Sunday, October 5, 2014

Isiah 5:1-7 to Virgin Suicides

So I hate to bring religion into an intellectual concept but I feel this will make a lot of sense to everyone. In Isiah 5:1-7 it reads: 

The Song of the Vineyard

I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
    and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
    but it yielded only bad fruit.

“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
    judge between me and my vineyard.
What more could have been done for my vineyard
    than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
    why did it yield only bad?
Now I will tell you
    what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
    and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
    and it will be trampled.
I will make it a wasteland,
    neither pruned nor cultivated,
    and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
    not to rain on it.”

The vineyard of the LordAlmighty
    is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice,but saw bloodshed;
    for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.


I found this reading very interesting because it has a lot to do with parental control in the Virgin Suicides and also the discussion we had in class. The coolest thing with Biblic Readings is how they mean completely different things to people at completely different times. Though, tonight this reading hit me hard. Basically, the owner of the vineyard, the vineyard, and the vines are metaphores for parents, their living space, and children.  All parents want the best for their children; that's a fact. However, the "best" is generally debatable.  It all depends on the child and what they need. Most parents try to form their child into their ideal when that is never the case. The best for a child is the support and care that the child needs so they can grow to be responsible and mature.  In the parable, the vineyard owner makes a "Garden of Eden" type of setting. Perfect growing conditions, perfect vines, perfect setting, but the vines bear wild grapes. This causes great confusion to the owner; why didn't the perfect grapes grow? It is because these ideal growing conditions do not grow ideal grapes. You get what you get, but you have to adapt your vineyard to your vines, not your vines with your vineyard. This is where the Lisbon parents went wrong. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon tried to make their ideal grapes with ideal conditions, not ideal conditions for their vines. This lack attention to their children because they think they will just grow to become their ideal made the children "wild grapes" and eventually led to the daughters' suicides. 

5 comments:

  1. So interesting, Nick. Really powerful and thought provoking. And yes, biblical passages can so often serve as the basis for an inspired and unique idea--that's why I strongly suggest taking a Bible as Lit class to all budding English scholars.

    I was particularly struck by this:
    What more could have been done for my vineyard
    than I have done for it?

    The fault here, according to the speaker, lies in the vineyard itself, not in the caring for it. Who is responsible for the growth of the vines: the caretaker or the vines themselves?

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    1. Yes, Asha, that is a very great idea. I am curious to what you mean by the care in the vineyard. Wouldn't a responsible owner take the best care of a vineyard before, during, and after growing grapes? A vineyard owner can't blame his crop due to his lack of care for it. You could have the best vines in the world but if you don't care for them at all they will either die or bear sub-par grapes.

      Though, can you blame the environment? You only can if the vineyard owner is all knowing and assuming he is a God-like figure. Humans, especially the vineyard owner or the Lisbon parents, don't necessarily know what more they can do. This leads to the idea of advice. Others may know more than you do about a subject.

      Through all of this I see the vineyard owner responsible because of his stubbornness (lacking knowledge and pursuit of knowledge) and his inability to put his 100% effort in for 100% of the time.

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  2. Thats an interesting way to think about it, there is seemingly a sense of cluelessness to the parents not of their children's emotions (thats obvious) but of how to raise children, clearly we can say they did something wrong but how did they know at the time (I'm not really pro Lisbon parents I think they are fools but theres argument that absolves their responsibility)

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    1. I totally agree with that Dan! You can't blame someone for doing something without them knowing if they are doing said action. However, in the Lisbon parent argument. One could argue that they fully know they are over-protecting their children and know they can give them freedom. However, they could choose to just keep them on a "tight leash" because it makes them feel in control.

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  3. This is so interesting. I really like how you said they mean completely different things to people at different times. While reading this not only did I see what you were saying about the parents, but I also saw a lot of parallels to the town itself, particularly the garden scene. It reminded me of the dying flowers (although they were not in a good environment in any sense) no matter how hard the granddaughter tried to save them she couldn't; it was too late.

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