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A Crossroads of Man, Technology, and Nature

2009-04-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

Ayten Salahi
AP-1
94598962
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We live in a world in which human beings have been given the power to destroy nearly everything that once was, or will ever be. We have manufactured weapons of unfathomable devastation, and we have designed innumerable plots to do none other than defeat our fellow human beings. We are a powerful species, and consequently, we are held responsible for the deterioration of our world. Such corrosion of a once pristine and primitive life has been delivered by the hand of our ever-strengthening technological advancements, and our ever-weakening regard for nature. William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark” tells the brief and mundane tale of one such intersection of technology, nature, and mankind. Stafford uses the unexceptional story of a drive down Wilson River road to discreetly convey the intrusion of an increasingly technological world upon both nature and mankind’s moral cognition.

“Traveling Through the Dark” is written in a deceptively straight-forward style, and Stafford’s complex, didactic message is thus shrouded beneath a superficial layer of colloquial diction and simple poetic structures. The reader is meant to believe that Stafford’s blunt wording says it all—that his poem does nothing more than tell the story of a man pushing road kill out of the road and into the river. Yet underneath this façade of simplicity, there is life, depth, purpose, and symbolism in every living and nonliving creature of “Traveling Through the Dark.” Stafford breathes life into each entity within his work, and he does so by personifying them—the dead doe, the car, the wilderness, and himself— with individuals powers that operate exclusively from the others. Each creature has a distinct power that the others neither have nor can control.

The relationship between the narrator’s car and the narrator can be described as the relationship between a predator and its prey. The car is depicted as a beast that can aim its parking lights, purr its steady engine, and exhale its warm exhaust—a predator who snaps his head towards his prey, aims his focus—the headlights—purrs in anticipation—the engine—and releases a warm breath just before he strikes. The prey, the narrator, does nothing but stand “in the glare of the warm exhaust”—unsuspecting and helpless. This car, this predator, symbolizes technology’s unwavering hold on the human race. Although we may believe we are in control of where technology will take us, we are powerless without said technology, and are therefore at its feet.

In contrast, the “heap, [the] doe, [the] recent killing” is personified with a very different strength. This “heap” of lifelessness is revived as Stafford apprehensively describes the dead doe as no longer merely a “heap,” but as a “her.” Immediately after acknowledging that this “recent killing” was in fact a female deer, the narrator uncomfortably recognizes that “she [is] large in the belly.” This interaction exemplifies the quintessential male response to a saddening and uncomfortable situation, and in such symbolizes an instantaneous moral response to the death of a pregnant female deer. This response symbolizes the eternal power of nature and its link to both death and the conscience—a power that forced the initially indifferent narrator to hesitate beside that mountain road, and to “think hard for all of us.”

The fourth stanza embodies the collision of each of these entities: man, technology, and nature. Here, the narrator is literally surrounded by each force. He is underneath a spotlight, being targeted by the warm, red exhaust of the purring predator, and being judged by the reclusive, listening wilderness. There, he could “hear the wilderness listening.” There, he “thought hard for us all.” There, he pushed the doe “over the edge and into the river.”

Love in the Time of Cholera

2009-04-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

For my end of the year assignment, I have chosen to read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For some reason, I was instantly drawn to the novel simply by its title--possibly because I am fascinated by global health and the societal effects of disease permeation.

However, I was not entirely sold until I read the first five pages of the novel; I was instantly mesmerized by Marquez's brilliant turns-of-phrase and beautiful language flow. His descriptions of mundane, seemingly uninteresting subjects such as aging evole into an entity that is not "the unequivocal sign of the final decay, but a happy return to childhood." Such diction evokes a sense of reinvention and creativity that I know will provide me with an all new perspective upon these mundane things as I read further into the mind of Marquez.

The Hidden Nora (and I Really Hate Torvold)

2009-02-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

Throughout my reading of Ibson’s A Doll’s House, I constantly found myself wondering, “Is this a joke? Or can a married couple seriously be this blaringly obnoxious, fake, condesending, and overall dumb?” I found Torvold Helmer to be patronizing and—for lack of a stronger, more insulting term—frustating, and I genuinely could not stand his seemingly one-dimensional character. I knew him as “the working husband” that somehow manufactured pet names for his wife that made me gag and die a little bit inside. No, Torvold. She is not a squirrel. For that matter, she is neither your sky lark, nor your pet, nor your child. No, Torvold. You are not right about absolutely everything, regardless of what you have been told or what your arrogance has led you to believe. Torvold—my little song bird, my little squirrely squirrel prancing among the trees, and the butterflies, and the dandelions, and my projectile vomit—you’re an ungrateful, demeaning know-it-all, and I am glad Nora left you.
Now for Nora. I personally found Nora to be a much more interesting character whose motives , but not her maturity nor her behavior, place her among the company of classic literary characters as Antigone and perhaps even Hamlet. However, I am still endlessly curious as to one thing: was Nora playing dumb throughout the entire play? Did she knowingly live in a situation in which she was valued as nothing more than a pet or a child; and did she choose to ignore this situation because of her immaturity, or because of her hopes for a “miracle” and her blinded faith in Torvold’s love for her? I believe that Nora was well aware that she was not valued. I believe that she sole reason for which she felt the need to constantly rehash the fact the “Torvold loved her terribly” when she was amongst other company was to fool herself into believing such an idea. The love between a husband and a wife is one that must also exhibit a level of respect and selflessness, and it is anything but similar to the love between a father and a daughter, an owner and a pet, a teacher and a student. I believe that Nora excused the absence of this particular type of love because she absolutely felt the need to wait for Torvold. She proved her love for him by committing forgery to save his life, and she was waiting for the miraculous act she was sure she would receive—all in due time. And when this miraculous event should take place—when Nora’s act of love and desperation is finally to be recognized and reciprocated with another act love from Torvold—Torvold’s condescension and scolding arrives in its place. And in that moment, the thinnest sliver of all that was holding the real, restrained, and independent Nora buried beneath the façade of a pathetic, doting housewife was broken, and Nora left Torvold.

She left her home and her husband, and children and her maid, her false pretense and her old life. She left to search for independence, and perhaps even for true love. She left to search for respect, and to rid herself of the unfullfilling, empty life she once led.

Antigone, Creon, and the Unachievable Golden Mean

2009-01-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

Mankind is often found guilty of overstepping his boundaries. He justifies arrogance, pride, and recklessness by associating these tragic character flaws with the heroism of adventurousness, authority, and courage. But not all men are bound by the same definition of immorality, or pride, or imprudence. Not all men are homogeneously identified with the same methods of wrongdoing. However, the story of Antigone illustrates the single most universal folly of all men and women, and that is mankind’s strong tendency towards the extremes.

We have Antigone, and we have Creon.

Antigone embodies the image of a strong-willed female unbound by the constraints of ancient Greece’s social mores—an individual so driven by a personal code of morality and integrity that she is able to consciously defy the word of ancient Greece’s highest royal order. Yet she is so strong in her convictions that she seems to give off an arrogant, “holier than thou” attitude. She not only criticizes but also rejects Ismene’s unwillingness to accompany her in her mission to bury Polyneices, even though Ismene agrees to keep her secret. This criticism illustrates a certain haughtiness about Antigone—one that denotes that if the level of your passionate morality and courageous defiance is not equal to that of Antigone, you are not truly moral, nor courageous, nor passionate, nor defiant. And that is where Antigone oversteps her boundaries as a mere mortal—she is in no position to be passing judgment upon the decisions of others, especially not those who are attempting to maintain a certain level of balance in their respect for both personal and social morals. One may even argue that Antigone’s foolish boldness and pretentiousness—her tragic character flaws—ultimately determined her grim fate.

Creon, on the other hand, embodies a rather polar image. Rather than signifying a man whose character and morality are based upon personal ethics, Creon chooses to uphold values that are more important in his eyes: authoritative power and the reputation of his country. His decision to deny Polyneices proper burial rights is immoral by not only religious values but also by intuitive ethics. Creon’s rejection of these values indicates that he is fearless as to the repercussions of his actions—he does not fear the wrath of the gods and goes so far as to accuse the oracle of being corrupt and rejecting his word as well. Creon is thus unable to find a definitive middle ground between the maintenance of a respectable/powerful rule and the maintenance of personal morality for its own sake. Of course, this conceitedness comes full circle, taking the lives of both his wife and his son.

A major theme of most ancient Greek literature is the concept of a Golden Mean, which is defined as the desirable middle of two extremes, one of excess and one of deficiency. Neither Antigone nor Creon is able to locate this Golden Mean, and I am forced to wonder whether or not that inability to find the Golden Mean was the single-most crucial factor that led to their respective downfalls.

The Frivolous Life of Ivan Ilych

2009-01-12T13:29:00.000-08:00

A frivolous life is one that lacks fulfillment; it is a life without profound human emotion, or insatiable curiosity, or risk. A meaningless life is one that is mediocre—average, dull, and routine. Such is a life of complacency and regret; such is the life of Ivan Ilych

The Death of Ivan Ilych addresses the oncoming death and genuine lack of life of the husband, the father, the statesman: Ivan Ilych. In his blinded human eyes, he believes he has it all: a steady job, a wife, a family, a game of bridge, and normalcy—bland, unexceptional normalcy. In all of his life, he felt nothing but mere contentedness. He dispensed no compassion or love, and in return he received none. So what is a life that is full of trivial pleasures and superficial happiness? What is a life that is filled with inordinate amounts of nothingness? It is selfish. It is empty. It is nothing.

With his three final days of life, Ivan Ilych began to drown in the realization that such was the life he had lead, and he suffered. He suffered for every ounce of intangible happiness and love that he chose to substitute with tangible goods and materialistic joys. He struggled and writhed with frustration as he searched for the purpose behind his life—a purpose that he was unable to find until his dying hours on earth. It was only in those hours that Ivan Ilych discovered the frivolousness of a life devoid of love, and it was in those final hours that Ivan’s pain and fear ceased to exist. In such, one must assume that with his realization of an overwhelming desire for compassion, pity, and love came the end of his pain. And honestly, I am forced to believe that had Ivan Ilych lived a life of profound purpose—of love and family and trust and consideration—he would have transitively been able to leave this world without kicking and screaming, without shouting and suffering, without pain and fear. Compassion was what he craved in his dying days; and yet he failed to dispense that compassion throughout his life. Forgiveness was what he needed with his last breathe; and yet he failed to dispense that forgiveness, that love, throughout his own life. Yet with this inner reconciliation and recognition that his life had not been one worth continuing to fight for—that his life had been wholly devoid of the divine gifts of love and human connection—he was able to leave this world peacefully. If only he had recognized this absence for his dying moments, Ivan Ilych may have been spared a terrible grief and torturous knowledge that he had lived a life of frivolous pleasures and superficiality.

Coatzee and Conrad Collide

2008-12-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

While I believe that Coetzee and Conrad had entirely different intentions in writing Waiting for the Barbarians and Heart of Darkness, there is one strikingly similar facet that is present in both novels: both the Magistrate and Marlow are characters whose consciences and perceptiveness are raised above those of the secondary characters within each respective novel. That is to say that the Magistrate is unlike any other character within Waiting for the Barbarians. He is utilized as Coetzee’s tool to highlight the folly and ruthlessness of the Empire—an empire who claims superiority over a “barbarian” race, when it is truly the empire itself that is barbaric and coldblooded. That is to say that Marlow was unlike any other character in Heart of Darkness. He is utilized as Conrad’s means to point out the hypocrisy that festers beneath the surface of a self-proclaimed, “superior” race—a race among which even the highest of its imperialist members oftentimes acted more animalistic and savage than they presumed their African “sub-population” would.

Furthermore, the Magistrate and Marlow serve to embody a perennial struggle, that of the individual versus the greater power. Both individuals exhibit awareness regarding the inhumanity of their greater powers—the Empire and Kurtz—and yet they are hesitant to resist this cruelty. At which point can individual morality subdue the devastating fear of resisting the greater power and the greater population? Why does the fear to act in accordance with one’s personal principles and decency exist in the first place, and why is it ever-more present when its adversary is endowed with greater authority? It is this fear that keeps the flames of a triumphant, prevailing empire alive, and both the Magistrate and Marlow serve to symbolize this fear—a fear that suffocated each of their consciences for the greater part of each novel.

On the broader spectrum, Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness both convey a similar message: an empire simply cannot exist without an adversary—whether that adversary is truly an enemy, or one that is feigned. An adversary symbolizes a force against which a population can unite and find patriotism. An adversary embodies at least one crucial correspondence between every individual within a population. The members of the Empire band against the impending danger of the Barbarians—who are not actually a threat initially. The members of imperialist Europe band against the savagery of the African world, and take upon themselves a communal duty to raise these tribes above their animalistic nature—which is not actually animalistic, but simply different from the European way of life. The Empire of Waiting for the Barbarians and the imperialist Europeans of Heart of Darkness have fabricated from thin air and nothingness a means to unify their peoples at the expense of another population. (467)

Coetzee: Brilliant Language, Odd Subject Matter

2008-11-23T20:54:00.000-08:00

This is possibly one of the strangest pieces of writing that I have ever read, and I don't simply mean strange in the sense that Waiting for the Barbarians discusses some...odd...subject matter. Scrutinizing Coetzee's work yields the presence of some very unique stylistic approaches. The most manifest of these approaches is his use of the present tense to tell the reader the tale of the Magistrate--we, as the readers, become a part of the Magistrate. We become lost in his thoughts; we indulge in his senses. Coetzee's deliberate employment of the present tense not only lures the reader into each scene but also gives the novel a sense of immortality, of endlessness.

Furthermore, I must concede that I am fascinated with--and slightly baffled by--Coetzee's simple yet complex, contradictory yet perfectly lucid stream of consciousness. Namely, I speak of his interactions with the barbarian girl. Perhaps the most compelling and puzzling of his thoughts concerning her is this:

"The girl lies in my bed, but there is no reason that it should be called a bed. I behave in some ways like a lover--I undress her, I bathe her, I stroke her, I sleep beside her--but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate."

It is in these contradictions that I become oddly enticed to read further.

I feel I must comment on another of these contradictions--one that I believe may be one of the most thought-provoking I have read thus far in Waiting for the Barbarians:

"Desire seemed to bring with it a pathos of distance and separation which it was futile to deny."

After having noted such captivating phrasing and careful positioning of themes and motifs, I have come to notice a trend of Coetzee's: he seems to juxtapose contrary ideas and subject matter--such as the concept of desire and its infallible resulting in separation. He also intermingles the contradicting threads describing the blindness of the barbarian girl with the graphic, visually-stimulating language used to describe the Magistrate's physical relations with the girl.

Overall, my first impression of Waiting for the Barbarian was a skeptical one. Yet as I continued reading, I found myself genuinely intrigued by the mystique surrounding the Magistrate's intentions, the barbarian girl's desires, and where their relationship would go. Also, I must admit that of all the works we have read thus far in the year, Coetzee's use of language and stylistic structure has been by far the most compelling.

2008-11-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

Marianna Torgovnick’s “Primitivism and the American Woman” lifts the mysterious veils concealing The Heart of Darkness and exposes perspectives that the novella cannot, or will not, say.

The “horror, the horror”—what has Kurtz actually done in Africa?

“Kurtz has allowed himself to be worshiped by his African followers.” Kurtz has becomes consumed by the fantasy of his ultimate superiority—unhinged from reality, drowning in a fantasy that is even more savage than his perspective of African primitivism.

He commits miscegenation (mates with a black woman, breaking a British code). The African woman is raised above the other Africans by wearing jewelry and leggings. She is beautiful, but she is not the Intended in that she is not “high of mind.” -- substitute/inversion for Kurtz’s ideal Intended woman. “She is presented as all body and inchoate emotion.”

Shrunken Heads
See passage at the top of page 398, which describes the collection of shrunken heads.

Shrunken Heads/Cannibalism in primitivism: absorption of a slain enemy’s courage and power, communal goals, provision of souls for boys at initiation, sense of renewal--all spiritual values that are primitive, yet not savage.

Western fantasy of savagery Westerners views of primitivism and head-hunting elicit a sense of savagery and animalistic, barbaric behavior—heartlessness, brute force.

Kurtz: completely disregards the communal, spiritual power of collecting heads. “In collecting heads, he acted out a Western fantasy of savagery, with emotions different from those typically found among primitive peoples.” (pg.399)

Erosion of Conventional European Values

“Africans became Kurtz’s grade fantasy theater for playing out his culture’s notions of masculinity and power through the controlled borrowed rituals attributed to certain groups within Africa, perverted to Western ends.” (pg.400)
Kurtz experiences a corrosion of European values, as asserted by the article. I disagree in some senses, however. Rather, he seems to be drowning in these European values, these Western presumptions of the African world. The only erosion of European values that I attribute to Kurtz is his unusual relationship with the African woman.

Marlow’s return to Brussels (pg.70)“I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams.”
Bitter, resentful, oppressed, jaded. He realizes, however, that he cannot express this bitterness, that he would be regarded as mad. Therefore, just one page later, he refers to those same, hurrying Europeans as “commonplace individuals going about their business.”

Closure?

2008-11-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Inside the inverted reality of Faulkner's literary design, the Sound and the Fury examines the steady decline of the Compson family, a metaphorical parallel to the diminishment of the Southern Aristocratic era. The self-centeredness of Mother, Father, and Jason wither any hope for a strong familial bond in the future; the embarassment that the Compsons find in Benji damages any hope to maintain the facade of a flawless Southern family; the sexual promiscuity of Caddy sullies the Compson name beyond repair; the suicide of Quentin, the first born son, casts an permanent shadow upon outsiders' perceptions of the once noble family. The Compsons have reached a dead end. With three physically or mentally sterile sons and one banished daughter, the Compson family has nowhere to go but to fade away into the absolute silence of a defeated family lineage.

And such is the final impression of the Sound and the Fury. Quentin's escape compounds with Mother's melodrama, which compounds to Jason's bitterness and fury--loudness, anger, red, pain, distrust, synicism, sadness, change?, the end. These components conjoin and are symbolized by Benji unprecedentedly loud and mournful bellering. And then--silence.

This silence, the silence that ensues the end of Benji's hollering, provides closure to Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury because it demonstrates the impending fate of the Compson family--silence; the end. This silence suggests that the family is doomed to be defeated by time, by change, and by their rejection of both time and change.

Faulkner: Folklore & Symbolism

2008-10-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury utilizes a series of literary devices characteristic to his individual style. Among these devices are his purely stylistic and syntactical divergences from traditional literature—namely his use of italicized flashbacks and periodical exclusion of quotation marks. Yet beyond this strictly technical and visually unusual perspective lies Faulkner’s personal, intangible style that spawns from his world, experiences, and subconscious. Welcome to the world of the South—the world of Faulkner. The South served Faulkner as a sort of home base, a creative basket of fruit from which he could draw the distinctly Southern flavors and spices he disperses so liberally throughout his works. These Southern elements are particularly emphasized in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury through his thoughtful use of Southern flower symbology and Negro folklore.
Although Faulkner employs flower symbology concerning the narcissus and the cornflower, one immediately recognizes a particular role behind Faulkner’s use of the jimson weed in The Sound and the Fury: to calm and soothe Benjy—it is his toy. Yet it was not until I had read Charles D. Peavy’s article concerning Faulkner’s employment of folklore in The Sound and the Fury that I discovered the dark underlying symbolism associated with this seemingly soothing weed.

The jimson weed is quite common in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Mississippi area and has a multiplicity of meanings in the folklore of the region. A course, ill-scented plant, the jimson weed is…quite poisonous. Children have been poisoned by eating its seeds or by taking its flowers into their mouths. Indeed, that Benjy is allowed by his Negro keepers to play with so dangerous a plant is surprising. The poisonous aspect of the plant is perhaps used symbolically by Faulkner: in the last chapter the bottle holding Benjy’s jimson weed flowers is an empty poison bottle.
…The jimson weed is odoriferous and produces a heavy and oppressive perfume. Because of this, the jimson weed is sometimes called stinkweed, and Edmond Volpe has suggested that Benjy’s stinkweed is an ironic symbol of the loss of Caddy, who ‘smelled like trees.’
...During most of the day, they [the jimson weed flowers] are closed into an erect, trumpet-shaped form, from six to seven inches long, resembling somewhat a large, closed morning glory. The buds, like the flowers, occur solitary and erect in the forks of the branches and closely resemble okra in fruit. This characteristic of the closer flower, and particularly the suggestively phallic appearance of the bud, has caused the jimson weed to be considered a symbol of the male sex organ by both white and black inhabitants of the hill country…Faulkner was doubtlessly aware of the phallic implications of the closed jimson flower clutched in the fist of castrated Benjy. (Peavy 438)

This passage revealed an entirely new facet of the jimson weed, which in my eyes was purely representative of a sort of pacifier to Benjy. Upon reading this article, I myself noted that Faulkner only uses the jimson weed as this “pacifier” after two distinct events: Caddy’s losing her virginity and Benjy’s castration. The foul-smelling weed is thus undeniably linked to the impurity of sexuality, a link that I had not noted until I had read Peavy’s article.

Furthermore, Faulkner’s Southern foundation is once again manipulated to add the element of prophecy, of foreboding, and of death. From his Southern home base, Faulkner draws a series of Negro folk beliefs that he attaches to each of Benjy’s African American keepers and indeed Benjy himself. These Southern folklore and superstitions are used to foreshadow the death.

In the first section of The Sound and the Fury, the Negroes read the “signs” of approaching death. Damuddy, the grandmother, and Quentin Compson, the son, have died, and Roskus prophesies yet another death.
‘They been two, now.’ Roskus said. ‘Going to be one more. I seen the sign, and you is too.’
‘I heard a squinch owl that night.’ T.P. said. ‘Dan wouldn’t come and get his supper neither. Wouldn’t come no closer than the barn. Begun howling right after dark. Versh heard him’
The squinch owl, or screech owl, is regarded by the Negro as a death omen. If an owl screeches at a house where anyone is sick it will make him worse and probably cause him to die.
Also, it is a widely accepted belief that a howling dog is a sign that someone is dying, or will die soon. (Peavy 441)

These Southern superstitions were unapparent to me before I had read Peavy’s article—yet, Faulkner’s use of Negro folklore concerning death omens drew my curiosity towards the fact that Benjy was somehow able to “smell” death or sense its imminence, a question that was further addressed by Peavy’s article.

When Benjy’s father Jason Compson III dies, Benjy ‘smells’ it. T.P., another in the series of Benjy’s Negro keepers, thinks that Benjy has sensed the death because of the howling of Dan, the hound. Benjy’s interior monologue, however, reveals that he smells the death long before he hears Dan howl. (Peavy 431)

This particular portion of Peavy’s article seemed only to intensify my curiosity, rather than quench it. Peavy continues on to reference the passage from The Sound and the Fury during which Benjy approaches his father’s room and can “smell it.” He begins to holler and simply cannot stop. Several lines further in the text, Benjy’s interior monologue indicates that he has acknowledged Dan’s howling. Therefore, Benjy sensed his father’s looming death long before Dan the hound had. My inquiry lies here: does Faulkner mean to lower Benjy’s humanity to that of a dog who, according to Southern superstition, is able to sense approaching death and project this omen through its hollering? Or does Faulkner mean to elevate Benjy’s being to one that is greater than both the animal and the human in light of the fact that he seems to be divinely endowed with a gift to sense that something is not right, or that death is approaching? My interpretation is that Benjy is gifted. He is a symbol of something that is divine, perhaps an angel, who is merely cloaked behind a disguise that makes him appear deaf and dumb. This disguise has been purposefully imposed upon him by nature and, I believe, is used as a tool to expose the true spirit, moral fiber, and superficiality behind each character in The Sound and the Fury. Although Caddy is portrayed as promiscuous to a fault, is she not also the character who treats Benjy with the most love, and care, and warmth, and compassion?
Peavy’s article, “Faulkner’s Use of Folklore in The Sound and the Fury” did much to open my eyes to the innumerable facets and layers of hidden meaning associated with Faulkner’s work. There is truly a veiled purpose behind nearly every line, every quotation, and every character in The Sound and the Fury, and one cannot truly savor its true depth without unearthing each one.

Word Count: 1,152 with quotations; 710 without quotations
Citation:

Peavy, Charles D. "Faulkner's Use of Folklore in The Sound and the Fury." The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 79, No. 313 (Jul. - Sep., 1966). University of Illinois Press. Pp. 437-441. 26 October 2008. http://www.jstor.org/stable/537508

Can somebody please find Bobbie Ann Mason and get her to answer my questions!!? GAHH.

2008-09-28T23:26:00.000-07:00

Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” tells the story of a withered man and marriage—a man stripped of his masculinity and a marriage robbed of its marital bliss—or at least that’s how it begins. It is a story told through the eyes of Leroy Moffitt, yet it is a story that yields the evolution of his wife Norma Jean. As “Shiloh” progresses and we discover more about Norma Jean and her completely disjointed life from Leroy’s, a question arose in my mind that I simply cannot find a definitive answer to. In fact, I’ve changed my mind about the answer at least four times within the time it took me to write the first and third sentences of this blog, but here it is: does “Shiloh” tell the tale of a marriage gone sour after a family tragedy, or does it merely convey a wife’s realization of her indifference, or possibly resentment, towards the man she was forced to marry since her adolescence?
I cannot tell if Leroy is oblivious, or just lazy. The impression that I get of him is that he knows his wife is indifferent to him, and he knows that she thinks of him as a hindrance. And rather than growing up with her and witnessing her evolution into womanhood, he works. He is a truck driver, and he is never at home until he has a car accident and is no longer mobile enough to continue working.
This accident seems both a curse and a blessing: a blessing because it allows him to discontinue work and reconnect with his wife, and a curse because his homecoming is ill-received by Norma Jean and eventually leads to the disintegration of their marriage. Mason describes his homecoming as a time when Leroy is “finally settling down with the woman he loves,” but does he truly love her? The only evidence I could find to prove that he just might actually love Norma Jean is in his adoration of her beauty, her flawless skin, and her “frosted curls…like pencil trimming.” Of course, you can’t forget to mention that log cabin that he obsesses over. He claims that he’ll build this cabin for her, and that they’ll grow together in that cabin, and that that’s all it will take to get back those fifteen years he lost from his marriage. I’m hesitant to believe that this proves his love for her. In my interpretation of Leroy Moffitt, I believe he feels he has to love Norma Jean simply because they have been together so long, when really want he truly wants it to be happy himself. Norma Jean wants nothing to do with a log cabin; Norma Jean wants Leroy to get a job and, essentially, grow up. To love somebody is to want them to be happy at all costs. If Leroy truly loved Norma Jean, he would abandon his romantic yet unrealistic desire to build a log cabin and do what would make both as them—as a couple; as a team; as a unit—happier and more compatible. Instead he describes his love for her in his depiction of her physical beauty. He wants to reconnect with her, but it takes not but until “the oven timer goes off” for him to forget why he wants to do this. Is that love? Is that even friendship?
I wonder what affect the death of their first and only child had upon their marriage, but I’m also drawn to the notion that perhaps there was no loving, devoted relationship for the death to have impacted in the first place. Norma Jean did become pregnant as a teenager, after all, and Bobbie Ann Mason omits the specifics behind their marriage—whether it was imposed upon them by family values or they chose to get married out of love; perhaps this is purposefully done to add that opaque dimension of speculation to “Shiloh.”

Sorry Mrs. Turpin, You Lose.

2008-09-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, this quote is entirely overused, and I’m almost hesitant to use it, but I feel that it applies oh, so perfectly to the life of Mrs. Turpin as depicted through Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”: actions speak louder than words, my friend. Mrs. Turpin claims to be among the righteous, when she is really only self-righteous; she believes she is favored in the eyes of God, when she is really most in need of God’s saving grace. Mrs. Turpin’s actions perfectly exemplify the definition of hypocrisy in that she preaches that which she herself does not practice. She is ridden with a critical and judgmental eye as well as a superiority complex that seems to genuinely hinder her ability to form loving relationships, or any relationship for that matter, with others.
Upon delving into this story, I found myself rather curious about Mrs. Turpin’s past. Had she always acted this condescendingly and unkindly to others, or do her own deeply-rooted insecurities bring out the worst in her? How can a woman, who claims that her philosophy of life is to “help anybody out that needed it,” think of only two things on a regular basis: herself and hateful thoughts of those surrounding her? The response to these questions I can only speculate, yet the questions themselves lead me to believe that Mrs. Turpin is not only as phony as she is fat, but also that her so-called revelation was nothing more than a sudden and momentary jolt of fear—a fear of God and of punishment, rather than a flood of guilt and desire to change.
Yet I do believe that Mrs. Turpin had a revelation. As evidenced through her subconscious belief that she is favored in the eyes of God, that her needs come before the needs of others, and that she has the right to pass judgment upon her fellow man, Mrs. Turpin has placed herself about the human race—either she believes she is angel, or she believes she is even more divine. She is blinded by this belief so much so that she loses sight of her true infinitesimal stature in comparison to the divine. She lost in her self-righteousness so much so that she dares to challenge the God whom she claims so angelically to serve. In shouting to God, “Who do you think you are,” she crosses a serious and almost devilish boundary; in God’s echoing back the same question, Mrs. Turpin is struck with her “revelation.” She is not an angel, and she is nowhere near the divine. She is human. She is tiny. And that is where her revelation ends. I believe that, at most, she is humbled by this experience; unfortunately, I am a firm believer that people hardly ever change, and a woman so frozen within her own pride and vanity deserves no higher expectation than such. Perhaps now Mrs. Turpin will be able to better conceal her true identity, feelings, and thoughts; perhaps the façade she regularly imposes will include better acting than before. It is not enough to have God speak to you, to be divinely touched—that means nothing if one does not listen and allow himself to be touched.

Interpreter of Maladies

2008-09-11T23:37:00.000-07:00

Ayten Salahi
Mr. Coon
English IV AP
12 September 2008

His Eyes and Mind, Her Words and Actions

Behind every character within Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, there exists a purpose, a theme—a window through which to perceive, or a sight upon which to bestow. Every action is transplanted with great precision, every response with careful meditation—nothing is said or done accidentally. Lahiri is able to manipulate these six characters such that Mr. Kapasi becomes this window, and the Das family becomes this site. Yet there are truly only two whose interactions the readers are most drawn to, whose thoughts and words are most captivating, and it is not inadvertently so. These two are not entire characters; they are parts of characters. It is through the eyes and mind of Mr. Kapasi that we become acquainted with the intense cultural disparities between the native Indian and the American assimilates. It is through the words and actions of Mrs. Das that we are introduced to both a personification of the seven deadly sins and a woman so suffocated by the pressures bestowed upon her by her heritage that she believes it justifies her way of being.

Lahiri utilizes both Mr. Kapasi’s perspective and his thought processes as tools to accentuate his and the Das’s profound cultural divergences, as well as the undeniable fascination that is born from these differences. Everything about them is different—the way the dress, the way they interact, and even the way they perceive. Upon observing these distinctions, one cannot help but notice that each and every contrast is carefully and purposefully transplanted immediately before or after its counterpart so as to powerfully present these concentrated contrasts. Lahiri describes the Das family’s attire, with their “stiff, brightly colored clothing,” their “flashing silver wires” covering the children’s teeth, and Mr. Das with this “shorts, sneakers, and T-shirt” and a “camera slung around his neck.” Directly following this description is that of Mr. Kapasi’s attire himself, with his greater concern for the durability and practicality of his “gray trousers” and “matching jacket-style shirt, tapered at the waist.” Further following that description comes that of Mrs. Das, with her “skirt that stopped before her knees,” her “close-fitting [chest-level] blouse,” and her unnecessarily large straw bag. Such distinctions—and such careful and thoughtful placement of said distinctions—allows one to observe that even the most trivial aspects of daily life differ between the two cultures.

And yet, that observation can only be made through Mr. Kapasi—he is truly the one and only character who is even mindful of the others around him; he is the only character whose thoughts seem to contain any substance concerning his surroundings. He notes this difference in clothing, and continues to note the unusual interactions between the family members in that they “were all like siblings, [and] Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not parents.” His work as an interpreter haunts him and his wife with an overwhelming sense of failure and an evocation of devastating memories, whereas Mrs. Das deems such an occupation as “romantic,” making the patients “more dependent on [him] than the doctor.” From these divergences, and from this lack of innate understanding, an odd infatuation is born between he who observes and that which he is observing, yet their intentions are not the same. She flatters him, however unintentionally, and he her with his admiration and unwillingness to part with her. To him, Mrs. Das represented the possibility of a new friend who valued his work. To her, Mr. Kapasi represented solely the possibility of freedom from her guilt—her intentions were almost entirely selfish, whereas his were to quench a certain burning curiosity.

It is through the greed defining her actions, the gluttony of her constant munching, the sloth in her unwilling and winy nature—it is through the lust that drove her infidelity, the cold and indifferent wrath she bestows upon her family, the pride with which she rejects Mr. Kapasi’s advice, and the envy with which she covets a different life—that we are presented with Mrs. Das—the personification of the seven deadly sins. Lahiri utilizes this character to symbolize the internal conflict that occurs within nearly every assimilate: how much of our own culture do we preserve? Mrs. Das symbolizes a woman so torn by this perpetual internal dilemma that she has surrendered to it, asphyxiated to the point where she herself has been lost, to the point where she had “fallen out of love with life.” From this loss of self and of love comes not only the onslaught of the seven deadly sins and her undeniable relation to them, but also the dreadful notion that her family must suffer for her unhappiness.

My Summer Reading Blog

2008-08-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

I suppose now would be the perfect opportunity for me to confess to a serious addiction that I have developed over the summer. Although I absolutely cannot stand when we teenage girls obsess with and/or overtly drool over fictional characters, I--along with the rest of the female population of the United States--have fallen in love with the Edward Cullen and the Twilight series by Stefanie Meyer. To be completely honest, there were only two reasons that I started reading the series in the first place. One: I was extremely curious as to why every girl I knew was suddenly in love with a vampire boy named Edward and a werewolf boy named Jacob. I thought it was outlandishly strange. Two: after having completed the first novel, I would have gained enough knowledge about the series to torment and embarrass my friends for having read such a ridiculous book, and I would be able to do so using quotes and other "meaty" evidence to support my ridicule. How could anybody pass up the one opportunity at which he or she could possibly remark, "So...I noticed that you fell in love with a fake teenage vampire boy from a fictional teenage fantasy book"? I couldn't; so I read. And then I read more. And then I couldn't stop reading. By the beginning of August I had become addicted to the series and even planned to attend a midnight party for the release of its fourth book, Breaking Dawn. After 2,500 pages and over 24 full hours of reading, I finally understood the infatuation, the allure of the Twilight series. Meyer gave me characters that I could fall utterly and irrationally in love with; she gave me scenarios that were so incredibly unbelievable that readers, like myself, were both powerlessly drawn into her spell-binding language and helplessly entranced by the world of Bella, Jacob, and the Cullens. Personally, I am not much into the mushy, lovey-dovey books, but the Twilight series has the perfect balance of action, romance, and--the most crucial criterion for a good book in my eyes--sarcasm. Well maybe that's not the most important criterion, which is why I must admit to something else: although I absolutely loved all four works by Stefanie Meyer, no book impacted my thoughts this summer more than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I know; it's a complete 180 from Twilight in terms of plot, language, and every facet of its being really. There was just something about being inside the mind of Christopher Boone, an autistic yet brilliant, simple yet complex, and naive yet worldly young man, that broadened my mind and forced me to think. After almost every three pages, Christopher had made a new observation about life that I had not yet considered. Prime numbers are like life. You must use timetables to make sure you don't get lost in time; yet time itself is a mystery, "not even a thing," an unsolvable puzzle. I find observations such as these utterly compelling. They are outlandish and ingenious, almost as though Christopher is able to take the most complex, intangible ideas and simplify them to the point of child-like clarity. After having read both the Twilight series and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, I was able to make a realization about myself and about my own mind. I am drawn to books, thoughts, and in fact people who compel me to consider alternate realities--books, thoughts, and people that force me to ask myself, "What if?..."--books, thoughts, and people who stimulate me to find my own answers, and who keep my mind wandering.