Things twist around

I'm working on George Orwell's 1984 again. This time, it's a comparison between Orwell's novel and Micheal Radford's film. I'm not certain the essay needs to be monstrous; but it ought to be worth the paper it's printed on. Following the usual five-point outline, I need three significant points.

Setting is going to be in there. I'll be looking at setting as more than just time and place, though. What does the setting say about the culture, class, the whole relationship to the environment. Some of the points here are A) The telescreen is omnipresent, always something being said; this makes the point about the bombardment of the senses. B) Cultural elements seemed to be a bit panned over-they don't bear the same import of the book, eg dollars for pounds, liters for pints, tea and the coral. C) Music is used in the film; diagetic music such as Oceania 'Tis for thee, and non diagetic music by the eurythmics which appears in Winston's various dreams. D) The sense of surveillance isn't there for the film as it is for the book.

Characterizations in the film are different. They're much more low key than than the novel. A) The Parsons' children are muted and tired in the film whereas in the book they gamboled about like lions around a kill. B) Charrington's lines are editted that he comes across in an almost surreal manner, or at least out of sorts. C) Winston Smith does not have the nervous panic that the book gives him-the stress he has simply trying to write his first journal entry is gone, the idea of killing Julia when she sees him in the prole sector is gone.

There are other changes which flow from the screenplay, such as A) Language. Radford really tries to push Newspeak, which is good. However he changes the term "Comrade" to "brother" and "sister". Comrade Ogilvy is still Comrade Ogilvy, but in verious other places, the change is made. B) Themes. The themes of malleability of reality is still there. The Alienation, though, seems curbed off. Winston's disgust for his fellow party members, the Parsons' children's treacherous loyalty to big brother, get boiled down to one invented speach. C) The ending is different; the film's is abbreviated.

perhaps this is worth it, perhaps.

Kurtz had a year in the jungle for his essay

It's not easy to break away from a content and satisfyingly warm summer to write a paper, in any event, but I feel I am worse than most at demanding academic discipline from myself. Today, I found myself preferring a breathless forty-minute run in the summer heat over the easy task of banging away at the keyboard.

I declared very firmly that I wanted to finish my prewriting last Tuesday, or perhaps Wednesday. I can say now that I've completed it in the same way as I did for my last sizable essay. In maintaining my nerve to write, I must remember that the sooner I write this paper, the sooner I can begin editting and rewriting it, which where I feel I can make my strongest impact one way or another for its true fated outcome.

Final Outline, sans intended citations.

i) Intro, mention the following
a) light and dark dichotomy
b) main characters kurtz and marlow
c) interpretation of Marlow's lie

ii) Light and Dark Dichotomy
a) what is the light
1)Surface reality
2) pretenses, work ethic, philanthropy, racism
b) what is darkness
1) the reality/genuineness of darkness
2) How the darkness affects people (discuss for various characters)

iii) Character analysis of Marlow (not touching on any of Conrad's other Marlow works)
a) his character and conduct before the his journey (unprepared for the repulsiveness of Imperialism, embraces work, despises lies)
b) his initiation up the river
c) what he takes away with him from his journey

iv)Survey of part one

v) survey of part two

vi) Survey of part three, Character Analysis of Kurtz

vii) Interpreting the Intended scene and Conrad's thesis, message, in the story.

viii) conclusion.

Here's my thesis, opener of the paper, in sixty-six words:
In his famous short novel, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad utilizes imagery of light and darkness to accentuate the leading theme of the story. Images of light and whiteness are symbolic of the beliefs and faiths of civilized white people, which are demonstrated as being pretentious and often throughout the story. Images of darkness and shadow symbolize the vacuous absence of any civilized beliefs or customs.

Revision.

It's a lot of back and forth between the book and the critical sources, both lending understanding to each other. I've finished my last read-through of the text-though I had rather say only latest-and I want to engage in my final section of prewriting, before I get down to brass tacks and actually (gasp!) write something.

First, I need to revise my thesis. Previously the words "dark epiphany" had been bouncing around in my head, the concept being that rather than describing the darkness as a force of evil, and "atavistic reversion" to paraphrase Ian Watt, the darkness of Heart of Darkness represented Epiphanical knowledge of the human capacity for good and evil. I had wanted to say that what happened in the book was that Mr. Kurtz had gone out into the jungle for a prolonged period of time, surrounded by the darkness, until he had a "dark epiphany" that he could do anything he wanted-such as shoot his Russian companion-and that he "had kicked himself loose of the earth" as Conrad wrote, acting against all his previous beliefs, if he indeed had any.

But now I'm thinking differently. What I'm thinking is that rather than an epiphany, what happened to Kurtz was a Revelation. Epiphany suggests the gaining of new knowledge, but as Marlow comments, the mind of a man is capable of anything because everything is in it. So the capacity for brutish evil which Kurtz Possessed was not learned, but uncovered-Revealed to him. I believe that the mechanics of this revelation are told partly in terms of light and dark.

In my interpretation the dichotomy between Light and Darkness is thus: Light represents the moral systems and conventions of civilization, which is throughout the novel dragged out as being a huge lying pretense. Brussels, head of the trading company which travels into the Congo, is described as a "Whited Sepulchre"- I forget the exact allusion, I know it's from the bible, and it's something about, "Whited Sepulchres, which look very pretty on the outside, but inside are filled with dead men's bones." This is one of the primary symbols of light-something very pleasing which masks something very ugly, yet distinctly human. This is why Marlow says he would become acquainted with a "Pretending weak-eyed devil" in the land. The pretense takes many forms. In England, the pretense is of the highest sort, and the company is believed to have a philanthropic, humanizing concern. The greed shows through the pretenses more in the Sepulchre City, and by the time Marlow is at the Central Station, the pretenses are almost nonexistent. One of the major pretenses is the work ethic. Marlow comments about how there is the "chance to find yourself. Your own reality." in work, but one's own reality is essentially a surface reality, a veil of pretense which hides the truth of Darkness. Marlow's disgust of the pilgrims and managers of the inner station is their refusal to work, or in the manager's case to simply keep the routine going, and do nothing productive; yet all the pilgrims want to get a trading post to make money, and the Manager wants to get promoted.

The darkness represents naturalistic human motivations in the absence of the various pretenses and hypocrisies of civilization. As Marlow sails down the African coast he runs across the French Man o' War, absurdly shelling the bush. Having left the land of pretenses-and being the type of man to question what's before him-Marlow sees the action for the absurd folly that it is, and he is positively relieved to see black people rowing boats from shore: the boat "gave one momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. [...] For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts." Things like the French ship scare this feeling away. When Kurtz stays at the upper station for a prolonged period of time, away from the light and submerged in the darkness, his civilized pretenses and beliefs begin to fail him, and he has no inner strength to force himself to act in accordance with his civilized morals. As a result, Kurtz is won over, or gives himself over, to his baser human motivations. He loses his pretenses, which had supplied him with whatever morals he'd previously had, and he becomes a terribly immoral. Kurtz is a bit of a special case for the Darkness, because he was absolutely hollow inside: "he could get himself to believe anything-anything." and as such I pose the he truly believed nothing, had faith in nothing, but was capable of faking belief. The darkness did not act force Kurtz to do anything, it did not manipulate him, it mere revealed to him that his pretense of civilized behavior was just that, and that he was capable of acting in ultimate 'freedom'- could kill if he wanted, could frighten tribes of Africans into following him, could demand sacrifices, could put heads on stakes, and least of all could have all the ivory he could possibly want.

So, that's the dichotomy between light and dark, as I see it. That's how I want to try and interpret the novel. This will require me to rewrite my outline. I should also find a better way of expressing the above. Those are two very, very ungraceful paragraphs.

Bears lose Rex Grossman, White Sox drop two to Red Sox

Having just finished annotating the various critical sources I've collected, I decided I should give the novel one last read-through. And it's been something.

Lawrence Graver broaches the subject of the narrative frame of the story, that it is a narrative within a narrative. Graver points to two or three instances where Marlow's internal narrative breaks-once when a member of his audience asks him to be civil, after Marlow describes them as people doing "monkey tricks" at a "half-crown a tumble", again when he describes the death of his helmsman and someone says, "absurd". There's another instance early in the second part as Marlow describes Africans rushing to the bank as the Steamer passed and the sense that came over him, that there was some kinship between himself and the natives, and someone grunts.

The break that I notice is the first, before Marlow begins his tale proper- "'What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the ideal-something you can set up, and bow down before, and make a sacrifice to. . .' He broke off." This part where Marlow breaks off his narrative harkens to two other points in the novel almost perfectly-First is Kurtz's idolatry, where he has "Set up" himself as a god, where natives "bow down" before him, and make sacrifices to him. The second is the intended scene. Much earlier, when talking about his earnest aunt, Marlow says of the world of women, "If they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset." The intended has most definitely "set up" her own world of faith and belief in Kurtz, and when Marlow visits her we winds up "bowing [his] head before the faith that was in her," which leaves only one matter to resolve: is Kurtz the sacrifice made to the Intended's faith, or is it Marlow? Kurtz is the one who died, but Marlow compromises his own morals not a little selfishly when he lies to her about Kurtz's last words. I believe it is Kurtz who was the sacrifice, if only because it matches with the thematics of the rest of the novel to describe Kurtz as a Sacrifice, like a Martyr, when the truth is that he was anything but. When he died he was a depraved villain who only in his last moments realized "the horror" of what he had done. But for Marlow to call him a sacrifice is the kind of Orwellian lie that he has despised throughout the whole story, and it represents just how much he compromised himself when he described Kurtz as a Sacrifice.

The other thing that jumped out at me was in relation to some parts of the telling, and Marlow's relation to his audience. Marlow refers to the "outraged law" and "all the legality of time contracts" when he arrives at the first company station, and enters the grove of death. Then, he meets the company Accountant, and soon thereafter the Manager of the Central Station. It occurred to me that Marlow's audience is a Lawyer, an Accountant, and the Director of Companies. Each member of the audience, save the narrator, is described pretentiously. The Director has the pose of a pilot, "Which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified", yet "his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom." The Lawyer had the only cushion and rug on deck "because of his many virtues", but in truth people don't get cushions and rugs from virtue but from money. The accountant was "toying architecturally with the bones," which-I hypothesize-is meant to elicit the more common meaning of bones; the things that get left behind when people die.

There's something in this story for each of the three identified members of the audience. Then, Marlow describes his job of piloting the river boat as a "monkey trick," and then likens the employment of everyone in his audience to the same. And then I was reminded of some of the narration when Marlow was going down the coast. He said "now and then a boat [...] gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. [...] For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts," but the presence of Marlow's white companions on his ship, and the Shelling of the Man o' war he encountered would scare the feeling away. All this put together, to me, appears to be Marlow's indictment of all of civilization. Everything people do-people like Lawyers, Accountants, Directors of Companies-is all a pretense, a surface reality which keeps in holding with our civilization. When taken out of context, the "monkey tricks" of civilization look as absurd as the French Man o' War, shelling a continent. These pretenses and surface truths blind us to the truths about our world-truths which were represented in the black paddlers of boats for Marlow.

Bears Win, Space Shuttle lands,

I suppose this is not uncommon. I've had two months to write this paper about Heart of Darkness and now I've only got three weeks until classes start, and I only have a thesis and a preponderance of pre-writing prepared. I don't suppose I'll be making any headlines: "College Student Needlessly Procrastinates" or the like. Two months, or three weeks, though, is still plenty of time, especially with my research complete. So, now I should write an outline. This will get fleshed out when I re-read the story and pick out the various specific incedents that I'll want to use as supporting examples of the thesis.

I.) Introduction of Thesis: The 'Darkness' of Heart of Darkness represents true knowledge of the human capacity for evil. (Upon writing that, I find that I am woefully unprepared to address any epistemological concerns that may influence this paper)

II) The Darkness in part 1 of the story: The example of Fresleven as a man who became acquainted with the darkness, the character of the Company Accountant and his snowy white suit, and the General Manager.

III.) The Darkness in part 2 of the story: The conversation of the Manager and his uncle, and the gesture towards the jungle, "the profound darkness at its heart." Traveling away from the surface reality of central station, on the oasis of surface reality-the steamboat. Discussing the blacks on shore, "this suspicion of their not being inhuman" and surface reality, Towson's inquiry and the character of the Russian.

IV.) Part 3, the character of Kurtz, his hollowness, and his dark epiphany in the jungle. His relationship with Marlow. His "moral victory" and his final words as being an acknowledgement of "the horror" of the human capacity for evil, which he experienced first hand.

V.) Marlow's own understanding derived from his journey, and his experience with kurtz. What he has learned about the darkness, and how it influences his actions with Kurtz's Intended.

VI) Conclusion


That'll do for a start, I hope.

Wish I didn't know now....

For the past month or so, I've been going over Heart of Darkness and various bits of critical analysis thereof over and over. Originally, I had thought to put forth a thesis about the story being a Night Journey, in the words of Albert Guerard. However, my investigations yielded nothing in the way of shedding any academic light on the nature of what a Night Journey specifically was. I didn't feel up to the task of trying myself to produce a cogent idea of what a night journey was-especially since my only sources were Albert Guerard's critical examinations of the Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Without understanding the criterion for analysis-that is, the Night Journey-I felt the analysis just wouldn't work. So, I kept at it and came up with something different.

I was on vacation up at Devil's Lake in Wisconsin when the idea came to me. The thought is that the Darkness, which is spoken of so much in the novel, which is described as having its hold on Kurtz, nearly surrounding the Intended, lurking in the trees, and so forth, is representative of Epiphanical knowledge about the human spirit, and its capacity for evil.

It's a fairly mainstream kind of interpretation, answering the very general question "What does the Darkness in Heart of Darkness symbolize?" It certainly doesn't qualify as any new area of study, and the thesis doesn't break off in any strange new directions of interpretation; but I think I can support this thesis well, and put together a cogent argument in favor of it, that finds resonance throughout the novel. I'll want to touch on all the significant characters and their relation to this knowledge. I'll want to make sure also that I have a grasp of the white/black, light/dark imagery and symbolism, because that can be an important facet of the argument, prevalent in the final scene with the intended, in Kurtz's ivory-white skin, Fresleven's white bones, in contrast with all the Africans, and the darkness of the jungle.

utter confusion.

So, I've been focusing on writing my paper, and I've had very few problem, until now. I'm working on my Works Cited page, and I've had no problem with citing my books and the journal articles (except guessing what the gale group wants to be called). However, from what I can tell, there are three different ways to cite articles from the reference collection, none of which seem to get the whole job done.

On the (Local college) library web site there is an entry for "Articles or Chapter from an Editted Book". The reference books are certainly books, which are editted, and contain articles. But the Library entry does not include any information for citing volume number, which seems pretty important when you consider that some of these reference collections have over one-hundred volumes.

The Troyka & Hesse Handbook for Writers, Seventh Edition has two entries that sound right for a reference book: "Signed Article in a Reference Book-MLA" and "Article from a collection of Reprinted Articles-MLA". Both of the those describe the reference books I used, but neither addresses volume numbers, either. The latter entry, "Article from a collection of repreinted articles" is the most thorough and seems like the most correct, but it's also as such the most complicated, and theHandbook for Writers provides no attached text to explain the single confusin example, so I doubt I could correctly mimic that kind of entry.




That all being said, I'm going to use the (local college) "Articles or Chapters from an editted book" format. I can't guarantee that it's the right one to use, but I can guarantee that I don't know that any other format is more correct.

outline

I’ve organized my outline, it turned out as a simple I, II, III, IV, V like I was taught back in junior high. But of course I see no reason why a simply organized outline should work against my paper... unless it should result in awkward paragraph form.

I.) Intro. State the thesis, etcetera.

II.) Character sketch of the narrator. Every article about “The Secret Sharer” has its own opinion about the characters; here is where mine will be.
A.) Reliability of the Narrator: I believe the strongest interpretation of the story flows from assurance in the credibility of the narrator; Without it, there is almost no relation between he and Leggatt and the story becomes particularly low.
B.) The excessive Kindness of the captain; this is an important trait, no doubt. His consideration for the crew’s hard work in the opening and letting everyone turn in early is how he meets Leggatt in the first place, and his kindness leads him to shelter the so-called “homicidal ruffian”.
C.) His great doubt and “Strangeness”. His doubt is an obvious trait, but what is his “Strangeness”, what all does it entail? How will the coming of Leggatt impact his strangeness?

III.) Sketch of Leggatt
A.) Leggatt as the Narrator’s bad dream, risen up from the unconscious (the Ocean) because the captain’s doubt has drawn him up. Here, I only want to establish Leggatt as Being the bad dream- I’ll talk later on what it means for the story as a whole.
B.)Leggatt as a repentant criminal. I’m on the “No homicidal ruffian” side of the debate, and Leggatt’s insistence upon carrying out punishment, originally in the form of suicide, speak volumes about his personal knowledge of his own guilt, and his understanding that he deserves punishment.
C.) Here I only want to broach the question, is Leggatt as a person(or a bad dream) a Better self, a Lower self, or equal to the captain? Whether it deserves its own outline bullet or not, I believe Leggatt is essentially no better or worse than any other man, and equal more or less to the captain.

IV.) Doppelganger! Or, what is the relationship between Leggatt and the captain, what does it mean, what is the statement of the story, then.
A.) Leggatt as the captain’s bad dream comes up to haunt him. The narrator may not be overwhelmed with self doubt (As Archbold was during the storm) but he’s obviously in excess of it, as there is a whole character to represent it. The bad dream represents the Crisis of the story; the problem to be overcome.
B.) The captain treats Leggatt kindly, unwilling to pass judgement. Essentially this unwillingness becomes almost cowardice, like how Archbold couldn’t order the reefed foresail set, and the captain is forced, by Leggatt, to make a decision on the matter, to maroon Leggatt.
C.) Koh-Ring: Does the Koh-Ring maneuver represent a cause or an effect? Is it what causes the captain to mature, or does the maneuver arrive only as an effect of the other actions of the captain, as in his malfeasance? I contend that the maneuver is the culmination of the challenges to the captain’s strangeness and his own perceived self-doubt. The maneuver certainly isn’t otherwise necessary, but the captain undertakes it as a lesson to be learned.
D.) The ultimate significance of marooning Leggatt: what does it mean? What does the hat mean? (Granted, I’ll be answering these questions, not asking them in the paper)

V.) Conclusion, recite everything I’ve said, and the thesis.

Sick, sick.

I've been sick this week. Not an excuse, mind, but the truth none the less. I finished reviewing my secondary sources over the week. I think my secondary sources have got to be twice as long as "The Secret Sharer" itself. One thing I learned after taking a nice thorough account of the three different types of sources out there, I found I really hate the internet, I think. All three internet articles I found were the worst sort of criticism. One, that I've written about here, purports that the narrator is so unreliable, the story may not even exist. The other two may be summed up by one loud word:

GAY!!!!!

It's mind boggling how deep some people are willing to go just to find "buttsex" in a story. One of the essays even goes so far as to say that in the story everyone on the ship is gay, as well as everyone in the world. Now, as Steve Zissou of The Life Aquatic tells us, everyone's at least part gay, but this article essentially called the whole world gay.

Now, maybe this isn't the internet's fault. The three internet articles were all also very modern. My brother joked when he noticed some of the criticism I'd photocopied from Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, "Won't this piss off your professor? Doesn't he want to you to use Twenty-First Century criticism?" Our humor doesn't transfer well to text, I admit. Essentially maybe it's just that all modern criticism likes to look for penis references and doubt everything it reads.

Or maybe it has to do with where these article databases get their articles from. None of the article databases as I recall threw up anything by Karl or Geurard, two of the eminent Conrad critics from the middle of the twentieth century. (or maybe I just wasn't paying attention) Parhaps the Article Databases only collect modern articles from more popular literary magazines, thus causing them to exclude older articles, such as Karl and Geurard, because they just don't get published anymore.

Whatever the story may be, I finished reading all the articles. I know more than I probably should about "The Secret Sharer". The last thing to do was to actually read the story again, with all the new information in the back of my mind. I read very carefully, underlined passages that reverberated within me and that I thought were significant to me and what I'd read. When I was done, I rambled out my new, informed impressions of the story. Then, I asked the question about the story that I thought would be the best to try and answer: What is the significance of the narrator's doppleganger relationship with Leggatt? Most critics agree, the relationship between the two IS the story. So I did some little character sketches of what I thought of both the characters, and came up with my thesis: Leggatt is the captain's Bad Dream of his own "strangeness", and by undergoing the ordeal of helping Leggatt the captain overcomes his doubts and strangeness.

Good and straightforward, not to wordy. There was a longer version I'll probably use, but the above states my most important point. I'm in the process of writing out an outline, and making notes on where I can ensure placement for all my ten sources. Yes, right now I think-I hope-that the process is well on its way. The only thing that stands in its way the absolute bothersomenes that is the responsibility of having other classes, and other responsibilities that promise to encroach upon my time.

Easy, ?

So after a two or three hour trip to the library, I think I have all my sources. I've said it before, libraries are a wonderful thing.

I grabbed another book--not Karl's, it had by then been checked out--by Lawrence Graver, giving me three books. As I've said, I have three database sources, though I may drop one of them, I'm not sure. And then I collected an article by Douglas Hewitt from Short Story Crticism vol. 9, an Article from Frederick Karl taken from Twentieth Century Literary Criticism vol. 6, and three articles from TCLC vol. 57--which has an 84 page section entirely on the secret sharer--by Geurard, Ressler, and Simmons.

All in all, this gives me eleven sources. Of the eleven, I've only really read the book sources, and I'll have to re-read those; all in all I'll have to read about seventy or eighty pages of Conrad criticism before I can start writing.

On the bright side, I should be an expert on this single story by the time I'm done. Nine days before it's due to be turned in.

Preparation, et al.

So, ten secondary sources; define ‘pressure’. I know I could grab ten sources very easily by grabbing a bunch of articles with basic information and minor, gleaning insight and scatter them throughout the plot summary. I could handle four or five, or even six sources that way. But ten sources? I mean, that’s almost half of all the reading assignments I’ve had in this quarter. And at the risk of being a bit snarky, requiring ten sources seems that it would add to the breadth of the essay before it would add to the depth of the paper.


But, maybe I’m overreacting. As it is I already have five sources. Two from books, although one of the books’ publisher’s doesn’t give itself a proper location in it’s opening pages. It’s just not there. I have three articles from COD’s online databases, two of which may be very useful, one which is less so. Now, supposing that I can get my two sources from the reference section, I’ll be at seven sources. If I can get a third source from Short Literature Criticism and Short Stories for Students and whatever else is at hand, then I’ll be at eight sources. I can probably grab a third book source if whom ever borrowed—not lent out, but borrowed—Frederick Karl’s reader’s guide to Conrad should be so good as to return it. Then, I’d have nine sources. So, I’d only need one more source then.


That’s so many sources, I get the mental image of my computer overheating, while my desk explodes with copies of articles flying into the air while I desperately try to grab them down, not to read, but to fan my motherboard that it doesn’t catch on fire.


After I collect my ten sources, then I have to read an analyze them all. Maybe I suck at finding delightfully compact sources, but my five sources come out to over ten pages a source, thus far. I’m going to have to thoroughly read and analyze/annotate at least a few of these sources if I really want to use them effectively. So, with the essay due in about... Ten Days? I’d say that I maybe have five days to finish my collection and analysis of this plethora of sources, then five days to try and cogently enmesh them with my own essay.


In a side note, I attended Barbara Ehrenreich’s lecture, and the food for thought dinner before hand. So I know that she’d only heard about the People’s Resource [Committee, Council?] about two hours before deciding to announce that she was going to donate her entire fee for the night to them. I do feel like something of a prick, though, because I sat at her table, and I was terribly unequipped. I couldn’t converse for screw-all. That, and it was a bit intimidating to be one of maybe four students in attendance.


Bought her book, though.

Draft Day, Playoffs.

I mentioned my fingers being frozen on my essay- they’ve also been frozen on this blog. I haven’t written anywhere near as much as I should have up to this point. I wonder if perhaps this is a result of the general workload I have. It isn’t that, since last quarter was much worse. Perhaps, then, it’s that of my classes this quarter almost all my time is taken by reading, and writing. Not that I would expect car chases or epic battle-royals to be part of the curriculum, but out of English, Literature, and Speech, my primary type of homework is read literature, analyze, write on literature. But then again, perhaps it’s just that after two quarters of blogging, I’m taking it for granted. Who knows.

“The Secret Sharer.” It served me a reminder that writing essays all in one night is a bad thing. Especially all on Draft Day. (Go Go Cedric Benson) Doable, but it’ll take years off your life if you keep it up. I also know that I didn’t prepare my sources – and I had plenty – or utilize enough in the paper. Each was cited once, both providing some pithy insight or note, but none really supplying any high-value thesis about “Secret Sharer.” In preparing for the final paper, I’ll have to read more into my sources, determine their theses, and more completely integrate them into my paper.

This situation also has an unforeseen benefit, in that it puts me a Leg-gatt up putting on a group presentation this Friday. (Get it? GET IT? Leg-gatt? Leg up? HAW HAW! I’m the funniest man alive!!1!) The group presentation will be the first discussion of “The Secret Sharer” in class, which is an important consideration. It will be necessary to start at the top, the outermost layer of the story—spend a few minutes handling the plot, characters, setting. Next move on to internal mechanics, simile, symbol, motif, other elements. Lastly take those elements and attempt to plumb from then some various interpretations of the story’s greater meaning, thesis, or theme.

Good criticism, tough to find- especially on shor notice.

For some reason, my hands feel near-frozen on the first installment of this paper which is due on the twenty fifth. And finding a good secondary source is proving just as hard.

I’ve been reading through the first of the secondary sources I grabbed, “CONSTRUING CONRAD'S "THE SECRET SHARER": SUPPRESSED NARRATIVES, SUBALTERN RECEPTION, AND THE ACT OF INTERPRETATION” and it’s no help to my interpretation. The author, Brian Richardson makes a harshly realistic interpretation of Conrad’s “Secret Sharer,” incredulously describing the first meeting of the narrator and Leggatt by asserting that if you were to “meet a largely naked stranger outside a bus depot who admits he's just killed a man, you would not be so quick to offer him excuses, clothing, and a hiding place.” Joseph Conrad was not only a writer, he was an artist, and Richardson here is paying no attention to what Conrad’s artistic goal (or at least, my interpretation thereof) in “Secret Sharer.” Later, Richardson questions the “appropriateness of the narrator's identification of himself with Leggatt.”

“Appropriateness”? Richardson may as well be saying, “It is inappropriate for Conrad to write this story in such and such a way.” Richardson seems to think that the relationship between the narrator and Leggatt is the same as any real people; that Leggatt is nothing more than a stranger to the narrator, at all, and that narrator is mentally defective, perhaps, for finding any kinship with the fugitive. Richardson explains:
The captain goes on to innocently believe every statement and claim put forth by Leggatt, never wanting or daring to scrutinize the other's discourse critically:

"I had not interrupted him. There was something that made comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps in himself: a sort of feeling, a quality, which I can't find a name for" (p. 109). It is precisely these kinds of romantic, unnameable qualities, I suggest, that often do not exist at all.

I’ll be honest, here. This guy sounds like some kinda fool to me. He says, in that quote, that a character does not have a feeling that he purports to have. “Do not exist at all”? Brian Richardson may as well walk up to a person who says, “I have a headache” and say, “No you don’t- you’re a liar.” Brian Richardson may as well question whether or not ANYTHING in “Secret Sharer” actually exists- the ship, the Sephora, Captain Archbold, the sea, the narrator, or anything.

If Joseph Conrad were alive today and holding a reading of “The Secret Sharer,” I can’t help but imagine that Brian Richardson would stand up in the middle of the reading, point at Conrad himself, and shout “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU! YOU’RE A LIAR!” To state that the narrator is unreliable is one thing, but Richardson has gone off the deep end, to state that Conrad is unreliable as an author.

This is perhaps the worst kind of criticism, because is highly destructive, but Richardson still carries it out fairly well:

There is consequently little reason to wonder why the captain fears Archbold's alternative interpretations, characterizations, and counter-narratives: "If he had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the test!" (p. 120), the captain writes, and he is correct in feeling alarm at the idea of such an investigation because it is a test he cannot expect to pass.

This line, with it’s use of quotation, appears very strong, except that the exact opposite of Richardson’s interpretation is probably what Conrad intended – why else would he spend such time and effort relating the two characters together?

I have a clear image of what this, and the other stories we've read, mean - but I cannot seem to reconcile my ideas to the task at hand.

Congratulations, Chris Duhon.

Tonight Chris Duhon set a new three-point shot record for the Chicago Bulls in their win over the Atlanta Hawks, by sinking eight of nine three-point shots, edging out the previous record of seven which was held by Jalein Rose, Jannero Pargo, and the legendary Micheal Jordan. Duhon's twenty-four points were also a season high for him. Also noteworthy, the Bulls have now won forty-six games, doubling last year's win total.

Anyway, I finished rereading "The Secret Sharer." It was a very informed second reading, aided perhaps by the reading I've been doing in my "interpreting cultural voices" seminar. We're reading from an anthology bookwhose theme is "Self and Other in global context." Joyce's "The Dead," Lu Xun's "Upstairs in a Wineshop," Rabindranath Tagore's "Punishment," Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author and Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis."

I also took advantage of this wonderous intra-net to grab a number of articles about "Sharer." About forty pages in three articles, that will be a whole 'nother read unto themselves. But for the time, I have a paper due in a little over a week.

I guess the one missing puzzle piece is the captain of the Sephora. What is he there for? Is he a foil to the narrator? In many ways, they are related; they both experience a harrowing experience on the seas, for instance. Archbold and his blurry-blue eyes go to pieces in the midst of the storm, and can't even give out an order while the whole crew is basically going bonkers. The Narrator has a similar moment when he's skirting his ship close to Koh-Ring island, but he manages to pull himself together at least to give orders. In both cases, Leggatt, sort-of saves the ship. In the first case he really saves the Sephora by going out and placing a precarious sail, but in the second instance a hat merely falls off his head.

Captain Archbold. He must mean something more articulate then all I can figure.

'uncah bubba

“Gorilla, My Love.” For whatever reason, I locked on the character’s (Hazel’s) intelligence as one of the key factors in the story as an initiation story. Hazel comments how she’s the smartest kid in public school 186, she offers expert criticism of the story of Jesus Christ by describing how foolish it is to get nailed to a cross, etcetera. Now, this is an important element of the character, but when I opened up the “masterplots” article, the word Pride struck me in the face. And it was correct- intelligence is a subservient trait to pride in the story. I’m kicking myself a bit for not noticing that; I’ve seen pride and discussed pride a number of times before hand, but somehow it just slipped past me as though I took it for granted. On the other hand, maybe the story is just written so well that these concepts, like pride, can just slip past the reader.

Pride is the center element of the initiation story, here. Hazel pride in her perceptions and beliefs about the world – her belief that her uncle meant to marry her – cause her suffering when she experiences the revelation that she was incorrect. What elements are in the story? That is, if I were to write a thesis about this story, what could it be? I suppose it would focus on perception and self-image, along with narrative structure and colloquial diction. How Hazel’s own proud perceptions drive the action and development of the story, et cetera. But, I’m probably not going to write that thesis. I plan on doing something with “The Secret Sharer” for my affinity for Joseph Conrad. I read the story last summer before reading Heart of Darkness, but I should refresh my memory, and quickly, since the first essay is due fourteen days from now.

By the way, Go Bulls, clinching their first playoff appearance in eight years. Been a long ride to get to this point.

Decisions, decisions.

Again and again when trying to focus on the production on any kind of cogent thought about “Boys and Girls,” I come back to Munro’s description when her character throws the gate open. “...I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did.” I try to be as careful a reader as anyone else, but that sounds like bull to me. Usually when I read something I can feel relatively sure that when I see something the author has written, it is significant. When Yeats writes “Perne in a Gyre” for instance I can be sure that he wrote that phrase for a reason. But Munro, in the above, specifically makes her statement absurdly ambiguous. Not only does she not provide any motivation for the character (although any reader can furnish their own) she for some reason writes, “I did not make any decision to do this,” as though her character has had a lapse of her senses, or a moment of pure insanity, or demonic possession.

What is it to make no decision? To make no decision is virtually impossible: when a person comes into a state of affairs that they can perceive and understand, they immediately begin making decisions. When any person stands in front of an open gate where a horse is escaping, and they are told to close the gate, they make a decision, no matter what. If they close the gate, it is because they have decided to. If the open the gate as wide as they can, it is because they decided to. Even inaction is decision: if the person stands entirely still they have decided to allow the gate to remain closed or open, however they are. The closest I can imagine a competent person making no decision in this situation is to flip a coin, or otherwise determine randomly, as to whether or not to leave the gate open. The person will be then responsible for the gate being open or closed, but they will not have decided that state of affairs within themselves, though they will be as responsible as if they had decided. The only other explanation for the character making no decision that I can understand is that she was somehow incompetent at that moment, either by bodily injury or by insanity. Munro’s character doesn’t have a broken leg, and she did not flip a coin. It seems to me that the character must have some kind of mental deficiency.

In the next paragraph, Munro describes how her character realizes that she has not helped the escaping horse; the horse will be tracked down and killed anyway. Munro describes how her character has disobeyed her father and now will no longer be trusted. Then she states, “Just the same, I did not regret it [...] [opening the gate] was that only thing I could do.” In this the author implies that the character had sympathy for the horse to be killed. By mentioning regret, Munro also implies that the character ought to feel ashamed of herself. But if the character is not in their right mind, and if her sympathy for the horse did not influence her because, of course, there was no decision made to be influenced, then what do these facts matter? They matter for absolutely nothing, unless Munro’s point is that little girls become little women, and a trait of little women is insanity.

One of two things is happening here. Either Munro made a terrible blunder in stating that her character made no decision, because it appears that the character did make a decision. Or, Munro lied to her reader. The difference here is whether Munro made the decision to write a contradictory statement or not. I’ll let an accident slide, but I don’t think I could tolerate this if it were done on purpose.

Literary analysis and "Boys and Girls"

At [unnamed college] I'm taking an Oral interpretation of Literature seminar this session, which is one-third about analyzing literature, along with english. That in mind, I ought to be analyzing literature like it's going out of style, right? Well, not so much in the first week.

If I were to develop a thesis for Boys and Girls, aside from "animal imagery contributing to the theme of freedom and imprisonment", I reckon I would write something like this: The family archetypes used by Alice Munro strongly influence character development in her initiation story, "Boys and Girls."

After presenting a thesis like that, I would then go on discussing how Alice Munro's character in the story relates positively to her father at some points in the story and negatively in others, and then articulate what elements of the father's archetypal character are responsible for that relation. Then, I'd do the same for the character's relation to the archetypal character of her mother. Lastly, to tie those relations in with the theme of initiation and growth, I would then go on to describe how the character's relation to her parents changes her and causes her to grow from what she is in the beginning of the story to what she is in the end of story. The final part of the analysis would involve how and if those changes constitute a proper initiation for the character.

"Boys and Girls"

In Munro’s story the main character, a young tomboyish girl, believes that her mother wishes to convert or initiate her into the duties of being a mother and domestic laborer. The character sincerely does not want this, and considers her mother to be her enemy, and to be plotting against her. The character identifies more with her father, with masculine traits: she enjoys helping him in his work, (raising and skinning foxes) dreams of performing acts of great heroism, and endeavored to learn horse riding and shooting. The plot of the story focuses on a pair of horses that the character’s family owns and means to slaughter for meat for foxes; one of the horses is named Mack and the other was a rambunctious Flora, a mare, with whom the main character identifies with on an implicit level. The focus of the story is when the character helps Flora the mare escape before it is shot and butchered. Flora is eventually caught and butchered anyway. When it is discovered that the character allowed the horse to escape she is ashamed of herself and her father is disgusted with her, and he condemns her as being “Only a girl.”

Munro states that there was no motivation on the character’s part – she says: “that was the only thing I could do.” Taking this into account, it is clear that the author does not with to discuss the internal dynamics and motivations of the character, or to provide information that the reader may thoroughly deconstruct her perception of the world. What I believe Munro tries to do in the way she describes the world is to present a greater dynamic than one’s characters mind, but the dynamic of human growth and human relations.

The character grows in the story, at first being very masculine, dreaming of being a stereotypical and capable hero, and in the end the character dreams of being the stereotypical damsel in distress, and thinks about how her hair will look, and what clothes she will wear. Again, Munro does not examine the character’s motivations, or why she thinks these things. The reader only knows that the change has occurred. The character and reader have both been involved in the action of the story, and at the end the character has changed. The reader must assume that it was the events of the story that caused this change somehow. It would seem then that the question that the author is trying to present is, what is significant about these actions? What is significant about the life of the character’s father and mother, and the actions they undertake?

Much of the story is about the character’s relation to her family. The author describes certain traits about the character’s parents: how her mother will go on and on in conversation, but how her father is very brief; the character is more or less disdainful of her mother, but surges with pride when her father describes her as his hired hand. The character begins with a great respect for her father and disdain for her mother. In the key point of the story the character betrays her father by releasing a horse, so that her father will have to painstakingly find it before it is butchered. The motives for the action are not discussed; the reader must accept prima facie that the character had some inarticulate but internal impulse. For following this internal impulse, her father shuns her, and labels her as a girl. The author here does not present a question so much as offer a situation to be explored and understood.

angry-letter-writing-pen

Today I went to get my books for my next sections of classes at the bookstore. I get home and take the books out of the bag, and there's a small flier in the bag for magazine subscriptions. Common enough; I've probably gotten one every time I've gotten books. But this time, I looked at the magazines advertised on the front of it, and I had an apiphany.

The flier says, "Students and Educators: Save up to 90% on over 500 popular magazines" and then there's pictures of magazine covers. There's Time with a Mission to Mars cover, Sport Illustrated with a college basketball cover, Newsweek with a Nancy Raegan cover, Rolling Stone with a greatest moments of Rock cover, and then there's a Playboy with "The Women of the Olympics: Twelve Pages of Spectacular Nudes." This made me stop and say, Hey, That's pornography! That's not good!

Now, I'm not saying that pornography is harmful. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Raegan both launched investigations into that area, and both determined that pornography was not harmful to society, it doesn't cause people to go crazy, or what have you. It is demeaning to women, however. And in this instance, I'm a bit bothered that [unnamed college] is allowing the advertisement of pornography through the bookstore, and surprised that it's being advertised to "Students and Educators." This is an institute of higher education, right? I would expect people with the benefit of higher education to look at this advertising and realize that this, more than other advertising, is of such a low character to be unfit for distribution on this campus.

But hey, maybe I'm missing the silver lining. I'm taking an oral interpretation course this coming quarter; maybe, just maybe, I'll be allowed to orally interpret some letters from the penthouse forum. (I can get a year of penthouse for only thirty dollars! Wowwie-wow-wow!)

Ok, I can explain.

This past three weeks I've finished four final projects. That, and I was devoting time to the important task of watching the bulls beat the supersonics. Ben Gordon is going to be something special on the Bulls.

Death of a Salesman.

I like how this play is focused around failure. Willy, Biff, Happy, all men, and all failures. Heteronormative gender roles of the times determined that men were to be "breadwinners," they by default had the job of supporting their family. When the play takes place, Happy is the only salaried worker, making seventy dollars a week, which is essentially about enough to support himself. The last job Biff had was working on a ranch in Texas for twenty-eight dollars a week(though cost of living is reduced in the South) Willy doesn'thave a salary, he only has the commission of whatever he sells, and he can't even drive to his territory anymore.

So, you have Biff who makes nothing, Willy who has to beg or borrow money every week from his nieghbor, and then you have Happy, who is skidding by at a measely job with no upward mobility. (all he can do is wait for his boss to die) Perhaps that's why Happy can believe in fantasies; why he can tell his father that Biff had a great meeting with Bill Oliver, or believe that he'll somehow become terribly successful at his job and make bunches of money, and then he'll go west, or believe that he'll ever get married. Willy can believe some of those things, because one way or another, he still has some money in his pocket. Biff, however, is the penultimate failure; he's never even made fifty dollars a week, he's spent time in jail, he's been fired left and right, failed to take a scholarship that was out there just waiting for him to grab it; though that's an issue of his stupidity, too. Biff has nothing, and perhaps that's why he's more able to see the world for what it is--see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

However, this also represents some truly aberrant behavior on Biff's part. There's a premise, but the behavior is just downright stupid on his part, and he chose to do it. Biff idolized his father, and then he found his father having an affair. After this, he refuses to take a single class in order to graduate high school, and in doing so misses his one chance to go to college, and if he'd gone to college, maybe he could've gotten a job where he could whistle in an elevator if he wanted. Essentially, Biff saw that his father was a fraud; then, he may have decided to be a failure to spite his father, as Willy thinks is the case. Which is like cutting off one's head to spite your face. Or, Biff may have decided to be a failure because he just wanted to reject the drive for success that his father represented. But if that's the case, then why didn't Biff reject everything his father did, down to breathing? Why not, say, just reject being an adulterous prick?

Say what you want about Willy Loman being a slimy, slimy individual, but Biff had earned- Rightly Earned, by his own accomplishments, a chance to be the first member of his family to go to college. Mind you, even today, there are people of all stripe who would bust their ass to get to college, but will never get the chance. Biff had earned the chance, not because he was white or rich, or any other wrong reason, and he threw it away. And why? Because he found out his father was human. That's all- his father was human, and he'd made a mistake.

Now, Miller tells us that this play is a tragedy. If it's a tragedy for Willy Loman, then Biff's decision has got to be melodrama. I hate melodrama. "A dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot of action at the expense of characterization." So long as you're ignoring natural laws, I've always felt that gravity was a bit of a drag...

Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum was in the house last night at [unnamed college]. Her lecture was Compassion and Global Responsibility. I admit, I was there for a class, but it was a popular spot anyway: even the balcony was filling up in the 900 person theater. Her lecture was on "Compassion and Global Responsibility,"and while it covered Compassion and Global, I don't think she ever mentioned the term responsibility.

I took three and half pages of dense, dense notes for this lecture, and It would be insane for me to reproduce them all. Her thesis: Liberal Arts education is essential in developing students into quality citizen who are widely compassionate, beyond their own community and nation.

Nussbaum discussed historical descriptions of Compassion, from Marcus Auriellius, to Plato, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to Adam Smith. Assessment: Compassion has always existed at a community level. It has slowly expanded over history, from family to neighbors, to community level, to national level, but essentially today our compassion as Americans stops at our borders. Sometimes large events can draw our attention to blatantly terrible situations: Like that almost 50 percent of the world doesn't meet its basic needs for food, or how 9/11 drew our attention to the plight of Afghani women, when feminist groups had been trying to raise awareness for decades. Essentially, this type of compassion is fleeting, and almost hypocritical.

Nussbaum's answer to this, far from a universal panacea, was Liberal Arts Educations. Rousseau recommended that people should be made to study human weakness and vulnerability, because it is something that all people, everywhere, have in common. The humanities, by and large, attempt to open students' eyes to the world around them, to other cultures, joys and sorrows, etcetera, and this study increases their capacity to be cuman, or cultivates humanity within them.

How does this relate to Death of a Salesman? Nussbaum mentioned briefly how our usually human relations with the rest of the world were economic; both at the global level and the community level. We view people almost as a means to an end in this sense, and are highly discompassionate in that sense. Such is the case of Willy Loman. His relation with Howard Wagner is a prime example. Willy and Howard understand each other perfectly, you see- Howard sees Willy only as an employee who brings a valuable sales territory to his company, but who is ultimately expendable. Willy sees Howard as an investment of effort who will eventually pay off for him. Willy devoted himself to be "well-liked" with Howard's father so that Howard would like Willy well, and do things for Willy, like get him a non-travelling Job. Only, Willy's belief about the situation was wrong, and Howard was not compassionate with him.

What Nussbaum would assert, I believe, is that if Willy had a good Liberal Arts education, he might have been more introspective, and thought more about his life. Maybe he would have baseless desires for other women and refrigerators and cars. Perhaps also he would have been more humble; humble enough that he would've taken Charley's job offer, and quit being a salesman while he could.

Frankness and understanding.

In the final weeks of the school period, a great many responsibilities are bearing down upon me as a student. For the past week I've been focused on an astrolabe, now I have a 10-15 page paper for an ethics class, about 200 pages of a book to read and another essay to write about that, a 4-5 page paper for this english paper, and a web project.

Now, I don't mean to make excuses; merely to offer something for consideration to reach some understanding of my position, and why there have been some significant gaps inbetween entries.

The Modern Language Association. They make the rules on writing papers. Perhaps in the broader sense, they make the rules about modern language. For instance, the spelling of the word, "Dependent." Try this out: if you happen to be on a computer that possesses the program Microsoft Word, or wordperfect, type in the word Dependent, and Dependant. You'll find that it cites neither word as incorrect or misspelled. If you should cite page 534 of the Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary you'll find an entry for Dependant, which relates you to the word Dependent, and at the end of a lengthy definition of Dependent, you will find the phrase, "Also, dependant." It would seem then that both forms are acceptable.

So, what does the MLA say about this? Well, I went to the MLA website, MLA.org, and I found that the MLA had absolutely nothing to say on the spelling of words. Or, more accurately the MLA website had nothing to say about the spelling of words. There's a section about becoming a member, (I guess you get a secret decoder ring that helps you find the true name of God or some such) about buying books, and job opening. So, the MLA website has proportionally little to do with language. Therefore, I state that the MLA sucks at websites, at the least.

Anyway I bring this up because I used the word Dependant in an assignment for an ethics class and the word came back as misspelled. Now in order to demonstrate to my professor in that class that I don't have a brain made out of pancake batter I'm going to have to lug a gigantic dictionary to class, because this professor is so self-possessed of his own righteousness of language that he will not perform any examination of his own.

As you may have guessed by the tenor of this entry, this particular ethics class in general has gotten my hackles up so high it makes the elephant's eye pale in comparison. This also generally prevents me from being able to produce a cogent thought about Death of a Salesman. What I will say, though, is that on Friday many point which were discussed in class which I had written and typed up and copied on Thursday. So many that it would have seemed that I merely copied down much of what was already said. But take my word, I'd typed that up on Thursday.

Bulls Beat the Heat in OT, 105-103

Ben Gordon is teh man.

Industrialization.

Industrialization generally is that period when automation entered into manufacturing which increased the quantity of items that a given company could produce, and as the supply increased, prices decreased. This decrease in prices sparked a now consumer culture that we see all around us today. As more and more "Stuff" was produced, it became necessary for people to buy more "stuff" to keep the wheels of the economy turning, as it were.

Interpreted through people, this seems like utter rapaciousness. The value which is taught by this consumeristic behavior is, plainly, Greed. The message is that it is Good for someone to spend; that it helps the economy. Within that state of constant spending, it's very possible for an individual to become highly mixed up, and lose the already far-away idea of spending to motivate the economy, and instead see spending for the sake of spending, and succumb to this greed; Willy Loman is such a person. As a modern individual, I hear all the time about how many people in America are in debt, but I can not believe that the understanding of this problem is at all new. I feel quite certain that Linda Loman in 1949 could see that it was dangerous, if not folly, to buy a refridgerator on credit and spend money that you didn't have.

The play, Death of a Salesman, adresses this theme of the American dream-become-greed. First of course there is Willy Loman, a content consumer. But his greed, his covetousness, spreads beyond money; he covets other women as well as material possessions, and has had an affair. This is fairly common, realistic fare. Where these values are blown up in the play are in Willy's sons, Biff and Happy, who takes these values to extremes. Biff is a bit of a kleptomaniac. He takes footballs from his school, wood from construction sites in broad daylight, cases of basketballs from his work, a pen off the desk a man he went to for a loan; simply enough, his greed overruns his senses in the extreme, and makes him a petty thief. Happy represents the other half of Willy Loman's covetousness in his lecherousness. Happy explains how he has slept with a woman who he knows to be engaged, and to whom's wedding he is invited. He says: "I don't know what gets into me [...] I hate myself for it. Because I don't want the girl, and, still, I take it and-I love it!" (norton anthology, 1551)

Willy Loman attempts to raise his kids to be successes; his only failure is that he thought himself a success, and made himself his children's role model. (A father is a role model no matter what, but you could throw some other ones in there. Uncle Charley or Bernard, for instance. But of whom turned out all right.)

It bears repeating,

My [local college] library has 'it.' I've mentioned its philanthropy center, but now it has surpassed itself; allow me to explain. For an astronomy class, I have to do something worthy of a final project, and being the big-shot that I am, I want an A on this. My plan was to build a Planispheric Astrolabe; a fiarly primitive through intricate device used to calculate the time of day and season, and certain astronomical events. Needing information, I went to the internet. The scarcity of information was startling; I'll admit, I did find one site, a University of Hawaii page from a few years ago with directions on building a type of Planispheric Astrolabe, and even provided one with images for the Rete, ascension, and the all-important Latitude plate, which much match the latitude of where it is to be used; a rare find indeed. But, it's instructions for construction were terribly confusing, and its Latitude plate was nearly incomplete. After several further hours of searching, the paucity of information made me consider that perhaps, No Planispheric Astrolabes had ever been contructed ever, merely copied from existing Astrolabes, which were themselves copied from other astrolabes, and on and on, until you reached an original set of astrolabes; and I hypothesized that These Original Astrolabes had been formed by the big bang, by evolution from other brass measurement devices, or fitting with creationism, made by god himself.

Skip ahead a day, and I'm in the Astronomy section (QB) of the [college] library. After looking through only one or two shelves, I find The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy which has a thorough twenty page section on astrolabes and making your own, and provides detailed images for copying and creating your own, And provides a detailed Latitude plate for New York, which is at fotry and two-thirds degrees north, only one and a third degree off from where I am- which is as close as I can get.

The Internet has just been served; now it's on.

Granted, this has nothing to do with Death of a Salesman, except that it may behoove me to check the library's hard reference section rather than poking around on the electro-web.

Death of a Salesman, On Ice!

I've just finished reading Death of a Salesman. I suppose I should give my first impression of the meaning of the story.

It's about Willy Loman, of course, and Willy Loman is a man who has a skewed and incorrect view of the world; views that do not mesh with reality, and what therein results from this. Loman believes that Business relationships work very much like Family relations, that after working for a company for 34 years a man is entitled to something beyond a pension, and that success is derived from affability, popularity, and personal vigor, rather than intelligence and book learning. Perhaps more generally, Loman seems to believe that a singular set of characteristics qualify a man to be a success anywhere, and that the world acknowledges a family value set as being supreme in all situations. That if you are well liked and vigorous in your endeavors, you will be success at whatever you turn your hand to, and therefore you can do whatever you want, or buy whatever you want, and American is designed for people to do that.

The other characters in the story, Biff, Happy and Linda are all very much defined by how they relate and compare to Willy Loman. (at least as I see it) Linda, because she loves her husband, doesn't question Willy's beliefs and ideas, and compromises to him. Biff and Happy both modeled themselves on their strongly pedagogic father, but while Biff has had his faith shattered, Happy believes what he's told, but whether he admits it or not, he wants different things than his father, and would never fit his father's idea of a fine character; never make enough money, never get married.

Now, these perceptions of Willy Loman's may be or have been called "The American Dream." So what is the statement about the American Dream? Here we have a seeker of the dream in Willy Loman; within the context of the story, and as the story itself interprets the American Dream, it is feasible to say that Willy Loman is the perfect acolyte of the American dream. What does he want? Everything. He wants money, a big house with lots of land, respect, a perfect family with successful male children, and power. (financial power; the only power that matters in America) And he achieves none of these things. His counterpoint, Charley and his son Bernard represent a much more practical outlook. They want many of the same things as Willy Loman, but are not proud, and are oriented towards narrower goals by more advisable channels; i.e, become a big shot lawyer, by studying really, really hard.

The metaphysical question

What is most real about the past and future? That's where the last entry left off. It seemed like the seminal question of the story. Consider the present tense of the story, page 579, line 32:

"Once again I felt the swatming sensation of which I have spoken. It seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely saturated with invisible persons. Those persons were Albert and I, secret, busy and multiform in other dimensions of the time. I raised my eye and the tenous nightmare dissolved. In the yellow and black garden there was only one man; [Captain Richard Madden]."

The present is something which is entirely tanglible to people; at this very moment, you the reader could rech out and grasp the computer monitor on which you are viewing this text. That tactile contact, matched with the sight of the monitor, the hum of the attached computer, and the smell and taste of... whatever; I don't know if you'd be licking your monitors, but that monitor wouldn't complain, I don't think. Anyway, those senses provide the greatest contextual cetainty that the computer monitor exists. Though you might try to *think* that it does not exist, your senses tell you that it does, and the senses are the only way in which people can understand the world around them, to have ideas such as "the monitor exists." The point of all this is, Because we can sense the present, it is more real than the past or future.

Taking that notion, we can then ask, as it relates to the excerpt from Garden of Forking paths, what is the feasibility of the existence of multiple realities existing? Yu Tsun in the excerpt describes seeing these alternate realities, where alternate forms of himself and Albert stand in the garden, doing whatever. But Borges' and Tsun's own descriptor belies their belief: "Invisible persons[...] I raised my eyes and the tenous nightmare dissolved." When applied to the test of Tsun's real senses, the concept of multiple present realities fails. The greatest reality it can have is a mental reality; a belief on the part of the viewer that alternate realities *Do* exist, and that belief is only as equal as you the reader looking at your computer monitor and thinking *That computer monitor does not exist."

The past and future are both intangible, albeit to different degrees; there can be fragmentary relics of the past; a skeleton with a broken spine that indicates how its owner died, or an ashtray at a table with cigarrett butts that indicates that the last person to sit at that table was a smoker. But the future exists only in the mind; we can look around and hypothesise about the future; as you may look at your computer monitor and hypothesis that it will exist in the future; but there can be absolutely no proof of that; that anything will exist tomorrow, or that anything will not exist tomorrow.

temperamental.

Page builder is an exceptionally temperamental program.

Bulls can't stand the heat.

With Midterms approaching, essays needing to be finished, and midterm tests needing to be studied for, Posting here has been a bit dicey.

The Garden of Forking Paths.

While writing my essay, I realized that I wasn't terribly certain what the theme of this story was. I had read in one of the Contemporary Literary Criticism volumes that the theme was called "Circular Time" but I don't buy that. The time is far from circular; Though the story is told in a frame from 1941, and takes place in 1916, and is a statement about events ex post facto, The story is still read from the first to last page. Yes, as a conscious reader I understand that I am reading events from different times, but of what significance is that? The story does not claim it to be of any significance. If anything, the story says it is less signicant: "Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen." By that account, the story itself says it is not happening, since the story is not necessarily in this present. It states that it expresses pasts events, in the time of World War 1. Even beyond then, this story is not an event, it is words on a page, meaning it is not an event that is happening. Is the logical progression that the story is not Real?

My brother told a story not too long ago about one of his philosphy classes. The pressor was talking about Metaphysics, and what was real, and a student commented, "You know, with quantum theory on the rise, physicists speculate that multiple realities may exist, where other possibilities have become reality." And the professor stopped for a moment, let a silence fall, and then said, "Yeah, but we're talking about this reality."

Now of course, in "The Garden of Forking Paths" no one says that this forking paths view of reality is correct; Ts'ui Pen believed it, and spent thirteen years writing about it. But neither Stephen Albert or Yu Tsun state that they terribly believe it. Yu Tsun makes his own statements about reality. The above, about centuries and centuries, and then, after Killing Dr. Albert, line thirty five, "The rest is unreal, insignificant. Madden Broke in, arrested me."

The theme of the story, if it exists, should be evident. (yes, no?) If the theme is evident, then it must be the theme that is most apparent. (yes, no?) The theme which I found to be most evident for the body of the work, beyond the spy story, was the Metaphysical question: What is Most real? But that's not specific enough: What about the past or Future is real? I'm not sure that Borges is an eminent philosopher, but the idea within his story is far from cogent.

Written under the influence of a football helmet.

Jorge Luis Borges, "El jardin de Senderos que so Bifurcan."

Considered almost a form story for Borges, it centers on one of his favorite themes, the concept of circular time parallel storytelling. Is it a good story? I liked it. But what would grace Paley and her father think?

I think that the father would want to like "the garden." The story certainly uses foreshadowing, representative of the rules of literature. I think the father may find it too cerebral or inefficient for a short story. The opening three of eight pages are spent, more or less, on set up and reflection. I think the father may demand a simpler factual account of events and characters, one that starts earlier, before Yu Tsun learns his contact has been killed or arrested, rather than in the middle of the moment of revelation. What I think would terribly attract the father to the story, paradoxically, would be the concept of parallel stories, and parallel lives; the concept that at all junctures of events in our lives there are sundry different outcomes; from life to death and everything in-between. I hypothesize that the father would interpret this view of reality as a type of determinism, that while there are parallel realities, you can only exist in one, and whatever is in that reality is fated to happen, as much as different events are bound to happen in different realities. I believe the father has enough character, or is enough of a character, to believe in something is paradoxical as determinism coming from possibility. He certainly has the character to look at life and declare aloud, Tragedy.

I think the Narrator would want to dislike the story. It's hard to say, though. The narrator (Grace Paley, for intents and purposes) would see that this is a fairly narrow story; told from hindsight, what you read is predetermined and written in a history book. Yet, it is not the kind of story where characters have open to them the moon and the stars of free will, despite what Dr. Albert tells you. In fact, these characters are not big on development; there is no change in this characters, they are mechanically scripted to act, and this they do. The story, told in hindsight, is predetermined even by the narrator, giving no possibility of freedom, not even the illusion. But then, This isn't that kind of story and I think The Narrator would realize that it is wrong to judge it by that standard. I think the narrators decision to lean away from this story would flow from it's mock formulaic pattern. The Narrator would respect the idea of the story, of parallel ideas, and respect the irony of telling a story about possibility in a way that removes all possibility. But I think the narrator might ask, why use irony at all? Why not tell the whole story of possibility? Why not, in fact, write Ts'ui Pen's labyrinthine novel? As a short story, it disregards character and voice at the service of an idea (which is not right or wrong, but just what it does) and it also does that idea a turn by telling the story in a fashion contradictory to that idea. Which is clever and surprising the first time, but is also a bit of a tease.

Further on Conversation with my father.

Honk Honk, vroom. (yes, it's a terrible pun, but a pun nonetheless)

After presenting "A conversation with my father," with notable awkward silences, I would *hope* that a couple individual ideas were articulated.

1.) That overall, the father's world view can be boiled own to pessimism; that the ultimate reality for everyone, whether real or invented, must and will be a victim of the way of all things, that is to die. It might have been an interesting (and better) question to ask whether this outlook of the father's was a result of his condition, or if this pessimism was an existing condition.

2.) The narrator was significantly different; I had originally typed polar opposite, but then I was unsure whether that would be true. But regardless the narrator is not so pessimistic, at least within the confines of literature. In the parenthetical aside, "(Actually neither would life, which unlike me has no pity.)" states that within her own stories the narrator has pity upon her characters, but also admits at the same time that life does not have pity. This perhaps indicates the narrators world of writing as being forgiving and escapist, and also by nature, unrealistic. The piece that doesn't quite fit and is therefore somewhat ironic, is that in the second framed story, the outcome *is* very pessimistic: the main character, the mother, is left alone and addicted, but the father Still doesn't seem to like it; which again begs the question, what is the simple story as he defines it? One of the articles I grabbed, in praise of loose ends, described a set of rules typified by Chekhov or Hemingway, where you could write a story that follows the rules but is unadorned, and told without strong voice, but conveys the bare essentials (as the 'simple' style defines time) to get the story across. The narrator figures that the first story is a simple story, but to follow the father's criticism, the narrator misunderstood on purpose. The narrator wrote that story as a joke, instead of following the marquis of queensbury rules to elucidate certain necessary, basic information (character's looks, background, marital status), the narrator stripped it down to, "Person X, in Situation Y, wound up at endpoint Z."

Ok, the second half of all that I just wrote wasn't spelled out in the presentation. But, still.

Different thoughts, conversation with my father.

Trying to codify the father's opinion of good literature... He's certainly a fan of Russian writers, who (according to the post script of the textbook) write in the field of psychological realism, attempting to express the realistic psychological motives of characters. To describe this in terms of stories, he would be expected to enjoy stories which inventory the traits of characters and their experiences in such a way that the reader can view not what goes on in the story, but the abstract concepts that the elements of the story represent, and the effects these abstracts have on characters.

Now, it can not be inferred from this preference for psychological realism that opposing styles would be defined as Bad literature by the father. Simply because he is a fan of a type of realism doesn't mean he cannot be or is not a fan of surrealism or fantasy. But perhaps it is possible to branch out from psychological realism to discern other related positive elements of literature. Psychological realism seems to be a discipline which stresses the simulation of human decisionmaking. The concept of an objective narrative comes to mind as something which would be in-tune with the precepts of psychological realism. Stories which include thorough inventories of the traits of the characters (perhaps in a biographical format) would fit psychological realism. Stories which are presented neutrally and without editorialization in the narrative, thus allowing them to be freely interpreted might also be viewed favorably by the psychological realist. Also stories whose plot elements are formed of the common everyday things of life, and not from rarities which, while being real, are uncommon, could also be viewed favorably by the psych. realist.

Snow!!!

This coming Friday I'll be presenting "A conversation with my father." So, I'll need a plan. There was certainly discussion in this last Friday's presentation on "The Most dangerous game," which lasted out the whole period. But I feel that I'd like to maybe take my presentation a little differently. First, I'd like to bring more to the presentation than just discussion questions; for a presentation, I'd like to have something to present. To me, that means writing out the story's dialogue and acting it out with my partner as a first. For a story entitled "A conversation with my father" what could be more appropriate than actually performing the conversation?

The next point that may be worth addressing is a bit of "Who is Grace Paley?" The textbook's afterworod asserts that readers may not identify with the story because the language and manners of "lower-middle-class urban Jews and Bohemians." I think I a little independant research could be in order.

So, by this time the story and the author will have been presented. I think that with that much information on the table, It will be feasible to present discussion topics. I think that the most appropriate questions would focus on the nature of the relationship between the Father and his son/daughter, the meaning of the story that gets told, and to what degree, the story is theirs. This simplest, but perhaps greatest question (in terms of possible magnitude of responses) would he to ask, hypothetically, what happened to the heroin-addicted mother in the story within the story? As a terribly broad question with almost no qualifiers, I think people could go on that for ten to fifteen minutes.

"A conversation with my father"

At first reading this story, I wasn't quite able to wrap my head around it, and what was going on. Perhaps it was, as the book put it, "Without being anti-semitic or elitist, readers may feel they can't identify with these characters."

But my first impression of the story was that the dialogue just didn't make sense; a father and their descendant are talking, and they have such huge misconceptions about what the other is saying that it threw me for a loop for a while; how could family be this off-base in their terms? In the second reading, a lot of that cleared up. In my second reading, I tried to watch the dialogue rather than read it. Sometimes for a scene of seemingly ambiguous or confusing dialoge I find that it helps to cast actors in the movie version of the scene and imagine them reading the lines. For Paley's story, I cast Carl Reiner as the father and John Stewart as the son. To just look at the words has almost no meaning in this story, you have to attach the words to a vivid image of people.

The story is described as a frame story, but to a certain degree the seperation of the stories being told, the dialogue between father and son and the narrative of the son's story were really the same story: A singular parent and their offspring coming into dispute and parting ways, leaving the parent old and alone. As the framed story becomes a metaphor for Paley's story, the final dialogue becomes almost cheesy. The father accepts that the son's story is hopeless and "a tragedy", and that of course is a metaphor for his own life, where he is old and alone and dying tragically, and when his son tries to tell him the story could end differently, the father refuses to accept it.

I suppose it could be said that in Paley's story, there isn't even real dialogue. We have presented to us the scenario that an author has gone to see his ailing father. But the story that the son tells doesn't have the son visiting his lonely old mother, to what degree is that the realer story? Throughout Paley's story the dying father and his son never agree: the father wants one of his son's old, simple stories, and the son doesn't believe that he ever wrote those stories. The son writes the simple stories, but the father says he failed. The son rewrites the story and his father recognizes that the ending a tragedy where the mother is left sick and alone, and then his son reverses himself and says his own ending was wrong. Neither character ever meets the other on even ground; and it's very possible that it's the son simply having a meeting with the memory of his father, or vice versa.

Speak Truth to Power

Back just now from the University of Chicago commemoration of Dr. King. Aside from Me. Mfume there were readings by three students: Mohammed Fadlalla reading from the Qur'an, Judith Stanton reading something of her own device: "Justice, Justice shall you pursue," and Paul Robeson Ford read "On the vices of imperialism and National Hubris" by Dr. King.

Mr. Mfume started with not one, not two, but three jokes, all of them fairly good. He began in seriousness with a biut of a story, about a greek philosopher who was brought before the king and ask, "Will there be justice?" The philopher realized his answer could mean his life, and said "There will not be Justice; not until everyone who is not injured is just as indignant." This story formed the basis for what I believe was the focus of Mfume's message. Considering that phrase, "not until everyone who is not injured is just as indignant," Mfume wanted to say that we who are not injured; the middle class caucasions, just to name a group, must be as indignant about the state of affairs in the world as if we were an injured group; say, Latinos, or Africans, or Asians, the poor, the drug addicted, or whomever is injured in society. And in this shared Indignation, all people must come together as a coalition to speak truth to power.

Mfume said that he wished to speak to the family, but not only the family of blood, but the family which is made by sharing common adversities and conditions, but sometimes we don't know what condition our condition is in, and we must therefore take time to reflect; time like Martin Luther King Jr. day. Mfume spoke on the life of Dr. King and when he confronted inequality in the nation, and of the history of inequality and some of its many causes, and its products. Then he proposed that Dr. King were he here today would have the fraternity of the indignant Speak Truth to Power, to the president and the congress, about a great plethora of issues.

I admit I wish I'd brought more paper with which to take more careful notes, and get a better idea of the structure of his speech. Mr. Mfume had addressed certain groups who would say of people who spoke out indignantly that they were unpatriotic, or traitorous. Mr. Mfume sai