Author Archives: arr4257

In her writing “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa asks the questions “how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?” In other words, how do you oppress someone into silence, based on how I interpret it. Throughout her piece, Anzaldua discusses how she felt that her language was a strong part of her identity, and that white society on the border was trying to take away their identity as chicanos by taking away their language. Growing up, she was always told in school to speak English, but, depending on who she was with, she spoke around 8 different languages of mixed Spanish and English. She felt that all of these languages were identities, and that her combination of them helped to create her own identity. I agree that, to “tame a wild tongue,” you must strip a person of their identity through language, and this is something that should not be desired to be achieved. Everyone has a voice, no matter their language, and different languages make life more wild in the best way. Anzaldua made it clear in her writing that she does not want her tongue to be tamed by anyone, and that while many attempted in her youth and most likely still do today, she will not yield.

Anna Ranslem

I saw a woman on the other side of the street dancing and singing without any music, she looked like a wild woman to me. 

There was a wild man running around the store with a gun, I was scared that he would shoot anyone who got in his way. 

I heard a very strange noise in the backyard that sounded like a wailing baby but, upon further review, it was just a wild animal. 

When I first met my friend’s dog he ran towards me and seemed more like a wild beast than a dog, but once he calmed down, he was tame at heart. 

My daughter is a little wild thing, constantly running and flailing around outside.

Anna Ranslem

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet/writer who grew up with both literary and professional parents and had a wife, Constance and two children. Although seemingly a typical childhood and marriage, Wilde’s fame included his criminalized homosexuality, which was seen as unacceptable at the time, which led him to live out his days imprisoned. Wilde belonged to and spoke for the aesthetic movement in Europe. While he is even more famous now for his works, his works were very popular towards the end of his life and career, more so in America than in England, although he did receive backlash for his personal life, which led to some controversies in his work. His greatest successes were his society comedies. 

While I do not find Oscar Wilde’s writing to be particularly “wild,” I do think that some may have believed he was a “wild” writer in his day due to how many of his poems discuss difficult topics, like death. This such topic is the topic of his poem “Requiescat,” in which he describes someone mourning the death of a woman they loved at the cemetery. The first stanza of the poem reads:

“Tread lightly, she is near

Under the snow,

Speak gently, she can hear

The daisies grow.”

I think this poem has some wild aspects because Wilde speaks about the dead as if “she can hear,” suggesting that perhaps she could be a ghost. Although it sounds to me that he is speaking of a ghost, this suggestion could also be referring to the afterlife of religion, which was very popular at the time. I personally think his writing itself is not often to be considered wild, but I do think that it is “wild” how often he writes about sad and controversial things in different lights.

Anna Ranslem

In both “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak, and “The Good Lion” by Earnest Hemingway, the idea of “wildness” is integrated into both stories, although in different ways. In the former, the word “wild” is not only in the title, but it is also on almost every descriptive page in the book. There are “wild things” and they are acting “wild” during when Max cried, “let the wild rumpus start!” By including the word “wild” so much in the story, Sendak forces the reader to consider the definition of “wild” to be connected to one’s imagination, since the premise of the story is that we are party to a boy Max’s imaginary “wild things.” With this, the term wild is, for the most part, used with a positive connotation. While the actual word “wild” is used many times in “Where the Wild Things Are,” the word is used as more of a concept in “The Good Lion” rather than Hemingway including the actual word. In the short story, the Good Lion, who is “cultured” and only eats human food, visits Africa, where he meets native lions there that eat other animals and humans. During this visit, the Good Lion thinks, “what savages these lions are,” which shows that the Good Lion does not think highly of these lions that are, what Hemingway would consider to be, living in the wild, thus painting the term “wild” in a negative connotation. The word in this negative connotation is being connected to the word “savage” that the Good lion used to describe the wild African lions. While the word “wild” in both stories is used to describe personified and made-up creatures, the light that is painted on the creatures of each story is very different from each other. While both the African lions and wild things are considered to be uncivilized in the stories, the Good lion wants to get away from the “savage” lions while Max wants to be with the wild things, until the end where both of their feelings switch towards the creatures.

Anna Ranslem

The Wizard of Oz is an interesting story because it blurs the line between the genres of children’s novels and adult/young adult novels. At face value, the story appears to be meant for children, with its whimsical characters and life lessons that appear to be fairly simple at first, but some may argue that it is meant for young adults, and that the lessons behind it may be deeper than they first appear. I think the communicator of this novel, Frank Baum, meant to blur this line and allow for a story to be written that could be meant for all ages. The audience of this novel is, I think, mostly children and young adults, although I think there are messages within the story that older adults could enjoy as well. 

Towards the end of the novel, Baum uses the word wild in the passage, “I shall go with Dorothy,” declared the Lion, “for I am tired of your city and long for the woods and the country again. I am really a wild beast, you know. Besides, Dorothy will need someone to protect her” (Baum, ch 18). In this passage, the Lion, after having felt insecure and considering himself a cowardly lion, finally accepts and embraces himself by labeling himself a “wild beast.” The Lion’s use of this word “wild” in describing himself has a positive connotation. He is embracing himself as a lion and allowing himself to feel “wild” instead of cowardly and tame. This positive connotation of the word “wild” is one of the fewer instances of the word being used in a very positive light, since in previous instances, the word was often used to describe the scary creatures that meant to hurt Dorothy.

Anna Ranslem

“If your soul’s locked in a cage

You can make a great escape

We’re made to run wild, live free

Love strong, you and me”

A song that I consider to have “wild” aspects is the song “Run Wild” by For King and Country, a band whose genre could be considered a mixture of pop, rock and alternative. The band, whose main members are Australian-born, American-based brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone, released this song in 2014 after gaining inspiration from Luke’s son learning to walk but trying to run. The song begins by asking some specific person if they are isolating themselves on purpose or not to try to hide your true self. The lyrics then ask the person if they would rather “run wild, live free, love strong, you and me,” suggesting that the person break free from isolation and be their true selves. This becomes the chorus of the song and the main point of the theme; to “run wild,” be yourself, and enjoy life to the fullest. 

In the song, the band uses lyrics like, “You’re a lion full of power who forgot how to roar, You’re an eagle full of beauty but you can’t seem to soar.” These metaphors compare the subject to animals that are typically regarded as being wild in nature, suggesting that their wildness has been suppressed, as well as the subject’s. This idea of “wild” suggests that wild means to them one that is uncontrolled and completely free. This theme of the song suggests that everyone should embrace their “wild” side as this would be the best way to live their lives. By grouping the words “wild,” “live,” and “love” together, their message is clear in their thoughts of being “wild” as a great thing. The end of the song even says, “We’re made to run wild,” suggesting that being wild is natural and even human nature.

Anna Ranslem

For this sports study, I decided to look at the game of men’s ice hockey, which is defined as a game played on ice between two teams who skate around to score the puck into the opposing team’s goal. The players are all men, and there are typically 6 players competing against each other on the ice at a time. There are two goalies, one per each team, defending their goal from the opposing team, and the other five are trying to both defend their goal and score into the other team’s goal. As this sport is very popular in the northern hemisphere where it is colder, the typical audience is those from colder climates and are majority those aged between 18 and 34, and the majority of ice hockey fans are white. However, the sport is still played in warmer climates, although the sport must be played indoors at an ice rink since the warmer climates do not have frozen ponds or outdoor ice rinks throughout the year, making the ice hockey fan base much smaller than other sports in the United States. However, the sport is extremely popular in Canada where the average temperatures throughout the year are much colder, as well as it being the sport’s country of origin. The object of the game is to hit a small puck across the ice before then hitting it into a goal with a hockey stick, and the players may use physical force to win the puck from their opponent, making the game very violent in nature and geared more towards the male population. My personal view of the interplay between sports and gender is that the general population regards male sports to be more “masculine” and, in consequence, more interesting and popular than female sports because of stereotypes that men are stronger and more athletic than women, which especially can be seen in men’s ice hockey due to its violent nature, associated with masculinity. “Wildness” can be easily seen in this sport when considering the speed, physical blows between the players, and the frequent fights that break out between the teams. To me, it is wild that the violent aspects of the sport are ingrained within the rules of regulation for the game.

Anna Ranslem

I researched the word “wild” in both the Marriam-Webster dictionary and in the Cambridge dictionary and found many different definitions for the word, meaning that the word can be used in multiple ways. Both also showed that the word can be used as an adjective, noun and adverb. The Marriam-Webster dictionary adjective description included definitions such as “living in a state of nature and not ordinarily tame or domesticated,” “not subject to restraint or regulation,” and “barbaric.” These different definitions hold different connotations; “barbaric” typically has a very negative connotation. In the Cambridge dictionary, the adjective form of the word included the definitions “uncontrolled,” “natural,” and “not thought about.” Some of these definitions hold very different connotations than some from the Marriam-Webster dictionary; the definition “natural” does not have a negative connotation at all, but is instead more neutral. When the word is used as a noun, I found that there were not as many variations of definitions as there were for the adjective form of the word. The noun definition mainly holds the meaning of being a place or region that is independent of humans and is of the natural form of Earth. 

To me, the word “wild” can be used to describe something that is out of the ordinary in human civilization. This word could be used to describe something that is “in the wild” where human civilization does not exist, or also the be used to describe something that is crazy. However, after researching the many definitions provided in the two dictionaries previously mentioned, I have realized that the word “wild” could hold many different meanings depending on the context of the sentence in which it is used.

Anna Ranslem

A film that I consider “wild” is “The Great Gatsby” made in 2013, directed by Baz Luhrmann, which tackles the famous novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the leading role of Jay Gatsby, the millionaire who throws extremely extravagant parties in the hopes of getting the attention of his one-true-love, Daisy Buchanan, played by Carey Mulligan, who married into old money. In the movie, the cousin of Daisy, Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire, arrives in New York and moves in next door to Gatsby. He experiences the lavish parties and opulence of wealth displayed by his new neighbor in a series of what many would consider to be “wild” events. This movie portrays the newly wild experiences of those participating in the roaring twenties during the prohibition, which is depicted to have backfired on the intended audience, who, instead of staying away from alcohol, engage in the extremely wild parties thrown by Gatsby. 

One scene in particular that I found particularly “wild” is the first scene depicting one of Jay Gatsby’s parties, in which Nick Carraway describes the party-goers as a “kaleidoscopic carnival” that are “spilling through Gatsby’s door” to experience the crazy party, which includes wild decorations, circ du soleil performers, a plethora of booze, hosting all of the different walks of life to be found in New York City. It is presented as a party scene that has never been seen before by an outsider, and it is clear that Nick Carraway considers it to be as wild as it can get. The craziest part is that Gatsby supposedly throws these parties almost every weekend, making the film all the more wild with all of the events that take place throughout it.

Anna Ranslem