First American Lit Essay of the Semester

Well here is how it came out. I'm not sure if it really captures what I'm trying to say...but hopefully it at least makes sense.

Abandoning the Societal Parent

The theme of innocence versus experience emerges in two nineteenth century American texts, Samuel Clemens’ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. The protagonist from each selection moves from a state of innocence, or more appropriately, ignorance, concerning their role as oppressed ward to an understanding that by sacrificing their institutionalized identity they are orphans both in the traditional and societal sense of the word. Huck undergoes this education through a host of parental figures and his friend Tom, who is a sort of authority, and Gilman’s narrator through her husband, family, and the notion of experts.

Huckleberry Finn swaps parental authority figures several times in the novel. Each figure appears to have a valid motive for adopting Finn, but these attempts to wield authority over Finn only serve as a learning experience. Through the process of several failed adoptions, Finn moves from desperate child to independent entity. Finn begins his adventures with a description of his current living situation, which includes an adoption by the Widow Douglas, since Finn had changed his status from a poverty stricken child and become a societal liability due to his newfound wealth. The widow sees it as her civic duty to educate a newly moneyed child raised in poverty, and Huck never mistakes her interest as familial love. Finn doesn’t even appreciate this civilizing attempt, and wants to escape her, but Tom Sawyer, Finn’s beloved friend, wants Finn to be assimilated into society, and only accepts him if Finn will “go back to the widow and be respectable” (220). This transaction is the first portrayal of a loved one, in this case Sawyer, tricking Finn or using their emotional bond to place him back into civilization. Sawyer will continue to overpower Finn with this type of emotional blackmail, until Finn experiences enough parental juggling to figure out that he is ultimately better off by himself.

Before arriving at that conclusion Finn will go through at least six, if not more, foster parents. Most interesting among these, especially when compared to the authority figure in The Yellow Wallpaper, are Finn’s biological father, Pap, and Jim, the runaway slave. Both of these figures fail in their attempts to father Finn successfully, due to their involvement with slavery – Pap is enslaved to alcohol, and Jim is enslaved to the institution of actual slavery itself. While Jim’s enslavement implies that there are forces outside his control, Pap is aware of his own depraved state and of the possibility of overcoming, it, as illustrated by the story of Pap confessing to the “new judge” that “he’d been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was going to turn over a new leaf” (232). Of course he doesn’t, and the judge is moved to say that “a body could reform the ole man with a shot gun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way” (233). Jim seems like more of an optimistic character, having taken his freedom from slavery into his own hands and run away. When Jim takes over as Finn’s respectable elder he does spare him from harm, as does Finn for Jim, but Jim’s enslavement to the institution that would segregate them prevents Jim from caring for Finn entirely. Jim seems on the verge of overcoming his ingrained notions when he tells Finn, “I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars” (248). But at the end of the tale, when Jim is granted his freedom, coupled with his heroism in saving Sawyer’s life, Finn says that Jim is overjoyed at Sawyer’s gift of “forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient…and Jim was pleased most to death and says, “…I tole you I ben rich wunst, en gwinter be rich again; en it’s come true” (406). So Jim’s ability to comprehend his own value is disjointed enough that he accepts five percent of his net worth as riches. Jim’s values are not going to free Finn, so Finn decides to head out to the isolate “Territory ahead of the rest,” free from any foster parent, an orphan of society.

The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper experiences a similar pattern from ignorance to understanding, even though her circumstances are quite different from Huck Finn’s. She is a member of the white middle class, and a wife and mother, but her doctor husband, John, takes the form of the oppressive societal parent that Finn escapes. She begins the novel describing their existence as “ordinary people” who are securing “a colonial mansion” for the summer (Gilman 832). This notion is shattered early on as the narrator confesses she has a nervous condition and this retreat is meant to be curative of what seems to be post-partum depression. Although the novel mostly documents her journey into mental illness, it also documents the role her husband John plays in institutionalizing her. She is powerless to his authority as a doctor, his rights as a husband, and by the same emotional blackmail seen in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She is made to feel guilty over her condition, as she says, “he said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well” (838). This line implies that the narrator’s mental illness is second to her role as a wife and mother, and that her insanity compromises her husband’s very existence. Since she cannot control her mental illness, it eventually overtakes her, and she understands that within the illness she is free from the societal confines of wife and mother, and ceases to achieve a cure. She describes her newfound freedom from the societal parent when she tells us, “I have locked the door and thrown the key down to the front path” (843). She takes this decisive action so that her husband will abandon hopes of rescuing her from her illness, to rejoin him in society. This, she hopes, will “astonish him” (843). This is how she sacrifices her identity in society, and she becomes free, crying out, “I have got out at last!” and embraces her new freedom by crawling over her husband in her circles of madness.

The goal of the societal parent is to claim the orphan back into society and prohibit them from existing as outcasts. Both of these characters, the narrator, and Finn, learn from their experiences that there is no cure for an independent spirit, and that the choice to be an outcast, an orphan, is the only one that leads to freedom.

40 Acres and Mule

Is she the mule?

Could the connection between the black slave and the white woman -- the tension between the two so beautifully captured in the current democratic race (I see the racism in that remark -- but I can't deny that when I was in the class African American History in the United States, the instructor, himself a black Methodist male, declared, "A white woman will be president before a black male..." leaving it up to us to decide whether this was a tragedy or not) -- be utterly contrived? I don't know how to reconcile this. When we were reading duBois in American Lit II at Fullerton a girl had the gall to compare the black slave experience to the white woman's experience, and I, with my carefully controlled tongue, blurted out, "And how many women were lynched in the 20th century? The 19th century?" and that girl wasn't thrilled with my comment, and possibly due to this confrontation, dropped the course.

I have trouble relating the experience of a white woman to that of a black slave, but I also struggle with comparisons I can't deny. In the paper that I am attempting to write for my American Lit class at DH I am comparing two texts that deal with innocence vs. experience. I want to use Huck Finn, and for the other text (keep in mind that there is no other text concerning slavery except "The Goophered Grapevine," I have selected The Yellow Wallpaper. And half a days notes into this I have run up against the wall of black slave vs. white woman. I have obvious problems with this comparison. And I know I could just use the texts, and there is no harm in doing so, but I think there could be harm to me. I see a fair and moving amount of difference in each experience, mostly concerned with the possibility of public execution. If Jim is caught as a runaway slave it is not impossible that he will be made an example out of, that is, castrated, hanged, and burnt. If the narrator from the Yellow Wallpaper were to leave her husband, she would be an outcast of society, but the prospect of physical violence is not apparent, and in this respect I don't see her having as much to lose. I guess it all depends on where you put your money, on physical or psychological violence. And even though these two different FORMS of violence have very different ways of acting out, the effects of them are similar, that is, they cause the victims to behave in similar ways.

What I have a deep problem with is one using the other as an example. At the very least it is a logical fallacy, and at best a haggard attempt at sympathy. One could possibly be a metaphor for the other, but they cannot truly be compared. And then, where law steps in, well that is a whole other story.

I'm pained by the whole process. I don't know where to draw comparisons and where to fight against the notion that the pight of a slave and the plight of a woman are similar. One has chains associated with physical torture and execution and the other has chains associated with identity and ego. I suppose they could run parallel in purely psychological terms, but not at the same time, and not according to the same rules.

Utterly infuriating.

Merry Racist England

We started discussing Oroonoko in Brit Lit yesterday, and I was pretty annoyed by the time we got out. The instructor is somewhat of an Anglophile, and Brit Lit is her specialty, and she was so excited to teach this work; she claimed it was one of her absolute favorites to teach. My approach to this work is one of more dread than eager anticipation. I think the first time I read it it nearly gave me an axiety attack, what with the dismemberment and roasting of Oroonoko at the end. But what turns me off the book completely is how Behn describes Oroonoko in the first place. She basically suggests that Oroonoko is only African in skin color, and is European in every other physical aspect. He has European looks, speaks English and French; he is basically a white European aristocrat, in black face. I can't stand this point of view -- that he was a "great soul" due to his possession of Eurocentric ideals.

So I don't really like Behn. It is a real aggravating read for me from the start, and the finish is just as ludicrous. Our instructor started things off well enough, but the conversation turned when she moved on to the description of Oroonoko that I just mentioend. Several black girls in the class remarked that he seems really handsome, ohhing and ahhing about how "fine" he is. The instructor asks the class who they think could play the part of Oroonoko today, and the girls began to call out actors like Tyrese, and Tyson Beckford, and my hand shot up and I said, "I don't think anyone could play this role. This is a white person in blackface -- this is a made up person that doesn't exist..." Okay. While I might have some control of words on paper, I have limited control orally, and am often misunderstood. A black student remarked, right after my mini-outburst, that of course there are black people that look like this, implying that I was suggesting there are no black people who look European, or have European facial features, which was not my point all, but what can I do? The teacher is fostering this conversation, using Behn's time and ideals as a cover for glossing over the issue of race in Oroonoko.

All this has made me very wary of this class. I understand that we can focus on Behn's fierce royalism, her loyalty to royal ideals, but when Eurocentrism is not identified and demonized (at least by someone in the class), I have a hard time believing that there is any critical thinking going on. I used to think I was at least somewhat into English Literature, but the more I read it, the less I care, and the more I just want to focus on American Literature....forever! But I can't ignore Shakespeare, and I do like Virginia Woolf, and even the Bronte sisters. I'm just really shocked that I'm in what would be considered an ethnically diverse class, discussing things like Royalism, and the girls in the class are swooning over Oroonoko instead of punching Behn in the face for crapping on his African heritage. It's tough, I can't excuse it.

I just realized...

...that both charaters, Tom and Huck, play tricks on Jim. Huck's trick moves the story forward, while Tom's trick comes off as just a tangential aside. I see now how Jim's different reaction to the tricks says something. Not sure exactly what, yet, but this may be the beginning of a cool paper. Someone has got to have thought of this already.

Warning: Disney Ending Ahead

I never really went to Tom Sawyer's Island when I was a kid, mostly because there weren't any rides there. As a teenager, it proved a great place to play hide and go seek, as well as get some action in a dark cave. Other than that, I have consistently avoided Mark Twain, partly because I thought he wrote stories about gosh dang America, with saggy bottoms and toad catchin' contests, that is, stories of no real relevance to me.

I confess: Mark Twain schooled me.

And really, after today, I have to eat some of my words about the ponytail guy. He knows his stuff. He's quirky; okay, not my kind of quirky, but I can't hang it all on quirks. The discussion he led today about Huckleberry Finn blew my thoughts and ideas out of the water. Of course I did participate in class, and you know he WAS eyeing me like, yes, I know YOU must have something to say, front seat sitter and copious note taker, and the giving me the eye sitter. (And the eye being the eye of understanding, if you must know.) And every time I thought to bring up my idea, he said something amazing and I just didn't want to interrupt his flow, because it was so fascinating. I'm a surely humbled.

We read the passage in Huck Finn that has, I most certainly assume, become one of the more quoted passages of the book, concerning Jim and Huck. Huck plays a trick on Jim, and in the course, makes Jim feel ashamed for loving Huck. It's only a childish prank, but Jim's strong words rang out and went directly into my heart and hung there, like a dart, holding fast to me, and not giving up. What is it about us that we want to make the ones that love us feel foolish for doing so? Why do we try to hurt those that truly do care for us, and try to keep them at arms distance? We can do it with just as immature, nasty, and childish pranks as Huck's were, trying to turn love and affection and concern into a joke, where we have the upper hand. And, like Huck, we wonder why we are so awful lonesome.

So that really hit home. We didn't really discuss that in class; the discussion was centered on how these two characters grow, and there was a video we watched that defined literature as works that change us; by the time we finish them, we have grown in some way. I feel that in this respect, a close reading of Huckleberry Finn is very fine, and can achieve that change or growth in us as good as any other American Novel, maybe even better, because Clemens actually warns us not to take it too seriously, and not to throw too much stock into it. Although I initially sunk my teeth into Clemens's marvelous manuvering of satire, I ended up touched by his tenderness, and even if I don't end up writing about this author, I do feel like I've grown, and I thank him for that, and Huck, and Jim.

So excited about IDEAS and this only the second class session...

We at DH are starting American lit II off with Samuel L. Clemens's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We are supposed to focus on things like the works view of racism, and/or if this view is offensive, look for elements of regionalism and realism, consider Huck as an American hero or antihero, consider the work a Bildungsroman, look for mythic patterns, the strange institution, the story's accessability, and finally class distinctions. This is the same guy who wants three 750 word essays from us. For the WHOLE semester. No word yet on MLA format.

So, I've been reading (having shamefully never read Clemens before...I know! And I consider myself a Faulkner devotee!) the work, looking for stuff (which I might add I never find anything on the first read for about 24 hours, after that things usually pop up like mushrooms. Yum.) I start thinking about the humor -- especially considering that this is a book with an adolescent hero, and something strikes me: why is this funny? Why is this book considered precious? Specifically why is it funny when Tom is explaining the rules of his gang, making the other boys sign their name in blood and vowing that dissention will result in death and the death of the guilty party's family, with Huck unable to even join the gang until he asserts that Mrs. Watson can be killed on his behalf if needs be. Ha. The line of business of this gang is "robbery and murder." This is funny. It made me laugh, certainly, and I'll admit in a gosh-gee-shucks-ma-and-pa kind of way. It's funny because when I think of little boys playing together I don't expect them to be "playing murderer," and the seeming contradiction in the idea of an innocent murderer, or a child murderer, well, it's kind of a basic premise for American horror -- that is, if it's not a joke. I imagine it is supposed to be satiric, with the desired effect a reaction of, oh that's terrible that little boys would play so violently, and then of course, it's like, wake up! America had practicially made a wondrous legend out of Jesse James...and then of course, the crimes of the Civil War in general.

All of this got me thinking about the horrifying/humorous principle that satire exempliefies. On the first read, it's funny -- these young kids out playing bandit, till one cries for his ma and they go home. Then, on the second read, after the initial smile, a faint alarm begins to go off. Why are these kids holding a secret meeting in the middle of the night, signing their allegiance inblood, and barely drawing the line at murdering women outrightly?! All this reminded me of Britney Spears. Yes, you read correctly. Her flashing her wares on getting out of cars makes the news and do you know what my first reaction is? Ha, ha! What a nerd! So silly. But by the third or forth time I've seen this story, I'm disturbed. At first the contrast of rich and beautiful with skanky and irresponsible in an oops kind of way is funny, and mostly who cares, but the more I think about it the worse it gets, I mean what do her actions mean? What do they reflect about me, the viewer, also a young woman...etc? I'm not sure if Britney intends to be satirical in her actions, but they do come off that way.

It's also fascinating to me that Clemens interrupts Huck's story to tell what happened to the slave that he and Tom messed with, Jim. While Jim is asleep under a tree when he is supposed to be protecting the house, Tom sneaks in to the house and takes three candles (which he leaves money for) and then when passing Jim, snoring away, reaches out and takes Jim's hat off and puts it on a limb high above Jim's head. When Jim wakes to this, the candles gone and his hat hanging up in the tree, Jim says that witches put him in a trance and rode him all over the world and hung his hat there as proof. Hmmm. Funny. But wait. This story gets so popular that black folk came from all round to hear the story or, get this, pay for a look at the nickel the witches had left for the candles. I got to thinking, why is this story here? What is it's purpose? Is Clemens trying to show that slaves were superstitious, and fell for anything, and would concoct outrageous stories in order to feel like they were an authority on something in their oppressed state? I couldn't believe that, so I came up with this: Clemens is trying to illustrate that slaves were asleep socially, and was possibly criticizing them for ever accepting that slavery was part of God's plan (therein lies the superstition blasted at them from anti-abolitionists), and that their outcome was out of their hands due to fate (also a superstition). Clemens is using the witch story to show that attempting to explain that which has a logical explanation, the placement of the hat, as a supernatural mystery, one in which the slave was the victim, was the kind of willful ignorance that had been learned by the middle aged slaves of 1840, and he is using this story to express his desire for slaves to wake up! And cease to accept slavery as a fate.

I'm thinking a major underlying theme of Clemens's work is, simply, wake up, America. So incredibly relevant, it blows my mind.

I left my heart...in Fullerton.

I'm so sappy. Seriously.

I forgot that my MW class at DH (Dominguez Hills for further reference) is American Lit II. I got to class about an hour early and was able to procure my parking permi, $80, my student ID, $5, and lunch, Subway, $5. But the quality of my English education at DH, priceless. The class itself is small, and the classroom is small and stuffy. I placed myself in the front row, of course, and waited to meet the man the psoters at ratemyprofessor.com called "sexist", a "woman hater", and "impossible". I don't really know why I go on ratemyproffesor anyway, seeing that I don't really have a lot of options in planning the next couple of years. I sort of have to take what I can get, when I can get it. The man, who I think is named, Giamotti, kind of like the actor, I think, strolled in, tall and wiry, mid fifties, with an 80's cotton turtleneck reaching for his too-high too-thin ponytail, cargo pants, and puffy hiking sneakers squeaking away accross the front of the room. He presented the syllabus from the college classroom website projected onto the screen, and in a short amount of time I learned that we were doing three papers of 750 words, and three in-class exams. No research, people. NO RESEARCH. But thanks for the training. I made myself proud by knowing all of the authors in the small pictures at the top of the webpage, Twain, Eliot, Faulkner, and Morrisson. I did you proud. We're using the same anthology that we used in Blythe's class, so I saved some dough in that department. The guy did earn some points by saying that Moby-Dick is the greatest American novel. Kudos. Maybe he will teach American Lit I and I will get to read my essay, which now that I have access to a University library, will get revised proper.

But I missed you. I wanted to telly you immediately afterward how superior you are! How much funnier, and more likeable! I'm already begining to think that the next two years won't be as hard as I thought. I hope American Lit II is going well for you, Joe.