Packet Work

For "A Very Short Story" written by Ernest Hemingway there was a clear cynical tone. I felt that the story itself is very sad and has an aspect of hopelessness. Hemingway uses careful diction and tone in his narrative in order to convey the short story's message.

"Fog," poem written by Carl Sandburg is very analytic yet nonchalant. Sandburg uses diction and enjambment in his poem to create a type of fog-like effect within the text when the reader reads the poem. Also, there is personification when Sandburg says that the "fog comes on little cat feet" (line 1).

Prestigious Black Women

First off, I wanted to say that I really enjoyed being able to listen and see Toni Morrison. Her majestic feel and power really captivated me. She gives this impression of being a very strong woman that sort of demands respect, you know what I mean?

Well, anyways, I really liked this interview. I thought that the whole analysis of laws and how they tend to "define the relations between people" (Morrison 7:13) was very interesting. Morrison goes into detail and talks about laws in early America that made white people in general feel superior than blacks. (Once again, I find myself going into this whole racial issue but to hell with your criticism about me being repetitive, right?)

So, slavery...

I find the whole interview almost ironic because there's this scrawny, clearly American white guy asking this powerful, strong and proud black lady about whether she feels like they are now in a "post racial time" (Rose 8:30). I don't know why, but I got the feeling that this guy is sort of telling this proud and almost resentful African American woman that has written a variety of books about racial constructs that the whole notion of racism is America nowadays is a fraud. I think that Morrison handled it very well in how she said that racial hierarchy is a "fantasy" (Morrison 10:30) but I think that what she might have really wanted to say is that OK, although there aren't anymore racially biased laws there are still unwritten laws in the social construct of America which keep alive the racial crudeness in this nation. To me, this is clear because I mean, how often in Song of Solomon has the whole motif of people trying to get away from their pasts and prove themselves in the present come up? All of the biblical references in the novel and the whole idea of people being freed from an oppressed past is clearly connected to the black people's history. The time period in which the story takes place is also very associated with black rights and the whole racial revolution topic.

All in all, I like Morrison. She clearly uses the past and the present when thinking about books and what to write about. She takes these things into consideration in absolutely all aspects of the novel and I think that this is what makes her such a great author.

Advance in Time

OK, so I guess it's time for an analytic blog. I feel as though in the last blogs I've been sort of talking about myself and how I've associated my life with the novels that we've been reading, so I guess that it is time for a nerdy blog.

Here it goes...

We see that in the Dead Family there is an obsession with the past. The past is what haunts the characters. Whether it's Macon Jr.'s father's death or Ruth's abuse when she was young, it is this fear or apprehension regarding the past that makes the characters cause suffering in their present lives. Macon Jr. told Milkman on page 73 about how there are reasons for the anger that he feels towards Ruth. Instead of moving forward with their lives, characters like Macon Jr. dwell on the past and fail to look into the future.

It is because of this that Morrison writes about how when Milkman was walking in the street to Guitar's house, Milkman "closed his eyes and then opened them"(78) and realized that everyone was going the opposite way that he was going. This happened after Milkman thinks about his past and what it means for him in the present. He says to himself, "And how did I forget that? And why?" (78) after he remembers how his mother breast-fed beyond infancy. The fact that Milkman opens his eyes and he is going against the flow of everyone on the street is clearly indicative that Morrison is making his situation be a metaphor for what he is actually doing internally. He is going against what his parents have done their whole lives and is actually looking forward into his future by analyzing his past. This is very different than Ruth or Macon Jr. who fail to discuss or analyze the past that has affected and ultimately scarred their lives.

Ok, that was dull, now I want to post this smart little quote I heard on some documentary about how "Humans were the first creatures that created the notion of a future." I don't remember who said it or what the exact words were but I remember that it talked about how the idea of future is unique to the human mind. Interesting, no? Ok. I'm going to shut up now. Ok, bye.

Anecdote

When I was only four years old, my parents decided that I was going to move to Miami. Living there wasn't so hard due to the fact that nearly 57% of Miami Dade's population is hispanic. This made living there much much easier. It was pretty easy to communicate knowing little english and life honestly wasn't so different than in Bogotá. Life was quite chillin if it hadn't been for one small thing...

Whenever we had any type of governmental hearing to either get our residency cards or our visas checked or whatever, my mother and father would always pray to lord baby Jesus that we would not have some douchebag latin guy have to care for us. Although this may sound surprising, it was always the Colombian immigration worker that would put on his little fancy immigration badge and think he was the shit making us wait for hours. It was always the Bolivian or Venezuelan agent that would feel that his position at the US Immigration Agency gave him some type of permission to treat us like drug-dealing thieves. We would spend hours sitting in those uncomfortable waiting room chairs just waiting for the pedantic and hotheaded latino agents to finally realize that we weren't bad people. They, being latino and all, felt that they were something superior. They felt that for some reason the fact that they had been able to become official US government agents made them special and gave them permission to treat us, their true countrymen, like crap.

Anyways, this reminds me in Song of Solomon of the part where they talk about how Macon Dead tells Mrs. Bains that she needed to pay her rent or else she and her sons would end up living on the street. When asked by her sons what Macon Dead said, Mrs. Bains replies, "A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A terrible, terrible thing to see" (Morrison 22). At first when I read this I said to myself like, "Yo, what the hell, this poor guy is only doing his job. Why does she have to be such a mean lady and say that about the poor man." But then I remembered those snobbish assholes in their uniforms and honestly, I feel for this lady...

I Believe I Can Touch the Sky

OK so here I am in my house reading this new book we got called Song of Solomon and I think to myself, "What should I blog about?" After reading a few pages, I get to the part where they talk about Mr. Smith the insurance agent and his suicide and thats when I began to think about the whole notion of flying and believing that you could actually fly...

Our class is centered around traveling (hence "Literature in Motion") and I think that there is probably some connection between this guy deciding that he could actually fly and the whole idea that when you travel and come out of your comfort zone and quotidian routine, then you're able to learn more about yourself as a person.

The narrator of the novel tells us that "None of them (the people of the city) had suspected he (Mr. Smith) had it in him" (Morrison 9). According to this, Mr. Smith had no crazy habits and never really did anything out of the ordinary and because of this, no one had expected that he would suddenly pull some crazy stunt. As I think about Mr. Smith and his belief that he could fly, I asked myself, "what would Mr. Smith gain by flying?" Perhaps he was tired of his life and wanted to free himself from his responsibilities. Maybe he had somewhere to go, someone to meet... Maybe he was trying to get to know himself or he might have even felt that by flying he could change himself.

Its interesting that Morrison would begin her novel this way, with something so complicated and curious as a suicide (specially this one with its bizarre qualities). Maybe some of the characters in the novel will have to face the same obstacles that Mr. Smith may have had to face? Or maybe they might even ask themselves the same questions that led Mr. Smith to believe he could fly? I look forward to seeing how Morrison is going to play with this idea of flying.

Exploitation

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that would be able to reflect the paradigms of a generation. The White Man's Burden is a poem that talks about how it is the duty of a "white man" to civilize and tame people from conquered lands. This poem demonstrates the clear way that "white" society justified their oppressive and cruel actions.

In A Heart of Darkness, there is a part where the narrator is talking about how once he had "a visit to the doctor" (Conrad 74) and there, "two woman knitted black wool feverishly" (Conrad 74). The narrator explains how this pair of women are made up of a "young one" and an "old one" (Conrad 74). I believe that these two women represent white generations and how both manipulate the indigenous people of Africa (the same way as the women work and give shape to the wool). Conrad writes later on page 74, "I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness . . . one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes." This excerpt's purpose is to clearly show the readers how the narrator is going into a job where the important thing is to manipulate and exploit. Both of the women are "guarding the door of Darkness." Darkness here may mean Africa itself. Also, the fact that they are doing their task with "unconcerned old eyes" shows how the women (representative of white oppression) don't show any type of consideration or care.