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Invisible Man

2005-04-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

At first, I didn't want to read this book. I thought that it was just going to be another book that dealt with racism. Once I read it though, I realized that there was a lot more to it than that. There were several sections in the book that lead me to believe that this book was more about the narrator trying to discover himself.

At the very beginning of chapter one, the narrator says, "I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to be born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!" Most of the people who are my age are dealing with this same thing: They have to find out who they are and what they want from life. I went through it, too. Like the narrator, I had to stop asking everyone else and start asking myself. After reading this statement I began reading Invisible Man with a different outlook.

This point is evident again when the narrator is ordering breakfast at a drugstore. The man behind the counter offered him the special. When the narrator found out that the special was pork chops, grits, one egg, hot biscuits and coffee, he was angry with the man. The narrator said that he would have orange juice, toast and coffee (Page 178). He felt proud that he resisted eating the Southern food. He was feeling good about this until he saw a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man eating the special. The narrator thought that he had changed his ways; he was different from Wheatstraw; he was more like the Northern, sophisticated, white people. But when he saw that white man, he wasn't so sure.

There are many other examples in the book that demonstrate how the narrator's conflicts were not only external, but internal as well. He couldn't make up his own mind about who he was or what he wanted to become. That effected his response to many of the racial issues he faced.

The House of the Spirits-Ideology

2005-04-07T22:28:00.001-07:00

I am sure that almost everyone in the class has discussed Esteban Trueba when referring to ideology in The House of the Spirits. There were many parts in the book when Esteban would break into a speech. Usually the characters who heard what he said disagreed with him. Who could blame them? In general, Esteban was obsessed with money and social status. He did not want to end up like his father, drunk and poor. Some might respect his dedication to his work; however, I think that Esteban was arrogant and selfish. He usually had to argue outrageous points to justify his own actions. The place where I think this is very evident is when Pedro Segundo Garcia and the priest from the nun's hospital try to confront Esteban about the rapes he has committed (Allende 63-65).

Esteban had raped most of the young women at Tres Maria. He also got most of them pregnant. The fathers of those girls wanted to confront Esteban, but they were too afraid of him. Pedro Segundo Garcia and the priest from the nun's hospital approached Esteban civilly. They tried to explain to him that simply providing food and brick houses did not make a man good. Giving the tenants some dignity and respect and paying them for their work would benefit everyone. Of course, Esteban was outraged. He ranted and raved for two pages about how if it weren't for him the tenants would be starving and living like animals. He had to provide them their basic needs and teach them how to be civilized (Allende 63-65).

The parts of Esteban's speech that upset me the most were when he said that the tenants were trying to turn against him and that everyone was not created equal (Allende 64). It wasn't hard to understand that he was suggesting his superiority. Esteban said that the tenants could never keep Tres Maria operating like he could. If he ever had to leave, they would let Tres Maria become the ruins he found it in (Allende 65). The thing that I found ironic was that when Esteban did have to leave Tres Maria for his mother's illness, Pedro Segundo Garcia kept things operating as well as Esteban did. There were many other times later in the book when Pedro Segundo Garcia took care of Tres Maria. The one that sticks out the most is when the earthquake destroyed Tres Maria and injured Esteban. It was Pedro Segundo Garcia that took the reigns and rebuilt Tres Maria. I think that this just demonstrates how wrong Esteban was. He had to create all of those other reasons to justify his terrible behavior. Talk about false consciousness. In his speech, Esteban basically argued that he was taking care of the tenants so if he wanted to take advantage of the young girls, he was entitled to that. That sounds a bit better than I was horny so I raped young women. What a slime ball.

Antigone

2005-03-15T21:30:00.000-08:00

I read Antigone in high school and I liked it then. But reading Bertolt Brecht's version was easier to relate to because of its more modern setting. When reading Brecht's Antigone, there were two characters that I hated. One was, of course, Kreon; and the other was Ismene.

In the first scene, Ismene is too much of a coward to defend her brother by standing strong with Antigone. I hated her for that. When I read that scene I thought about how I would handle the situation. If my little brother was left to the vultures, I would definitly break the law and risk my life to insure his burial. I don't have any other siblings who I could ask to help me. I would turn to my closest friends. I know for a fact that they would risk their lives to help me stand up for what's right and bury my brother. Ismene was Antigone's sister and she was too afraid to help her bury Polyneikes. Later in the play, when Antigone is being sentenced for her "crime," Ismene wants to die with her. Ismene told Kreon that she helped Antigone and she should be punished as well. When Antigone says that she acted alone, Ismeme pleads with Antigone to let her die, too. Ismene is afraid to live alone. All in all, I thought that she was a very selfish character who only made things worse for Antigone.

The other character that I think everyone hated was Kreon. He was the typical power-hungray dictator. He wanted Argos so badly that he was willing to risk everyone and everything in Thebes to get it. When he realized that he wasn't going to win, he wanted the city to fall with him. Kreon clearly didn't care about anyone but himself. He didn't care about his family and he certainly didn't have the city's best interests at heart. Antigone tried to warn The Elders of Kreon's poor leadership, but Kreon convinced them otherwise. Hamon also tried to talk some sense into his father, but Kreon suggested that Hamon was only defending Antigone and her cause because he was thinking with his dick instead of his brain (page 43). Hamon helped to persuade The Elders a little bit, but they still wouldn't stand up to Kreon. He ruled the way he wanted to, at any cost, without opposition.

I felt that The Elders played an important part in Antigone. If they would have challenged Kreon, he would have had to try to please them at least a little bit. In class, we tried to compare Antigone with modern issues. Some suggested struggles over abortion; others suggested gay and/or inter-racial marriages. I think that Antigone could be used to portray American politics in general. We usually have two sides to every issue. The Democrats and Republicans (Antigone and Kreon) are constantly trying to get the American people (The Elders) to accept their argument as the right and just argument. The American people are just like The Elders: it takes a great deal of evidence until they can be persuaded to support the opposing side. Of course, all The Elders have to support the same side. If they would decide to change, they would have to do it all together and at the same time.

Gregorio Cortez

2005-02-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

I found this piece to be entertaining and interesting. "The Legend" was fun to read. It was simply a good story. The way that Cortez was portrayed as such a hero made it seem like I watching a cartoon. After reading the comments that followed "The Legend," I was disappointed to find out that the horse trade and the mare were purely ficticous. The mare was my favorite part of the whole thing. It was Cortez's faithful, loyal sidekick. I would have enjoyed "The Legend" better if I could have continued thinking that events actually occurred as told in "The Legend."

The aspect that made this work interesting was how many variations the author found. It doesn't come as a surprise that people would have twisted the facts to such an extent, though. Like I said above, I really liked the part about the mare. I probably would have mentioned the events involving it more than any others. People just empahsized their favorite parts of "The Legend."

The author explained this concept in the section following "The Variants." Like The Thoery Toolbox suggests, "The Variants" changed based upon each singer's subjectivity. For example, on pages 181 to 185, the author describes how The Border Corrido and the Mexico City Broadside were different becasue of the purposes they were trying to serve. The Border Corrido was created for rural folks. The Mexico City Broadside was a great tale for the city population. Its intention was to help raise funds for Cortez's defense. The Mexico City Broadside was also more national in a sense. It made Cortez's struggle a battle between the Americans and the Mexicans. It even went as far as to suggest that Cortez "honored his flag." Luckily, the two
nations didn't get into a war over this!

This work definitely helped me to see how a person's subjectivity could affect their understanding of a story. Based upon where audiences and readers are from, what they know, and what experiences they have had, they bring new meaning to a story. All of the variants provide excellent evidence of that. Two different variants existed for two different geographical regions of Mexico. That was the reason that I found this piece interesting. It didn't just give several different variants of "The Legend," it explained the reasoning behind some of those variations.

Blood Wedding

2005-02-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding could be described as nothing other than a tragedy. Simply from reading the title, readers could tell that this play would have a horrible ending. If they couldn't tell from the title, they surely could tell from the foreshadowing used in the very first scene. The play started off with the Mother talking about her family's horrible past and how a small, simple knife killed her husband and her son. Any story that starts off with that much tragedy is only going to end in more tragedy.

I really didn't care for Blood Wedding. It seemed like a Spanish version of Romeo and Juliet. The thing that I did like about it was the way that Lorca avoided a descriptive blood battle. He used the discussion between the Beggar Woman and a couple of girls to inform audiences and readers that the Bridegroom and Leonardo were dead. This was a crafty way to avoid more tragedy and gore in such a depressing play.

The Awakening

2005-02-06T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Awakening really reminded me of The Yellow Wallpaper. Both involved women who were struggling with mental illnesses. At least that's what a reader might think, at first. During the time that both of these stories took place, society had certain "codes of conduct" that everyone followed. Mrs. Pontellier simply couldn't force herself to act like the ideal lady. For example, on pages 50-51, Edna goes out of the house on a reception day. She was supposed to stay home and greet all of her visitors. Instead, she felt like going for a walk. Mr. Pontellier was extremely upset by this. He was so worried about what kind of an excuse she left for her callers and what they would think. How trapped Mrs. Pontellier must have felt.

I can't begin to imagine what life must have been like for women back then. We are so free to do what we want when we want. It doesn't matter to anyone if couples marry and then divorce; when people have affairs society doesn't banish them; and it is socially acceptable to be married at any age over 18. When I finished reading The Awakening, I tried to picture Mrs. Pontellier in today's society. Perhaps she wouldn't have jumped into a marriage for fear of being an old maid. Then, maybe she would have been free to marry for love later in her life. Or, maybe she would have chose to divorce Mr. Pontellier and get remarried to Robert. Mrs. Pontellier was born too soon.

I think the point that Kate Chopin was trying to make with The Awakening was that women were starting to want control of their own lives. They felt so trapped by society's norms that they were unable to be themselves. It drove some women crazy, literally. Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, I think that Chopin was trying to warn society that their harsh constraints on women would cause more harm than good. Women were smart and needed to be accepted for who they truly were. Chopin tried to wake society from a long slumber. What an eye-opener she gave them.

The Yellow Wallpaper

2005-01-26T12:36:00.000-08:00

I really liked this piece, especially after I read the "story behind the story." The author made up a fictional story based upon her actual experiences. When I knew that, I understood the story better.

In the mid-19th century, when the story was writen, women were supposed to be the subordinate ones in a state of good mental health, let alone, a state of poor mental health. They did as they were told. Being that her doctor told her to stay at home, alone, and get plenty of rest, the author did what she was told. It almost caused her to go completely insane. The author finally decided to get back to work, and that helped her symptoms. She improved once she became active.

In the story, however, the narrator did not become insubordinate. She ended up going insane. When I got to the end of the story, the term, "stir crazy," came to mind. By staying alone in the house, the narrator's symptoms only became worse.

The author said that she wrote the story to prevent this from happening to any other women. She didn't want them to be told to hide from their lives; it would only make their mental conditions get worse. The author experienced this first hand. She took a risk and made her discovery public with her work.

The reason that I suggest that she took a risk is because, as I mentioned in the beginning, women were supposed to be subordinate. They weren't supposed to think for themselves. For this reason, I saw a great deal of correlation between The Yellow Wallpaper and Frederick Douglas's autobiography.

Both were writen in the mid-19th century. One by a black man, a former slave, nonetheless, and a woman. During that time period, society thought it extremely improper for either one of these classes to think. But these authors went a step beyond that. They not only wrote about their experiences, they took an authoritative tone: they knew about their conditions better than the white males who tried to tell them otherwise. On top of that, they also published their pieces for the public to read. What an outrage both must have caused in their day.

Douglas Blog

2005-01-25T17:29:00.000-08:00

I found Frederick Douglas's autobiography to be a great piece. It was not only informative, but I could not put it down. I wanted to know when and how Douglas obtained his freedom and what happened to him after that. Even though the chapters that I read did not answer these questions, I still wanted to read on.

By writing his autobiography, Douglas provided readers with a window to see a glimpse of what slavery was like. Aside from all of the brutal beatings that were vividly described, the theme that meant the most to me was how the slave owners de-humanized the slaves in any way that they could think of. The very beginning of chapter one introduces this theme. Douglas wrote about how he didn't know his age and how he wasn't supposed to inquire about it. The less slaves knew, the better. He made the comparison that slaves knew no more of their ages than horses.

There were many other places in the work that illustrated how slave owners intentionally kept there slaves ignorant. The one example that stood out the most was in the beginning of chapter six. Mr. Auld was trying to persuade his wife of the dangers of educating slaves. He said, "...Learning would spoil the best n_r in the world...if you teach that n_r how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave...it would make him discontented and unhappy." The slave owners knew that if their slaves became educated, they would no longer tolerate slavery. That is exactly what happened with Douglas.

Douglas was special, however. He was smart. There were several examples that demonstrated how intelligent he was. Douglas basically taught himself how to read and write. While in Baltimore, and only about ten or eleven, he made friends with little white boys and they helped him learn to read. That wasn't enough for Douglas, though. He wanted to learn how to write, as well. He worked at Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard, where he wrote one or two letters on lumber; he taunted little boys on the street into writing competitions with him; and he copyed his master's copy-book. After several years, these tactics worked and Douglas learned how to write.

The will to learn that Douglas had made me realize how powerful learning is. He was smart enough to know that knowledge would eventually gain him his freedom. I am so blessed to be getting an education, and all I have to do is get out of bed and go to class. I have taken it for granted. Douglas made me realize that knowledge can create endless opportunities for a better life.