Rant

I know we don't have a journal topic for this week, but Native Son, written by Richard Wright, is driving me nuts and I need to get some things off my chest about this wonderful, but gut-wrenching novel.

First off, this may just be because I was born in a time away from segregation and lynching and the white on black racism, but I do not understand it. I was raised up in a Christian household, so I believe that we were all made of the dust of the earth, like it says in Genesis. So someone has a different skin color than me, big woody-doo! If God decided to make me out of dust near White Sands, New Mexico and the guy sitting next to me was made from mud, or red, Texas dirt, or what ever color, why does it matter? You can't change the way you were born, and if we want to get extremely technical, none of us are the exact same color because nothing is a perfect match in this world. Even identical twins have differences.

Now on to my frustrations with the book. I have such conflicting emotions! Bigger is a horrible, horrible, terribly awful human being. I am no professional, but from the article I read on http://bipolar.about.com/od/glossarys/g/gl_sociopath.htm, I would say that Bigger is a sociopath. He has no remorse for the first woman he murdered, he lacks empathy for when he rapes his girlfriend, keeping him from having a functional relationship. Despite the anger and resentment I feel toward Bigger and his crimes, I don't want him to receive the death penalty, because it isn't for the right reason. Bigger is being executed because they want to make an example of him to the black community. Bigger should be executed because he has two counts of murder and one count of rape. They don't care about Bigger's raped and murdered girlfriend until they realize that it could help them in their case. This frustrates me beyond no end! If he is going to be tried, I want him to be tried properly and fairly, not because he is black. That is not what justice is meant to be. Lady Justice is blindfolded because she is supposed to be unbiased to race, gender, and anything else that sets us apart. Yet Bigger is not even given a chance, because he is black. I know different times hold different beliefs, values, and norms, but this...this just flips my lid. Being fair and civil to one another should not change due to the time and place.

Thank you for listening. My apologies for being angry and demanding justice from fictional characters. 

Oh Where is my Hair Brush!

The symbol I want to talk about today is Janie's hair. Now I imagine everyone is thinking, "What? The only time hair is important is in Rapunzel," but I beg to differ.

In many cultures, hair length is related to power; for example, in the Old Testament the Nazirites would go lengthy periods of time before cutting their hair to show their devotion to God. One Nazirite, named Samson received a special gift of strength as long as he did not cut his hair. Greek Gods such as Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo, were often sculpted with long hair. In Greece, long hair was considered a symbol of wealth and power. In the Middle Ages, short hair was a sign of peasantry and servitude, while long hair represented the aristocracy, who held a lot of power over not only their servants but also hold a great deal of influence in decisions made for the society.

Even though Janie is placed low on the totem pole by being bi-racial, as well as being a female. The odds are stacked against her from the very beginning. When Janie first appears in town, one of the first things the men notice about her is her hair; "The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume;" (pg 2) Since her hair is among the first three things the men first notice, it shows that she has the power to command their attention even though the only words she says are "good evening". She can command their attention whenever she desires.

Jody realizes how much power her hair has and how attractive the men find her hair so he forces her to keep it tied up. "Whut make her keep her head tied up lak some ole 'oman round de store" (pg 49). "Maybe he make her do it. Maybe he skeered some de rest of us mens might touch it round dat store" (pg 50). The previous quotes show that Jody is afraid of the effect Janie's hair has on the people around her. He realizes that she could over power him if she gets the people of Eatonville on her side. To  keep Janie in line, he forces her to keep her hair tied up whenever she is around people, thus killing two birds with one stone. One of the first things men notice earlier in her life is how beautiful her hair is and Jody does his best to keep them from making advances toward her. The second thing is by having Janie hide her hair Jody is taking away her power. Like Samson, Janie receives her special gifts from her hair. When that is gone, so are her gifts.

Janie receives her gift from her hair, and it helps to keep her strong even amongst all of the adversity she faces. It reminds her of who she is, and what she has over come.

Marital Bliss

I have been blinded by the screaming outcry of Janie's plight through her marriages. The stereotypical portrayal of the male-dominance in the book makes me feel that this is an underlying theme; the choices a young black woman (or any woman) had (has?) is a "lesser of two evils" approach.

Her first was an arranged marriage, still practiced today. She had no concept of how the relationship was supposed to work, and was under the misguided impression that marriage preceded the love. She though that love was a by-product of marriage, and was greatly wrong. To add to the strife, Logan wanted a work mule and wife, and was unhappy with Janie for staying in the house.

Her second marriage she was suckered in by pretty talk and gifts a-plenty. Once ensnared, Janie was a trophy wife to expand Starks' power and hold over his little empire.She was a verbal punching bag whenever he felt belittled by his age and condition, and Janie's beauty not fading.

Her last marriage was her best, even through the beatings. She actually had feelings for Tea Cakes, but suffered through the bad parts to hang onto the good.

Each marriage is a stereotype of the farce of relationships and marriage. In each instance Janie was a victim, whether by the hand of another or through her own naivete, or when love feels it can withstand the bumpy road (and bumpy fists). I see this aspect of the book as a stepping stone for women's rights when there were little, and none for the black female.

Nanny is Muh Subject

Janie was raised by her Nanny and the “quality white folks” her Nanny worked with. The grandmother cared for Janie deeply and at one point in the story states that she loved Janie more than she ever did Janie’s mother, her actual daughter. As Janie is becoming more curious about boys Nanny finds Janie kissing Johnny Taylor and immediately tells Janie she will have to get married. Nanny initially had plans for Janie to attend school and choose a man that would better suit Janie but for her own protection from the worthless boys Janie will inevitably encounter Janie will have to get married. “You wants to make me suck de same sorrow yo’ mama did, eh? “Mah ole head ain’t gray enough. Mah back ain’t  bowed enough to suit yuh!” (Hurston, 14) Nanny does not want Janie to end up like her mother and despite Janie’s objections she feels it is in her best interest to marry Mr. Killicks who can provide protection and security.

Nanny explains to Janie that “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world” (Hurston, 14) since woman in general have no say in what goes on but even more so if you are a black woman. The mules are over worked day after day until they eventually die. Nanny was the last of the slaves to endure slavery which causes her to know more about the inequalities that have been in effect since before she was even born. Nanny is only doing the best she knows how for Janie to be able to live the life she never could, for Janie to fulfill her dreams and doing what a woman ought to be able to do.

The Price of Power

Throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God there is a constant struggle to climb the social ladder, but everyone has a different idea about what it means to get to the top. Janie experiences what it is like to be at the top, and comes to the conclusion that it is not what she wants out of life. As she talks to Phoeby about the experience, she says:

          She was borned to slavery time when folks, dat is black folks, didn't sit down anytime dey felt             lak it. So sittin' on porches lak de white madam looked lak uh mighty fine thing tuh her. Dat's             what she wanted for me-don't keer whut it cost.

She knew that a great cost came with sitting on a high chair. It meant that she would have to sacrifice living life to be a part of that porch.

Joe Starks places Janie in the chair that he considers to be above the working class people: "He was very solemn and helped her to the seat beside him. With him on it, it sat like some high ruling chair" (32). The problem with this place is that it is his vision and not her own. He wants to have a "big voice" at the cost of her relinquishing all rights to her own voice.

Jody establishes the plans for the town while standing on the porch of the store. This platform is used to demonstrate his power over the people. The town may use the porch as a place to conduct their mule talk and gossip, but they only say certain things when Joe is not present. When they are talking around him, he still has the power to lead the conversation in the direction he wants it to go. His position forms a wedge between him and the townspeople.

Janie knows that even though this is her husband's dream, he still pays for this position in life: "Dis sittin' in de rulin' chair is been hard on Jody,"she muttered out loud." "She was full of pity for the first time in years. Jody had been hard on her and others, but life had mishandled him too" (87). Jody has a phenomenal dream, but he never anticipates the consequences of such a high position. Janie knows that that her husband is left with the same dilemma as her grandmother, she says: "She didn't have time tuh think whut tuh do after you got up on de stool uh do nothin'" (114). Joe has nothing left once he accomplishes his goal, not even his wife, so dying alone became his price for power.

The Narrators voice in TEWWG

The narrators voice can take on many different forms. The dramatized narrator is hardly ever seen as a narrator. Hurston, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, the story is narrated different ways.  The narration of the woman on the porch allows the reader to see what kind of woman Jennie is, and how we are to view her. “What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls?  Can’t she find no dress to put on?—Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in?”

From this we learn that she is an independent woman and is not concerned with what others think of her. She is confidant of who she is, but she has not always been that way.

As a girl she has to come to grips with who she is. “So when we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me.”  Janie narrates herself as she describes her growing up years with whites, dressing as a white, not knowing she is black.

Then she looks to marriage thinking that it will lead to love and happiness. After being unhappy in one marriage, she movies to another man. He is not much better than the first one.

 We see different narrators telling Jennie’s story; how she is seen by others, and is how the reader will see her. We learn more about Jenie with the people she is round.

Booth says in his rhetoric book. “We should remind ourselves that many dramatized narrators are never explicitly labeled as narrators at all. In a sense, every speech, every gesture, narrates; most works contain disguised narrators who are used to telling the audience what it needs to know, while seeming merely to act out their roles.”  

Emotions

Hello classmates of Modern Literature,

I know it is late, but do to some family dysfunctions of my own I was kept busy all weekend and I now have a free moment. The theme of my weekend however, fits very well into my blog post for this week; family.

Chapter five in The Rhetoric of Fiction is about the reader's emotions and beliefs. As I Lay Dying is centered around family, however it is not the traditional family that everyone believed in the 1930s and most people still find the structure of it shocking, because the family breaks many of the beliefs people have when they think of a family.

The first instance this appears is when we discover from Cora that Anse does not have any sweat stains on his shirt. Anse is the father and husband of the household so he is supposed to be the main bread winner of the family. There are some households where that is still true today. The fact that Anse does not work to help keep the family with a way to survive and leaves it all on the children. He is supposed to be the family's back bone, and instead he stabs them in the back on multiple occasions. The occurrences continue throughout the novel by how he treats his family and they just keep coming one after the other after the other. I will list them in order of birth from Addie and then working all the way to Vardamen.

Anse starts by violating Addie. He forced her into a marriage that led directly to children when that was not at all what she wanted. A husband is supposed to be protecting of his wife, the place where she always feels safe, but instead he does the opposite. He makes her feel unsafe and disgusted. He sends her to the point of wanting to kill her, and it was only to have the children to do the work so he no longer had too. Even the one good thing he says he will do for Addie is not even for her. A husband is supposed to mourn after his wife's death, and yet he is only concerned about the new teeth that await him in Jefferson. After not even a day of burying his wife, he has already remarried another woman. Anse only came to Jefferson to fulfill his own selfish reason so that he could get what he wants as well as someone else to do all the work around the house again.

When it comes to Cash, Anse is beyond awful to him. When Cash breaks his leg in the river while trying to save the wagon, Anse refuses to take him to Dr. Peabody because it will cost him to much money. Instead he makes a concrete cast to set Cash's leg in. Even when Cash's leg turns black from the lack of blood flow, Anse still remains unconcerned and only has cool water poured over the concrete to lessen the swelling. I don't know about anyone else, by my natural, parental instincts are telling me that this boy needs to get to the hospital and no matter how bad it gets, Anse refused because he does not want to pay. On top of putting Cash's leg on the line, he also places Cash's livelihood on the line when he sells Cash's carpentry tools. Those were not his to take, but that is all Anse does, takes from those who he won't owe anything too.

Jewel is used by Anse and he is not even Anse's son. He sells Jewel's horse out from under him without waiting to ask for his permission. If it had been a horse Anse had bought for him for a birthday or some sort of celebration, I could understand that, but Jewel worked many long nights in the pitch black to earn this horse. He put his blood, sweat, and tears into earning that horse on his own and it is swept out from under him without a second thought. This does not just violate the views that we have of a father figure, but how a decent human being should ask.

Dewey Dell is one that I feel extremely bad for, she had ten dollars set aside for to help her start the next part of her life. It would either buy a marriage certificate to start a life with her lover, or relieve her of the uncertainty of her unborn child. Anse steals the money from Dewey Dell to buy his own marriage certificate not even a day after they bury Addie. Anse places his own happiness over the happiness of his own daughter, who he is supposed to protect.

Anse is the perfect example of how the reader reacts emotionally to parts of the book and how it affects the entire story line. If you do not like someone in the beginning then it affects how you view them through the rest of the novel and that dislike increases until you hate them and builds from there.

The Good, The Beautiful, The True

Going back to Chapter 5 of Booth, there are many things, of course, that caused me to continue reading As I Lay Dying. When I finished the book, I could not believe that I stuck around for the rest of the book only to figure out that Anse is just ridiculous and just completely does not care about anything but himself. In the last section, Anse has just sent Darl, his second oldest son, to an insane asylum, and all Anse has done since is gotten his fake teeth and a new wife. I read the book with Practical Interest, expecting something bad to happen to Anse, as a way of karma for his lack of care towards his children. Of course, nothing happens. That was highly disappointing.

Another thing that kept my interest throughout the book was Darl. I wanted an explanation for his ability to see things that have not happened near him, such as when he knew his mother had died even though he was not at home with her, and understand the emotions of his siblings so well, especially Dewey Dell. Aside from these odd things, I enjoyed Darl as a character because he seemed to be the only person that even attempted to connect with Vardamen at all. To me, this was huge. Everyone else sort of brushes Vardamen off as a child and focuses on their own problems, but Darl actually talks to him and answers his questions. Specifically, when Vardamen was worried that his mother was a horse, Darl made sure to let him know that only Jewel’s mother is a horse, instead of ignoring him or saying no one’s mother is a horse. This kept my Practical Interest, even if later they just threw Darl into an asylum. I guess him being crazy is some kind of explanation for his weird sort of powers? Or not.

Overall, Faulkner employed a really odd sort of truth to the story that held my Intellectual Interest. The story was following the most dysfunctional family I have ever heard of, and there is no happy ending for anyone but Anse. Really, I took this story as a chapter of reality. Nothing in life turns out how it is expected to and people that stick out get sent to asylums and when parents don’t care about their children, they get pregnant, get their prized horse traded without permission, think their dead moms are fish, and get their broken legs cast in cement. Really, neither Addie nor Anse seem to have wanted the children at all, or each other, even. This family sticks together for completely unknown reasons. If there was no explanation that they were related, the characters would have no premise for being together through the whole story. My real question was why stayed together, and the only answer I got was that staying together was that staying was easier than leaving.

Did Faulkner do that on purpose? What was his reasoning for all this imperfection and dysfunction in the family?

The idiot and the other three

On page 152, Booth puts in parenthesis "Faulkner can use the idiot for part of his novel only because the other three parts exist to set off and clarify the idiot's jumble." This bolsters his point that not all the characters are qualified (or just not smart enough) to narrate a story. I find this very amusing, yet sad. In particular, Vardaman and his confused mumblings through out As I Lay Dying. Is he really the idiot?

After observing his mother die, his reaction is stunted - because the whole family is stunted and he has no nurturing from this lovely family. He associates the death with the fish he found "down to the bridge", as he has no idea what is really happening. The fish was all cut up into not-fish, and now his mother is not-momma. One minute, momma's there, then the doctor arrives (against Anse's wishes - was this observed by the little one?) and she dies. Blaming Peabody would be a natural thought process.

Although mumbling through multiple thoughts per paragraph, one particular sentence caught my eye. It is profound in a way that is beyond the years of Vardaman, and I wonder how it had been slipped in for his thought process. On page 66 he rants:

              "It was not her. I was there looking. I saw. I though it was her, but it was not. It was not my                 mother. She went away when the other one laid down in her bed and drew the quilt up.
               She went away."

To make the rather adult observation that his mother left when she got into bed and the one there was no longer his mother is a concept many use to ease the pain of watching someone waste away into death. The person you loved died before all this pain, try to remember the happy times... She went to a better place, no more suffering...

Is Vardaman really the idiot here? While grown adults will cliche everyone to death in order to remove the pain of close people dying, Vardaman is dealing with the loss the same way. Awfully adult of him to deny the loss and pain and try to find some comfort in words (in Addie's definition).

Unfortunately, he returns to rabbits not in the box, bananas for everyone, and the shiny train in the window. The poor child.

The Loud Voices of the Silent

As Booth states, “the author can achieve effects which would be difficult or impossible if he allowed himself or a reliable spokesman to speak directly and authoritatively to us.” (Booth, 273)  Faulkner has 15 different dramatized narrators in which lies “a confused variety of more-or-less reliable narrators, many of them puzzling mixtures of sound and unsound.” (Booth, 274) 

 Peabody only speaks at the beginning and ending of the book. Faulkner has Peabody place a great deal of judgment on Anse. Peabody’s negative perception of the Bundrens comes from him coming from a different social class and not being able to understand the ways in which a less fortunate family gets by. Peabody attempts to discredit Anse by judging the way he treats Cash’s leg injury. ‘Concrete, I said. ‘God Almighty, why didn’t Anse carry you to the nearest sawmill and stick your leg in the saw? That would have cured it. Then you all could have stuck his head into the saw and cured a whole family…’ (Faulkner, 240) Peabody is an example of an unreliable narrator. Anse, regardless of how barbaric his attempts are to help his son Cash, does it with the best intentions. 

The ending of the novel with Anse introducing his children to his new wife is told by Cash one of the most reliable narrators in the novel. Nowhere in the novel does it explicitly say that Anse from the viewpoint of his children is a selfish person. This is an example of the “authorial silence” that allows readers to work out their own interpretation of the novel. As the novel unravels it is clear that Anse along with the rest of the Bundren family are in fact after their own selfish interests.

Functional Dysfunction

As we have discussed in class, our idea of what family means is very different from the Bundren family. It is more like a set of individuals that have their own interests, goals, and lives, and see everyone else as means to their own end. This is one of the main ideas that keep the interest of a reader. The reader has intellectual interests about a family that seems to be unfamiliar to one’s own concept of family. The conflict of beliefs draws us in, and makes a person want to understand why they do these unusual things. Peabody states:

     “I can remember how when I was young I believed death

     to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely

     a function of the mind-and that of the minds of the ones 

     who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end;

     the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality is no 

     more than a single family moving out of a tenement

     or a town"(43-44).

Addie's death is a symbol of the thing that pushes the family into a new period in their lives. It is her death that releases them of the labels and positions they were given during her life. Darl seems to be the only one that has all of the information about the families past, so I don't find it strange that Cash says: "This world is not his world; this life his life"(261). The family has transitioned to a new "tenement" and Darl's knowledge will not allow him to live in that place. The curiosity about how each character deals with her death drives the reader to want to know more about the facts of their actions.

The reader’s qualitative interest is fulfilled by all of the motives that each family member has in the beginning of the story: Anse wants to purchase new teeth; Vardamann wants to get his hands on bananas; Dewey Dell wants medicine to abort her baby; and Cash wants to buy a record player. Even though this sounds so dysfunctional when a mother and wife dies, the reader is interested in how this will all play out. Booth writes: “All good works surprise us, and they surprise us largely by bringing to our attention convincing cause-and-effect patterns which were earlier played down” (127). Throughout the book one sees how each situation and person effects another one, but many times the reader is left clueless of what direction one is being led, but soon finds that it all makes sense.

The practical interests of the reader are satisfied in this book depending on the perspective of each reader. Anse is one that seems to be a horrible person, in which one would like to see the consequences of his actions, but he never seems to have to answer for all of the people that he uses throughout his life. I suppose one could say that because he is the head of the household that would mean his lot would end up being his children’s lot. In this way, one can be satisfied that all did not suffer the consequences of his actions. “Booth states: “It is of course true that our desires concerning the fate of such imagined people differ markedly from our desires in real life” (130). A greater tolerance is found for Anse and Addies’ death, because of the readers curiosity about how everything will end.