Journal #7

Reading Michael Lassell's poem How to Watch Your Brother Die saddened me. I thought it was a really deep and emotional poem about death but more about dealing with homosexuality. The poem starts off with the narrator going to visit his dying brother in the hospital and meeting his bother's lover. The narrator is obviously uncomfortable with the fact that his brother is gay and has a lover but tries to let it go for the sake of his death. He tries to comfort his dying brother's lover for the last hours of his brothers life but he still cannot completely connect and relate to what its like to feel love for another man. The narrator even says to the lover "I'm sorry. I don't know what it means to be the lover of another man." I think that the narrator tries really hard to be comfortable with homosexuality, but deep down he will never really be able to. The reason I feel this is because the narrator says to the lover "how can you stand it?" which shows emotion that he feels sad for the negative retaliation the lover gets for being gay. Also, when the funeral director says that "he will not embalm the body for fear of contamination" the narrator says "let him see in your eyes how much a man can hate another man" which shows that he is mad at the funeral director for "the fear of contamination" of his brothers homosexuality. These two quotes shows that he cares but the very last line of the poem contradicts this. It reads "how [his] children will feel in [his] arms, warm and friendly and without challenge. The worlds "without challenge" stand out boldly saying that people who are homosexual are challenge and he will be lucky to hold his kids whom he assumes wont be like that.
I see a relation in this poem to the glee episode that we watched in class. In glee, a gay guy named Kurt struggles with his sexuality. He is the only sexually open gay guy in his school and he comes across many challenges and troubles because of so. For the choir class, the singers have to pair up to sing duets. Kurt wants to sing with a new student who just came into the class but is told by his friends not to for the sake of the new kid's reputation. His friends don't want the new guy's first debut to be with a gay since not many people know him and they don't want him to come out making a bad first impression to everyone else. Kurt is hurt by this, but he understands that he is "different" so he himself chooses to not sing the duet with the new kid. Instead he does a duet singing the parts of both a man and a female role showing that it doesn't matter if you are a boy or a girl. His statement is bold in defining that homosexuality does not define a person and men can like what women like as well.
The similarities between these two are the fact that people in our world today are not comfortable with homosexuality. They both show a discrimination for gay people having lovers or for liking someone as their same sex. I feel that this is unfair today and people should be able to love whoever they choose. I believe that love is not something that can be chosen, it is something that is set out there for you to find in your life time and whomever you find it with should not be judged.