American Literature
12/11/04
James Weldon Johnson
I really enjoyed reading The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. There are many reasons for this. While we discussed many of the appealing things about the book in class, none of them really hit why I personally find it so enjoyable. After some thinking, I believe that the reason I like The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man so much is its style and language. For a book that has so much depth, the language is simple to read and it makes the pages fly right by. The style of Johnson's writing seems simple as well. I really liked how he made a book that has so much depth to it easy to ready.
12/05/04
Critical Article
Much to my dismay, we did not study Willa Cather this semester. While she was brought up a few times in class, we never read any of her works and only discussed her as being a feminist writer and a lesbian. Apparently I have not read enough of Willa Cather. When I read My Antonia and One of Ours I saw them as fabulous books that had a lot to offer. Not once did I see them as Willa Cather crying out that she was a lesbian or a feminist. However, because we are required to read an article once during the semester for our weblogs, I decide to look into Willa Cather and her real story about the feminist/lesbian issue. The article I chose to write about is entitled "Willa Cather: Willa's case." It was written by Marilee Lindemann in The Gay and Lesbian Review.
Lindemann first brings up the fact that when Cather was 14 she "embarked on a four-year masquerade as William Cather (also known as Willie, William Cather, Jr., and William Cather, MD), an elaborate and public episode of male impersonation documented in studio photographs that show her sporting crewcuts and dressed in masculine attire" (Lindemann 21). Lindemann also notes that she continued cross-dressing her first two years at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln where she fell in love (according to Lindemann) with a woman by the name of Louise Pound. In a letter to Pound, Lindemann notes "Cather rails in the course of the letter against the fact that feminine friendships should be regarded as unnatrual. She winds up blaming the weather for her frame of mind, but signs the letter, Yours, William" (Lindemann 1). However, Cather soon gave up her boyish ways in order to live conventionaly and to present herself as the early 20th century career woman.
The article continues on to state that Cather apparently got very paranoid later in life and believed enemies were out to get her: "By the end of her life, in 1947, Cather's desire to control her privacy and her reputation was so obsessive that she destroyed all the personal letters in her posession, asked friends to destroy any they had, and even stipulated in her will that quotation from or re-publication of any surviving letters be forbidden...Her longing for mainstram respectibility has forced all scholars of her life into similarly unsatisfying compromises and resulted in inestimable losses to Cather scholarship and to gay and lesbian history" (Lindemann 3). It should be noted that Lindemann states in her article that she never used quotation marks because Cather's letters are not to be read, but that what is stated are some of Cather's exact words. How believable that is, I'm not exactly sure, but "The Gay and Lesbian Review" is noted as a scholarly journal.
Lindemann states that O Pioneers! and My Antonia can be read as "celebrations of women whose energies and intelligences were devoted to the expansion and settlement of the nation" (Lindemann 3). Maybe so. I read My Antonia for fun. Lindemann also couples same sex couples in some of Cather's novels.
This article has made me more aware of Cather pushing women to the front. However, maybe I didn't read the books that I read of her's careful enough. I loved My Antonia and never found anything super feminine about it. And the fact that Antonia ends up being a super mother is even more reason for me to believe that Cather was just writing a story about a woman who seemed more modern than the women of the times. But I could be wrong. I'm not a fan of feminists so I think that's why I fight peoples' view of Willa Cather as being a feminist so much. Who knows...
Works Cited
Lindemann, Marilee. "Willa Cather: Willa's Case." The Gay and Lesbian Review. 31 Jan. 1996. Vol. 3, Iss. 1; p.21. ProQuest. 3 Dec. 2004. http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2053/pqdweb?index=14&did=000000506106961&Srch.M
11/20/04
Harold Frederic
The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination is a very interesting story. One of the first things I noticed about the book is that it's supposedly a great classic and I had never heard of it. However, if I try to put myself back in the year 1896 I can definitely see how it would be a very popular read. For one, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination was probably a really risky novel in the late nineteenth century. In my opinion, the book basically slams two pretty big religions-Methodism and Catholocism. While this was probably frowned up on in 1896, I bet that it was also one of the main reasons that The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination turned out to be so popular!
I would like to learn more about Harold Frederic and where he came up with such a novel as this. The main character, Theron, is a character that I'm starting to detest. The more I read about him and the more we discuss him in class, the more I cannot stand him. He is a weak being who treats his wife poorly and gets so caught up in what other people think about him that he completely becomse a different person from the person he started out as at the beginning of the novel. While I admire Theron's passion for the Bible, I also see it as a flaw and weakness. Theron knew nothing about the Bible. He took it so literally that he almost fell apart the first time he went to see Father Forbes. Anyone that believes the Bible to be the absolute 100% truth is setting themselves up for dissapointment. Considering the fact that the Bible has been translated hundreds of times over thousands of years, odds are that there are errors in it. If Theron could not realize that, he was in the wrong profession.
I think that it would have been a bad idea for a Methodist or a Catholic to read this book in 1896. However, maybe some of them were so curious that it made the publicity of the book sky-rocket. I find it to be an extremely intriguing book. The characters and the odd town of Octavius make The Damnatin of Theron Ware or Illumination a very thought provoking novel.
11/10/04
Jack London
I first read To Build a Fire in the tenth grade. At the time, we were learning about the conflicts such as man vs. man, man vs. nature, etc. I guess that's probably a little below college level, but one thing that we definitely knew in the tenth grade and that we discussed in American lit. the other day is that the man in To Build a Fire is a complete moron. I understand that there are many people in the world that believe themselves to be invincible, but this man is out of control. He is stoic:
The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero.
The above paragraph is pretty shocking. That the man considers such severe and dangerous cold weather to be nothing that mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks can't guard is absurd. Such thinking is stupidity. While he pats himself on the back for making it this far all by himself, he was an idiot to not listen to the old man who tell him how dangerous it was to travel alone in such weather without a partner. The man was a newcomer to the territory. When someone is new to a place, they most certainly never attempt such stupid feats.
Something that really bothers me about this story is that we never know why the man is trying to get to the old claim. Getting out logs in a spring is mentioned, but London definitely leaves the readers hanging. The only dialogue that is found in the story is at the very end when the man knows that he is going to die. In addition, I find the dog to be the most comforting part of the story, and I was very glad to see that he made it out. I believe that London is trying to say that the dog, who only relies on instincts and is considered just an animal, is a millioin times smarter than the man who wouldn't listen to advice and ended up freezing to death.
11/06/04
Desiree
In Desiree's Baby, I cannot get beyond the fact that Desiree just walks into a deserted field at the end of the story and ends up killing herself and her baby. While it is not directly stated that Desiree does indeed die at the end of the story, the reader is left with a sense of doubt that she would ever survive. My main question is what was her motivation to kill herself, and the baby that she loved so much, when she could have just gone home to her mother who loved her no matter what race she came from.
Another question I have about Desiree's Baby is the relationship that she shares with her husband Armand. The nature of how they fell in love is rather doubtful. And if Armand WAS so passionately in love with her to begin with, why would he care what race she was? Or why would he fall out of love with her so quickly? While Desiree's racial background was questionable, it's funny that the man just automatically assumed that his baby would get his "blackness" from the wife. I don't think Armand was ever in love with Desiree in the first place. If he was, he never would have been spending so much time in LaBlanche's cabin anyway.
Desiree's Baby is more of a tragedy than anything else. The irony that it was Armand in the end that was "black" was a veyr painful thing to read. However, I think the story ended perfectly. While it would be interesting to see what Armand had done after reading the letter, I think the ending left the reader extremely surprised which is a good sign of any story.
10/29/04
Charles Chesnutt
Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales portrays the act of slavery in a way that strikes me as being extremely odd. When Julius tells the story of "Po'Sandy," it's mentioned that the slave owner sells Sandy's wife while Sandy is working on another plantation:
"W'en Sandy come back, Mars Marrabo gin 'im a dollwar, en 'lowed he wuz monst'us sorry fer ter break up de fambly, but de spekilater had gin'im big boot, en times wuz hard en money skase, en so he wuz bleedst ter make de trde. Sandy tuk on some 'boug losin' his wife, but he soon seed dey want no use cryin' ober spilt merlasses; en bein' ez he lacked de looks er de noo'oman, he tuck up wid her atter she'd be'n on de plantation a mont' er so."
What strikes me so much about the above passage is the line, "but he soon seed dey want no use cryin' ober spilt merlasses..." I cannot believe that poor Sandy just had to give up on his wife and move on. There was no attempting to run after her, no threats to the plantation owner, no wild rages of anger, nothing. If my husband was taken and moved onto another plantation I would go crazy! I'd at least try to find out where he went and maybe attempt to run away to that plantation and then convince her to run away with me. But then again, that's also coming from me and I certainly do not understand the practice of slavery and do not realize the consequences of running away on a plantation. It's obvious that Sandy was meant to be with his second wife who he held in such high regard, but it's still sad that anyone would just have to suck up the fact that their spouse was just taken away.
In addition to Sandy's story, I have not yet noticed any bitterness toward the act of slavery in Uncle Julius. It's obvious that he does not condone it, but he never rants and raves about what a brutal thing it was. I know that I would be extremely bitter, but it was brought up in class that if Uncle Julius did preach about it being a horrible thing, Chesnutt would probably not have as many readers. The slave owners found in The Conjure Womand and Other Conjure Tales also seem relatively nice. The slaves do not have to work during the winter or on Sundays and are only punished when someone tires to run away or steal something. This again must be Chesnutt trying to keep his readers. This is also something that I noticed in Gone With the Wind. The slaves almost seem proud of working for the O'Hara family. Mammy gets disgusted when the war is over and there are slaves running free. The attitude of slavery in Gone With the Wind is much like the attitude in The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales. Not a great deal of bitterness and slavery is taken lightly in a weird and hard to describe way.
10/15/04
Vine Leaves and Doctors
I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The Vine-Leaf." The reasons that I liked it so much were that it was fast moving, it was very intriguing, and it made you really think about Dr. Malsufrido. Specifically, was this a true story, or was it a story that he made up to keep the trust of his patients?
Dr. Malsufrido is a very interesting character. For one, someone brought up his age in class. Would a doctor who was almost ninety years old really be practicing medicine? And would people really trust his knowledge? Maybe the good Mexicans he had been practicing on preferred the old ways rather than go to a doctor fresh out of medical school who knew more about modern medicine. I personally do not think I would feel comfortable seeing a doctor who was almost ninety, but I guess everyone is different when it comes to medical care.
Another thing I found interesting about Dr. Malsufrido's practice is that he made his female patients confess before he would diagnose whatever was wrong with them. Granted it's understandable that he does not want to have anything to do with helping a murderer escape, but the fact that everyone trusted him that incredibly much blows my mind. The fact that he tells every female patient the story of the vine-leaf makes me wonder if he really does keep everyone's secrets. Maybe he tells everyone's secrets in order for his current patient to feel comfortable. It's all very funny. There is too much irony in this story for it to seem real. It's very creative and fun, but it just seems too out of the blue to feel real. For example, what are the odds that the women with the vine-leaf would marry the man that owned the painting of her? Why would she let an artist paint the vine-leaf in the first place if she never wanted anyone to see her face?
And my last thought on the "Vine-Leaf." Even if the women had randomly told Dr. Malsufrido that she was in love with him while he removed the vine-leaf, and if they had married, I don't think it would have worked out.
10/08/04
Lions and Mothers
I am beginning to enjoy American literature more and more and I think the biggest reason for this is that it has a lot to do with the common people. In addition, back then a large majority of the common people were farmers. I come from a long line of farmers, and my family was definitely farming throughout the times of Hamlin Garland and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Unlike Whitman and Dickinson, I actually feel like I can relate to Under the Lions Paw and The Revolt of Mother.
The American farmer has always struggled. He (I don't mean to sound sexist but traditionally farmers are male) struggled during the times of Under the Lions Paw and The Revolt of Mother, and he still struggles today. Under the Lions Paw is a great story. I believe that it's a great story because of the reaction that it most likely gets out of the reader. I know that I was extremely angry when I finished reading it, and odds are most people are. Mr. Butler did an unjust thing to Haskins and every reader knows it. While Mr. Butler did nothing wrong in the legal sense, it's the moral principle of the thing. Here is a man that worked SO hard to make his farm a success, and also worked his children and wife a great deal, and he ended up losing it and having to move on. Life's not fair, and Garland writes a great story that proves that. Farmers deal with that kind of thing all the time, and a good story gets a good reaction out of the reader. While there's nothing too complex about Under the Lion's Paw it does fire up the reader and that's awesome.
I found The Revolt of Mother to be very amusing. Mostly because it does happen. Famers are extremely busy people. They work long hours and what comes out of those long hours is the means to support themselves and their families. The topic in today's class was "Do farmers keep up their barns better than their own homes." The answer to that is sometimes. I would definitely say the poor to middle class farmers keep their barns up better than their homes because they need their animals to produce in order to build a nicer home. The family usually understands that too. However, Mother waiting 40 years for her house when her husband promised is not okay. Women on the farm do a great deal of work too. Raising kids and cooking and clearning for everyone is a mightly tiring job. When you add doing the financial books, it turns out to be a lot of work. Again, The Revolt of Mother gets a good reaction out of the reader and both stories of the American farmer are pretty much bull's eye on the target.
09/24/04
Mark Twain
After spending the last month studying Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, I find the literature of Mark Twain to be extremely refreshing. His humor is much easier to understand, and he to me he really feels like the average American. In fact, what's even better about him is that he tells stories about the average American. In addition, when I read the stories we were required to read I noticed that while he's extremely funny and does tend to make fun of people, he doesn't seem to look down on anyone.
The most specific thing I noticed, especially when reading "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calvaeras County," were the names of Twain's characters. I am in a creative writing class right now, and we spent a great deal on character development. To me the name of a character says a lot and when Twain's stories contain names like Simon Wheeler, Jim Smiley, Andrew Jackson, and Daniel Webster, it just makes me think a little more about his chacter development. Look at his own name! Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quite a mouthful, and even Mark Twain is a very interesting name. These interesting names completely fit the characters in the story. My biggest question is how did Mark Twain decide what names to give his characters?
09/10/04
Emily Dickinson
I just wrote a great deal about Emily Dickinson and it was lost. The frustrations of technology.
Tonight I read a great deal of Emily Dickinson's poetry. While I know that I favor Dickinson's writing over Walt Whitman's, I'm still struggling with understanding it. However, there was one poem I did find that I feel pretty confident about. The first stanza of #67 is fairly clear to me:
Sucess is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
When I was in eighth grade my English teacher used to run around yelling "Life's made of peaks and valleys folks, and you're never going to fully appreciate a peak until you experience a valley first." I believe Emily Dickinson is basically stating the exact same thing. As we learned in class, one of the conventions of Romanticism is the idea of childhood inncence. In order for a poet to be brought into the world, childhood innoence must be destroyed. As we talked about with Whitman, a poet cannot become a poet unti he or she has dealt with death which is a type of initiation process in growing up. When a poet experiences a loss, he or she knows the true value of love and relationships and can write about it from experience. Therefore, we are brought back to Emily Dickinson' line, "Sucess is counted sweetest by those that ne'er succeed..." because success to a person who does not usually succeed is a beautiful and wonderful feeling. In fact, when it comes to a person who succeeds every day to someone who is used to failure, sucess is going to be sweetest to the person used to failure. Just like if we never experience valleys we will never truly appreciate the peaks.
In addition, because I have such low confidence when it comes to interpreting poetry, I turned to my M. H. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms to see if there was anything on Emily Dickinson's particular style of writing poetry. I found out that Emily Dickinson frequently used what is called imperfect rhyme, also known as partial rhyme (or "near rhyme," "slant rhyme," or "pararhyme") to take the place of "perfect rhyme" where the correspondence of the rhymed sounds is exact. Her use of slant rhyme prevents monotony.
