The Crying of Lot 49- Chapter 5

In this chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 we really start to see how everything is more and more connected. Oedipa goes to Berkeley in this chapter and starts to see more horns. She sees a muted horn in a bathroom stall with the words in the beginning of the chapter and then later again in a laundromat and a bathroom at an airport. By now, we obviously know that the horn must mean something but we don't know what. Later in the chapter an old man gives oedipa a letter to deliver to the "horn people" because he is too sick to deliver it himself. In this chapter we also learn about D.E.A.T.H or "Don't ever antagonize the horn" which  is ironic because to me, it seems like the horn is antagonizing Oedipa which in turn is making her curious about the horn. The horn is so present in this novel I am very interested to see what the horn means and who the "horn people are".

Howl by Allen Ginsberg

      This story was very interesting to read because it really hit home with me, being a college student and all. The first lines, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix" explains what Ginsberg saw during his college years and what so many of us witness or even go through during school. I think his personal testimony of what he may have witnessed was a bit more extreme than what I see here at Clemson, but all the same, I see people and sometimes myself, waste away our intelligence through partying and not taking school seriously enough.
      "Who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy" is one of my favorite lines in this story. Ginsberg uses intense imagery throughout "Howl" and this line displays his perfect choice of words wonderfully. Another line stood out to me, "Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of time!". I literally laughed out loud when I read this line because it is so true about what young people think they are having or going through during college and when you think about it coming from Ginsberg's point of view it seems like a joke. I feel like he is being sarcastic and I ended up laughing at myself. By the end of the poem I wasn't sure if Ginsberg had been talking about Carl Solomon the entire time, or just towards the end. I was confused as to if all of the experiences mentioned in the beginning had been Carl Solomon's, or just anyone Ginsberg saw wasting away their college years.  I really enjoyed reading this although at some point I was a little shocked at the vulgarity or I didn't understand parts of it, but as a whole, I liked this story.

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

To me, this poem is about how the author perceives death. In the beginning of the poem he says that the world will either end in fire or ice but doesn't tell exactly which way he thinks his world will end. Wether it is in fire or ice he sounds content by the end of the poem in the last two lines "Is also great, And would suffice".
When I think of the world ending in fire, I think of pandemonium and a more chaotic, uncontrollable end. Ice sounds more calm but also more cold, in a sad or bitter way. The author sound content, I think, because it doesn't necessarily matter how the world ends but more of what happens after the world ends.