Practical Application: Revising to Use Appositives, Participle Phrases, and Adjectives out of Order

I revised the intro to an essay for WSt 484. And I even noticed I have a few accidental appositives! I didn't use those, though. Hopefully I got the adjectives out of order correct. For some reason, I think I'm having the most trouble with that sentence structure.

Which Side Are You On?

Queer Subtext in Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row”

According to Eve Sedgwick, a leading theorist in gender studies, [APPOSITIVE] queer is defined as an “open mesh of possibilities” (“Queer and Now” 8). Similarly, in his book, Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life, Steven Seidman groups homosexuals together with “’loose women,’ ‘the delinquent,’ and ‘the sex offender’” as the denizens of the closet--the social classes that threaten the institutions of repronormativity and heteronormativity (25). In this essay, I will take these ideas to heart while considering Bob Dylan’s song “Desolation Row,” which recounts the goings on of the neighborhood of the same name. In this enclave, activities that would normally be frowned upon in common society are flaunted—carnivals are held, there are battles, people are having sex—and in the end, it’s all just a part of life, albeit a life that agents of the institution within mainstream culture continually work against.

Leading lives that challenge each character's historic personality, [PRESENT PARTICIPLE PHRASE] the diverse population of characters on Desolation Row illustrates Sedgwick’s idea of the possible: Cinderella, the Good Samaritan, Einstein, Cain, Abel, Casanova, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound are jumbled together [APPOSITIVE]. Varied, collected, [ADJECTIVES OUT OF ORDER] the peculiarities which pulled them or drove them there aren’t punished the way they would be were these characters located in mainstream society—just across the street. 

Here, things that would ordinarily be criminalized (namely sexuality, as well as general mischief) [APPOSITIVE] are commonplace. Desolation Row can be read perversely as a metaphor for queer culture as well as the closet—a place where a collective of characters comes together to form an underworld that resists society’s laws and norms.

The first verse of the song introduces the listener to the general flavor of the town: “Here comes the blind commissioner/ They’ve got him in a trance/ One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker/ The other is in his pants” (Dylan lines 5-8). On Desolation Row, the agents of the institution (the commissioner, and, elsewhere in the verse, sailors and the riot squad) are free to do things they wouldn’t be able to outside of Desolation Row. Romeo—a symbol of heteronormativity— [APPOSITIVE] is rejected and punished while on Desolation Row for verbalizing the anti-feminist idea that Cinderella “belongs” to him (Dylan line 18). Cinderella, queered in the song "Desolation Row," [PAST PARTICIPLE PHRASE] is also a traditional symbol of the heteronormative culture; instead of hiding away by the fireplace like she does in the fairy tale, she stands “Bette Davis style,” smiling and easy in her own way, sweeping up “after the ambulances go” (Dylan lines 16, 22-24). Presumably, Romeo stayed to fight after being told to leave Desolation Row, which resulted in him being injured enough to require an ambulance. This introduces the idea that queer culture has its own etiquette, which might be different from that of the mainstream ideology. Furthermore, the queer movement is geared up for a fight.

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WORKS CITED

Dylan, Bob. “Desolation Row.” Highway 61, Revisited. Columbia, 1965.

Sedgwick, Eve. “Queer and Now.” Course Pack, WSt 484. Pages 78-85. Pullman: Shahani, 2010.

Seidman, Steven. Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life. New York: Routledge, 2002.