Part Two....Realism vs. Romanticism

2) In Cather's story A Wagner Matinee, she was probably trying to communicate two main themes: never to waste time and to never let someone take away what you love the most because sometimes you can't get it back. In this story, Aunt Georgina (as mentioned in my last blog), didn't necessarily waste her time, but more let it pass her by because she lived such a constant routine doing chores. So basically, you can say by just always trying to do her chores and pelase her husband by doing so and never allowing her to do what she loved for her own pleasure, she wasted her time. It's like writing, you can writefive pages and say nothing. It's meaningless text. So, all of her hard work on her homestead is meaningless work. She accomplished nothing in the long run. However, if she would of just allowed herself to practice for five minutes each day and go for listens and plays monthly, she would acocmplished a lot more for her mental and physical health. She would of turned out different. Instead, she has authoritis in her fingers and can never really play piano again.
Which leads to the second theme. She let her passion be taken away from ehr by moving to a homestead with a younger man, and now she seems to ahve no depth to her mind and doesn't seem to percieve much.
A social theme that is communicated through her writing is the issue of aging. This women is also dealing with the afct that not only did she waste her life away, but she can't get it back. It isn't like she is a young women either. It is just harder to start over when you are so old.
In Conseqences, it is hard to say what Cather is trying to communicate. Maybe it is to work hard a little more then we play. In this story, Eastman has a friend named Cavenaugh who was a big social butterfly, while Eastman would prefer to get done his work. In the long run, Cavenaugh kills himself, as good as his life was. But, we don't know if Cavenaugh killed himself because the stalker that was driving Cavenaugh crazy was there, apparently. But, did this stalker even exist? No one has ever seen him really. This story is confusing.

3)In a Wagner Matinee, Cather could be writing for a family member (or anyone really) that went through the same trauma as Aunt Georgina, communing that she feels bad. Who knows, maybe Cather has an Aunt Goergina. Anyways, in a Wagner Matinee, she is communing to young artists to never let go of their passion for anything because they posess something most people can't even touch.
In Consequences, maybe it is a memorial for someone she knows who went through the same thing. AS far as she is writing to, hard to say. She could be writing to young people who live in apartments to caution them about stalkers and playing mroe then you work.

4) A Wagner Matinee holds a lot of relevence to my feelings for two feelings. Number one, I always would rather draw or play something when I'm doing what I'm suppose to be doing. In addition, I can connect to Aunt Georgina's feelings. She let something be taken away from her and didn't even realize how much she missed it until later because she repressed it so much for so long. This is how I started feeling about playing violin this year. I never cared, and then I saw how good people were getting at playing whatever they play and how I could of been like that if I would of practiced. I wasted a lot of time. Now I have to make up for it. The only difference if that I have more time to make up for it.
Consequences was just fun to read. It didn't hold a lot of relevence like A Wagner Matinee did. It did make me mroe cautious though.

5) A Wagner Matinee drew me right away because I knew it was about music, and how sometimes people would rather be doing other things then what they are suppose to be doing, such as practicing music. This is how I feel when it comes to homework, like right now. Anyway, it was fun to read because I knew basically all of the musical references.
I liked Consequences because it was a big mystery. You knew something weird was going to happen because Cavenaugh's life seemed too perfect. The ending was alittle predictable, but I love it when a story such as this one leaves you with questions.
For example:
Was the stalker real?
Why did Eastman think of his work as a delightful place at the end?