tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27001813596412438862024-02-20T11:35:18.414-08:004th Time AroundAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-81307353643715908402015-05-15T17:18:00.002-07:002015-05-15T17:18:38.773-07:00Is this where... we came in? <b id="docs-internal-guid-7985077c-411e-e784-d9ff-3a9816f949e6" style="font-weight: normal;">I wrote this piece for another project, but I had this class in mind while writing it. It is a nice summary to my blogging for this class, so I will review it and post it below. </b><br />
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<b>Didactic Paint Smears</b><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the position of someone undergoing the process of “coming of age”, writing about “coming of age” presents several pitfalls that must be avoided if the work presented is to come across as anything less than pretentious (there is irony here that such a proposition may itself be a pitfall I am tumbling into blindly). The main difficulty for a younger writer when exploring the general coming of age theme is to refrain from writing about it in any semi-analytic, intelligent way. There is a reason that all the great coming of age novels (which are all as semi-analytic and intelligent as other classic fiction novels) are written by adults who are looking back on their youth. From the vantage point of having come of age, one’s “coming of age” years can be held in a more objective light, accessible to the general public. However, the raw emotion, generally unfiltered personality, and cruder style found in younger writing can still provide insight into universally relatable human emotion--into the human experience. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can’t define what the human experience is. To do so would take something away from it. I can only understand and explain the human condition in the form of pictures. Snapshots. Vignettes of a collective human culture and collective emotion. These pictures can be found in old folk songs or stories your grandparents tell you. They make your stomach feel heavy. They make you feel alive. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see a man alone in a smokey blues bar, sipping gin and staring into nothing. Click. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see my great grandmother’s old maid: a hundred year old black lady named Ruthie who makes the meanest biscuits around and drives a red cadillac. Click. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see a shuffling shrimp boat captain with his bible tucked away for whenever the rain lets up. Click. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see myself waking early in the morning to hold someone I love, wrapping my arms around them, watching them wake. Click. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to live these pictures. Breathe them in like air. All the food, the music, the work, the heartbreak, and the love. I want to translate these experiences into words, paintings, songs. Before you know it, snapshots of the “human experience” are piled up in front of you like stacks of dirty dishes. Our brain is wired to filter a myriad of raw data and translate it into images and sensations that are easier to work with, but when confronted with the task of choosing a degree to study, a place to move to, a profession to learn, and a life to live, I freeze up. A lot of us do. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Sylvia Plath’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Bell Jar</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the narrator, Esther, uses a different metaphor to explain her idea of the “human experience”. She equates each experience--each snapshot--to a fig: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.</span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Esther’s indetermination is one of the defining characteristics of a “coming of age”. The dangers of not picking a path to walk down are more potent than the dangers of picking the wrong path. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to bite every fig; live every picture. But what happens if you do? Do you ever really taste any of the figs? I could work on an Australian cattle ranch for six months, study Italian in Milan for a year, and then spend a few months in Nigeria writing a novel or banging around on a drumset, Ginger Baker style. But at the end of it, would I have really lived any of those experiences? It seems fake. Like trying to understand a culture during a vacation. And writing about it seems even worse. You wouldn’t just be fake, but a sort of literary minstrel as well, pretending to be these people you aren’t, for the sake of your work. Showcasing their entire life in a poem or song, pretending that you understand them with a few months of their life under your belt. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then what does that leave me to write about? What other choices are there but to grab onto a few figs and miss out on the rest, or to try to grab all of the figs and miss out on the substance of any of them? </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe it won’t seem fake in a few years. Or maybe it will seem impossible in a few years. But my feelings </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">now </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are as real as my feelings </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">then </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will be in the future. Not confronting the problems of coming of age--of finding happiness and meaning by exploring and adding to the human experience-- in the hope that things will make sense in the future when I develop a pre-frontal cortex and get a degree and a job (essentially randomly letting a few figs hit you in the head), is in itself a failure of the coming of age process. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to wrestle with these questions. Think about them, dream about them, and write about them. Then we can learn who we are, what we need, and where to go to find the figs that make us happy. And at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-39476782889978970472015-05-15T13:47:00.005-07:002015-05-15T17:27:22.270-07:00Thoughts about the Beach The setting of Sag Harbor immediately grabbed my attention, and throughout my reading it has remained my favorite element of the novel.<br />
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My great grandfather built a house on the South Carolina coast in the 1960s, in a small commercial town called Garden City. Located on a peninsula, the "Beach House" as we all call it (original, I know) has remained a staple of my childhood. I've been able to compare my own experiences at the Beach House to Benji's, and contemplate how it has played into my own coming of age.<br />
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The most noticeable difference between Sag and Garden City is that Sag Harbor is a group of families that own their houses and come out every year for months on end while Garden City is <i>mostly </i>rental houses that flood with all sorts of folks every... Saturday? I think Saturday is the "move in" day. Wait, maybe it's Sunday. In any case, those are <i>very </i>different situations. For most of my life, trips to the Beach House have been very family orientated. Whether it's play Axis and Allies with my dad, lugging over beach equipment with my family in a grotesque caravan of poking chairs and prodding umbrellas, sandy and salt stained books and nearly empty sunscreen bottles, torn bags and sloshing coolers, rusty shovels and the blister-inducing boogie boards, or going out to eat at the K&W Cafeteria (best roast beef on <i>earth</i> I swear... good coconut cream pie as well), I was with my family. Benji, on the other hand... is without his parents for the majority of the novel (and for the majority of his summer vacation). I'm certainly envious. Having a group of friends down there would certainly be more <i>fun, </i>but I'm not sure how it would influence my coming of age. It might work on it in a different way, with less of an emphasis on philosophical values and a greater emphasis on social values. Benji also spends way more time at the Beach. Months instead of weeks. Without a social group that would be terrible!<br />
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Recently though that family dynamic has changed for me (a natural product of coming of age, as I'm sure many of us can relate to). Last winter break I was prone to long walks on the beach (down to the "point" of the Garden City peninsula--where you can hunt for bird bones in the dunes and watch the point where the harbor empties through to the sea--or operating a four-fishing-rod solo operation out on our dock (no luck... no damn luck...just lost bait!). I <i>did </i>had my music. Dark Side of the Moon and Dylan were usual company out on the--sometimes frigid--beach treks (even in South Carolina, January is pretty damn cold), and Lightnin Hopkins was out there fishin' with me. And honestly there aren't better places to think and reflect than out on an empty beach with some Pink Floyd or fishing in the rain with Lightnin Hopkins. Trying to pin down how these two weeks influenced my coming of age would be difficult, it's not something you "unlock", but a gradual evolution to the way you think and appreciate things. You approach things differently. You feel older, possibly more melancholic, certainly more <i>careful</i>, like you've been stomping around all the time and have just became conscious of how loud you've been. The sights and smells of the beach--Yum Yum's ice cream, the salty breeze, waves battering the shore, dune grass waving in the sunlight... you notice them all more. It's not a Stephen Daedelus level epiphany, but it <i>is </i>a change. I'm not sure you would get the same effect if you're around others a lot. That is, if I was out having BB fights with friends I certainly wouldn't have been staring at my motionless bobbers, noticing the fractals in the water and studying a crane try to find a fish to eat for half an hour. One's not better than the other, they're just fundamentally different situations.<br />
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I can't really say that I relate to Benji's experience. It's much easier to contrast my own experiences to his, because they are very different, but take place over the same "backdrop".<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Then take me disappearin' </span></i></span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">through the smoke rings of my mind,</span></i><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Down the foggy ruins of time,</span></i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Far past the frozen leaves,</span></i><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">The haunted, frightened trees, </span></i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Out to the windy beach,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Silhouetted by the sea, </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Circled by the circus sands,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">With all memory and fate,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Driven deep beneath the waves,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Let me forget about today</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13.3999996185303px; line-height: 19.142858505249px; text-align: center;">Until tomorrow.</span></i><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-40797241372261031042015-04-19T13:48:00.003-07:002015-04-19T13:48:46.577-07:00Madam CrommelynckI think one reason that Mitchell painted Jason's schoolteachers as extremely nasty is so they would later act as a contrast to the person who turns out to be a much more better teacher than any of the school teachers: Madame Commelynck. Her advice in regards to poetry, literature, and language have immediate impact on Stephen (translating that French book for example). Furthermore, like Hugo, she acts as a character that shows Stephen that its OK to write poems. Hugo does it by liking poetry *and* being cool. Madame Commelynck simple says screw everyone else, if they think you're gay for writing poems they're bafoons.<br />
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She's an interesting character because, while she seems very cultured and knowledgeable, when she started talking about living next to Charlie Chaplin and all those other famous people I felt a hint that she might not really be everything she makes herself out to be. I don't really have any concrete evidence... the whole situation just seems really weird. And then, to make things weirder, she gets <i>extradited</i>. Are you kidding me? Mitchell is totally playing with us.<br />
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"Hey, here's this cool character who's helping Jason with his poetry and overcome his inhibitions <i>aaaaand </i>she's extradited"<br />
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All in all, Solarium is kind of a weird chapter. We'll have to see how Jason responds to his short experience with a great teacher and how this effects his membership with the SpooksAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-84659620784084558902015-04-10T20:32:00.000-07:002015-04-10T20:32:39.169-07:00What did you bring me to keep me from the gallows pole?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason's personification of his stammer, Hangman, is another element of his colorful imagination (Millennium Falcon, ghost boy on the lake, etc.). </span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-567c901d-96c8-478b-1ffa-e123aa57d545" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The personification is sort of haunting. The Hangman makes cruel decisions on his own, has his own commandments, and comes and goes as he pleases. He's almost biblical... When he's temporarily defeated by Ms. de Roo, she beats it using her "white magic". He seems to come at the worst times, and recedes when Jason's with Ms. de Roo. It's like... he </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knows. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of this is almost comical from our perspective, but from Jason's perspective this really is a haunting figure due to both how dangerous the Hangman can be socially and also probably just how annoying it is to have to change words so often. </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We talked in class about how it was hinted at that Jason can't full suppress the hangman. When he is excused by the teacher from doing his vocal presentation, a classmate disappointingly asks if Jason will be doing a presentation the next week. The guys are just waiting for him to slip up and really screw up (rather than a short pause) in public. Later we see the hangman strike again in math class, where Jason has to look stupid in order to not stammer (this again shows how important social status is and how damaging stammering would be). All of this contributes to a sort of looming impending doom that this social situation presents. </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;">The hangman presents a problem that must be solved. What will Jason bring to keep him from the gallows pole? </b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, an interesting fact... The Hangman comes from author David Mitchell's person experiences. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #070606; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I try to cultivate a conviction which states this: "I may stammer on this word, yes, and I may look like I'm being strangled by an invisible man, but if that makes you uncomfortable, then that's 100% your problem and 0% mine." </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-9868199753828743412015-04-08T18:23:00.000-07:002015-04-08T18:26:57.975-07:00Sylvie... The character of Sylvie is unique among any of the characters we've encountered so far in the sense that she doesn't <i>explore </i>philosophical or coming of age concepts (like Holden, Esther, etc.) but rather embodies some of those concepts herself.<br />
<br />
Chapter 8, when Ruth is put in the position to experience Sylvie's world, and the subsequent fallout of that night, forces us to address how we feel about Sylvie--a detached transient-- raising two children. In doing so, <i>Housekeeping </i>forces you to think about your views on the nature of transience in the context of a rather rigidly formed society.<br />
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The question of where these transients fit into society, especially into the role of raising kids, is more difficult the more you attack it. On one hand, if children are raised under a strict "Home Ec Teacher" discipline, could this way of life be damaging to those children who are naturally "transient"? And if children are raised under a Sylvie discipline, could this way of life be damaging to those children who will find greatest happiness in order and stability?<br />
<br />
<i>Housekeeping </i>might make the case that such questions are irrelevant. Sylvie did, after all, grow to live a transient lifestyle after spending her whole childhood. And Lucille did, after all, escape from Sylvie to find a more stable life. In fact, the grandfather could be another example, running from his childhood stability Iowan homeland. Perhaps, if the nature of transience (or lack of transience) is a natural part of a person (as the novel seems to imply), it doesn't really matter who raises you.<br />
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However, someone pointed out in class (I think Coleman) that it's easy to have transient people in a heavily structured world (a world where most people are "stable" or whatever), but it's harder (or impossible) to have structure in a world where most people are transient, because society relies on a vast network of people subscribing to the same set of ideals and such, but transience doesn't. Maybe that's part of where most of our inner uncomfort comes from the idea of Sylvie raising children. But mostly, I think it's because wasps and leaves in the corner and moldy, dripping couches is just kind of gross.<br />
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<i>"It's about the immensely resourceful sadness of a certain kind of American, someone who has fallen out of history and is trying to invent a life without assistance of any kind, without even recognizing that there are precedents. It is about a woman who is so far from everyone else that it would be presumptuous to put a name to her frame of mind."</i> -New York Times article on <i>Housekeeping</i><br />
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Does Housekeeping really portray Sylvie (or Sylvie's type of person--a transient) as a sad concept? I suppose the whole letting the soggy couch dry on its own and sweeping leaves into the corner of the house might be there simply to make us go "ARG look at this sad was of living!", but classroom discussion on these subjects was generally much more forgiving and I certainly didn't feel that Housekeeping tried to completely paint transience in a negative light. <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-27306933431397152462015-03-06T18:53:00.000-08:002015-03-06T18:53:00.370-08:00Writing Styles and Other Stuff ("Another ramble")The more I read Catcher in the Rye, the more I understood why it is seen as one of the great novels of the 20th century, specifically in American culture. It deserves all the credit it is given. I found Holden to be the most relatable character I've ever read. I also "understand" Holden better than just about any other character I've ever read (the only character I feel I understand more is Bob Slocum from Joseph Heller's "Something Happened", and that's probably because its 600 pages of stream of conscious instead of 250 pages of personal narration).The prose of Catcher is what makes it such a genius work. The story/plot itself isn't top-tier, and it shouldn't be. However, I think critics of Catcher may dismiss the plot too quickly. It's not like Holden is going to school for 200 pages. He's doing some pretty crazy things for a teenager. Going to bars, walking the streets alone, paying a prostitute, etc. If we had a book with a page turning, mechanically calculated, precise and stunning plot (Great Gatsby comes to mind as well as several Stephen King novels and some Fantasy novels), we would lose what makes Catcher Catcher.<br />
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I think if most authors tried to write the plot of Catcher, it wouldn't be that great. However, one of my favorite quotes by my second favorite Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson is something like <b>"a terrible writer can take a genius plot and make it suck. A great writer can take a terrible plot and make it great"</b>. <i><span style="color: red;">(Warning: slight tangent!)</span></i> For an example, he used the fact that his friend got into an argument about what makes a great author. His friend's basic argument is that writing is mostly about mechanical skill, not crazy epiphanies and seemingly divine inspiration (sort of contrary to Stephen Daedelus, eh?). His friend then said something similar to the above quote, that great writers could turn a crappy idea into a great novel. The person he was arguing gave him a challenge: write a <i>decent</i> novel who's plot was based on two things: (1) Pokemon (2) The Roman Empire. Sanderson's friend took the bet and tried to write a novel. <b>And he got published</b>. I'll try to find the novel (I've found it before but have never got around to reading it).<br />
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I think JD Salinger is a perfect example of a great writer. This guy could literally narrate a baseball game in Holden's voice and I would love it (and so would millions of other people). He achieved a state of both commercial success and academic legitimacy, which I think is the hallmark of a great book (something that's not pulp fiction or purely academic jargon).<br />
<br />
Plath's and Joyce's writing styles are also very good, but I don't think they're as universal as Salinger's. Well, maybe Joyce's was in his day. Ulysses, for example, still has some amazing lines.<br />
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Check out these two, for example, and see if they resonate with you.<br />
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The first is when Leopold is riding along in a carriage to a funeral, and there's this really awkward moment where another guy is talking about how bad suicide is (very bad for catholics) and he doesn't know that Leopold's dad killed himself. Anyways, during the ride Joyce drops this on us (it's a memory of Leopold's):<br />
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<b>"That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blinds. The coroner's ears, big and hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep at first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The Letter. For my son Leopold. No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns." </b><br />
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Jesus <i>christ</i> that's almost as emotionally heavy as Plath!<br />
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And an example of how he makes a newspaper machine interesting (and somewhat deep):<br />
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<b>"Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doings its best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way Sllt." </b><br />
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Plath also has amazing prose for her heavy hitting, grey style. But I'm not sure if she's as universal of an author. I definitely wouldn't want to watch a baseball game narrated by Esther. It would probably just depress the hell out of me (GO AWAY HOLDEN!). The thing I like about Plath's prose it that it really does feel poetic. There's lots of imagery, colors, etc. I find it somewhat similar to White Boy Shuffle in that sense (although the tones are very different, I find the prose to be very poetic in both). Bell Jar definitely has a more complete plot than something like Catcher though.<br />
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So I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say with all this. Just that JD's prose is amazingly universal and that I think that the ability to write good prose and turn anything (such as pokemon in ancient rome) into good fiction is the defining trait of a good author.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-84436215397758074902015-03-05T18:27:00.000-08:002015-03-05T18:27:28.675-08:00Lady Lazarus AnalysisThis is not a strict analysis but just some dotted thoughts. Feel free to comment your own thoughts or disagreements on any points I make.<br />
<br />
Lady Lazarus feels like it belongs with Daddy. I don't mean that they cover the same subject, but that they feel like chapters in the same book. While Daddy illuminates facts about the narrator's life through the lens of talking about another person (her father), Lady Lazarus takes a much more direct approach.<br />
<br />It's mostly about suicide.<br />
<br />
At the beginning:<br />
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"I have done it again.<br />
One year in every ten<br />
I manage it--"<br />
<br />What has she done again? A suicide attempt.<br />
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And then we have a few stanzas which show how... uneasy she is about herself? About life?<br />Lines such as: "A sort of walking miracle, my skin / Bright as a Nazi lampshade" Are certainly not positive feeling images. Sour breath, peeling skin, it all has a quality of death and uneasiness. Then she says "soon, soon the flesh / the grave cave at will be / at home on me", basically saying she's close to attempting suicide again. The "peanut crunching crowd" feels like it's Mr Gordon, "unwrapping" the narrator.<br />
<br />There's some dark humor halfway through: "Dying / is an art, like everything else / I do it exceptionally well". Of course we know she <i>doesn't </i>do it exceptionally well.<br />
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Crudely, in the second half of the poem the narrator talks about how she dreams(?) of committing suicide: burning herself alive ("Melts to a shriek / I turn and burn") and letting others find nothing left of her but ash and the jewelry she was wearing.<br />
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The last stanza also seems very important:<br />
<br />"Out of the ash<br />
I rise with my red hair<br />
And I eat men like air"<br />
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This sort of resembles the discomfort Esther has for men in a more extreme way. It feels like the whole red hair rising out of ash could be a allusion, or maybe she just used red hair because it relates to fire.<br />
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/ramblingsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-70445921747276543802015-03-05T18:10:00.003-08:002015-03-05T18:10:34.367-08:00rambling thoughts about Esther's father's place in The Bell Jar One of the main causes that triggered Esther's depression in the Bell Jar. Earlier in the novel she said the last happy moment of her life was when she was running along the beach with her father. She was about 9 years old at the time.<br />
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In chapter 13 when Esther visits her fathers grave she states that neither she nor her mother cried over her father's death. Her mother didn't even allow her children to attend her father's funeral. This sort of... repression of emotion is certainly a <i>huge </i>cause of Esther's depression later in the novel. It's almost as if her mother tried burying this sad emotion by pushing it down in water, and now it's bobbing back up to the surface in the form of depression. As Plath writes in her poem <i>Daddy: </i>"Daddy, I have tried to kill you."<br />
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Esther says her father came from "some manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia" and we also saw her view the German language as a dark and barbed language. Her mother describes her father as being a "bitter atheist" towards the end of his life. In her poem <i>Daddy</i>, Plath writes:<br />
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"I have always been scared of <i>you</i><br />
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.<br />
And your neat mustache<br />
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.<br />
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--"<br />
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Which supports the dark picture of an authoritarian father.<br />
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Oddly, this might not seem to line up with the fact that Esther was clearly happier when her father was alive. Obviously I'm comparing Plath's poem and her novel and <i>assuming </i>the father is the same in both, thought that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.<br />
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<div>
One interesting way I think the poem and the novel line up is that the last line of the poem: "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through." echoes Esther's mental state after visiting her father's gravestone because the very next scene is her pill ingestion suicide. </div>
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Part of me wonders if he himself was depressed. It would certainly fit the dark picture of a bitter man, and the "manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia" is impossible to ignore. Furthermore, serious depression can be genetic, so Esther's own depression is further evidence that her father may have been depressed. I'd be willing to bet a lot that he was depressed.<br />
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Do we ever get the exact reason he died? All I remember and all I can find by re-reading certain chapters is that he was admitted to the hospital and died there. However, there is a very interesting line that gives us some clues. In chapter 13 Esther is thinking about her mother's handling of the situation (her father's death):<br />
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"She had just smiled and said what a merciful thing
it was for him he had died, because if he had lived he would have been crippled and an
invalid for life, and he couldn't have stood that, he would rather have died than had that
happen."<br />
<br />
<b>My theory is that he shot himself and then died later at the hospital. Or maybe he was never admitted to the hospital (I can't remember if Esther visited him there or not. If not it's possible he succeeded in killing himself instantly). Think about it. Just a little while ago we were on the beach and Esther was talking with that other dude about suicide. What was the "man's way" to kill yourself? Gunshot. What was Esther specifically worried about in regards to shotgun suicide? Not shooting the right place (blowing your face off, something not necessarily fatal) and having surgeons save you. What if her father--who we have strong evidence was depressed--had tried to kill himself ("crippled and invalid") and had later died at the hospital? Her mother didn't want her kids at the funeral. Why? She didn't want them to find out their father tried to kill himself. <span style="color: red;">Further evidence for this theory or evidence against it would be greatly appreciated. </span></b><br />
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So this blog wasn't very well organized or anything, but I have a lot of things to think about and possibly a basis for a critical analysis paper, so I'll call it a success!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-86426492947677417212015-01-30T18:38:00.001-08:002015-01-30T18:38:04.266-08:00Cranly Of all the characters that Stephen interacts with in Portrait, Cranly is the most interesting. He also ends up having an importance influence on Stephen towards the end of the novel.<br />
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The first time we meet Cranly (other than the roll-call in the classroom), he is almost ironically acting the comic character, questioning and answering Stephen in Latin. Cranly never seemed to be the bubbling, bouncy, smiling character even when he had his funny moments (and is described as "brooding", "sour", "bitter", "watchful", etc. to give us this impression). Later we see that Cranly acts the complete opposite--when he overemphasizes his annoyance by shouting/screaming/shoving (Temple on multiple occasions and then the portly kid who farts on the steps). I don't think Cranly is actually that angry (his "victims" always seem to be in good humor, maybe he acts like that a lot and they know he isn't really all that angry). Which again, makes him an almost comical character.<br />
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The main impression I got from Cranly is that he was the most mature student at the college. He sort of has this attitude like "Cmon guys, seriously?" over a lot of things that he finds petty. For example when Maccan and Stephen are sparring over the Tsar's peace petition paper, Cranly is sort of like "Are you guys serious? Can't get go play handball? etc.". Later when Cranly and Stephen are talking, Cranly acts as the voice of maturity and reason when he calls Stephen out on his babyish behavior regarding Stephen serving in church service. Stephen doesn't want to out of principle or whatever, and Cranly again has that "C'mon, seriously?" vibe going on. "Just do it dude, it's a small act... it wont kill you, it will make your mom happy" etc.<br />
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In class it was briefly mentioned that Cranly served the purpose of trying to bring out a little humanity in Stephen, and I think that adding this element to his character really gives him a lot more depth. <br />
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"Have you ever loved anyone?"<br />
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"I ask if you even felt love towards anyone or anything". <br />
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"Your mother must have gone through a good deal of suffering. Would you not try to save her from suffering more even if... or would you?"<br />
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"Do as she wishes you to do. What is it for you?"<br />
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Cranley asks Stephen.<br />
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These sort of questions only act to reaffirm Cranly's maturity.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-12661534993789657722015-01-25T09:33:00.001-08:002015-01-25T09:33:41.365-08:00A Simple Twist of Fate<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Joyce quotes are <i>italicized </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dylan quotes are <b>bolded</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So far we have seen Stephen's street ramblings change from a light, willful participation in a fantasy world (Blackrock) to a seemingly addictive, distorted, alien world (Dublin). The change can be "diagnosed" in part by more "tangible" causes--the lower social class, the increased sexual frustration, religious anxiety, etc. There may also be a more abstract element of "coming of age" that cannot be explained by events that effects the drastic difference in tone we see between the different ramblings. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Blackrock fantasy was much more grounded in the Count of Monte Cristo. It was much less confusing, very sunny, etc. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There would come to his mind the bright picture
of Marseille, of sunny trellises, and of Mercedes</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The difference between the two is best shown in this passage:<i> He returned to his wanderings. The veiled autumnal evenings led him from street to street as they had led him years before along the quiet avenues of Blackrock. But no vision of trim front gardens or of kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence upon him now.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The appeal of a Mercedes comes from Stephens desire for an intimate relationship, and his inability to go about getting one (the tram scene is an example). He describes his Mercedes fantasy in the following passage...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">---</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">I think that the Bob Dylan song "Simple Twist of Fate", both musically and lyrically fits Stephen's street ramblings. </span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'll start with some Dylan lines. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They walked along by the old canal<br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />A little confused, I remember well<br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burnin’ bright<br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train<br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />Moving with a simple twist of fate</span></b></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="background-color: white;">A saxophone someplace far off played</span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">As she was walkin’ by the arcade</span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">As the light bust through a beat-up shade where he was wakin’ up,</span></b><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The imagery feels very similar. It's used to create a sense of loneliness surrounded by a bustling world. The protagonist in Dylan's song finds himself alone in the middle of the city of neon signs (neon always implies nightlife) and saxophones. There is this very real and very alive city that is completely separated from the protagonist. </span></span><br />
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="background-color: white;">He hears the ticking of the clocks</span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">And walks along with a parrot that talks</span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailors all come in</span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Maybe she’ll pick him out again, how long must he wait</span><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Once more for a simple twist of fate</span></b><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br style="margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Again, we have the lone soul walking among the bustling city docks. This time, he's hoping "she'll pick him out again" as he waits for a simple twist of fate.</span></span><br />
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Portrait, we get very similar passages.</span></span><br />
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He passed unchallenged among the docks and along the quays wondering at the multitude of corks that lay bobbing on the surface of the water in a thick yellow scum, at the crowds of quay porters and the rumbling carts and the ill-dressed bearded policeman.</span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He had wandered into a maze of narrow and dirty streets. From the foul laneways he heard bursts of hoarse riot and wrangling and the drawling of drunken singers</span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By day and by night he moved among distorted images of the outer world. A figure that had seemed to him by day demure and innocent came towards him by night through the winding darkness of sleep, her face transfigured by a lecherous cunning, her eyes bright with brutish joy. </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These are all images of someone who doesn't know what else to do than look for a simple twist of fate--his Mercedes to step out of the shadow... or to "pick him out again". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are a lot more more parallels you could draw. The first passage in "Simple Twist of Fate" for example seems to fit Stephen's Tram Ride experience. Also the "she" in the song is widely considered to be a prostitute. Also the line "<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">People tell me it’s a sin, t</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">o know and feel too much within" reminds me a lot of Stephen's religious anxiety. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In any case, I highly recommend giving Dylan's song a listen to get the full impact... <span style="color: red;">the whole song sounds like a theme-track to Stephen's street ramblings. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></span>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-71595367515006642632014-12-14T20:02:00.000-08:002014-12-14T20:02:16.191-08:00The JungleAt the end of the first chapter in part 2 (my edition doesn't have chapter markings?!?) Stamp Paid has a pretty pseudo-philosophical segment on the dehumanization of slavery to blacks and whites alike. This reminded me of similar statements expressed by... I think it was Fredrick Douglas? We talked about it in history class. The basic idea is that by subjugating blacks ("the jungle whitefolks planted in them"), the whites became afraid. Stamp Paid says that "scared were they of the jungle they had made". In this context, was schoolteachers calculated and scientific method of treating his slaves an expression of his fear? Perhaps he thought that if he could completely understood everything about his slaves then he could protect himself from "the jungle". And what is the jungle? Ingrained resentment on an extreme magnitude? Barbarism? The description that Stamp Paid gives of the jungle: "swift unnavigable rivers, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood" has a very "Heart of Darkness" feel to it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-18960840104859084762014-12-14T13:08:00.001-08:002014-12-14T13:08:27.959-08:00AmyAmy is a really frickin cool character. I'm talking about in the literary sense. One of the things that I disliked about Their Eyes Were Watching God was the Tolkien-esque feel of all the characters. There were the good guys and the bad guys and <i>everything </i>they did and <i>everything </i>they said supported their status as a good person or a bad person.<br />
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The book Beloved is much more George RR Martin-esque, as there are characters that I either don't know how to feel about (Beloved) or characters who I both love and am annoyed by at the same time (Amy and Denver).<br />
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Amy is a really cool character because she's not the knight in shining armor coming to save Sethe. She sort of stumbles onto Sethe, calls her a "nigger woman" or something like that, and keeps rambling on about her pipe dream of buying velvet in Boston (.... okay?). But the more I read her story the more I liked her.<br />
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She made it seem like she really didn't want to help Sethe and wanted to move on towards Boston, but as readers we were kind of made to feel that deep down she really did want to help Sethe. When he eventually sticks with Sethe for a few days and saves her from frostbite, our hopes are confirmed.<br />
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All in all Amy is a really well written and interesting character. She's written as if a bunch of strings were pulling her in all different directions.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-53016464612206588452014-12-14T12:15:00.000-08:002014-12-14T12:15:37.454-08:00White Boy ShuffleThe suicide dynamic in the White Boy Shuffle is one that is rather rare and was somewhat confusing to me upon initially reading the book.<br />
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Gunnar's and Scobies thoughts on suicide stem from a self-consciousness that Gunnar describes when he says the following to Psycho Loco:<br />
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"<span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Might as well kill myself, right?</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Why give you the satisfaction.</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">The trippy part is that when you think about
it, me and America aren’t even enemies.</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’m the horse pulling the stagecoach, the donkey in the levee who’s
stumbled in the mud and come up lame.</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">You may love me, but I’m tired of thrashing around in the muck and not
getting anywhere, so put a nigger out his misery” (226).</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Why does everything seem to turn downhill in Boston? I think it's the awareness that the boys have of the underlying racist tendencies that even exists </span>among<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> the backdrop of </span>multiculturalism<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> found in Boston (</span>contrasted<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> sharply with the single cultured settings earlier in the book). Scoby goes ahead and kills himself, leaving Gunner to play the part of Osamu Dezai, "the heavy hearted writer who wandered the back roads of Japan struggling to raise the nerve to commit suicide in the Tamagawa River" (190).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The nihilism in the book seems to peak during the scene when Scoby is asking Gunnar about the height of various buildings in Boston... obviously planning his suicide. Gunnar knows Scoby is going to kill himself. I think he doesn't stop him because Gunnar feels just like Scoby does, the only difference is that--like Osamu Dezai--Gunnar is still gathering the courage needed to kill himself. </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-45794293716232886932014-11-14T18:42:00.002-08:002014-11-14T18:42:09.953-08:00Love and Theft<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft"--his 31st studio album and the second album in his late 90's/early 2000's comeback (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times)--is an essential album for anyone looking to sample "American Music", and is a highly recommended album for anyone regardless. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-8d764cd6-b153-ff19-0441-ceb7c91586de" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The album achieves such an accurate representation of what “America” is with what David Mcnair calls a “complete artistic synthesis. On </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Love and Theft,"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">country, blues, folk, swing, and rock all converge with Dylan's husky growl into a form of music that he has himself described as "all mashed up." Throw in some F Scott Fitzgerald quotes, pecan pies, and a wide cast of jokers, gamblers and other operators of the iconic neon midnight big city american scene… put that over Dylan’s growling voice that sounds like it’s been soaked in Wild Turkey and left in a smokehouse for a decade, and you have pure extracted AMERICA in music. It’s something that very few can get close to pulling off (maybe Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash?). </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The title of the album, “Love and Theft”, is based on the same titled book by Eric Lott which describes the history of minstrelsy in America. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dylan’s song is greatly influenced by the negro blues. To quote Eric Lott, "High Water" sounds the most like actual minstrel show music from the 19th century, which is interesting not only since it's dedicated specifically to black blues singer (donor?) Charley Patton but also because it's a song of high seriousness, as though ultimate truths are rooted in cultural plunder.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lott goes on to defend Dylan (not that there’s really any criticisms) by saying “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He's one of those rare people, like Michelle Shocked, in fact, for whom cultural miscegenation is a spur to cultural newness and uniqueness. Dylan goes his own way”. Basically, Dylan’s not playing the part of mistral in the creation of this album, but is still acknowledging his negro folk blues influences with the title “Love and Theft”.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t expect the album to be a “Blonde on Blonde” and you would be crazy to expect something on the level of “Blood on the Tracks”, but this is still a very good Dylan album and is another testament to his status of one of the greatest artists of all time (seriously, who comes out with one of the best albums of the decade--check out the reviews--as their 31st studio album?!?). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Best songs: “Mississippi” and “Summer Days”. Look them up on spotify or something cause they aren’t on youtube (Dylan’s stingy about his copyright). </span></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-69297424433798343762014-11-14T18:20:00.002-08:002014-11-14T18:20:44.368-08:00I'm a get up in the morning, I believe I'll dust my blog<span style="font-family: inherit;">The blues has been a significant aspect of African American culture, influencing many writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and most significantly Richard Wright. In his essay "Richard Wright's Blues", Ellison defines the blues as the following: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger it's jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Buddy Guy (a blues guitarist) reflects this sentiment quite well in his song "All that makes me happy is the blues" </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">i've been .. so bad, since she's been gone<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />i've tried to take comfort<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />in some old sad song<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><span style="background-color: yellow;">cause i feel a little better<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />knowing someone hurts the way i do<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />yeah! when i'm this far down<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />all that makes me happy is the blues</span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">all the talk on TV<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />shouting about something<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />nobody listening<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />nobody saying nothing<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />seem like my old guitar<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />is the only place i find the truth (yeah)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />this whole world is gone crazy,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />all that makes me happy is the blues</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">i'd love to hear that sweet Memphis soul<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />and that good old funky rock n roll<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />oh but when i need some healing<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />there's only one thing i turn to</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">when I'm this far down<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />all that makes me happy is the BLUES</span></i></div>
<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Generally, blues does not take the shape of an extremely in-the-moment pain infused expression (like a Nine Inch Nails album might). Instead, it's more of a communal head-nodding understanding between those who have had the blues (And, as Albert King said in his song <i>Blues Power, </i>"Everybody understands the blues. Everybody from one day or another have the blues"). This is partly what Ellison means when he calls the blues a "near-tragic, near-comic lyricism". </span></span><br />
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ellison goes on to call the blues "an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically". We can see how this could parallel certain ways that authors may draft their stories. The example Ellison uses is Richard Wright's Black Boy, which is an autobiographical novel that echoes the blues expression.Right underwent the "personal catastrophes" in his early life: His father left his family when he was a baby, he was later lodged in an orphan asylum, he was constantly hungry, he became a drunk as a young boy, etc. Wright expresses that "near-tragic, near comic lyricism" when he writes the seemingly paradoxical image of a protagonist who "sings lustily as he probes his own grievous wounds". </span></span><br />
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Singing lustily as you probe your own grievous wounds? Sounds just like the blues. </span></span><br />
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While the blues as a musical form was developed by blacks in the south (early 20th century), the blues as way to "</span></span>keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger it's jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism." did not develop with the rise of black literature. Joyce, Nehru, Dostoievsky, and countless other authors have expressed catastrophic personal events through near tragic, near comic lyricism in their writings.<br />
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Some blues songs to check out:<br />
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1. Albert King: I'll play the blues for you<br />
This is pretty smooth, sounds very 70s. It was hard to pick a single Albert King song to put on this list. I highly recommend his 67' album "Born Under a Bad Sign" for some real blues revival.<br />
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2. John Bonamassa: Sloe Gin</div>
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This is an extreme exception to the near-comic head nodding of the blues. This is one of the most emotional songs I know (up there with NIN's "Hurt"). The "I'm so damn lonely, I aint even high" line is killer. The guitar playing creates a mood much better than most blues songs... this is because John doesn't base his blues on traditional american blues but on a sort of english/irish fusion blues. I wanted to include an exception to the "Near comic near tragic lyricism"... this is it. </div>
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3. Robert Johnson 32-20 blues</div>
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This is in my opinion the most listenable Robert Johnson song. Y'all should read about Robert Johnson, he's one of the pillars of blues history. His music is so old that it's not super listenable, even though Clapton and Keith Richards will blow steam up his ass all day. </div>
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4. He's better than BB King. He's better than Buddy Guy. He's way better than Clapton. SRV is the master of the blues. The way he controlled the guitar tops even Hendrix's control. Evidence? Listen to any damn Stevie Ray Vaughan song.<br />
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Here's my favorite... first of all it's live and sounds 2000% better than the studio version (that's already an accomplishment). He also brings on Johnny Copeland which is a really nice addition.<br />
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I present, SRV's live "Tin Pan Alley"<br />
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If you like this stuff, other artists to check out are Freddie King, BB King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Robert Cray. I'm not a huge Howlin Wolf/Muddy Waters fan, but if you liked the Robert Johnson delta blues stuff you might be into that pre-blues revival acoustic based stuff. </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-3735357077334089052014-10-16T18:51:00.001-07:002014-10-16T18:51:36.054-07:00Going, Going, GoneIn class we talked loosely about Jody's physical deterioration and the effect that had on his behavior towards Janie. As Jody's physical health deteriorates due to a combination of age, the luck of the draw (liver disease), and stubbornness (seeing the witch doctor lady instead of a medical doctor), Jody begins to lash out with increasing severity. Mr. Mitchell said something about the episode sadly making sense to us, and I agree with that. It reminds me very much of super old people who get very bitter when they realize that they can't do certain things on their own any more (drive, care for themselves, etc.).<br />
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In Jody's case it is even worse. <u>Jody built his life around control and power</u>, and slowly withering away must have really got to him. Right before he dies we see that he has completely lost control of one of the people he controlled best: Janie. Instead of Jody making Janie be quiet and listen to him, the tables have turned and Janie is telling Jody her mind whether he wants to hear it or not (he doesn't).<br />
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They are the final words that Jody Starks hears before he dies. Janie, finally free, casts off her hair binding and walks out of the house ready to find something (or someone) in life to make her happy. From the prologue I'm guessing that's going to be Tea Cake.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-25479267188912799922014-10-16T11:55:00.001-07:002014-10-16T11:55:37.840-07:00Why all the hating on Janie? Today in 2nd hour's class (10/16) there was a lot of discussion about Janie. Most (if not all) speakers agreed--to an extent--that Janie was whiney and impulsive.<br />
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There is a scent of hypocrisy in the sense that, if Janie stayed with Logan and remained unhappy for the rest of her life shoveling manure, we would all be very sympathetic towards her and wish that she had made decisions in her life to escape such a situation that made her unhappy. Yet if she runs away from Logan (who, while he really isn't all that bad of a guy, Janie is certainly unhappy with) we all board the hate-train.<br />
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We also talked about the idea that Janie was running away from Logan more than she was running to be with Jody. I also disagree with this. I think it's equal part run from and run to. Jody met her in the woods and they talked for three days. Jody seems like the kind of guy that would be able to put on a mask and act very suave with the ladies. There's not doubt in my mind that at the end of those three days Janie felt like the Juliet and Jody seemed like her Romeo.<br />
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To anyone living in modern western society (where the ideal of loving your spouse is <i>expected</i>) it seems odd to me that we would criticize Janie running off from a situation in which she is genuinely unhappy to be with a guy that seems like a genuinely great guy. I know that she only knew him for a few days, but hell, he was leaving! She had to make a decision. It was a gamble that I definitely would have taken in Janie's shoes.<br />
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In any case, any amount of impulsiveness that she had before her marriage with Jody was soon extinguished (probably by Jody himself). For I'm sure that in her 20 or so year marriage with Jody there were ample opportunities that were presented or that could have been made by Janie to escape from her unhappy life in Eatonville.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-59746055738224605422014-10-15T18:32:00.002-07:002014-10-15T18:32:25.065-07:00Jody's domineering nature building tension(Up to chapter 7)<br />
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When we first met Jody I thought that he genuinely cared for Janie (naive maybe, but in the context of Janie's stale marriage with Logan I was hoping for a breath of fresh air). It was impossible to know who Jody was until they got to Eatonville, and by then it was too late.<br />
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Jody didn't talk to Janie in the woods for three days because he loved her. He saw in Janie a possibility to advance himself. He saw a beautiful, proper lady... just what he pictured he would need as mayor of Eatonville (the mayor needs a stately wife). When the couple gets to Eatonville we see that he cares a lot about her image - she needs to be seen at the right places, she needs to play hostess correctly, she needs to say the right things (refrain from speaking in many cases), etc. Janie falls from a marriage that--while stale and uninteresting--was safe/stable to a marriage in which she is a prop to advance Jody's position in the community.<br />
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Janie is a part of Jody's quest for power. He is not cruel to Janie for no reason--it is just his view of the world and his quest for power that brings forth frustrated anger.<br />
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However we have begun to see the beginnings of rebellion in Janie (such as her speech at the end of chapter 6 and all the hints the narrator gives us that she was sad/tired of the marriage).<br />
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We know that Janie ends up with some guy named Tea Cake (from the prologue). It's only a matter of time until something blows, and the more egocentric that Jody becomes, the more tension is built.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-71856733315925198182014-09-19T20:01:00.004-07:002014-09-19T20:01:54.164-07:00Will "Da Real One" Bell<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My favorite Will Bell rap/poem has to be his "You have been warned". It has great comedic moments and delivers a powerful message. Will is criticizing the stars of the rap industry who "ain't doing nothing but mic bruising". So in a sense this poem is about being “real”. Will is not just hating on the stars of the rap industry, he is also trying to present a picture of how horrific the ghetto is. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the start Will begins his attack with "And I got more thug in me than three fourths of the whole rap industry so... I don't scare easy."</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He follows with a great line "So when it comes to shit like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre... it ain't got nothing on 10 city blocks filled with guns, heron, and crack rock. That's probably why they ain't trying to film no horror movie in the ghetto." which, while being a somewhat funny line (he doesn’t deliver it in a somber tone but in a playful one - which sets the crowd roaring with laughter), also works towards accomplishing the presentation of a picture of the ghetto as being horrible. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Cause where I'm from if you got a problem with a nigga you don't rap to him you put gun claps to him. You think I'm lying? Just look at our past. I love Tupac and Biggie but both of their mouths wrote checks that their ass couldn't cash"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here Will references the murders of famous rappers Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G in the 90's. Both participated in a verbal feud (East Coast vs. West Coast) but in the end were both shot and killed. He is able to both tell a story about the ghetto - how the ghetto functions - with the line “where I’m from if you got a problem with a nigga you don’t rap to him you put gun claps to him” and also takes a stab at rappers who became disconnected with the ghetto after they’ve risen to stardom, and eventually pay a bloody price (“Tupac and Biggie but both of their mouths wrote checks that their ass couldn’t cash”). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the poem, the narrator “travels backwards through time” to many iconic and sad moments in African American history. He runs from slave tunnels to Malcolm X’s assassination to Tupac’s murder, chased by a voice screaming “YOU BETTER </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">RUN </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NIGGER!”. He runs and he runs and he only gets peace when he eventually dies. This line really reminded me of the "Keep that nigger boy running" line in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Invisible Man </i>so I wrote a second blog post that took some of my thoughts about that into more detail. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In terms of his presentation, we really hear Will's emotion as he sounds angry and on the verge of tears at the same time. Scared and frustrated at the same time. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It hits hard, it doesn't reward us with a happy ending, and it's presented in a way that allows us to feel the full emotional impact of the words. </span></div>
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The last poem that I want to talk about is Will's <i>Diary of the Reformed</i>. I ended up choosing this one as my poetry reading.<br />
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This poem talks about the useless violence in the ghetto. It specifically focuses on "black-on-black" crime and is -as Will describes it- a "black-on-black rhyme" (which, as a white guy, made it a little uncomfortable to say/rap to a room without a single black person).<br />
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The narrator begins getting a call from his cousin about "how he just got shot at". The narrator immediately takes action, gets ready, and sets off with his cousin to take revenge on the people that attacked the cousin. It is only moments before the narrator is about to take action that he has an epiphany moment and realizes the cyclical pointlessness of all the violence. It just creates more violence and ends up hurting everyone.<br />
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This was an even more powerful poem once I learned that Will Bell was killed in 2011 from such useless violence. He was shot outside his strip-mall located poetry club by two people who have yet to be identified.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-36579814244524834862014-09-19T19:49:00.001-07:002014-09-19T19:49:02.799-07:00You better run!Just some thoughts I had listening to Will Bell's <i>So I Run, </i>contrasting it's story to <i>Invisible Man</i>....<br />
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While listening to Will Bell's poem <i>So I Run</i>, I was reminded of the dream envelope that the Narrator opened in <i>Invisible Man</i> that read "Keep that nigger boy running."<br />
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In <i>So I Run</i>, the narrator is chased through many different scenes of terror in African American history. From the underground railroad to the murders of Tupac and Biggie, the narrator runs. He runs from a voice that is always chasing him. It screams: "YOU BETTER RUN NIGGA!". The fact that these two phrases are so similar to each other made me immediately make the connection that they had.<br />
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And so I started to think about the narrator in <i>Invisible Man</i> versus the narrator in <i>So I Run. </i>For starters they are both running, and they are running because of other people. In <i>So I Run, </i>the narrator is running from a threat - he is fleeing in terror. This is very different from the running that the narrator does in <i>Invisible Man</i>. From his college scholarship, to his dismissal to NYC by Bledsoe, to his "reeducation" (the party members literally called it "indoctrination") in the communist party, the narrator is kept running for the benefit of others. For the benefit of the white town leaders, for the benefit of Bledsoe, for the benefit of the party. So in a way the two forms of running are similar and in a way they are different.<br />
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Or maybe Will Bell is not trying to say that people were literally screaming "You better run nigga!" at him. Maybe he is trying to say that was what it <i>felt like </i>or <i>seemed like </i>to the narrator. Maybe the narrator (in <i>So I run</i>) feels that the actions of those around him are telling him "You better run nigga!". If this is true, then the only difference between the two narrators is that the narrator in <i>So I Run</i> is conscious of the fact that he is being sent from place to place while the narrator in <i>Invisible Man </i>is not fully conscious of this fact.<br />
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In <i>So I Run</i>, the narrator gets peace from the voice -from the fear- only when he finally dies. However in <i>Invisible Man</i>, the narrator seems to have escaped from the "Keep the nigger boy running" cycle when he is in his lightbulb room stealing electricity from the city.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2700181359641243886.post-86442365156768462992014-09-01T13:33:00.002-07:002014-09-01T13:38:38.172-07:00Humility in Chapter 1 of "Invisible Man" "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I gave up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the Lion's mouth. I want you to overcome them with yeses, undermine em with grins, agree em to death and destruction, let em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open" (16)<br />
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This quote - the dying words of the narrator's grandfather - sets up most of the first chapter very well. I suspect it will set up the rest of the book very well, but I cannot make a definite judgement on that since I haven't read most of the book at this point.<br />
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The best single word that both encapsulates the grandfather's dying speech and the first chapter in general (as well as a single word can encapsulate such things) is <b>humility</b>.<br />
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Humility presents itself in two very different ways in chapter 1. There is a first type of humility that is <b>ingrained in one's existence</b>. It becomes as much of a person as primal desires are, it is a defining characteristic of one's existence. This is the type of humility that the "town's leading white citizens" (at the community gathering) want in the black populace.<br />
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The second humility is one of <b>illusion</b>. It is a tool, an attack that -like a tick or leach- is able to gain strength through remaining undetected. This is the humility that the narrator's grandfather described. He (the grandfather) was in full, conscious control of his humility - and that is what separates his humility (of the second type) from the narrator's father who, by having no conscious control or understanding of his humility, has ingrained it into his existence (the first type).<br />
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The narrator in chapter 1 is stuck in a sort of limbo between these two polar opposites.<br />
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(1) "On my graduation day I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress. (<b>Not that I believed this - how could I, remembering my grandfather? - I only believed that it worked</b>.)" (17)<br />
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(2) "Should I try to win against the voice out there? Would not this go against my speech, and <b>was not this a moment for humility, for nonresistance</b>?" (25)<br />
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(3) "Then on a sudden impulse I struck him lightly and as we clinched, I whispered, 'Fake like I knocked you out, you can have the prize.'<br />
'I'll break your behind,' he whispered hoarsely.<br />
'<b>For <i>them</i></b>?'<br />
'For <i>me</i>, sonofabitch!"<br />
(24)<br />
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These are three quotes that show that the narrator has a pretty good understanding of what his grandfather was saying. The narrator is sort of 'sucking up' to the white towns leaders, and the humility that he talks so passionately about in his speech is certainly not <i>ingrained </i>in him (for we see him in all three quotes using it as a tool - to curry favor or attempt to avoid pain). In the third quote the other fighter does not have this understanding. By letting humility become a part of him, he partly destroys his own identity, accepts his second class status, and refuses to use illusions ( in this case faking unconsciousness) to trick the white town folk (who just want to see two blacks beat the hell out of each other).<br />
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But as soon as the narrator get's his briefcase and scholarship to the black college, he feels that he has triumphed over the townsfolk. And while the objective act of giving someone a nice briefcase and a scholarship is certainly a kind act - knowing these rich white town leaders, it is fairly safe to assume that this was an act to push the narrator towards "leading his people in the proper paths" (32) and to "Keep this nigger-boy running" (33).Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11160735803297672220noreply@blogger.com4