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March 30, 2006
Alrighty, so we're ALL a little depraved.
In this post I observed how children, sweet and fluffy as they may look, often are little hellions who are psychologically incapable of taking a walk in another's shoes. This story proves that it's not just the kids who are delighted by suffering....
"Mrs. Pritchard would go thirty miles for the satisfaction of seeing someone laid away."
So Mrs. Pritchard gets her jollies from funerals? In the post I lined to I talk about how little children are generally unable to see another's tragedy, especially if that tragedy in some way benefits said children. I suppose in the rural Depression-era South a funeral might be an exciting social event: good food, companionship, a break from the drudgery of everyday life. I mentioned in class, and I'll point it out again here, that the Anne of Green Gables books are FULL of people who just love to go to funerals. This certainly can't be a characteristic of any one genre; Lucy Maud Montgomery and Flannery O'Connor lived at roughly the same time, but Montgomery was nothing close to Southern Gothic. Her work is actually the most famous in all of Canadian literature. So, no, she wasn't a Southern writer by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, where Flannery's stories are dark with the depths of human folly and cruelty and just plain rotten luck, Montgomery's work reflects the sweetness of Victorian romance. Two women who could not be more different, writing at the same time on the same continent: Could there really be something to all this excitement over funerals? Has anyone else run across this theme elsewhere? Are we as a species so depraved, so incapable of mercy and sorrow, that at any time in our history we enjoyed going to funerals for the excitement or the food or perhaps the sheer drama? Are we really so crazy that we ever forgot to mourn a death and instead celebrated it for the chance to go have our jollies at a funeral?
Posted by MeganRitter at 03:16 AM | Comments (0)
Meaning of life, what?
O'Connor, ''A Late Encounter with the Enemy'' -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn't conceive of any other condition."
"...his heart doggedly persisted to beat...."
I think that here the word "living" is a bit of an exaggeration with regard to our friend the grandfather....
Of course his muscles flex to pull ligament and tendon and bone, and he breathes and eats and drinks and blinks his eyes. All his vital organs are functioning. Not spectacularly, but they are functioning. He can even have some semblance of responsive conversation. But at the risk of giving away the ending, the grandfather was dead years before he actually became the corpse waiting in line at the Coke machine. What differentiates him from a dandelion or a sea sponge? There's nothing of value going on in his head; there's nothing left to him that could be called a soul. Sally, for her part, i treats him as nothing more than a pretty prop. He's not going to be at the graduation to see her great accomplishment; he's not there to share the wisdom of his very long lifetime. Sally might as well dress a doll in his uniform and sword as have him there. He's not alive enough for anyone to realize when he's dead.
For the record, has anyone noticed that O'Connor foreshadows better than just about any other writer out there?
Posted by MeganRitter at 02:57 AM | Comments (1)
March 13, 2006
O'Connor, ''The River'' -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"'You count now,' the preacher said. 'You didn't even count before.'"
Jesus was a great man whose reputation was forever ruined by his terrible fan club.
So according to this preacher, before Bevel was ceremoniously dunked in a river, he didn't matter? I didn't think Jesus had that attitude when he was eating with the Gentiles and tax collectors and prostitutes. Whatever happened to all the things he had to say about acceptance and tolerance and love? I'd always understood Jesus' basic point to be, "People of earth, you ALL kind of suck at life, but THAT'S OKAY, because I'm here to get the crap kicked out of me so that you don't have to suffer as a result of your suckage at life." Unless I've been understanding it all way wrong, this would mean that all lives have VALUE, whether you're baptized by immersion or worship cattle or don't believe in anything.
Posted by MeganRitter at 05:32 PM | Comments (4)
O'Connor, ''A Good Man Is Hard to Find'' -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"'We've had an ACCIDENT!' the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
'But nobody's killed," said June Star with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car."
We're used to thinking of children as little dumplings of sweet, fluffy innocence....
Haha.
Children are fantastic, sure. Don't take this as a "RAWWWWR I HATE KIDS" manifesto. I volunteer two weeks every summer as a camp counselor. I love children. But they are ghoulish little creatures. The psychologists tell us that children don't start develop a capacity for empathy until at least the age of six - some put it as late as the age of twelve or thirteen. Many children are fascinated by tragedy and terror without yet having developed the ability to look at them from another perspective. It probably startles people who haven't spent time around children to see how excited John Wesley and June Star are by the accident. They're thrilled. It's the first exciting thing that's happened all day, and they're much too young to feel much sympathy for the adults around them. It's not in the nature of most young children to empathize. Sorry if I stripped anyone of their illusions regarding little kids. They're adorable and precious, but they are essentially self-centered. They can't help it; it's just how their brains are wired.
Posted by MeganRitter at 05:22 PM | Comments (4)
March 01, 2006
Portfolio One
I've found that I really like having strong opinions about literature, especially when no one else shares said strong opinions.
I hope I did this first one right. Technology and I don't always get along.
COVERAGE
Frost's "After Apple-Picking" Here I addressed the effect of the peom's rhythm pattern.
Oster's "On Desert Places" Here I responded to Oster's claims about the emotional baggage - or lack thereof - that serious writers carry.
Lehman's "The World Trade Center" Was he going for a socioeconomic critique here?
Roberts on Character Isn't literature really all about character development?
Wallace Stevens, "The Death of a Soldier" Here I discussed the personal side of Stevens' assertions about death.
Roberts on Symbolism and Allusion Here I argue that anything can be a symbol if we want it to be.
William Carlos Williams, "Tract" Here I continue an earlier argument about the American way of mourning.
Anger Management Problems, Eh? Questions on my mind about the respective behavior of Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson in The Great Gatsby.
You Are Entering the Twilight Zone Meyer Wolfshiem is one messed-up man.
Depth
"The Adding Machine" Watch me, not for the last time, base an opinion of a piece of literature on the things I'm learning in a special topics class on the history of the 1920s.
A Different Kind of Freedom Here I use research from my 1920s class, and a connection to a totally unconnected novel, to make assertions about Myrtle Wilson's sad fate in The Great Gatsby.
Sympathy for the Devil Here I apply some of Roberts' assertions about point of view to analyze the assorted opinions of thre lead character of my favorite book.
Trimalchio of West Egg And they said three years of Latin would never get me anywhere. Gatsby vs. Roman literature.
Discussions
"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" I don't like Bernice. Some people do. They let me know it, too.
Roberts on Poetic Form Here I argued against the use of rhyme and rhythm in poetry, and a classmate pointed out that it wasn't all bad.
Timeliness
"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" Lots of people came springing to her defense. Don't know why. I hope Bernice falls off a cliff.
Xenoblogging
Brenda Christeleit: William Carlos Williams
Matt Hampton: "The Adding Machine"
The Comment Primo
Onilee Smith: Roberts on Poetic Form
Chris Ulicne: "Trifles"
Terra Stumpf: Lehman's "The World Trade Center"
The Comment Informative
Chris Ulicne: A quick lesson about the craziness of Evangelicals
Posted by MeganRitter at 04:26 PM | Comments (1)
Trimalchio of West Egg
Article: Kumamoto -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
Kumamoto's article discusses the connections between Gatsby and the Roman story of the wealthy, popular Trimalchio. My AP Latin Prose class in high school actually read the story of Trimalchio....
The part I remember best from the story of one of his feasts is the part when Trimalchio's slaves bring out the pig on a platter. When they take the big knife and slice open the pig, the pig's insides are stuffed with birds. (It's been a long time since I read it, and anyway the noun declensions were a little funky, so I can't remember if the birds were dead or alive, but I think they were alive.) This to me is a symbol for Gatsby. The pig is the big, grand, thing that we see - the Romans associated pork with luxury, even if the pig is on the dirty, smelly side. The birds, meanwhile, are smaller and hidden and not so associated with the good things of life, but they are creatures of sweetness and innocence. To me, Trimalchio's weird idea to stick the birds inside the pig symbolizes how the best parts of Gatsby's character - his steadfast unyielding love for Daisy - is hidden inside the somewhat shady giver of lavish parties.
Posted by MeganRitter at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
You are entering the twilight zone....
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"'I see you're looking at my cuff buttons....Finest specimens of human molars.'"
I know Meyer Wolfshiem isn't the most savory of characters, but did this set anyone else back quite the way it did me?
At first I thought that maybe there was a possibility that this wasn't an oddity in the 1920s. At first I suspected that this maybe this was, if not totally normal in the 1920s, at least an occasional practice. I went hunting on Google, using roughly nineteen thousand sifferent search terms, and could find nothing to indicate this was at all an accepted pratice of the 1920s. So at least I'm comforted by the knowledge that Wolfshiem was a freak in his own time too. Fitzgerald doesn't often dive into exaggerations of reality to make his point, but this time it works very well. Wolfshiem is involved in the same shady business deals that Gatsby is, but the cuff buttons establish him as someone several steps beyond Gatsby on the road to Hell.
Posted by MeganRitter at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)
Sympathy for the Devil
Roberts, Ch. 5 -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"The second factor is the speaker's emotional and intellectual position. How might the speaker gain or lose from what takes place in the story? Are the speaker's observations and words colored by these interests? Does he or she have any persuasive purpose beyond a straightforward recorder or observer? What values does the speaker impose upon the action?"
It is through coming to understand this particular nuance of point of view that we come to love chanracters that first instinct tells we ought to hate, or to hate characters that first instinct tells us we ought to love.
I'll draw from my favorite book, Gone With the Wind, which was made into a tolerably good movie. Through my seven long years as a GWTW fanatic, I've found in general that people who see the movie hate Scarlett and people who actually read the book love Scarlett. This is all about point of view. Those who see the movie can't quite get into Scarlett's head to see her emotional and intellectual state, so when she stomps around Georgia acting like Satan Incarnate, they see her as "bad" character. Of course, in the book she also stomps around Georgia acting pretty much like Satan, but in the book we a re privy to her private thoughts and emotions. In the book, we see the sheer desperation and misery that drive her to lie, cheat, and swindle, so we can't quite condemn her. If we read the book, we see that she may do bad things, but that she may have good intentions. It's through examining what a character's point of view is that we learn that their lives are not all black-and-white good-and-evil struggles.
Posted by MeganRitter at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)
Anger management problems, eh?
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"...Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood discussing whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name. 'Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!' shouted Mrs. Wilson. 'I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai-' Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand."
This seems to me to be a weird sort of role-switching. What does it mean?
So Tom is married to Daisy and keeping Myrtle Wilson as a mistress. Clearly it angers him past the bounds of sanity to so much as hear Daisy's name spoken aloud. Meanwhile, isn't Myrtle, the woman who would like to have Daisy's place and can't, the one who should really hate to hear Daisy's name? She's certainly comfortable with it, or at least she puts up an effective front of being comfortable with it. Why does it bother Tom so much to hear Daisy's name? Is it guilt? Having read the book previously (it's one of my favorites) I know that Tom has already had several women on the side, including one only months after his wedding. He and Daisy have had a rough marriage. I can't see where it would bother his conscience to have one more fling. Toward the end of the book his jealousy of Gatsby's relationship with Daisy rips him apart inside, but in light of Tom's character I've always interpreted this as Tom's greedy childlike need to own the whole world. Why can't Tom stand to hear Daisy's name from Myrtle? And why does Myrtle take such pleasure in saying Daisy's name? Is it the thrill of triumph, the thrill of knowing that she and not Daisy has Tom's love? Is it the rare thrill of defying a man? How did the roles of the philandering husband and the insecure mistress get flipped here?
Posted by MeganRitter at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
A Different Kind of Freedom
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"I supposed there'd be a curious crowd around there all day...searching for dark spots and some garrulous man telling over and over what had happened until it became less and less real to him and he could tell it no longer and Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten."
The 1920s represent freedom for women far more than any other era in history (except maybe the 1960s, and if I wanted to get political I'd argue that women's lib does NOT represent freedom for women, but my purpose is not to get political, unfortunately.) Most American women may have found their freedom in the 1920s, but not all of them. Myrtle Wilson, trapped in a loveless marriage to a broken-down mechanic, is a symbol of all those women for whom the new political freedom of the 1920s did not necessarily equal personal freedom.
We've discussed in my History of the 1920s class how the world opened up for women in the 1920s. Dr. Spurlock's (very excellent; shameless plug) book, New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture chronicles how in the 1920s, new opportunities came available to women in every possible arena. By 1920 women made up nearly half - 47.3%, to be exact - of all U.S. college students. For the first time significant numbers of women experienced periods of freedom before settling down to married life - a short spell in which they lived with neither parents nor husband, but lived and worked on their own. This had long been customary for young men, but by the 1920s young women were taking advantage of this opportunity for independence as well. Furthermore, the sexual revolution of the 1920s is not just a myth: Dr. Spurlock's book chronicles how during the 1920s women were the first time able to be frank about their sexual urges and to express said sexual urges without the enormous social backlash experienced by "loose women" of earlier generations.
Somehow, all this freedom missed Myrtle Wilson. Trapped in marriage to George Wilson, in love with another man who used her as a toy, thee was no possibility that the narrow, dingy life that she lived. Hold that thought - there was one possibility. On the night when George Wilson tries to control her past what she could stand - on the night when he tells her they're leaving Long Island, and by extension her lover, Myrtle Wilson truly rebels against her life for the first and last time. Getting hit by a car is Myrtle's "tragic achievement." Dying like someone's cocker spaniel in the middle of the road is Myrtle's "tragic achievement." The night she died is the first time we have ever seen Myrtle assert her independence. In death, she is free as she never could be in life.
It is interesting to compare this to Kate Chopin's short turn-of-the-century novel The Awakening. The novel's protagonist, whose name I've forgotten in the 2.5 years since I read it, is a wealthy New Orleans housewife with everything she could desire...except emotional and sexual fulfillment, except a sense of self and of autonomy. Unable to cope with her inability to feel free, she walks into a bayou and drowns herself. Her freedom, like Myrtle's, can come only in death. They're on opposite ends of the socioeconomic ladder, but both are trapped by the worlds they live in and can find freedom only in death.
Posted by MeganRitter at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)