Their Eyes were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is considered a Slave Narrative, because it contains elements that are an essential component of Slave Narratives. Her critics have agreed that it contains some components but not all, so her novel was re-labeled as a revised Slave Narrative.
One of the components of a Slave Narrative that is found in Their eyes were Watching God, is Janie’s autobiographical account of the life of a slave, told by Janie. It is recognized on page 8, when Janie says to Pheoby, “ ‘Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell yuh, but it’s hard to know where to start’” (Hurston).
She then leads into another component in the Slave Narrative, a vague notion the narrator has of her parents. Janie says, “ ‘I ain’t never seen mah papa. Mah mama neither’” (Hurston 8). All she knows of her mother is that her mother was raped by her school teacher, who was presumably white, even though Hurston doesn’t specifically tell the reader of his race. The only family she has is her grandmother who raised her.
To tie in another Narrative Slave component, Hurston also uses the volatile relationships between masters and their slaves. Janie’s grandmother was a slave who was raped by her master, which resulted in the birth of Janie’s mother. Women slaves had no control over their bodies. Their master was allowed to do whatever he pleased. Another form of this violence is between the mistress and the slaves. When Joanie’s mother was born and upon looking at her, the mistress realizes that baby with “gray eyes,” and “yaller” hair was a “white baby” she orders the whipping of Janie’s grandmother, not caring whether or not she lives or dies (Hurston 17).
A clash of religion is another component of a Slave Narrative, which is generally seen as Christianity vs. another religion. In our novel, the struggle is only seen as the women are on the porch gossiping about Janie as she is returning to Eatonville. Janie brings their hypocrisy to the surface in her conversation with Pheoby, “ ‘Well, Ah see Mouth – Almighty is still sittin’ in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me in they mouth now’ ” in which Pheoby responds, “ ‘Yeah, Sam (Pheoby’s husband) say most of ‘em goes to church so they’ll be sure so they’ll be sure to rise Judgment. Dat’s de day dat every secret is s’posed to be made known. They wants to be there and here it all’” (Hurston 5-6). The other religion that is practiced is voodoo. Huston doesn’t create a conflict between the two religion rather she shows the hypocrisy that was see by others of non-Christian faith.
Political propaganda, one of the main components of a Slave Narrative, is seen throughout the novel in different forms. The first is in the form of generational gap.
Janie’s view on marriage and her grandmother’s view are dramatically different. Janie thinks that marriage meant “husbands and wives always loved each other” and her grandmother defined love as “protection” (15). Another form is the formation of Eatonville as a city. Joe Sparks a black man buys up all the land and builds up a town for displaced slaves. Sparks, as mayor establishes a class system by the way he dresses better and enforces Janie to dress and act proper, not like the common women of the town. The successful building of an African American town of Eatonville, and the economical success that the community generated is another component of the Slave Narrative. It demonstrated the freedom and independence of the African American people.
The main ties to the Slave Narrative, is Janie’s life journey. She struggled to become her own person with her on voice through three different marriages. She went through abuse, homelessness, death of loved ones, a murder trial, and she survived a massive hurricane. All of these trials demonstrate a tumultuous life journey and ends with Janie’s ascending out of her life of crisis. This is what makes Janie the heroine of the novel, which is another component of the Slave Narrative.
What makes this novel a revision of the Slave Narrative is how the novel ends. Janie is a single landowner who is economically stable. In a Slave Narrative the woman would be married and her husband would be economically stable. Here Hurston revises it by giving her heroine an economically stable life without the hassle of a marriage. She gives Janie what she had been yearning for throughout the novel, her freedom.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarpersCollins Publishing, 1937.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Heavywieght Modernist Championship Fight(WCW vs. T.S Eliot)
Dr. Jordan
WCW versus T.S Eliot Round 1
William Carlos Williams also known as WCW, was an American poet whose concept centered on modernism and imagism. He is very much a centrist of post war poetry, heavenly in the United States, and commenced the habit of open and organic form. He was concerned with everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His most anthologized poem is “The Red Wheel Barrow” and published as part of Spring and All, which is regarded as some of his best work. Although, Williams’s diction about poetry agrees with their high modernist principles, he was not hesitant about his disagreements with major writers such as T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound.
In the poem Spring and All, it is clear that spring is an important part of this poem. Eventually it emerges as a main character taking on almost human characteristics, as it changes the world of the poem. In (lines 14-15); our first glimpse of spring is described as being “sluggish and dazed” These words usually apply to humans but are used as personification for an object or idea of spring, paradoxically T.S Eliot uses spring, particularly April as “April is the cruellest, month, breeding”, “Lilacs of the dead land(Lines 1-2)”. Both use imagery particular spring as a metaphor for the sweeping changes over the whole world in the early 20th Century. World War one is over and Carlos promotes the good of people producing new and exciting art and philosophy and new prosperity. Contrastingly T.S Eliot, though its shifts between satire and divination paints a visual of modern day through obscurity as dark, futile, full of uncertainty and despair, while still incorporating or re-working the literary past of the British customs.
It is some of those dictions, and poetic devices why Williams in his 1919 prologue to Kora in Hell, denounced Eliot as well Ezra Pound as “conformists, preoccupied with rehashing the literary glories of the past, (285)”. Carlos argument stems from his notion of speaking in modern-verse, in the language of the United States, with “verse to be alive, infusing into something of the same order, some tincture of disestablishment, in the nature of an impalpable revolution (284).” Although, Pound asserted agreeably that poetry should make a new, he discouraged Williams with the notion, past and present can make a new, by that meaning, the past is capable of modernization. For a more modern day example, Hip hop artist Kanye West’s song “Gold digger”, uses the cameo from Ray Charles “ I Got A Woman” and incorporates Kanye’s modern day depiction of a gold digging woman. The track mixes the past musical style of rhythm and blues with a present or modern bouncy hip hop beat. Eliot would agree with this example because it puts the “old and the “new” in a paradox, keeping the past unchanged and the present unpretentious, and evolutionary.
To close T.S Eliot , and WCW share high modernist principles in a broader concept such as wearing out of language, cliché and starting a new, and unpretentious art. They only differ in the issue of determining if the past is a necessity when incorporating the new.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Jahan Ramazani, pp 284-285, 291-292, 474-479
Pound, Eliot, and the Rhetoric of The Waste Land
Author(s): Marshall McLuhan
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 3, Anniversary Issue: I (Spring, 1979), pp. 557-580
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468929
WCW versus T.S Eliot Round 1
William Carlos Williams also known as WCW, was an American poet whose concept centered on modernism and imagism. He is very much a centrist of post war poetry, heavenly in the United States, and commenced the habit of open and organic form. He was concerned with everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His most anthologized poem is “The Red Wheel Barrow” and published as part of Spring and All, which is regarded as some of his best work. Although, Williams’s diction about poetry agrees with their high modernist principles, he was not hesitant about his disagreements with major writers such as T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound.
In the poem Spring and All, it is clear that spring is an important part of this poem. Eventually it emerges as a main character taking on almost human characteristics, as it changes the world of the poem. In (lines 14-15); our first glimpse of spring is described as being “sluggish and dazed” These words usually apply to humans but are used as personification for an object or idea of spring, paradoxically T.S Eliot uses spring, particularly April as “April is the cruellest, month, breeding”, “Lilacs of the dead land(Lines 1-2)”. Both use imagery particular spring as a metaphor for the sweeping changes over the whole world in the early 20th Century. World War one is over and Carlos promotes the good of people producing new and exciting art and philosophy and new prosperity. Contrastingly T.S Eliot, though its shifts between satire and divination paints a visual of modern day through obscurity as dark, futile, full of uncertainty and despair, while still incorporating or re-working the literary past of the British customs.
It is some of those dictions, and poetic devices why Williams in his 1919 prologue to Kora in Hell, denounced Eliot as well Ezra Pound as “conformists, preoccupied with rehashing the literary glories of the past, (285)”. Carlos argument stems from his notion of speaking in modern-verse, in the language of the United States, with “verse to be alive, infusing into something of the same order, some tincture of disestablishment, in the nature of an impalpable revolution (284).” Although, Pound asserted agreeably that poetry should make a new, he discouraged Williams with the notion, past and present can make a new, by that meaning, the past is capable of modernization. For a more modern day example, Hip hop artist Kanye West’s song “Gold digger”, uses the cameo from Ray Charles “ I Got A Woman” and incorporates Kanye’s modern day depiction of a gold digging woman. The track mixes the past musical style of rhythm and blues with a present or modern bouncy hip hop beat. Eliot would agree with this example because it puts the “old and the “new” in a paradox, keeping the past unchanged and the present unpretentious, and evolutionary.
To close T.S Eliot , and WCW share high modernist principles in a broader concept such as wearing out of language, cliché and starting a new, and unpretentious art. They only differ in the issue of determining if the past is a necessity when incorporating the new.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Jahan Ramazani, pp 284-285, 291-292, 474-479
Pound, Eliot, and the Rhetoric of The Waste Land
Author(s): Marshall McLuhan
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 3, Anniversary Issue: I (Spring, 1979), pp. 557-580
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468929
Monday, February 15, 2010
Eliot's Religious Connection( Blog question #7)
Gaston Mclemore
Dr. Jordan
T.S Eliot Religious Influence
Thomas Sterns Eliot, author of The Waste Land, has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century. A pioneer of the modernist movement, T.S Eliot is known for fragmented, elusive poetics, and became, in his own words, a “classicists in literature, royalists in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion (Brooks, Cleanth 1948).” Eliot’s Waste Land, shows the obscure work of dark despair, yet a clear portrayal of evolvement in poetics, and literature leaning towards the modernist movement (F. R. Leavis).
Anglicanism is a tradition within the Christianity compromising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worships or church structures. It is basically an adaption of many faiths such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. This circle of religious beliefs make sense in context with the many societal themes in The Waste Land, such as lack of faith, lack of communication, fear of both life and death, corruption of life-water symbol, and a corruption of sex. As such, it is open to a multitude of interpretations and no two critics agree completely on its meaning. It is clear that he unequivocally believed that the very existence of the Western Civilization was threatened. The Waste Land had poignantly described the decay of civilization, and events that captured Eliot for religious and political reasons. The peace agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 confirmed Eliot’s worst fears of the weakness of the West. “Our national life seemed fraudulently,” he remarked after Munich Pact (F. R Leavis). With these dramatic events taking shape Eliot visualized a destabilization of the West or a decent into authoritarianism. Eliot had an epiphany and felt it necessary to have “a vigorous rediscovery of what it means to live Christianly. He believed that unless England and America recovered a form of Christian society, they would fall into the paganism of Russia and Germany (F.R. Leavis).
In a 1932 essay “Christianity and Communism” Eliot argued that the only Christian scheme made a place for the values “which I maintain or perish, the belief, for instance, in holy living, and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, and austerity (Christiancentury.org). This statement is of significance because Eliot portrays two kinds of people in the modern waste land. These are seen in the crowd that flows over London Bridge (62-65). He states, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” This is a reference to Dante description of the people in limbo. They were the dead who were neither bad nor good, just secularized. This is one category of people in the waste land. The other is given by another reference to Dante: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.” This is descriptive of people in the first level of hell, those who were born before Christ. They have no knowledge of salvation and cannot be saved (According to Dante).
The reference shows that there are also people in the twentieth century that have no faith. Eliot illustrates the lack of faith at several points. In lines 301-302, one of the Thames daughters states, “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” Since she has no faith there no connections or meaning in her life (Wheelwright 97). There are several references in the poem “the hooded hordes walking in a ring.” Madame Sosostris sees them and the protagonist meets them as he journeys to the Perilous Chapel. The Hooded hordes are hooded because they cannot see the hooded figure, the “third that always walks beside you,” who represents Christ (Brooks 26). They are walking in a ring with no sense of purpose or direction because they have no faith.
Eliot surely did his part to redeem the time and help preserve the faith. He did this mainly through his poetry, which brilliantly displays the moral disparity of our time and recounts his own pilgrimage of faith.
Works Cited
T. S. Eliot and the Life of English Literature Author(s): F. R. Leavis Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), pp. 9-34 Published by: The Massachusettes Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087797
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Waste Land: An Analysis." T.S. Eliot. ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Wheelwright, Phillip. "Eliot's Philosophical Themes." T.S. Eliot,.ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Philip Yancey, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1076, www.christiancentury.org
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Waste Land 474-485
Dr. Jordan
T.S Eliot Religious Influence
Thomas Sterns Eliot, author of The Waste Land, has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century. A pioneer of the modernist movement, T.S Eliot is known for fragmented, elusive poetics, and became, in his own words, a “classicists in literature, royalists in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion (Brooks, Cleanth 1948).” Eliot’s Waste Land, shows the obscure work of dark despair, yet a clear portrayal of evolvement in poetics, and literature leaning towards the modernist movement (F. R. Leavis).
Anglicanism is a tradition within the Christianity compromising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worships or church structures. It is basically an adaption of many faiths such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. This circle of religious beliefs make sense in context with the many societal themes in The Waste Land, such as lack of faith, lack of communication, fear of both life and death, corruption of life-water symbol, and a corruption of sex. As such, it is open to a multitude of interpretations and no two critics agree completely on its meaning. It is clear that he unequivocally believed that the very existence of the Western Civilization was threatened. The Waste Land had poignantly described the decay of civilization, and events that captured Eliot for religious and political reasons. The peace agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 confirmed Eliot’s worst fears of the weakness of the West. “Our national life seemed fraudulently,” he remarked after Munich Pact (F. R Leavis). With these dramatic events taking shape Eliot visualized a destabilization of the West or a decent into authoritarianism. Eliot had an epiphany and felt it necessary to have “a vigorous rediscovery of what it means to live Christianly. He believed that unless England and America recovered a form of Christian society, they would fall into the paganism of Russia and Germany (F.R. Leavis).
In a 1932 essay “Christianity and Communism” Eliot argued that the only Christian scheme made a place for the values “which I maintain or perish, the belief, for instance, in holy living, and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, and austerity (Christiancentury.org). This statement is of significance because Eliot portrays two kinds of people in the modern waste land. These are seen in the crowd that flows over London Bridge (62-65). He states, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” This is a reference to Dante description of the people in limbo. They were the dead who were neither bad nor good, just secularized. This is one category of people in the waste land. The other is given by another reference to Dante: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.” This is descriptive of people in the first level of hell, those who were born before Christ. They have no knowledge of salvation and cannot be saved (According to Dante).
The reference shows that there are also people in the twentieth century that have no faith. Eliot illustrates the lack of faith at several points. In lines 301-302, one of the Thames daughters states, “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” Since she has no faith there no connections or meaning in her life (Wheelwright 97). There are several references in the poem “the hooded hordes walking in a ring.” Madame Sosostris sees them and the protagonist meets them as he journeys to the Perilous Chapel. The Hooded hordes are hooded because they cannot see the hooded figure, the “third that always walks beside you,” who represents Christ (Brooks 26). They are walking in a ring with no sense of purpose or direction because they have no faith.
Eliot surely did his part to redeem the time and help preserve the faith. He did this mainly through his poetry, which brilliantly displays the moral disparity of our time and recounts his own pilgrimage of faith.
Works Cited
T. S. Eliot and the Life of English Literature Author(s): F. R. Leavis Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), pp. 9-34 Published by: The Massachusettes Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087797
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Waste Land: An Analysis." T.S. Eliot. ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Wheelwright, Phillip. "Eliot's Philosophical Themes." T.S. Eliot,.ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Philip Yancey, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1076, www.christiancentury.org
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Waste Land 474-485
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Expatriate Movement( The Sun Also Rises)
Gaston Mclemore
AML 3311
Dr. Jordan
The Expatriate Movement
In its broadest sense, expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. The phenomenon and image of Americans living abroad is associated with certain cultural movements, particularly literature, in which expatriate individuals and communities were portrayed. Some prime examples are American literary notables who lived in Paris, from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression or the so-called Lost Generation, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound to name a few.
Many of the expatriates began their exodus for a multitude of reasons; World War I and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many writers fell into. This attitude led to books such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. George Steiner says, “Writers of the lost generation are often less reliable citizens of their nation, and frequently carry in their mind a map of the world, an imagistic or fantastic or writer geography, on which the capitals and frontiers seem at odds with the familiar political atlas.”(Steiner) He goes on to say, “The one thing that makes this affair possible is minimal equipment needed by a writer such as an imagination, intelligence, paper and a pen or a typewriter, and financed by the oblique economics of patronage, royalty, or private income, the writer has less to bind them than most of us, is freer to choose his working location in the context of pleasure or stimulus and is more disposed to mythicize and justify the activity, to attach a dramatic value to it.”(Steiner)
Some of the reasoning behind this self-exile was the disagreement of leaders and actions of America at this time. The lost generation suffered from many non-diagnosed or recognizable disorders, most commonly was post-traumatic stress disorder. The masses that left America were not only writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, college graduates and the lost generation of war veterans. In the 1920’s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as “the Harlem of Paris” (Steiner). In France, the artist movement revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein, and the emergence of Avant-Garde. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Expatriates, writers, and artists tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country” and “Paris is my homeland” (stein). This set the bar for the expatriate movement that everybody followed.
Later on the twenties, a time of post war and economic optimism, came the influx of jazz and many African American notables such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Larry Potter, Mildred Thompson, and Sam Middleton.
The Expatriate movement served as one of the staples for many of the most polished American as well African American writers, artists and musicians. These expatriates suffered through a lot of uncertainty, and hardship but have triumph to help take shape the modernist movement we have today.
Works Cited
Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html
LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html
Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing Author(s): Malcolm Bradbury Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, American Literature Special Number (1978), pp. 15-39 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3506762
AML 3311
Dr. Jordan
The Expatriate Movement
In its broadest sense, expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. The phenomenon and image of Americans living abroad is associated with certain cultural movements, particularly literature, in which expatriate individuals and communities were portrayed. Some prime examples are American literary notables who lived in Paris, from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression or the so-called Lost Generation, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound to name a few.
Many of the expatriates began their exodus for a multitude of reasons; World War I and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many writers fell into. This attitude led to books such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. George Steiner says, “Writers of the lost generation are often less reliable citizens of their nation, and frequently carry in their mind a map of the world, an imagistic or fantastic or writer geography, on which the capitals and frontiers seem at odds with the familiar political atlas.”(Steiner) He goes on to say, “The one thing that makes this affair possible is minimal equipment needed by a writer such as an imagination, intelligence, paper and a pen or a typewriter, and financed by the oblique economics of patronage, royalty, or private income, the writer has less to bind them than most of us, is freer to choose his working location in the context of pleasure or stimulus and is more disposed to mythicize and justify the activity, to attach a dramatic value to it.”(Steiner)
Some of the reasoning behind this self-exile was the disagreement of leaders and actions of America at this time. The lost generation suffered from many non-diagnosed or recognizable disorders, most commonly was post-traumatic stress disorder. The masses that left America were not only writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, college graduates and the lost generation of war veterans. In the 1920’s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as “the Harlem of Paris” (Steiner). In France, the artist movement revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein, and the emergence of Avant-Garde. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Expatriates, writers, and artists tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country” and “Paris is my homeland” (stein). This set the bar for the expatriate movement that everybody followed.
Later on the twenties, a time of post war and economic optimism, came the influx of jazz and many African American notables such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Larry Potter, Mildred Thompson, and Sam Middleton.
The Expatriate movement served as one of the staples for many of the most polished American as well African American writers, artists and musicians. These expatriates suffered through a lot of uncertainty, and hardship but have triumph to help take shape the modernist movement we have today.
Works Cited
Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html
LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html
Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing Author(s): Malcolm Bradbury Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, American Literature Special Number (1978), pp. 15-39 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3506762
Willa Jewett (Blog Question #3)
Gaston Mclemore
AML-3311
Dr. Jordan
Willa Jewett?
Students of American Literature are aware of the literary relationship between Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather which goes beyond the fact that each wrote of a period in American Life which both had known and loved, and which no longer exists. Miss Cather dedicates O Pioneers Miss Jewett in an acknowledgment of indebtedness to Sarah’s counsel to recapture in writing her early memories and to make style subordinate to truthful presentation. Her appreciation of Jewett and Whitman is present in her attributes in clear, fresh writing to her literary maternal heritage. Not to mention the similarity in ideals and a preference for women protagonists. The power of nature and innate connection with the animals and country life are essential to both texts. Although, one can argue that Cather’s O Pioneers expresses more universal appeal than emphasis on locale color like, Jewett’s A White Heron.
In Cather’s O Pioneers as well as Jewett’s A White Heron, Both writers share a tendency to see people in a resemblance to things of nature, and attributes nature thoughts and feelings of people. In addition, both have an implication of passion, romantic love or an embracement of female sexuality juxtaposed to nature. In part one of O Pioneers, Cather calmly says “The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two said young faces that were turned mutely towards it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the somber eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking in the past.”(Cather 11). Willa Cather uses “watery light” as a catalyst for optimism, for the land and almost as an awakening, giving “watery light” a voice and God-Like power. Similarly, Jewett’s depiction of Sylvia within nature is underscored through attributing human characteristics through non-human beings. Sylvia begins to climb a pine tree; the tree is presented as an active being; “the tree seemed to lengthen itself out”, “The old pine must have loved his new independent, “it must have truly been amazed that morning.” (Jewett 55). Like the depiction of Cather’s “watery-light”, Jewett’s description of the tree creates a climax and expands the relationship with nature giving it, Garden of Eden imagery.
As part one, The Wild Land continues Alexandra goes in-depth to reveal her relationship with the seasons and the soil. Even during a drought, she feels closeness with the country and tries to buy more land despite her brother’s wishes. Like Jewett, Cather portrays her harmonious relationship between women and land. This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are responsive to others (Benjamin1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is also social, in that women’s cultural roles bind them to land. They recognized that women were economically and socially central to the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Gubert 1989). Both women have fantasies or sensual dreams reflecting sexuality. Sylvia’s decision to reveal the location of a beautiful white heron and its nest to a visiting hunter, but it also may be metaphorically interpreted as Sylvia’s exploration of her sexuality. She fantasies about a visiting hunter, denies the relinquishment of her virginity, climaxes and he leaves disappointed. In relation to Jewett, Cather uses little Marie and Emil to explore the Garden of Eden and find her sexuality leading to her climax.
In short, Both Jewett and Cather touched on gendered related stereotypes and created female individualists rather than imitations of male protagonists. Cather and Jewett’s writings accurately depict the society of the 1960’s and struggle of change into the mid to late nineteenth century.
Works Cited
O Pioneers, Willa Cather pgs- 6-12
Geographical Literary Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr,. 1995), pp- 217-228
AML-3311
Dr. Jordan
Willa Jewett?
Students of American Literature are aware of the literary relationship between Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather which goes beyond the fact that each wrote of a period in American Life which both had known and loved, and which no longer exists. Miss Cather dedicates O Pioneers Miss Jewett in an acknowledgment of indebtedness to Sarah’s counsel to recapture in writing her early memories and to make style subordinate to truthful presentation. Her appreciation of Jewett and Whitman is present in her attributes in clear, fresh writing to her literary maternal heritage. Not to mention the similarity in ideals and a preference for women protagonists. The power of nature and innate connection with the animals and country life are essential to both texts. Although, one can argue that Cather’s O Pioneers expresses more universal appeal than emphasis on locale color like, Jewett’s A White Heron.
In Cather’s O Pioneers as well as Jewett’s A White Heron, Both writers share a tendency to see people in a resemblance to things of nature, and attributes nature thoughts and feelings of people. In addition, both have an implication of passion, romantic love or an embracement of female sexuality juxtaposed to nature. In part one of O Pioneers, Cather calmly says “The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two said young faces that were turned mutely towards it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the somber eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking in the past.”(Cather 11). Willa Cather uses “watery light” as a catalyst for optimism, for the land and almost as an awakening, giving “watery light” a voice and God-Like power. Similarly, Jewett’s depiction of Sylvia within nature is underscored through attributing human characteristics through non-human beings. Sylvia begins to climb a pine tree; the tree is presented as an active being; “the tree seemed to lengthen itself out”, “The old pine must have loved his new independent, “it must have truly been amazed that morning.” (Jewett 55). Like the depiction of Cather’s “watery-light”, Jewett’s description of the tree creates a climax and expands the relationship with nature giving it, Garden of Eden imagery.
As part one, The Wild Land continues Alexandra goes in-depth to reveal her relationship with the seasons and the soil. Even during a drought, she feels closeness with the country and tries to buy more land despite her brother’s wishes. Like Jewett, Cather portrays her harmonious relationship between women and land. This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are responsive to others (Benjamin1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is also social, in that women’s cultural roles bind them to land. They recognized that women were economically and socially central to the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Gubert 1989). Both women have fantasies or sensual dreams reflecting sexuality. Sylvia’s decision to reveal the location of a beautiful white heron and its nest to a visiting hunter, but it also may be metaphorically interpreted as Sylvia’s exploration of her sexuality. She fantasies about a visiting hunter, denies the relinquishment of her virginity, climaxes and he leaves disappointed. In relation to Jewett, Cather uses little Marie and Emil to explore the Garden of Eden and find her sexuality leading to her climax.
In short, Both Jewett and Cather touched on gendered related stereotypes and created female individualists rather than imitations of male protagonists. Cather and Jewett’s writings accurately depict the society of the 1960’s and struggle of change into the mid to late nineteenth century.
Works Cited
O Pioneers, Willa Cather pgs- 6-12
Geographical Literary Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr,. 1995), pp- 217-228
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The Loud Noise
Postmodern is defined as certain tendencies in post World War II Literature. Similar to modernist, the postmodernist concept relies heavy on fragmentation, paradox, and questionable narrators. It coincides with meta narrative and little narrative being characterized by the rise of industry, technology, urbanization, and the belief of no absolute truth. In this context, the stance of the characters in White Noise, moral ambivalence as well as discussing the characters moral choices in relation with man’s “death fear”, and the artificial relief provided by the never ending technological process which are slightly referred to as moral ambivalence. ‘Death fear’ and the ‘ technological process are conveyed as the extension of man’s pursing a concrete life in today’s world where man faces various unexpected problems he is unable to deal with, since they don’t fit the patterns of the rationalist order and reason. Don Delillo uses his own narrative technique and expresses with a specific sense of humor, mans disappointment of being left helpless and alone despite the “Grand Narratives of the Era”.
Even early as Chapter six Jack infers, “Mans guilt in history and in the tides of his own blood has been complicated by technology, the daily sleeping falsehearted death. At the beginning of Chapter 6, Jack considers his son’s premature hair loss and wonders if he or Heinrich’s mother might be responsible for their son’s thinning hair, by having unwittingly consumed toxic foods or raising the boy in the proximity of industrial waste. Jack begins with a specific, particular observation but soon brings the problem of Heinrich’s thinning hair into a wider, universal context. Heinrich’s relatively insignificant hair loss illustrates the novel’s greater concern with the way technology has unwittingly changed fundamental aspects of life. Jack’s individual genes might be responsible for Heinrich’s balding, but, given the pervasiveness of chemicals in the modern world, it’s impossible to determine who or what, exactly, is at fault. Man’s culpability is no longer obvious in many situations, since to some degree technology has begun to operate outside of man’s control. Technology has not only blurred the lines between what we are and are not accountable for, but it has also eroded away, like Heinrich’s hairline, some essential part of our lives. This passage sets the stage for the airborne toxic event and for Jack’s eventual confrontation with his own technologically induced death, Nyodene D. This passage represents a few of several themes that represent ‘post-modernism’, underground conspiracies, and the role of technology expansion in it.
Additionally another theme streaming in Post-Modernism and throughout the text besides death is consumerism, and media saturation which is ever-present towards the end of chapter ten. Jack says, “The system was invisible, which makes it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with but we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, circuits, streams, and the harmonies.” At the close of Chapter 10, Jack goes to an ATM and finds that the bank computer corroborates his personal accounting. For Jack, this represents a significant victory, arrived at by hard work and good fortune. The vast, complicated network of technology that underlies everything from the supermarket scanners to the ATM machines has, to some degree, validated Jack and his sense of personal identity. The data have told him that he is indeed who he thinks he is. The value Jack places on such a seemingly small thing reflects both the importance of numbers and technology in defining identity, as well as Jack’s deep-seated insecurity about what that identity is. He seeks confirmation wherever he can, and if the ATM can confer a temporary sense of security, then he is all the happier and stronger for it. However, the quote also hints that this accord won’t always be the case, and that at some point in the future, the networks and the technology they represent will turn against Jack.
Don DeLillo has published thirteen novels since 1971, along with several plays and numerous stories. I believe he is one of the most distinctive and interesting American writers of our day (not to mention that he can be very funny). His sentences are utterly his own. That’s why this is a definitive postmodern novel.
Works Cited
Don Delillo, White Noise
Class Notation
http://www.perival.com/delillo/ddbiblio.html.
Postmodern is defined as certain tendencies in post World War II Literature. Similar to modernist, the postmodernist concept relies heavy on fragmentation, paradox, and questionable narrators. It coincides with meta narrative and little narrative being characterized by the rise of industry, technology, urbanization, and the belief of no absolute truth. In this context, the stance of the characters in White Noise, moral ambivalence as well as discussing the characters moral choices in relation with man’s “death fear”, and the artificial relief provided by the never ending technological process which are slightly referred to as moral ambivalence. ‘Death fear’ and the ‘ technological process are conveyed as the extension of man’s pursing a concrete life in today’s world where man faces various unexpected problems he is unable to deal with, since they don’t fit the patterns of the rationalist order and reason. Don Delillo uses his own narrative technique and expresses with a specific sense of humor, mans disappointment of being left helpless and alone despite the “Grand Narratives of the Era”.
Even early as Chapter six Jack infers, “Mans guilt in history and in the tides of his own blood has been complicated by technology, the daily sleeping falsehearted death. At the beginning of Chapter 6, Jack considers his son’s premature hair loss and wonders if he or Heinrich’s mother might be responsible for their son’s thinning hair, by having unwittingly consumed toxic foods or raising the boy in the proximity of industrial waste. Jack begins with a specific, particular observation but soon brings the problem of Heinrich’s thinning hair into a wider, universal context. Heinrich’s relatively insignificant hair loss illustrates the novel’s greater concern with the way technology has unwittingly changed fundamental aspects of life. Jack’s individual genes might be responsible for Heinrich’s balding, but, given the pervasiveness of chemicals in the modern world, it’s impossible to determine who or what, exactly, is at fault. Man’s culpability is no longer obvious in many situations, since to some degree technology has begun to operate outside of man’s control. Technology has not only blurred the lines between what we are and are not accountable for, but it has also eroded away, like Heinrich’s hairline, some essential part of our lives. This passage sets the stage for the airborne toxic event and for Jack’s eventual confrontation with his own technologically induced death, Nyodene D. This passage represents a few of several themes that represent ‘post-modernism’, underground conspiracies, and the role of technology expansion in it.
Additionally another theme streaming in Post-Modernism and throughout the text besides death is consumerism, and media saturation which is ever-present towards the end of chapter ten. Jack says, “The system was invisible, which makes it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with but we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, circuits, streams, and the harmonies.” At the close of Chapter 10, Jack goes to an ATM and finds that the bank computer corroborates his personal accounting. For Jack, this represents a significant victory, arrived at by hard work and good fortune. The vast, complicated network of technology that underlies everything from the supermarket scanners to the ATM machines has, to some degree, validated Jack and his sense of personal identity. The data have told him that he is indeed who he thinks he is. The value Jack places on such a seemingly small thing reflects both the importance of numbers and technology in defining identity, as well as Jack’s deep-seated insecurity about what that identity is. He seeks confirmation wherever he can, and if the ATM can confer a temporary sense of security, then he is all the happier and stronger for it. However, the quote also hints that this accord won’t always be the case, and that at some point in the future, the networks and the technology they represent will turn against Jack.
Don DeLillo has published thirteen novels since 1971, along with several plays and numerous stories. I believe he is one of the most distinctive and interesting American writers of our day (not to mention that he can be very funny). His sentences are utterly his own. That’s why this is a definitive postmodern novel.
Works Cited
Don Delillo, White Noise
Class Notation
http://www.perival.com/delillo/ddbiblio.html.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Gaston Mclemore
AML 3041-02
Dr. Jordan
December 1, 2009
Jamaica Kincaid
“I was always being told I should be something, and then my whole upbringing was something I was not: it was English.”
The word culture is defined as the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. With that being stated it’s safe to say that Kincaid’s colonial upbringing plays an important role in her life as well as her writings. She was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson, on the island of Antigua, located in the Caribbean, and later changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid due to disapproval of her parents for writing. From 1983 to today, Kincaid is best known for her Caribbean novels, poems and short stories such as Annie John, A Small Place, At the Bottom of the River, and Girl. The major themes of her writings tend to put independence, gender relations, and colonization in a paradox, battling with the admiration yet resentment of the British colonizers. Along with this written detail of the novelist, I will be presenting a clip of Kincaid reading and discussing excerpts from, Annie John.
Annie John, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985 depicts the growth of a girl in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. It covers issues as diverse as mother-daughter relationships, sexism, racism, clinical depression, and education. The independence of the chapters makes their compilations seem episodic, which is to say that each chapter involves a series of episodes about certain times in a young girl’s life. During this close-reading she touches on her start in print with “Talk of the Town” column in the New Yorker, specifically the irony that her submissions in the 1970s, just preceded the period of celebrity culture. Kincaid says, “It was time when rich people in America wanted to be known for working, doing something other than being rich, and they would get jobs or something like that.” Also, she speaks on wanting to write differently from anyone else at the magazine, “a vanity or arrogance of her youth.” Her piece about a book reception for economist Milton Friedman consists entirely of an inventory of the cost of the event to her and other participants, whom Kincaid rigorously fact checked. Her hostility towards Friedman is due in part by his advisory position, in those days to “a cruel government in Chile,” and Kincaid emphasizes that she wanted to express this but “didn’t want to just say it.” When “Mr. Shaw published it, it was amazing to me”, says Kincaid firmly.
Furthermore, Kincaid talks comically about a passage called “new”, which she expresses her passion for youthfulness while reading a conversation about two women discussing the nature of men, women, and the new celebrity culture emerging. Among some of her prestige awards are the Prix Femina Etranger for her memoir, My Brother in 2000, a Guggenheim fellowship in 1989, a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts for her collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River (1983).
Although Kincaid’s woks are short in length, they have never failed to elicit respect, if at times reluctantly. She is a forthright person who speaks candidly, and left the New Yorker in 1995. Kincaid is currently a professor at Claremont Mckenna College, and up until recently a visiting professor and teacher of creative writing at Harvard University. Over a career that has spanned more than two decades has earned a reputable place in the literary world for her personal, stylistic and honest writings.
Works Cited
Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 13, Gale, 1994.
contemporary Black Biography, Volume 4, Gale, 1993.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/460
"Jamaica Kincaid," BBC World Service, http://www.bbc.co.uk (February 11, 2003).
www.wikipedia.org/Jamaica Kincaid
AML 3041-02
Dr. Jordan
December 1, 2009
Jamaica Kincaid
“I was always being told I should be something, and then my whole upbringing was something I was not: it was English.”
The word culture is defined as the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. With that being stated it’s safe to say that Kincaid’s colonial upbringing plays an important role in her life as well as her writings. She was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson, on the island of Antigua, located in the Caribbean, and later changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid due to disapproval of her parents for writing. From 1983 to today, Kincaid is best known for her Caribbean novels, poems and short stories such as Annie John, A Small Place, At the Bottom of the River, and Girl. The major themes of her writings tend to put independence, gender relations, and colonization in a paradox, battling with the admiration yet resentment of the British colonizers. Along with this written detail of the novelist, I will be presenting a clip of Kincaid reading and discussing excerpts from, Annie John.
Annie John, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985 depicts the growth of a girl in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. It covers issues as diverse as mother-daughter relationships, sexism, racism, clinical depression, and education. The independence of the chapters makes their compilations seem episodic, which is to say that each chapter involves a series of episodes about certain times in a young girl’s life. During this close-reading she touches on her start in print with “Talk of the Town” column in the New Yorker, specifically the irony that her submissions in the 1970s, just preceded the period of celebrity culture. Kincaid says, “It was time when rich people in America wanted to be known for working, doing something other than being rich, and they would get jobs or something like that.” Also, she speaks on wanting to write differently from anyone else at the magazine, “a vanity or arrogance of her youth.” Her piece about a book reception for economist Milton Friedman consists entirely of an inventory of the cost of the event to her and other participants, whom Kincaid rigorously fact checked. Her hostility towards Friedman is due in part by his advisory position, in those days to “a cruel government in Chile,” and Kincaid emphasizes that she wanted to express this but “didn’t want to just say it.” When “Mr. Shaw published it, it was amazing to me”, says Kincaid firmly.
Furthermore, Kincaid talks comically about a passage called “new”, which she expresses her passion for youthfulness while reading a conversation about two women discussing the nature of men, women, and the new celebrity culture emerging. Among some of her prestige awards are the Prix Femina Etranger for her memoir, My Brother in 2000, a Guggenheim fellowship in 1989, a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts for her collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River (1983).
Although Kincaid’s woks are short in length, they have never failed to elicit respect, if at times reluctantly. She is a forthright person who speaks candidly, and left the New Yorker in 1995. Kincaid is currently a professor at Claremont Mckenna College, and up until recently a visiting professor and teacher of creative writing at Harvard University. Over a career that has spanned more than two decades has earned a reputable place in the literary world for her personal, stylistic and honest writings.
Works Cited
Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 13, Gale, 1994.
contemporary Black Biography, Volume 4, Gale, 1993.
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/460
"Jamaica Kincaid," BBC World Service, http://www.bbc.co.uk (February 11, 2003).
www.wikipedia.org/Jamaica Kincaid
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