Cowboy Hat

Things twist around

2005-10-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-08-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

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,

2005-08-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

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....

2005-08-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

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, ?

2005-05-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-04-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-04-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-04-16T19:06:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

“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.

2005-04-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

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"

2005-04-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

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"

2005-03-29T17:20:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-03-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-02-28T14:39:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-22T21:42:00.000-08:00

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,

2005-02-18T22:56:00.000-08:00

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!

2005-02-15T12:51:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-02-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

Page builder is an exceptionally temperamental program.

Bulls can't stand the heat.

2005-02-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-02-01T15:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-01-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-01-25T13:05:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2005-01-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

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"

2005-01-20T19:25:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

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 said that it is OK to have a problem with what's wrong with this country, because it's OK to have a problem with things that are wrong. The speaker then went on to list numerous examples of what is wrong today. When he had presented a plethora of problems to be solved, Mr. Mfume then said that we must not give up on the American Ideal, where Justice is the supreme ruler and law is only it's tool, and where fraternity is the human condition. His generation, he said, was perhaps the first to realize that there may be only one more chance ever to change the world, and our generation is that last chance to take the world and fix it.

His final message, before leading a prayer for children, was to never stay mute in the face of wrongdoing. Speak the truth. Citing Dr. King's letter from the Birmingham jail, he said that when one is advised to stay mute in the face of injustice, stand and say that Now is the day and This is the hour.

It was an inspiring speech, and made me certainly glad to have attended.

The first of perhaps several...

2005-01-14T20:10:00.000-08:00

About "The Most Dangerous Game." It was implied that the prime topic of discussion for this story may be determining why this story has been, or my have been, questioned as quality literature.

The story was written in 1924, (on the final page of the story in the textbook, that number appears, and it looks well enough like a date for me) and as our textbook has established the definition of literature and acceptability of various types of literature has increased in the last century. It therefore seems logical to me that an older story may have been originally criticized because there was a persisting narrower view of what could be called literature, let alone good literature. That being said, I believe that any given criticism of the story on the premise of being "not literature" is probably based on the story not fitting an older stereotype of what was good literature.

That being said, I think that criticism of the story is that it is not a mentally engaging piece; that is to say it has low intellectual or emotional value. A character about whom we know nothing, Rainsford, is dumped onto an island where he is hunted by a madman villain, Zaroff, and eventually kils the villain. It could be said that the story does not challenge the reader to think about the details therein. Also, the story does not provide you with any emotional involvement beyond the somewhat base enjoyment when the villain is defeated and (supposedly) the archetype of moral rectitude. Also, the story may have been itself panned by critics by using a great deal of suspense, and appearing to be a lower form of writing; in the same sense of an action movie being panned for best film at the oscars or what have you.

I think the story's subtlety is it's biggest enemy. If there are intellectually valuable items in the story, which I think there are, they are in a sense buried beneath the text which is meant to create suspense, or fear, or whatever excitement was meant to be conveyed in the hunting sequence. The entire concept of role reversal, between being the hunter and the hunted, is expressed in its entirety in one line: "'I am still a beast at bay,' he said," and if you don't stop at that and think yourself to ask a question there, it's possible for a reader to run right over that line as macho posturing and thinhk nothing of it.

Martin Luther King day

2005-01-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

For the first time I think, ever, I have plans for MLK day. That is, related plans; certainly I've done things on the holiday, but this year I will be on task.

http://mlk.uchicago.edu/

At noon there will be a speech given by Kweisi Mfume, Former President and CEO of the NAACP, and held a Baltimore Congressional seat for a decade. Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus... Really, you should just go to the website listed above and check out the 'keynote speaker' link.

Aphorisms.

2005-01-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

The question came up in class today, "What is an aphorism?" While people were presenting the quotes they had found in regards to literature, the source of one of the quotes was an aphorist, that is, one who created aphorism. Now, I didn't raise my hand. Better to remain silent and be assumed a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. (which is, in fact, an aphorism) But now I've gotten my big dictionary, and an aphorism is, n. a terse saying embodying a general truth or astute observation. The definition cites, "Power tends to corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Lord Acton)

Having the dictionary out, I also decided to look up a word that came to head in class which I believed to be related for no particular reason: axiom. n. A self-evident truth which requires no proof, or a universwally accepted principle or rule. And I would have thought 'aphorism' would have related to a more truthful, factual statement, while 'axiom' would have been in terms of mottos or slogans.

What is literature;

2005-01-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

Well, it matters more what you want this word 'literature' to define for you. The introduction of our textbook produces an excerpt from Hard Times by Charles Dickens exampling a person without imagination who only defines a horse as a herbivorous quadruped with forty teeth which sheds its hair or hooves, depending on the country. This is a valid definition, as valid as defining Literature from its Latin roots in Littera and Litterarum, meaning letters of the alphabet, and of that which is related to reading and writing. A more poetic definition is not wrong; it can even be more correct than a scientific definition. However; I believe it to be in the best interest of the English language to retain the word Literature as a noun of simple meaning.

Borrowing from my Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, Literature, definition 2: The entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc., I would take that definition and try to provide a primary definition: The entire body of formal texts of the human race. I use the words "formal texts" to distinguish a type and intent of writing, defining "formal texts" as writings which consist of a main body with an idea. Writings which do not contain a main body of an idea ought not be considered literature. For instance: An essay produced for an English class is literature, as it has a body and a thesis. A message delivered from a student to a professor asking only "Was there a test Monday?" is not literature because while it does have a body it does not posses in its words an idea.

It may seem foolish to take a definition of literature to such lengths, addressing minor notes and memorandums, but I believe it is necessary, in developing a comprehensive definition of literature to be capable of addressing all sets of organized printed words. Consider a certain type of printed word: the memorandum. Some memos are literature, and some are not; George Kennan's "Long Telegram" which outlined the United States's containment policy throughout the cold war was a memo which possessed ideas and is therefore literature. A hypothetical memo from George Kennan to his secretary requesting more paper for his typewriter, while still a memo, is not literature because it does not possess an idea.

In the two examples I have tried to demonstrate that the possession of ideas in texts is the defining characteristic of literature; however, I may have made it appear that the length of a text is a defining characteristic of literature; it is not. A sonnet, which possesses only (I believe) fourteen lines can be literature, but books of algorithms, or an automotive manual, or an unabridged dictionary, which could all be hundreds or thousands of pages, are not necessarily literature. The essential feature of a "formal text" which is literature is the possession of an idea. My big dictionary defines an Idea as "any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity." The key word there was awareness. Self-awareness is what separates human beings from high powered computers; the old statement, "I think therefore I am." When a text is endowed by its author with a statement of a conception of awareness, an idea, then that text has been elevated to the level of literature.

A quote about literature.

2005-01-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

I remember in a previous life, or maybe just a previous english class, I read an essay by Gertrude Stien about Master-pieces and why there are so few of them. It was almost completely without punctuation, and therefore terribly difficult to read and thus appeared brilliant.

"What are master-pieces and why after all are there so few of them. You may say after all there are a good many of them but in any kind of proportion with everything that anybody who does anything is doing there are really very few of them. All this summer I meditated and wrote about this subject and it finally came to be a discussion of the relation of human nature and the human mind and identity." Gertrude Stein

alternately, the followup from the same essay:
" And do you create yes if you exist but time and identity do not exist. We live in time and identity but as we are we do not know time and identity everybody knows that quite simply. It is so simple that anybody does know that. But to know what one knows is frightening to live what one lives is soothing and though everybody likes to be frightened what they really have to have is soothing and so the master-pieces are so few not that the master-pieces themselves are frightening no of course not because if the creator of the master-piece is frightened then he does not exist without the memory of time and identity, and insofar as he is that then he is frightened and insofar as he is frightened the master-piece does not exist, it looks like it and it feels like it, but the memory of the fright destroys it as a master-piece. Robinson Crusoe and the footstep of the man Friday is one of the most perfect examples of the non-existence of time and identity which makes a master-piece. I hope you do see what I mean but any way everybody who knows about Robinson Crusoe and the footstep of Friday knows that that is true. There is no time and identity in the way it happened and that is why there is no fright. " -Gertrude Stein

Eh. I'll have to print these up and carry them with me to have any chance at being able to produce them in class.

Cowboy Hat rides again.

2005-01-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

Back by overwhelming academic demand, the Cowboy Hat web log returns for its second straight season.

Today's useful information: Ethics and Morals are the same thing. Ethics is derived from the greek Ethos, while Morals is derived from the latin More,(pronounced, apparently, More-ay) both of which refer to customs and cultures. But, one is greek while the other is latin.

Nicholasjohnson.org

2004-12-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

Back from the forum. It was worth the twelve hours of driving. And, at the very least, I learned why the vikings play in a dome. It's fricking freezin in the land of one-thousand lakes. The forum was held in Sundin music hall, which had maybe three hundred seats give or take, and it was full up; Hamline university had comeras on stage to record the event, and to play it on a close-circuit TV system in an adjoining building to serve the overflow of attendees. So, it was a good turnout.

First, Commissioner Micheal Copps was not in attendance, as he was undergoing surgery for back pain by his doctor's orders. Appearing for him was FCC legal counselor and aide (Jonathan or Jordan?) Goldstien, who read Commissioner Copp's statement. (I must say, though, as a member of the tribe of Isreal, his appearance doesn't help battle the myth that Jews run the media.) Commisioner Jonathan Adelstein was on the line up. The night began with their opening statements, praising us for turning out, and expressing how eager they were to hear from us after the June 2nd rules were stayed and the commission recieved three million letters opposing media concentration.

Then, there were two panels. These panels consisted of individuals involved in the local media of the Twin Cities, or otherwise, in the case of Nicholas Johnson. The panel members had around five minutes to present their viewpoint to the audience, and more importantly, to Commissioner Adelstein and Mr. Goldstien. Now, there were ten members collectively on the two panels- the first on media localism had a Colleen Aho of AFTRA, an entertainer's union; Ken Goldstein, professor of Political Science at Madison; Rob Hubbard, owner of a mid-size broadcasting concern in Minnesota;(Hubbarb is a good guy- he stayed the whole meeting, same as the commissioners) Bob Bundgaard, mayor of the small Breezy Point community(pop~650) in Minnesota and owner of a small 50K watt radio station up there; and lastly, Al Cristopherson, head of the Minnesota Farm Bureau, commenting on how Minnesota's WCCO and Chicago's WGN have cut their Farm News programs, and how right after they did, a 'madcow' was found in america, and they had to bring back the staff of the shows to cover it, because only the Farm news could explain what it meant both to farmers and consumers.

The second panel had Former FCC Commission and Chairman of the National Citizens Committee on Broadcasting Nicholas Johnson, who improvised on stage, but told everyone they could read his prepared statement at NicholasJohnson.org; Janice Lane-Ewart, involved with twin cities local radio station(which was highly praised throughout the night) KFAI; Lorenna Duarte, who began her speech in Spanish, and then said in English a half-minute in, 'That's what Minorities feel like when they listen to the radio.'; Sarah Nelson, who works at the Univ. Minnesota's Radio K, which produces "Access Minnesota"; and Laura Wittstock, who is trying to orgazine an Indian Broadcasting network, but it's tough going.

That took us from 7:10pm to 9:15pm. After that, Testimony from the audience started. People had the chance to go up, and address the Commissioner and the Counsel for two minutes. It was pledged that everyone who wanted to testify would be allowed to, and the Commissioner and Counsel meant it- They stayed till 1:00am to hear Everyone who wanted to speak.

What was most amazing, was that this was an open forum- Anyone could say anything so long as it was said respectfully- And there was not a single voice in favor of allowing media concentration. The crowd was unanimously against media concentration.

It was an experience. Now, I have to figure out what to do with this experience.

Should I stay or should I go?

2004-12-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

I am referring to the FCC Media Concentration forum in St. Paul Minnesota coming up in three days. An agenda has been made available by the FCC:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-254939A1.pdf

This breaks down the four hour meeting, and also explains that this isn't commissioner Micheal Copps and Jonathan Adelstein's two-man show. The Commissioners will make opening remarks, then there will be two panel-based discussions, one about local media, another about Media Concentration. The Two commissioners will not be on either of these panels. The first panel about local media will have a Professor a radio advocate, two broadcasters, and a member of the farm bureau(?). The second panel on Media Ownership will have Nicholas Johnson, former democratic FCC commissioner. Nicholas Johnson is very often mentioned in Barry Cole and Mal Oettinger's book, Reluctant Regulators, and has a mild celebrity-regulator status because of it. The other three panel folks are news people, I think. Their titles are unclear.

The final section of the forum is "Comments" for 105 minutes. I've mentioned before, this trip won't cost less than one hundred dollars in gas and lodgings. For an unemployed student, that's a lot of money. But, this quarter, I've expended a hefty amount of energy looking into the issues of media operations and regulations, and I feel like I took it seriously. I wouldn't have taken it seriously if it didn't interest me. Now, I'm not enamored with it- it's a harsh subject, not like going to a bears game or something, so I'm not sure just how important it is to me. But as soon as I take this trip, I'll know how important it is to me, I hope.

The Micheal York philosophy goes, Rather regret doing something than regret having done nothing. So, come hell or highwater, I'm going to this forum. This being decided, I want to get that Reluctant Regulators book. Need some reading, after all. I'll want to put together an intelligent comment or two. Heck, maybe I'll even bring up something George Orwell. But, since this is being conducted at a college campus, There's a chance that the forum will be full of young folks who'll boo me down as a poseur if I use an Orwell Cliche.

Again, long time, no post.

2004-12-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

But, I have a good excuse. I've been working to complete my final project. Visit it or suffer the consequences at:
www.geocities.com/madnes6841

Click on the Airstrip One link.

web work.

2004-11-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

This web project coming up is... daunting. And, distracting, which may explain the scarcity of posts on this blog of any substance. This project reguires a five-page 'thing' about George Orwell's 1984. Assuming that one page will be a generalized introduction page with links to the other four pages of actual substance, I will need then at least four individual ideas, or one big idea with four facets that can be seperately expressed. And I can't even come up with an idea of what to do with my free time on a weekend.

The exact requirements:
-Your final web project asks you to develop some kind of 'response' to (or extenstion of or supplement to) George Orwell's 1984.
-The 'response' can be as creative as you like, as long as it fulfills the requirements listed below.
-Each student will present his or her work in class on Dec. 6 or 8 (Dec. 6 is the project due date).
-An 'A' project must include:
- text of your own
- images (other than Page Builder clipart)
- links between pages (you can have links to external sites but these don't count as part of the 5)
- at least five separate pages (linked together) that you build as part of your response

Looks easy enough- I could provide vaguely on-topic text and images on five pages. But, I suspect there must be an underlying idea behind the text and images.
Options.
-Comparison. This is, compare George Orwell's 1984 to something else, either another book or the real world. But this has probably been done to death. Out of three Orwell essays I viewed in class, including my own, all were comparisons of some sort.
-Analysis. Not original, but I could certainly make a go of it- select certain sections of the book, analyze what's happening on them, and try to tie them all together.
-Dramatic interpertation: Perhaps the idea which requires the least thought. In this one, I would try to write a few scenes of 1984: The play or, if I dared, 1984: The Musical. But I don't know anything about music.
-I have a murky idea about writing journal entries, with some as-yet unknown connection to the journal entries in 1984 and then scan them, and put up these images on the website. I suppose I could provide text in the archaeological sense, connected to the appendix, which may be considered to have been written from the point of view of the distant future, after the totalitarian society of 1984 had broken down. I'd have to determine which journal articles to rewrite, or if I were to write new journal articles, I'd have to pick sections of the book which were significant to the character Winston Smith which did not have journal entries written about it. Hm. This looks promising.

"Lobbyists At work"

2004-11-24T10:45:00.000-08:00

For the past week or so I've been coming to the (unnamed college) library inbetween my classes to read this book, Reluctant Regulators: Te FCC and the broadcasting audience, written by Barry Cole and Mal Oettinger, copywright 1978. Cole spent several years observing the operations of the FCC commissioners very closely and often in their chambers during the seventies to get his information to write this book. I've just reached chapter three, "Lobbyists at work", and come to a somewhat noteworthy passage that relates to the psuedo-study I've been doing of the media and the FCC. I wanted to provide it here.

"The real lobbying power of the broadcasters does not lie in the amount of money they may contribute to campaigns, nor even in the power of their editorializing or formal endorsements. The power lies in the discretion of the broadcaster to report what a member of congress is doing when the member is not running for office... (next paragraph)

Even when an incumbent is running for reelection and the equal time rules of the Communications Act (harshgrimcon's note: the equal time rules have since been eliminated) and the rules governing payment for political advertising come into play, a broadcaster may choose to devote a great deal of free time to the campaign and thereby help, or more likely, harm the incumbent. In the news coverage the broadcaster is free to characterize the nature of the political race-what is said might be more persuasive that paid political ads. In a business built on compromise, an incumbent congressman is generally quick to forgive a station owner for opposing the congressman in the last election; the next one is two years away."

And this was written in ninteen-seventy-eight, six years before Nineteen-eighty-four. And I haven't even mentioned the way FCC lawyers typically become Lawyers for Broadcasters when their term is up, and how Federal Communications Bar Association lawyers, who represent Big Media, often Join the FCC as "Public Service." This intermingling occurs throughout all regulated industries, but that only indicates that the problem is more widespread, and still as unacceptable.

It's quiet...

2004-11-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

The final push to put out a George Orwell essay occupied the first couple of days after the last post- and then the weekend. And now, there's another project bearing down: a 5 page web project. So, a Five webpage project. Not my ideal assignment, but assigned nonetheless.

A lot of topics to write about passed through in that time- commenting about the media's coverage, albeit brief coverage, of the RNC's alterations to their rules concerning supporting congressmen who have been indicted on account of Tom Delay. See, not only did I not know Tom Delay might come under indictment, I didn't know the RNC had vowed not to support members who came under indictment. So, two points for the media, sorta.

I also could have written about the difficulty in researching FCC regulations, becuase the only record of the Code for Federal Regulators (CFR) procided online is the up-to-date one, and it doesn't list things like, what changes in regulations allowed clear channel to explode.

Most appealing to write about, though, would have been an episode of South Park. South Park is the ideal of modern satire, and this week their topic was the media. The boys of south park elementary were taking a television production class for an extra-cirricular grade the needed to pass the fourth grade. So all the kids put together a school news show. They do their first show, but they're blown out of the water by another kid's show, "Close-ups of pets with a wide angle lens," Which is just that, with the funky chicken playing in the background. To get their ratings up, the kids change their show's name to Sexy-Action School news, report on the local Hooters, report lies about celebrities, ask their black friend Token to speak with a white accent, and have pandas run on from time to time. Their ratings go up, but they are again beaten by their competitor's new show, "Close-ups of pets with a wide-angle lens, wearing hats," which is just that, again played to the funky chicken. The boys realize they have to come up with the best news show ever to win the ratings battle. In order to help them think, they drink a whole lotta cough syrup. They wind up stoned out of their fourth-grade minds watching the show of close-ups of pets with hats, thinking it's the funniest thing in the world. This gives them the greatest idea ever- do a hard-target investigative report about how the entire school is getting high on cough syrup. Their show goes off wonderfully, they get the school off cough syrup, and they win the ratings war, and their show gets extended. Then, they discover that it's really hard to come up with really good shows, and decide to bail on the whole project.

While the above doesn't really elaborate anything, and doesn't offer any insight, it was certainly amusing to watch and write about.

Google News search, "US Military" murder iraq trial

2004-11-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

Today in the (unnamed) college library, I was doing gooogle searches for "US Military" murder iraq trial trying to find seperate incidents where United States troops were on trial for murdering Iraqis. The inciting incident which inspired these searches was the footage delivered by Kevin Sites, NBC embedded reporter in the 3rd battalion, 1st Marine Division in Fallujah, of a marine murdering a wounded Iraqi prisoner, shooting him in the head.

The Google news search turned up this headline, from the Borneo Bulletin:http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/tue/nov16w20.htm .

Google listed 11 aritcles like that one. The articles came from Xinhua in China, Al-Jazeera in Quatar, News24 in South Africa, The Age in Australia, Turkish Press in Turkey, Channel News Asia in Singapore, Africa South African News in South Africa, and SierraTimes.com . The Sierra Times is an internet publication, founded in Nevada in 2000. It was the only American source listed by Google. However, maybe it's just the time lag- According to the Google results, the earliest of these stories were run only yesterday, 11-15-04.

FCC holds Media consolidation forum, Dec. 9, St. Paul. MN.

2004-11-15T20:50:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if this link to a .pdf press release from the Federal Communications Commission's website will work, but I have to try.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-253766A1.pdf

The jist of the story is, FCC commissioners Adelstein and Cobb are going to hold a Forum at Hamline University in St. Paul Minnesota on the subject of the FCC's attempt to allow further Media consolidation in 2003. That attempt was overruled in the Third Court of Appeals.

The date for this talk is December ninth, '04, 7-10:30pm. I'm ~440 miles and Seven and a half hours away from St. Paul, and I'm no friend to the Minnesota Vikings, but still, if I really cared about this Media Consolidation issue, I would be obligated to go.

philanthropy center

2004-11-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

In the library of (Unnamed) College, right off the computer area where you can take advantage of a high speed internet connection(like I'm doing right now,) there is a small section underneath a stairwell with a sign hanging from the ceiling pronouncing it to be the Philanthropy center. I've been in the computer lab several times and noticed this little nook, and today I didn't have much to do so I went over and had a look.

The philanthropy center is close to the size of a garden shed, maybe nine feet by nine feet, or less. There's a table with four chairs and a sign declaring that table the exclusive privilidge of those people using the philanthropy center. There's a single book case, waste high, with two shelves on each side, providing in total about twelve feet of shelf space. On the wall in the back of this space, there's a large wall map of the (unnamed) Metropolitan area.

(It's worth noting the Dictionary.com definition of Philanthropy at this time:
1.)The effort or inclination to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid or donations.
2.)Love of humankind in general.
3.)Something, such as an activity or institution, intended to promote human welfare. )

I was interested in the books there. I figured, philanthropy. That's the practice of improving the human condition, right? I thought maybe I'd find a little bit on philosophy, histories of philanthropy, a how-to guide on volunteering for non-profit organizations. In fact, the books had topics like the listings of American foundations, guides for writing grants, laws for tax exempt organizations, guides to giving, directory of nonprofit funds, grant-seeking on the internet, preparing financial statements for non-profit organizations, methods for individuals seeking grants, guides to fundraising, and the world of postgraduate funding. Not what I had expected.

But, there was one book-actually three volumes, Philanthropy in America: a comprehensive historical encyclopedia, edited by Dwight Burlingame, published by ABC-CLIO, and apparently available as an ebook at their website, abc-clio.com. The volume describes itself as the first and only encyclopedia on the topic as a whole, featuring entries on individuals, organizations, events, theories, and legislation. The very first entry, and a lengthy one, is Accountability. After that, Jane Addams. Amnesty international was not listed.

"Orwellian"

2004-11-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

I'd like to begin by saying that Harsh grim con weighs 198lbs. Harsh grim con has always weighed 198 pounds.

My assignment today requires me to find something Orwellian in the media. I didn't have to look to come up with something the smack so hard of Orwell, it makes your parents' faces hurt.

"Liberals are out of touch with Moral Values."

If you've followed the aftermath of the 2004 general presidential election, you've certainly heard this. The story is that a great deal (55-60%?) of voters told exit pollers that their primary concern in choosing a president was Moral Values. Major Media outlets picked up on this, and presumed that since Bush won, Bush must have Moral Values. The next step in conjecture was to say that John Kerry and liberal America was "out of touch" with moral values. This story that Bush had Moral Values was circulated incredibly heavily on the major networks and their cable partners-Fox and Foxnews, NBC and MSNBC, ABC, CNN, Radio, everywhere. It has been repeated so many times, I assert that most Americans who aren't solid liberals are convinced that the Democratic party is out of touch with moral values.

In the words of Joseph Goebbles, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will think it the truth.

My brother asked, Where did this report come from? The networks say that exit pollers produced this number. My friend Mike said that it was a zogby poll. But what survey produced these results? What was the methodology of the poll? My brother interviewed at the National Opinion Research Center a few months ago, and polling organizations(at least NORC) are strict beyond words in carrying out their surveys. So what choices did voters have in this survey? Was Gay Marriage or abortion an option on this poll? The president's performance? How were these numbers arrived at?

No one asks, and what's Orwellian about this is, it doesn't matter. The Major Media outlets repeated this story again and again until people believed it, and it doesn't matter whether the story-that liberals are out of touch with Moral Values-is true or not. This statistic will be repeated until liberals start winning elections again, and will be cited as a reason that Liberals haven't expanded their base. And for all intents and purposes, it may have been completely made up.

Post Script- As a liberal, I can tell you that Liberals are not out of touch with Moral Values. We're full of moral values, and we call them expanded Health Care, Maintaining Social Security, Fiscal Responsibility, Not sending American troops overseas when it isn't absolutely necessary, and Cooperating with our allies around the world. And I think those are pretty good moral values.

"Orwell Rolls in his Grave"

2004-11-08T19:46:00.000-08:00

So, having just now watched this movie, the essay prompt I mentioned earlier becomes slightly different.

Orwell Rolls in his Grave states plainly that the American media situation is very similar to the Media of the Soviet Union, where all news stories are controlled by the Soviet Government or the Communist Party. The film also relates the American Media to the Nazi propaganda machine of Joseph Goebbles, albeit sparingly.

Having watched the video, it becomes evident that the themes that I have to relate to my environment and Nineteen-eighty-four are: Totalitarian control in Media, which sounds like 1984, or Monopolistic control of media outlets, which sounds like the current situation. Bias in the media, which sounds current or blatant propagandism, which sounds like 1984. Reality Control, which is a 1984 term which has no modern world counterpart. Perhaps I should make Reality Control part of the Thesis, is it seems not to be a means but a complete end.

And in Truth, that's what Reality Control is: The manipulation of media (which means the propagation of false-hoods as truths in a system which masquerades as being diverse and honest and good) to control what people believe about the world and their environment, which of course influences their actions.

It occurs to me only now that everyone in my class has access to my Weblog via my Professor's webpage. So, my classmates could be spying on my analysis for their own gain. If that is the case, and you are borrowing my ideas, let me say this- I'm dumb. And failing the class. Really.

Another essay draws nigh...

2004-11-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

In two school week's time(eleven days) I'll have to turn in an essay about Nineteen-eighty-four. There's a number of prompts available, but I can certainly single out the prompts which will not be written on. Comparing the expression of ideas in Orwell's essays and in Nineteen-eighty-four is right out, since I'd have to read a sizable amount of Orwell to so, and I'm a dreadfully slow reader. Also, describing how modern political figures have used Orwell is not going to happen. After the second presidential debate, when Kerry said that (I believe he was talking about the) clean air act was an Orwellian name, that same night on The Daily Show, the fake news and media criticism outlet, Jon Stewart played the Kerry clip when he used the term Orwellian and said simply, "You lost us at 'Orwellian,'" the statement being that by and large, people don't get Orwell, or what it means to be Orwellian. I don't believe there'd be a large base of intelligent uses of Orwell in political commentary.

For some reason, I had highlighted the first prompt, which involved finding inconsistencies in the media as a basis for the discussion of Memory in nineteen-eighty-four. Perhaps I was attracted to the idea of being some kind of amateur media watchdog who would find some unbeknownst oasis of truth on the internet. But now, that would just be silly of me- because I expect that I would find contradictory articles of which I remembered absolutely nothing, either in their first or second iteration.

The prompt I think I should write on is one that I originally crossed out, perhaps because it required me to watch a video. You can only imagine the horror entailed in that. The prompt asks you to watch Orwell Rolls in his grave and comment on similarities between the modern media and the media situation in Nineteen-eighty-four. I want to do this prompt because I can take a tangent on Language, which may involve me reading Orwell's politics and the English language essay, but also because It gives me cause to type up and discuss a few interviews I took at a Democratic Rally here at [unnamed college] in October.

So, for this prompt, I need the following: Orwell Rolls in his Grave(which I suppose I can get at the[unnamed college] library), Orwell's Politics and the English language essay, typed versions of the interviews I had from this rally, and a hefty amount of Media study so that I can provide references to support my opinions on the similarity between modern Media and that of Nineteen-eighty-four. No problemo.

And because it bears saying, (no pun intended) Chicago Bears beat the New York Giants!

On Tuesday....

2004-11-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

I was working as an election judge, and one of my fellow judges, Ann, was a seventy-two year old woman who had been a teacher. Ann caught me at one point reading Nineteen-eighty-four, and she mentioned to me that she had read the book when she was in school in nineteen-fifty. Now I thought that was just astounding, that she was reading the book in her class when the book was only two years old. I also thought there was a stunning similarity in our conversation to the scene in chapter 8 section 1 where Winston Smith tries to talk to an old prole about what he remembers of the time before the party. I attempted, for my own reasons, to try to extract some information from Ann about what her class's opinion and interpretation was of Nineteen-eighty-four, whether it was viewed more as science fiction or political commentary, and she answered political commentary. The big point amongst her peers was that they believed a situation like in Nineteen-eighty-four could never exist, anywhere. She also felt it had a greater impact, because its title was in the future, rather than the past. All in all though, she reminded me that the discussions she'd had about it happened more than fifty years ago.

This made me think, has the collective interpretation or opinion of Nineteen-eighty-four changed in fifty year? Ann made me think that maybe, it hadn't.

Orwell Symposium presentation blog fantastico

2004-10-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

On the Twenty-Seventh, I had the extreme pleasure to attend Christopher Hitchen's presentation for the Orwell Symposium. Hitchens, author and journalist, was delightfully informative about Orwell, and certain current events. Hitchens promised not to leave until he had answered every question put to him, but near 3:10, when he produced his lighter and worked a cigarette between his lips, it was a polite way of signaling, "Wrap it up so I can grab a smoke."

To Recap, Hitchens's began by stating that there had been three great questions in the 20th century: The right of European and Western nations to Imperialism, the Democracy versus Fascist totalitarianism, and Democracy versus Communism, and George Orwell was right on all three issues. His speech focused on George Orwell's background, from his family which was involved in the opium trade in China, his time in Burma as a policeman, His return to England, His service in the Spanish Civil War.

His key points on Orwell were how Orwell drew on his experiences to understand how power worked, his understanding of the English language as shown in his essay, "Politics and the English language," and that in order to move forward, and make changes in public policy and government, it must first be admitted and accepted that the current course of policy is wrong, and blame must be accepted.

Afterwards, Hitchens answered questions about Orwell's opinion on Stalinism versus Marxism, Whether the analogy to 1984 applied to the General elections in America in regards to the Military-Industrial complex in this country, Whether Orwell and Leon Trotsky could be referred to as Anarchists in regards to their actions during the Spanish Civil war and Russian Revolution respectively. One of the last questions, and I thought perhaps the most important was, "Evil having been established, in counterpoint, Does the concept of Good matter, or apply?" Hitchens said that Evil did not imply good. That is, simply because evil exists does not mean that an equal and opposite Good accompanies it. Evil requires the cultivation of Virtue. (Virtue in the Greek sense, meaning strength and integrity) There does not have to be evil in politics; some politicians would rather resign than participate in evil, (I believe he said) and there is latent virtue in most people. But always, power can corrupt. He also spoke on a few more current events points, but that's a different subject, and it threw me to have to switch gears like that.

So, that's what the speaker had to say. I really don't know what to think about his views on Orwell. He's certainly in greater possession of the facts than me- at least, he says he is, and by merit of his accomplishments, and that the staff of COD saw fit to invite him to speak, I feel safe in presuming that he is in possession of the facts. Certainly, to offer any adequate dissenting opinion, if I had one, I would be required to do research and reading until my eyes bled. I would certainly say that he had the air of a demagogue around him. I believe when he spoke, at his heart he expected his audience to accept what he says, because he believes so firmly that his is right. In his little side comments, and his sense of humor, I could almost feel his disdain for any idea he felt was incorrect, or of little value. I would be the first to admit to his credit that he probably exhaustively researches any opinion before he calls it his own, so his belief in his opinions is certainly just.

But in honor of George Orwell, I'll let skepticism of what I'm told rule the day. What I really believed happened was that his information is not, or is not yet useful to me, so I haven't formed any opinion of it whatsoever.

Letter to the Editor, 2.

2004-10-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

I wrote a followup letter to the editor of that college paper. I gave it a clever name and everything.

Draft Dodged?
On October Fifth of this year, a draft bill was voted on in the House of Representatives. The bill was H.R. 163, the subject of two articles in the Courier this month. The bill, which would have required a mandatory period of service for all men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, was voted down by a margin of 402 votes Nay, 2 votes Yea, 29 not voting, and 2 representatives were not on the roll. That’s about ninety-two percent of the Congress voting against the draft bill. The vote was done at about seven-thirty in evening, and was recorded as House Roll 494. The Bill had been inactive in the house for nearly twenty months as it sat in the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on Total Force. On the night of the Fifth of October, Representative John McHugh (R-NY) moved to suspend the rules and vote on the bill. The rules were suspended, and the motion to vote to pass the bill went unchallenged, and the vote proceeded.

H.R. 163 had sixteen sponsors in the House of Representatives, all democratic. Of those sponsors, twelve sponsors voted against the bill (including primary sponsor Charles Rangel (D-NY) and our own Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois,) sponsors Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Donna Christensen (D-VI) were not on the roll, sponsor Corrine Brown (D-FL) did not vote, and sponsor Fortney Stark (D-CA) voted Yea. The only other representative to vote yes to the bill was John Murtha (D-PA). (voting info found on http://Thomas.loc.gov)

This was to be expected; in an election year, neither party wants to be associated with the very unpopular idea of a draft. Furthermore this bill, and its matching Senate bill (S.89) are ‘Joke Bills’, not intended to be passed, but to force votes at crucial times, and create marks on people’s voting records. The Republicans were very clever to force the vote on this bill at 7:30 in the evening when it was able to slip by almost entirely unnoticed in the media. (I only found out about the vote by a chance visit to the selective service website: http://www.sss.gov/)

However, the draft is not quite a dead issue. President Bush’s policy of fighting the terrorists over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here requires a significant amount of American soldiers to be stationed overseas. Furthermore, if President Bush continues his policy of fighting terrorists through Regime Change and invasion and occupation, the volunteer army will almost certainly come up short. President Bush has publicly stated that America will have a volunteer army; however, his policies are not suited to an all volunteer army. If President Bush’s policies are continued a draft could be more likely further down the line, maybe a year or two in the future.

Any draft would require the agreement of the Congress and the President. A modern draft would target men at the age of twenty to produce the required amount of soldiers. After that, twenty-one year old would be drafted, and then twenty-two year olds, and so on. Teenagers would be drafted last. So a draft taking place in a year or two would target individuals who are eighteen or nineteen years old today.

The first President Bush told us to read his lips when he said “No new taxes.” Now, his son tells us “All Volunteer Army.” Does the apple fall far from the tree? Answer that question at the polls.

Harsh Grim Con, Student

This article was written under the influence of a headcold.

2004-10-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

So, there were three speakers giving lectures this Wednesday for an event of the title "Rethinking Rights, liberties, and security." I was attended the first two lectures, given by Misters Peter Hart and Steve Sawyer. I was unable to attend the final lecture, which perhaps would have interested me the most, given by Edwin Yohnka on the subject of the Patriot Act, but such is life. I believe, though, that I saw College President, Dr. Sunril Chand in the audience for a brief period.

I was able to connect much more with the second lecture by Mr. Sawyer, who discussed the Geneva Convention and the legality of certain American actions in regards to the war in Iraq and the war on Terror. About a year ago I was in our book store and came across two book in the anthropology section, one on torture entitled "Ordinary people, unspeakable acts: the dynamics of torture", and another entitled "On Killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society." Both of these prepared me in detail for the discussing the Geneva Convention. But, I suspect that in regards to this English class, the focus should be directed to the first speaker, Mr. Hart, who discussed the modern role and behavior of the media in relation to the war on terror, the government, and elections.

If I had to define Mr. Hart's thesis, I would say that he felt the media has become less independent, less responsible, and overall less accurate, in its coverage of the war on Terror, National Security, the war in Iraq, and the presidential election. His point was that the political parties have used their power in the relationship between the government and the media to manipulate the media. Also, that the operation of major media outlets as profit organizations has resulted in journalists being less free to print stories. Those facts together cause news coverage to become less discriminating and less accurate.

And, you know, he's probably right. It's downright depressing to think about. But what does this all mean?

The media is most important in its effects it has upon individuals. It doesn't matter if every media outlet in the world publishes the most fallacious lies imaginable if the audience is smart enough to see the truth.

So, much more important than the reliability of any given media outlet to be honest, accurate, and unbiased, is the reliability of the audience to be discerning, knowledgeable, and judgmental. And that simply begs the question, how discerning, knowledgeable, and Judgmental is the American public? Or at the very least, how skeptical are Americans?

Americans can be lied to, and easily. I remember a poll floating around not too long ago, saying that seventy percent of Americans believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Or, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. The authorities on these subjects, Hans Blix and the Darfer (sp?) report, and the 9/11 commission run contrary top public opinion, yet the opinion remains.

So people are gullible. But is the situation improving? I heard on NPR that record numbers of students were turned away from the University of Illinois this year, indicative of higher college enrollment. If more and more people are attending higher education, are these students being taught to think critically about the world around them? Are students being trained to do independent and perhaps unrewarding research about their world in order to inform themselves? I would say that I am, but I am not a representative sample.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: If people are misled by the media, it is not the media who is to blame, but the people. If individuals choose to be believe what the media tells them without investigation or verification, and they are lied to, they have no one to blame but themselves-and Much More importantly, individuals must learn to be discerning. People can not rely on the media to be entirely honest, accurate, and unbiased, and as such, People must learn to be smart viewers, readers, and listeners. Only when people rise to the challenge of being a truly intelligent and responsible audience will the media respond in kind and become more intelligent and responsible.

Will this happen? George Orwell, if his opinions were concurrent with his novels, would probably tell you No. He might say that human beings are lazy, irresponsible, and perhaps downright stupid. Perhaps he's right. After the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Nixon, voter turnout took a tremendous drop, because a generation of young people had been turned off. Rather than taking the example of President Nixon, and learning that they had to dedicate themselves to being smart and informed voters, and work towards getting their candidate elected, they simply got angry and walked away. There was a scandal last election. Now, four years later we will see if people were turned off in the same way.

You can fool All of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. While I don't doubt that that holds true, we'll see just how many people you need to fool in order to win the presidency of this nation.

Building a website part 2.

2004-10-14T19:21:00.001-07:00

So, after much effort, I've finally managed to put something together that can be reached from the internet. But now, there's a gigantic problem.

I can't add text.

Oh yeah, I can create a text box and write in it, but I wrote a thousand word response in MSworks, and now, Pagebuilder won't allow me to copy and paste that text in a text Box. Pagebuilder acts as though there was no selected text at all. So, you know, I tried to retype it manually. I get half a page in, and my internet connection gives out and pagebuilder loses it all. So, I put up a link on the page to this blog, a far superior method of writing on the internet, and now, I present my response to "The Yellow Wallpaper", under the contingent that I cannot reproduce the text on that infernal web page.

I must say, I’m not a fan of "The Yellow Wallpaper." For such a short piece, it manages to be lethargic and disinteresting. Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman intended her story to be a criticism, but did not hardly pursue that criticism at all, instead drawing attention to wallpaper and insanity. The ending, which could have been very positive, was a hefty disappointment.

The story is a narrative, which may have included no genuine dialogue at all, if the author had wanted it; However, the story presents actual dialogue on three separate occasions, and relates several other conversations. Since there was dialogue, I expected it to be interesting, and move the story along. The conversations is almost entirely mundane and oft superfluous, where characters repeat facts and opinions that the narrator has already explained. If this is way the author intends to utilize dialogue, perhaps she ought not use it at all.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman never avails herself of a direct strike against the rest cure. Throughout the story it is clear that the narrator is not improving under the rest cure, but her health is not failing because of it-the responsibility for that is ascribed to bad wallpaper. There are numerous approaches the author could have taken to make a criticism on the rest cure. Gilman could have used dialogue to express criticism; she could have written a disagreement, perhaps even an argument, between the Narrator and her husband where she expresses her lack of faith in the rest cure, and why she feels that way, and John refuses to hear her concerns. Instead, we are given the bedroom scene (lines 133-143) where the narrator only says that she does not believe the cure to be working, and John rebuffs her. In that scene, an opportunity to write a genuine criticism was available, but it was not seized. At the very least, the author could have written that the rest cure was to blame for the narrator’s madness, but Gilman never makes such a statement.

The story is not helped in any measure by it’s lack of direction. Gilman meant for her story to be a criticism, yet it is split between a horror story about insanity, and the examination of the relation of the Narrator and her husband. A criticism of the rest cure should focus on the patient who is undergoing the rest cure, the nature of her illness, and the administration of the rest cure itself. The elements which garner the most attention in "The Yellow Wallpaper" are the patient’s surroundings and her relation with John and Jennie.

Worse, even, than the story’s lack of direction is it’s misdirection. If Charlotte Perkins Gilman meant to say that the rest cure caused insanity, then she is wrong. In the same way you can’t die from not using the bathroom, you can’t go insane from three months of incarceration. I describe the rest cure as incarceration because, I believe, they are fairly similar; a long period of seclusion coupled with little activity. While I respect it as a bold stroke to imply that the rest cure causes insanity, the intent of that implication is muddied because it is not clear, in "The Yellow Wallpaper" that the rest cure is the cause of the Narrator’s madness. The story associates the wallpaper in the Narrator’s room closer with her failing health than it does the rest cure by leaps and bounds: As the narrator focuses more and more on her wallpaper, her sanity fails more and more. The story should have associated the Narrator’s madness with the rest cure directly, to make clear that it is the cure that drives her mad. To give an example, there ought to have been a section of the story where the Narrator is alone for a day and undertakes a variety of mentally and physically stimulating activities, whether they be reading a good book, the New York Times crossword puzzle, balancing her checkbook, doing a two mile run, or whatever you please. In the aftermath of these activities the Narrator would explain how much better she felt for having performed them, to elucidate that as the rest cure is ignored, the Narrator’s mental infirmity wanes. But, that does not happen.

Finally, the ending is poor and negative. The Narrator at last loses her grip on reality and goes insane, because of her wallpaper. I believe that Charlotte Perkins Gilman perhaps wanted to make her criticism more of a cautionary tale, and thus felt the ending had to reinforce that caution: Undertake the Rest Cure, and go crazy. But Gilman muddies her own point when ties the Narrator’s madness with the wallpaper. The more effective ending would have been one where the Narrator was brought to the edge of madness by the rest cure, and then by her own choice, demands to be taken off the cure, and taken back home, where she could engage in a more normal routine, with academic exercise and a healthy social life, which would result with her eventual recovery. In this ending, it would be possible to indict the rest cure as maddening, and then demonstrate that a healthy regimen of mental exercise was a superior treatment for nervous depression.

There is a possibility that I have misunderstood Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s approach to her story. Perhaps she wished to convey a woman’s descent into madness while under the rest cure in a strictly realistic narrative, where the rest cure was not openly questioned by the patient, or her doctor and husband. Where the patient herself falls into a schizophrenic state and focuses her attention-and ours, for it is the patient’s narrative-to her wallpaper, believing from hallucinations that there is a woman behind the walls of her room. Perhaps this is how the author thought it best to approach the rest cure in a cautionary tale. However, whether that is what she felt or not, her final product was not the critical examination it could have been.

building a website.

2004-10-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

I don't get it.

"Using the PageBuilder feature that is part of your free geocities webspace, you are to develop a 'hyper-text' response to Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' In other words, you are building a web page that uses text and image to convey your reaction to the reading. You can be as creative as you like - it is YOUR reaction."

Now, I wrote an essay where I explained what I thought about the yellow wallpaper. While perhaps not every sentence was my own personal opinion, I can guarantee that If I didn't believe something, I didn't put it in that essay.

This assignment requires my personal response, but with imagery, and submitted passively, via a website. however, I can be as creative as I want- meaning that I can choose my level of creativity. My next question would be, can I then choose a level of creativity which does not include illustrations?

I just don't get it. Why a website? And why pictures? If I couldn't express myself through the written word(as I am doing at this very moment), I wouldn't be in college to begin with.

I'll do the assigment. I mean, what the heck else am I going to do? But I certainly don't understand it- and may not even be able to set up this damnable website. Damn thing says I haven't started yet. All I wanted to do to start with was put up one line of text- "Quaquae ipse miscrima vidi; et quorum pars magna fui. -Virgil, Aeniad" And lousy geocities can't even get that up. How I am supposed to do whole response if I can't even do a single line?

Hannah and Martin

2004-10-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

On the tenth I had the privelidge of traveling in to Chicago to see the Timeline theater company's closing performance of Hannah and Martin. Hannah and Martin is the story of Jewish scholar Hannah Ahrent and her relationship with famous continental philospher and unrepentant supporter of Hitler, Martin Heidiger.

The story begins ~1946 in Germany, where Hannah has come to Germany to do a series of articles for The New Yorker about the Nuremburg trials, primarily the trial of a man, Von Schirach, who was the leader of the Hitler Youth organization, responsible for indoctorinating children into the Nazi party and the SS. Aside from the trial of Schirach, Hannah is at odds with her student and typist, Alice, because she wants her to type some letters in defense of Martin Heidigger, that he may continue teaching in Germany. Then, the story goes back to the beginning.

Hannah was one of Heidigger's students at the Freiburg academy. He liked some of her essays on St. Augustine, and they struck up a relationship soon thereafter. You know, the moon-eyed girl in awe of her professor, so they start sleeping together, type relationship. he promises to teach her to think, but then sends her away to another university, to learn under Karl Jaspers, Heidigger's old teacher. She's heartbroken, but gets over it. Over time, she becomes very good friends with Jaspers and his wife, who very often have his students over for dinner.

Skip forward several years. By this time, the Nazi party has come to power in Germany, and Martin Heidigger has joined it, and been named the Rector of Frieberg academy by the Nazi party. Hannah marries one of her friends who had also been a student of Heidigger, Gunther Stern.(BTW, they are both Jews) In their apartment, they harbor people who have politically unpopular views- communism, for example- not because they are sympathetic to communism, but because they believe that absolutely everyone must have the right to express their views. Just before giving his speech at the Frieburg academy, Heidigger visits Hannah and Gunther- he does not approve of their harboring communists, but none the less they congradulate him on his position.

In his opening address at Freiburg, Heidigger announces that the students of the academy must learn of proud German history, German culture, and become soldiers in a new German era, and other such nazi-esque announcements. In that first year, Heidigger leads a Nazi Party rally amongst the students, but things get out of hand, and the students begin burning jewish books from the library. Heidigger tries to stop this burning, and fails. While Gunther is away from Hannah on sume business, she hears that the Nazis mean to sweep their neighborhood to round up political dissidents- she telegraphs Gunther, and he immediately flees to Paris. During their seperation, their marriage comes apart. Hannah stays in Germany longer, then flees to America.

After the war, Hannah returns to Germany to write these articles for the New Yorker about the Nuremburg trials. While in Germany, she receives a telegram from Heidigger asking her to come and see him. She goes to the home of her friend Karl Jaspers, and there she learns that Heidigger facilitated the removal of Jews from Freiburg; and that when Jaspers was removed from teaching in Germany, and he went to Martin for help, his student would not even allow him to sit in the library. Hannah says to them she probably will not go to see Martin.

Of course, She goes to see Martin. He has been banned from teaching and publishing his works because of his connection to the Nazi party. Heidigger himself is in pitiful shape-poor health, aching joints, probably very few years left. At first, Heidigger's wife, Elfride-who was a staunch Nazi and anti-semite, and perhaps drove her husband into the party- pleads with Hannah to help get Martin reinstated. Then she goes to bed and Martin comes down, and he and Hannah 'have it out', so to speak. To summarize, she accuses him of being a dirty Nazi, he defends himself saying he was the only person who could define the nobler principles of the party about German culture and art and music and that he met Hitler and believed in him, Hannah rebukes him that his actions were horribly naive, that he had to have seen that Hitler was pinhead, and to have seen it in Mein Kampf. He accuses her of deriding him simply because of what he has to say and that she is a hypocrite, who supported everyone's right to speak, communists, chimney sweeps, butchers, plumbers, but when Martin Heidigger opens his mouth, she won't listen. Hannah then brings up the way Martin treated his old teacher Karl Jaspers, how he wouldn't let him even sit in the library; she brings up his address to Frieburg academy where he said that sthe students had to be soldiers. Heidigger tries to explain that he meant Soldiers in the sense of Peraclitus(sp?)- who referred to all life in terms of conflict, but eventually Heidigger breaks down and admits that yes, the party was a mistake but no, he Will Not apologize for it until Hitler apologizes to Him. In the tearful end of the argument, he pulls out a Wagner record(Tannhueser, or Tristan and Isolde), and puts it on the phonograph, and cries out over and over, "Do you hear? This is how it was supposed to be! Do you Hear?"

After her meeting with Heidigger, Hannah reverses her position on Heidigger, and writes some letters on Martin's behalf. Alice, one of Hannah's students who follows her and types for her because she reveres her,(basically in the same way Hannah revered Martin, but not sexual) says she Cannot type the letters. Not that she will not, but Can Not, because she despises Heidigger as a Nazi, and accuses Hannah of having blood on her hands for writing them. Hannah tries to defend Martin, saying that if he cannot teach, and cannot write, it is the students who will suffer, and Alice counters by saying that she can't even stomach the concept of reading anything that Heidigger wrote. Von Schirach, the Nazi on trial for indoctornating children into the Nazi party is found guilty.

Now, My brother thought that the central question in the story was Freedom- as in, was Martin Heidigger truly free and acting of his own will when he mades those calls about the Nazi party? According to Sarte, people are always free and always responsible for their actions. However, according to Merleau-Ponty, circumstances do matter, and people are not always free to do exactly as they would. My brother thinks about freedom a lot, I think.

I thought it was more about the choice between right and wrong for Hannah- Did she stay true to her convictions, and defend Heidigger's right to teach, because he has a right to have opinions? Or would she act in contradiction of her beliefs, and support his removal from teaching?

Now, how this all relates to 1984 is that it's a story about how very, very smart people can be drawn into a violent, evil fascist state, the type of which is represented in Orwell's story. Von Schirach, for instance, made the same claims about loving German culture and music, and wanting the children he was responsible for to be strong in mind and body- while what he was really doing was writing songs that dehumanized Jews, giving German children rifles that they could practice their shooting, and earmarking particularly ruthless children who would inform on their peers to become members of the SS.

Just made me think of 1984.

The meaning of the yellow wallpaper.

2004-10-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html

The above links to the article, "Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper", by author Charlotte Gilman. I'll get back to that later. I was thinking about the story some more, and considering the various topics which have to be included and I got to thinking, What is The Yellow Wallpaper really about? The general concensus being reached in class is that the story is a social commentary about womens' rights, the social inequalities between men and women, and the suffocating nature of the heteronormative lifestyle in the Victorian era.

But for me, there were always a lot of metaphors and story elements that didn't add up. For example, a chunk of people in class agreed that Jennie, in the story, was meant to represent the ideal Victorian woman. While she may or may not have been that, the story didn't treat her ideal status if it was important, and that didn't add up to me. If this is a social commentary, and Gilman meant to be taking shots at the prim and proper housewives of the period, Why didn't she further examine the character that is the ideal housewive? The character of Jennie ought to have been picked apart in a social commentary, but Gilman doesn't do that.

Another example, the presumed 'Writing metaphor' in the story. If the story were a feminist social commentary, then I should expect those actions which somehow further a woman's independence-like writing, even when told not to by your husband- should be extolled as virtuous. But writing isn't really extolled as anything. It's just there. There's an assertion made by Jennie in the story that writing causes the narrator's sickness; If 'writing' was meant to serve as a sort of code-word for independence, you would expect such an assertion to be clearly refuted, but it is not. In fact, in line 16, "I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal..." In the words of our reverant Commander in Chief, there's some mixed messages here.

Finally, there's gender roles. If the story were a social commentary about women being dominated by their husbands, then it would logically follow that John, the narrator's husband, should be villified. But John is not villified. In fact, the more vocal elements in class seem to agree that he means well. Furthermore, if the story were feminist social commentary, you might expect the main character to develop a feminist mindset. The narrator, at one point, would have to come out and make some motion for her own independence. But the end result of the story is that the narrator just goes crazy. It seems to me that at no point does the author attempt to espouse any feminist mores.

Now, I'll get back to that "why I wrote the yellow wallpaper" thing. It's pretty clear that Gilman intended her story to be an attack on the Rest Cure, and not on the mores of her society. She mentions in her article that the story was considered to have some value amongst Alienists, (psyhologists) and then says: "But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked."

That pretty much seals it for me- The Yellow Wallpaper was intended, and more importantly, IS, an attack on the rest cure. Now, I don't mean to say that it can not be interperted as social commentary; readers may interpert stories as they please, but to me interpertations of stories are of secondary importance to True Meaning. When I set forth to read a book, story, or article, it's the least I can do to try and understand what it is the author is truly attempting to convey.

On the Vice presidential debate.

2004-10-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Cheney,

If you count the Iraqi police and military personnel who have died in Iraq, you are correct that it makes it appear as though less U.S. personnel have died. But you only achieve that by increasing the overall number of dead counted. I imagine if you were to count the Iraqi civilians And police And military personnel who have died, the numbers for U.S. personnel would look even better! And, through some reasearch, I found that if you also count all the people who died in car accidents in the United States last year, on top of Iraqi police, Iraqi military and Iraqi civilians, U.S. casualties in Iraq fall away almost to nothing!!!

Dick Cheney, how dare you accuse John Edwards of ignoring the sacrifice of Iraqis when in doing so you put the Iaqis who you feverishly pray will cover up the Bush Administration's mess in Iraq before your very own American servicemen. You should be punched until you develop turrets syndrome. Or until you piss blood, whichever comes first.

textual difference in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

2004-10-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

Textual difference. I'm tying to think of book where textual style stood out to me. The Oxford english edition of Don Quixote comes to mind, for a tremendous amount of footnotes. Otherwise I would like to engage in the romantic belief that words on paper are always equal, regardless of layout.

The Norton Anthology text appeared highly realistic and practical to me, perhaps for its minimalism. The individual lines were given no extra spacing, and where there were defined breaks in section there was simply an open space to make that clear. It looked like a journal. Only, typed very precisely, with a singular footnote. Furthermore, As a contextual note, the Norton book itself is a fairly hefty piece of work; weighty, you might say. Gilman's story appeared almost tiny and insignificant in such a humongous volume, but that worked to its benefit. I may have slightly underestimated it, and I was surprised. Furthermore, I've experimented with other electronic readings, both in .pdf format and html, and really, I've come to the conlusion that reading off a computer screen is just a pain. Paper wins.

The Virginia e-text uses a layout which appears less and more structured at the same time. Individual lines are seperated. Sometimes there are three-sentence paragraphs, then a space and a single sentence, other times one finds several single sentences in a row, all seperated. This creates a disjointed feeling in the reading. Each line draws more attention to itself as it stands, to a small degree, alone. The story may look less like a journal and more like a straight narrative. Section breaks, however, are represented by a thick black line. These serve the greater function, in my perception, to isolate and focus certain sections of the story. The Virginia e-text also provides some few pictures from the original publication. To me, pictures undermine writing. I don't believe that many authors when writing a story actual think about what pictures will aid in telling their story; rather, good authors uses words to make pictures obsolete in comparison to the reader's imagination. When I read the un-illustrated "Yellow Wallpaper" in the norton anthology, no pictures were needed, and now, looking at E-texts, I find them to be wasteful.

There are other E-texts available; ( http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/CPG/TYW.html ) the one just listed provides some of the same pictures, full sized and with caption, which is still a waste in my opinion. New lines are double-spaced, as in other etexts. Section seperation is done by Asterisks, performs the same function of the solid line from the Virginia Etext, but which appears highly suspect in and of itself.

Alienation in The Yellow Wallpaper.

2004-10-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

Or, Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the shadows?

Alienation is perhaps the most important theme in The Yellow Wallpaper. It's curious, though, I was just reading about alienation in my textbook for my Scorsese film class, because it was talking about Taxi Driver which is so much about alienation. but while Taxi Driver fits closer to the existential paradigm of alienation, where you are alienated from God, Nature, Other People, and then Yourself, (and in that order, I believe) the Yellow Wallpaper is a bit more freeform. The Yellow Wallpaper approaches alienation in terms of loneliness, and it does so in physical, social, and mental terms.

First, there's the physical. Allow me to quote line nineteen, with important words in all caps. "A most beautiful place! it is quite ALONE, standing WELL BACK from the road, quite THREE MILES from the village." As a reader, I immediately understood that the author meant 'a house in the middle of nowhere'. Not necessarily original, but it plays its part. to continue..."It makes me think of english places that you read about, for there are HEDGES and WALLS and GATES that LOCK, and lots of SEPERATE little houses for the gardeneras and people." Later on there's the well mentioned lines about bars on the windows and one about a gate at the top of the stairs. Even later on as the narrator starts to come unpasted, she see the very wallpaper like prison bars locking a woman behind them. Perhaps even more obvious, this woman spends her days staring at the wallpaper, which could be called fancy double-talk for Starting At The Walls. Much of the setting is described in terms of seperating boundary lines.

Second, the social alienation. The setting really helps this, because when you're three miles out of town, there's not a lot of company to keep. Matter of fact, it strike me that this woman may have been home, Alone, for much of her time at Anscestral-spooky-manor-house. John is out most of the day, Jennie is not always present as the housekeeper, so there must have been some days where this woman was all alone, with her baby that she hardly ever talks about, and never even looks at. If that's not loneliness, I don't know what is. Even when Jennie and John are around, they're not much for company. The wife's relationship with her husband is far from healthy, and Jennie is simply one of the narrator's in-laws. So the few relationships she does have access to could be described as particularly low value.

Third, the mental Alienation. Line 25, "I get unreasonably angry at John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I thing it's due to this nervous condition." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these feelings the narrator describes, this unreasonable anger, is in fact entirely reasonable, given a husband who laughs at you and puts you up in a makeshift asylum over summer. Yet, the narrator denies her own feelings- and alienates herself from them. The Narrator says in the very beginning of the story, line 7-10, that John is a physician, and he doesn't believe she is sick, and that there's nothing she can do. Again, she believes she's sick with some real illness, but when her husband just says she needs rest, she compromises her own beliefs to assent to his. She's not the only one in denial. As was covered in class today, John the husband is also, probably, in denial about his wife's condition. When you deny your thoughts and feelings, the only thing you achieve is denying your own self. Which is cool if you're trying to attain Nirvana, but somehow I doubt either John or the Narrator seek the Buddha.

There's also a repeated reference to Gymnastics. In describing the wallpaper in line 96, the Narrator says that following the wavy pattern is as good as Gymnastics. That stuck with me, because I'd heard that word, or at least thought of it earlier, when (in line 32) the Narrator says the upstairs room was a nursery and then a playroom and then a Gymnasium because there were "rings and things in the walls." So, you have the narrator in this room that was designed for physical gymnastics. But she's barred from physical gymnastics you know with the rest cure. So, she starts staring at the wallpaper, which she then describes as being akin to a sort of Mental Gymnastics. Does this one near reference reveal untold depth about the differences and similarities between our mental and physical state? Like the way Travis Bickle, protagonist of Taxi Driver tells us, "You are only as healthy as you feel?"

I think the answer is a definite Maybe.

Ok, I'm a liar.

2004-10-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

So, I know I wrote that thing about how I wasn't going to put up things that didn't have to with this english class. However, observe the title of this posting.

So, the college I attend has this newspaper, The Courier. The new edition was out today, and there were a few copies laying around in a lounge that I frequent inbetween classes. So I innocently started reading, and wound up at the opinions/editorials page. The editor had written a piece called, "The military draft and you." Now, I was taken aback by this editorial. And if by some chance you, noble reader, attend a well-known two year college in Dupage county you might think twice before reading the editorial in the October 1 edition of it's newspaper. An address was given for letters to the editor, and I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to write a response. It may not get printed, but I've decided to put it up here.

While not usually a reader of the Courier, I had the opportunity to read the October 1 editorial, "The military draft and you", and I felt the article deserved comment. Several elements of the article concerned me. Least important but still noticeable were misuses of the words 'escalade', 'definitely', 'adamantly', and 'politician'. More importantly, there was a misleading reference to "hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans[lost in Vietnam]" in the conclusion of the article; the Department of Veterans Affairs (www.va.gov) reports American combat deaths in the Vietnam War at forty-seven thousand four hundred and ten, and other deaths in the theater at ten thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, for a total of over fifty-eight thousand dead.
I was most concerned, however, with the representation of the bill H.R. 163. I first became aware of this bill in May of this year, when a plethora of sites across the Internet had articles about a third draft, with links to sites such as Congress.org. At that time in May I did some research, and found, as was mentioned in this editorial, that H.R. 163, (and its matching bill in the Senate, S.89) had both been introduced in January of the previous year. The last activity taken on H.R. 163 was referral to the House Armed Services committee's Subcommittee on Total Force, February 3, 2003. Likewise, the last action on S. 89 was referral to the Senate Armed Services committee, January 7, 2003.
These bills had been completely dormant for over fourteen months. Why had the alarm been raised only then? A closer look revealed the answer: H.R. 163 had just gained a new sponsor. In January 2003, the bill had fourteen sponsors in total, including Rangel himself. In May 2004, Donna Christensen (D-VI) co-sponsored the bill, bringing the total number of sponsors to fifteen. I suspect that H.R. 163 has resurfaced now because in July of this year Jesse Jackson (D-IL) joined in sponsoring the bill. S.89 still has only one sponsor, the senator who proposed it, Ernest Hollings(D-SC).
By this time you may have noticed that the names associated with these bills, H.R. 163 and S. 89, have all been Democrats. In fact, the sponsorship of both bills is entirely Democratic. This was the final piece of information I needed to put together to figure out these bills. The bills both call for a mandatory draft of all people in the United States age eighteen through twenty-six to provide two years of "National Service" as a member of the armed forces, or in a civilian capacity, with certain deferments provided. These bills were proposed by the Democrats in Congress with the goal of forcing a vote, which is believed would invariably fail, and would hopefully cause the Republicans in Congress to lose some amount of face. However, as both bills are being killed in committee, that vote will likely never come to pass.
I believe that these draft bills have created a tempest in a teacup. The author of "The military draft and you" listed several important issues in his piece. "The war in Iraq, the economy, homeland security, abortion and free trade" are all issues worthy of editorial. In my opinion, though, the draft is not a major concern at the this time.

The letter squeezes in at 550 words, ten below the maximum for letters to the editor. I realize now, though, that I made a blind reference or two- H.R. 163 is a bill in the house of representatives proposing a draft, and "Rangel Himself" refers to Charles Rangel (D-NY) who originally put forth the bill in the house. Both Rangel and H.R. 163 were referenced in the editorial "The military draft and you".

(This letter has since been published in the October 15th edition of The Courier.)

(About an hour later...)

2004-09-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

An hour later I'm in-between English and Math, I've had lunch, and I'm polishing things up here. First off, I had to change the name of this here web log. When I made it in class, I didn't want to get hung up on a name, so I picked the first good name to pop into my head, "Truth or Consequences." Truth or Consequences is the name of a town in New Mexico if I'm not mistaken. This summer I was on a road trip and passed through there, and the name stuck with me. Of course, it meant absolutely nothing in relation to this web log. This new name, Cowboy hat, has at the very least a functional meaning. I have a predilection for wearing a cowboy hat to class. That title should ensure that my professor, or anyone else from my class who should happen upon this web log will be able to identify the author. There can't be too many web logs entitled "Cowboy Hat" out there. Can there?

Second, I threw up a profile. It's not much- an attempt or two at disarming honesty and a bit of dry wit, but that about does it. Third, if you've happened upon this web log by some terrible accident, allow me to explain the user name. It's an anagram of my real name. That handles all of that.

Web logs are public documents, but this one ought not to be. As I explained in the first post, this web log exists for a class. My professor is going to be reading it periodically to make sure I'm posting and thinking. I wouldn't want to make him sort through a bunch of meaningless posts about how I wish Chicago Bears Rex Grossman, Mike Brown, Jerry Azumah, Charles 'Peanut' Tillman, and Brian Urlacher weren't injured. Or lots of posts about film directors and Martin Scorsese. Or anything else that didn't directly pertain to this here English class. So, that's the way it's going to be. Now, if you happen to be a random person looking for interesting web logs, go to Diepunyhumans.com. It's the web log of comic writer Warren Ellis, a particularly genius individual, responsible for Transmetropolitan, Interplanetary, and more.

Having just written the above paragraph, it strikes me that I've written a post that has nothing to do with my English class, wherein I explain why I will not post things that has nothing to do with my english class. Sigh. In the words of Bob Dylan, a lot of things can get in the way when you're trying to do what's right.

Allow me to explain myself...

2004-09-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

This blog has been created for an English 101 Honors class. To be honest I keep an old fashioned journal on paper. The internet is not my best friend. The entries within this blog are going to relate to class readings, class discussions, class projects, ideas I have on related to topics being discussed in class, and/or connections I see between subjects in this class and other classes I am taking. (Those other classes are Math 118, and The works of Martin Scorsese(humanities 188))

If you thought that was highly prefunctory, you're very, very right. Anyway, our first Reading, discussion, and project(essay) is about the Charlotte Perkins Gilman(Stetson) story, The Yellow Wallpaper, published ~1893. I've already mentioned it in class, but the title and content of the story immediately made me think of Robert Chambers, an American author from the same period as Gilman. Chambers, in 1897 published a book of related stories called The King in Yellow, where young people, often artists, living in New York, New York or Paris, France, encounter a play entitled The King in Yellow, a character known as The Phantom of Truth, or a symbol called the Yellow Sign, which appears to subtly shift and move when looked at. The people who encounter these things are invariable driven crazy and destroyed by forces beyond their comprehension. Chambers' works bear a strong thematic resemblance to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu mythos, August Derleth, and other such ~1920s horror writers, who wrote about characters being driven mad and destroyed things man was not meant to know.

So you can imagine my satisfaction when the main character of The Yellow Wallpaper went crazy in the end.

I have a theory about The Yellow Wallpaper. I believe the author wanted to portray, or make veiled reference to heteronormative sexual domination which was typical of relationships in her period. In the story the main character, "The Wife", becomes obsessed with the swirling arabesque yellow wallpaper in the bedroom of the manor her husband has rented for them for the summer, which seems to shift subtly under her glance. There is at least one scene featuring The Wife and her husband John in bed at night. In this scene, The Wife has an epiphany about the wallpaper. I believe that this epiphany does not coincedentally come at night. I think it may be that this epiphany came to the wife at night because she was with her husband, in bed.

If I'm right, was Charlotte Perkins Gilman trying to say that women are driven insane by the domination their husbands can exert over them, psychologically and physically?

I think the answer is a definite Maybe.