and social questioning of ideologies as well as those of religious and social combined are depicted in Silence through numerous aspects. Hence, Endo has successfully achieved his task as a writer of triggering the train of thought he himself might have been quite obsessed with at some point, and exposing much area of questioning for his readers.