Perspective in Beloved

As I read the Four Horsemen chapter I realized that perpsective plays a huge role in the novel.

When viewed from the perspective of the slave catcher, recapturing Sethe and her children is just another job. He even reminices about the different strategies that other escaped slaves have used to try to avoid capture as if it is just workplace banter. From the perspective of Schoolteacher it's a financial move, capture the woman who still has 10 good breeding years left and pick up her children as profits. But for Sethe it is the unthinkable. So she does what she thinks must be done in order to keep her children from experiencing the suffering and the horrors that she experienced.

Another example of this perspective is when Paul D. confronts Sethe about this after Stamp Paid shows him the newspaper clipping. Sethe dances around the topic for a while before finally confirming what she did. Paul's reaction is to say "you have two legs, not four," implying that what she did was subhuman, animalistic even. This is another matter of perspective, again, Sethe thought she was saving her children from a lifetime of suffering, but in Paul D's eyes she acted like an animal.

An earlier example of this, is when Sethe overhears Schoolteacher teaching his nephews about characteristics, and how he analyzes Sethe's "human characteristics" along side her "animal characteristics." To Sethe this is the ultimate offense and what drives her to send her children away and make a break for freedom, but for Schoolteacher it's just another lesson about another creature.

 

Memory

In Beloved there is that one passage where Sethe talks about "rememory" and what that means for her and how it affects her, but I think that Toni Morrison does a lot more with memory than that passage suggests. 

The pivotal scene in the story is told through a memory, also most of the traumatic experiences and important parts of the novel are told by Morrison through the memories of different characters such as Paul D. or Sethe, or Stamp Paid. Also Sethe uses memories of different characteristics of her baby to finally realize who Beloved really is. She never asks Beloved and Beloved never mentions it, she just recognizes little things that, when pieced together, finally allow her to understand who Beloved is.

 Another thing that Morrison does by telling her story through the memories of her characters is build suspense because none of the memories/small stories are told sequentially. For example when Morrison is telling the story in the four horsemen chapter though Baby Suggs' memory and Baby Suggs gets this really bad feeling, the reader has no idea what is coming next. By using this technique Morrison is able to make every scene unpredictable.

I'm not sure whether or not I like what Morrison does with the memories. On the one hand, it makes the novel more interesting because every scene is unpredictable and the reader never knows what's coming next. But on the other hand, it makes the book confusing and I'm sometimes having a hard time determining the sequence in which these scenes are occurring.   

The Art of (style) War

Style Wars really deepened my understanding of graffiti and graffiti culture. Before seeing Style Wars, I had seen graffiti but I never really understood it. It was just something that was there pretty to look at but often illegible. I never knew what a deep culture it had and how much of an art form it was. The movie really showed how much of a culture graffiti is and it also explained the process in detail which answered many questions that I always had about graffiti. I never knew that it took so long to paint a piece, I always thought that some artist would go out for like 45 min and spray paint a wall or something, when in reality there is a carefully thought out plan that takes hours to complete.

Many of the adults in the movie seemed to criticize graffiti because it is technically vandalism and they thought it made the trains and walls that graffiti was painted on uglier. In my opinion graffiti is an art form just as much as painting on canvas or music or dance. In fact all of the trains that they showed with paint on them looked more vibrant and alive and were much prettier than the dull white-grey that was their original color. Also when the cars where cleaned they turned an even uglier color of muddy grey that many citizens agreed was worse than the graffiti itself. Vikram and Jack talked about a famous graffiti writer's works being sold for millions of dollars, the fact that graffiti, which is supposedly "ugly vandalism" could sell for the same price of modern "art" should be indication enough that graffiti is art.

Side Note: Did anyone else find it sort of creepy how excited that one guy was about graffiti writers getting caught in razor wire?

Gunnar's college experience

After Gunnar is shipped off to El Campesino Real High School he seems to develop this attitude of indifference almost to the point of apathy in most things. He doesn't really care how he performs on the basketball court; he hides from recruiters and barely attends classes, spending most of his time in the library. 

This attitude carries on to the college process that is initiated when he takes the SAT, shocking the school officials with his high scores. When college recruiters come to talk to him he basically makes a fool of the Harvard recruiter and just walks away. Then he chooses Boston University seemingly randomly after he finds the BU recruiter playing cards with his friends and negotiates for Scoby to come along as well. 

When he actually goes to college these attitudes continue. He only attends one class where he is ridiculed and then suddenly treated as a celebrity and then he ends up leaving the class and stripping naked on his way home. He then allows the entire class to enter his house where he is naked cuddling with his wife. He also doesn't seem to care that much about basketball in college; he only joins the team after he is kicked out or leaves all of the other clubs he was trying. He doesn't think much of his coach and still is amused when the other players get covered in ink, because his hands were inky and he got it on the ball. 

It seems to me as though this attitude emerges as a result of Gunnar leaving his old life behind. He leaves behind Psycho Loco and the gang, leaves his family, he stays with Scoby, but Scoby gets really stressed out and depressed when he gets to college. Maybe I'm just reading too much into this but it feels like something has definitely changed. 

Gunnar the Poet

Having read the first few chapters of The White Boy Shuffle, I think that the most interesting thing for me is the writing style and Gunnar's style of speaking and writing. Gunnar starts out the novel in the Santa Monica culture talking "proper," but the narrative still has some aspects of slang in it, despite the poetic aspects that it also has.

But it gets really interesting when Gunnar moves to Hillside. He is forced to leave behind his "proper" way of speaking and adopt the more slang, street, almost thug language of Hillside. Despite this change in how Gunnar talks he still thinks himself a poet and his style of speaking still has poetic aspects to it. A reader can see this in the conversations he has with Nick Scoby. But the most interesting part to me is when his poetry and his Hillside language meld together. This is first seen at the Shakespearean contest when he goes up, and recites a version of Shakespeare but much more adapted to the style of speech he has learned to use in Hillside. This is increased when he earns his status of poéte maudit for the Gun Totin' Hooligans and for the neighborhood in general. When he is asked to speak at Pumpkin's funeral he delivers a poem full of Hillside dialect, truly displaying the result of this melding. 

As well as Gunnar's language I think that the language of the novel itself is different from that of most novels. Paul Beatty writes it with a much more laid back tone. No real fancy language or flowery styles, to me it makes the book that much better. As well as being kind of laid back, Beatty's writes in a way that allows him to flow fluidly in and out of Gunnar Kauffman's character. His writing meshes very well with Gunnar's style.  

Ethnic Notions

At the end of Ethnic Notions the movie had a little section that showed how far society had come since the time period depicted in the movie. (The movie was made in the 80's so it was a bit outdated)

I was thinking about how far we have come now, as of today, and while it does seem like the more extreme, in your face, exaggerated depictions have died out, it feels like that has brought on a new era of more subtle racism and notions of black people especially. When I think of current views I think of how black people are (sometimes) portrayed as criminals and it brings to mind all of the cases of police brutality against black people. This may not be the exaggerated, blackface and broad red/white lipped minstrel dances but it seems like it is another form of society's (wrongful) notions of black people. 

We also talked about different things that exist today that have a basis in this culture, such as the "eenie meenie" thing. I was really surprised to learn how such commonplace things like that (seemingly) nonsensical rhyme have such dark root. Even things like the food brands (aunt Jemima, etc) seem sto stem from this. Maybe it's nostalgia for things that we learned as children, its just seemed to me that there would be no reason to keep things like that in today's society. 

Janie's Many Marriages

There has been a lot of talk lately about Janie and her two marriages, from both perspectives, those who feel sympathy for Janie and those who think she is being "whiny."

In her first marriage Janie is married, against her will, to Logan Killicks, a farmer with 60 acres of land. Logan really loves her and for about a month he waits on her and praises her constantly. But after a while he stops and begins asking her to help out around the farm by doing things such as chopping wood and shoveling manure. Janie refuses to do these things and takes them almost as an affront, it seems as though she believes that these tasks are beneath her. Then along comes Joe Starks all handsome, suave, and rich and she immediately runs off with him. I don't think that this is something that Janie should be severely criticized for; she didn't love Logan at all and was forced to marry him. 

After living with Jody for a while with him as that mayor of Eatonville and her as the mayor's wife Jody begins to seem like a bad husband as well. He forces her to work in the shop all the time, even forcing her to wear a hair rag so that the other men won't look at her. He won't let her partake in the town gossip since that is "beneath" her in her position as mayor's wife, and as they grow older he begins to point out her signs of aging like wrinkles, in an attempt to draw attention away from his own aging. Some people seem to be very sympathetic for Janie at this point and there is some sympathy to be had for Janie but I think that it is partially her own fault. What was stopping her from just leaving Jody when he started acting like this towards her? It says that they were married for 20 years, so this isn't a new occurrence by the end of their marriage. It seems to me like she could have just as easily run away from Jody as she did from Logan.

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First Impressions of "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

A few days ago, I read the first three chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God and I was struck by the stark difference between the narrative parts of the novel and the dialogue. The narrative is very poetic, almost to the point of being flowery and then suddenly the reader is thrown into the dialogue which is written phonetically in a sort of vernacular of the time. It is written as it would be spoken by the characters, accounting for accent and dialect. This difference in writing style between the narrative portions and the dialogue helps the reader understand how the people that Zora Neale Hurston is trying to portray would have spoken. 

I think that it is interesting that although the characters' dialogue is written differently from the narrative, they are both still able to convey the same message and the author does a good job of making transitions between them very fluid. A good example of this is when Janie is telling her story to Phoebe. The story starts out as Janie speaking to Phoebe in the house and it is written in the style of the dialogue, but as the story progresses the narrator kind of takes over the story and it is written in the style of the narrative. Despite this change of style, it is still apparent that Janie is telling the story, and the same ideas are conveyed. 

It will be interesting to see how these two very different styles of writing work together throughout the remainder of the novel. 

Final Thoughts on Invisible Man

As we finished our discussion of Invisible Man in class I began thinking about the narrator and his progression throughout the novel. It seems to me that not only has he gained a greater knowledge/sense of his invisibility, but by the end of the novel he has also gained a better understanding of how the world and society works.

The book opens with him stating "I am an invisible man," and by the end of it the reader understands how he came to be living in this cellar, invisible to everyone. I think that this final realization of the power of invisibility, that he can wield comes in the scene where he has diguised himself to avoid Ras' men. He is mistaken for a guy named Rhinehart at least 3 times and each time he learns a new about piece of Rhinehart's personality. How Rhinehart is actually 4 or 5 very different people all at the same time. I think that this is the truning point for him, because he realizes that by being invisible he can do whatever he wants without as many societal restrictions.

Not only did the narrator become invisible by the end of his story, but he also gained an understanding of how the world works and how society works. In the beginning he was completely oblivious. Bledsoe sells him this story of earning a job in New York and then returning to college, when in reality he is being expelled, the Brotherhood tell him that he will be the next Booker T. Washington, when really they are just using him and in the end they get rid of basically everything that he's already done. Only at the very end of the novel does the narrator realize that the Brotherhood was simply using him. At this point, I think he finally understands the dynamics of society. How Bledsoe tricked him, how the Brotherhood used him, it's all part of how this wolrd works and it takes the entire book for the narrator to finally realize that not everything is as it seems and that all of these "opportunities" that he has received have really been tricks and illusions to get him to do what the people want him to do.

I guess that what I'm getting at is that the narrator realized more than just his invisibility by the end of the novel, he also realized how society functioned around him.

The Mask

Today in class we talked about a poem called "We wear the Mask." It talked about how people wear a mask sometimes and society doesn't see who they are or what they really feel on the inside. During the discussion a lot of comparison's were made to the "mask" that Bledsoe wears in Invisible Man when he is talking to Mr. Norton or the trustees and how that differs from his actual personality that comes out when he talks to the narrator.

As we were discussing I thought about the narrator and what "mask" he wears and I found that a when he enters the Brotherhood, it seems to me like he is asked to wear a "mask." He is given a new identity and is completely retaught in a new way of thinking by an older member of the Brotherhood. When he makes his speeches he isn't talking as himself but as that the identity that they have created for him, he speaks wearing the "mask" of the Brotherhood. In the beginning it seems that he is simply spouting their ideologies and doesn't completely believe in or even fully understand what he is saying.

As he begins to spend more time in his role with the Brotherhood, I think that he begins to become the "mask" that he wears. He starts to agree more with the ideas that he was taught by the Brothers and the identity that they gave him is more and more becoming his identity. I think that at the same time that he is becoming more independent and confident, he is also losing a part of he was before he came to the North.

Dreams and Surrealism

There are many parts in Invisible Man that are very "dreamlike" and surreal. In the first few chapters it was only small parts of the story, such the dreams that he had, or situations like the events that happened in the Golden Day. But as the book goes on the situations he is put in and the things that occur have become more and more surreal, like something out of a crazy dream.

I think that there are a lot of really good examples of this in the events leading up to and during his time working at the paint factory. It starts out as him crossing a bridge blanketed in fog, walking into the unknown. This scene on its own is pretty surreal, the fact that he is crossing a bridge into a place that he can't see, with fog all around him. But it only gets more surreal when he arrives at the paint factory, where he bounces from job to job being yelled at by all kinds of different people. First by Mr. Kimbro for messing up the paint and then he is sent to work in the basement with Mr. Brockway who is a bit odd and seems more like someone that would be encountered in a dream rather than real life. He is old and uneducated yet is somehow the only person who is able to keep the boilers and other parts running. 

Then he goes to get his lunch but is caught in a union meeting where he is called a "fink" and yelled at more until they decide to take a vote and then vote him out of the room. This part is very surreal how they go from calling him anti-union to suddenly having a vote about whether or not to let him into the union. After this he goes back to the basement were Mr. Brockway yells at him for being a part of the union, which he isn't, this yelling climaxes in a fight between him and the old man who ends up biting him and losing his dentures. This part, while comical, is totally unreal and would probably never happen in real life. This scene ends with the boiler exploding and the narrator passing out.

After the narrator passes out the book becomes even more dreamlike. He is waking up, as if from a crazy dream, only to find it's all real and he is in the factory hospital. In the hospital, instead of operating on him to fix the injuries he sustained in the explosion they decide to try an experimental electroshock treatment that renders him unable to move while they treat him. This part of the book is when a reader would have a hard time trying to tell if any of what was happening is real. The narrator has just woken up from an already surreal fight and explosion only to find that the doctors have decided against conventional methods and moved on to experimental electroshock treatment.

This part of the novel is so surreal that it would be very easy to convince the readers that he is actually at home dreaming all of this and that none of it is real. I think that this is done to help usher in a transition in the attitudes of the narrator. Gone is the submissive accepting narrator from the first chapters and in his place we have a narrator that is starting to change his view on everything and beginning to notice his invisibility. 

Native Son

 In our class discussion on Native Son it came up a lot that Bigger was a product of his environment. As we discussed I began to think about exactly which parts of Bigger's environment were causing him to turn out the way he became, because his environment wasn't all bad. He had the influences of his mother whose good intentions landed him a job and tried to keep him out of trouble.  I think the part of his environment that influenced him the most to do what he did both when he killed Mary and in his subsequent actions was fear.

In particular one scene that really exemplified all the fear in his environment was his confrontation with Gus in the pool hall. That scene was a crazy convoluted mess of fear. He had planned to rob Blum's store with his gang, but he was afraid of robbing a white man. But he also knew that he couldn't show his fear to his friends, so he had to find another way to stop the robbery from happening without making it seem like he didn't want to rob Blum's. So he confronted Gus claiming that Gus was afraid and intimidating Gus. In reality Gus was more afraid of Bigger than of robbing Blum's and he leaves because of this fear. This gives Bigger the result he wanted without him losing any face among his gang. 

This fear in his environment molds him to think irrationally when he is in situations where he becomes afraid. An example of this is after he kills Mary accidently he immediately is afraid of repercussions, but instead of telling someone that it was an accident he decides that it would be best to burn her body and blame it on Jan. Another example is when he decides to write a kidnap note that blames the Communists. This isn't a rational decision but he is so afraid of what will happen that the fear forces him to make these kinds of decisions.

In the end he is caught and faces a much worse fate than what he might have encountered if he had told the truth from the beginning. Bigger is a product of his environment, but more importantly he is a product of the fear in his environment and I think that is what causes him to act in the ways that he does.