Week 2- Of Gallypots and Cannibals

So the first of today's poem excerpts comes from Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room." I don't have page numbers but it is from lines 31 to 36:

With Puppy Water, Beauty's Help
Distill'd from Tripsy's darling Whelp;
Here Gallypots and Vials plac'd,
Some fill'd with washes, some with Paste,
Some with Pomatum, Paints and Slops,
And Ointments good for scabby Chops.

And for the second excerpt, we again go to Othello. This time in a conversation between Othello himself and the Duke of Venice:

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

I found these two quotes interesting, since they seem to counter one another in terms of the words I put in the title. It makes me wonder if the two could be related in any way, or if comparing gallypots to cannibals is an impossible task?

On one hand, we have the gallypot; which in this passage is used to mean a jar of some sorts. It is also spelled close to the word "gallipot" which is a small pot used by pharmacists to hold medicine. In the passage from poem one, it is used to describe the jars holding various items to clean oneself before returning to a dinner, or a party or some other event to be held, so they are part of the constant quest for beauty, typically sought after by women who have to keep up appearances and care about how they look. Though it can be a vain quest that many undertake, I see it as a piece of illogical insanity, because what everyone calls "beautiful" can vary in any number of ways and make the goal of it almost impossible for others. I don't know how other people view it, but it's just one little dose of insanity in the making when I see these so called gallypots.

Then we have cannibals in the othello excerpt, certifiable crazy people who for one reason or another, consume human flesh to eat. I realize that this isn't the main point of the excerpt, but it was my comparable point and I think it makes sense; cannibalism is just another form of insanity. How or why these people began to partake of human flesh as a meal, I do not know, but I do know that it is something frowned upon by our modern day society, and I'm sure it wasn't all that big either in the time of this poem. It's something that, like the unobtainable goal of everlasting beauty, is beyond a normal person's means to understand and leaves us with many questions. So next time you think about your next haircut or meal, think about just how far some people go with these simple things for their own wants.

There we go, another post down. =( I'm not as happy with this one as I am with my first, but I think it still makes a good point to think about, which is what I want. Until next time then, later viewers.