As I Lay Dying

I'm so happy to be reading this novel again. This is my third time through the novel, and new things are popping up everywhere. I found in Anse's first passage where he regrets letting Darl get drafted into the military. It seems that this read around Anse is a lot more emotional, especially about his children. I'm noticing how everyone paints Anse as a bad man, but really, Addie is a little more lunatic than everyone thinks. It's not just because she gets off on whipping the kids, but it's her ideas about how the world around her should function; for her; by her. Addie is the Hebrew god of this novel, and her family runs around the land like temple robbers, devout at that. I am really into Anse's point of view this time, and what people say about him, contrasted with what Addie says about her life, and their marriage.

I'm also interested in all the lines in this novel. The image of the cross, looking like this -- + -- is everywhere, beginning with the first paragraphs, where Darl describes walking on the path (the y plane) and compares his and Jewel's height (the x axis). Jewel is taller than he, so sits higher on the plane; Darl is sub-par; his mind is beneath the surface. This could be read as Jewel having a higher sense of awareness, but I see the line, as drawn by Faulkner, the y line at least, as sanity, and the Darl will prove, by deviating from the line as much as possible that he's not sane. Cash follows the line with a gripping obsessive finality that seems devoid of emotion. Our first introduction to Cash's mind is a series of lines that follow one another, logically, and with intense purpose. Anse is overwhelmed by the thought of living next to a government line, a road; Addie insisted on it. Dewey Dell has a definite agenda, and by getting from point a to point b she feels it will be accomplished (by following that line to town). Vardaman is also somewhat deranged, but his association of the fish with his mother is based on principles of time, and that time flows in one direction. I don't know enough about theories of time to expound on this more, but it's there, like furniture in a dark room -- I bump into these ideas, but I can't tell what they are in the dark.

I hope this paper comes out clearer and shinier and A minusier than the last. Also, I just love swimming in Falkner's words. I want to go back to his house. Yeah, it's getting creepy.

Grumble

I got my Huckleberry Finn essay back and I got a B+. Pretty good, pretty good. According to his rubrick I suck at grammar, and that greatly affected my grade. Without the "D+" score for grammar I probably would have gotten an A-. All this is iced with the general boredom I experience during this guy's lectures. What I'm wondering is if he wants us to write about things like the reasons Huckleberry Finn is classified as regionalist, or something. That utterly bores me and feels like a bunch of baloney. I'm really grumpy because we've gone over "The Wasteland" for two weeks, all lecture proving that Eliot was trying to use myth and create myth and work with myth, and Joseph Campbell and the Fisher King...all fascinating, but apparently meaning that if I am going to go on my own with my own ideas I'm going to have to be as exhaustive. I mean this guy is serious about defining terms. I understand his concerns; he kept writing words like "clarify" and "explain" on my paper, so I get that I need to be more articulate...in a three page paper. I get it though, this is pressuring me to write the best essays I've ever written, and okay, that may take more than three hours. Sometimes I don't enjoy the jabs, you know? I have such a problem with pride, really. It's like -- why aren't you praising me? Why aren't you overlooking my lack of a highschool grammar education? Whine, whine. Well, I will...gulp...spend more time drafting. No getting by this one.

Back to Business: Moll Flanders: "Let Them Be Told"

Upon asking my overflowing-with-knowledge but apologetic-to-alarm Brit Lit (All my Brit Lit Instructors have been female, BTW) instructor if we were going to be writing about Moll Flanders, I discovered that no, no we probably weren't going to get an opportunity to write about the novel. I hope the poisonous dart of frustration didn't actually come out of my eyeball; I ran away too quickly to actually know whether it hit her or not.

I mean what is the point of having us BUY a novel that isn't in the anthology if we aren't going to write about it? And isn't the point of a survey class to cover several pieces within a given amount of time and then to have the scrutinize them on the own? At the 300 level? I feel like I'm being shoved back in the nest. Ugh...I feel so fragmented. First I'm on two campuses, which is not quite tearing me apart Jim Stark style, but does create some division in my mind, if only on a spacial level. Then I have a poetry class with a very sweet instructor, but there's nothing special going on there, hence I often forget about the class when preparing. I think I've already told most of you about the Lit Crit class from the bizzaro version of my life -- where the instructor is actually treating us like college juniors, only the entire class is cross eyed (myself included) after reading work that seems utterly ironic and impossible to penetrate; seriously, Derrida is somewhere looking at us laughing uncontrollably. I mean what kind of system doesn't require you to take ANY underclass literature courses to qualify for their literature program, and then approves an instructor that chooses to only give you theoretical texts to see what you make of them? Oooh, avant garde, yeah, hooray. Please, just one diagram. If he wold only give us one diagram. One definition. Seriously, I think he's afraid of the texts, and afraid to teach them. I looked at the class today, and I think I saw human cattle. The survey courses aren't nearly as vague -- but both of the instructors are overwhelming us with Old Historicism and New Historicism and History and Herstory and the PAST. These poor texts. We are waving at them from afar...and I seriously think our Brit Lit is a Anglo-Sympathizer. She is far too forgiving when she discusses Eurocentrism and Anglo-Power. She's very pretty, and she has these watery eyes that do remind of some Anglo faraway upon a time, but she is just...I don't know, silly about England. I just really can't fathom why she made us buy a text we aren't going to write about. I'm almost mad.

So I figured that since I'm not going to write about Moll Flanders I'm going to have to blog about it.

I think that there is strong suggestion in the text that language is the most powerful weapon a person of either gender can wield against another, and Moll's story is about a woman realizing that her worth is contingent on her ability to manipulate language and control others through artful conversation. I haven't read the whole novel yet, but I think that from the beginning her character only has an advantage when she can articulate her feelings clearly. I'm not sure if this theme is adequately developed all way through the novel -- we'll see.

And is it just me or is the time change evil?

Movie Break

I finally got around to seeing Anderson's There Will Be Blood, which I thought was masterful. I have been thinking about it all night in my sleep -- having dreams about unclogging pipes and overflowing sinks. That movie watched like an excellent book, probably because it was based on such a good adaptation, and I really loved the way the credits were done...and the music was really good, very Hitchcockian, actually -- where the music enhances the suspense, but doesn't compete with the scene.

What I'm trying to figure out is why I didn't particularly care for Paul Dano's performance as Eli Sunday. I really liked him in Little Miss Sunshine. He's a good screamer, and there were moments where he shone, but for some reason I kept thinking, while I was watching him that he wasn't believable. Of course, you have got to hand it to anyone who dare act against Day-Lewis. Come to think of it, I hated DiCaprio's performance in Gangs, too. So maybe I'm just witnessing an eclipse. When ol' Eli gets it in the bowling alley, I was a little relieved.

I want to see it again, though it is a hard watch. A lot of the scenery reminded me of our road trip, and make me hungry for America again. Now that I've seen TWBB, I don't know what to do with myself, cinematically. But I think the Art Theater in Long Beach is having it's final pre-restoration showing tonight. So we better get there early.

My Oscar Speech! (Also known as "pats on the back all around!")

Well, folks, I have my first essay back from grading. The class is English Literature, something like from 1600 to 1800. A lot of Restoration and such. In my paper I argued that Dryden's poem, "MacFlecknoe" has it's legs cut off by Rochester's "A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind." I went into it figuring there were some deep philisophical tensions implied by pitting the poems against eachother, but I really couldn't get a handle on these, so I went ahead and wrote the paper. My strongest argument was that Dryden's speaker -- who is only directly speaking at the beginning of the poem, and indirectly speaks as he quotes Mac -- takes the position of superior on the basis of imagining itself a literary giant, and this attitude is what Rochester's speaker chiefly attacks in Satyr. Weaker but also significant was my claim that the wit used in Mac, the satire, was weak and didn't appear to help the speaker acheive the status that it was trying so desperately to both hold on to and establish; the result being that Dryden's poem reads as a panicked attempt to hold on to the trasitory experience of being "great" and Rochester's arguments being strengthened and becoming more firmly established due to their ability to scrutinize other works through them with less support through sentiment and appeal to pathos.

And, my dears, I got an A. Hooray! The first A of the semester. It's always a boost; a little shower of relief; a reassuring touch; a spark of understanding between teacher and pupil.

I'm not admittedly superstitious, but there is something nice about the first grade of the semseter being a mark of excellence. It sets the tone for a semester of hard work and payoff. It's not so much that I invest mass amounts of time to school -- I'm rather lazy, if you must know -- but I do really try to use my noodle as much as possible. And sometimes going with your gut, which I am inclined to do, even when you think you aren't giving the instructor what they want, necessarily, can help you grow, intellectually as well as emotionally, because when you give your ideas credence by writing about them in a formal essay, you do yourself a good service. Even if I don't get the highest mark, I can say with some passion that I always try to follow a voice from within, and even though I recognize that voice as having small chance of being truly original, I come away with a scant impression that I have tried to be true to myself.

I'm sure this reads as very self-congratulatory, but really, I almost have to continue to convince myself that in going to school, in following my dream to be a writer, I am overcoming some obstacles in my life...proving to myself that I too am alive...

Well, this got altogether far too existential for enjoyment. But please don't forget that there are students out there that appreciate recognition, and don't simply slave for the A, but work toward standards of excellence, standards that are a part of their inner make-up, and who are truly grateful for the opportunity to take great risks, and relish a good reward.

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.