The Natural world of Hemingway and McCarthy

The parallels between Hemingway and McCarthy never occurred to me but after reading the short story “The Big Two-Hearted River.” I can see how closely both authors seek answers in nature.  Nick’s spirit is nurturing in watch the trout and how they keep steady in the face of a current. The analogy of the current could be the adversity of life. McCarthy’ father figure reminisces about the pre-destruction of earth.  Hemingway has always been influenced by naturalism.  Hemingway accepts that the forces of nature rule the world.  In the “Road” nature as we know it is destroyed but it still rules the world in the Darwinian way of survival of the fittest. The strong survive and sometimes it isn’t pretty but necessary. The man tells his son the way of survival too but in the terms of good and evil.  The boy will never see nature as it once was but only can rely on his father’s memory. The boy’s natural world is evolving, changing and survivors must redefine their roles in the new natural world of ash and destruction.  In Buddhism there is a Goddess named Kali and she is Goddess of Time, Change, and Destruction. Kali destroys but she also brings about rebirth like the phoenix rising out of the ashes.

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The Road

I think that the belief in God would be the man's insistence that there were good people in the world. The man wanted his son to believe in goodness and just maybe a higher being. The idea that a man and his son were trapped in a purgatory world with hope for a better future. I know that the man is dying but he still hopes for his son's future. The God is in the man's selfless sacrifices for his son. I don't see the divinity in the son but rather a salvation for mankind in the boy. The man realizes that he is an alien to his son. "Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed." (Cormac 163).The boy holds the key for constructing a new world for himself. The father is the son's guide and protector while the son acclimates to his world.  The boy still believes in goodness as exhibited by the boy’s concern for the old man and wanting to share their food with him.  The boy continues to look at not the past but the future.

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The first part of The Road

               The Road is one of the bleakest novels I have ever read.  I read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and it was rather dark but running through it there was hope and ultimate survival against all odds.  In The Road the theme was death all around and all living creatures reduced to survival of the fittest or survival on an animalistic level: cannibalism. The landscape is filled with ash and various shades of gray. The only thing that keeps the man going is his son. I think the man would have succumb to suicide too if not for his son.  His son gives him hope for the future and for a belief in God.  When I purchased this book the sales clerk asked me if I had read it. I said, “No”. She informed me that it was very sad and she just wanted me to know before I purchased the book.

               The Road is a novel which offers an apocalyptic revelation but certainly not where the forces of good prevail and triumph over the forces of evil. I guess it tells of a singular good man trying to bring goodness to his son in a world filled with evil.  

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Rough Draft for 2nd essay

The “Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich is culturally significant in the writings of Native Americans. The reading of this short story is typical of post-traumatic stress syndrome of a Native American man and the lack of resources that would have helped Henry cope with his stress. The US government has a long history of marginalizing native people.  The government is not the only ones that have taken advantage of Native Americans.  People assume that the first slaves in the New World were African Americans but that is not true. Native Americans were the first slaves of the New World. Squanto the famous Indian who helped the Pilgrims navigate their first successful year was captured as a young boy and was enslaved until he returned to his people. He was fluent in English and probably can be credited with the survival of the Pilgrims that harsh first year.  

There are many such examples in American history of the disenfranchisement of the Native American. The time period of this short story is during the Viet Nam war with many Americans criticized the war and the climate was one of hostility toward returning veterans.  The government asked a young native man to go to a country where he was unfamiliar and fight in battles with enemies that were not his enemies but enemies of the government.

The red convertible in this story represents to me the importance of the horse to the Plains Indians. The introduction of the horse to the Plains Indians was momentous because it meant greater freedom for the nomadic hunting tribes. The Native Americans were able to move unrestricted in search of hunting game.  This is major because before Henry goes to the Marines, Henry and his brother, Lyman take a trip throughout the United States and even up to Alaska where they stay with Native Americans from Alaska.

The Henry, that returned from Viet Nam was a silent shadow of the young energetic man full of promise and hope for his future.  He was used and then when no longer useful sent home.  Henry is full of shame and nightmares about his service to a government that only rejects Henry.

Henry’s last line is “My boots are filling up.” (Erdrich 3394). Native American People normally wore moccasins. Are the boots the last anchor of the white man in weighing the Indian down?   

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Fun home and good times

Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” is a tragedy with black comedy in the mix. It starts out with the daughter stated that she is the opposite of her father. “I was Spartan to my father’s Athenian.”(Bechdel 4013). The whole family life is a sham. In one part of the comic it shows the whole family going to Mass and the line above it declaring, “He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not.” (Bechdel 4014). “That is to say impeccable,” (Bechdel 4014).  But the façade hid pain and perversion. “But would an ideal husband and father have sex with teenage boys?”(Bechdel 4015).

               The children soon learn to avoid their father’s mood swings by saying nothing and showing affection to their father resulted in extreme embarrassment for the children.  The father masking his emotions with the reasoning that they are not a physically expressive family. “The embarrassment on my part was a tiny scale of my father’s more fully developed self-loathing.” (Bechdel 4018). Even though the interactions between child and father were guarded and limited, the children seemed to love their father because of fleeting moments of kindness mixed with dark tantrums. It reminded me of a child with an alcoholic parent. On one hand there is denial and the need to hide the illness from other people because of shame. The child missed her father before he committed suicide. The analogy of the warm water and then the “sudden, unbearable cold of its absence” (Bechdel 4020). The father’s attention and then the cold rejection of the father. Who was too wrapped up in his own self -loathing not seeing that his children needed him?

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Poetry after 911

I was moved by the poem “Alabanza” which I had to look up on my Spanish dictionary to be sure what was the meaning. Roughly it means “in praise”. This poem to me represents the diversity of the victims of 911.  These people in the poem were working people. They did not have executive jobs with big pay checks just people trying to make ends meet. “Ecuador, Mexico. Republica Dominicana, Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.” (Expada 18-19).  These working people might have been immigrants coming to America for a better life.  They had no political agenda or power to control America’s policy toward the Middle East.  Some of the restaurant employees might have been Muslim too.  The last stanza where the smoke from the towers and smoke from Kabul is powerful. The idea that the Muslim and Americans can learn from one another. It is the least powerful people who suffer both in America and Afghanistan. Alabanza to all people!!

“The World Trade Center” poem talks about the transformation of a universally agreed ugly building and turns it into a symbol of America.  People begin to appreciate its uniqueness and associate it with New York. It is no longer viewed as architectural monstrosity. “My whole attitude toward the World Trade Center Changed overnight. I began to like the way.” (Lehman 16-17). This all happened because of the World trade bombing.    

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Maus II

Maus II was definitely an adult visual story.  In the story I wasn’t sure what kind of animal or man was the narrator.  Everyone wore a mask. Did this signify that people wear masks all the time and no one can clearly be recognized?  The narrator is a commercial success but feels depressed and has survivor remorse because his dad survived the holocaust.  He sits at his desk as the bodies pile up. The even bodies do not have human faces they are only emaciated corpses. Spiegelman needs to see his shrink who also happens to be a survivor.  The narrator has issues with trying to understand his dad and what he went through in the concentration camps. “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.” (Spiegelman 3772).    The only character that I saw that didn’t wear a mask was the German soldier beating the Jewish prisoner, Appel. Is the German soldier revealing his true face? I think that the adult comic/visual book helps the reader to visualize and comprehend the horror of the holocaust.

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In the Ruins of the Future

“In the Ruins of the Future” Delillo has captured the disbelieved and horror that this could happen to the United States.  The idealistic nation woke up to a nightmare on 9/11.  I too thought when I first saw the news reports that a plane had struck the tower and that the pilot must have been drunk or high to not have missed such a large target as a building. Never did it cross my mind but of course when the second tower was hit there could be no mistake.  The terrorists did not see Americans as human beings only enemies of their religion. Zealots thought to be heroes if they killed Americans.  The survivors of the attack worked together to help their neighbors and pulled together to survive.  The TV coverage was intense. “When we say it was unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions.” (Delillo 4040). The hard truth was someone unnamed and unknown had planned and executed over three thousand men, women and children.  The last part of the story where the Muslim woman is praying is revealing in that the greatness of New York and America is its ability to accommodate diversity in the human race. “But the dead are their own nation and race, one identity, young or old, devout or unbelieving-a union of souls.” The dead unite the living.

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New York Day Woman

New York Day Woman reminded me of some of my relatives.  I had an Aunt Annie and she was from   Czechoslovakia.  She traveled all over the city using public transportation.  She was also very frugal.  I think that this woman has also been tested by poverty and knows the value of saving and not being extravagant.  She is confident in a quiet way. She knows the world and is comfortable being who she is.  The daughter however, is ashamed of her mother.  She wants to know, “Why, you can’t you look like a lady playing softball?” (Danticat 3848). I think that the mother knows that her daughter is ashamed of her because the mother never went to any of her daughter’s parent-teacher conference.  The child that the mother is watching in the park accepts the New York day woman unconditionally and enjoys being in her company.  The mother doesn’t want to shame her daughter. “Shame is heavier than a hundred bags of salt.” (Danticat 3849). The mother makes light of the fact that she has to have dentures. She states “You can take them out when they bother you. I’ll like them, I’ll like them fine.” (Danticat 3846).  The New York day woman has made her peace in the world. 

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The Colonel

               The colonel that Forche describes in the excerpt from “The Country between Us” is like a third country despot. The colonel is an omnipotent man who enjoys his power and cruelty with relish.  The contrast between the house and the veneer of civilization is striking. “Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace.” (Forche 3725).  Further in the excerpt it describes with banality their menu of rack of lamb and a good wine with a maid to serve.  The son and daughter are depicted as bored spoiled children self-absorbed in their shallow lives. “His daughter files her nails, his son went out for the night.” (Forche 3725). After this meal  the colonel bring in a grocery sack filled with human ears.  He proudly shows this to his guests.  They are like his trophies. I think the colonel is  like a matador who keeps the ears of the bulls he has fought.   He shakes it in front of his guest for shock value.  The colonel drops the human ears in a glass of water and like a parlor trick the desiccated ears fill with water and seem to come alive. Floating in the water absorbing the water and becoming fleshy. The colonel callously tells his guest that he is tired of the rights of people and then to add to his crudity he states,”tell your people to go fuck themselves.” (Forche 3725). The last line of the excerpt, “Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.”  (Forche 3725) to me meant that the ears were deaf and the colonel could not hear the innocent people he has murdered.  

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The red convertible

The Red Convertible: Lyman Lamartine was a sad story about two American Indians whose life on the reservation was idyllic but the white man’s war (Viet Nam) interfered with their lives. Henry was a strong confident carefree young man who alongside his brother made a road trip in a red convertible.  The convertible became a symbol of their freedom and self-confidence. It was a link to happier times for both Henry and Lyman.  Their road trip was far reaching and they even went to Alaska on a whim. They enjoyed life and lived each moment without regrets. When they came back Henry had to go in the Marines.  He went to Viet Nam for three years and when he came back he had post traumatic syndrome. The reservation had no facilities to help Henry and Lyman just wanted his brother back and not the silent nervous stranger. Lyman feels that giving Henry a purpose will be beneficial so he bangs up the convertible so Henry will repair it. Henry is better for a while but Henry and Lyman go for a ride and Henry just goes into the water and his boots fill up which was one of the lines in the first paragraph of the story.   Lyman pushes the convertible into the water that Henry has drowned in and now Henry owns the whole car and Lyman walks everywhere.

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Bless me, Ultima

               I understand the thoughts of the young Catholic boy about to receive his first confession. Sin is very real and damnation is only a sin away.  That is how Catholic religion was in my time.  The nuns and priests were infallible and their word was law.  For one of the boys, Florence to claim that he never had sinned was blasphemous. “I don’t have any,” Florence said softly.” (Anaya 3318). “Everybody has sins!” shouted Agnes.” (Anaya 3318)  The way that the story moved alongside the Stations of the Cross was interesting to me.   The childish confessions of sins were benign but their actions against Tony were vicious and not very Christ-like.  They all marched in for their confession like devote Catholics but just a few moments ago were beating Tony who was by far the most forgiving and conscious of his sins.  Is the writer drawing a parallel to Christ who was blameless but willing to suffer for the sins of others?

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rough first draft

                                                                     The Mother

                                                            By Gwendolyn Brooks

        The poem “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks evokes a myriad of emotions in the reader. 

 The title itself brings to mind a singularity that she is “the mother” not a mother but emphasis on the mother.  Brooks by using this title makes the reader identify with the image of our own mothers. The title can also refer to a negative connotation as in the derogatory abbreviation of  Motherf**ker.   This interpretation would be a bit absurd but to each his/her own. That is the beauty of poetry it suggests but does not give graphic descriptions of each event.

            The first stanza and in particular the first line: “Abortions will not let you forget”  

(Brooks 1).  This line changes the universality of mother into directly addressing you (the reader).  The slang or vernacular of the next line states that “you remember the children you got that you didn’t get”. (Brooks 2). This suggests that you were pregnant and expecting a child but you never got it because of an abortion?  The poem goes on to describe the fetus as “small pulps with little or no hair” (Brooks 3). Is Brooks deliberately deemphasizing the humanity of the fetus by referring them as meaty scraps?  The first stanza of the poem Brooks has rhyming couplets: forget, get, hair, air, beat, sweet, thumb, come sigh, and eye.  

 “You will never neglect or beat” (Brooks 5).  Is this a rationalization to mitigate guilt over the abortion? Brooks paints a picture of a mother that would dote on her children with a “gobbling mother-eye.” (Brooks 10). The mother would buy sweets and never leave them (the children) but this negates what her first line of the poem states. Abortion is the mother choosing not to bear responsibility the babies that would come. This stanza is make-believe of what an ideal mother would do and that she would cherish each memory of motherhood.

            The second stanza lines 11-33 are significant because Brooks ends the rhyming couplets.  This stanza is about anguish and regrets.  Brooks twice depicts the children as “dim”. Does  Brooks suggest that since these children never saw the light of day that they are dim because their life force or inner light was stolen by the decision of the mother to abort? In this stanza Brooks starts with the pronoun I and uses it frequently in the stanza. Brooks also first mentions the word “sinned” and crime. Does this mother now admit if only to herself that she feels guilty over the abortions?  “I have stolen you births and your names”. (Brooks 18). The mother will never know of each baby’s loves, marriages and life itself.  Her babies will never cry “straight baby tears.” (Brooks 19).  Brooks in line 23-24 of the poem denotes that the mother “poisoned their breaths but even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate”.  The mother is communicating that she made the decision to abort but it wasn’t personal? She did not view them as people at the time maybe only as a malignant growth?  The mother is remorseful and questioning her decision but maybe she had no choice in the matter and abortion was kinder than life would have been for the children.  She mourns the lack of existence of her children that she got but didn’t get.  The mother reluctantly states that the truth is the babies were born and died but “never giggled or cried.” (Brooks 31).  Maybe the mother is now too old for childbirth and she wonders what her children would have accomplished in life.  Did she have the right to decide their fate?  Did she make mistakes?    Brooks in this stanza is verbalizes what every woman might think after an abortion. It is a life-changing decision whether you decide to abort or to have the baby.  Personal shame and sorrow mark this stanza. Grief is apparent in the lamentations of the mother.

            The last stanza where the mother is pleading with the reader to believe that she loved you (the children) she is begging for their forgiveness. She knew them faintly but she loved them.  Is it possible for a mother to terminate her pregnancy and still feel the right to mourn the nonexistent babies?  Is the last word in the poem “All” (Brooks 35) meant to encompass every woman who has had an abortion?  Is she asking the reader to understand that the choice of an abortion was difficult and she did not make the decision out of convenience but out of necessity?

            The poem asks forgiveness but does the mother ever forgive herself. She makes excuses for her decision until the end and she states that her babies were killed.  The mother acknowledges that she made decisions and that she grieves for all that might have been.  The poem does not tell the reader what factors weighed in the termination of the fetus.  Was the child a consequence of rape?  Was the child the result of incest and sexual abuse?  Was the mother already burdened with too many children to care for properly?  The use of the word all is significant because it suggests a universal forgiveness regardless of the action.  Remorse is the end result of all abortions and compassion for the difficult choices by the mother. 

            It is interesting to note that nowhere in the poem is the father mentioned, it leads the reader to assume that the decision is the woman’s right and not the father’s decision to bear the child.  Is Brooks leading the reader to believe in choice and not condemnation for the mother?

             

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Angry woman

Audre Lorde is the original angry black women.  In the poem, “Power” she could be talking about the situation in Ferguson.  She talks about how a policemen shot a child down and shouted at him “Die you little motherfucker. (Lorde 24)   She is convinced that justice was not served. She writes about coercing a small black woman to vote with the rest of the white male jurors. Her words are violent and extreme. “and lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children” (Lorde 37-38). I think Lorde demonstrates her feminism in the poem “Stations.”  See writes of women waiting for another person to fulfill their dreams and not be an agent of change in their own lives.  Until the last line of the poem, “Some women wait for something to change and nothing does change so they change themselves.”(Lorde 41-45). All of Lorde’s poems in this week’s presentation are intense and not pleasant, light reading. She evokes powerful feelings of racial injustices and women’s issues of inequality.

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What is race?

Black or white was the question that went through my mind as I first read Morrison’s “Recitatif” Is Twyla or Roberta black or white.  I started thinking what would leave me to believe one way or the other and I realized that by making any assumptions you were showing your cultural generalizations.  I think Morrison was very clever in making the reader believe one way or the other without specifically identifying one race.  In the beginning of the story Morrison writes, “It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning-it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.” (Morrison 3541). Nowhere was it identified that the races were black and white. It could have been White, Hispanic, Asian, or black.  Did Morrison deliberately not clarify the races of Twyla and Roberta so that the individual reader would have to define their own stereotypical ideas of race?   In the middle of the story it also seems to take a detour about the characters themselves. Twyla seemed to be the street wise kid where Roberta was the simple-minded naïve girl but later in the story suddenly Roberta is the hardened free-wild child and Twyla is the conservative hardworking waitress. I didn’t know what to make of Maggie and the different version that each remember. Does it show that your interpretation depends on your race?  Twyla remembers Maggie as “Sandy-colored” but Roberta insists that she is black. Why is this significant?

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death by alphbetical order

I know that this blog will probably not meet the length criteria because even though I read through the whole alphabet I don’t know what I think about it.  It was quite strange and I understand about graphic novel and the idea for an alphabet book with stories about young children who perish is kind of extreme.  I think the graphic stark black, white and gray gives them a chillingly touch of reality. It makes me think that a child could have actually illustrated the book.  The drawings are rather simplistic and look like something someone would doodle in their notebooks while listening to a boring class.  The names used in the book reminded me of English names. For example, Yorick (Shakespeare character). Maud is another old fashioned name and Neville who died of ennui. I am sure that some people would have to brush up on their vocabulary to understand the nuances of the book.   I think this graphic piece of work was a page turner though because I couldn’t wait to read how everyone was dying in a new and novel way.  

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Steps 1-3 essay

      I have done a closer reading of the poem “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks. The first sentence is striking to me “Abortions will not let you forget”.  This statement I think will help me develop my thesis. Abortion is a word that is so emotionally charged for many people.  The second line also makes the reader recall that “You remember the children you got but didn’t get.  Brook’s use of got and get are paradoxical, one being in present tense and the other in past tense. The reader is taken on a journey of lament and retrospect.  Brooks describes the fetus as a pulpy thing but she cannot let the reader forget the potential of the lives she destroyed.  Did the mother in this poem have choices?  Were the choices of necessitate or convenience? She writes “Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.” Does she have other children?  Why did she abort her child?  Can she live with her choices?  She refers to her babies as dim. Was this because they never saw the light of day? The last line of the poem “All” Is Brooks crying out to all mothers that have aborted their children? 

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How do I love thee?

     I enjoyed reading “The Monkey House”.  The description of a nothinghead who refuses to take ethical birth control pills and the ethical suicide parlor made me pause and ask “whose ethics??” The way that Vonnegut uses the word ethical makes it sound like the ideas and concepts the world is monitoring are harmless and benign.  Why do the hostesses have to be six foot gorgeous amazons? Is it a coincidence that this story takes place in Hyannis, Cape Cod?  I think that because the Kennedy family was notorious for their sexual exploits that making the story take place in their home town is significant.  The major criminal is a nothinghead named Billy the Poet. Vonnegut describes the ethical issue of the pills “The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex.” (Vonnegut 11).

               When describing a good week at the Suicide Parlor: “In a really good week, say the one before Christmas, they might put sixty people to sleep.”  Is this a reference to a statistic that most suicides are committed during the holidays? Everything and everyone is automated and if people are unhappy then go visit the suicide parlor and everyone is pleasant there.

               When Nancy is captured and Billy has sex with her she is despondent.  Billy states that all he is doing is restoring innocent pleasure to the world. I think it is brilliant of Vonnegut at the end to have Billy leave Nancy with one of the most famous love poems ever written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.    

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Where are you going, where have you been?

Where are you Going, Where have you Been

               This story represents a young naïve girl, Connie, who is harmlessly trying to gain her independence and is experimenting with her freedom.  She is interested in boys and has fantasies about them.  She appears to be a typical teenage girl. One evening when she is out with another boy she happens to see a young man in a gold jalopy.  The man says "Gonna get you baby."(Oates 3124) Connie turns away.  I don't think she gives the man another thought just a guy trying to flirt with her which Connie appreciates.  She realizes that she is pretty and enjoys the male attention.

               One summer day when Connie's family goes to a picnic, the man with the gold jalopy shows up at the house.  At first Connie is flattered but then she starts to question why the stranger knows so much.  It soon becomes evident that the young man is not young and he might be wearing a disguise (wig and sunglasses)  Connie retreats and wants the man to leave.  The man has a friend with him in the car, Ellie.  Ellie is also not a young man.

               I think that this story and the characters tell a sinister tale of a deranged stalker who believes that Connie is his true love and he will stop at nothing to get Connie.  He threatens Connie's family and then asks her if she knows of a woman down the street with chickens.  Connie said she did but the woman is dead.  Is Arnold implying that he killed the woman?  Arnold Friend insists that is his real name but he is no friend to Connie.  She asks numerous times for him to leave but he refuses to leave without her.  I guess Connie feels powerless against this man because she eventually walks out the door with him fully cognizant of her danger.  The man is living a fantasy because he doesn’t know even know Connie.  He thinks her eyes are blue when they are brown. This predator is only thinking of his desires and wants Connie just as an object to be possessed and then thrown away (murdered).

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Lowell, Sexton and Plath

When I read the assignment for this week I immediately recognized Sylvia Plath’s name. I guess because a film starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia was released a few years back. I had never heard of the other two poets: Lowell and Sexton. I read all the poems but the poet that I enjoyed the most was Anna Sexton. The poem “Her Kind” was interpreted by me to represent her mental breakdown. The reference on the first two lines of the poem: “I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night” (Sexton 1-2). I think this suggests the fearful superstition people harbored that mentally ill people were witches. People burned witches at the stake “Where your flames still bite my thighs.” (Sexton 18). Sexton is admitting that she suffers from mental illness too when she writes in the last line of each stanza “I have been her kind.” (Sexton 7, 14, 21).

The other poem that I enjoyed was “Young”. Sexton captures the essence of a young girl who dreams of her future and her longing. “and I in my brand new body, which was not a woman’s yet, told the stars my questions and thought God could really see.” (Sexton 19-21). She writes of an innocent time in a young girl’s life where possibilities still exist. Her first line in the poem “A thousand doors ago” (Sexton 1) she is reflecting on her past and the thousands of door signifies choices in her life and the consequences of the choices. Her last line is a mirror opposite of her first line. “elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.” (Sexton 24). I feel that she is describing how adolescent’s bodies are growing and changing and their dreams hold sway over their young perceptions of reality

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